Take

It's two days before our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary when I tell my wife to undress and wait for me in the attic.

Her fingers stop moving on the keyboard.

The sun from the window catches the edge of her glasses. Outside, someone is mowing a lawn. The dishwasher hums behind me.

"Excuse me?" she says.

I lean back against the door.

"You heard me." I hold her gaze.

She studies me for a moment, then a half smile appears. It's the look she gets when she doesn't know what she thinks yet.

"Surprise me," I say.

"Okay," she says finally. No follow-up questions. No details. No negotiation. Which, for Margot, is its own kind of surprise.

A few minutes later I hear the attic ladder unfold in the hallway. A step. Another. Then nothing.

I wait.

My first impulse is to follow her, maybe even check in: Are you sure this is okay? Instead I open the refrigerator, stare into it for a moment, then close it again.

The attic is directly above the kitchen. Somewhere overhead, something scrapes softly across the floor. I pour a glass of water. Drink half of it. Set it down, then undress, dropping my clothes on the tile floor.

Margot's chair is still pushed back from the table. I walk over and touch the seat with my fingers. I leave my hand there for a moment and then sit down. The seat still holds her heat. Upstairs, another floorboard shifts.

The light from the single window divides the attic into brightness and shadow. One wall is painted. Another isn't. A mattress sits beneath the slope of the roof. Exposed rafters disappear into the darker corners. The attic has looked half-finished for as long as we've lived here. On the floor, a sheet has been spread and smoothed flat. Next to it, she has placed a glass jar filled with lavender oil.

Margot is sitting on a low stool, dressed in a black lace bodysuit I've never seen. Her hands rest on her knees, palms down. Her posture reminds me of a yearbook portrait: carefully arranged and faintly uncomfortable, as though she'd become self-conscious halfway through posing.

The sight of her makes me smile.

I cross the room and stand in front of her. This close, I can see that she's done something with her hair, pinned it up, left a few strands loose. She did that for me, I realize. She came up here and prepared.

"Stand up," I say.

She stands.

I'm not sure what I expected, resistance maybe, or a joke to break the tension. Instead she just rises from the stool, quiet and attentive, like she's listening for something.

I walk a slow circle around her. I do it because it seems like the right thing to do, and halfway through I feel slightly self-conscious, a man circling his own wife in an unfinished attic. But I finish the circle anyway. The lace clings to her hips, the weight of her ass beneath it, and I feel it low in my stomach, the way I always have.

"Turn toward the window."

She turns.

The light finds the curve of her shoulder, the line of her neck. Twenty-seven years and I'm seeing her like this, like I've been given new permission to look.

"Put your hands behind your back."

A pause. Not long. The length of a breath.

She puts her hands behind her back.

Something moves through me that I don't have a name for. Not quite power. More like knowing.

"Are you cold?" I ask, and immediately regret it. It's the wrong kind of question. It belongs to a different version of me, the one who would have followed her up the ladder five minutes ago to make sure she was okay.

But Margot surprises me.

"No," she says. Just that. And she doesn't turn around.

I put one hand on the back of her neck and take hold of her hands at the wrists with the other. Her head drops and she makes a sound I'm not familiar with, half sigh, half letting go.

"Tell me what you want," I say.

"I want you to tell me what to do.”

She has spent most of her adult life turning ideas into realities. Companies. Communities. Projects. Entire futures assembled from conversations that began with the words, "This might be crazy, but..."

"Kneel," I say.

She kneels.

Not quickly. She goes down slowly, the way you lower yourself into a hot bath, not reluctant, just deliberate. Feeling each inch. When she settles back on her heels she lets out a breath that seems to have been held for longer than the last few minutes.

I crouch down in front of her so our faces are level.

"Look at me."

She looks at me. Her eyes are bright. Not with tears, something else. Something that has been waiting.

I take hold of her hair and lift her face toward mine, kiss her eyes, the side of her nose, draw my tongue across her lips. Then I stand and drag my cock across her face, still gripping her hair with my left hand. When she opens her mouth I pull away, hook my thumb in the corner of her lips.

"Lie down and spread your legs," I say. "Not in the shadow. Move into the sun."

I usually take my glasses off before any physical play, which means shapes become blurry. This time I want to see all of her.

The lace of her bodysuit ends at the top of her thighs, what the catalogs call crotchless. I ease her out of it, reach for the jar and open it. The smell of lavender fills the room. I pour a generous amount into my palm, warm it there for a moment, then begin at her shoulders, working slowly around her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, the outsides of her calves. She doesn't move. When I reach her feet she makes a small sound, the same one as before.

I set the jar aside.

I move in closer. I don't touch her at first, just look. I breathe on her. I've always loved the smell of her sex and now I slowly take it in.

I press my hands into the tops of her inner thighs and begin to trace circles, pulling the flesh, spreading her legs wide then closing them, opening her then closing her, again and again, my hands moving where they want. I push her legs apart, grip her hip bones, turn her, reposition her without asking. She is mine to arrange.

She trembles slightly and I don't stop until I am ready. Then I lower my mouth to her and taste her slowly, dragging my tongue the full length of her. Her lips are swollen and pink and I want to bite them.

I pull back. Something tightens through my whole body, my fists and jaw clench. I want to devour her. I want.

I move back up the length of her body, my chest brushing her skin, and when I reach her face I stop. We are close enough that I can feel her breath. Neither of us moves.

What happens next is a kind of dance I'm having with myself as much as her. My body is moving without thought, without memory. I grip her thighs and pull her toward me, then push her away. 

The back of my bicep drags between her legs, then my forearm, the back of my palm, across her face. I flip her over, prop her belly up with pillows, grind my hips into the back of her thighs. I bite the back of her neck. My face drags across her ass. I spread the backs of her thighs with both hands and press my face deep into her cunt. Then I roll over and lay my back across hers, her spine against mine.

I pull away and turn her over. Her hair has come loose. I pin her wrists to each side and look at her face. I lower my mouth to her throat, her collarbone, drag my tongue down the center of her chest. She arches up toward me and I pull back just enough to keep the distance mine to control.

I take her by the ankle and lift her leg slowly. She lets me. Her face has put everything down. Then I take her by the hips and turn her over, pull her toward me until she is where I want her. She goes without resistance. I press my forearm across her lower back and enter her slowly, feeling her open around me. She makes a sound into the sheet. I hold still for a moment, my hand in her hair, then begin to move.

I find a rhythm and stay in it. At some point, somewhere beneath me, she begins to moan, low and steady, and then her whole body tightens and she cries out. My hands move to her shoulders. Her hair is loose now and I gather it in my fist. I am aware of nothing outside this room, this body, this motion. The light has shifted. I don't know how long we have been here.

Something begins to gather at the base of my spine. I move faster without deciding to. My grip tightens. I am not thinking. I am not anywhere. There is only the gathering, the tightening, the sound coming out of me that I don't recognize, too loud for the room, almost a shout.

When I come it is like falling through the floor. There is love in it and anger and something close to fear, all at once, all without twenty-seven years of words. I collapse across her back, my whole weight, and for a moment I am nothing at all.

I move off her and lie on my back. After a moment she turns and puts her head on my chest. I can feel her breath evening out. She begins to say something and I put my fingers to her lips.

She stops.

I wrap my arms around her and hold her there, her whole weight against me.

I have been mapping her for twenty-seven years. The territory keeps changing.