My friend Ann tells me I like it too much. My assistant thinks it’s awe-inspiring. My sister-in-law, Organza, thinks it is unnatural and probably ungodly. My best friend, Deborah, won’t even discuss it. But I ask: What’s wrong with desperately wanting your own husband or that sex with him becomes a goal each time we are apart? That he is my favorite smell and color and food? It is not all consuming, all the time. Instead, it is something that comes to me like a new idea: unexpected, quick, and completely inescapable. I want to worship at his temple. Then I want lightning to strike it.

This is the way it happens. It may be dead in the middle of summer, which around here means hot. He is showering in scalding water. I’m standing in front the mirror, wrapped in a white towel and combing my hair. I’m thinking of a song, but it is fleeting, and I don’t know what it is. I’m standing here even though through the steam I can’t see my hair to brush it right. The words and melody to this song still elude me. I stand there anyway. I’m not really brushing my hair. I am distracted by what I hear.

I hear the water streaming from its foggy nozzle. I am listening to him shift and move, making that water splash and drizzle. I am sure the mirror is now opaque from condensation, but I’m not looking at it. I’m glancing out of the corner of my eye—as if someone can see me watching, as if there’s something wrong with me watching—and watching the way his silhouette moves behind the blurred glass. I can make out the outline of something bulky in one of his hands; he’s using the loofah he laughed for hours about me buying. He turns, and I can see the line of his butt curving down into well-muscled thighs. I hold the comb harder against the instinct to push the door back and squeeze his ass. I run it through my hair once more, though this time I bring it low and let its smooth spine slide over the top of my towel. I bite my lip. I put the comb down. He shifts again and I can make out his broad back. Suds drip over his backbone and his legs.

He speaks, but I don’t; I am in the zone, his zone. Slowly, I slip my hand beneath my towel—it’s chafing me. I let my fingertips move along the offended skin. My hands slide farther until I am holding my own breast in my hand.

Startled by the silence as he turns off the water, I suck in a deep breath. He pushes the glass door open. He turns, and I know what he sees. He sees me standing, one hand grasping a towel that dangles against my thigh, the other stroking breasts I know he remembers kissing. I also know what I see. I see smooth bronze skin and fine black hair leading its wet way down his belly to circle his sex, the way I would circle him. I see eyes, whose color is not nearly as important as their intensity, as they watch my hand. I smell heat and heat and Irish Spring and heat. He is dripping.

I step closer to him, and I can feel it. The warmth is reaching out from his body to mine. I let the hand he can’t stop watching slip to my belly, to my thigh, then between. I drop the towel. His lips part. A featherlight touch on his wrist first, then a slow trail over his soft skin and hard curves up over his shoulder all the way to his neck. Caressing, holding there for a moment. His skin looks like buttered bread and smells like soap. Good Lord. I don’t dare glance at his face; that would be too, too much. My lips now find him. He tastes good. Sweet and salty and good. Kissing barely satisfies me. My teeth sink slowly into his skin, which surrenders, and his muscle, which resists. Steam still rolls over his hot shoulders and chest. I spy a droplet of water licking his chest. Like a jealous guardian, my tongue is forced to capture it. Feeling electric hands on my back, I shake, then shake them off me; electricity distracts me from my purpose.

I want to devour him; I want to take him into me, make him a part of me, make us whole. My tongue and teeth and hands are sucking him, biting him, touching him. Trying to get through his flesh to his soul. I wrap my arms all the way around him, holding him close as I try to pace myself. I move up and down, my arms rubbing him, my nipples gliding against the ridges of his abdomen. He tries to touch me again, but I bite his nipple softly and shake my head. I go lower, biting into his solid abdomen, then watch, fascinated at the muscles there. Lower, until I flick my tongue against his navel. Lower, until my cheek rubs against his swollen, hot penis, what I have been after all along. It is soft. It is hard. It is a darker bronze than rest of him. I am worshipping it and what it does to me. It slips in and out of me. It does it slow at first to make sure that I am open, then fast because I always am. It circles and pushes, and when I know that he’s fucking me, no longer making love to me, it makes me come.

I run my tongue down one side of his length, then the other. I rise from beneath and lick to the tip, fill my mouth, and suck him in. I can feel his thighs swell, strong against my breasts as he flexes, trying to fortify himself against what I’m doing, but I am relentless, my jaw and tongue working. I let him go but dip below to take one testicle into my mouth, then the other. I am always amazed at how the skin there tightens. I tip my head up again to flip his penis across my lips. I open my mouth wide and let his dick in again. It’s loose between my lips, and I roll my tongue against it. Next I close my lips and suck in earnest. He draws in a rush of breath that sounds equal parts tenor and snort. My hand moves up over his strong thigh and around to squeeze him tightly at the base of his penis as I work my head back and forth. His hand comes down to fix in my hair. He wants me to stop so he can take control. He doesn’t want me to stop.

Kneeling before my husband, knees on the cold, wet, slippery linoleum, I slide them open and bring my free hand into my moist heat. I dip inside and then out, flicking a finger against the throbbing flesh budding out of me. It’s thick, swollen, and sensitive. A shock goes through me as I do it again and suck him in. I can hear his breathing and his heartbeat, punctuated by alternating grunts and whimpers. His thick veins pulse against my tongue, and I take him as deep as I can into my mouth and throat, in and out, the way my body wants. I relax my lips and let moisture pool in my mouth as I rapidly move my head. He moans. I strum and pluck and pierce myself in time with his moans. I become a study of ragged breathing and soft mewls. I am engorged and throbbing as I rub furiously, needing to come and to make him come with me. He tries to pull away, but I am on a mission, and I know what he’s struggling to stop. His hand pulls my hair too tight. The muscles of his thighs are squeezing beneath my arms. My mouth clamps around him until he jerks and spurts heat into my throat.

I rise, then turn to lean over the sink rinse my mouth with water. I arch my back, raising my ass for him as I do.

The fronts of my thighs are pressed against two drawer knobs. The edge of the counter is digging into my hip. My ribs press against the rim of the sink. My breasts lay inside the sink on the cool porcelain. He does not enter me slowly. He doesn’t care that the water’s still running or that it’s too soon. His dick is still hard. My head is in the sink. And he loves me, but he’s going to fuck me now.