Intimate Encounter

"Well, here it is!" Drew announced, winking at his new wife.

Eagerly Josie followed him to the door, gasping in surprise when she saw the horse-drawn carriage. "Wow! For us?" she exclaimed.

"After you, ma'am." Drew grinned and bowed to her.

"Oh, Drew, you're so romantic!"

He helped her into the carriage, and they were off. The cool night breeze caressed Jo's face as they rode along, and the atmosphere was peaceful and serene.

"Everything just looks so different from the way it does in the daytime!" Josie marveled.

"It does, doesn't it?" Drew agreed. "It's almost like seeing it for the first time again." They rode past the Myriad Botanical Gardens, the Crystal Bridge Conservatory, the Skydance Pedestrian Bridge, and many other landmarks. At last the carriage stopped at the Bricktown Riverwalk.

"Oh, are we going on the canal?" Josie asked excitedly.

Drew winked at her. "Wait and see."

They dismounted from the carriage and walked to the dock, where they boarded a water taxi. "I've never been on one of these before!" Josie exclaimed.

Drew laughed. "I told you I had a big evening planned, didn't I?"

The view of the canal from the water taxi was breathtaking. Mesmerized, Josie hardly noticed when a waiter appeared to take their order. "So this is dinner and a cruise, all in one?" she asked. "I don't believe it!"

"You've never been on a dinner cruise before?" Drew's eyes were twinkling.

"Never!"

Dinner was delicious, and Josie found that she was ravenous. She ate every bite, and afterwards, she and Drew cuddled together, gazing up at the stars.

When they returned to the bed and breakfast, Josie began to remove her husband's clothing almost as soon as they were inside. She started with his suit jacket, then removed his tie, and slowly, ever so slowly, unbuttoned his shirt. She removed it and his undershirt, then placed hot kisses all the way down his chest until she reached his belly button. Pausing only long enough to unfasten his belt and unbutton and unzip his pants, she shoved them and his underwear down in one swift, fluid motion.

He gasped in surprise and delight as she took him into her mouth and began to use her lips, tongue, and fingers to bring him pleasure. "Oh, Josie," he whispered as his fingers lightly swept through her hair.

His moans of pleasure grew louder as he began to thrust, and when she knew that he was close, she gave him a final loving pat and stood to kiss his lips.

"Whoa, Josie!" he laughed when they both came up for air. "I didn't know you were into that!"

"Didn't you like it?" she asked anxiously.

"I loved it!" he quickly assured her. "It's just that I never would have guessed..."

"I wanted to thank you for the most wonderful evening of my life." She took his hand and led him to the bed. "Now, let's finish what we started..."

The remainder of the time Josie and Drew spent at the bed and breakfast was a glorious period spent walking along the lake hand in hand, cuddling together while watching television, and making love. Although she missed her family and friends, Josie dreaded returning to her regular humdrum life.

"You look a bit down, hon," Drew remarked as they loaded their suitcases into the car's trunk.

"Yeah." Josie sighed. "It's just that the past few days have been so much fun that I hate to see them end."

"I know," Drew said softly, taking her into his arms and holding her for a few seconds. "I promise, we'll do it again sometime, soon." He kissed her forehead, and then they were off.

One afternoon a few days later, Drew found his wife looking at one of her old high school yearbooks. "This is Miss Giles," Jo told him. "She was my English teacher one year. I got to know her really well. We had an incredible amount in common. She didn't even live to see her thirtieth birthday."

"Gosh, what happened?"

"Cancer."

"That's terrible! It must have really hurt you."

"Yeah. I never completely got over it. I still think about her a lot." She turned to another page. "Here I am with Brooke, Nancy, and Tiara. We look so young, don't we!"

"You all look pretty much the same, except that you can tell Nancy's lost a lot of weight since high school."

"She really has! I was amazed," Josie agreed.

"Want to see what I looked like in high school?" Drew asked.

"I'll bet you looked like a hippie, didn't you?"

"I'll let you decide that." He quickly glanced through his bookshelf. "Ah, here it is! My senior year." He lifted the yearbook from its place, leafed through the pages, and then showed it to Jo. "See, here I am...check out that sixties hair!"

Drew looked just like a forty-years-younger version of himself, except that his hair was longer and all dark brown rather than salt-and-pepper, and he was thinner as well.

"Wow, you were really hip...or should I say 'groovy'?"

He laughed heartily.

"So, did you join any Vietnam war protests?" she asked him.

"Nah, I was never much into civil unrest."

"I was just a little kid when all that was going on," said Josie. "I always felt like I missed out on a really exciting era."

"The first landing on the moon happened the summer after I graduated high school," Drew told her. "I remember that just like it was yesterday!"

For the first time, the fifteen-year age gap between herself and her husband made a deep impression upon Josie.