Edie had the post-pregnancy blues, until she found her man fresh from a workout.
“Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in an enormous castle…”
I begin well, but then seem to lose my thread. I’m telling an improvised fairytale to my baby daughter Violet, for my own entertainment as much as anything, while she cutely splashes about in the bath.
“Um…” I cradle her tiny body and smear a little bit of lather over her shoulders and arms, feeling foolish that I can’t think what my imaginary princess should do next. Violet gurgles. She’s only four months – far too young to understand a word I’m saying anyway, so I change tack slightly.
“Unfortunately the princess had an awful mother-in-law, who insisted on visiting every other weekend after her granddaughter was born, and on rearranging the kitchen cupboards when she came. What a bitch!”
“Edie!” My boyfriend, Dan, yells from the bedroom where he’s doing something ‘manly’ with free weights.
What? We can’t even call Dan’s evil mother a bitch now? Because she is a bit of one, a bit. It’s true what I said about the cupboards.
I coo at Violet as I lift her out of the bath and snuggle her into a super-soft, warm towel. Then I dress her in a sleepsuit and take her downstairs to nurse her off to dreamland in front of Eastenders. She drifts off surprisingly easily, and after Enders has thumped to a drum-roll end, I carry my little precious upstairs and deposit her in her cot, still sleeping.
When I straighten up from my delicate transferring-baby-into-cot operation, Dan is standing in the nursery doorway, watching us. He still has that faintly ridiculous new-dad, lump-in-the-throat prideful glow about him. I hope it never fades away.
He’s been working-out for ages and is only wearing a pair of jeans. His fingers are gripping the top of the door jamb, his sweat-flecked muscley arms taut as he leans forward and sort of dangles himself from the frame, looking somewhere between macho and monkey. I can’t help thinking it’s probably against the laws of physics for an IT geek to be this sexy, but even though he spends all day writing lines of computer code, Dan comes in quite an aesthetic little package. In fact, from the neck down I swear that Dan could pass for 25. And that isn’t to say that his face isn’t pretty OK too, because it is. Very OK, in fact. Maybe a little sharper than a classically good-looking face − his nose and chin are a little pointy − but his face is the face I love, and I truly see nothing but beauty in it. Dan’s a little older than me but he’s way fitter and more adventurous. He loves his rugged outdoor activities, does my Dan. Surfing, skiing, rock-climbing and the like, including things I’ve never even heard of that probably involve more risk of neck-breaking than I’d like to contemplate.
Looking at him now I feel a nice little warm glow in my belly, and somewhere lower too. This takes me by surprise because the truth is I haven’t plucked up the courage to have a shag with Dan since Violet was born. Meaning that for four whole months now I haven’t really taken full advantage of having a boyfriend this fit and hard-bodied.
For the first couple of weeks after Violet was born I didn’t really feel all that comfortable sitting down quickly, or going for a wee, let alone anything more athletic. I can’t get my head around those stories of women who go to the doctor for their six-week check-up after their baby is born to find that they are – whoops – pregnant again. So we’re taking it slow. I don’t really feel under any pressure from Dan to do it – he isn’t that sort of guy. And right up until a moment ago I was still feeling too tender to contemplate it just yet.
“Hey,” Dan says, his voice less than a whisper because of his proximity to our sleeping babe. “You look pretty strung-out.”
“Do I? I feel kind of calm,” I reply in an even softer voice, given that I’m even closer to our babe.
Dan doesn’t say anything else, he just does that twirling-around-the-doorframe thing he does and vanishes out of sight, into our bedroom.
I follow him and, half expecting it, half not, find him pushing me up against wall’s tattered cream paper. He pushes his lips onto mine with urgency and he tastes of tea. I feel my body start to respond with uncertainty, like a rusty engine coughing its way back into life.
Dan’s hands find their way into my hair, trailing down my back and cupping my arse. His bare flesh is warm through my shirt. I can feel his pheromone-based need. Taste it. Smell it. It’s like his body chemistry’s calling to mine, and I don’t even have a say in my response.
Head back, lips parted, shuddering slightly then moaning out loud, I slide my hands down the back of his jeans; mirroring his movements on my body. He’s not wearing underwear and his arse is firm; muscular. I squeeze it lightly and let my hands run over the delicious indentations at each side. I explore his arse with my fingers, revisiting the familiar − so nostalgic, yet so now.
As I’m spinning from a head-rush, Dan is manoeuvring me onto the bed. Still clutching him, I fall back in among the scrunched sheets and find him above me. He’s a long shape − his shoulder muscles tight and coiled as they support his body. Delicious.
I fumble my way out of my clothes, still caged by his arms. I fight my zipper and then my maternity jeans, which I still wear these days, and, lastly, my knickers get kicked off onto the floor. I tug my way out of my baggy T-shirt and nursing bra to find it almost weird when Dan lets the rough pad of his thumb graze over one of my nipples, but only on a flappy over-thinking level, and only for a moment. Because, deep down, my most primal part knows exactly what to do. I find myself gasping and writhing as all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end in that oh-so-familiar response to his touch.
When Dan slides off the bed onto the floor, between my legs, neurotic me returns to the fore and worries − even panics – that Dan won’t find everything how he left it. But it doesn’t take too many delving strokes of his tongue before I stop over-thinking again, reassured that everything is in full working order. In fact, if anything, it’s working better than I remember it working before. Sensation takes over as his soft warmth slips in and out again and again. Primal, desiring, craving me wins the day.
I gasp, grasping the sheets, bucking and clenching as I come hard. It’s like being reunited with an old friend. Once lost, now found.
I’m still descending from my much-missed plateau of bliss when Dan stands up and takes off his jeans. His cock is right in front of me and I pull myself into a sitting position to look at it. I’m shivering with excitement. It’s hard and luscious and long. Don’t get me wrong, of course I’ve seen Dan’s cock during the last four months, but right now, with the agenda we have, I look at it in a way I haven’t done for ages. I look at it like something I desperately want inside me. Like it’s something I desperately want to have fuck me.
First Dan touches me with his hand. He has such beautiful hands. The pads of his fingers are just rough enough from all his outdoorsy activities. My c**t is slick; wet-smooth from my orgasm. He slides along its ravine and pushes a finger into me. What was once unthinkable is now ecstasy. My man knows just how to touch me. He works the place inside me that makes me need his cock like I need oxygen, and I feel myself mourn for all the time I was without it. He slips another finger inside and then presses his thumb against my arsehole. He pauses − a question − and I say, “Yes. Oh yes.”
He slips his thumb a little way into me and moves his whole hand. His fingers jerk against my G-spot. His thumb tip makes my anus flutter and I writhe. Spread on the bed in front of him, I consider that if I ever wondered when I would want him again then surely I have my answer in this instant.
Now. I want him now.
Dan rolls on a condom from a long-ignored packet on the bedside table, and I lie back. He moves over me; stops, starts, repositions and slides into place. His cock is, as it always was, the perfect size and shape for me. He doesn’t fuck hard, but he still manages to get perfect-feeling friction back on my G-spot. It feels so right as he fucks me. So good and real. Like he’s closing up the circle; making me back into myself again. And it feels bizarre that having Dan inside me had ever seemed so alien. Weird that I’ve spent the last four months wondering if me and Dan would ever manage to have sex again. How could we not? How could something this real ever be gone? All my doubts are erased by real sexual healing.
Dan moves faster. Unsurprisingly, he isn’t going to last long, but I don’t care. I’m still high from my orgasm mixed with the sheer joy of the fact that we are doing it; finally doing it. I feel like I’ve shed my skin; broken out of my cocoon; become both mother and lover. I’m sparkling and high. I reach up and touch Dan’s face, watch it move under my fingers as he comes inside me.
Afterwards I shift one leg so he can roll to the side and slide down next to me. I wait for his breath to even out before I snuggle close and find his ear.
“You’re a mother-fucker,” I say, with a smile.
He pauses and looks at me.
“And you gorgeous, are one hot mumma,” he replies.
