Adam, Animal, Leash

She’s taken a week of paid time off for this. To stay at home. With him. Doing practically nothing.

Wearing nothing.

It’s the third day, early afternoon. Sunlight through the screen door patterns her legs and stomach. As she studies it, dark blond hair falls in her face. She shoves it back. The strands tickle over her shoulders. It feels good; her head feels so light, relieved from the tug of her professional chignon or even the ponytail she wears when running errands.

She finds herself more powerful naked — not a worker, not a woman, but a human animal. No mincing steps in high heels. No tight waistbands. No ruddy bra imprints on her back and underneath her breasts. Those faded in the first 24 hours. He’d helped to pet them out of her skin.

She shifts at the memory of his stroking hands. The carpet is soft under her bare ass, but above it, between her legs, frustration glows. They haven’t had sex yet this week. It’s worth taking a few days to simply settle into things. She knows this. But the animal doesn’t believe in patience.

Her toes flex, rubbing the sand-colored pile. She could pace, or roll on the carpet, but neither movement will work out the tension. And she couldn’t go far. Her leash is connected to a leg of the armchair. Which, of course, she never sits on.

Through the screen, she hears birdsong and the shush of his trowel turning the earth.

He’s just around the corner, so she can’t see him when she looks out. But she sees him when she closes her eyes: his own dark eyes, his curly black hair. With each day he’s worn less and less. When he’s naked he’ll be Adam in Eden. No, he already is. The world is his to nurture.

He only leaves the house to work in the garden. She doesn’t go outside, but he tethers her here near the door. He brings in strawberries and feeds her from his hands. Sweet redness smears her mouth like juice from rare meat.

She wants him now. She doesn’t care if he brings strawberries.

But after three days, she’s sunk deep enough into the dynamic — relearned herself, the bare elements of her nature — that she can’t, or won’t, simply say so. If she needed to she could call to him, and he’d hurry to her side. A cell phone rests on the side table just within reach, at the end of the leash, if she needs more serious help, or if he does. But she can’t… won’t use words to plead, Come here, I want you.

So, even though she doesn’t believe in patience, she has no choice but to use it.

She keeps her eyes closed, lying covered by nothing but the sun, listening to him work. To the rustle of leaves and whisper of sandaled footsteps. At last the whisper becomes louder, comes closer.

Her eyes open as he slides the screen aside and comes in.

He’d been wearing shorts in the garden, almost fig-leaf colored — a handsome shade against her Adam’s brown skin. At once, he steps out of them. He kicks them off a foot along with the sandal. She ignores them. Laundry is not on either of their to-do lists for this week.

Their eyes are on each other. Watchful, hungry, intent.

He’s brought no strawberries in this time.

He approaches. She remains where she is, on her back, hands and feet flat against the carpet. He reaches for the chair leg and in a simple motion — done without looking at what he does, the same way he undressed — he looses the leash.

Then he walks away. Toward the bedroom.

She stalks after him.

On the leash, she might be considered his pet. And oh, he does pet her. And feed her. But he will never tame her.

He doesn’t want to.

And when he takes her off her leash, he becomes her prey.

Though impatient, she doesn’t move too quickly — for one thing, her body can’t decide if it wants to walk after him or crawl. And so she does both, learning with each step what it will be. She follows his footprints, and the sound of his movements, and the memory his presence leaves on the air like a scent.

Water runs in the en suite bathroom. She crouches at the closed door, waiting.

He knows she waits there. But he steps out as calmly as if he doesn’t.

She’s fallen in love with his composure, and in lust with it. It’s masterful. At times nearly more than human.

And it’s a pleasure to tear away.

Releasing the gathered tension in her legs, she springs at him. They fall together onto the bed. She scrambles on top of him. This close, she can smell him.

The hand she captures smells of gardener’s soap. Even so, because of how strenuously he works — rarely gloved, never holding back — soil remains deep under the nails, and a few grains are in the whorls of his fingers. His fingertips are paler than the backs of his hands. Both sides are beautiful, these large and graceful hands. She tastes the garden on them, and salt.

She sucks them deep, runs her tongue across his skin, closes her teeth around the bases of his fingers.

He looks up at her, his eyes bright. Something breaking through his composure. But not the strength that lies under it. Not necessarily physical strength — although his hands are anything but weak — more mental, or emotional. Even spiritual. Her handsome, healthy human.

She is his beautiful beast.

And strong too. With a messy wet sound she releases his hand, while her own hands rake down from his shoulders, leaving the tracks of her nails. The second time she does it, as pink marks cross pink marks, he moans. His body rises beneath her, twisting. Her thighs tighten their grip around his waist.

She uses her teeth on his jaw, scraping against stubble. His heart beats under her lips, which do not kiss. Not at these times. And she avoids his throat. They each have certain vulnerabilities which, even now, especially now, are respected.

Her hands ball into fists and come down on him, hammering — chest, biceps, thighs. His fingers run through her hair, not grasping or petting. Not guiding. But a touch of possession is in the touch, and pride.

She nips at his forearm and his chest. The nips become harder as she travels down his body, until they become sucking bites along his hip bone. His erection brushes her cheek. Finding his calf between her thighs, round and firm, she rubs against it. Not able to help herself. Not willing to.

She lets herself be an animal, doing what she wants.

She makes herself his animal, doing what he wants.

Her bold Adam, receiving her violence, glorying in the pain. He moans again, rough, close to laughter. Delighted with the marks she leaves. Fingers digging into his skin. Teeth sinking toward muscle. She rarely makes him bleed — but she doesn’t hold back from it, either.

His hips push up against her. His cock is so hard, and she feels his pulse thrumming under its velvet surface. When she takes hold of it, she’s gentle.

After all, she wants this part of him in its best condition.

She lowers her cunt down on it as her tongue circles outward from his nipple, running over pebbled flesh and a foam of body hair and tender scratches. His large, beautiful hands close on her hips, holding on as they roll above him. Her clit grinds against his body as she takes him in all the way. He’s the perfect size for that. Every part of his body is perfect.

If she were a different kind of woman, maybe she’d write him a poem telling him so. But this animal that she is lets him know it in a different way, by showing how she wants to eat him all up.

Her head tosses, helplessly, as hot pleasure surges up her spine. Loose hair sticks to her sweat-dampened throat. Even without the leash there, she’s his. They’ve claimed every bit of each other.

Her inner muscles tighten and contract in a building rhythm. Finally she screams. Throws her head back and howls out her pleasure. Beneath her, he pumps into her body and shouts her name.

Afterward, she settles against his side. He strokes from the nape of her neck to her ass, long, slow strokes as much for his enjoyment as for hers. She runs her fingertips over the hatchmarks coming down from his shoulders. Their breathing slows and they drink from the carafe of water at the bedside: him out of a tall glass, her lapping from his cupped hand. They lie there for so long she starts to see a bruise beginning over his ribs — left by her fist or her mouth, she can’t tell.

The angle of sunlight through the blinds changes, starts to get in their eyes. She closes hers. It’s too much work to go to the window. It would mean leaving him, and her animal nature resists that. Leaving would go against his desire.

Eventually, in any case, the sun will set on their third day in Eden.

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T C Mill is a writer and freelance copyeditor (one answer to the question, “What do you even do with a philosophy degree?”) based in the Midwestern US. She devours books, blogs sporadically at TC-Mill.com, and is a co-editor of the New Smut Project, publishing diverse literary erotic anthologies.