He stepped up close behind her in the aisle to look over her shoulder at a book she had picked off the shelf. With a mere inch between her back and his chest, their clothes lightly brushed. He felt the magnetic tug between them, and he sensed, hoped, that she felt it as well.

When she leaned back, hardly moving an inch, and her shoulder blades pressed so slightly but firmly against his chest, she confirmed his suspicion. Her movement nevertheless startled him. It felt sensual and electric. It was direct, and yet clandestine, even a little naughty considering the context. Here was this confident, intelligent, accomplished, well-put-together, and very sexy, adult woman, subtly but clearly, indicating she felt attracted to him.

He had suggested Barnes & Noble as somewhere to go after dinner. Not to buy a book, he said, but just to talk more. Maybe that was a nerdy move, but she was all for it. He had seen her large bookshelf when he picked her up at her home, and he knew she liked books. After the dinner at the little Italian place, it was clear that neither of them wanted the night to end yet. Their first date was going well, and the verbal chemistry was very positive: a mix of reciprocal self-revelations, asking questions, and sharing opinions on a range of random things. It felt light and easy, but also stimulating.

He had been flirting physically as well. He had touched her a few times during their restaurant, tête-à-tête, reaching across at points during their conversation to touch her hand or arm. He tested her a little when he grabbed her hand in the parking lot as they walked toward his car. She told him later that it had seemed bold to her, but welcome. He had felt at ease, careless in his confidence even. Not confident of her acceptance, but sure of his attraction to her. The motion of taking her hand had been easy and natural, their fingers immediately intertwined, and she squeezed back to signal her agreement.

They had moved through the store aimlessly, talking about books they had read or heard about, being a tiny bit cerebral, and sharing opinions and thoughts on random subjects.  Underneath the intellectual and emotional connection, the sexual tension built. In the bookstore's crowded aisle, their occasional closer-than-normal proximity became another form of flirting. A transcript of the conversation would have given no hints about what was happening between them. The magnetism felt palpable.

As her shoulder blades pressed against his chest in the aisle of that Barnes & Noble, his throat tightened as a profound surge of lust welled up inside him.  There was something about her movement that felt so natural, mature, and direct. He could tell that her body would just nestle perfectly into his embrace. He did not pull away, yet he restrained himself from embracing her. He knew it was better to not push too aggressively just yet.

This is good, he thought, just let it build.

They had “met” on the dating website, Plenty of Fish, a week earlier when she sent him a short email responding to his dating profile posting. That set off a short series of written correspondence followed by a phone call to set up a date. Her profile had described herself as fit, 5’2” and her somewhat blurry full-length photo validated that.

His divorce from his wife of eleven years was not yet final, but there was no doubt about the outcome. It had been six months since she had filed, and he had passed through a dark period that fall and winter struggling to come to grips with the reality that his marriage was over. As the snowy New York winter gave way to a fresh, cool spring, he felt a slight but surprising glimmer of hope.

He was not ready to move on to a serious relationship and find another wife. No, no, his needs were more immediate. He wanted to get laid and have fun with someone. Did it really matter who that person was? Yes… and no. Yes, she couldn’t just be any random woman, they had to mesh well, but no, he was not trying to line up the planets of two adults for the happy ever after.

He had not had any sex for almost three years. He took care of his sexual needs by himself in the usual way, but now that was not enough. His Christian religious beliefs along with his desire to not end their marriage, had restrained him from looking around during the separation, but now, five months after she had filed, he found that he suddenly just wanted to cast that all away.

“Fuck it!” That was his attitude.

His wife had not moved with him when he was transferred to his new assignment in New York 18 months earlier. Despite her convincing-sounding assurances that they were going to keep trying somehow to make it work and that their trial separation was just temporary, her decision to move to Alabama near her parents instead of going with him should have made it clear that their marriage was over. He had been, he realized later, in denial about it all.

He had a hard time judging the quality of their marriage because he simply did not have that much relationship experience. Compared to his parents’ pattern of constant bickering, his marriage had not been quite so bad, but it still wasn’t all that great. He knew he had contributed to her unhappiness through the neglect accompanying his workaholism. He had taken her for granted while she was giving birth to their children and bearing the bulk of the early child-rearing duties. Following up that failure with appeasement and trying to buy her happiness with various gifts had only served to earn him contempt and cynicism.

For too long he had been angry with himself and just as mad at his soon-to-be-ex, and then, in that spring, he just felt tired of the anger.  

Fuck it! I haven’t been laid in years. He thought. She wanted out. That hurt, but over is over, and why waste life being with someone who doesn’t want to be with you? Learn from it, and move on.

Returning to the car, he took her hand again in the parking lot. His attitude had inadvertently allowed him a more confident approach. Confidence is everything when it comes to seducing women, and he had a glimmer of understanding that his openness, honesty, and directness were turning out to be a good combination.

He asked if she was ready to go home in the car, and she said she had an idea. It was late, and almost everything was closed, so she suggested the train station down by the river. It turned out to be perfect.

While it was true that he wanted to get laid, he did not plan to push at all, in fact, he planned not to go for it at all, right away. He wanted to seduce and pursue her and end up enjoying a sexual connection, but he knew he had to elicit her response, and that pushiness would be counterproductive.

In his POF profile, he was clear about the fact that he was moving in a few months. The Army wanted him to go to Iraq. He was also honest about his marital status. He had no intentions of using guile or deception for a simple one-time encounter. There had been a few women he reached out online to who politely declined, mentioning both his marital status and moving plans, so he knew his chances were not great, but why not try, he thought.

The train station parking lot was empty except for a few parked cars. They faced the river, and the twinkling lights of the small city on the other side reflected off the water. The light from the parking lot lighting made stark shadows in the car, and he could make out her features in the dark, but just barely. He turned on the radio and found a station with some good music, romantic and yet light, like the moment. He relaxed, and they were silent for a while, occasionally talking about a song. Their conversation continued easily, almost effortlessly, and the ease itself was comforting and

His very first initial impression of her was tough brassiness. This was New York State after all. Many people came across like that. She was into some things that he had never taken up- motorcycles and extreme downhill skiing, surfing. She was also pretty sharp intellectually with a Master's degree in a medical administration field from U-Mass. He found she was conversant on a broad array of topics. His own background as a Ranger-qualified Infantry officer in the US Army, then teaching at a local college, seemed to meet her approval, or at least established in her mind that he wasn’t a deadbeat.

In the car, listening to the radio and talking quietly, she was softer and more vulnerable. He could sense her openness to him. When the impulse came to kiss her, he neither hesitated nor rushed. He leaned over the center console and found her in the dark, her luminous eyes closing as they closed the last inch or so together.

Her suggestion of going to the train station parking lot had certainly set the stage. She had responded to his POF profile with a similar attitude that was basically, “Yes, why not have fun getting to know someone?” She had not seen his profile as a sex-personal per se, just a well-worded proposal for an open-ended connection without an agenda. It sounded refreshing to her, and the first emails and phone calls had not put her off at all. After the ugly breakup with a dude who had cheated on her with multiple women, a light fling sounded good. That relationship had been very serious, and the shattering of her trust was painful and humiliating. Six months later, like him, she felt ready for something - though nothing too serious.

For him, so adrift from his past after the divorce started, their kiss felt like cutting the last mooring to his former conservative self. He fell into it, drawn by the magnetism between them, entranced by the magical way their lips molded together. Never had a kiss had ever felt like that. It felt electric, full of strange, sensual energy that held him completely spellbound.

 As the world spun around them, he fell endlessly into an abyss. Their whole reality at that moment seemed swallowed up by how their mouths joined together. Later, when he saw the introductory credits to “Mad Men,” he recognized that feeling of reality slipping away and the toppling, lazy, not-panicked sense of falling and falling into nothing.

When he paused, he realized he had stopped breathing, not from tension or worry, but due to the sheer magic of that time-freezing moment. She giggled a little and whispered for him to breathe. He felt silly, but it was nice to let it out. All that tension seemed to flow out of him in that breath.

The sheer nakedness of his vulnerability felt startling to her, endearing, and yet impressive in its unpretentiousness and subtle yet very direct confidence. She had never met any guy like this, she thought, and the way he kissed, and the intense pull she felt toward him and his physical presence, seemed to be erasing her recent ugly memories. Her carefully built walls were melting away like ice in the warm sun.

He laughed, and then they kissed again.

And again. And again.

The kissing quickly became breathless and hungry, each of them unconsciously murmuring their enjoyment. Would anyone believe if he said it was ethereal? He was less dizzy now, or more adjusted to the spinning, but also impossibly and completely caught up in it. The kissing was just insanely good. There was no need for words. Clearly, the intrigue and magic of that kissing and the unstoppable magnetism were very mutual. Since he had predetermined that he was not going to try to be directly sexual, he focused entirely on kissing. It wasn’t difficult; the kissing was a thing unto itself that completely captured his attention. Not a means to an end, it was a very desirable end, a place where he wanted to linger.

Their consciousness of time left them.

At one point, he suggested they move to the back seat. The center console had become too much of a barrier. She quickly came around the station wagon, and he opened the back door and followed her in.

Ahhh, so much more room!

The floodgates of their passion yawed open wider.

Within seconds she climbed on his lap, and her petite frame fit perfectly into him. The tilt of her head and his head met at what felt like the most comfortable and erotically pleasurable angle. They were free to touch more, and he engulfed her in his arms pulling her snug. All the while the kissing continued, somehow evermore electric and enticing. His erection bulged in his jeans, but he ignored it.

She had on a thick sweater since it was cool that night, but he explored her figure over it, feeling the dimensions of her torso from hip to bust and back. His brain wanted to comprehend her dimensions and his hand became like alternative eyes, seeing her body while his real eyes were closed in the kissing. He realized later how much this teasing type of touching only fanned the flames of more intensely, but at that moment, it was all just one thing- part of their endless kissing. He had not expected to experience anything like this, and he was not sure how to comprehend it. Was it just kissing? It felt like so much more.

As magical and transcendent as it had been, he retained the presence of mind to stop. It was well after midnight, and they had been making out for hours though he didn’t bother to try to calculate the time.  Despite the years of Christian conditioning to tamp down his natural masculine sexual energy, he easily and intuitively fell into the role of seducer. He stopped their making-out session so that he could retain the initiative and with a calculated intention of leaving her feeling a little hungry. He did not try to hide how powerful it had affected him, but he knew it was good to regain some measure of self-control. Obviously, something intense and incredible had happened, and they both wanted more. That was good enough, perfect even. He drove back to her house, they kissed more in the car before he broke it off again, scribbling his address on a scrap of paper and inviting her to come over for lunch the next day.

She admitted to him later that she had made herself cum twice before falling asleep. The sexual tension inside her had built up inside to where it demanded release. She told him she had been so turned on by the kissing and touching that her panties had been soaked, and she had not hesitated to start touching herself after getting into bed nude. That image alone provided fuel for his own fantasies for years afterward whenever he thought about their fling. He always pictured her in the dark of her room, a place later to become very familiar to him as one of the settings of their many fantastic sexual encounters. In his mind, he pictured her legs wantonly open, hips thrusting, moaning uncontrollably, her swollen labia slick with her wetness as her fingers furiously worked her clit, and her other hand pinching her sensitive little nipples.