Year of the Inner Goddess

May 2026 – Listen Here

I had every intention of presenting myself with all the composed grace and trembling anticipation of Violet Bridgerton receiving Lord Marcus Anderson – the scene etched so vividly in my mind it was almost rehearsed. The muted lavender of her corseted silhouette, the ceremonious arrangement of her form at the foot of the bed, not languid but purposeful – each line of her body a study in nervous beauty. She did not rush him. She simply waited, suspended in that exquisite tension, as he crossed the threshold and the room seemed to draw tighter around them both. And I, foolishly or faithfully, meant to summon that same delicate equilibrium – poised between dignity and desire, where even the smallest glance might unravel everything. 

But life, as it so often does, chose its own arrangement.

Work would not release me when I intended, the sky hung low and weeping, and with no remnants of a proper meal to be found, I gave into necessity. I set about making potato soup, meant chiefly for myself, yet also because I could not bear the indignity of offering a guest nothing more than a glass of water upon his first entrance into my home. 

This, of course, unraveled all prior intentions.

By the time the doorbell sounded, the soup stood half-assembled, the bread unbaked, and rivulets of cooling water raced their hurried path down my skin from a hasty bath. I dragged a day dress over my head as I raced down my hall, making for the door with all the gracelessness of a woman caught between preparation and surrender.

There was a keen edge of disappointment in the disarray, in this imperfect orchestration – so uncannily similar to the awful trend my week had taken. My guest deserved better than this half-formed tableau, so lacking in intention. I recognized the pull to resist, to let my failure take command and render me brittle with it. 

But that would serve no one and only fray me further.

Instead, I turned inward and resolved to close my mind to all that lay beyond the bounds of my sanctuary. The world, with all its clamor and missteps, would wait. 

And he – stalwart Woodsman that he is – seemed to take it all in without judgment. No flinch, no visible disquiet. Only a fixed presence as I moved about him in a restless circuit, finishing the soup, coaxing flame to candlewicks, darting from window to window, closing them lest the neighbors mistake the impending passion for some unruly disturbance. 

If anything, he lent the moment a curious plantedness – as though the chaos did not need taming, only witnessing.

At last, I gave up trying. Perfection would not be summoned this evening.

The airy house dress would suffice. The soup was left to simmer. The world, for one fleeting instant, would simply have to continue without me. A small, unguarded part of me threatened to tear up at the subtle admission of failure. 

I stopped there, in the center of my living room. Quite still. Suspended, uncertain, for once, what must be done next. Exhaustion ate into my bones. And more than that – my mind faltered, as though the very machinery of it had seized, leaving me quite unable to summon even one more decision. 

The Woodsman closed the distance. I don’t even know where he came from – slipping behind me. There was the breadth of him aligning with my back, a living ember at my spine. A curl was brushed aside, an almost absent-minded courtesy – and his mouth found that small, fated juncture between neck and shoulder.

And I… breathed.

All the earlier fretting – the fatigue, the unbearable weight that had trailed me through the week like a dampened cloak, the low thunder that had lingered just above thought – fell into a kind of suspended stillness. Not gone, not banished… simply held at bay. As I had closed the windows and drawn the curtains, so too I drew my focus, narrowing the world to this single, contained moment.

I did not need to be composed.
I did not need to be anything at all.

And I cherished that more than he could possibly have known.

The contact of his lips on my skin lingered, tracing their way upward in a manner that felt exploratory rather than assumed. I steadied myself with both hands against the bookcase, grounding, anchoring, as nibbles to my ear, and peace began to weave together in an intimate accord. There was no rush in him – no demand – only a presence that invited rather than overtook.

It was enough to answer.

To meld more fully into his chest, ever so slightly. To allow the space between thought and action to dissolve. I inclined toward him, a subtle shift of my hips betraying me, and could not help the small, knowing smile that followed at the answering iron lengthening beneath the gray of his sweatpants. I etched the feel into memory.

I sensed the shift in him then – not abrupt, not insistent. Just his broad hands circling my hips, and with a patience that became almost ceremonial, he turned me to face him.

And there I was.

Flat-footed. Unvarnished. The day still written plainly across my face – fatigue at the brow, the faint bruise of shadow beneath my eyes, a thousand small omissions where I had meant to prepare, to polish, to present a more composed figure. I had not even managed the smallest rituals – no darkened liner, no careful finishing touch to mark anticipation.

For a fleeting instant, I sensed it – sharp and unwelcome – that I had arrived as less than I had intended. Less than he might have deserved.

But he did not meet me with scrutiny. There was no calculation in his gaze. No tallying of what was absent. Only an unflinching regard.

There was something of the old forests in him. Not the tended paths, nor the pretty edges – but the deep places where the trees stand close and ancient, where the air holds the memory of fire and frost alike. A darkness not cruel, but enduring. The sort that has known breaking and remained.

He felt of cold steel and banked embers. Of long winters. Of wolves that move unseen and fires that burn low but never die.

Not untamed – no. That would have been simpler.

He was held in the way of a creature that has learned its own edges and does not stray beyond them. Strength not worn, not displayed… simply present, like the earth beneath one’s feet, whether one thinks to notice it or not.

And when he drew me closer, it was not with urgency, nor with claim, but with that same rooted inevitability – like stepping beyond the first line of trees and knowing there is no turning back.

He did not look at me as if I were unfinished.

He looked at me as a creature that had crossed into his crepuscular orbit, nothing more demanded of it than to be there. 

And the ache in me – gnarled, wearied, wound too tightly for too long – eased beneath it, as though I had been drawn near an hearty fire, held for an interval apart from the chaos of the world. 

Chin tilted, I met his gaze – deep-set, penetrating, bearing witness without asking, without taking. The breath I drew faltered on its way in, returning slower on its release, a loosening through my shoulders, a surrender I had not granted myself in days.

He did not ask.
He simply gathered.

Arms beneath me, certain and unstraining, lifting as though it were the most natural conclusion to the moment. My legs found their place about his hips without instruction, my arms circling his neck in answer, lips meeting, and we remained there – suspended, not only in height but in time itself.

Candlelight flickered in approval. Rain whispered faintly against the glass. The room, with all its earlier disarray, seemed to settle – velvet drapes, low light, the hush of an evening not yet spoken into being. 

With the assured steps of a hunter, he moved, carrying me from the living room. When he spoke, it was low, asking for direction, and I could not help but feel a fleeting, self-conscious chide at my own lack of ceremony. I had not offered the tour, had not guided him through my space as a proper hostess might.

But even under our brief interaction, my thoughts had blurred at the edges.

“Backwards.”

An airy word, scarcely useful at all, given that he carried me forward. It did not seem to matter.

The apartment, modest as it was, revealed itself easily enough. He carried me down the narrow hall. At the side of the bed, he paused. There was no tremor in him. No uncertainty in the hold that kept me aloft.

Only steadiness. And a part of me – long neglected, deeply feminine – stirred in answer.

There was the distinct impression that, should I choose to remain just there – suspended between movement and stillness – he would not falter in holding me so.

My hands found the line of his jaw, fingers tracing the strong cut of it, tarrying in the softened roughness of his beard. The texture grounded me in its familiarity, and though we were not strangers to one another, there was something about this moment – here, within my own walls – that carried the distinct, almost sacred quality of a first. 

There was no clock pressing at the edges. No obligation waiting to reclaim the hour. And that, more than anything, was what I cherished.

Only the quiet understanding that the evening might unfold as it wished – unhurried, unmeasured – held not by expectation, but by presence alone.

At last, he lowered me to the bed – though even then, his hands did not quite relinquish me, as if the act were not a placing, but a continuation.

And immediately – inevitably – my mind found fault.

The white duvet still lay unturned, pristine and impractical. There had been no time for preparation – no careful layering of a waterproof barrier, no music drawn low and enveloping to shape the hour into something cinematic. Only silence. Only the pattering hush of rain beyond the glass and the faint glow of candlelight doing its best to stand in for what I had not arranged.

Again, that jab – sharp, familiar.

Not enough. Not properly done.

But the Woodsman did not falter.

He bent over me with a grounded certainty – and when his mouth found mine, it was neither crude nor tentative, but lingering… carrying the hush of dark timber, the wild rootedness of a thick canopy, a presence ancient and enduring – as though he meant to draw me into those shadowed woods where light does not follow, all within that single exchange.

And for a span – only that.

Nothing beyond it.
No future pressing in. No past asking to be accounted for.
Only the simple, undeniable fact of being there.

I drew him in – not just the shape of him, but the impression he carried: the faint ghost of smoke, as though he had stepped from distant firelight, something assured, a current that did not demand explanation. It settled around me, within me, until thought itself blurred at the edges.

And I answered him.

Not in performance. Not in perfection.

Only in presence.

My arms found their way around him, drawing him nearer, and I let myself follow where the moment inclined, deeper into it, into the stillness that had at last found me.

His hands shifted then, tracing their way to the narrow straps at my shoulders. It was almost ceremonial in the motion as they slipped free beneath his contact, falling away as though they had never intended to remain. 

I assisted without thought, easing the fabric down, lifting my hips, wanting him to see me. Carefully, he set the garment aside, not allowing so much as an inch of it to brush the walnut floor.

And there I was. Not perfected. My body – marked by years, by life, by the children I had carried – lay bare.

I caught the compulsion to retreat, to gather myself, to shield my breasts, to hide the unguarded places that spoke so plainly of time and change. But the longer I remained, the more that reflex loosened its hold.

I was enough.

I let every doubt, every small, insistent voice that would name me lacking, fall silent – if only for the span of a heartbeat.

Because in that passage, beneath that weathered regard, I was not measured. I was desired.

And that… was its own kind of grace.

A sovereign part of me rose to meet him – sinuous, imbued with a larcenous invitation. There was a trace of coyness in the sway and arch of my Inner Goddess, a vision wholly feminine, wholly assured. I was aware of his gaze, of the stillness that stole over him, the further tenting of his gray sweatpants, and keenly aware of the breath he held without realizing.

My Inner Goddess… purred.

Unexpectedly, he began at my feet.

Those broad, calloused hands caressed as though no part of me was too small to be worthy of notice. The contact was feather-light at the outset, a mere suggestion along the arch, a passing whisper at the ankle, before drifting upward in an unspoken exploration. Calf… knee… the long line of my thigh… and back again, as though committing each path to memory.

There was nothing careless. Only attention.

And it startled me – how deeply I felt it. To be explored in places long forgotten… not neglected, perhaps, but rendered functional. For so long, my body had been a thing of purpose, carrying me from one demand to the next without pause. And now – here – they were met not with expectation, but with regard.

The Woodsman attended.

And in that braced devotion, a tension within me began to loosen – unwinding from its long-held vigilance, easing from sharpness into an awareness that was far more receptive. 

The instant gathered into a slow descent, an immersion into stillness that seemed to close in around us. His trace mapped its way upward – not rehearsed, but sure – reacquainting himself with a landscape he had long known, yet now tracing it with a settled reverence. 

My eyes fell closed.

Not in retreat – but in surrender to the sensation of it. To better feel. To better remain.

And with that small act, the world seemed to narrow, its edges dimming into a lambent vignette where only touch and presence remained. The quiet of the room, the faint hush of rain, the low flicker of candlelight – all of it fell away until there was only this… only him… only the unfolding awareness of being known without demand.

Without urgency, his mouth followed where his hands had led, as though each place had been waiting for the kiss of his lips. And beneath it, I understood myself yielding to the cadence of it, to the rare and exquisite permission to simply receive.

To exist there.

His mouth became my body’s catalogue – remembered, rejoiced in – and I dissolved beneath it. I found myself wanting to understand it more fully… to learn, in mind and in feeling, how to receive that kind of oral attention, how to let myself want it without hesitation.

And so I focused.

On the fullness of his lips bound to my apex, the artistry of his tongue between my thighs, the brush of his beard against my fragile skin. On following where he lingered, where his attention returned, the liquid fervor of his path as it traced and retraced its way across and through the folds of my pussy. 

What did I favor? What did I crave?

I tried, for a fleeting space, to discern it – to name the places that called for more, the sensations that rose above the rest. But as my thoughts unraveled and my body answered in kind, there was no single preference to be found.

Just as one rhythm began to crest, he shifted – subtle, instinctive – changing the pressure, the pace, the pattern. What had been lazy became intent. What had lingered became lighter, then returned again with masculine insistence. Each variation met not with surprise, but with a widening awareness that I welcomed it all… every shift, every nuance, every unspoken understanding carried in the movement of him.

And beneath it, I felt myself dissolve further still – beyond thought, beyond choice – into the simple, undeniable act of receiving.

Perhaps it was the sense of his own immersion in it – not performance, not for show or design, but an instinctive craving. There was a kind of hunger in the way he moved, the way his hands held my thighs firm, the way his attention lingered – not because it was asked of him, but because he wanted it.

As though this, too, was for him.

His mouth shifted, returning, savoring, exploring with an intent that was almost indulgent – each variation less a question than a claiming of the experience itself. And I sensed it – that he was not merely giving, but taking pleasure from it as well, drawing his own satisfaction from every response he coaxed from me.

A sound escaped me – I tried to stifle it, catching it against my knuckle – but he did not relent. If anything, he seemed to answer it, his attention shifting, returning with alert insistence to the very motion that had drawn my outcry. His tongue working tight swirls over my pearl before sucking it between his lips. 

And I could not contain it – not the sound, not the response, not the way my body answered him without permission.

I unraveled – my legs trembling and tightening around his head, my fingers caught fast in his hair as I rode the fierce, rising torrent that took hold and swept through me. 

The Woodsman seemed to relish it.

His hands found firmer purchase on the underside of my thighs, folding me in two, granting him unfettered access to all of me that was generally so carefully guarded. The shift, the exposure sent a flush rising, inhale catching, but the Woodsman ignored me. Every inch of me was known  – lingered over, savored, attended to with a focus that left little space for anything else. 

And I…I felt the warmth rise fully then, unmistakable, coloring everything. My face, my shallow pull, my thoughts – all caught between a fleeting instinct to retreat and the undeniable pull to remain exactly where I was. It was so good… and still, there was that flicker of shame at the depth of it, at the rawness of my own wanting. 

So I closed my eyes more tightly, as though that small act might shelter the enormity of it – both the vulnerability and the undeniable consuming pleasure that accompanied it. Because the Woodsman was thorough, invasive, as though he meant to leave no part of me unacknowledged.

And then he unfolded me – but to my surprise, he was not done. He resumed as though he had only just begun. Gods of Olympus. The long, wandering passes with his thick tongue, the tracing, the awakening of every inch – every hidden place that had long gone unremembered.  

That euphoric haze returned, my mind muddled, but I no longer felt fractured or worn thin by the world, but wholly gathered into myself. Feminine in a way that reclaimed rather than performed. The sharper edges of me – so necessary in daylight – seemed to yield, as though I had finally been granted permission to just be…me.

And then, again, his mouth returned to the path he had begun, drawing its way along my inner thigh with an almost maddening patience. When he returned to my feet, it was with that same curious reverence – though there was a skill to it that startled me.

He began with my littlest toe, adoring it first, his exhale ghosting over the top of my foot – so light, so fleeting it might have been imagined, had it not sent a sliver of electricity bolting upward through my body.

And just as I began to follow it, to make sense of it, he shifted again – taking another with that same focused attention. His tongue flicked between two toes, a fleeting contrast that caught me off guard, while his thumbs worked slowly into the arch of my foot, grounding and unraveling me all at once.

Before I could fully gather it, he moved again – returning, repeating, altering – never allowing the sensation to settle into expectation. What had been murmurous became pedatory; what had lingered gave way to a force more insistent, only to ease again just as suddenly.

It was the unpredictability of it… the way it refused to be anticipated.

The willing attention to something so unconventional – so freely, almost devoutly bestowed…caught me off guard. There was a flicker of embarrassment, of course there was, but it felt distant, almost inconsequential against the tide of need that carried me further from myself.

My Inner Goddess did not wish it to cease.

If anything, she urged it onward. All I could do was moan and ask, in breath and instinct, for more. 

Time slipped – no longer measured, but dissolved into a languid, swirling fog. I loved that there was no rush. No clock pressing at our backs.

I lifted my head when he stripped away his shirt, then his gray sweatpants. The sight of him, of his cock finally freed, proud and erect in the pale light, sent fresh waves of arousal through me. My gaze lingered, unashamed, taking in every inch, every striking detail – without restraint, without the frantic grasp of scarcity.

And my Inner Goddess stirred low in answer.

When he stepped into the adjoining en suite, even for that brief interval, I moved quickly, throwing back the covers, setting the space as I had meant to from the beginning, calling for music to fill the air with intoxicating and enveloping tones as I covered the bed in a waterproof fleece.

He returned, coming to stand at the side of my bed. Gloriously naked. Ready.

I reached for him.

The next two and a half hours did not pass in the way time usually does. Seconds stretched, minutes lengthened, until it felt as though time itself had loosened its hold on us entirely.

I instructed him to lie back, and he did – without question, without hesitation.

Then I made my way over to him.

I straddled him for a suspended moment, feeling the breadth and girth of him beneath me, before guiding him to the folds he had so worshipfully prepared.

And then I took him.

I rode him for long minutes – but what I loved most was the absence of urgency. There was no desperate claiming, no frantic need to seize every crest as though it might vanish. I was not chasing scarcity.

I was choosing.

Feeling him – every ridge inch of him – the frenetic sting when he pierced my innermost depths, filling, answering, the slow, undeniable meeting of man and woman. Without urgency. Each movement drew a response, an answering rhythm that was almost sacred – a kind of rare, preciousness that belonged to the annals of Olympus herself.

I followed every rise, every trembling edge as it gathered and swelled, letting it build, letting it stretch, letting it hover just at the point of breaking. I did not precipitate it; I lingered there, savoring the ascent, the suspended ache of it, rather than surrendering too quickly toward the fall.

My head tipped back, my body open, breasts on display, my eyes rolling as lightning shot through me in currents that refused to be denied or contained. My fingers tightened, searching for purchase, nails biting into my palm, teeth catching against my knuckle as I tried – uselessly – to gather myself, to arrest the sounds that insisted on escaping.

And still – I broke.

Again.

And beneath me – the Woodsman.

Stone-set.
Present.

Attentive in a way that grounded even as I unraveled.

There was no distance there. No absence.

Only the undeniable reality of him – beneath me, with me – meeting every shift, every need as though he registered it all just as keenly, just as fully. 

And I let myself fall into it.

Again.

And again.

They were deep, intimate kisses – sustained, consuming, the ardent exchange of breath. Not taken lightly. Something in them felt like recognition. Like souls meeting and greeting in a language beyond words – where heart, flesh, and presence were all that remained. 

There were points of reprieve – when I would rest my head against his chest, still joined, my body settling into a fragile calm between rising storms. His arms closed around me then, gathering me in with an unwavering resolve that was both grounding and protective, as though he meant to keep me there until I remembered how to breathe again. 

A threshold that asked nothing… and yet allowed everything. 

And then…that devilish grin.

Just the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth, as though he alone knew what was coming next. I would feel it then – the shift, the pulse of his rigid cock within me, followed by that tightening, answering coil low in my belly, winding, winding…

until I could not remain there.

I would rise again, breaking free, lifting above him like a phoenix reborn, my hips finding their motion once more – rolling, pressing, chasing that mounting edge with a rhythm that was no longer measured, but instinctive. 

And when I reached that precipice – when I teetered at that fragile, impossible height – his thumb would find me, slick in my nectar, the pad would swirl and swirl over my pearl. The contact was precise, circling, circling, drawing the orgasm higher, until it sparked through me like a living current. It gathered, coiling, expanding, each pass building upon the last, until it overtook me entirely.

I unraveled.

Screamed. Shattered.

Reduced to ragged cries and quaking sensation, collapsing once more against his chest, gasping, undone in the wake of it.

And then – he did the most wicked thing.

He reached between us, where my nectar pooled and ran in rivulets down his hips to the already sopping sheets, and with an almost amused intent, he gathered it – drawing it upward, tracing it across his own body, marking his abdomen and pecs with it as though it were a badge to be worn rather than hidden.

There was a low note in his voice when he spoke – deep, almost amused, his baritone lingering long after the words had faded. 

“Oh no… You came all over me.”

My cheeks burned instantly, chagrin rushing up in a vivid flush. I covered my face, half in mortification, half in helpless laughter – but I could not stop the smile that broke through.

There was a boyishness to it. A kind of irreverent delight that felt so wholly him – so unexpected, so disarming – that it unraveled any fluttering self-consciousness I might have clung to.

And as though to make certain I understood –  as though to prove the point in a language all his own – 

In the wake of my next orgarms, he did it again. Not once. But twice.

Each time following a crest so intense it left me breathless, undone, still catching myself in the aftermath.

And somehow,  instead of embarrassment, it made me blush and giggle in spite of myself.

Something shared.
Something… ours, if only for that fleeting, incandescent span of time.

He offered to change positions, and though a part of me was tempted – to wander, to explore, to turn the pages of the Kama Sutra and bend ourselves through every possibility – I found that I loved where I was. There was steadiness in the simplicity of it… in the way we had settled into one another without pretense, without performance.

I did not want variation.
I did not want novelty.

I wanted this.

This closeness.
This rhythm.
This quiet, consuming presence that asked nothing more than to be fully lived in.

And so I stayed.

There, above him.

Where I could see him – truly see him – every line, every shift in expression, every flicker of response that passed across his face. I could take him in without interruption, without distance.

And more than that, I could choose.

Adjusting the angle between us, finding what fit, what deepened the sensation, what drew that rumbling reaction from him that I had begun to recognize and savor. There was a kind of indulgence in it, in being able to linger, to move as I wished, to explore without urgency.

At times, I would settle lower, stretched along him, the solace of us mingling, my body draped across his chest, one leg draped over his. My fingers found his hair then, idly, absently, teasing through it as I centered my heart, as I let the moment expand rather than rush forward.

I did not want to leave that vantage.

Did not want to surrender the view.

Or the feeling of being exactly where I wished to be, with him beneath me, and the night still entirely our own.

Eventually, we shifted, me still above him, but in the reverse – balanced and braced, my mouth to his cock, his lips to my pussy. One hand gripped his shaft, stretching the skin taut, the other cupping and caressing the smooth fullness of his jewels. I stretched my tongue to his weeping tip, tasting his salt, then wandered my own slow path, circling, learning, reacquainting myself with the shape and presence of him. Beneath me, his attention answered in kind. There was a symmetry to it, a consuming unraveling. My need tripling and my focus slipping. 

I lost my concentration. Pulse faltered. Thought slipped.

Completely.

I could feel it, the way he was dismantling my floodgates, piece by piece, until I was no longer guiding the breaking point but being carried by it. And just in time, I pulled away, huddled beside him, and gushed while completely untouched, overcome by the sheer force of what had been building. 

Well… that was new.

He laughed – amused, a bit chiding – that he did not mind. But I could only shake my head, not yet ready for that particular boldness. Perhaps, in time, I might consider the idea of nearly drowning a god, but I was not there just yet. 

His hands found me, drawing me back, guiding my reluctant form over him when I made to move away. The Woodsman would not have it, but with assured ease, sealed his lips to my dripping slit, my remaining wetness soaking his face. The gesture, the continuation of the moment, made heat rise just as quickly as before.

Determined, I returned to his cock.

Every instinct sharpened now, intent on giving as fully as I had been given. I mapped, tasted, learned the cadence of his response, letting it guide me rather than dictate – letting it guide me rather than command me, allowing the interval to stretch, to breathe, to unfold in its own time. 

As I took him into my throat, there was a fleeting thought – half wonder, half disbelief – at the reality of him. Had he always been this… monstrous? As in measurement, I wrapped both hands around his girth, my Inner Goddess swooning as his full, thick head reared high above my grasp. 

Had time simply dulled my memory, made me forget what it was to encounter his particular monolith, so consuming in its physicality? 

I could not say.

Only that in those long, unbroken measures, I noticed it anew –
the rarity of it,
the luxury of it,
the astonishment of being so wholly there with another.

I remember being on my back, the tempo between us shifting – igniting – as I watched him above me. There was an ineffable quality in the sight of it, the raw way he buried his cock in my pussy, the way I took every brutal inch, that did something carnal to both of us, because his rhythm changed, primal, lustful, drawing us further into it. 

My palms slammed above my head into the headboard, my body on fire with heat, every nerve lit. Each thrust was more demanding than the previous. The penetration so ineffably deep it bordered on pain, a thin sharpness threaded through the pleasure that only seemed to heighten it. Not too much, though it flirted with the border. Just enough to demand my attention, to force my breath to concentrate through it, to meet it, even as I convulsed around his throbbing cock.

I loved that edge pain – the way it asked everything of me. The way I had to yield my body open, to find the rhythm within it, to let the tension transform into a consuming, blistering climax.

And there I was – beneath him, around him, with him above me, his cock buried and then retreating – an image that would etch itself into memory, not for what was done, but for how completely it was felt. It. Was. Glorious.

Winded, we found ourselves curled upon the bed, my head resting against his shoulder. I tried to collect my breathing – pursing my lips, letting out a slow, cooling breeze against his fevered skin – yet it was I who chilled far more quickly.

And so, like a kitten drawn to the hearth, I curled closer still, seeking the warmth of him, pressing in without thought for whether it offered him any relief at all. I only knew the instinct to remain near – to gather what heat lingered between us.

His fingers outlined the small constellations of ink upon my skin, moving from one to the next with a centering curiosity. And in that suspended, unmeasured stretch of time, he asked about them – their origins, their meaning.

It was… beautiful.

Intimate in a way entirely separate from what had come before.

We spoke then of things not easily offered – he of his mother, his voice carrying a weight that needed no embellishment. And I, in turn, spoke of my ink – how it came to rest upon my skin, how it marked over the remnants of a past I had once tried to conceal.

There, in that shared stillness, it did not feel like confession.

Only… understanding.

When he began to tell the story of the tattoo upon his back, I untangled us – my fingers urging him, gently but with purpose, to roll over so that I might see it fully.

It was a clever maneuver.

Moments earlier, he had offered me a massage, and having been a recipient of his ministrations in the past, I considered accepting. But I wished, this time, to give rather than receive.

He had already lavished so much upon me.

I wanted, in some small way, to return it.

So with him settled on his stomach, his voice continuing as he spoke of how the ink had come to rest upon him, I moved to straddle his waist, reaching for the oil I had set aside earlier. I poured a measure into my palms, warming it between my hands before letting them find his back.

He shifted as though to turn the attention back toward me – but I tsked my tongue in queenly protest, and told him I wished to give… just for a moment.

And besides, I liked where I was.

I adored the feel of him beneath me – the solid line of him, the strength held in stillness. My palms moved with purpose, learning him through touch – the sheer breadth of his back spanning beneath my hands, wide and unyielding, as though built to bear weight without complaint. His skin was smooth, muscular beneath the oil, but beneath that – firmness. Density. Muscle layered in sinewed strength.

There was something deeply satisfying in it. Each pass outlined the long sweep from shoulder to spine, down along the powerful lines that framed it. I let my hands wander as I worked, over the breadth of his biceps, along the defined ridges of muscle, down the length of his back where strength tapered before rising to his firm buttocks. The rise and fall of him beneath me became its own rhythm – steady, measured, real.

He did not protest.

Did not shift.

Did not seek to reclaim the moment.

He simply lay there.

And allowed it.

I shifted lower, working from his shoulders down over his ribs to the strength of his lower back, my hands learning him in a different way now – slower, more indulgent. And then, with a dash of mischief, I let my breasts follow where my hands had been – gliding over him, the radiance of skin meeting skin as I drew that same path upward, my body liquid against him from the small of his back to the nape of his neck. 

I placed a kiss there.

Then another along his shoulder.

My breath brushed near his ear, a whisper of the unspoken.

Inevitably, he turned. And there I was once more, straddling him.

The shift altered everything – the vantage, the awareness, the way the shift gathered again beneath my control. I paused, taking him in, letting my gaze linger without apology, his long cock resting along his abdomen, the tip grazing his belly button. I marveled as I settled the quivering lips of my pussy over the underside of his shaft, watching the head darken and swell as I moved not in urgency, but in exploration. 

I let the moment stretch.

I drizzled oil on his length, slickening our languid movements. I rolled up and down his length, learning him again in a different way – through glide, through pressure, through the subtle friction that drew an involuntary moan from within me. I loved the way his substantial shaft parted the lips of my pussy. My Inner Goddess growled at the sight, and I rolled my hips, mesmerized.

I traced his cock with my fingertip, curious, attentive, following the lines and contours with an almost reverent fascination. There was a detail, a subtle line that drew my attention, a purple vein snaked its way along the underside. I followed it slowly, marking the way it pulsed beneath my finger, fascinated, committing it to memory. My Inner Goddess wondered if I could sense it inside me, though perhaps it was muted by the barrier he so faithfully wore. 

All the while, the Woodsman lay beneath me, hands tucked behind his head, simply watching.

That gaze – unbroken.

Patient.
Constant.
Ancient in its stillness.

My need sang once more. I wanted to feel him with me, not necessarily from urgency, but from a deeper call I could not quite name. To take him in, to hold him there, as though closeness alone might quiet the echo of everything that had come before. 

It was difficult to explain.

It was not hunger in the usual sense.

It was recognition.

Two souls who had known fracture… who had carried their own concealed darkness, their own histories of sharp edges and unkind seasons – and yet, here, found a kind of meeting in the intimate twilight of it, a place where those edges did not cut quite so sharply.

Recognition. A communion.

A sense of I know this place in you.

And in that knowing, a meeting of darkness that did not recoil but understood, and in that understanding, a strange need to meet him there.

But before I could take him, the momentum shifted.

Suddenly, I was on my stomach.

His hands, strong and anointed with oil, found my back, moving in long, sweeping strokes that seemed to gather every frayed edge of me and press it into stillness.

And then – I was crying.

Just… undone.

Because I was being taken care of.

Because, for once, I did not have to hold everything together. Did not have to be the one bracing, managing, enduring. His hands moved over places that life – motherhood, responsibility, survival – had claimed and hardened. Places that had not known this kind of attention in far too long.

And it broke something open.

The gentle Woodsman stilled, concern threading through him, worried he had been the cause of it – worried he had somehow hurt me.

I tried to gather myself, embarrassed by it, by the strangeness of tears brought on by nothing more than touch.

But it was not nothing.

It was exhaustion.

It was release.

I turned my head, voice tremulous, assuring him, “No… please, don’t stop. It’s alright… I just…needed this.” 

I needed to let a little of it out.

Assured, he continued.

And then – without warning – everything rotated once more.

Oil dribbled over my buttocks, running down the crevice, wetting my lips, and with it – every glimmering tear, every thread of strain – vanished beneath the sensation. His hands continued their slow caress along my back, but the contact… his unmistakable hard cock resting against my derriere… drew a low moan from my Inner Goddess as fire kindled and leapt within my belly.

Instantly, I was breathless…the tension thick, undeniable.

My body answered instinctively, arching, pressing back toward him, seeking that contact. The oil made it oh so easy – dangerously so- to almost, almost slip into the forbidden. And again, that licentious rush of absolute abandon flowed over me, and I luxuriated in it, in the edge of it, in the space between restraint and surrender.

There was nothing and everything all at once.

And when he did finally part my cheeks and thrust into me, my eyes rolled back, the sensation striking deep and immediate – and his hands wrapped around my hip bones, pulling me back, folding me in, until I was in a fetal position, my calves beneath me, my shoulders pressed into the mattress – 

and then…he took me.

Completely.

This time, there was no mistaking it.

Need.
Urgency.
A depth I had not yet touched with him.

The position, the angle – it drew the feral from me, and he answered in kind. The Woodsman moved with force now, with unmistakable lust, and the sensation rose too quickly, too powerfully to contain. It tore through me, another crest breaking loose, my body answering – jerking me forward, pulling me from myself – leaving me gushing on all fours, as I came undone, aware only of the way it carried through me and spilled beyond my control.

A sharp pang followed.

Disappointment.

I was struck with it – that flicker, that fleeting spark – the first true hint of his own approaching release… an elusive moment that had escaped me for so long. And my own orgasm had stripped it away, leaving me uncertain – afraid I would not be able to draw it from him again. 

I folded back into him, my body finding its place once more, my fingers slipping between my thighs to guide him to the gates of my greedy pussy, keening to restore our connection. His hands gripped my hips, the cadence relentless, unbroken. 

And then…

I registered it.

That change.

That gathering.

A growing tension, building in a way that stilled everything within me, as though even the slightest movement might undo it. So even as every part of me hung on the edge of shattering again, I held.

Waited.

Focused only on him – the brutal slamming of his hips, the strain of his breath, the climb –

and then…

He was there.

Breaking with me.

His body shook like a mighty oak under a storm, the force of it immense, undeniable, driving through him and reverberating through me with a power that stole breath and thought alike.

His entire body trembled.

My left hand reached back, finding him, his thigh offering connection, grounding. While my right arm wrapped around the arm he had wrapped under my breasts, clutching him to me, and though he was wrapped over my back, I wrapped myself around him as best I could in that position, anchoring him to me as the eruption carried through him.

Through us.

Until the movement tendered.

Until the intensity gave way to something heavier, slower – his weight settling, mine following, the world returning in fragments.

And I held him there.

Not out of need.

But because I wanted to.

Because that shared breaking was among the most extraordinary sensations I had ever known. 

And then I guided him back onto the bed and nestled against him completely, ignoring his protest that he was hot and damp, because I was too – and it didn’t matter.

I only wanted to remain there.

To gather every remaining trace of the moment before it could slip away.

My body curved into his, fitting where it could, as though closeness alone might hold the evening in place just a little longer. His vitality – the steady rise and fall beneath my cheek – it was too rare a thing to release so easily. 

Inevitably, the world returned. 

He showered, and I rinsed off in the other bathroom, the separation of it feeling almost surreal after such closeness. 

I returned to the kitchen, tending to the soup that had been forgotten for two and a half hours, stirring it absently as though nothing at all had happened – as though the world had resumed its ordinary rhythm without pause. Then back again – pulling the sheets from the bed, gathering them to be started in the wash, because I had thoroughly soaked everything.

There was a simple domesticity to it. Almost absurd.

And yet… perfect.

I had just returned to the soup when he appeared again, moving with that same unassuming ease, asking where my linens were stored. I protested, of course, told him he needn’t trouble himself, but he dismissed it with that same untroubled certainty I had come to recognize.

He would not hear of it.

So I fetched the sheets, intending to help, but again – he refused me, insisting I go tend to my dinner.

And so I watched for a second, unaccustomed to a lover lowering himself to such a task, remaking a bed he had not shared in sleep. 

He made my bed with a care that bordered on ritual – smoothing the fabric, tucking each edge with precision, replacing the pillowcases, even finding where I had tucked away the decorative pillows and restoring them to their place.

It was such a simple act.

And yet, after weeks of holding my world together, I felt a sting rise behind my eyes, tears threatening at the unspoken, unexpected thoughtfulness of it.

One less thing.
One less burden to carry, to tend, to remember.

The Woodsman – present, attentive – even to the smallest detail – took things one step further. When he flipped the switch and the room failed to fill with light, he set about changing the bulb – the one I had ignored for months. I had been too short to reach it, too reluctant to invite maintenance into my sanctuary, unwilling to risk boots and dust upon the space I guarded like a priestess of old.

So I had simply… endured.

He had not.

I could not quite understand it – this set instinct to tend, to notice, to act without being asked. I nibbled my thumbnail. Perhaps I should have called maintenance. Was this a failure on my part? Did I look needy… helpless? 

My mind, still mellowed by everything that had come before, could not quite sort through the why of it. Could not yet decide if it was all right to accept such help.

So I chose, for the time being, not to puzzle it out.

Eventually, we settled onto the couch, my bowl of soup cupped in my hands, slipping into an easy companionship that asked nothing more of either of us.

No performance.
No expectation.

Just… being.

I watched him go. Pausing, I remained there, my hand still resting against the wood frame, as though I might feel the echo of him lingering beneath my palm.

My heart full.
My body humming.
My Inner Goddess sated.

I turned back into my home – my shoulders lighter, my sanctuary absent the usual sense of resetting. The bed remade, linens already swirling in soapy bubbles in the washer.

For once, there was nothing to restore.
Nothing to reclaim.

Only this… abiding tingling beneath my skin.
This peaceful, radiant fullness that refused to be hurried away.

I curled into the luxurious comfort of my couch, the air still carrying traces of him – faint, elusive, and yet unmistakable. It wrapped around me, settled into me, as though the evening had not ended… only softened.

And I let it.

Let the glow take root.
Let it linger.
Let it be mine.

I sat luminous over my wine, turning the evening over in my mind like a jewel beneath candlelight. 

What a glorious, unforgettable affair.

Until next time, XO. Elsie