Thirty seconds, fifty seconds, a minute and you surface for a breath you never knew you were missing. Your heart clenches and implodes, your muscles spasm and fall lax.

You look down at your fingers and play with their sticky tips. Absently tasting one trying to figure out where your hair clasp fell. It tastes nutty and feels like the best sex you’ve had.

The blankets and sheets rustle to cover your body as you look for your clothes. They fail, you fail.

Your body wants to do nothing but lie there – on the couch, on the window ledge, by the staircase, next to another sleeping body. Your body wants nothing but your touch still lingering over erect tips. Causing goose-flesh, thinking of trouble.

Yet, you get out. A little shame still clinging on to you – shouldn’t you have done it with your mate? Shouldn’t you have waited for the real thing? Shouldn’t you stop loving inanimate objects? Shouldn’t your conscience shut up?

Ha ha ha. Your laugh tinkles through your rooms as you stagger through them. A shameless soundtrack to your few minutes of emotional and physical expenditure.

Oh fuck yes. Your oath rebounds across the shower stall. The heat from the spray soothing your sore, throbbing bits. Your skin puckering all over again. This time, a sheen of moisture replacing the sweat.

Mmm. The glow remains. Your body has been towelled off and cosseted, but in the aftermath of your mischief you are resplendent.

You get back to your room, you pass the couch, you climb up the staircase, you lean on the window ledge. They all feel different, they all feel empty, they are all waiting for you to return and for life to take hold of them once again.

You leave, you stay, you tell yourself never again.

The next afternoon, you come right back to your steel-bodied lover; disregarding any real one lying next to it.

And take the pleasure due to you all over again.

Her hair grew soft and long and was a rich shade of mahogany.

It brushed her behind. It swayed to the rhythm of her dancing rump when clad in only a flowing skirt. It whipped her hotpant-clad butt when she was in a particularly perky mood. It formed a sheet for her back when she lay in my bed.

She drove me crazy. That’s what she did.

When she raised her arms, I slavered. I couldn’t help it. I just knew I wanted to see that neat thatch of hair under her arms. She never shaved. For that matter, she never even wore her blouses sans sleeves. Her thatch was just for the men who shared her bed. Men like me.

Our world would turn grainy, like a photograph from the 20s, when we were together. Underneath it all, she was that kind of woman. Heavily done lids and dark lipsticks shaded her plum-cheeked face. She wore cheap lace-edged stockings from the dollar mart and would look, for all the world, like a woman fit for some expensive wining and dining.

Wining and dining were far from my mind when I was with her. All I wanted to do, was unbutton all that satin and starch and bury my face in the crook of her arm. Like some horny adolescent just discovering a fetish.

And sniff in her scent. Like sweat and saffron and nuts. Odd, I know, but so evocative of the woman she kept hidden from the rest of the world. I just couldn’t resist tasting her.

A taste would turn into lazy nibbles and within seconds I would want more than just a bite. My tongue would sneak out to claim a nipple’s curve for a morsel. My nose so close to the skin under her arm. My fingers dipping into her damp heat. The flat of my palm cupping her. The side of my palm sliding urgently along her slit.

In her arousal, her flavours and scent would drive me to the brink.

She indulged my maschalagniac tendencies. She loved the attention her breasts received from me. Most men would pay the respects due to her breasts and move on, but not me. Her breasts filled my plate and her arms were my choice pickings.

You can feast on a woman’s body; but do you know the places where she would really like you to dally? With this particular woman, I’d like to think I do.