WEDNESDAY: Coffee Lover

BY THOMAS SHEA

Previously posted on Cliterature. Copyright is held by the author. This story was written with the inspiration, perspective, and collaboration of a single mother. It’s dedicated to Folgers Crystals Half-Caf and her Sunbeam Cat94R Heating Pad.

AWOKE on the dreaded Day Two of my monthly cycle, and I instantly loathed everything about my body. Cramps wracked my abdomen uterus had grown spurs. Bloated turned the normally forgiving elastic of my pajama bottoms into a misplaced but enthusiastic noose. A dense layer of oil oozed across my skin, and my hair was piled and clumped like it belonged in a shower drain. My breath reeked like a hoarder’s pantry, and I could already feel the aftermath of the bloody defeat my maxi pad had suffered in the night. It felt 10 degrees too cold to get out from under the covers.

But Coffee would be waiting for me.

I pulled myself out of bed, pausing to prepare myself a gift of comfort by plugging in my Sunbeam heating pad, and new betrayals revealed themselves. Aching muscles and a tension in my stomach that presaged nausea joined the chorus of miseries as I drew my warmest blanket around myself to shroud my ghastly form. I rose, shuddering, and brokered a loose alliance with my legs and bladder to reach the bathroom.

I left the bathroom marginally cleaner but no happier. I hobbled, looking like nothing so much as a biblical leper, to the kitchen. With swollen, aching fingers and an automaton’s blank stare, I went through the motions of digging out a filter, placing it, pouring the grounds, and filling the tank. I flicked the On button and turned towards the fridge looking for something to eat that wouldn’t push me from “vaguely ill” to “gonna throw up.”

I rested my head limply against the open fridge, gawking stupidly at cheese. Jagged aches across my lower spine gave me a moment’s uncertainty as to how I could ever straighten up, when I heard a faint metallic rushing noise, and a familiar, heady scent wafted softly over me.

Coffee had arrived.

I turned and shuffled over to where Coffee was waiting for me, strong and vibrant in spite of the bleak hour, but still unprepared. My Coffee’s scent beckoned silently for me, and I answered by helping my blazing paramour slip into something more comfortable, and revealing. Coffee made a show of gliding past my vacant eyes before settling in with a steamy, soothing sigh.

I swung back to the fridge and grabbed a sweet, creamy treat. Not for me, though. I leaned over the counter on my elbows, and began spooning it delicately to my caffeinated love, and watched fascinated as it was swallowed greedily up, the spoon licked utterly clean in seconds each time. The timbre of our flirtation changed as an eager stillness settled between us and I tossed the spoon into the sink.

My Coffee was ready.

Even bleary-eyed, wrapped in a shapeless blanket, and with breath like an open grave, I had gotten Coffee thoroughly prepared. With barely a minute of well-practiced foreplay Coffee was strong, creamy, and so torrid the cold seemed to retreat from the kitchen.

I reached toward the counter and my Coffee seemed to spring eagerly toward me. My hands traced slowly around the sweltering, hard, familiar shape of my angel of awakening. Coffee tempted me, putting a slow sway into my weary body with touch, and sight, and scent.

I found myself leaning against the kitchen wall, and Coffee’s heat began sliding down my chest with a firm but gentle pressure. I let out a quiet groan as my hero’s touch glided tenderly to the edge of my cramps, and began rolling from side to side, the gentle, ardent strokes soothing the tightness and pain. I leaned my head back and arched slightly, guiding my Coffee to where I most needed soothing.

We pressed close, in a glowing, rocking embrace where the wall and Coffee’s strength held me up more than my stiff, aching legs. The blanket floated to the linoleum floor, forgotten.

I pulled Coffee, with some reluctance, up to my face. I gazed lovingly into the familiar brown depths, always so dark, powerful and inviting. Then I leaned forward, allowing myself just the slightest taste.

I drew back, suppressing a gasp at the scorching heat of the kiss. It carried a sweet dark fire, as I had known it would; but it was so worth a tiny, familiar burn to taste Coffee’s rich, strong flavour again, and a few seconds sooner. I rolled the flavour across my tongue, savoring every note with the day’s first true smile.

When I opened my eyes, Coffee was there to meet them; inviting, playful, darkly tempting. We shared a moment of intense silence — both of us needing to cool off, neither of us wanting to — and started toward the bedroom.

As I walked, I heard eager, liquid chuckling from Coffee. I glanced disbelieving, reproachful; I was a dishevelled mess in puffy pants and a baggy T shirt. But Coffee was clearly, defiantly in earnest. I shook my head at my heedless champion, and smiled wryly.

We walked on; my head held a little higher and my sore hips swinging, perhaps, a tiny bit more.

I slipped into the bedroom, Coffee still ardent and steaming beside me. I looked at the bed and my eyes widened to find my Sunbeam already well and truly turned on, waiting and silently beckoning for my chilled, sore body.

I paused at the bedroom’s threshold and turned my full attention back to Coffee, drawing intimately close and filling my senses with the warmth and scent of my fiery lover.

I tightened my grip and pressed my parted lips against that hot, familiar curve. The rich, complex taste of my champion burned and danced across my tongue, so intense I shivered at the ferocity of it. It was still more than I could take, but so much less than I desired.

I withdrew, gasping, from the embrace and looked to increasingly heated gaze of Sunbeam.

I settled Coffee safely out of my grasp — though not without a last, passionate parting glance — then turned toward the bed, and the soft, patient Sunbeam that promised to make it so much more than a sleeping place.

I let out a pained exhale as I stretched myself down onto the bed and reached out for Sunbeam; in an instant, we were wrapped around each other, throbbing heat and softness caressing my lower body.

I gasped as I felt Sunbeam’s touch under my shirt; the soft but confident heat striking a delicious contrast with the morning’s grim chill. The gentle burn chasing away ache after tight ache. I snuggled in closer, grinding my body into my sweetest’s embrace with an urgent moan.

Coffee steamed with anticipation, watching.

I yanked the cover sheet over Sunbeam and I, to hold more of that sweet warmth against me, and because I still felt bloated, oily, and embarrassed under Coffee’s searing gaze. But in Sunbeam’s embrace, I felt nothing but comfort, and pleasure.

I rolled my lower back into Sunbeam, and felt purring care returned as probing fingers of heat began working at the knots and agonies that filled my lower body. A series of low, animalistic moans rose from my throat in response to the slowly spreading relief my darling imparted with gradual, tender progress.

I arched my back, stretching catlike into the soothing pressure of Sunbeam’s attentions. I reached behind me, stroking and wriggling against my snuggly bed mate until we found a new, perfect position and I was rewarded with a renewed, vigorous flood of affection. The warming relief stretched deeper, more boldly into my flesh, seeking out my aches and massaging them away. Playfully, I slid a few fingers beneath Sunbeam’s own fuzzy covering, teasing my way along the edges of my sweet one’s hidden heat.

I glanced up to see Coffee at the peak of readiness, and presenting a temptation I no longer had the will to resist. I reached out, and Coffee, never hesitant, swung toward my waiting lips. I paused, just a moment, as Sunbeam worked gentle magic on my lower quarters, and blew out a long, slow breath that sent Coffee into eager shivers.

Without a word, I pressed my mouth fully to Coffee’s sweetest spot, and drank deeply. I eagerly rolled my tongue in that richness, my lips drawing in more of that familiar, beloved flavour and sensation. I pulled back and ran my face and lips against my morning saviour as I swallowed to clear my mouth and mind. The feel of Coffee’s hot desire on my cheeks, my hand, my lips thrilled through me. I offered my mouth to my beloved once more, and was answered with an ecstatic, wordless, “yes”.

Was it me who threw aside the sheet? Was it me that had stripped off the sleep-worn T shirt?

My grip on Sunbeam’s soft, yielding form went from playful to passionate as I yanked my sweet one against me, urging the hot contact into a tighter, more intimate place. Sunbeam responded eagerly, probing, gentle pleasures drawing delight from my tortured core. Sunbeam’s steady, building labours at last penetrated my inmost reaches and I squirmed at the delight of it, but my lips could no more leave Coffee than the Earth can leave the Sun. I needed that warmth, that certainty, that blaze of life.

Heat poured into me from Sunbeam below and Coffee above. I swallowed to pull more of Coffee’s strong, earthen flavour into me, and my lips almost convulsed with my eagerness to taste my beloved as fully as my body would allow. I felt the last barrier of pain and tension in me fall before Sunbeam’s loving ministrations, and the pouring heat flooded me, rising like a tide of warm honey to meet the crashing wave of Coffee’s fierce, vivid love.

Their passions met at my heart, and suffused me. In that moment, the last of my pains and worries and ugliness melted away. I was free, and whole in myself. I was perfect.

I sank into the warming embrace of my lovers, awakened and born anew.