The Maintenance Man

I came instantly. A ripe and aimless shivery thrill launched itself from the well deep inside my belly and surfaced in a breathless “hello” as I answered the door and saw him standing there.

Cold air rushed in and I watched him dust snow off his boots, thudding one against the other. His cheeks were flushed from the winter freeze, black beanie on his head pulled down just below his brow, revealing a pair of sleepy-lidded blue eyes that locked my gaze with an intensity so flagrant it made my face blush and my pussy drip. 

I’m not kidding. Have you ever met someone who made you instantly wet? It’s disarming and I was dumb struck as he introduced himself, Henry O’Dell. I knew who he was though, before he even said it.

I’d heard his name 10 times that day. We were new, you see, hired just a month earlier to work as “house parents” at a big prestigious boarding school in the richest town on the island. My then-husband and I moved in that very night and Henry had come to welcome us, introduce himself, whatnot. It’s so cliche when I think about it now—the plot of a caricatured porno—but he was “the maintenance man”. 

I had a picture of him in my mind before we ever met, and a funny feeling I would know him in the close kind of way you know someone after exchanging sorrow, spit and breath.

We met in January and by March we were deep in the throes of a stolen romance confined to park benches and other people’s houses and beach dunes and text messages, but no sensation was ever dulled by the inconvenience of our affair and when I think about it now, I’m almost certain our love saved my life.

My ex husband was a cruel, hateful, and mentally abusive person and I was desperately unhappy but too scared to admit it … I’d nearly given up, resigned myself to joyless days and nights beside a bitter man who had no use for me other than as an emotional punching bag.

But then I met Henry and he made me want something again. 

I thirsted for every little encounter we had. He’d stop by the house to fix a faucet or assemble a piece of furniture. One time he came over to trap a family of squirrels that had made themselves a home in the attic. And we’d talk about nothing and everything and smoke weed together out of the little one hitter he kept in his care and laugh about minutia and god how I loved him and craved him and thought for the longest time I was just a delusional basket case … that our chemistry was all in my head. 

I didn’t even care if it was though—I’d take every careful word we spoke right into my bed and review it. I’d cherish it, touch myself and cum over and over just thinking of the way he held a damn hammer. I’d caress the lips of my cunt and think of his mouth, I’d tease my little clit with the warmth of my own finger tip and flood my panties imagining our eyes locking the way they did that first night and his voice commanding me on. I’d slip my fingers inside my silky holes imagining what his cock would feel like, his weight on top of me, his body falling into mine, how we’d both edge and cum and edge and cum in tandem with such ferocity and fever we’d be flush with exhaustion and fall asleep midday in my sun littered bedroom. I’d soak my sheets routinely just picturing him, waiting for the next time I’d see his face. 

I thought I was pathetic—here I was in the middle of my 20’s and married to a nightmare—and there he was, nearly 7 years my senior about to be a dad … but something about those fantasies changed me and I finally got up the guts to leave my husband after too many years of hell. I left the boarding school too, went back to live with my parents three towns West. I borrowed a car to see Henry a few weeks later… just to say goodbye because we truly had become friends.

We met up at the beach and I’ll never forget it … I was talking nervously as he walked me to my car. He stopped and reached his hand out to touch my cold cheek. The March winds whipped around us and the salt in the air hung heavy like smoke. He tilted my head and told me to look at him. 

I can still feel the excitement rising in my chest - stomach fluttering, heart in silver shreds, struck like the strings of a lonesome guitar vibrating in wobbly ecstasy. Henry O’Dell oh my godddd. My knees went weak. 

I lifted my eyes, lashes batting, encircling his gaze too scared to meet it. And he asked me in a cool, even tone why I wouldn’t catch his glance … so with the tentative sidle of an animal pursued, I finally let my eyes drift upward to find him. He studied me, our gaze locked and he held me in his sight for what seemed like forever and I felt like an Angel. Then he pulled me close- quick and strong - with one warm hand on the small of my back and the other caressing my hair. He slowly pressed his open mouth to mine, kissing me with his entire body. I melted into his form in a delirium.

His tongue tasted sweet. I was stunned and tumbled into a hazy dream-like trance, enveloped by his scent and his body and the sound of the sea waves crashing behind us, great salty gusts pushing us closer. Was this even real? 

And in an exuberant moment I realized every time I laid awake praying to some unknown god for Henry to fill every space in my body, he was hungering for me too.

He later said about the first night we met—the instant he saw me he wanted to rip all my clothes off and take me right there. Very rarely do people have a love at first sight and you see, this was ours. 

After that day at that beach we did the impossible. I drove hours to see him every week for months. And the first time we fucked I came as soon as he was inside me. I’d climbed on top of him and lowered myself down fitting his thick pulsing sex inside my nectar beaded well with the most calculated restraint, though I desperately wanted to smash myself on top of him and writhe with thunderous force all over his hard cock. I came the moment he fully entered me, felt my whole body rippling with streams of long awaited glimmering wholeness. He circled my rosy nipples with his tongue, beard scratching my breasts and I came again, eyes rolling back, weak from the release. 

I’d never been so liberated before a man—like an animal freed from its cage and let back into the wild. His cum tasted as sweet as his tongue and I swallowed it like water. Swallowed it like I was stranded in the desert and he was my only hope of survival. I kneeled in front of him taking his perfect cock deep in my throat with a willingness I never knew I had. I wanted him completely.

We almost got caught once at this house he was working on. It was empty when we got there and he brought me up to this enormous bedroom with skylights and a sofa, slipped my jeans down to my ankles and slowly expertly traced his hot mouth down the length of my body, tongue pressing deep into my pussy circling and stopping in cadence with my breath until I was grabbing my own hair and begging breathlessly for more. He held my thighs apart and blew into my void, opened his mouth and hummed so I felt the vibration on my insides, then ate me like a piece of fruit, languidly, savoring every bit of juicy pleasure. 

I was starting to unravel, felt the orgasm begin like a sneeze, when we heard footsteps on the stairs. We scrambled into the bathroom. I stayed behind the locked door pressed up against a giant claw foot tub and fumbled with my clothes in silence—heart racing, giggling on the inside—while he went out to chat with the owners, explaining he’d just stopped by to check on a leak in their shower or something. We snuck out the back door and laughed deliriously. 

We only had a handful of moments together but every time was dirty and beautiful and hopeless and perfect.

I was so lost when he found me—a shell of myself having come of age under a mean leader— and Henry was a magical person. A liar, a cheater, and a saint no less. He revived me.

I knew it wasn’t anything that could last and I think that’s what made it so hot. A moment in time together. Two strangers colliding in one life, changing the other forever. We spoke a few times after I moved away and I still know his birthday, but it’s been years now. I’m sure he has my naked photos somewhere and I hope he thinks of me from time to time. 

Henry O’Dell you were the lover that brought me back to life.

Photo by Natali Wonkaz