What the Woodshed Heard

What the Woodshed Heard

I wake before dawn, sometime around four, the house wrapped in a kind of sacred quiet. I slip out of bed without disturbing R.S., knowing he won’t even register my absence. Downstairs, I make coffee, finish the dishes left from the night before, and layer myself in big boots, long underwear, and a hoodie — my makeshift armor against the 34‑degree air.

Outside, the gravel crunches under my feet, each step grounding me deeper into my body. The cold hits my lungs in a way that feels clean and clarifying. It clears the residue from my mind and makes space for something better to arrive. I let my thoughts drift without attaching to any of them, opening myself to the possibility that today might bring something unexpectedly good.

I walk the loop toward the back of his property, wanting to complete the full circuit before heading inside. But the thought of R.S. — warm, asleep, waiting without knowing he’s waiting — pulls me back sooner than planned. The promise of his bedroom, his body, the slow burn of the day ahead… it’s enough to turn me around.

I slip into the dark house, peel off my layers in the basement, and pad upstairs. In the bathroom, brushing my teeth, a slow grin spreads across my face. I know exactly how the day will unfold - with the kind of intimacy that stretches across hours, a connection that feels like a conversation the body has been waiting to have, and the kind of pleasure that rearranges you. What I’m not expecting is a Sunday morning that will rock me open in a way that exposes me and my deepest darkest.

I open his bedroom door and close it behind me with a soft click — the sound of a secret. His breathing is steady, unhurried. He’s cocooned himself on one side of the bed, so I slip into the other, mirroring him.

The walk has awakened every part of me, and lying there beside him, I drift into that meditative space where sunrise feels like a private ceremony. The sky shifts from deep orange to peach to apricot, finally softening into blue. As the light grows, so does his awareness. I feel him stir and catch him looking over at me with that boyish, half‑awake smile that always disarms me. Rugged on the outside, tender underneath — a combination that makes me feel both safe and alive.

He stretches and heads to the bathroom, moving with that quiet confidence I love. When he returns, he doesn’t hesitate, pulling me close, warm and unguarded, inviting the morning to unfold with a lazy intimacy.

Later, over coffee at the kitchen island, conversational foreplay begins — We volley and move through ideas and topics the way some people move through touch: politics, art, friendships, the strange beauty of being human; sharpening each other, teasing each other, revealing ourselves without ever naming.

Eventually, he drifts into his morning chores — rituals he likes done a certain way — and I handle a few emails before meeting him outside at the woodshed. He’s prepping the fire that will heat the water for our shower later, moving with that same effortless competence, tossing thick pieces of wood into the coals with practiced ease. He slips off a white cotton glove, lights a joint, and we fall back into conversation as he works, the smoke curling between us like another form of touch. When he finishes, he catches my eye and holds it, pausing mid‑sentence as something flickers across his expression.

He watches me watching him, the heat from the stove warming his gloves, and without breaking eye contact, he asks — in that low, deliberate way of his — if I’ll indulge him.

I step closer, letting the warmth brush my skin. I reveal just enough — the lines of my stomach, the curve beneath my ribs — and his breath catches. The cold tightens my skin, the sun carves shadows along my torso, and a gust of wind sweeps through the shed as if the weather itself wants to join in.

His eyes darken.

Mine do, too.

He doesn’t touch me at first. He just watches — with a focus so intense it feels like a hand on my body. The air between us thickens, charged, waiting. And then, when the moment is ripe, he steps behind me, his presence a wall of heat against my back. His breath brushes my ear as he whispers what he wants, what he imagines, what he sees when he looks at me like this.

And, his words unravel me.

I close my eyes and let myself sink into sensation — the warmth, the cold, the nearness of him, the fantasy blooming in my mind. The woodshed blurs into something primal and private, a place where time loosens its grip and the body speaks in its own language.

He guides me deeper into that space, his voice low, his imagination and mine matching beat for beat. The world narrows to breath and heat and the slow, deliberate build of pleasure that feels both inevitable and entirely... new.

When the release comes, it isn’t just physical.

It’s a letting go —

a surrender into something raw and honest and beautifully unguarded.

Afterward, I stand there catching my breath, feeling both undone and more myself than before. Some moments mark you, shift something inside you, and remind you what it means to be fully alive in your body.

This is one of them.