by Ann Baillie
(06/19/02)

"What are you thinking about?" I asked Kitty. She was unusually quiet, lying on my shoulder looking out the bedroom window at my ratty snowball bush.

"Biochemistry," she said.

Kitty is not conventionally sexy. She's thirty-five and has had a baby, and it shows. Her breasts are full, but soft rather than firm. "Sagging" is a cruel word, but that's what they do when they're not supported. Her belly and hips are round and streaked with silvery stretch marks. Unless she uses half a bottle of gel, her hair looks like she just got out of bed no matter what lesser measures she employs. When she doesn't have her contacts in, she wears the most God-awful glasses you have ever seen. She freckles rather than tans and she's developing crow's-feet.

None of that's what you see when you look at her, even though she makes no attempt to hide any of it. Kitty sparkles and snaps; she's a live wire. Her amused acceptance of her flaws makes them endearing rather than off-putting. She doesn't fight with herself but she hasn't given up on herself, either.

She's got a wonderful mouth. Watching Kitty put her lipstick on can make a man cream his jeans. She knows how to dress. Even her bras fit perfectly and she looks put-together in her gardening clothes. Her eyes are an unusual shade of blue that someone once told me is called periwinkle; they shine with a kind of mischief that is utterly devoid of malice. She'll never try to hurt you, but she will set you spinning like a top without warning.

Which is what she'd just done. I woke up early that morning to find Kitty half-asleep, tracing figure eights on the insides of my thighs while my cock tried to figure out how to go up and down at the same time. I rolled on top of her and kissed her, and we spent what felt like hours having slow, luminous sex, neither of us waking fully.

When I finally woke up for real, I found Kitty curled up at my side, her head on my shoulder and her legs tangled in mine. I was thanking my lucky stars to have this phenomenal woman in bed with me -- and she was thinking about biochemistry? Ah, hell! If you can't handle this kind of thing, you have no business taking Kitty home with you.

I looked down at her. "Dare I ask where that train of thought got started?"

She grinned and rolled over on her belly. "Sex," she said. "When you break it down, it's just a bunch of chemical and physiological reactions, like breathing or digestion."

"Not quite," I protested.

"Oh, but it is, at least at the core. Let's take erections, for example." She scooted up until her chin was level with mine and she was sprawled across my chest. "I was reading the other day that they're started when some kind of stimulus causes the nerve endings in the penis to trigger a release of nitric oxide, which triggers the extra blood flow. Then the blood vessels themselves take over the release of nitric oxide, which is how an erection is sustained. Now the interesting thing," she went on, her eyes dancing, "is that the stimulus can be physical or mental, and if it's physical, it need not be direct.

"For example." She ran her fingers through my hair. "If I kiss you here," she demonstrated, running her lips and tongue along the line of my jaw just under my ear, "the response occurs somewhat south of the stimulus," she whispered in my ear.

She was right about that. Kitty, with her unerring radar for secret hot spots, traced the line of my hipbone with one fingernail while she bit my neck. I ran my hands down her sides, pulling her more squarely onto me, pinning my growing erection under one of her thighs.

"The funny thing," she continued, her breath hot in my ear, "is that the same thing done by the wrong person won't have that effect. Take Bruce, for example."

"No thanks!" I told her flatly. Bruce is my downstairs neighbor and living proof that the feminine complaint about men being slobs is sometimes true.

"See what I mean? The response is involuntary, but the source of the stimulus makes a big difference."

I grinned at her. "Being kissed by Bruce would trigger an involuntary response, but it wouldn't be the same."

"Exactly." She traced my lips with a finger. "Which suggests that the mental stimulus is more important. It's the thought that gets you hard."

Words worked, too. Just hearing her say that made my cock strain upward against her. Even better, her eyes held the memory of a thousand nights and Sunday afternoons, a thousand stolen moments. I took them, then I gave them back to her and she caught her breath. I braced my leg between hers and felt her wet against my thigh.

There was nothing detached or clinical about this conversation where Kitty was concerned. Breaking sex down to its component parts took none of the pleasure out of it. Rather, it seemed to fascinate her. Her lips dipped down to touch mine lightly, twice, before she kissed me long and hard.

"What about women?" I asked her softly when she moved down to my neck. "Did that article say anything about how women get aroused?"

Kitty snorted, amused. "Get real! Female sexual dysfunction still isn't taken seriously. That's where this research comes from: it's all part of the war against impotence."

That wasn't an issue for me right then. "It's probably not much different, at least chemically," I mused as I ran my hands over her ass. It's soft and round, but there's power underneath. I've seen Kitty slide into home plate pursued by a laughing herd of neighborhood children, all of whom had forgotten whose team they were supposed to be on in the sheer joy of the chase. When she emerged from the ensuing pile-up, she was barely winded. There's power under those curves.

"Probably not," she agreed. "And it's marvelous, isn't it?"

She stretched out full-length on me, purring, mouth on mine, one hand on my chest and the other tangled in my hair. Kitty loves touch; she revels in it like one of her namesakes in a pile of catnip. I reached between us and took one of her breasts in my hand, rolling her nipple between my fingers. Then I pulled her up so I could put it in my mouth.

"It's funny," she said when she could speak again. "The physiological responses in a lot of other mammals are the same, but it doesn't matter to them the way it matters to us. They seem perfectly content with sex once a year, strictly for reproduction. And religions condemn this, yet many think of it as the one pleasure unique to being alive and human. Angels can love, but they cannot touch." She shifted to my side and ran one small, strong hand down my belly, veering off just before she touched the head of my cock, going down the inside of my thigh before she went back up to my balls.

I closed my eyes and groaned. Having a body was a wonderful thing that morning.

"Wings of Desire," I said after a while, when her hand had settled into slowly stroking my cock, remembering an old German movie we'd seen together a few months ago. "That's what you're thinking of."

I brushed her hair out of her face and put my thumb in her mouth. "Damiel gives up eternity for the possibility of this. Mere possibility, not promise. He could have loved Marion as an angel, but that wasn't enough. If there was a chance for more, he had to take it."

The thought struck me then of what it might be like to be close to Kitty and be unable to touch her. It was awful. I needed to touch her like I needed to breathe. I could never keep my hands off this woman.

I kissed her shoulder and reached between her legs. She was soft and wet and inviting. I pushed a finger inside her once, twice, listened to her sigh with pleasure, then withdrew and traced circles around her clit. She cried out and her head fell forward, her cheeks flushed pink and her lips darkening to crimson. She would come soon if I kept this up, but I wasn't going to let her, not yet. I slowed, ran my finger down her slit until I held her pussy lightly in my hand, not moving.

"Bastard," she gasped. She was breathless and trembling. Her legs shake sometimes when she's right on the brink. "I hate you."

I smiled up at her. "No, you don't."

"You're right," she said. Those periwinkle eyes smoldered. "I don't hate you. I want you."

She straddled me, rubbing herself against me, smearing her juices down the full length of my cock. I thought I would go mad; I was so close to where I most wanted to be, so close. She knew it and she teased me with it, making me think with each stroke that she would let me in.

What made it even more unbearable was knowing that she was driving herself crazy as well. She pressed both of my hands to her breasts and I could feel her heart pounding.

Sex is great, it's one of my favorite things in the world, but it was best with Kitty and so hard to pin down precisely why. Kitty's good, she's sensitive and responsive in bed, but she's not the only one. I've known prettier women and sometimes Kitty could drive you around the bend, but....

Then I laughed.

"What?" she asked.

"What do we call it when the attraction between two people is especially strong?"

She laughed, too. "Chemistry," she said. "Of course."

"I guess you were right after all," I said, thrusting up against her, my voice low and ragged. "It's just chemistry and physiology."

"Oh no!" Kitty gasped. "No. We can call it chemistry, but, oh God! that will never explain this. We're mammals, but we're angels, too."

I caught hold of her hips. Steadied her.

I was right where I needed to be; all I had to do was change the angle slightly. Then her whole body came tumbling down on me, and as I slid into Kitty for the second time that morning, I remembered that Damiel had given up more than eternity. He had also given up his armor. When Kitty's legs started shaking again I saw tears in her eyes, and I gave up mine once again.

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