The Trade by JT Kalnay Page A

harmonious proportion with the other.
    "Just a few more minutes,” she said. “I grew
up not far from here. My parents had a small house just on the
other side of the bay. I still have it. It’s the only place I can
ever get away, just by myself. I come here once in a while when I
need to be reborn. No-one knows about it.”
    Jay knew now that they were running to the
sunrise. A glorious, soul-lifting sunrise it became. Fingers of
salmon reached up to touch the few clouds that clung to the remnant
of the night sky. Ribbons of honey and wheat and gold stretched up
over the horizon and gilded the tops of the gentle ocean swells.
The slow dance from night to morning twirled around the salmon and
gold and insisted on picking up the tempo and rising to a crescendo
of flame and ruby. The runners coasted to a stop, their hands
finding each other's. Their bodies slowly coming together. They
stood and gathered in the growing dawn together, easy friends in
the manifest presence of their creator.
    Tonia gently led Jay towards the dunes,
guiding him between the tall grass until they came to a sheltered
quiet spot. She pulled him towards her and gently kissed his lips,
his cheeks, his forehead, his eyes. Jay caressed her face,
returning her kisses, yielding to her soft yet persistent lead.
    She pulled him down onto the sand and lay
beside him, continuing to kiss him, to talk gently to him. He felt
as though the glory and passion of the gift of the rising sun were
being revisited on him in this summer sun shower of love. His eyes
closed in complete surrender to the beauty who led him further,
ever further. The intensity of her kisses, and the urgency of her
touches grew. She rolled onto her back and pulled him on top of
her. Their shoes and shirts and shorts dotted the sand around them.
As the sun crested over the eastern horizon, Tonia Taggert lay
naked, pastry dusted with powdery sand beneath the glistening,
gleaming, panting body of Jay Calloway.
    "Now,” she breathed softly into his ear. Jay
exalted in the realization of exactly what was going to happen.
Slowly he lowered himself as gently as a fully aroused man can.
Sinking into the warmth and wetness of her, feeling the best of all
that she was and all that they were together reaching up through
him where they were joined. He cried out in the exquisite pleasure.
The new lovers lay still in each other's arms as the dawn broke all
round them.
    For an eternity they lay there silent just
listening to the world awaken. "Now,” she whispered again and they
began to move. Rising and lowering and pushing and feeling the
beauty of love and the closeness of friendship and the majesty of
all that the world could be.
    The sweat stood on his back and formed on his
face and ran down off his chest, mingling with the mist on her
gently tanned skin. Faster and deeper and more urgently he moved
until it seemed he surely must lose himself inside her. He tensed
for the moment that he knew was upon him and for which he had
waited all these months and from which there was no turning back.
He felt her body rise up towards him, her arms clutching at him,
holding him tighter and closer than he knew was possible. The power
of her release rocked him and drove him into the abyss where he
loosed himself in searing streams, deep inside her, screaming out
and writhing with feelings he'd never known.
    They lay together in each other’s arms for
what seemed like a lifetime. And for Jay it most certainly was. His
lifetime of loneliness and detachment and watching from somewhere
else and wondering if he was destined to be alone was over. For the
first time in his entire life he believed he knew what love
was.
    After a long time, she roused him from his
reverie. "It always has to be like that for us,” she said. "It
can't be motel rooms or the back seats of cars or anywhere whose
beauty can't match this. It can't be a kiss and a feel and a minute
under the covers with our pajamas on. I can't do that Jay. I