We've been out Christmas shopping for my wife, visiting the quaint little shops of the funkiest neighborhood, the kind Stacie loves and doesn't have any of in her Bible-belt hometown, where you can buy Mexican fertility candle holders, wildly colored saris, and all sizes of statues of Ganesh and Buddha. None of which are completely appropriate for my wife. The candle holder I buy anyway, because Stacie bought one, and having stuff around that's connected to her is good for me, but I need something my wife's going to actually do something with and that means clothes, especially sweaters, she does actually sometimes wear the dozens of sweaters she owns and claims to like getting more for Christmas. We find a soft little cardigan the color of her eyes. It's softer and more girly than what she'd normally pick, but what's Christmas if not for pushing personal limits a little bit?

Shopping complete we eat at an equally funky multi-cultural cafe, staring at each other and chatting away as we always do over our much too infrequent meals, thrilled at this rare opportunity to be out of the closet, the mutual desire that is always there building to a point where something needs to be done, our feet touching under the table and our hands touching on top of the table.

She drives us back to her hotel room where we separate and inspect our purchases. When we get to the cardigan we look at each other, the need unspoken, desire over the top, she strips quickly and puts it on, twirling in it, and only it, in front of the mirror. It is not a her thing either, the color is wrong, the style contrasting with her hard-assed nature, but she looks good in or out of any clothing, and I am naked and on her in an instant and we are kissing violently, hands stroking, neck licking, nipple biting, dragging her back to the bed, head buried between her legs, licking her until she is just at the point of coming and then up and over and in, buried inside her, kissing again, her legs spread and around me her hips up, we rarely fuck this way but she is wearing what will be my wife's sweater and she knows and understands, and responds urgently our hips bucking and slamming until she comes once, twice, and then me, collapsing on to her, locked together, breathing hard.

Minutes pass before I carefully remove the cardigan from her, fold it just so, wrap it again in the tissue paper and put it back in the bag to be wrapped and presented under the tree to my wife. Because having things around the house that are connected to Stacie is good for me.