Free Purely Relative by Claire Gillian

breathing sped up and grew louder near my ear
where he’d buried his face in my hair. “Gayle,” he growled. His thrusts grew
more powerful until I lost my powers of observation.
    My body coiled in tightly, all the sexual tension Jon had wrought
into every muscle, every tendon, organized for what promised to be the mother
of all O’s. Closer and closer I inched to my release. Jon was caught up in his
own maelstrom of animal-like yearning to achieve climax. My “yes, yes, yes’s”
might have had something to do with it, too.
    We strained and drove and clenched and thrust until I
unraveled in an explosion of muscular energy. My mouth locked open in a silent
scream as Jon pulled more and more involuntary contractions from me, powerful
tides of erotic sensations that in return ripped from him what he’d ripped from
me.
    He kissed away the last of my whimpers, moving his hips for
a few final thrusts. The last of the delicious shudders, his and mine, waning
until all that was left was our gasping, our sweat-slickened skin, and our
racing hearts.
    Jon rolled off me and we lay there, side by side holding
hands, our breathing finally starting to slow. “Wow,” he said.
    “Wow, yourself. I feel like I should bow down and worship at
the temple of your masculinity.”
    The mattress moved with Jon, who chuckled as he grabbed a
handful of Kleenex. Too sated to move a muscle, I relaxed into the touch of the
tissues against my sex. Jon took his time cleaning me up, a deeply intimate act
that reached inside and squeezed my heart. The deed done, he collected me close
to his body and curled around me, breathing me in as I did the same to him.
    “I love you, Jon,” I said, right before sleep sucked me into
oblivion. If he answered me, I didn’t hear him.
    ***
    We awoke naked and tangled in each
other and after sharing some rather energetic and creative “good mornings,” we
headed to the shower.
    Jon finished first and stepped out to give me more space to
condition my hair and shave my legs and other parts. When I pushed back the
shower curtain, dripping wet like a bedraggled rat, I found him equally naked,
but dry. One knee kissed the floor, the other formed a right angle.
    Oh my God! He’s down on one knee! He’s going to propose! My inner girly-girl ran around in a circle shrieking and waving her hands.
    “Damn, slippery floor,” he said, climbing to his feet.
    “Oh! Are you okay?” I asked. My voice fell flat as the
bottom dropped out. My inner girl tumbled into the chasm of ridiculous hopes
that weren’t really hopes, but more like fantasies, and not the least bit
realistic and therefore not the type of thoughts a modern woman like me ought
to be having. And yet, that girl had caught a branch sticking out of the side
of the cliff and insisted on seeing how it might have played out. In my imagination
it went something like…
    “Gayle,” he would begin. “I love you with every ... no,
sorry, that’s lame....” He would swallow and his Adam’s apple would disappear
into his jaw before falling back down, like one of those carnival games where
you have to ring the bell by hitting a catapult hard enough with a hammer. “I’ve
always known, always believed, always hoped, you would marry me. I told you
that first night we made love. I meant it then. I mean it now. Please make me
the happiest man in the world by agreeing to marry me. I’ll take care of you.
You won’t have to look for another job. We’ll buy a house. You can have a baby
or two or three, make me dinner every night, something complicated with exotic
ingredients, and when I come home yelling ‘honey, I’m home,’ our pudgy kids
that look exactly like you will come running out of their rooms covered in
grime and fighting because you’ve gained 200 pounds and live on the sofa
watching bad reality television and are too tired to discipline them and thank
goodness I’m getting some action on the side from Thalia because a man like me
has needs