MB Saucy Side: Bedouin Song (Ferro Version)

You lie besides Ferro upon a too-short picnic blanket, blades of bluestem tickling the soles of your bare feet (“It’s just uncut hay,” Ferro said when you asked about the long, reddish grass). Your skin is slick and sticky from Georgia’s humidity, your upper arm sticking to Ferro’s as if you’re both suckered octopi. Sad, that your long-awaited vacation together has left you feeling more like a slimy mollusk than the sex deity of Ferro’s dreams. The summer sun set two hours ago in a wavy haze of orange and pink, but the heat doesn’t yet feel as if it’s dipped beneath eighty degrees (“It’ll cool off, I promise,” Ferro laughed when you claimed that you were going to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West).

The field where he brought you is too close to the city’s electric glow to fall to complete night, but the moon is new and thus it’s still dark enough that you can see more stars than you ever could view in Chicago. A meteor shower was scheduled for tonight according to Virginia (Ferro would never have ventured outside without air conditioning if not for his mother’s subtle pressure), but so far not a single shooting star has yet streaked by, and your boyfriend has become increasingly quiet over the past hour. A few times, you worry that he’s drifted off until you roll over to confirm that his eyes are closed, and he instead surprises you with a kiss. His kisses are slow and lethargic, and you return them with equal indolence.

Tonight is too hot for passion.

Just when you’re once again convinced that he’s fallen asleep, Ferro unexpectedly speaks up. “My mom adores you, by the way. I knew that she would.”

You nestle closer, the air having cooled off just enough that you can now tolerate his body heat. “I’m very lovable,” you declare as if Virginia’s blessing was a given and that your stomach hadn’t been a Gordian knot of anxiety during the entire drive down to Atlanta.

“So you are.” With a fond chuckle, Ferro wraps his arm around you so that your head rests on his shoulder. His fingers trace light circles through the thin fabric of your tank top, tickling down your back until he finally reaches its hem and ventures beneath the fabric. His touch against your sensitive skin leaves you prickling with expectation and want. The night is still suffocatingly hot, yet you can’t help but crave the way he makes you burn.

As he continues to stroke your waist, Ferro’s other hand cusps your cheek. He tilts your face upwards. This time, his kiss lands heavy with desire; you melt into him with a moan that he echoes back, his hand involuntarily gripping your side as he draws you closer. Soon, you can no longer tell which gasps are yours and which are his, your joint soft pleas and needy whimpers lost beneath cricket song and the shushing of wind through long grass. Everything is hot, so damn hot. Each stroke of Ferro’s tongue and insistent caress of his hands stokes the flames, leaving you panting and feverish until the stars above blur and you no longer see anything but him.

Ferro pulls away. You shiver, although you can’t tell whether it’s because the night has cooled or whether you simply feel bereft of his embrace.

“Look up!” he urges, voice rough with interrupted arousal. “Look up!”

Your gaze follows his upstretched hand to the sky above. It takes a moment for your vision to focus, dazed as his kisses left you, but then you see it: a flash of light, so quick that you briefly wonder if it was imagined before it’s followed by another and then another like silvery rain.

“Should we make a wish?” you ask without taking your eyes off the meteor shower.

“Why bother? I already have everything I want.” Ferro brushes his lips against the line of your neck, ignoring the falling stars in favor of kissing his wish already granted. “I love but thee,” he quotes against your heated skin, “with a love that shall not die, till the sun grows cold and stars grow old.”

*Title and quote from the poem “Bedouin Song” by Bayard Taylor