We decided on a little bistro close to our apartment building. It was kind of dark, cool, and intriguing. The food was excellent. I didn’t eat much, though, as I spent most of the meal just looking at the angel across from me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not a thing. I just can’t get enough of looking at you. You make this dark room bright.”

“Thank you, I think.” She beamed at me.

“You’re so bright and sparkling. You just look pretty.”

“That is so nice. I’m so pleased you think I’m pretty. I didn’t get to be pretty when Jerry was alive. He and his crew liked me to look hot, you know like Sandy at the end of Grease?”

“Hot is great,” I grinned at her, “but you’re just made for pretty.”

“I can be glam, too, you know.” Her voice and look were tantalizing.

“I’ll bet you can,” I smiled.

“Can you imagine me as sultry and smooth?” she laughed.

“It’s a hard image, considering how bright and sparkling you look right now,” I confessed. “But, I saw that over the past couple of days. I never want you to be sad again, Shania, but the truth is, you look terrific in black. Very glamorous.”

“The biker boys liked black, too,” she said, looking over my shoulder into space. “But they liked tube tops, leather shorts, high-heeled boots and stuff.”

“Piercings and tattoos?” I asked.

“Just my earlobes and a tiny tattoo on my hip.”

“You have a tattoo on your hip?” I asked, amazed.

She nodded and grinned. “A little, tiny tiger. I let you see it later when we get naked.”

I stopped in mid-stroke, my fork hanging in mid-air. “We’re not doing that, Shania. I already told you.”

“That was before you admitted you loved me.”

I nodded, putting down my fork. “All the more reason not to.”

“Eric,” she said, softly but very firmly, “I want you to love me, and I want you to make love to me. You’ve admitted you love me. Tell me why you refuse to make love to me.”

“Because, Shania, there is a chance you won’t love me. If that happens, I don’t want you to feel you’ve been used, tricked, or have made a commitment beyond what you can deal with. I don’t want you ever to regret that we made love.”

She leaned forward so she was nearly in my face. Her voice was low and dangerous. “I will have you, Eric. You will be mine. I will hold you inside me and draw your love into me. I want that, and I want it tonight.”

“It is because I love you that it won’t happen tonight, Shania, not on the night after you buried your husband.”

She continued in the low, forceful and demanding voice. “I don’t give a fuck about that, Eric. That is the past. It is ancient history. He used me for his own gratification. What I want now is to share myself with you and for you to share yourself with me. I want us to be partners Eric. You can’t deny me that if you truly love me.”

“You can’t blackmail me like that, Shania. I won’t let you use what I feel for you as leverage so you can manipulate me. We will make love when you can convince me that you are in love with me, not before.”

“I don’t have to manipulate you, Eric. You already love me. You want to protect me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“And, if I need anything, you’ll make sure I get it?”

“I will provide for you, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. And you won’t push me away from you, will you?”

“No, I won’t do that.”

“Will you let me come live with you in your apartment?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And you’ll do damned near anything I ask of you, won’t you?”

“Within reason,” I chuckled.

“Eric, my husband is dead. I’m released. I’m free and alive. I want to celebrate that freedom and being alive.”

“You don’t need me to do that,” I said softly.

“But, I choose you,” she matched my tone.

“I’m conveniently located,” I joked with her. It pissed her off.

“You think it means that little to me?” her eyes flared and flashed. “If it was just a matter of fucking somebody, I could hook up with Stan.”

“The jerk from this afternoon?”

“Yeah. Honestly, Eric. I can’t figure out what you’re trying to do with this? Don’t you want to make love with me?”

I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. “You have no idea how much. But, what I really want, Shania, is to hold you close to me. I want to feel you breathe, touch your skin, caress you and enfold you. What I want is to wake up next to you. I want to know you are close to me, that I can reach out and touch you. I want your kisses and your touch. I want to know who you are, what your next thought will be, the desires of your heart and be the love of your life. That’s what I want. And, even more important, I want you to know that you can trust me to think of you first and always. I want you never to doubt that you are more important to me than life itself. Making love, sex? I want for you to be thrilled, exhilarated, energized, and delighted. I want you to be overwhelmed with pleasure. What I want is for you to feel the synergy of the two of us being existentially more than just you and I joined. I want my life to be about you, Shania. And if that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, and I imagine it will, I want for you to commit to sharing that vision of unity and togetherness for the rest of our lives. I want to celebrate being alive and being together, mystically joined into a single entity from this day forward. I want our lives to intertwine, to interweave and become one life that matters more to us than either of our lives individually. That’s what I want.”

Shania sat absolutely still. She appeared stunned. She raised the linen napkin to her lips and dabbed gently.

“Take me home, Eric,” she said. Her voice was barely audible.

I nodded and signaled the waiter for the check.

As we stepped out into the night air, I felt distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Shania. I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all that.”

“Shut up, Eric,” she said, not unkindly. “I just want to go home.”

“I’ll walk you back to your apartment”.

“To our apartment, Eric,” she whispered. “Where you live is where I live.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you wanted to go back to your place.”

“Your place is my place, if you will have me.” She put her hand on my arm at the crook of my elbow to stop me. “What you just said.” She looked into my eyes. “That’s the vision.”

“Well,” I responded uneasily, “it is my vision.”

She shook her head. “It’s our vision, Eric. Now I know why Jerry never understood. You’ve been the keeper of our vision. Jerry and I were never meant to have it. It belongs to us; to you and me.”

“Okay.” I was at a loss for words.

Shania slid her hand down my arm until she grasped my hand. We started walking toward our complex.

“I don’t know if you believe in fate or whatever,” she said, “But this is it. We’re fated to be together. When I heard you lay it all out like that, I was astonished. I don’t know why, really. I’ve known we belong together for a few days. Tonight it just became absolutely crystal clear.”

“Well, you already know how I feel about you, my love. All that remains is for you to decide.”

“If I love our vision, can loving you be far behind?” she asked lightly.

“I hope you will,” I chuckled. “Unrequited love is a bitch.”

“I’m nobody’s bitch, Eric. I already told you. But I’m going to love being your partner.”

I pulled her hand up to my chest and pressed it to me. “I’m going to love having you as my partner.”

“And,” she said confidently, “as far as tonight is concerned, I going to sleep with you in your bed, in our bed. I am going to be naked and you are, too.”

“Shania,” I started with a cautionary tone.

“Hush!” she ordered. “I will hold you and you will hold me. If we make love, it will be. If we don’t, then we will be together. Frankly, at this point, I don’t really care. All I want is to be with you. If you love me then I will love you in return. If you enter me, then I will welcome you. If I need you, then I will take you and you will give yourself to me. It doesn’t matter, Eric. All that matters is that we begin, right now, this night, to live into our shared vision, together.”

“So you are coming into my bed in spite of everything?” I laughed.

“Our bed, Eric. From now on, there is no yours or mine. Everything is ours. Our apartment, our bed, our relationship, our love, our life. It was meant to be and I can prove it.”

“You can, huh?”

Shania sounded dead serious. “You are in 2B and I am in 3C. Do you know what you get when you multiply them?”

“Uh,” I stammered, “Algebra? Not one of best subjects. I don’t know. Is it like 6BC?”

“Exactly,” she said. “The beginning of time.”

“Honey,” I said, as gently as I could, “I don’t even know if the calculation is right.

But I do know that 6BC was not the beginning of time.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see her grinning wickedly. “Well, crap!” she said. “You seem to need empirical evidence that we should be together. I’m grasping at straws over here. You want to go with it for me?”

I laughed aloud. “You are incredible! Bright, beautiful and a really quirky sense of humor, too. How could I not love you?”

Shania directed me into the shower first. She collected our glasses, wiped down the table, and washed the glasses out, leaving them in the strainer while I showered and shaved. I came out from the shower wrapped in a towel around my waist. She gave me the once-over.

“Not bad for an old man,” she remarked.

“Just got to keep driving the knife in, don’t you?” I asked, only half-kidding.

She stepped up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She planted a blistering kiss on my lips. When she pulled back, her eyes searched mine.

“I don’t care how old you are, darling,” she whispered. “You’re mine. I own you, and you own me. It was just a joke.”

“I’m sensitive about that topic. It’s the weak link.”

“I will love you for who you are, my darling. All this other junk is just crap. It doesn’t matter.”

“You kiss me like you love me,” I observed.

“You could feel that, huh?”

“Do me a favor,” I asked her. “Don’t decide tonight. Wait until tomorrow, at least.”

“Or next Tuesday?” she teased.

“That would be fine.”

“I like feeling your warmth. Do you know that your love for me just flows out of you?”

I shook my head. “Maybe it’s just the desire.”

“Oh, God,” she said breathily, “I hope so!”

“So you do want me to love you, then?” I kidded.

“Go get in the bed. I’ll shower and join you shortly. Oh, and lose the towel,” she ordered.

“This is not a good idea, Shania,” I repeated.

She put a finger up to my lips. “Shoosh,” she whispered. “When you feel me take you inside me, you’ll know its right.”

She twisted out of my grasp and stepped into the bathroom. I turned toward the bedroom, turned on the bedside lamp, pulled the towel off and scrubbed my hair one last time before sliding between the sheets. I felt the cool comfort of the bedding against my skin and the easy support of the bed smoothing the tension of the day from my muscles. I turned on my side and looked at the street lights beaming their glow into the night.

I must have dozed off, because my next conscious thought was the realization that a warm body was pressed against mine. My arm was wrapped around her waist and my hand was full of her breast. The aroma of fresh flowers gently reached into my nostrils and I could feel one of her hands smoothing the skin along my thigh. I released my handhold on Shania and turned onto my back.

“You were sleeping when I came to bed,” she whispered in the night. She twisted around so she was facing me. Her hand rested easily on my chest.

“I guess so,” I answered softly. “A lot happened today.”

“Yesterday,” Shania corrected me.

I looked at the projected numbers on the ceiling. It was 1:12 in the morning. “Huh,” I observed. “It’s tomorrow already.”

“That’s right,” she said, nuzzling her lips against my shoulder. “And I don’t regret anything I said yesterday.”

I chuckled.

“You still want me to love you, then?” I asked.

“I do. So, if you don’t mind…” Her hand slid down my body to capture my manhood.

“Not much going on down there,” I laughed.

“Don’t be so impatient,” she whispered. She raised herself up on an elbow, leaned in to kiss my lips. It was tender, gently sucking, with tiny licks of her tongue at my lips. “You kept your promise, though.”

“What was that?”

“You didn’t make love to me last night.”

“But you did come into my bed,” I reminded her.

“Our bed, my darling, remember?”

“Hmmm,” I hummed, feeling her fingers beginning to trigger my arousal.

“Oh, that’s starting to feel better,” she said. She changed the motion from pattering her fingers on my manhood to stroking it.

“You’re just intent on doing this, aren’t you?” I whispered hoarsely.

“I am. I want to feel your love inside me.” She leaned in to kiss me with increasing passion.

“What about you? Are you going to ready?”

She hummed an affirmative. “A couple more of your delicious kisses, darling,” she whispered. “I’ve been ready for you.”

“You haven’t slept?”

“A little. I curled up and let you spoon me. Do you know what you did in your sleep?”

“Tell me.”

“You actually said the words. It was clear and exiting. You said, ‘Oh God, Shania, I love you so very much.’”

“The truth is out,” I chuckled.

Her hand continued to stroke me, in spite of my full arousal. “I wondered how many times you’d said those same words in the privacy of this room over the past weeks and months.”

“Constantly,” I chuckled. “I told you I’d loved your forever.”

Shania launched herself astride me. I felt her hair swish across my face. She leaned down and kissed me, this time tugging at my lips with her teeth.

“I want to feel you inside me,” she whispered.

“You’re in control.”

Her lips went to my ear. “That’s right,” she whispered into my ear. “Tell me what I want to hear.”

“That I want you?”

“Uh-uh,” she said, sliding her body down until my rod contacted her flesh. “Not that.”

“That I need you?” I teased.

She raised her hips until the tip of my manhood was just lodged at her entrance. “I can tease, too, you know.”

“Oh,” I said as if in revelation, “I think I know, then.”

“Say it,” she ordered.

“Shania,” I whispered. She pushed until a tiny bit of my shaft penetrated her.

“Almost!” she encouraged. “What does Shania mean when you say it?”

“I love you, Shania.”

Her warmth enveloped me completely as she sank her hips down on me. “That’s it,” she hummed as she enveloped me. “And I can feel your hardness and your love filling me up.”

It was paradise. Shania held me inside her, tiny pulses moving through her and transferred into me. She hummed and moaned, “Oh God! That feels so good, so right.”

“I’m not hurting you?” I worried.

“Oh, fuck no! It’s perfect!” she purred. “I knew it would be. Oh, God, Eric. Love me!” She leaned down and planted her lips on mine. I felt her sucking my lips with hers and plunged my tongue into her mouth. She sucked on it as her hips wiggled on my shaft. She released my lips and raised her head. “Oh, baby,” she moaned. “Tell me,” she pleaded.

“I do, Shania,” I groaned. “I do love you.”

“Oh, my love,” she whispered, “this is perfection. We’re going to do this a lot, baby,” she moaned.

I chuckled.

“You’re laughing at me,” she accused.

“No, no,” I replied quickly. “It just feels so good, like you said.”

“You do love me, don’t you?” she asked, working herself into a rhythm of hitches and thrusts on my rod.”

“You’ve known it all along,” I answered.

“I did,” she said, with a small gasp. “I knew you loved me.”

“And now you’re loving me,” I whispered.

“Yes, I am. I want you to fill me with your love seed.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, concerned for her gratification.

“Please, baby,” she groaned. “I came when you entered me. I’ve come again since then. I want to feel your come inside me. Flood me with your love,” she pleaded.

“Soon, baby,” I moaned. “God! You feel like fire and velvet.”

“Yes, velvet,” she hummed. “Like when you say my name.”

“Shania, my love,” I said, feeling the beginning of my own release approaching.

“Hold me, darling,” she demanded. “Hold me close and fill me with your love.”

“Yes, baby,” I groaned, clasping my arms around her and feeling the unmistakable burn that started above my knees. “Now, baby. Now.”

“Yes, my love,” she whimpered. “Me, too. Oh, God! I love you!”

Her lips sought out mine as our bodies heaved and we groaned together into each other’s mouths. Our tongues tangled and roamed against each other. We held each other and shuddered together. Shania pulled her head up and away and took a huge gasp of air.

“Good?” I asked, barely able to breathe myself.

She laid her head on my shoulder. “We are incredible together,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and I didn’t even have a chance to make love to you.”

“I can’t imagine,” she said, still panting.

“Isn’t it great we still have that to look forward to?”

“Hmmm,” she hummed, snuggling against me.

“Shania,” I whispered. “You said it.”

“I know,” she said gently. “I do because I want to.”

“I’m okay with writing it off to the passion of the moment.”

“I don’t think so, my darling.”

“I’m an old man, Shania,” I said quietly.

I could feel her chuckle. “You held up pretty well.”

“No joking, my dearest. We really need to address this.”

“You’re still inside me, Eric. I’m holding your love inside me. I don’t ever want to let it go. As of now, you are my love and my life. Nothing else matters but the two of us being together. Put it behind us, my love. I am yours and you are mine.”

“There will be comments, innuendo, and nasty insinuations.”

“I don’t care, Eric. We have our vision. We have our love. I’ll be your trophy wife. I don’t care. Love me and let me love you. That’s all we need.”