First time for everything.

“Please?” I try.

Claire’s laugh is muffled as she runs her tongue down my length, licking her arousal off me. “Keep going.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” My voice is almost a whine. I’m horrified, but apprehension only lasts a moment. Then I’m too busy thinking about her mouth as she sucks my cockhead between her lips.

Yes.

The pleasure is gone too soon. I’m exposed again as she pulls her mouth away with a popping sound. Her hand encircles the base of my shaft, and I can’t squirm myself into making her give me the friction I need. She lets me try. When my hips are still, she drops her face over me again. She’s close but not touching, breath tormenting me, teasing flesh that wants to be buried inside her.

“Tell me what you want.” She’s torturing me. I shouldn’t like it this much, but I do.

“I want to come,” I groan as the tip of her tongue swipes across my slit, hot and wet. “Please.”

“You can make yourself come. You don’t need me for that.” She ends the sentence with another lick, this one slower, as if I’m delicious. Then another. My eyes are rolling back in my head, my ability to form rational thought long gone.

“You,” I pant. “I want you to make me come.” The words are choked. I’m grateful for the darkness, how it hides the need that must be painted across my face. I wish it could hide the need in my voice.

“Good start,” she encourages, wrapping her lips around me and sucking. It’s incredible. I’m grasping the sheets so tight I can’t feel my fingers. She can’t stop. I will die if she stops. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do at this moment to make her keep going.

“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop. God, Claire, your mouth. Fuck.” I’m a mess—rambling, practically incoherent with pleasure.

She releases me from her mouth, but this time she strokes me, hand working up and down my straining cock. “That was good, so good.”

I’m forty-three years old and feel ridiculously proud because my wife said I did a good job begging her to make me come. Three years with Claire have shown me there’s nothing I won’t do if it earns me her praise. She asks a question that makes my head spin.

“Mouth or pussy? How do you want me to finish you?”

Finish me.

There’s never been a better choice of words.

“Pussy,” I instruct, hurrying to add, “please. Please use your pussy.” I’ve made it this far. There’s no way I’m losing my release now.

I can’t see her smile, but I can hear it. “That’s my good little deer. You’re a quick learner, aren’t you?”

My “Yes” turns into a groan as her heat consumes me. She rides me hard and fast. I can’t stay quiet. No amount of gritting my teeth can keep me from moaning as my orgasm builds. It’s the only thing I can do. I’m incapable of anything else. My brain is short-circuiting.

Her hips start to slow.

Nonononono.

“Please.” I don’t even recognize my voice anymore. “Please make me come.”

Her pace increases.

“You’re doing perfect.” That breathless sound is back in her voice.

A shiver runs through me.

“Not yet,” she pants, answering my unspoken question. “I want to come with you.”

My response isn’t even words. It’s something wild clawing its way out of my throat. I’m winding tighter than I ever thought possible, my body shuddering for release.

“Feels so good.” Claire’s struggling to get her words out. “Perfect.”

I’m right there. So close. Drawing on my last bit of cognitive function, I beg for what I’m desperate for.

“Please let me come. Please.”

She tightens around me. “Yes. Yes. Come, Shane, fu—” She cuts off into a yelp, her walls clamping on my cock, arousal surging down my shaft.

I don’t know what I’m saying, just that I’m growling it, unable to keep my hands on the sheets any longer. Grabbing her thighs, I control her motion. She’s still on top, but I’m fucking her. My hips slam up into her with desperation that nearly unseats her. That’s not happening. Not after all this. I’m not coming anywhere except inside her pulsing, hungry cunt.

Holding her on me, I explode as she continues to writhe through her release. Claire screams. My cock’s throbbing triggers another orgasm or maybe prolongs the current one. I don’t know what’s happening beyond the fact that I’m coming, harder than I ever knew I could come. Even harder than the first time I fucked her in the woods.

I don’t know how long it lasts, but when it’s over, I feel wrung out, a blissful exhaustion settling into my bones. She’s draped across my chest, our hearts racing each other. We stay there for a minute, or maybe five, then she breaks the silence. “Was that okay?”

Was that okay?

Hot showers are okay. Baked potatoes are okay. That was drugs. I would burn down my life for that kind of soul-shaking pleasure.

“Shane?”

In my reckoning, I didn’t answer her. My voice comes gravelly and somehow fast.

“Yes. That was…” I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the words.

“Not too much?” There’s amusement in her voice, like she knows she just upended my world, the way she always does.

“No. It was perfect.” Again, I feel like I need to say more, but I’ve got nothing.

“Okay.” She kisses my chest, then untangles herself. “Let me get a washcloth to clean you up.”

“Yeah.”

My body feels like it’s sinking into a warm bath, relaxation sweeping through my muscles. I can’t keep my eyelids open. Don’t want to. I want to soak in this peacefulness. I drift off before she’s back from the bathroom, thinking about our plans for tomorrow.

Claire

“Did you pack the bear spray?” Shane asks. He begins to fuss with my pack as if he might unzip it and start rummaging. That’s not happening. Everything is situated how I want it. I spin away from him, laughing at his frustrated huff.

“We have everything we need to get to the first resupply point. Relax.” Hooking my fingers through his belt loops, I tug him toward me. He hugs me, backpack and all.

“Relaxing isn’t my thing,” he grumbles, but then his voice lightens. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“It’s going to be incredible.” I fight down the urge to bounce around like an overexcited golden retriever. We’re in our driveway, doing a final check on our backpacking gear. I’m taking a year off from teaching, and Shane’s on leave from work. Months of hiking with my husband lie before me.

On one of our belated dates, after I moved in, we discovered that we both had hiking the Appalachian Trail on our bucket lists. Training and planning began immediately. With every month that passed, we grew closer, fit together better, and realized that sex is just one of many ways we’re compatible.

A year later, Shane proposed. In the woods, of course. Just thinking about it makes me feel like a flurry of confetti is swirling inside me. I was hunting him and followed his tracks to the lake. He was on one knee when I got there, the ring glittering in the sunlight the way it’s glittering on my hand right now.

“One last hunt before we hit the road?” Shane interrupts my reminiscing with a mischievous look as he releases me. Just like that, I realize our start might be delayed. I’m completely on board. Margot’s coming over—she’s house-sitting for us—but not until this evening. Right now, it’s just Shane and me.

“I thought I wore you out last night,” I say, unable to keep from grinning. “How are you still frisky, little deer?”

He captures my hand, moving it to his crotch. “Huge deer.”

Heat flickers low in my stomach when he stirs beneath my hand. Unbuckling my backpack, I step closer to him. His throat bobs as he swallows.

“I’ll give you five minutes.” I lean in close to whisper, “You better run fast.”

He does.

But I’m faster.