Grace

The exhibition that Harry had organised at Frederick’s gallery had been an outstanding success.

I had completed my first month at art school. I’d been nervous about going back to familiar places around the city, but Harry had organised for me to be taken across the gulf most days on the amphibian and on the days when it was too rough to travel in such a small craft, I’d taken the ferry with the other commuters.

Having sworn that I’d never become one of them, on the occasions that I had to join the Island commuters, I found it a pleasant enough experience. Perhaps it was the thought that I was coming home to Harry that changed my attitude.

Harry.

I thought about him this Saturday morning as I found myself with a large basket under the feijoa trees collecting the autumn harvest.

Before I shook the tree again and waited for the sweet, green fruit to fall to the ground, I pulled one from the basket and bit into it. My mouth filled with the familiar flavour of my youth.

These trees would provide fruit for at least another month and hopefully, if I took care and didn’t gorge myself on too many, I wouldn’t come out in a case of hives.

I picked up my basket and headed back down to the house.

As I walked in the front door, I could see Harry sitting out on the newly refurbished deck. He’d insisted that it be completely rebuilt if we were going to spend so much time down here at my house.

My house.

Sometimes I still couldn’t get my head around that fact.

No matter what happened to me in the future, I had the bach at Spindle Bay. I would always have a home on the Island.

Harry had been busy arranging for the installation of new appliances and the odd piece of furniture.

A dishwasher and new stove had arrived in the kitchen, along with a coffee machine. Sometimes I still used the old stovetop coffee percolator, but not quite so often now. I didn’t need to prove to Harry any more that I was my own woman.

In fact, the truth of it was that I enjoyed being a part of a couple.

My photograph of the red boat shed sat on the wall in the middle of the lounge in pride of place.

My going away present, Harry had called it. And yet here I found myself. We were making plans for our wedding, next spring in front of the boat shed.

Just underneath the photograph sat the new dining table with matching chairs that Harry had delivered. He’d muttered some nonsense about the chairs he replaced having been here since the 1930’s. He wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Coffee?” I called as I put a new capsule in the machine. I didn’t really need to ask the question.

“Yes,” Harry called as he looked up from his laptop. How he managed to work out there I could never understand. But he’d come to love the space on the beachfront and we were spending more and more time down here than up at Ridgedale. It had become our personal haven and I wasn’t unhappy about that.

His wet suit sat out on the rail of the deck, drying in the late autumn sunlight. How he still got into the water at this time of the year was beyond me. The water had gone from its familiar summer blue to the aqua-green that it took on as winter approached. I wouldn’t be getting back into the ocean until it was again the colour of Harry’s eyes.

I took two steaming brews out to the deck and then brought a serve of feijoa slice with fresh, whipped cream.

“I’ll get fat and unattractive if you keep serving me this,” Harry said through a mouthful of slice.

“Not with the amount of swimming you do every morning,” I replied. There was nothing more that I loved than watching Harry, wet from swimming, pulling the second skin of his black wet suit from his inked body.

At the weekends, he came back to bed after a shower, his body still largely cool from the ocean. In the months that we’d been together now, I’d traced every leaf and vine and rail that ran the length of Harry’s side.

“We’re going to start pruning the vines next week,” Harry said. “Would you like to come up and do the paddock above Spindle Bay with me?”

“The one we photographed?”

Harry nodded, “Yeah. You could take some more shots. I’ve got an email here from Frederick, he thinks that a showing of the seasons through the vineyard would be a good idea.”

I thought about how much my life had changed since the afternoon I’d spent up in that paddock with Harry.

“Is it hard?” I asked.

Harry tipped his head sideways and looked at me with hooded eyes, “You know it’s always hard when you’re around.” He reached out and pulled me from my seat and into his lap, before planting a sloppy wet, feijoa-flavoured kiss on my lips.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” I laughed.

The amused smile on Harry’s face said more than any words could say.

“You’ll pick it up. Pruning’s not so difficult and I always prune that top paddock.”

“How come?”

“It overlooks Spindle Bay and it’s where my father taught me how to prune the vines and it’s probably where I’ll teach my son how to prune the vines as well.”

His son. We’d never discussed children.

“Your son?” I couldn’t help the teasing tone in my voice. “Have you been making more plans for my life that I should know about?”

“Well,” he said with a wide grin on his face, “I guess if we have daughters I can teach them as well, but my family tend to have sons. I don’t know why.”

“You’re planning to have children then?” Harry knew as well as I did my thoughts on him organising my life. I couldn’t argue that things had worked out well for me, but I still liked to push back whenever I had the chance—it was what made our relationship such fun.

Harry’s eyes never left mine—he enjoyed the game as well. “Only if the woman I love is keen. And probably not until she’s finished her degree.”

“Right answer,” I said as I bit into another piece of feijoa slice.

“Besides,” he said, “you’re going to be far too busy studying and putting together seasonal shows around the vineyard to be bearing children.”

“I’m glad we got that discussion out of the way then,” I teased.

I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than a little brood of Harry’s running around the bach.

 

The next morning

I’d heard Harry get up for his morning swim. The westerly wind caught the old French doors as he came back into the house and the familiar slam that I’d hear over the coming months of winter woke me.

I dozed, while I listened to Harry washing the salt off his body in the bathroom down the hall.

By the time he climbed back into bed, I must have dozed off again, but the chill of the bulk of him as he scooped me into his arms jolted me awake.

“Aargh…” I moaned as he scooped my body into the hard planes of his own. His cock, hungry for me found its way between the soft folds of my legs.

“It’s getting cold out there, I need to warm up.” Harry whispered as his cold hands explored the warm folds of my body.

I was wide awake now. “Don’t think you’re coming in here in winter if you’re still swimming,” I said.

“Hush, woman,” he said rearranging us both so that he now lay across the top of me, the bulk of his hard body surrounding me and supported on his elbows. “I need servicing.”

His lips came down on mine. Ever since the first time that we’d made love I’d been powerless in the face of the force that was Harry Pearson.

Nothing in the intervening months had changed.

His tongue found its way into my mouth as his cock found its way home inside of me.

I groaned around Harry’s tongue.

The insistent pressure of him instantly turned me on—my body ready to receive him at almost a moment’s notice. My body opened completely to him and I enjoyed the sensation of being taken by the man that I’d fallen so in love with.

In so many ways, Harry Pearson had become an overpowering force in my life—yet in so many others as a result I’d found so much freedom of expression and the ability to become the woman that I knew I could be.

Lost in the pleasurable sensations of making love, I allowed Harry to take me to the place that he’d taken me so many times.

The muscles of his body rippled as he moved inside of me.

I traced the soft hair of his chest and then ran my fingers up to the rough scrub of his face.

As Harry began to lose himself in me.

As the rhythm of our pleasure increased.

He pushed me closer and closer to orgasm.

His fingers found my hard nipple and his teeth found my neck.

The sharp and welcome pain pushed me over the edge and my body quivered around him in release.

I opened my eyes to see Harry staring down at me a look of wonder in his intense blue eyes.

“I love you so,” he whispered. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

“I know,” I whispered.

His lips covered mine and he lost himself in us.

 

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