THIS IS WHAT I WANT

 

Part Two

 

By Dreamspinner

 

            Josiah Taylor knocked on Elisa’s door promptly at four-fifteen.  She had been pacing her living room awaiting his arrival, so when the knock came the door was opened within seconds.  “I take it you’re ready!” he laughed.

            “Yes” was the woman’s one-word reply.  I’ve never been readier in all my life.

“Let’s go!”  She led the way, hoping he would notice she had no obvious panty lines.  The thong, she had decided, was absolutely necessary.  Besides, she had thought, once she had gotten used to it, I love how the feel of it between my buttocks.

            Going down the stairs she said, “I measured all my parts…I wanted to be able to compare my gains to where I was before I started training.”

            “Good idea”, he said.  “Can I see?”

            “I wrote everything down on a scrap of paper.  It’s over here on my Dad’s workbench.”

            Josiah ran his finger down the list of figures.  “Forearms, eleven inches; upper arms, twelve; chest, thirty-eight; waist, twenty-nine and-a-half; hips, thirty-seven; thighs, nineteen; calves, fifteen; ankles, nine.”  He looked her up and down.

            “Is there something wrong?”         

            “Quite the opposite, Elisa.  These are impressive measurements, especially since you’ve never worked out…you haven’t, have you?”

            “No.”  I wish I had been allowed to.

            “I’m especially impressed by the size of your chest and calves”, he said.  “You have wonderful symmetry.”  Then he was silent for a moment.  Then he said, “OK.  Let’s begin with a basic routine of six or seven exercises.  After your muscles are accustomed to that routine, we’ll add more specific exercises.” 

            Two hours later, her limbs were shaking.  “That was a ‘basic routine’?  I can hardly move.  In fact, I don’t think I can climb the stairs!”

`           “If you can’t, I’ll carry you!”  

            “Would you, Josiah?” she pleaded histrionically.

            They both laughed.

            “Ahh, you can make it”, he said.  “I believe in you, Elisa.”

            She thought of her thong again as she led the way upstairs.  Jesus, she thought, I bet he can see the sweat in my crack!  And having though that, she thought, Those are words Mother wouldn’t approve of!  And then she was angry.  Damn you!  You’re nagging me from the grave!  Well, she thought, full of resolve, fuck you, Mother!  And fuck you again!  I’ll bloody well think whatever words I like, and to hell with you!

            At the back door, Josiah said, “Rest for one day, Elisa.  We’ll do the same routine day after tomorrow.”  And he went out.    

            Elisa was so fatigued she nearly went to sleep in the bath.  The feel of freshly-washed sheets and a glass of wine finished her.  She was asleep five minutes after the last drop touched her lips. 

            Moments after she fell asleep, Elisa’s eyes began to move under her lids and her mouth twitched like a baby’s, sleeping in its mother’s arms.  She dreamt about a beach in Argentina; she saw the swells in the azure sea and the sun blazing down on Josiah—Josiah of the softball-sized biceps and gentle nature. And she dreamt she lay beside him on the sand.  In her dream, she too was muscled, and Josiah’s penis stiffed when he ran his hands over her hard contours, and she liked that. 

            And she dreamt of her father, watching his daughter and her man from a distance.  In her dream she saw her father smiling, and cried in her sleep.    

Then her dream changed abruptly.  Josiah was in the bed, kissing her, running his fingers through her hair, his hands everywhere; the small of her back, her breasts, her hips.  And she was wild as an animal, kissing him with a passion she never knew she could muster. 

And her hands, too, were everywhere—on his buttocks, holding his penis, caressing his face, tracing the line of his jaw, clutching at his hair.  She licked his mouth and she smelled him in her dream, he smelled like sweat, the sea, and faraway places.  And they turned end for end and she took him in her mouth, and he took her in his. 

She threw off the sheet in her sleep, writhing with pleasure as her passion rose.  She came like the ocean swells she dreamt of earlier, taking him inside her again and again, crying out in her sleep, coming more completely than she ever permitted when she was awake. 

The bed was wet with her, and she quieted, shivering.  Still asleep, she reached down for the sheet and pulled it tight around her chin.

The object of Elisa’s dream was not asleep.  He was sitting at his kitchen table, thinking thoughts.  For the twenty years he had been her neighbor, Elisa had played in Josiah’s mind.  And that night, strong thoughts of her visited him.  “She is not Elisabeth”, he said out loud.  “Now she is ‘Elisa’—a woman abloom with confidence, pacing like a lioness; she is not Elizabeth, the woman living in her mother’s house, plagued by a gang of doubts.  She is beginning to break out of the box her mother kept her in, and I am happy.  I have waited years for this day.”

 

In twelve months, Elisa had become more of what she had longed to be than she thought possible.  Josiah had been right in his assessment of her potential—Elisa of the “genetic endowment”, as Josiah had first observed, had become Elisa of the broad shoulders and muscled limbs.  And she had let her hair down, too.  Previously, at the insistence of her mother, she had kept it bound in a tight, unflattering bun.  Now her hair was as free as Elisa herself, and had become a great thick mane of dark wavy tresses streaked with gray. 

     The supplements Josiah had suggested had invigorated her spirits as much as they had help her put on muscle.  Josiah had shown her how to pose so she could see for herself how rapidly she was developing.  She often said “I am becoming what I wanted”, as she stared at her reflection in her full-length mirror.  But as she admired herself on the anniversary of her first workout, she saw a new thing.  As she had on every other morning, she saw Elisa the strong, Elisa the new; Elisa the confident, Elisa of the steady gaze, Elisa the proud woman who was finally coming into her own.  But the new thing she saw in the mirror that morning was a woman who had fallen in love with Josiah Taylor.

     She had felt it coming on, of course.  Each afternoon as they sweated together over weights, Elisa stared at Josiah’s muscles as they contracted and relaxed with his efforts.  The sight made a new thought come into her mind.  His penis would be like his a muscle, pushing its way inside me and pulling out again, over and over.  At times, this new thought made her feel like she would faint, and that frightened her.  When she would sit down, her head swimming with the idea, Josiah would sit beside her, his hand on her shoulder, and ask if she was feeling alright.  She would always answer yes, and say that she only needed to sit down for a bit.  “Better drink some Gatorade, Elisa” he would say.           

“You’re right”, she would answer.  And having had a drink, would take her turn at lifting.  And thoughts about Josiah’s kindness and gentle nature would roll through her mind. 

As the months had passed, Josiah’s solicitude had become more important to Elisa than his body.  And as that had happened, memories of her father had arisen in her mind.  And those memories had in turn provoked a realization: I have felt empty ever since my father died.  Now, I feel a new feeling is filling the emptiness.

     The thoughts that Josiah had been having were not new.  For years, he had been thinking of the woman, but whereas his earlier thoughts had been of the Elizabeth of old, who was owned by her mother, now his thoughts were of Elisa the free, Elisa the strong, Elisa the woman who was coming into her own.  And like the woman, he too had dreams.         He dreamt of running his hands over Elisa’s muscles, and in his dreams, they felt like hard rubber under silk.  Josiah’s dreams of Elisa made his penis harden and he would awaken and wish she was beside him. 

Pleasuring himself had been easy enough with thoughts of Elizabeth the old playing in his mind, but thoughts of Elisa the newly-muscled made it as easy as it had been when he was nineteen.   

  

As Elisa showered that morning, she thought of Josiah, and thought I will tell him today.  As she worked on her client’s accounts, she thought I will tell him today.  And as she showered, she thought the thought again—I will tell him today.

That same morning, Josiah had awakened with a thought on his mind.  I will tell Elisa I have loved her for years, and I will tell her when she opens the door to let me in.  He had known she was her mother’s prisoner, and had contented himself with loving her secretly.  But now, her mother was gone, and Elisa was free.  And a year of seeing Elisa’s muscles grow had brought his feelings to a boil.  Josiah the man had grown frustrated.  I have spent too many months aching for her caress, and I have stolen too many glances at her over dinner, wondering if she has similar feelings.   “I am tired of postponing the inevitable”, he said.  “I will tell her everything, and I will tell her today!” he declared.

     Elisa was still in an accounting frame of mind after she finished her last client’s work.  “I will measure my limbs and compare the new measurements to those I took before I started training”, she mused.  The old scrap of paper still lay on her father’s workbench, and the tape measure was still in the drawer.  “I will measure myself upstairs”, she declared, and scaled the stairs.  At the top of the stairs, it occurred to her how easy that climb had been.  “Twelve months ago, I would have been puffing, trying to catch my breath!”  And having said that, she thought of Josiah.  He will be proud of me when he sees these new numbers, she thought, as she took out a new piece of ledger paper and readied her tape.   She laid the old scrap down and transposed the old figures onto the fresh paper.

            Forearms, eleven inches; upper arms, twelve; chest, thirty-eight; waist, twenty-nine and-a-half; hips, thirty-seven; thighs, nineteen; calves, fifteen; ankles, nine.  “OK”, she said aloud.  “Now for my anniversary measurements.”

            “Forearms, thirteen inches; upper arms, seventeen; chest, forty-two; waist, twenty-six; hips, thirty-seven; thighs, twenty-two; calves, eighteen; and ankles, still nine.”  Her heart had beaten faster with each successive assessment.  She sat heavily in her office chair.  “My God, I’ve gained a total of nineteen inches of solid muscle in six months!”  She jumped up and ran to the bathroom scale.  “One hundred ninety pounds!  And my waist is three-and-a-half inches smaller!”  She ran through the house with excitement.  I can’t wait to tell Josiah!  I hope he is pleased.  No, I want him to be pleased.  No!  She thought at last.  The plain truth is: I want him to love me.  

        

“I must not appear overly excited”, Elisa said out loud as she looked through her closet.  She had phoned Josiah at work and proposed that they skip that afternoon’s workout.  “Let’s go out for dinner tonight”, she had said.  There had been a pause after she said that and she had worried he might balk at the idea.  After all, she had thought later, it did sound as if I was asking him out.  We have been out together before, but my idea sounded more like an offer of a real date.  But to her relief, he had agreed, saying he would like that very much, and that he would stop over at six. 

At five forty-five, Elisa slipped on her little black dress, her black pumps, pulled her thick hair back with a silver barrette, and applied her reddest lipstick.  She had no way of knowing it, and in truth if she were told so she would have denied it, but by selecting these particular things she had made herself a seductress.        

Elisa’s clock struck six.  She recognized Josiah’s knock—he always knocked three times.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  She drew in a long, shuddering breath and opened the door.  Josiah rushed in and immediately took her in his arms.  “Elisa”, he began, “I will burst if I don’t say this.  I love you and I have loved you for years.”  And then he kissed her on the mouth.  Elisa the new, the confident; Elisa the woman who was coming into her own, kissed Josiah as if she was the first woman kissing the first man. 

     And then she pulled back.  She held the man by his shoulders and she said, “And I, Josiah, I too will burst if I don’t say I love you.  Look at me Josiah”, she said then, stepping back and pirouetting.  “Look at me…look at what I have become, not just in body, but in spirit.  Josiah, I am so grateful.”

“Elisa, you don’t owe me any…” the man started.

“Shh…”, she said, putting her finger to his lips, “if it weren’t for you, I would not look like I do today, nor would I know who I truly am: a woman who shares the same desires as other women, a woman who wants to know a man like other women know men.  And the man I want to know in that way is you.” 

And after a moment she kissed him again.  And after she had held her mouth to his for a moment she pulled back and looked at him and said, “Josiah, it is what I want.”  

“You shall have it”, said Josiah.

 

The End