Page 26 of Fever Dream

She paused to make sure I was following and then brushed her hair away from her face.“Anyway, I’m wearing the kimono and pale pink lingerie, and I’m swaying my hips.I feel his presence, his eyes on me, piercing.The movement was pleasurable, connected to the music coming from the radio, and it just felt good to move.But his penetrative gaze called another part of me forward.At first it felt foreign, forbidden and almost wrong.”

“Why would it feel wrong?”

“I don’t know.It just did.”She shook her head.“Some things are better off as mysteries, doctor.”

“Right.Go on.”

“And I started to move in pleasure for him.Breathing deep into my belly, completely for me, but willing to be offered up for love…a gift…to be deeply seen.It’s those eyes that do it to me, every time.”

“His eyes?”

“Yes.Being witnessed allows the fullness of the other part of me, the deeper part, to come through.”

Women.“And then?”

“He says… ‘Come here.’”

I’m practically on the edge of my seat by this point, and I say, “And do you, Grace?”

She sighed wistfully.“I slowly meet him in the chair where he’s sitting in a way that demands more from me.”

She stares at me and continues.“We breathe and move together for what feels like an infinite amount of time.It goes on forever, and I hope it never ends.I lose myself in him, in the emotion of finding myself, my center, my home.This is who I am.The emotion is overwhelming, and I generously reveal and cycle through them all.The rage and anger, the uncertainty.It’s pleasure as grief, pleasure as longing, pleasure as love, pleasure as tenderness, pleasure as beauty, pleasure as whatever he wants me to be.”

“Whatever he wants you to be?”

“Yes.You’d think this night moves forward into lovemaking, but good sex always awakens you in spontaneous ways.”

Patient professes grand delusions.“How so?”

“I said, ‘I feel like I need to scream.’”

“He said, ‘Great.Let’s go.’”

I listened as she told me the story.Suddenly, the clock on the wall meant nothing.

“He led me to the car in the garage, opened the door for me, and I slid in.I watched as he walked around to the driver’s side.He climbed in beside me.

“‘We can’t leave,’ I said, thinking about the children,alwaysthinking about the children.”

“‘No,’ he agreed with a smile.‘But we can stay right here.’”

I shifted in my chair, waiting for her to continue.She drew it out, like any good storyteller.“And then what?”

“We end up having our own delicious releases: screaming, fucking, letting it all out.He held me as I cried, and I felt something shift deep in my core.Later, we stumbled back into the house, like teenagers trying to sneak in without waking their parents.We were exhausted and in love, and we laughed ourselves to sleep.”

“Good sex is like this,” she tells me.“It’s like life.You never know what’s next, and you are a yes for all of it, because it’s happening through love.”