Pickin Clover by Bobby Hutchinson

his shirt. “You’re wondrously beautiful, my Polly.” He dropped his trousers and underwear to the rug, slid his socks off, too, and lowered himself over her, covering her body with his, feeling the enticing softness and delicacy of her skin, concentrating on visual images, allowing them to enfold him in a cocoon of lust.
    She skimmed her hands down his chest, tugging at the hair there, her arms encircling his back, and her legs parted and wound around him. Damp heat enveloped him.
    “Now, Michael.” Her voice was throaty and she raised her hips, inviting him, nibbling kisses down his chin and under his jaw. “I want you now. Don’t wait, please, Michael.”
    His swollen penis pressed against her through the flimsy barrier of panty, and he pulled the garment aside, just enough so he could slide into her.
    The heat... The tightness of her...
    She lifted herself against him, and he slid farther inside. A contraceptive. He needed a contraceptive. They were upstairs, in his bedside table. Silently, he cursed his lack of foresight as his body throbbed with desire too long denied.
    “I have to get a condom, sweetheart.” He moved to stand up, but her arms locked him to her.
    “No, Michael. Don’t. My period’s coming. Stay, please. Don’t go. Love me now.”
    For one blind, ravenous instant, he almost gave in. But then the fear intercepted, cold and harsh. If she became pregnant...
    “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” By the time he came hurrying downstairs, though, the magic was gone. She was waiting, just as he’d asked, but it was a passionless waiting. Although he kissed her, fondled her, caressed every inch of her body, he could sense the distance that had crept between them like a cold dark shadow that, try as he might, he couldn’t dispel.
    He fought against it. His libido reacted to his wife’s beauty as it always did, and when he became hard and pulsing again, he reached a hand around her backside and slid it up between them, touching every secret inch of her, willing her to soar with .him. He slid the condom on and buried himself inside her, moving with the long, slow strokes he knew she liked, claiming mouth and nipples with lips and tongue in an echo of that other urgent movement.
    “I can’t, Michael. You come.” The whisper was defeat, another acknowledgment of his failure.
    Passion drained from him, as if a plug had been opened.
    “I love you, Polly.” It was the truth, but it couldn’t heal what was broken between them. He held her for several more long moments, then released her and headed for the bathroom.
    For the rest of the evening, they were terribly polite to each other.
     
    Two days later, with the morning sun beating down on her and the smell of lilacs from a neighbor’s yard filling her nostrils, Polly remembered every detail of that miserable evening, and in spite of the blue sky and fresh air, she felt frustrated and angered by it all over again.
    She was wearing denim shorts and a checked shirt, with a billed cap covering her hair. She sat perched high on a scaffold that rested against the side of her mother’s house and wielded a scraper, attacking the blistered, dried bubbles of ugly gray paint.
    Far below her—it was shocking how high up she was—Jerome was talking to his daughter as he replaced the last pickets in the fence he’d repaired. He’d also fixed the railing to the back door, and emptied the front porch of its garbage. Impatient to get on with the painting, Polly had offered to start scraping.
    The good thing about being up that high and doing mindless physical work was the time it gave her to think about everything, Polly mused. She wrinkled her nose and admitted that the bad thing about it was exactly the same.
    She thought about her and Michael and their diminishing sex life. With every fiber of her being, she’d wanted him to make love to her the other evening. She’d felt warm and loving and eager and sexy when he took her in his arms. But the