“It’s time to take out the big love guns,” snickered Caroline, taking a sip of her coffee. Asher stared into his.

“Most guys are losers, you know,” he smiled slyly, still staring into his swirling coffee. He wanted to encourage his friend after she’d had her heart broken yet again, but couldn’t find it within himself.

“Thanks for the encouragement. You know, I brought you here for help, Ash. I’m spiraling into patheticness here. I’m wasting away in my prime. Without a good man to wield his power on me.”

Asher’s grin broke out of his mouth and his gaze shot brightly up to his friend’s face as he chuckled, in spite of himself. She always knew how to make him laugh. But he wanted her to see him other than the way she saw him, and it was weighing on him.

“No comment,” he replied, winking at her. Caroline blew him a kiss in return before her eyes were diverted by a California surfer-looking guy sauntering past in colourful Maui shorts.

“What about him?” she said in a hushed, purposefully dramatic tone, her eyes big. “Do you think he could fuck me up against a wall and make me feel loved at the same time?”

Caroline and Asher had known one another for about a year. They’d met when Caroline had stopped to talk to, stroke, and kiss Asher’s Rottweiler puppy, Reggae. She had barely noticed Asher she was so in love with his puppy. But, after trading happy springtime banter, they’d gone for coffee. In the age of internet dating and online job apps, Caroline was glad she was so social, that she connected so easily with people. The two had hit it off; her blunt colourful wit complimented his silent but highly genuine grins and occasional, surprisingly incisive statements. He’d been attracted to her, but unhappily with girlfriend and devoted to being loyal. She’d been attracted to him, but devoted to respecting his loyalty, and besides, although she was happy to have found such a quality friend in him, he didn’t really seem like a guy who could drive her crazy, make her scream, and hold her close the way she needed. She wouldn’t settle for less, so she had to be careful how she spent her time. Caroline was hyper aware of her own mortality and was determined to find fire love while she was living.

Asher had broken up with his girlfriend two months later. Caroline and Asher had continued to hang out, talk relationships, philosophy, puppies, and even sexual fantasies. They were close. He had learned what she liked, what she wanted, what she wished she could have, and silently, slowly, day by day, he gradually realized he could give it to her. And he knew that if she knew it, the look in her eyes would change. But she had been dating a string of guys from Tinder ever since they’d met, and hadn’t gone without a date long enough for him to... well, do something about it. But he also knew that was shit excuse.

“Wanna go?” he smiled.

“Yep. Dinner and a movie at my place, yeah?” She loved him. She was aware that their friendship was a lot a like a relationship without the sex, and she didn’t fully know how to explain it to herself. In the back of her mind, she knew that if Asher ever just broke out of his subdued haze and made a fire love move for her, she’d probably drop her search and fall madly in love with him. But she also knew that she could never initiate it, because she wouldn’t be turned on unless it was coming from him. His fire would feed hers. Not the other way around. She was tired of men without any semblance of romantic passion and she knew that if she was gonna get it, she’d have to let it come to her; it wasn’t something she could ask for, or find.

Later that night, post-pizza, they were watching a slasher movie - an old one, from the 80s. Really doesn’t matter which one. There was a scantily clad young girl walking down into a basement alone, and Caroline chuckled, moving closer to Asher on the couch. He’d chosen the movie not because he thought it was quality, or didn’t deserve a scathing gender analysis. Rather, he wanted her close.

“Scared?” he smiled.

“Terrified.”

“Come closer.”

Caroline smiled and sprawled sideways into her good friend’s arms. They cuddled all the time. This was nothing new.

“Why’d you choose a movie that you knew would scare me while I was busy slaving over a hot stove to make you delicious homemade pizza?”

“Remember when we said that if we were both single at 40, we’d marry each other?” he asked.

A question with a question. Caroline was quiet for a moment. It was true; they’d said it. As a joke, sort of. After her last month-long Tinder fling gone wrong.

“Yeah. What about it, babe?”

“Fuck that.”

“Um. Okay. No need to be so harsh about it. Geez. I’m a seasoned expert when it comes to rejection, Ash. You of all people should know that.”

Caroline knew he was probably about to follow up with a joke, and that he meant nothing bad, but she couldn’t stop the swell of emotion from suddenly rising in her throat.

“No, I mean, fuck waiting. I want you now.” The scantily clad girl was being ambushed from behind. Asher paused the movie.

“What?” Caroline’s slow sadness paused too.

Asher reached over to grab the outside of her thigh and pulled her onto his lap so she was facing him, straddling him, with one leg on each side. This was a new position for them.

“Asher. What?” Caroline was already turned on by the deftness of this move. But also confused.

Without a word, he looked her straight in the eye, darkly, hotly, deeply. Unmistakably.

“Asher,” she said it softly now. She said it the way someone speaks when they find something they thought they’d lost long ago. Quiet awe.

He reached his hands out to massage her hips, and slowly stroked a firm yet sensuous route from her navel up between her breasts, along her throat…very gently; his hands travelled up to cup her face.

“Caroline.” His tone was not one of awe, but of confirmation, knowing. Total eye contact. He had never shied away from that. “If you go on another date with another lonely, horny, soulless boy, I will lose my mind. I’m the one you want.”

By now Caroline was in mild shock and heavily turned on. Her thighs clenched into Asher’s sides. She looked down at him, slouched a little. Before she could experience the classic pre-kiss hesitation she had grown so accustomed to, he grabbed her face in his hands and held it as they kissed. As he kissed her. As she kissed back. It was long. And slow. And full. And it went on. And Caroline did not stop to giggle or make a joke. It went on. He held her face and she kissed him back, their tongues reflecting all the ways they’d both imagined tracing one another’s bodies.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he said, and she did, and he stood up, supporting her ass firmly with his hands.

He walked to her bedroom and dropped her on the bed.

“And miss the end of that movie?” she said.

“Shhhh.”

He pulled off her t-shirt. She lifted her arms to help him do it. He undid her jeans. He pulled them off. She didn’t wear bras, so was left in her plain, black cotton underwear. The pizza and slasher movie variety. She kneeled on the bed, and reached out to pull off his shirt. She wanted his skin on hers, so badly. That’s all she knew for sure.

“Oh, god, Caroline.” Asher stood back and admired her. “You have no idea.”

“Yes. I do.”

With that, he pulled off his own shirt, dropped his pants, and stood there in his boxers.

He lay down on the bed and pulled her close, into a spooning position.

“There’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now,” he said, tenderly brushing her hair out of his face.

She snuggled her ass perfectly into his hardening cock, and reached back with her hand to pull him closer. He moved in as close as he could, and wrapped his arms and legs around her, enveloping.

“Me neither, Ash. But I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it.” With one arm cuddled securely under and around her breasts, he let the other fall to her pussy. He placed his large, warm, hand flat-out on her pussy—through her underwear.

“Oh.”

And then he just held it there, holding onto her warm, moist core as he rocked her back and forth gently, both hands securely rooted in their positions. One anchored up between her breasts and the other held her fire in its palm.

He knew what she needed, and he needed to give it to her. How often did that sort of thing come about? Once every 40 years? He kissed the back of her neck, her ear, nuzzled his head into hers, and held her tight, rocking slightly.

Caroline had never felt so secure in her life. She felt she could finally relax her limbs, her worries, her jokes, her insecurities, her fear of abandonment, her resentment for not being taken and held the way she wanted. She locked the top of her foot around the back of his calve and rocked with him. Her entire body was buzzing. Asher’s hand grew hotter on her pussy. She felt tears streaming down her face. Slowly, he turned her onto her back.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her face, her mouth. He moved slowly down to pull off her underwear, and then simply rested in a hug around her lower stomach for a moment, breathing heat and life into her navel. She smiled even though no one could see. She caressed the back of his head, tugging his hair gently.

He kissed her on the stomach, and then just below that, and then below that, and then he was kissing her clit, full and sweet. He kissed it again, and kissed either side of it too. Asher softly but persistently kissed every inch of her lips, her clit, her hip creases, her inner thighs. Dry kisses at first and then long, slow, French kisses, until his tongue was loving her like a juicy tropical fruit.

Caroline’s legs had shot out wide, and her breathing was heavy. Asher’s cock had grown huge and rock hard in the process of eating her lush core. He stuck his tongue inside her, left it there for a moment, and suddenly licked upward. Caroline went crazy, pressing her pussy, her begging cervix, down onto his tongue, into his face. He reached up to grab her breasts and pull her down harder into his mouth, his nose, his face. She ground down and in, and squeezed into him, moaning low and loud. Her moan made him moan out loud too, right into her pussy, overwhelmed with want.

She wanted his cock in her mouth, but he wanted to be inside her more. He pushed her legs open and apart wide and slid into her. As he did, they both cried out and landed in a hugging embrace. As he pushed his cock in and out of her wet, adoring pussy, as she pulled him in deeper and held on tighter, they held one another, they looked at one another, they kissed full on the mouth. And then his hands shot down to grip her ass, her hips, and pull her even farther into him. It was a perfect fit. I’m not just saying that. It was.

He held off until she was right at the edge and then they both catapulted at once. Into the moment, and into the future, simple and real.