It Only Took a Second

"No, not yet," I cautioned with a grin of my own as she began to stroke me with purpose.

We rinsed, I shut off the shower, handed my wife a towel, and began to dry myself with another.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Honey, it's simple. I want you. You caught me in a moment of utter weakness a while back. I need you! I need to feel closeness. I need your comfort. I need your touch and your affection.

"I know I don't sound incredibly masculine right now, but you're the better half of me and I need to feel connected to you again, and I mean that literally as well as figuratively.

"You argue with me all the time that you're not attractive and that you don't understand why I think you still are. Yeah, maybe your lovely little butt doesn't sway as hypnotically when you walk because your gait has changed, but it's still your butt, and it's still a wonderful sight to behold. And yes, I know, you've put on a few pounds, and I don't care .

"I was, of course, first attracted to you because of your beauty. Your face, your hair, your incredible green eyes, your beautiful chest, your awesome tummy, and incredibly long legs and all that.

"Your beauty made me so scared to even say a word to you. And then you, thank god , dumped my coffee all over me, and that was when I began to fall in love with you because I experienced your spirit and your soul! Don't you understand? All of you is a wonder to me, and I want you !

"You're still gorgeous! And don't think I'm saying that only because I'm your husband. I saw a few other guys checking you out last week when we went out to dinner. Don't you get it? You are freaking hotter than all hell!

"Good god , Kaley, it actually kind of pisses me off a little that you think I'd be put off by any change in your appearance. You're my wife for crying out loud, and I love you! I need to know that you believe me, and you still trust that I'm being honest!"

I'd never spoken to my wife with such unfettered conviction before. I worried how she'd react to my challenge.

She stared at me as we stood at the end of the bed.

"You're being honest with me?" she asked with less doubt in her expression.

"Of course I am. I hope I've never given you any reason to think otherwise."

She sat on the bed and stared into the distance.

I saw tears forming in her eyes.

"Kaley, I'm sorry. I went too far."

"No, baby. You didn't." She smiled so sweetly it made my heart flutter. "I guess I needed a bit of a kick in the arse ."

"Maybe you did. And I'm sorry for waiting so long to do it. But... Kales?"

"Yeah?"

"It's ass , not arse ."

That made her laugh harder than I'd heard in an incredibly long time.

She enjoyed when I'd playfully tease her about her use of the Queen's English, but I'd abstained for some time.

I motioned for her to recline into the bed, and she did.

"Tell me if you're uncomfortable, okay? I don't want you--"

"I'm okay, my love."

"Good. Then give me," I whispered, encouraging her to part her thighs.

I watched as she opened her legs, her perfectly delectable lady-bits on full display. I knelt to the floor between her thighs and nuzzled my nose into the fur at the center of her vulva, breathing into my lungs the scent of my wife's essence.

"Yes," I hissed as her pheromones poured into me. "Your scent, Kales. God, I've missed your scent."

I pushed my nose into her folds and filled my lungs once again with her aroma. I slowly moved a hand upward along her hip where it was met and grasped by my wife's. She laced her fingers into mine and held my hand tightly. I savored and relished the flavor, pushing my tongue into her vagina and drawing out her moisture, taking it into me.

With my free hand, I parted her labia and played my tongue in full strokes from her folds to the tip of her clitoris's hood. I felt the faintest of quivers as I tongued her there.

"Oh," she whispered.

"What, Kales? Did I hurt you?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

I resumed my feast. I watched a dribble escape and slowly descend. It became captured in the crinkles of her anus. Not willing to let any of her nectar get away, I drew it into my mouth with my tongue. I felt her clench, so I did it again.

"Oh !" She groaned.

I licked her there again with a little more force. With the same increased pressure, I licked the entirety of her crotch from the ringlet up to her mons.

"Ooph !" she yelled. "I felt that!"

Her nails dug into the back of my hand before she released her grip and pulled her legs upward.

I did it again, tasting and smelling every square millimeter of her freshly washed body from the base of the mark at her tailbone to her ginger-furred mound.

I heard her begin to cry.

I quickly stood to look at her. "Kaley! What's wrong?"

"I need more! Please, baby, don't stop!"

She peered at me with piercing green eyes and an expression I can't quite describe. The sight of it countermanded the tears she emitted. I treated her crotch to a year's worth of exploration. I tongued against her meatus and received several groans. As had happened on our honeymoon, the experience and the sensory overload worked its magic on me, and I told her.

"Steven! Up here, baby! Get up here!"

I scurried up onto the bed and she brought my penis to her mouth. The sensation of her tongue massaging the underside of my knob caused an immediate and intense orgasm.

"Kales! Yes !" I cried out as she withdrew me and pumped the full length of my shaft with her hand. My body tingled and pulsed. She laughed gleefully as I painted her chest with my cum.

"Crap, Kaley, I'm so sorry. That wasn't what I had planned," I said with a giggle after I collapsed onto the bed beside her.

She smiled. "No, Steven, don't be sorry. I kind of wanted that. I've missed it. Does that show you how badly I want you?"

I watched her beautiful green eyes and tender, sweet expression.

"Yeah," I whispered, smiling back at her feeling total contentment.

"Let me get a washcloth. Be right back," I said.

I went to the bathroom and retrieved the washcloth from the shower peg. When I came back, Kaley was licking her fingertips.

"Need this?" I said, offering her the washcloth with a chuckle.

She laughed and grinned. "Not just yet."

She grinned and swabbed her breast with a finger.

She then used the washcloth to clean my stuff from her torso. She relaxed easily on the bed after throwing the spent cloth through the bathroom door onto the tiled floor.

"Hold me, please?" She sighed languidly.

I nestled into the pillows and drew her to me.

We snuggled, skin on skin, for several quiet minutes. I stroked her hair and her back, listening to her easy, relaxed breath.

"I felt something," she whispered.

"Yeah? What was it like?"

"It's difficult to describe. It felt like when the anesthesia one gets at a dentist begins to wear off. But I most definitely felt it."

"When?"

"I don't want to say." She giggled softly.

"Oh, come on," I gently prodded.

"I felt it in my clit. And I felt something different when... when you did whatever you did to my bum."

"I licked it."

"You didn't !" She laughed.

"I did. I licked your pretty little bumhole."

"No!" She laughed even more forcefully. "Why?"

"I've always wanted to," I said in a chuckle. "And... I honestly didn't think you'd notice."

"Well, I did. But it's icky, isn't it?"

"We just had a shower, so no ."

She propped herself up on her elbow and held me in her delightfully beautiful gaze. I hadn't seen such a warm and happy expression from her in a long time. We softly stroked each other's skin for wonderful minutes, just looking into each other's eyes.

"Did you like it?" she asked with a curious grin.

"I did. It was kind of novel and a bit taboo. Did you?"

"I felt it, so yes."

I smiled and waggled my tongue at her, which made her laugh and blush.

She stared at me sweetly for a few moments. "I'm glad this is a Friday night."

"Why's that?"

"Because we can stay up late and see what else we might manage."

She offered me a breast, and I suckled it tenderly until I was hard enough to properly enter my accepting wife.

After Kaley had completed her therapy and continued exercise regimes at home for some time, few people could see anything about her to hint she'd been severely injured in a freak accident. She wasn't breaking any personal records, but she was delighted to resume running with me.

It mildly surprised me that, on the third anniversary of the accident, she proposed we take a day off from our jobs to run the same trail on which it occurred. She said she wanted a bit of closure or completion, because we'd not visited the park since the event.

We entered the gates and drove along the service road. Kaley asked me to stop at the ranger station.

"Keep the car running. I want to ask a ranger a question, and I'll only be a moment," she said as she exited the vehicle.

She was, indeed, only in the building a few minutes before she returned to the car.

"Do you remember where it happened?" she asked.

"I'll never forget. Are you really sure you want to run that path again?"

"I'm certain."

"That's fine with me."

"You checked the weather forecast?"

"I did. Nothing but blue skies and light breezes," I assured her.

When we reached the parking lot at the trailhead, I parked the car in the exact spot it'd occupied when we were last there.

"Do you think we should try the new extension and do the 10K?" I asked, looking at the map mounted on the board.

"No, but let's do it anyway. I need to keep pushing myself," she answered with determination.

We did some stretches for a few minutes to limber ourselves. Kaley removed her sweats and t-shirt because the temperature was perfect for the running shorts and fashionable jog bra she was wearing underneath. She might also have considered how much I liked to trail her so I could watch her runner's-rump in those hip-huggers.

I tossed my own tee in the back seat as I fetched our water bottles. She clipped hers to her hip-pack. The last thing we did was apply some sunscreen.

We began our jog at 1:30 that afternoon, noted when I started the fitness app on my watch. A half-hour into the run, the path began to parallel the arroyo. I knew we were getting close to the particular tree. I wondered if it would still be there, or if the storm had killed it. After about ten more minutes, I had my answer. It was still standing, as lush and green as it'd been that fateful day.

I told Kaley I'd spotted it.

"Which one?" she panted.

"The one up there on the right." I pointed.

Kaley decelerated her pace for the remaining distance, then stopped and drank some water.

She walked to the tree and ran her hands across its trunk, looking up at the scarred protuberance where the limb had split off and fallen onto the trail.

I followed her as she stepped twenty or thirty yards away, removed her phone from her pack, and snapped a photograph of the tree before walking back to it. She poured a few ounces of water from her bottle on the ground underneath its canopy.

"No reason we both can't live our lives," she whispered.

Palo verde trees are a desert native, and I realized my wife's action was purely symbolic. It was a beautiful notion. She walked around the base of the tree, looking up into its canopy.

"Love, would you give me a boost?" she asked, standing close to the trunk.

"Why?" I asked.

She removed a tool from her pack. It was a hand pruner. She worked it in front of her a few times with a relaxed smile.

"Kaley, you can't do that, honey. It's like collecting firewood. It's against the law in a state park."

"I know, now hurry up. I don't want to lose my second wind. We've only a kilometer to go."

I cautiously looked around us to see if anyone would observe. Seeing no one, I made a saddle with my hands and interlaced fingers. Kaley stepped into it, and I lifted her a distance as she balanced against the trunk. She reached above her head and snipped off a small branch. It was about an inch in diameter at its thickest and was maybe three feet long. It fell to my feet. Kaley held against the trunk as I lowered her back to the ground.

"You're naughty," I said.

"It's okay. I asked the ranger's permission. At first, he told me the same thing you said, but when I told him what happened to us here, he remembered being told about the incident."

"Oh. That's so awesome. What are you going to do with it?" I asked as I picked up the cutting from the ground.

"Can you see it when I'm dressed like this?"

She turned her back to me. I nodded. Two inches of the mark on her back was visible above the waistband of her running shorts.

"I have to look in a mirror and contort a little to see it. I'm taking this branch home. I'll tidy it up to hang it in the office next to our wedding photograph and an enlargement of the one I just took. It'll be a visual reminder to me of what I went through, and, more importantly, what my husband endured for me. I want it to be there, right next to that picture of us as a reminder to me to never push you away as I did, ever again."

She kissed me softly and tenderly. Her perspiration-sheened skin was in close contact with mine as she held me.

"Steven, I hope I'm not sounding redundant. I know I have said it a number of times, but saying it here... right now... seems apropos.

"My body survived that day because of you. I'm certain neither my sanity nor soul would have if not for your steadfast conviction and dedication to me, both physically and emotionally, every day since.

"I want you to know my love for you has grown so deeply and broadly since I first met you, even to this very moment. Words fail me when I try to explain it, so I won't try."

I'd have begun bawling with her praise if she hadn't taken another drink of water and hit the path again. When we completed the 10K circuit, it was just shy of 3:15pm.

After we'd cooled off in the air-conditioned car for a few minutes, I began the drive back home.

At one intersection along the service road, Kaley pointed left, back into the park, and said, "Go that way."

"The exit to the highway is the other way," I said, pointing right.

"Remember the cabin? I booked it again. I packed us an overnight bag, and it's already in the boot. We're going back to that cabin to relive our wedding night."

"Yes, ma'am !" I laughed and left rubber on the road.

It would have been fun to make the 10K an annual event, but it wasn't to be because we've discovered something on our fourth wedding anniversary of all days. We now know it'd be difficult (for her, at least) to run a repeat 10K next year because my wife will be seven months pregnant!

Thanks for reading! We humbly ask you comment and rate this tale!

Don't forget to follow us so you'll be notified on your dashboard about new or updated content.