I had no idea what his touch meant this time, but then, I never had. His right hand landed gently on my shoulder in what might have been a friendly embrace. I failed to parry. He read acquiescence. With his left paw he grabbed my throat.
“Is that what you want?” he hissed, moving his face into mine. “Friendship?” His gaze was even. His hand tightened below my jaw. Leaning his weight into me, he backed me against the wall while I wrestled with myself. I could feel the blood pouring into my clit.
The first time he’d put his hand on my throat I was twenty three and enthralled. Here, I’d thought, was the assurance I’d been looking for. I couldn’t have asked him to top me. I didn’t know the words. He topped me anyway and I fell hard. Ten years later, I felt the same desire and the same fear. And ten years of accumulated anger. I met his fiery gaze, the one that used to melt me, and said “Fuck you.”
“How dare you,” I asked, breaking his hold, “reappear from the mists and put your hand to my throat?”
“Hey, Lou, I’ve tried to keep in touch. Besides, you…”
“Keep in touch? You bastard. You send me filthy poetry every Valentines Day—Szymborska and Doty last year, as I recall—then you promise to call and then disappear for another 364 days. Keeping in touch? I get better from my one-night stands.”
“I…I know I’ve been a lout, but I thought…when you accepted my visit…I thought…”
“You thought I’d tumble for you? Just fall to pieces under your powerful hands? I’m not that desperate, babe. Not anymore.”
I woke to the sound of Greg’s voice and the weight of his hand on my shoulder.
“Huh? Oh, you’ve closed. Let me get out of here.” I stood quickly and looked for my bag.
“Easy, girl. I put it in my truck. You’re not walking in this weather.”
Thick globs of snow splattered themselves on the windshield and stuck to the wipers. The trip to my house took half an hour. “Come on,” I said. “You’re not driving home in this shit. I’ve got a spare bed.”
He followed me in without comment, stomping the snow from his boots. I was shrugging out of my jacket when he said “Spare bed?”
Still bound by my jacket, still covered in snow, I covered the distance between us. Flakes from his eyelashes melted on my face as I raised my mouth to his. Our boots made puddles on the floor.
The jackets were dropped. He pulled at my boots and I fumbled with his until each hit the wall with a thump. Wet jeans landed beside them. Our shirts, we kept on, rubbing our wet faces on the flannel and wool. His cold fingers crawled underneath to cup my breasts.
“Chair,” I said and we reassembled with his arms around my back and my face buried in his neck. His cock pulsed quietly in my cunt and the winter thrashed outside.
Man was I lost. I walked back a couple of blocks to this gas station I’d passed, went inside and asked to use the phone. No-one answered so I left a message. It wasn’t until I was handing the phone back to the attendant that I actually looked at her. Jesus.
This chick knew she was a dyke at thirteen and never gave it another thought. Tall and lean with long, wavy brown hair under a green bandana and wonderful cheekbones. Oh, and her hands: big, rough, covered in callouses and scrapes, they looked like they could do anything.
I guess I was being obvious, because she said “Can I get you a Coke while you’re waiting for your friends? Come on. I’ve got some back in my office.”
To my surprise, her office really did have a refrigerator, from which she removed two glass bottles. It also had a desk, which she leaned against while she eyed me, and a low sofa, which I settled into while I waited for her next move. She surprised me again when she said “Why are you in my office?”
I know this game. She wanted me to say it. “I liked your hands when you took the phone,” I said. “I’d like more of them.”
That was all she needed. She put down her Coke and dropped to the floor in front of me. I just had time to set my bottle on the floor before she pinned my wrist to the arm of the sofa. I don’t have much hair to grab, but she managed enough of a handhold to force me to look up at her. She held my eyes for a long moment before falling on my lips and filling my mouth with her tongue.
My lips were swollen before she left them to set upon my neck, which she spent long minutes covering in welts. By the time she told me to take off my shirt I impatient. “You first,” I snapped. I think she considered slapping me, but then she broke into a grin.
“Demanding little bitch, aren’t you?” she asked.
I replied only “Yes,” but quickly removed my shirt, lest she think I was holding out. The rest of our clothes followed, leaving two naked girls entangled stickily on the sofa. Her fingers cupped my cunt and dipped in. “Please,” was all I said, and she smiled almost sweetly before sliding down my body. Her tongue found my clit and she settled in with a sigh. She was gentle and patient until the sensation built to a buzzing, thrumming pulse that exploded into the crash of orgasm.
A while later, she tucked me back in my clothes and offered me a map.
We slept as late as we could and stumbled down the stairs into the shower. The scratches on my shoulder hurt like hell under the soap. “Torment!” he sang. “The gift that keeps on giving.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be harmless before your coffee?” I asked, letting him under the spray.
“Docile,” he said. “And, defenseless,” batting his eyes as coquettishly as a six-foot blackbelt can.
“Really?” I asked. “Let’s see. Turn around for me.”
And he did. I tapped his left foot with mine, urging him to a wider stance, then bent to sink my teeth into his ass. He yelped, but didn’t move away.
“Nice,” I said, as I nibbled my way up his sinewy back. “You are a sweet thing this morning, aren’t you? Can you keep still a bit longer?”
“Yes’m,” he replied and I reached for his cock.
He leaned on the wall and I leaned into him. I pressed my cheek against his back while hot water cascaded over both of us, stinging my eyes and filling my mouth. My left hand stroked his cock while my right scratched at his thighs, leaving red trails on his tender skin. I palmed his ass, squeezing the heavy muscles. With a soapy finger, I traced the crack of his ass. Up and down, slow and deliberate. His breathing quickened.
“I’m going to fuck you,” I murmured, and waited for his response.
“Anything you want,” he said and I smiled to hear my own words from his mouth.
I entered him gently. Just one finger, just the tip, moving past the muscle, reaching into his hole. He whimpered. I quickened the pace of my hand on his cock, circling my fingers more tightly.
“Will you come for me?” I asked, and his body gave way. He collapsed onto the wall as his cock filled my hand.
“Flight nine-oh-seven from Cleveland now arriving at gate eighteen,” said the announcement. I dragged myself out of my drink and away from my reverie. By the time I got down to baggage claim Dix was scowling into his cel phone.
“You’re here,” he said, putting the phone away.
I had time to contemplate a turn of tail and “Not anymore” before he added “I half-expected you to leave me stranded.”
“I considered that,” I said, “but here I am.” “Come on. We’ll take a bus to the subway. I need dinner.”
On the bus, we talked of travel. We were quiet underground. It wasn’t until the alley outside the restaurant that he spoke again. “Louise,” he whispered, “I can get a hotel. You don’t have to see me at all.”
“No, I don’t,” I replied. “And I’ve asked myself every day this month whether I wanted to.” Goddamn it, I'd planned to be cooler than this. I looked past him at the streetlight. “I guess I want to know if there’s a friendship here, ‘cause I’ll be damned if I can tell.”
I met him when he signed his lease. A week later, we ran into each other at a conference and decided that dinner was in order.
We spent our first date sprawled in his living room, drinking chianti from pint glasses and eating leftover chocolate cake. A little past midnight, I’d given up on getting laid and was eyeing the door. I was propped on my elbows and looking for my shoes when he grabbed me. With a hand on my waist and his teeth sunk into my lip, he lowered me gently to the floor. He found my wrists and pinned them above my head. I gasped.
“That had a nice effect,” he said. “I wonder what else makes you pant.”
He quickly found out, stripping me and using my silk blouse to lash my hands to the legs of his couch. He fucked me on the Persian rug. My ass was raw for days.
I woke with his weight on me. My head was heavy. I tried to speak but a damp hand clamped over my jaw. I was grateful that I could still breathe.
At first all I knew was his cock. He moved in my cunt like he knew it, working back and forth with a steadiness that confused me. Did I know him? I couldn’t see a thing. In moments, I realized that my eyes were covered in something flimsy. I could make out vague shapes, but nothing coherent. I realized that I wasn’t at home.
I strained to remember. Where had I been last night? What the fuck was going on?
“You’re not paying attention,” he said, and covered my mouth with his. No, not kissing me, but cutting off air. The hand that had been on my mouth moved to my nose. His lips sealed against mine. I panicked and tried to protest, breaking the seal as I did. My breathing came in ragged gasps. He laughed.
“I’ll have to remember that,” he said. “Now, hold still.”
He lifted my hips and drove his cock in. Deliberately, raking the top of my cunt, then pulling back and pounding me hard. No sound now but the wet slap of skin. Nothing to do but give in.
The plane was late, so I hunkered down in a corner of the airport bar and ordered myself some bourbon. It was only fitting, I figured, to meet Dix a little schnockered.
I slurped my drink and remembered.
In 1995, I was the “Complex Manager”—how’s that for a title—of a 250-unit apartment building in a mid-western university town. I was newly degreed and recently dumped. I was desperate for everything—sex, scintillating conversation, and a sense of who I was going to be in five years.
Dix was a handful of years older than me and everything I thought I wanted. Urbane and brilliant, he spoke in that kind of post-modern-cultural-studies argot that reeked of education, intellect, and arrogance. Did I mention he was a professor? I’d hardly be the first twenty-two-year-old to find that attractive.
I closed my eyes and pictured his strawberry curls, his deeply cleft chin. His body had been a revelation. Broad-shouldered and covered in a russet fur, he was nothing like the willowy boy I had planned to marry. He, I had thought, would be different.
“At seven-oh-five, on United. You’ve told me three times this week and twice today.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, it’s just…”
“Shh. I know. It’s going to be fine.”
“So, um, you never told me what limits you want to set.”
“Actually, I did. I don’t want to set any at all, aside from the usual safer sex precautions, and full disclosure, of course. I want you to have a good time.”
“Right. Um. Ok. But, are you really sure? I mean, its really fine if you don’t want me to…”
“You goober. You just want me to tell you not to have sex with him so you don’t have to decide for yourself. Nice try, sweetie. Not going to work.”
