MB Saucy Side: Bedouin Song (Talia Version) (Patreon)

You lie besides Talia upon a too-short picnic blanket, blades of bluestem tickling the soles of your bare feet (“It’s just uncut hay,” Talia said when you asked about the long, reddish grass). Your skin is slick and sticky from Georgia’s humidity, your upper arm sticking to Talia’s as if you’re both suckered octopi. Sad, that your long-awaited vacation together has left you feeling more like a slimy mollusk than the sex deity of Talia’s dreams. The summer sun set two hours ago in a wavy haze of orange and pink, but the heat doesn’t yet feel as if it’s dipped beneath eighty degrees (“It’ll cool off, I promise,” Talia laughed when you claimed that you were going to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West).

The field where she brought you is too close to the city’s electric glow to fall to complete night, but the moon is new and thus it’s still dark enough that you can see more stars than you ever could view in Chicago. A meteor shower was scheduled for tonight according to Virginia (Talia would never have ventured outside without air conditioning if not for her mother’s subtle pressure), but so far not a single shooting star has yet streaked by, and your girlfriend has become increasingly quiet over the past hour. A few times, you worry that she’s drifted off until you roll over to confirm that her eyes are closed, and she instead surprises you with a kiss. Her kisses are slow and lethargic, and you return them with equal indolence.

Tonight is too hot for passion.

Just when you’re once again convinced that she’s fallen asleep, Talia unexpectedly speaks up. “My mom adores you, by the way. I knew that she would.”

You nestle closer, the air having cooled off just enough that you can now tolerate her body heat. “I’m very lovable,” you declare as if Virginia’s blessing was a given and that your stomach hadn’t been a Gordian knot of anxiety during the entire drive down to Atlanta.

“So you are.” With a fond chuckle, Talia wraps her arm around you so that your head rests on her shoulder. Her fingers trace light circles through the thin fabric of your tank top, tickling down your back until she finally reaches its hem and ventures beneath the fabric. Her touch against your sensitive skin leaves you prickling with expectation and want. The night is still suffocatingly hot, yet you can’t help but crave the way she makes you burn.

As she continues to stroke your waist, Talia’s other hand cusps your cheek. She tilts your face upwards. This time, her kiss lands heavy with desire; you melt into her with a moan that she echoes back, her hand involuntarily gripping your side as she draws you closer. Soon, you can no longer tell which gasps are yours and which are hers, your joint soft pleas and needy whimpers lost beneath cricket song and the shushing of wind through long grass. Everything is hot, so damn hot. Each stroke of Talia’s tongue and insistent caress of her hands stokes the flames, leaving you panting and feverish until the stars above blur and you no longer see anything but her.

Talia pulls away. You shiver, although you can’t tell whether it’s because the night has cooled or whether you simply feel bereft of her embrace.

“Look up!” she urges, voice rough with interrupted arousal. “Look up!”

Your gaze follows her upstretched hand to the sky above. It takes a moment for your vision to focus, dazed as her kisses left you, but then you see it: a flash of light, so quick that you briefly wonder if it was imagined before it’s followed by another and then another like silvery rain.

“Should we make a wish?” you ask without taking your eyes off the meteor shower.

“Why bother? I already have everything I want.” Talia brushes her lips against the line of your neck, ignoring the falling stars in favor of kissing her wish already granted. “I love but thee,” she quotes against your skin, “with a love that shall not die, till the sun grows cold and stars grow old.”

*Title and quote from the poem “Bedouin Song” by Bayard Taylor