The Garden

January 22, 2022

It was early Summer, early enough that the warmth of the sun on her skin was a sensation so new as to bring a smile to her lips. The fragrance of the grass in her nostrils as she walked barefoot over its soft yielding blades shimmered in her memory … something innocent and childlike, experienced a millennia ago, and re-lived anew each year.

She walked slowly through the garden, sometimes closing her eyes and lifting her face to the sky as if to be kissed. She could feel the sun on her eyelids… even see it though her eyes were shut… the barest caress that, as she allowed her senses to focus, moved from her eyes to her cheeks, her lips, and down across her shoulders and onto her breasts.

She slowed her pace, opened her eyes, and glanced to her left. A field of tall yellow sunflowers stood in untidy rows for as far as the eye could see… barely moving in the slight breeze, yet seeming each to greet her in person by the very nature of their slight swaying. They were like a battalion of yellow-haloed sentinels, lightly bobbing their allegiance to her as they stood rooted to the spot.

There were sounds too. It was a still, balmy day and the occasional drone of a bee reached her ears as it went about its bee-business, concentrating on its short journeys from one flower to the next, its tiny back legs coated in yellow, as if in some ritual homage to the sunflowers so generous with their pollen. The ebb and flow of its buzzing rose and fell as it flew nearer or further away from her in turn.

Birds, too, were keeping her company. The song of a blackbird with its cadences of notes improvised each time seeming to celebrate the warmth and utter privacy of this garden, this green space in which she revelled.

She walked, not hurrying, feeling the sun on her knees as each leg moved in turn, taking her deeper into the garden, the light touch of her cotton dress rippling around her body as she walked creating delightful kisses of silken breezes under her arms, around her legs and between her thighs as, naked beneath it, she walked on.

Ahead of her, slightly to her right was a wooden bench. It was old with the wooden slats that formed the seat flaking where ***t and varnish had ***led in the culmination of previous Summers and Winters, each in turn marking its surface with tiny souvenirs. Its supports and legs were of iron, black, and sturdy though they too bore the marks of yearly battles with the elements – a rust spot here, and flake of missing ***t there, yet conveying a modest permanence in all is Victorian design. It reminded her of benches in parks frequented by Peter Pan and Mary Poppins and other anonymous ladies and gentlemen from a dozen films and story books.

She walked languidly on, the dress continuing its undulating caresses and the sun joining with its invisible stroking so that she knew her nipples had hardened beneath the fabric, and not from any chill, and the dampness she knew contained between her legs made her breaths imperceptibly shallower and shorter with each sensitive stride.

She reached the bench and sat down. She could feel each wooden slat beneath her, solid and firm, like genteel punishments waiting for permission to begin. So she sat, seemingly still to any observer, while the tiny sensations on her skin brought the *** to the surface of her body, and racing beneath her skin, so that she felt that even an ant crawling onto her arm would be enough to send shivers down her spine. As if from nowhere, she imagined its bite, and surprised herself with a barely-heard low moan, as she imagined the pinprick of ***.

Her body and imagination were together as one – like lovers contained within the same mind, entwined now in longing and desire.

The breeze increased marginally, as if responding to the warmth that had grown around her.

Swinging her legs up and around, she let herself lie lengthways along the bench. It was shorter than she was so she bent her knees and lay, with her eyes full of blue sky, her legs bare where the dress had given in to gravity and fallen around her thighs.

The bee came close then turned and headed home, its buzz growing fainter until it disappeared. The blackbird stopped singing. The garden held its breath. She closed her eyes.

Gently… slowly… as if unwilling yet compelled by the insistence of another, she moved one arm so that her hand lay across her breast. She closed her eyes. A whisper so faint that surely it must have been mere memory reached her ears… “beautiful”… it said, like a sigh.

With no conscious decision, without thought or awareness of movement, her fingers stroked her nipple. Her nails casually raked it, and the accompanying throb between her legs made her repeat it.

She moved so that the material of her dress fell away from around her thighs and buttocks, and she allowed the gap between her legs to open, feeling air on her cunt, and the thrill of exposure, though no-one was there but her.

Delaying deliberately she moved her fingers from one nipple to the other, gently teasing… occasionally pinching, feeling the throbbing between her legs grow in response. Eyes closed, enjoying the sun’s warm glow, she could hear the blackbird begin its song once more, faintly in the distance, above the sound of her own breathing.

And the breathing of the Other.

She opened her eyes in alarm, forgetting she was looking directly upwards, and, blinded momentarily by the brightness, closed them quickly. Turning her head to face away from the sun, she opened her eyes once again, more slowly, and found she was looking at a hedgerow of roses – different colours, red, yellow, white and pink. Moving her gaze down the length of her own body it rested, finally, on two bare feet. She tried to sit up, mortified, but a strong hand stopped her rising and firmly, though gently, pushed her down to lie prone on the bench once more.

Her thoughts raced… who was it? How did he come to be there (for even having only seen two feet, they were definitely male) so silent and … yes… intrusive – that was the word.

The hand was still there, on her chest, above her breasts, holding her down. Her dress was still around her thighs. Nothing had been said, nothing was said now as, intentionally, slowly but with gentle authority, the hand moved and fingers found her nipple as her own had done, and, as she had done, started to pinch and tease.

Her mind was racing. Was this ***!? Should she kick out and run? But… ahh… he knew what he was doing, this man… and there was something about the way he touched her nipple and breast. It wasn’t ***ful, it was authoritative. It wasn’t aggressive, it was … with intent.

She found herself momentarily splitting in two. One half, rational, conditioned, still embarrassed, told her to push against this ***, get up and escape. The other, aroused, ***, wanted to give in, to give control to him, to … the hand had stopped. She could feel his breathing rise and fall exactly as her own. He hadn’t removed his hand, it was still firmly holding her down, resting between the tops of her breasts, waiting. The heel of his palm pushed down with slightly more pressure, as if he was listening to her heartbeat through its skin.

Reaching down, she took hold of his wrist. She didn’t know what she was going to do – push it away or convey refusal through gripping it. Her fingers curled around his wrist. She could feel his pulse beating strongly beneath her fingertips and there was a strength too in the muscle of his forearm. She lifted the hand off her chest… and he let her.

There was a nano-second of a decision about to be made. Pushing the hand away more decisively, she could have swung her legs around, stood and walked, or run, away from the situation.

But she didn’t. Her nipples were still hard, even slightly bruised from her own, and his, touch. Her chest felt light without the weight of her unknown companion. And so, she moved his hand – a hand that, it seemed to her had been awaiting some kind of permission, back down to her breasts, where after letting it rest heavily for a moment, it resumed touching her, his fingernails pinching the very tips of her nipples.

She gave in. She gave herself to it, to the vulnerability, to the anonymity, to the strange silent agreement, and as his hand moved down between her thighs, to the insistent parting of her legs, the sliding of his two fingers into her wet cunt, she turned her face to the roses.

Later, not too much later, as the length of his hard cock moved to fill her, and his two hands pinned her wrists behind her head, she turned her face to the blue sky and let him take her.

“Beautiful” murmured the breeze…