I’m ghostly as I putter around the house, walking through the moonlit rooms, running my fingers along edges of furniture to help guide my way. I don’t want to disturb Karen, and I should just park myself in a chair and read until I’m sleepy, but I can’t. I need to move. When I feel this way, I always need to move.
I find myself, as usual, on our second-story balcony, looking down the Hollywood Hills to the city below. This balcony is the reason I bought the house. You can see everything from here. You can lose yourself in the lights of the city, truly the jewels of L.A. You can lose yourself in them forever.
I don’t know how long I spend watching the twinkling red and gold dots, standing outside in my blue flannel robe, not noticing the chill creeping beneath it and to my skin. I am unaware of time, of the sound of her feet behind me, of anything until her hands steal around my body and gently pull me to her.
She’s taller than I am. I fit against all the grooves and swells of her body. I have always taken comfort in how well we align ourselves together. She unties my robe from behind and removes it. I am naked underneath and when she wraps me in her arms again I feel that she is naked, too. The air is suddenly cooler to me, but her body saves me, protects me. She bends and kisses along my shoulders and each kiss is followed by a breath of iced air that makes me shiver.
She doesn’t speak as she kisses lower, following the line of my spine to its base, doesn’t seem to mind the cold stones as she settles on her knees to continue. She probes my ass with her tongue. She pushes me forward until I am leaning on the railing, offering myself to her, my legs parted, my hips back. This has always been her favorite position to take me, to dine on me. I stare out at the lights as they mock me with their firefly quality. One twinkles and goes out. I fix on another as it does the same. Shimmering bits of fairy dust strewn over the dirt of our city.
Karen is more insistent now, her tongue joined by her hands. One hand snakes in front of me and begins to play my clit the way a musician might gently strum a guitar. The two sensations, her hard, forceful mouth against my ass, her soft fluttering fingers on my clit, drive me mad. My legs grow weak, but I grip onto the railing even tighter and silently beg her not to stop.
She won’t. Not yet. She’ll continue, as always, digging her sweet tongue deep inside my asshole, rubbing my clit between her thumb and forefinger. She’ll continue until I am as close to coming as a person can possibly get.
And then daylight will arrive and bathe my naked body with its first rays of warmth. And the lights of the city will fade, one by one, until all but the stoplights are extinguished. And Karen’s touch will lift from my body like the gossamer stroke of a silken sheet billowing in the wind.
And when I turn to catch a glimpse of my one, true love, she’ll be gone.
Because I’m the insomniac, but Karen’s the ghost.