Invisible Anna

by Coralie Moss

  “Am I forgiven for overlooking you the first time we met?”

  She nodded, on the verge of tears, then closed the sketchbook and passed it over. “Yes,” she whispered, “you’re forgiven.”

  Leo dropped it on the floor and brought his body closer to hers. “Could we get back to our studies?”

  The second round of kissing began with a newfound tenderness. Anna’s lips softened, grew plump with stirrings of desire flitting up and down and across her body. She wanted to know more about him, and she wanted to linger more on his perfect mouth. His jaw was close to perfect too, but his unshaven chin chafed her skin.

  She wasn’t going to complain. Reddened cheeks were a kind of badge, a sign, that she, Anna Granger, had been making out with a man and liking it very, very much.

  It crossed her mind at one point that she hadn’t thought about Daniel since his early morning text from Berlin. Leo’s mouth escorted that fleeting thought off the bed and out the door.

  He pulled her on top of him and brought the quilt over her back. His hands cupped her buttocks, squeezing and releasing while they kissed, molding Anna’s curves to his thighbones, belly, and chest. And if she wasn’t mistaken, something between her legs responded to their kissing. Make that two things—one hers, one his.

  “Would you mind taking your shirt off?” she asked, slightly giddy and completely emboldened by their foreplay and one of the suggestions in Gaia’s chapter about how to ask for what you want.

  “Would you mind helping?”

  She pulled away from his mouth until she was crouched above him on her hands and knees and grinned in anticipation. Pulling off Leo’s shirt was anything but routine, and as he curled his torso away from the bed and extricated his arms from the short sleeves, Anna had an exquisite view of his abs. The man was all muscle, defined and refined, with curls of hair sprinkled across his sternum and below his navel.

  He noticed the direction of her gaze.

  “Chemo,” he apologized. “I lost a lot of body mass.”

  “I’m not complaining.” Anna tossed his shirt off the bed and ran her fingertips up his chest, over smooth skin, curled hairs, raised nipples smaller, harder and darker than her own. He slid his fingers underneath the hem of her sweater and gave it a tug.

  “What about you? Need any help getting this off?”

  She sat back on her heels. Leo’s hands trailed down her thighs and waited. The muted voices from the background of Anna’s awareness roared to the front.

  Take off her clothes? In front of a stranger?

  “I’ve had babies, Leo, and I’m fifty. And gravity is not my friend. And it’s completely light out,” she argued, gesturing to the obvious. Sunlight burst from behind a cloud and in through the windows, as if she’d choreographed its dramatic entrance.

  “The better to see all of you,” he said, his voice gentle, his eyes and hands coaxing. He continued to wait while Anna debated how much of herself she was willing to reveal.

  That morning, she had dressed in one of the gorgeous lace bra and panty sets she bought for the upcoming trip with Daniel and added a cotton knit camisole for a layer of warmth. She made her decision, raised her arms and invited Leo to peel off her sweater.

  This disrobing was a test drive.

  He took his time. The man undressed the way he kissed. Slow, curious, appreciative. One hand rounded over her right breast. Her sweater pooled over his wrist while his fingers stroked her armpit, making space for her to slip one arm out. He repeated the movement over her left breast, sliding both hands over her collarbones and up the sides of her neck until the sweater was all the way off.

  He cupped her ribcage and ran his thumbs underneath the fullness of each breast. Her nipples hardened in response to the attention. She stopped breathing.

  “Saffron, those were some lucky babies.” Her breasts were much more than a handful, and the span of Leo’s splayed hands played teasingly over the lace encasings. He found her nipples, one at a time, stroking his thumbs over the wide aureoles.

  Anna groaned, her thighs spread, her center poised over Leo’s groin. He drew her toward him. She had to breathe, or she was going to faint.

  “Kiss me again,” he whispered.

  She was happy to oblige. This time, when their mouths met, one tongue wrapped around the other while the ridge in his sweatpants pressed against her. A tremor passed through her body, igniting a long dormant connection between her mouth and her labia like an engine coming back to life after a long time spent idling.

  Her mouth slid off his. She buried her face in his neck, tongued his skin, and bit.

  “You felt something,” Leo said, surprise threaded with the pleasure in his voice.

  “I did,” Anna murmured. “I really did.”

  “That’s an advanced exercise. You’re getting way ahead of me.”

  Anna muffled her giggle as Leo rolled her to her back, taking his weight on his elbows on either side of her arms. He kissed the corner of one eye and the other, making his way down both sides of her face to her neck and the fullness of her breasts where they rose above the lacy bra.

  “Saffron, I want to taste you.”

  Oh.

  What he was suggesting was, technically, a kind of kissing, lips to lips. A kind of kissing she hadn’t participated in for… Anna couldn’t recall how many years. It didn’t matter. It was a long time ago.

  “I don’t have any diseases.” She squeezed her thighs together and cringed inside at the way she’d blurted out her declaration. “That didn’t come out very sexy.”

  The frank recounting halted his explorations. She played with his hair as his hands stilled over her breasts. “I’ve been careful, and aside from the cancer, I’m clean too.”

  “May I say something?” she asked, everything at once tentative and brave.

  “Of course.” He nibbled at the voluptuous curve of her belly. Yeah, she didn’t find that at all distracting.

  “I’m in no way ready for sex, but kissing you and touching you feels really good. I want more, and I have no expectations of you around…around anything except clear communication and respect.”

  Leo smiled at her breasts, and he smiled at her face again. Then he rose high enough on his knees to bring his hands to the waistband of her pants. “If you’ll lift your hips, my tongue can get started on some of those clear communications.”

  Thank God for fancy underwear.

  Off went her pants; on stayed her panties. Leo traced the delicate lace along the waistband, and the more he touched her, the more her individual skin cells lit up and linked together, creating delicate chains of sensation across her body.

  “These are gorgeous.”

  “They’re new.” She blushed again. She was such a novice, blathering on about her skivvies.

  “You have beautiful curves.”

  He continued to explore, running his hands from her chest to her waist, his thumbs meeting near her navel. Leo dipped his head to the rounded rise of her belly and nibbled, licked, and sucked at mouthfuls of her flesh. His exhale swept across the sensitive skin of her inner thighs as he nudged her underwear to one side and burrowed his nose between her labia. He separated her lips with two long licks, removed her panties, and dipped his head closer for more.

  Anna arched, closing her thighs on instinct before relaxing into the sensations.

  This was not long-time-married-people oral sex. This was a connoisseur of cunnilingus at work between her thighs, licking and sucking with a gusto that made her want to laugh and open her legs as wide as they would go. She flashed on Elaine calling the two of them brazen hussies, and she liked the moniker.

  And when she opened her eyes wide, her arousal-addled gaze flitted across the ceiling, and a memory of one of the last parties with the MacMasters the summer before Gary died.

  “Leo. Stop.”

  She pressed the top of his head away from her sex and scooted her hips, providing her with a cushion of space into which she could insert her hesitati
on and hold it, barrier-like, between them.

  At least, temporarily.

  Leo lifted his head. His lips glistened, and his eyes did that sexy, half-closed thing. Anna propped herself on her elbows, watched as he swayed above her, kissed one hip bone and the other, his chin hovering over her recently trimmed pubic hair. One arm held tight to the back of her waist.

  “This is too much, too fast,” she groaned, before dropping back onto the bed and covering her face with her hands.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Hesitation vibrated in the musky, scented space between her thighs. “Yes.”

  Leo grazed his mouth over her skin, cradling her pelvis between confident hands, and tucked a section of the bedsheet between their bodies. “Saff, have you been sexual with anyone, at all, since…?”

  She threw an arm over her face and shook her head side to side. Not the time to cry. Not the time to cry. If only she could crack a joke, find a laugh, but this was too important a moment to disregard. His questions sent shudders through her chest, alerting her to the presence of the two other unseen men in bed with her—Gary and Daniel.

  Her body vacillated between memories of past intimacies with this more immediate desire to move forward with the man nestled comfortably between her legs.

  Leo moved up the bed enough to rest the side of his face below her navel. “We can stop any time.”

  “I know.” She uncovered her eyes and fingered the curve of his ear. Her cells softened, drifted south, pooled themselves under the weight of her lover’s head.

  “We can go as slow as you want. We can take days to explore.”

  “I know.”

  My lover. She mouthed the words. Gary and Daniel disappeared. A tentative undulation unfurled from one hipbone to the other. Leo responded. His eyes asked for permission, hers answered: yes. He pulled the sheet away and kissed the insides of her thighs, each time longer than the last until he added gentle bites. He brought one thumb to her outer labia and stroked, adding his tongue, coaxing responses from her body.

  Anna murmured to herself.

  Trust.

  Heard Gaia’s voice.

  Breathe.

  She relaxed her leg muscles, released the building tensions, and invited Leo’s fingers to enter. She stiffened. Clamped down.

  “Saffron.” Her name left his lips, startling her before sound thrummed up her spine. “Relax.”

  “I am.”

  “Wait here.” He withdrew, stroked her jaw, and cantilevered his chest over hers. A drawer opened, then the crinkle of something plastic.

  “I bought lube.” Leo waggled the container of clear liquid and handed it to her to open. “I think you’ll like it. Squeeze some on my fingers.”

  She flipped the cap and prayed. Her head was ready, her heart was ready, and maybe her menopausal body needed a little help reaching the same conclusion.

  “I’m going to warm this up, and then I’m going to go back to what I was doing. You okay with that plan?”

  Anna giggled. Was she okay with a kind, handsome man letting her know she was desirable still? “Yes, Leo, I am very okay with that plan. Anything I can do?”

  “Lie back and enjoy,” he purred.

  Gaia’s book had multiple paragraphs dedicated to the benefits of playing with making sound during sex play. Anna had highlighted the instructions to relax her throat, open her mouth, and let any sound come out that wanted to, a technique that would, ostensibly, allow her to orgasm more fully.

  She had to remind herself more than once to let go into the stroking rhythm of Leo’s tongue and fingers, to let go into all the new sensations.

  Anna began her experiment with quiet ahhhs. Leo answered from deep in his throat, skin against skin, vibrating. The more she ahhd, the more he licked and sucked with his tongue and probed her with his fingers. He encouraged her with his own guttural sounds, until Anna ahhd her way to a prolonged, overdue orgasm.

  Never was she so grateful for the privacy of a cottage in the woods at the end of a dirt road—and the patience and persistence of a sexually skilled man.

  Leo withdrew his fingers with care, wiping them on the top sheet before he pressed the soft cotton to the puddle between her thighs. He kissed a wandering line along the center of her trembling body, encouraging her to taste herself on his lips when he brought his mouth to hers.

  Her senses were heightened, on edge, in the aftermath of so much stimulation.

  “Happy belated birthday.” He burrowed his face into the side of her neck.

  Anna laughed, powerless to move, her head lolling to one side. She had no control over her bones, her muscles were useless, and little currents of electricity continued to ping through her. “I’m sorry, but I ate all the cake.”

  Now it was Leo’s turn to laugh. “And I ate all of Saffron.”

  He spooned into her body and covered them with the quilt.

  “What was that like, for you?” His question came after a comfortable quiet settled between them.

  “Couldn’t you tell?” She turned her face to feel his nose press into her cheek.

  “Touché. But the book suggests we process our experiences with our partners afterwards.” He bit at her earlobe and the back of her neck. “Once they can speak.”

  Anna chuckled. “Then I’ll start by saying this entire week has been one surprise after the other.”

  “I’d like to have more surprising days with you.”

  “Would you like to do more right now?”

  Leo jostled against her back while reaching between his legs and shifting his position. He lifted his head. “You want to know if I’d like for you to reciprocate?”

  “Yes.”

  He hugged her tighter. “I’m getting exactly what I need right now. Being still and holding you and letting my body have these sensations.”

  A wash of something foreign swept over Anna, a pang deep in her heart. They might get to do more of this. Or they might not. “You’re here for two months?”

  “A little less.” Dipping his head, he inhaled whatever scent pooled at the side of her neck. “My plan is to be back in New York by the end of November or early December. I have a capable assistant running the shop in my absence, but there’s the whole holiday thing to get ready for, and then once the holidays are over, it’s back to my clients.”

  “And you’ve only been here a week and a half.”

  “And what a week and a half it’s been.”

  “I’m not sure what it is I’m trying to say, but I think it’s something like this.” Anna rolled over so she could face him. “I’m older than you, and—”

  “Maybe I have a thing for women who are older than me,” he interrupted.

  “I’m being serious here.”

  “So am I, and I’m only suggesting you might have a thing for younger men and you just didn’t know it until I came along.”

  Anna laughed. “Okay, you got me there, but let me finish. I don’t have a boyfriend, I’m not even casually dating anyone, but I am going on a short trip later this month with an old friend, and I don’t know if this old friend is someone I’ll be sexual with or what.” She pressed the fingertips of one hand to his chest. “When I agreed to go to that workshop with Elaine, this,” she waved one finger between his chest and hers, “was not on my agenda. And if life continues to deliver this level of surprising developments, I may not make it to my next birthday.”

  Her mock seriousness drew a smile from Leo.

  “So, yes, I would like to get through a few more chapters of that book. With you.”

  “Can I tell you what I would like?” he asked.

  “Please, do.”

  Leo sat up, cross-legged. Anna followed his lead, clutching the quilt to her chest and turning so she could lean against the wall.

  He stroked her leg while he took his time responding. “I would like to set a day and a time to get together again, to go over something specific from the book, without any pressure to get as sexual as we did today.�
�� He raised his gaze. “If I… If my body feels pressured to perform, my fear is the pressure is what’ll continue to stop me from recovering. And I’m not saying that to put distance between us.”

  “This is uncharted territory for me too.”

  “How does this sound?” He gathered her hands with his. “Saffron, would you like to get together for another session of intimate breathing with me?”

  “Leo, I would be delighted. Would Friday work for you? Perhaps late afternoon, followed by dinner?”

  His eyes lit up. “Do you like homemade pasta?”

  “Love it.”

  “Then I would be delighted to accept your invitation. And I’ll teach you how to make fettuccine.”

  Anna fell over, flinging her arms wide. “Oh, my God, he cooks too.”

  Chapter Seven

  No more surprises flaunted themselves for the rest of Anna’s day. Daniel was at a European trade show in Berlin, and between his obligations and the time difference, they wouldn’t be able to talk until he returned to New York.

  She wandered unfocused through the rooms of her house and chalked up her spaciness to sexy times with Leo.

  At the workshop, she’d discovered how out of touch she was with different parts of her body, like they’d checked out, gone on vacation, and forgotten to return home. A couple hours with a fellow explorer had her wondering if study sessions with Leo might be the best preparation she could have hoped for before the upcoming reunion with Daniel.

  She brought her attention to what needed doing for her business. A quieter voice tried to draw her attention to what she wanted to do for herself.

  There were sewing projects she should cut. Some of her clients’ boats would be in the harbor for the winter, but others would be heading for warmer waters by mid-October. Her business had thus far been solely based on custom orders. Maybe she should consider a line of ready-made items, like decorative throw pillows or boat bags made from upcycled sails.

  The quieter voice, the one that had been trying to reach the surface from a sleepier section of her awareness, coughed. It was a quiet cough, but it got her attention.