Jim Halpert pushed his luck, hustling up Cherry Hill road towards his house at a speed that would likely earn him a ticket if any of Pennsylvania’s finest were to turn their radar guns on him. He had the window rolled down, his arm hanging out, the wind making his slightly shaggy hair into an even greater mess. He had bolted out of work fifteen minutes ago just after four o’clock, reckoning that no one could reasonably be expected to stay until five on such a perfect August Friday as this. It was as good as Northeastern Pennsylvania weather ever got, warm and a little breezy, the sky cloudless.
He had plans for when he got home, plans for serious mischief. They had overslept and missed out on their usual morning session, and when she left for the day she gave him that look, that sly “we’ve got some business to attend to when you get home” look. The afternoon had seemed to take forever.
She worked at Dunder Mifflin only in the mornings now, having switched to part time to focus more on her art. Jim had suggested she quit entirely, but she resisted him on that, pointing out the size of the mortgage payment, and adding that the idea of not seeing him for nine hours at a time didn’t appeal to her anyway. She clinched the argument by noting they might be wise to build up some reserves in case they were to have any new expenses to deal with sometime in the next few years. He had smiled at the thought of what, or more accurately who, those potential new expenses might be, and conceded she was right.
She had found that four hours a day at Dunder Mifflin were a whole different world than eight or nine. Whatever nonsense came at her in the morning, she knew she would be in her house by one o’clock or so, painting or puttering about or doing whatever she wanted, and then, just when she would start to get bored or lonely, he would be home. As the show approached, though, it was more often the case that she would spend all her afternoons wrapped up in painting and not even realize he was at home until she saw him peeking into her studio, gawking at her with an irresistible mixture of adoration and lust. Once he was home, though, the afternoon painting session was over.
As Jim covered the few remaining miles to their old house, he imagined her painting. He loved watching her create. He never watched her without feeling pride in her talent and how hard she had worked to develop it. And he loved the way she moved as she painted, loved the looks of concentration she would get on her face, loved the way she would get lost in her own creative world. He took great pride in her art, getting a huge kick out of telling visitors that the various paintings all over their house were all done by his wife.
But watching her paint almost always stirred him another, more primal way as well. For one thing, she usually didn’t wear a whole lot when she painted. She liked to feel free, loose; maybe a tee shirt and shorts, never shoes, rarely a bra. And her hair would be pinned back in some random way and there would be paint all over her and she would move around as she took in what she was doing from different distances and angles, sometimes she would even work up a light sweat, and she would make those cute little expressions, sometimes even talk to her self a little bit in that adorable way and it would just drive him wild, make him want to…
“Shit!” Jim realized in his little reverie that he had missed his turn. He put his mind back on his driving, annoyed that his error would delay him getting to see her by as much as a whole minute. He resolved to put his plans out of his mind until he was safely at home. He arrived and entered the house quietly. He hoped to get to watch her paint for a few minutes without her knowing he was there. He heard music coming from her studio and thought he would likely succeed. He walked upstairs, down the hall, and happily saw that the door to the studio was open.
As he spied his wife he saw that, as he expected, she wore nothing but a flimsy tank top and denim shorts. She had four canvases spread out in front of her, each with similar mess of mottled colors. She would step back from them, shake her head, make a few brush strokes on one of them and then repeat the process. A bawdy Liz Phair song was playing fairly loudly and sometimes when she paused to look at he work she would shake and sway a little bit to it, displaying just a hint of that way she moved that could improbably be called both dorky and graceful. That was enough to raise Jim’s heart rate and alter the blood flow to certain body parts. On a whim, he stepped back several feet from the door to insure he wouldn’t be seen or heard, and stripped, and then stealthily crept into the studio as naked as the day he was born.
As he made his way into her studio, she continued to alternately paint and fret about some unsatisfactory result. Finally, with him just a few feet behind her, she somehow sensed his presence and turned around. Standing before her she found her husband, naked as the proverbial jaybird and obviously extremely glad to see her. She was momentarily startled, then smiled in delight.
“What, did you need to count to 21?”
He laughed. He had expected to take her aback, but she was always ready with a quip. “Yep. And I could get to 23 if you would just lose your shirt.”
She obliged, and took a moment to drink in her husband, sizing him up from his big feet to his unruly mop of hair. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She could never decide which part she like best, though lately she had been in a collarbone phase. Under these circumstances, though, her gaze was inevitably drawn a little lower.
“My, but the redwoods are handsome this time of year.”
On their honeymoon just two months earlier, they had made their way down the West coast from Oregon to San Francisco. They spent their days driving along the coast, staying in random Bed-and- Breakfasts, touring little wineries, doing whatever they liked. They made each other laugh all day and attempted to wear each other out at night. One night, after they had driven through a section of the Great Redwood Forest, she had given it its nickname. He had been embarrassed by it at first, but as far as nicknames for it go, he had to admit that “Redwood” wasn’t bad. It became a code word for them; if she worked redwood trees into a conversation it was a sign that she wanted to be alone with him in the very near future. Occasionally in the mornings at Dunder Mifflin she would send him an IM asking if they would be having lunch at the “Redwood Grille,” leaving him smiling and blushing as he sat at his desk.
She smiled her biggest girlish smile and stepped to him, jumping into his arms and straddling him with her legs, meeting his lips, then tongue. He carried her into the bedroom as they made out, she able to feel him just beneath her. She whispered in his ear, “If there are any particular places you’d like to kiss me, please feel free.”
“Actually, there was a place or two I had in mind.”
He placed her on the bed. He stripped off her shorts and she let her legs fall apart. She reached back with her arms to grab the headboard and closed her eyes in anticipation. Momentarily, she felt kisses moving up her leg, closer, closer, closer, achingly close, and then just when she wanted to tell him to hurry up she felt his tongue right on her most sensitive area, gentle at first, then vibrating rapidly.
He felt her respond, become wetter, heard her breathing become more rapid and the occasional moan or gasping of his name. He put his fingers inside her, ran his other hand all over her body, focused on her reactions as he cycled through the various moves in his repertoire. He had always been a giver in this regard, finding being able to elicit an ecstatic response in whom he was with a much bigger deal than his own completion. With her, though, it had gone to a whole new level. Over the months, with plentiful practice, he had learned exactly how to best please her and had come to know her so well that he could intuit just what would drive her the highest at any given moment.
She had accepted that letting him please her was pleasing to him, and had learned to just let herself bask in it, to lose all self consciousness and just let the pleasure overtake her. It often seemed that just when she was sure it was as good as it could possibly get, he would do something that made it even better. She heard herself moaning, gasping, but wasn’t even conscious of making the sounds. Then she felt his actions stop, and just as she started to beg for them to resume she felt him enter her, powerfully, in one fell swoop, making her practically scream in what was a heady, almost indescribable sensation that stopped just sort of pain. She felt his weight on her, caught glimpses of his face as she sporadically opened her eyes. Even in this act he could seem to incongruously maintain a warm, loving expression. He gradually increased his pace like a driver shifting gears when the time is right, and she felt herself rising rapidly, found herself torn between whether to rush it or resist it. As she got close she realized this would be no ordinary finish, nor even one of the really good ones that left her gasping and amazed. This was going to be one of those that, at least for a few moments, transcended everything, burned itself into her brain, echoed in her body, seemed almost impossibly wonderful and all encompassing.
He sensed how close she was, and gave it everything he had, and as he felt her powerful contractions and her passionate, almost screaming moans, he let himself follow her, spending himself into her as she very slowly came down. He could almost always time it so they finished very nearly together, and especially loved the moments of softening inside her as she recovered, basking in the afterglow, taking in that slightly vacant but still joyous expression on her face. This time it seemed to take her a long time before she returned to the conscious universe. When she finally did, she gazed up at him, smiled a slightly dazed but still enormous smile and simply said, “So, how was your afternoon at the office?”
