"To Have and to Hold"
(First published at Satinslippers.com, 2003)
Copyright R V Raiment, 2003
To have and to hold, to love and to cherish.
It’s Sunday morning, a lie-in morning, and I’m dozing as usual, naked on top of the big bed in our pine and white
bedroom. Neither asleep nor awake, the first I know she’s home is a soft caress of her long hair cascading onto my
lower belly, wet lips and tongue fleetingly lifting my dormant cock, instantly half-rousing him then letting him go.
I keep my eyes closed for a moment, delaying the gratification of seeing her, and when I open them she’s standing in
front of the thin white curtains, unbuttoning her blouse.
I love to watch her undress, always have. I love to see the curves of her body a shadowy silhouette through fabric of
clothes made translucent by window light and watch as the clothes she gently discards reveal more and more of the
body that is such a joy to me, every curve kissed and caressed, accented with shadow, by the soft white light that
rebounds from every surface.
She has not the face or figure of a goddess, though that makes her no less goddess-like to me. There’s a slight
irregularity to her features which, even when she was younger, would have kept her face off magazine covers and
toiletry packaging, and whilst she’s slender now I’ve known her when she was less-so, have shared her battles against
encroaching fat. There’s an odd double curve where only one should be to each of the cheeks of her otherwise shapely
behind, and one or two slender, forked-lightning silver trickles on the gentle curve of her belly that testify to the child
she had before we met.
But I’ve loved Cathy long, and very deeply, for quite a few years now. And still I love to gaze on those big eyes around
which laughter lines have already begun to gather, those softly welcoming lips, her gently sweeping curves, her little
imperfections, and the glorious, perfect dark, unmanicured triangle of hair that is her garden.
I love to watch her bend, as she does now to remove her briefs, and watch her haunches tauten into that wonderful
heart of a shape, and I will never forget the first time I saw her do so close-to, never forget how wonderful I thought that
little gathered pucker of flesh between her cheeks was, how sweet it looked, how clean.
She’s lighting a cigarette now – a vice we share - squatting, facing me and knees akimbo, at the bottom of our bed. I
take the proffered lighted cigarette from her without taking my eyes from the slim pink gape in the darkness of her groin,
and she lights a cigarette for herself.
Seeing her there, looking at her, and knowing I will soon hold her, my mouth-awoken penis stirs, begins to harden and –
as she always does – she watches, smiling gently.
“So how’d it go?” I ask her, smiling. She frowns a little frown I love:
“Okay, I guess.”
“Only okay? I thought this one was special?”
She exhales deeply, then:
“Told me he’d fallen in love with me, didn’t he,” Cathy grimaces.
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh!’”
“That’s not so unusual, is it?” I asked her, but I knew what was coming next.
“No it’s not – but this one was the biggie.”
“He wants to marry you, you mean?” I couldn’t help smiling, if a little ruefully, and added: “But I thought he was already
married?”
Cathy nods:
“Yup. So he’s all set to discard his wife, his children, his community status and anything else, so long as I’ll consent to
marry him.”
“I’m sorry, love. He doesn’t know about me, I take it?”
“No, he doesn’t. I gave over telling them about you a long time ago. They don’t seem to be able to handle the idea.”
“I know what you mean.” And I did. I’d given up telling prospective lovers about our arrangement too, and for the same
reasons she had. Most women I met thought an open marriage had to be some kind of a lie, like maybe you were
pretending your wife was okay with you screwing around because it was a somehow easier falsehood, somehow less
disprovable, or more sustainable, than pretending you just weren’t married.
In more innocent days I’d told the truth – always the happiest alternative – and watched or heard the disbelief turning
their faces or voices ugly. ‘I’m not into anything kinky, you know!’ they’d often assert: ‘I’m not going to have her watch
us!’ And when I told them that was no part of the deal, that we simply lived sexual lives that were at once separate and
together, they would not believe it. Truth is, of course, they did not want to believe it. On the simplest level most women
- and men in Cathy’s experience - will fuck you only if they know you’re not fucking somebody else at the same time.
That’s why so many two-timing married men pretend the sex has gone out of their marriage. If you’re fucking more than
one person at a time, I guess, they think you’re making comparisons all the time, and are afraid – if you do – that you
may find them lacking. In order to give them pleasure – as well as to receive it – you must make yourself a prisoner of
their own insecurity – or cheat. And back of the minds of almost every would-be lover we’ve ever dated – or tried to –
and irrespective of how fervent they were about ‘no strings’ arrangements, lies the possibility that you could be ‘the one’
for them. And if you are to be so they have to know that they can have you exclusively. In proof of love he or she will
give up something they don’t really have the guts too pursue over and over again in return for your disposing, at a
stroke, of much of what has been precious and joyous in your life. That’s the price, and Cathy and I find it, frankly, too
high.
I could see she looked downcast still, and I asked her: “You really disappointed?”
“Yes, I am. He was really good fun. Good in the sack, kind, gentle, a wicked tongue – and a long one, too – and he
made me laugh a hell of a lot. David likes opera and ballet, which were never your cup of tea, and it was good to be
able to talk about those things with someone who was a fellow fan. But now he’s fucked it up. I did think I might tell him
about us, see if he could adapt, but I knew he couldn’t, knew he’d got himself fixated on ‘marriage’, wanted to ‘own me’.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, and meant it. “D’you want to come to bed, let me take your mind off it?”
It was her turn to smile ruefully:
“I need a shower – forgot to take one before I left.”
I knew she meant it. We neither of us come to bed together with the scents of a lover still upon us, but I could see too
that she looked weary. Thankfully I did not feel weary myself. Sandy, who shares my love of aircraft and has the cutest
little round arse I’ve ever seen, had met me for an early fuck the day before so she could have me before her husband
came home from his monthly trip. In consequence I’d had an early evening, e-mailed one of my ladies-in-waiting,
watched some tapes, drunk a little wine, and I was rested.
“Bed bath?” I said.
Cathy looked surprised:
“You mean that?”
“Of course I do. You look – if you’ll pardon the phrase – a little shagged-out, and I know I’m up for it.”
“But we’ve never...”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I answer quickly, cheerfully. And I am cheerful. It’s true, we never have bathed
another lover off each other’s skins, and I love her for not taking the idea for granted. Knowing she’ll resist I get up
quickly, pull a bath sheet from the closet and spread it on the bed. Pretty much a fait accompli, and she’s too tired to
resist.
It’s something we give each other as a treat sometimes and we keep a purpose-built trolley that I made alongside the
vanity unit in the corner. Two bowls, a stack of face-cloths, scented soaps, a shelf full of necessaries underneath and a
shelf full of towels under that.
She’s spread out on the bath sheet when I turn round and I’m glad that she’s accepting. Doing this is always a joy to me
and my cock is hard with the sheer pleasure of it as I wheel the trolley towards her, then sit on the edge of the bed.
She turns face down, spread-eagled, as I wet and soap the first cloth, and I start with the back of her furthest arm and
hand, working the soap between her slender fingers, down the back of her arm to the shoulder, down and into the
armpit so accessible from here. And when they’re wet and soapy I take a clean wet cloth from the second bowl and
repeat the process, cleaning soapy residue away with the cleaner water before towelling the area I’ve rinsed, every
motion slow and careful.
The second hand and arm, then, and then lifting the sheaf of hair to get to the back of her lovely neck, wetting a little of
it at the nape and seeing it moisten darkly, stroking back, down over her shoulders and back to the waist. When the
upper part is towelled and dry, a fresh cloth in my hand I soap and stroke the glorious soft mounds of her arse, working
a fresh soap-slippery cloth deep into that valley of her, carefully finger-circling her sphincter at the last.
Fresh cloths again for the backs of her legs, feeling her wriggle as I soap between her toes, and when she’s dry she
turns that I may start again.
I love to wash her face, stroking the cloth gently over her closed eyes, working it round the curves of her gently,
contentedly smiling mouth, and I love to soap her breasts, too, lifting them, massaging them with warm wetness.
Only when all else is done do I turn to my favourite place. This time there is more than a hint of scintillating glitter here,
matting some of her pubic hairs together, that is not mine, and as I cleanse this lovely garden of his presence I am
smiling. Her legs splay further and she moans as cloth and soap slide down toward the core of her, cleaning her inner
thighs and then those gorgeous, now engorging, pink and pouting lips.
“Oh God,” I hear her say, my gaze transfixed with the beauty of those darkly dampening curls; “I’d forgotten I let him jerk
off on me there before we got started!” That explains that presence of him – a jerked-off cock lasts longer the second
time around - and I shake my head; it really does not matter. “Are you sure you are okay with this?” she murmurs,
though she can see me smiling, and I tell her yes, and absolutely, as all else done I focus on her clit, see and feel her
writhe with gentle pleasure.
Truth is I do not care that she lent herself to someone else the night before, that she found pleasure in him, and I resent
perhaps as much as she does the fact that he has disappointed her with his stupidity.
Cathy is a dream who came into my life quite unlooked-for whilst both of us were trying to sort out the mess of previous
relationships. Burned and twice shy at the time we talked a hell of a lot at first and made the startling discovery that we
were both the same.
He wants to marry her, and he can’t. Partly he can’t because I did, but mostly he can’t because we don’t believe in
marriages other than our own. ‘I love you, I want to marry you’ we had both come to realise actually means ‘you give so
much fucking joy to me I want you for myself alone, you meet my needs so perfectly that I want you to give them
permanent priority in your own life, regardless of any needs of your own which I’ll assume I satisfy because you enjoy
our fucking, laugh at my jokes and commiserate so gently over my misfortunes.’
Married to Cathy I do not own her, and nor does she own me. We know there’ll come a time when age or infirmity will
stamp their own limits on our freedoms and we know that when that time comes we will be together, and take care of
each other. But for so long as our instincts, needs and desires can take joy out of being with others, we have decided
we will do so.
I have not asked her if she was tempted by his ‘offer’. I do not really need to. And in the unlikely event she is ever
tempted she knows I’ll let her go, because loving her I want her to have the best that she can get, want her to be happy.
I would die for this woman, give up life and all freedom if I had to, and I know that she would do the same for me, so what
kind of sense does it make for either of us to deny each other pleasant little freedoms that don’t hurt us?
As I massage baby powder into the skin I love Cathy, eyes closed, languidly draws me to her. I suck and nibble at her
proud little nipples, proud that I may do so, until I feel the beginnings of urgency in the increased writhing of the body
beneath mine. The powder makes it easy for me to slide gently down her body, tracing a moist line with my tongue from
the point of her clavicle down her chest and gently upward-curving abdomen. The powder as always lends a strange
taste and texture to the act and I blow gently into the sweet depression of her navel to disperse the talc that has so
inevitably gathered there. Remnants still feel gritty on my tongue, but I do not care. I can feel her buttocks lifting from
the bed with the urgency of need, and slide my tongue’s moistness down that second curve of belly till it’s slicking
through the dark hairs of her mound.
Dipping my face between her thighs, pointing my tongue, I find the clitoris quickly and play with it moistly a few moments
before sinking deeper, and soon the whole of that soft valley is wet with my tonguing, her labia pinkly glowing, my
probing tongue – even if it’s not as long as his – joyously deep inside her, tasting salt and her own wetness.
Moaning, writhing beneath me, I can feel the powerful ambivalence in her as her surging desire demands my
penetrating cock whilst her vaulting pleasure desires my tongue remain where it is. Were God a woman, I know, my
penis would stand from my chin. Only now Cathy’s hands are scrabbling at my hair, seeking to pull me upward, and I
know her cunt has won the fight within her.
When I slide onto her and into her it is like the matching of perfect halves, no guiding hand required, no bunting of blind,
irresolute cock striving to grope its way in. The channel of her is wet and wanting, the stem of mine hot and impossibly
hard.
He did not feel it like this. Slender latex would have been the least of her requirements in this unhappily dangerous age.
But even if he had I would not care. For this is us, now, this is Cathy and I, lovers, friends, companions, promised for life.
We’d no sooner ask each other to quit the happy, tantalising pursuit of sex, quit touching new souls, encountering new
minds, sharing different bodies, than we’d ask each other to stop eating, or sleeping.
Perhaps he lay on top of her like this, feeling himself inside her, feeling the electric contact of the soft skin of her belly,
her giving breasts, her taut, hard nipples, saw a similar expression, that agony of ecstasy, upon that wonderful face.
Lucky him, lucky her, luckier me. Because I’m the one she always comes back to, never really leaves.
I’m holding back as best I can. My balls feel hard and heavy with their pent-up, weight of teeming come, and tense and
hard my cock’s beseeching its release, its inundation in joint wetness. I focus on the sensations around him, trying to
see by feel alone the perfect folds and contours he’s embracing, imagining the tiny sweet hairs caressing the hairs of
my balls with every plunge. Then her fingertips alight on my cheeks, her hands draw me down towards her, our lips
meet.
That last, hungry, deliberate kiss is the final signal, always, the double penetration of tongue and penis, the double
merging of infinite warm wetness, of inner flesh of tongue caressing tongue, glans caressing vaginal wall, triggers her
and triggers me, and this time – as often – our mouths part at the last that we may groan, or curse, or pray aloud with
the joy of coming, the sudden effulgent gushing of mutual liquid as sacred to us as baptism.
We curl up snugly on the bath-sheet, still entwined with each other, my cock still glistening wet, overflow juices trickling
unheeded between her thighs. We will shower, together, later, or bed-bath each other again. And after a little while she
stirs, lights up for both of us a strictly un-PC post-coital cigarette, and smiling warmly through her own smoke asks me:
“So how did it go with Sandy?”
Copyright 2003
RVRaiment
All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or in part without written permission from
the author.

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