Tomás’ first impressions of Shenar were through the veil of hers and Frank’s love. He stood at the picture window, hanging back in the room out of sight, as Frank met her alighting from the car. Their mouths came together first, then their bodies. Tomás could not even determine the color of her hair, so closely were they enwrapped on the driveway. He studied how they absorbed each other’s lips and slipped between each other’s clothes and under limbs in their effort to get beyond skin to skin contact. They waltzed their desire languidly. As Frank’s back rotated toward him, Tomás saw Shenar’s face nestled between Frank’s neck and shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed, her mouth open as though she was moaning from the heat of Frank’s body. They continued to turn. Frank enveloped Shenar. The energy of his embrace lifted her into the air. Frank’s face was immobile and bent into her.

As the couple separated and began moving toward the house, Tomás positioned himself at the edge of the island isolating the breakfast nook from the foyer. They entered arm in arm, leaning against one another, saying nothing. Tomás was pleased to see the effect this woman had on his brother. For years since Frank’s first wife had been hospitalized he had been known as eligible for an evening, but Tomás couldn’t remember ever seeing passion flicker across Frank’s face in the presence of any woman. Enjoyment, yes. Never passion. This afternoon, Frank glowed with passion. His eyes were dark and lustrous. His complexion was marbled with desire. Tomás approved and was grateful to the woman who inspired this in his brother.

“Tomás.” Frank’s voice was throaty with anticipation. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Shenar.” Shenar stepped toward Tomás and offered her hand. “Shenar, this is Tom.”

The two strangers began smiling on approach. Their hands and eyes met simultaneously. A surge of heat seared Tomás’ palm. His eyes widened in surprise. Hers did the same. Neither of them spoke. They stared at each other in disciplined shock.

“You drove!” Tomás erupted. He was incapable of saying “Hello”. He thought he might betray himself without some solid syllables to keep his voice from cracking.

Shenar’s eyes glinted and softened, like lenses catching the light as they switch out of focus. She bent her head back and began to laugh. A light, cold sweat broke on his temples. They all laughed, as though Tomás had uttered the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

And then they were all talking, about driving, and her trip, and the rain and Seattle micro-beer, and work.

“I think I’m going to enjoy working with you.” Shenar reached across the table and lightly tapped Tomás’ forearm. His skin tingled where she’d touched him. This is unfair, Tomás thought. She knew she was going to do that. She could steel herself and ignore this, this thing that was happening between them.

“Tomás’ style is much different than yours, Shenar, he might be able to help you completely define the project.” Frank reached out and touched Shenar, the same way Shenar had touched Tomás. Tomás imagined he saw static electricity crackling between them.

“You’ll love working with him,” Frank continued in the background. Tomás searched the corners of Shenar’s eyes for a clue.

“Tell her about that!”

Tomás wasn’t listening. He was focused on the patch of skin on his arm, wondering if, somehow, Frank had detected his reaction to Shenar’s touch, and reached for Shenar out of a sense of territorial imperative. “Uh, what? The black box thing? Oh, yeah. I was lucky to get my hands on that. It helps to know lots of computer nerds. They’ve saturated the flight industry.”

“No, Tom. Tell her about what you did with it.” Tomás noted with surprise that Frank’s voice wasn’t impatient. He glanced at Frank. Frank was staring at him with what looked like compassion.

“What I did with it. Oh, yeah.” What in the world is Frank thinking, Tomás wondered, if he isn’t trying to protect his interest in Shenar. “Uh, well, without getting too technical...”

“You can get technical, Tomás.” Shenar’s voice was patient, as though she was used to correcting people’s assumptions of her ignorance. Tomás was embarrassed, but knew he couldn’t possibly explain that although he’d known about her expertise, he had been flustered by his attraction to her. He stuttered his way into an explanation. His mind continued on a different track, musing about what was really going on in this room. It was as though he was alone in this. Maybe he was. Maybe what he’d thought he’d seen in Shenar’s eyes hadn’t been there at all. Maybe Frank thought he was just tired and overworked. If this was happening only to him, he realized, there was no problem. He could certainly control his own reactions. Tomás began to believe he’d allowed himself to be fooled by a magnetic field illusion, a sort of inter-personal Aurora Borealis. He started adjusting to what he knew would now be his position in Frank’s affections, brother-to-a-couple. He relaxed. He had experience in that. He could do that. Especially if he liked the woman.

As the door closed behind Tomás, Frank herded Shenar around east wall of the foyer into the kitchen. His hands rubbed her buttocks and hips gently as he nudged her into the room. He nuzzled her neck and murmured, “I don’t feel any panties. Are you wearing panties?” He was overcome with the thought of her moistness soaking into her skirt during the twenty hour drive from Phoenix, drying in the fabric and perfuming her from behind. He was rubbing hard enough, now, to lift her skirt a little each time on the uptake. She hummed softly and let him maneuver her around a chair, against the edge of the table. When he pressed urgently against her lower back, she bent over generously, adjusting her stance seductively. He seated himself in a chair and nuzzled his face into her skirt, between her thighs, into her veiled display. “Mmmm”, he was crooning, between deep breaths. “Mmmm, you smell so good.”

Frank growled, stood abruptly, toppling the chair behind him, unzipped himself and brought himself out. He pushed Shenar’s skirt up over her hips. She was naked from the waist to the tops of her boots. She groaned with need. Frank plunged so swiftly he felt himself bite her swollen flesh. She yowled and arched into him. He closed his eyes and began the rhythmic dredging of possession, probing every crevasse of her he remembered, hunting for new fissures someone else might have conjured in her since they’d last melded. Normally, he bellowed each new conquest. Tonight he was silent, focused.

He opened his eyes and saw her buttocks stretching away from his dick while he drilled into her succulence. Everything gleamed with their urgency. The odor of their joining singed his nostrils and inflamed his thrusts. He lunged straight and sure. She grunted windily at the apex of each stroke. He imagined his tip had located her cervix. The entry to her core.

“Aownh!” Slipping his arms beneath her chest, he pulled himself partially out of her. He supported her and they both spun her slowly around on him. When she was facing him her legs encircled his hips, burying him back into her. He lifted her into his chest and straightened.

Tomás decided to walk back from his car before leaving and peek in the kitchen window. His intention wasn’t to spy. He thought if he could see the two alone, the vision would act as a splash of cold water on his face, causing him to come to attention, drowning his attraction in the pair’s obvious absorption in one another. He expected seeing them together would rekindle his senses of shame and inappropriateness.

They hadn’t wasted any time. There they were, not six minutes after he’d left, frontally disrobed, standing, coupled, in the middle of the kitchen. Frank had hoisted Shenar to his groin. Her legs were wrapped about his hips. His hands supported her. One of his fingers was buried between her buttocks.

Shenar’s arms were around Frank’s neck. They were staring at each other, mouths open. Their breathing indicated that they were responding vocally to whatever their entwined parts were doing. Frank shifted his weight from leg to leg, matching the rhythm of Shenar’s gently heaving pelvis. Occasionally one of them would lick the other’s lips, or face, or slip a tongue into the other’s mouth, performing oral Braille.

Tomás stared at Shenar’s breasts. His chest tingled with the memory of plumpness against hard muscle.

Suddenly the couple dropped to the floor, parted momentarily, and joined again. Tomás saw Frank, large with desire, take aim and penetrate Shenar. Although he knew the thrust was quick, his mind isolated and transmitted each millimeter of Frank’s progress into Shenar’s lushness...his lust lurched.

He was bathed in sweat. He looked about furtively.

Tomás rubbed himself beneath his slacks, trying to ease the ache in his body and his heart. This is the kind of love I want to be making someday, he thought. Exploratory. Too passionate for immediate climax. I want to stand in the middle of the passion, for awhile, and shudder. Watching the woman to whom he’d felt a violent, momentary connection being taken by his brother, Tomás wondered if maybe it wasn’t love he felt for Shenar; maybe it was a yearning for the same kind of relationship Frank obviously had. He rubbed his palm absently at the spot where the spark had burned. He turned away from the couple before they began the primal rutting toward release. He didn’t think he could bear to watch them in their orgiastic agony, or their afterglow.

Tomás slid into his car and fumbled with the seat belt. This had not been a good idea. Far from discouraging him from feeling anything but friendship toward Shenar, he now had a multi-dimensional image of her, naked and aroused, branded onto him.

He gave his carnality a hard pinch. It would not do for him to disturb Frank’s lovemaking with intruding thoughts of his own, tonight, or tomorrow night, or ever. This was not his love. This was not his life. Shenar was not who he wanted.

Tomás steered his car carefully out of the driveway and turned toward I-90W, away from Frank’s home and away from his own. It was time for a diversion, he decided. He knew where to find one. Pioneer Square, at this hour, was loaded with jazz groupies lusting for a musician but primed by the music to accept almost anyone who was comfortable clubbing. He slipped a CD into the disc drawer in his dashboard and headed toward the waterfront.

Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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