His cock bulged granite hard as he proposed to her.

One knee down on the plush carpeting of the hotel room, trying to remember the talking points of his proposal of marriage to her, the speech he’d been practicing for weeks now, the speech he’d practiced in the car, and at just the time he needed his mind clear and focused, his cock decided to rear its throbbing head and distract him.

Talking point one: the second letter he ever sent her--not email, not IM, an actual letter--where he revealed three things about himself and asked her to tell him three things about herself. How this act distinguished him from the others for her, distinguished her from the others for him, and put their lives on parallel courses. How their futures changed the moment he put the letter in the mailbox, the moment she opened the envelope.

Talking point two: that autumn afternoon in the used bookstore when they could not keep their eyes and hands and lips off each other. She’d be browsing in her aisle and he’d be browsing in his own, but as they moved from aisle to aisle they exchanged glimpses between the shelves. After a time they couldn't help themselves and snuck up behind each other repeatedly to steal kisses and exchange caresses and whisper affirmations of love.

Talking point three: that numinous Sunday morning, the two of them lying in her sex-saturated bed with coffee and the Sunday paper, when he looked at the sun pouring through the window, filling the room with light, and he wanted his life filled with that same light and knew he could not live without her and turned to her and told her, “I want to grow old with you.”

And that third point is the one that did it, the one that made his heart stir, his eyes mist, his cock fill with hot blood, unfurling like a flag.

He didn’t know if other men were like this, if other men felt this keen linkage between sex and strong emotion (he suspected most did not). He’d even been like this with his first girlfriends in high school. A hand held while walking down the street stirred him erect, a simple declaration of love could nearly make him cum. He sometimes suspected his brain was wired differently from others.

In an attempt to regain his composure he rejoined the narrative of his proposal. He told her of the life he saw for them, the days and weeks and years marching toward the horizon of an unbounded future.

He smelled the scent of her pussy then, brackish, distinct, unbidden, and every other thought in his mind fell away.

If his mind was wired differently than the minds of others, then so was hers.

God, he loved her.

Fuck the talking points.

He looked into her eyes and asked her, “Will you marry me?” An infinitely expectant pause filled the air as her smile spread across her face like a prairie wildfire. A film of tears welled in her almond eyes, threatening to cascade down her cheek.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, yes.”

His heart raced, his chest pounded, his lungs emptied of air. Blood surged through the thickened shaft of his cock like the piston of an engine, pointing toward the object of his endless affections.

He scooped the simple handmade wooden ring out of of his pocket. He held it out to her in the open palm of his hand.

“Be my wife.”

As as he slipped the ring onto her finger he saw the visual sexuality of the act--the extended finger inserted into the empty ring--and knew the sight could not be coincidental. A ritual handed down from generation to generation as a marker of union, sexual and emotional and spiritual and practical. They tried to disguise it by conducting weddings in churches, by forcing them to be recognized in courthouses, by surrounding the ritual with the trappings of bloodless civility, hiding from view its essential wildness, its simple wonder.

It didn't matter.  No one can hide what lies in plain sight. Sex is holy. Connection is all.

He held her hand in his. Their eyes locked.

He wanted the veil of her wedding dress to have kitten ears.

He wanted to lead her down the aisle with a leash and chain.

He wanted arousal in the pews where the crowd sat assembled, cocks growing hard underneath pleated tuxedo trousers, pussies growing moist under elaborately tailored dresses. He wanted couples reaching out openly to touch and fondle each other.

“Kiss me, love,” she said.

He kissed her.

“You are the only man I’ve ever wanted to marry,” she told him.

His hands moved to her breasts, as they nearly always did (“It’s like they're magnetized,” she once told him). They studied each others faces as he caressed her.

His thumb and forefinger traversed the verdant curves of her breasts to her nipples. He pinched them gently at first, then summoned more force.

The tears that had been threatening to spill from her eyes did so now as she looked at him, her gaze alight, that pretty smile beaming from her shining cheeks. Gradually her eyes grew cloudy, her mouth lax.

He twisted her left nipple in his hand; she gasped in arousal, her legs trembled and threatened to buckle underneath her.

He caught her weight in his arms, supporting her, and led her to the bed. She crawled onto the sheets, curling like a satisfied cat.

“Now come fuck your new bride,” she mewed to him.

He bounded onto the bed.