“Don’t sound so surprised,” I tell him, pinching his nipple lightly. “I might not be the sort of girl you’re used to—”
He stops me by pulling me close to his body, skin on skin. “And I’m your type of guy?”
This closeness, the pressure of his erection against my bare belly, makes my voice hoarse. “Not really. No.”
“Too clean cut? Not enough ink?”
He traces the line of the tattoo I have on my belly, an intricate Celtic knot surrounding a Star of David.
“You got it.” That’s not really true, but to talk about the real reasons Joe isn’t my type while he’s licking my throat is a bit of fragrant bullshit. What we both want is to fuck and have it be good and unemotionally tangled. It doesn’t really matter that we’re not each other’s “types.”
He pushes me gently back on the bed and looms over me on hands and knees. His mouth now has moved lower, to sweep along my breasts and finally, oh, fuck! To take a nipple between his lips.
“Funny, I thought I’m any woman’s type,” he murmurs, licking and sucking at my nipples while I mewl in pleasure.
“Is that your problem?” I ask when he takes a brief break from my tits to concentrate on my throat again. “They all think you’re their type?”
His body covers mine, but he’s good enough to keep from crushing me with his weight. His mouth pauses in its exploration of the curves and hollows of my throat. His hand, stroking my hip, stops.
“Yes,” he says.
His face is buried against me and I can’t read his eyes, but I don’t have to. This feels like an honest answer, probably more honest because he doesn’t have to look at me when he says it. I run my fingers through his hair. It’s soft, but short, and if he uses product in it, it’s not much.
“Poor Joe,” I whisper. “They all want you but none of them know you.”
This raises his head and he stares, mouth slightly open and glistening with the saliva he’s been painting on my skin with his tongue. He blinks rapidly a few times. We’re glued together at the gut, his dick rubbing the softness of my belly.
I take his cheeks in my hands and hold him still to stare into his eyes. “Why don’t any of them know you?”
He shakes his head and pulls away a little, but not hard enough to take his face from my hands. I wait until he looks at me again, and I tell him something that seems pretty straightforward to me but appears to take him by surprise.
“Sweetie, it’s all everyone’s looking for. Someone to know them.”
His body tenses, like he wants to flee, and expecting him to get up, I let him go. After a moment he lays down on top of me again and presses his mouth to the beat of my pulse. We stay like that for some silent moments until I realize our breathing has timed itself to each other. In. Out. His skin has humped into gooseflesh, thousands of tiny bumps that scratch my fingertips as I stroke my hands down his back over and over.
His arms have gone around me as best they can in our position. We’re hugging each other. I wrap my legs around his waist and hook my ankles together to embrace him as completely as I can.
He’s not saying anything, but his cock’s still hard and his heart is thump-thumping against mine.
“How many women?” I whisper in his ear, my breath caressing him.
“A lot. Too many. Not enough.”
This makes sense to me and I feel sorry for him again. I might be alone, but I’m never lonely. I want someone to know me, someday, but I’m not desperate yet for that someone to find me. Joe seems to think it will never come.
“When’s the last time someone took care of you?”
Mute, he shakes his head against me. His fingers splay against me, and we grip each other tighter. I can count the number of bumps in his spine, though he’s anything but frail.
“Roll over,” I whisper into his hair.
He does, onto his back. I turn off the lamp to make this easier for him, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. By the time they do, the stars have begun to glow against the ceiling. There’s a little bit of light from the window, enough to outline him in silhouette, but nothing else.
I crouch over Joe’s body with my knees on either side of his hips and my hands on the bed next to his ears. I can sense his body, the heat of his cock, but I’m not touching it. I let my hair hang down over both of us and move so it trails along his skin.
He sighs. The bed shifts as he moves, arching a little. I fasten my mouth on the line of his jaw, orienting myself. His skin tastes good. Smallish bristles scrape my lips and I bare my teeth to press them on his skin. I nibble him and dart out the tip of my tongue to flick along the places my teeth have touched.
He’s touching me any place his hands can reach, mostly my hips and ass and thighs. He hasn’t yet slipped between my legs to stroke me there, but that’s okay. There’s time enough for that. I don’t intend to rush.
I move down his throat to the hard bump of his collarbone. I bite and lick and suck his skin until he cries out. I shush him and soothe the hurt with kisses. His cock throbs harder against my belly. He likes that. I make note.
My hair trails over his face and arms as I move down his chest. I lose myself in nuzzling into the patch of hair there, which smells like him but more. When I find the small button of his nipple and take it between my teeth, his entire body jerks.
I laugh against him. “Sorry.”
His voice is hoarse. “Jesus, Sassy.”
“Should I be more gentle with you?” But I know the answer to that. With every bite his prick’s gotten harder, his breathing a little harsher. He lifts his hips against me whenever my lips part and my teeth scrape his skin. I do that now, before he can answer, and whatever he intended to say is lost in a garbled sigh.
I think Joe’s fucked a lot of women, maybe even made love to a few of them. But from the way he’s reacting to this it doesn’t seem he’s had many do the same for him. Which is a shame, because he’s got a body that begs to be made love to, all smooth muscles and perfect alignment. Some women, I think, scoffing, don’t know what the fuck to do with a beautiful man.
I don’t mind the darkness, even if it does make me a little clumsy. Half the fun is having his dick end up in my eye instead of down my throat the first time. I make up for it by kissing his cock very sweetly on the tip, once I’ve got a handle on where, exactly, it is.
It bobs against my mouth. I grip the base and stroke upward, a feather touch. I kiss it again, small tender kisses on the most sensitive part. I stroke it a few more times while I let my breath kiss him, and I wait until his hand snakes down to tangle in my hair and his hips thrust upward before I open my mouth and ease him inside.
He moans when I do, though mine’s muffled. I keep my grip firm just below the head and concentrate on sucking lightly until he stops thrusting. I admire his control and open my mouth wider, relaxing my throat to take him down the back of it.
Sucking cock is an art. Like playing the piano or painting, it takes practice. Enthusiasm. Skill. I like sucking cock for an appreciative man, the sort who’ll let me do what I want to do instead of trying to control it all.
I make love to him that way until my jaw begins to ache. By that time he’s moaning a lot, and I’m wet enough to feel it without having to touch myself. My clit tingles and I squeeze my thighs together and let them go repeatedly, a little trick that can get me off if I do it just right.
I stroke his cock and move between his legs to lap at his balls. I find the sweet spot at the base of his testicles and press him with my tongue and fingers until his thighs tense beneath me and his groans take on a certain quality I recognize.
I ease off, moving back up to suck a little at the tip of his cock. I crawl up his body, kissing along his chest and shoulders until the notch of my cunt aligns with his cock. When his prick strokes my clit, I shudder. I rub myself back and forth along him like that a few times, then lean up to grab a condom from the nightstand drawer. I lift up enough to put it on hi
m.
He’s gone quiet. I have a hand on his bicep to support myself, and the muscles there are trembling. Slowly, slowly, I maneuver myself onto his erection, shifting and rocking my hips to get the perfect fit. It’s been so long since I’ve had a man inside me I wanted to savor every second. That, and though I’m wet and the condom lubricated, Joe’s big enough to stretch me. When the tip of him nudges my cervix, I take a deep breath, but that’s it, he’s all the way inside me. My thighs grip his hips. I put my hands over his nipples and tweak them lightly.
He surges inside me. I wait until he settles and lean forward, changing the angle just enough so he can push inside me a fraction more. Then I move. Slowly, because I think he needs it that way.
We rock together like a boat on a lake. Gentle, back and forth waves with every so often a bigger one to tip it and make you remember just how deep the water is, and that you can’t swim.
We fuck that way for a long time. He lets me control it. If he gets too frantic, I stop. I bite his throat, his shoulder, a nipple, and lick the spot after. I rub my clit against his belly with every thrust. It’s an intermittent, tantalizing pressure that sends me into oblivion.
I come for a very long time, and it’s wonderful. Joe, bless him, waits until I’ve finished before he picks up the pace and thrusts inside me ever faster until at last he’s done, too.
My body falls forward. He puts his arms around me. My face fits perfectly into the curve of his shoulder. My hair’s gone all over the place, tickling, but I’m too sated to push it into a semblance of order.
The moment he softens and begins to slip out could be awkward, but it’s not. I reach to my drawer and grab out a clean washcloth, kept there for this very purpose, and I get us both cleaned up and the dispose of the rubber in the garbage as easily as defragging a hard drive. I settle down next to him, a leg thrown over his, and pull up the covers over both of us. It’s a bit chilly in here.
We’re not saying anything, but neither is he getting up and leaving. I don’t want him to feel he has to go, but I don’t want him to feel he has to stay, either. So I wait a few more minutes in silence before I kiss his shoulder and lift myself on an elbow to look at him.
I can see only the outline of his face as he turns to me. Cheeks, nose, chin, the hollows of his eyes. He could be smiling, he could be glaring, but somehow I imagine he’s only looking.
“What is it?”
“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“That’s a million dollar question.” I touch his chin with my fingertip. “I don’t want one right now, I guess. I’m not looking for one, anyway. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t turn one down if life threw him in my lap, you know? But I’m not trolling.”
“You’re not like most of the women I know, then.”
“Honey, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, I’d be able to retire.”
We laugh, gently, and I tuck myself against him again. I stroke my hand down his chest, over and over, petting him just the way I thought he needed it earlier today at the office.
If he were a cat, I think Joe would be purring. He’s gone all loose and warm and his voice sounds drowsy when he answers me.
“I mean, most of the women I meet want a boyfriend. They might say they don’t. But they all do.”
“Well, sure they do. Most people, if you ask them, want someone. Nobody likes to be alone.”
“They see a suit and a car and a job.”
I wonder if he’d regret saying these things when the sun is up. If he’d have said them across the dinner table instead of in post-coital splendor. But he’s said them, and I appreciate his honesty.
“And you see tits and ass and hair.”
Beneath me, his body stiffens but relaxes almost instantly. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“You could meet a nice girl…in church…” I venture, smiling.
Joe snorts. “I don’t go to church.”
“How come?” I’m curious, always, about what makes people tick. “Are you Jewish? Joe!”
I get up on my elbow again, dramatically. “Omigod, if you’re a nice Jewish boy, my dreams have come true! Marry me and have babies!”
He laughs and his hand comes up to stroke down my hair again. “I’m not Jewish.”
“Well, damn,” I tell him. “Too bad. I thought all your problems were solved.”
He’s too nice a guy to tell me there’s no way in Gehenna he’d actually marry a girl like me, but then I’m too nice to say the same about him. We laugh together, and it’s nice. He yawns and I glance at the clock. It’s late. I don’t have to be up early in the morning, but he probably does.
“Tell you what, bunny,” I say. “Stay here tonight and get some sleep, and in the morning I’ll make sure you’re up and out the door in plenty of time to run home and get ready for work. I’ll even make you eggs.”
“You will?” His head turns on the pillow and his eyes catch a hint of silver from the faint moonlight.
“Sure.” I stroke his chest again, to assure him. “Turn over.”
He hesitates, but does, and I spoon him from behind. My belly fits just right against the curve of his ass. I put my arm over his chest and find his hand, which I hold against us both. At first, he’s almost vibrating with tension but in a few minutes I feel his muscles relaxing, one by one by one until he’s breathing deep and I know he’s asleep.
I hated Sassy. I wanted to rip out every single blue hair from her head. I hid it by pretending great interest in my sandwich.
“So, did she make you eggs?” I took a bite of sawdust and washed it down with bile.
“No. I woke up before she did and left.” Joe wasn’t eating yet. He leaned back against the bench and stretched out his legs.
I try not to be smug and satisfied with that answer. “So…are you going to see her again?”
He looked at me. “I see her almost every week.”
I’d like to pretend this fact doesn’t make my gut twist. “So it’s going well for you.”
“She comes into work, that’s all, Sadie. I haven’t gone out with her again.”
“Why not?” I put down my sandwich and concentrated on the soda, sucking so hard the straw rattled the ice in the cup.
“Because she’s not my type, and she’s not looking for a boyfriend, anyway.”
I knew this; he said as much in the telling of the tale. Still, he’d spent the night with Sarah, which he never did. And I couldn’t get the vision of her holding him out of my head.
“I like her,” Joe said, after a few moments.
“There’s nothing wrong with liking her,” I answered crisply. “She sounds very likeable.”
From the corner of my eye I see him looking at me intently. “What do you see, Sadie? When you look at me? Am I just a suit and a car and a job?”
I watched the second hand on my watch spin around the dial twice before I answered. “No.”
“Look at me, Sadie.”
I did.
“What do you see?”
I gave my head a small, purposeful shake and looked away. “I should be getting back. I have an appointment in half an hour.”
Joe has a very nice laugh, a deep and hearty chuckle that’s like listening to the ocean. The noise he made just then aspired to become laughter but didn’t quite make it.
“See you next month.”
I nodded, still not looking at him. He didn’t get off the bench. His gaze burdened me.
I am always watching Joe walk away from me. Today I was the first to my feet and turning my back. I left him sitting on the bench, and though I wanted to, I didn’t turn back to look at him when I went.
Chapter
10
I had a robe, a locker key and a pair of rubber sandals. The other women in the locker room seemed to have come in pairs or trios, even quartets, and they squawked and nattered like birds gathered around a handful of scattered grain. The open area ringed with lockers reverberated with the rise and fall of feminine chatter,
in the midst of which I stood alone.
Katie had given me the gift certificate to Daffodil’s Day Spa for Christmas, but I’d been putting off using it. Since I couldn’t take the time on the weekend or in the evening, I’d finally broken down and scheduled the appointment during the week. Now I was feeling guilty about taking time away from my patients to succumb to the allure of being pampered.
The cheerful attendant who’d checked me in invited me to use the sauna, hot tub and steam rooms while I waited for my massage. The sunken hot tub was big enough to seat ten women. The bubbling water was a perfect complement to the rise and fall of giggling and confidences, of the complaints about husbands and children.
Nobody looked at me oddly when I came in by myself, but I still felt out of place as I hung my robe on a handy hook and slid into a spot next to a broad, red-faced woman wearing a skirted bathing suit in a bold leopard print.
“Hey, hon,” she said at once. “Can you move over? I’m saving that spot for my sister. She’s in the steam room.”
I acquiesced, of course, automatically, even though there was plenty of room in the hot tub and her sister was nowhere in sight. The woman turned back to her companion on the other side and dove back into her loud, blatant conversation about her husband’s outrageous sexual demands.
“He watches those late night cable movies,” she declared like she was at home discussing this over coffee instead of in a public place in front of half a dozen strangers. “Then he gets all these…ideas!”
Her friend, a nip/tucked blonde with crimson nails, sighed dramatically. “My husband wants to touch me all the time! He wants to hold my hand, or sleep next to me, and I’m just like, get off me!”
I couldn’t listen to this. It wasn’t that they sounded malicious. On the contrary, both sounded pretty fond of their husbands, content in the fact their men still loved and desired them enough to demand their attentions. They hadn’t dropped into the bitter tone of women who profess to love their husbands but genuinely loathe them.
Even so, I already felt awkward and out of place being by myself when everyone else was with friends. Sitting here listening to them bitch and moan, no matter how good-naturedly, was like repeatedly hitting myself on the head with a frying pan. Pointless and painful.