by CD Reiss
I couldn’t look. Between Dash’s inspection and the sight of the sharp edge, I was compelled to jump ten feet. If I did, the bloody gash and the ruined evening wouldn’t be his fault. The flat white ceiling was about to become my entertainment.
“No one asked him to be a ship’s captain.”
“Ouch,” he said, and inside I jumped a little because I thought he’d cut me.
I looked down, and all I saw was my near-hairless body and Dash Wallace an inch from my pussy, attention laser-focused.
“You don’t give a disabled veteran an inch.”
“He loved the sea more than his wife! And he told her to her face. What is that even? Who says something like that?”
His eyes flicked to mine. Was the blue warmer than it had been? Or was I seeing them differently? “She loved him for it.”
I straightened and put my finger up to make a point. “She fell in love with his sea-captain-ness. But that’s not sustainable. A girl can’t sit on the bench while the sea’s up to bat all the time.”
When his body jerked with a laugh, I shifted a little out of fear he’d cut me. But he wasn’t even close, and the laughter was so beautiful and real that my fear disappeared in a poof of my own delight.
“You’re right.” His attention went back between my legs. “I must have been caught up in the way he compared the color of the sea to wine.”
“Storm is burgundy; calm is chianti.”
“And us, the incompetent waiter’s cork bobbing.”
I laughed again because the passages were funny and the connection with Dash tickled my heart.
“Stay still now,” he said. “Just a little more.” He waved the knife.
I wanted to laugh, but I was trying not to move. Stillness was hard enough with blood screaming to the surface of my pussy as if getting three nanometers closer to him would get me off.
“Your pussy is gorgeous.”
The lack of seduction in his voice sent blood to my face. He said it as if stating a fact. The same way I was reciting meaningless facts to stave off the fear. The capital of West Virginia (Charleston), or the quadratic equation (X-equals-negative-B-plus-or-minus-the-square-root-of-B-squared-minus-four-AC-all-over-2A), entire pages from the LAUSD protocol handbook.
“You blush easy.” He stood and snapped a towel off the rack. “I like that.”
I sat up straight while he ran warm water over the towel. I had been shaved clean without a nick or a cut.
“I like that you don’t play a game at being experienced or naïve. You are who you are.” He wrung out the towel. “Lean back again.”
I leaned back but didn’t use my arms to prop myself up. I relaxed completely into the mirror. It was over. I felt as wrung out as the towel and as warm as the water. Tension flowed out of me. I could have gone to sleep if every nerve ending between my legs wasn’t begging for release.
Dash put the warm towel on my belly and wiped the soap away, then down, he pressed it against me. I drew a hard breath in and arched my back. The warmth and the rough texture was enough to set me on fire. I pushed forward into it.
He put his hand on the mirror and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my chin while rubbing me with the warm towel. “You’re right on the edge. I could see it. You’re so ready to come for me. If I wait until I eat you, it’s going to be half a second. I want it to last.”
I could barely see him past the red film of my orgasm. I held it back but wouldn’t be able to for long. “I don’t want to yet. I want to wait for mine.”
“Yours? Do you think you’re only coming once?”
I nodded because I couldn’t make a single word. Couldn’t even think or control my body. The towel on my clit brought all my sense to it, rushing to the surface, blacking out everything. My back stiffened and arched. One hand curled on the edge of the vanity and the other gripped his shoulder. I howled to the ceiling then collapsed like a flag in a dying wind.
His lips landed on mine like an avalanche. We kissed in a flurry of hands, tongues, lips. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it. I reached for his buttons, but he moved my hands to his belt. We kissed while I yanked it open and he unbuttoned his shirt.
Pants open, I reached for my prize.
“Oh, Dash. I…” I looked down at it. I hadn’t realized how big he was when he’d pushed me against the railing of my front steps.
I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know if I could get it down my throat, but hell if I wasn’t going to try. Before I could ask myself how I would do it, my feet and the floor parted company as he threw me over his shoulder and tossed me onto the bed. I landed with my legs open.
He stripped off the rest of his clothes. He was magnificent. An athlete. It was his job to be perfect, to tighten his abs, rip his biceps, work his thighs into powerful machines. I started to close my legs so I could turn, and he grabbed them and held them open.
“I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m sure you did.” I put my arms out for him.
He grabbed my wrists and pulled me forward. I was tongue-close to his beautiful dick. I looked up at him and opened my mouth.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Please.” I wanted him to come. I needed it. “I’ll enjoy it so much more if I know you’re satisfied.”
“I think you’re stalling, sweetapple.”
“Stalling? I’m just moving this off my desk so I can enjoy myself.”
“You’re moving my dick off your desk? It’s like paperwork?”
“Well, no. It’s really nice paperwork. But a lot of paperwork. Like an eight-inch stack of cardboard.”
“Cardboard?”
“I didn’t want to imply floppy,” I said. “Rigid like corrugated. Or…” We were both laughing so hard I couldn’t even think of the word. “Something. Look, I’m really new at this.”
He was laughing, and I smiled. I liked this. Liked him. Liked that he was in control but we could talk. And with that laugh, he stopped being a baseball god. He stopped being the athlete, the performer, the graceful shape between the bases. He stopped being perfect batting form, and he stopped being the mysterious guy who never interviewed. I thought I’d been seeing just him all along, but I hadn’t. Not until he laughed, naked before me, did he become no more and no less than a man.
He got on his knees so he was just below my eye level, more or less, and we laughed together, kissing on the edge of the bed.
“Okay,” he said when he slowed down. “You want to suck my dick?”
“Get up to the plate.”
“One ‘bat’ analogy and you’re getting a spanking.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
He stood. I sat up straight and guided his cock to my lips. When I had it, he gently gripped the hair on the back of my head.
“Just your mouth,” he growled.
Just my mouth. I’d never done it that way. Never been anchored by a man’s grip on me. This must have been the control thing. I let myself fall into it, giving up power, surrendering to his grasp.
Yes. I could do this. I was free to do it, and I was free to like it.
I shifted, opened up, and let him guide himself along the flat of my tongue. I pressed down the back of my tongue as if I was at the doctor’s office and pushed forward.
He breathed an aah then groaned an affirmation, pulling out. “I underestimated you.”
Looking up, his face toward me, framed by his pecs, his forearm cutting my vision as he held my hair. I turned back to his cock. I’d taken all of it. I could do this. He guided it into my mouth again, and I took it again, holding my breath, nose catching the tickle of his hair. He pulled out quickly and pushed back in.
“So tight and sexy,” he said through his teeth. “I’m not fucking you tonight. I’m coming in your hot little mouth. I’m going to fuck it. Are you ready?”
I nodded as much as I could.
“Breathe,” he said.
He smiled down at me. I swallowed.
“Lie back,” he said, brushing the hair out of my face. “You were saving this for last.”
Little white butterflies took flight in my tummy. He pulled my knees apart.
“I’m nervous,” I said.
“I know.” He ran his face along the inside of my thigh and up to the center, where he kissed gently. “But trust me. I love this, and you will too.”
This was a first. I’d never had a man’s mouth on me, and I bundled nerves and expectation in my chest, waiting for it. I felt his tongue on me as a slight flutter I could barely discern, but it was the thought of it that made me gasp. As the pressure increased, I could barely hold myself together. Nothing I’d imagined had prepared me for this direct line to an orgasm. He pulled it out of me. Licked and sucked away the layers between myself and my climax, changing his motions as soon as the payoff reduced. I threaded my fingers in his hair and pulled his head into me, and just when I thought I’d come for sure, he pulled back.
“You all right?” he asked, smiling.
“I’m good,” I squeaked.
He readjusted himself and put two fingers in me then flicked my clit with his tongue. I bucked. He flicked again. I squirmed against his fingers.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“Is that how we ask for something, Miss Foster?”
“Yes, please.”
He gave me a little suck. “Ask again.”
“Please let me come. Please.”
“That’s my sweetapple.”
He laid into me, sucking, licking, and biting until I tried to push his head away. He moved my hand and kept going until the pleasure subsided, regrouped, and flooded me again.
He collapsed on top of me. I kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth.
I was delicious.
twenty-one
Dash
She left in the morning, while it was still dark and pouring winter rain. I drove. She wasn’t getting in a cab in the rain, in the dark. Those people didn’t know how to drive when there was any kind of precipitation, never mind at night.
“Thank you,” she said. I could barely hear her over the windshield wipers. “Last night was pretty amazing.”
The previous night had been a warm-up. I hadn’t even fucked her. Hadn’t blindfolded her or tied her up. She only came three times. Her ex-boyfriend had apparently fucked as if he was driving in the rain.
“Never settle for anything less, Vivian. I mean it. You’re a sex goddess.”
“Oh, stop!”
She was beet red. I couldn’t see her face in the dark or with my eyes on the road, but I knew it was true, and it made me want her all over again.
I rattled around the files in my brain, trying to find the right words to convey how beautiful and sexy she was because words like beautiful and sexy were overused and generic. She was unique. But I came up with nothing. I gave my attention to the road and holding her hand. No mean feat considering I hadn’t taken my meds since the day before.
We got to her house. It was still pouring, and the clouds kept the street dark.
“I forgot an umbrella,” I said.
“It’s not that far.”
I got out and went around, opened her door, and put my jacket over her head. We ran to the door. She jangled her keys out of her purse. My jacket was a shitty covering, and drops of rain ran veins of hair over her face. She swung the door open and looked at me with those porcelain-blue eyes.
“Thank you, sweetapple.” I kissed her quickly. “Go in. You’re getting wet. And the heat’s getting out. You don’t have stock in LADWP.”
She laughed harder than I deserved and went in.
I dashed to the car and sat behind the flooded windshield.
I knew what I wanted to say.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
Then more stuff about how summer isn’t long enough and it’s hot and shitty sometimes
And then the thing I wanted to say in the car
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Some other stuff I forget…So long as men can breathe or eyes can see: So long lives this and this gives life to thee
That’s the nicest thing. You’re going to spoil me
A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. I’m driving, so we’ll talk later
I shut off the phone and pulled away. The rain let up on the way east. Los Angeles rain always shuts off like a faucet when the sun comes up. When I got home, I went out front. The air was usually clear after a rain, and I could see all the way to San Pedro.
Which was fine.
What wasn’t fine was what the rain had done to the slope in my south-facing yard. It slid downward. The steps were covered in mud, and when I say covered, I didn’t mean it was messy. I meant the steps would have to be excavated by a crack team of archaeologists to prove they ever existed.
Cancel Youder.
Where would we work out? What hill would we climb? I was too tired to deal with another change. I was going to bed for a few hours, then I’d cope with the general state of collapse.
And her.
The one thing that wasn’t collapsing. She was unsustainable but necessary. I’d given her flowers and poetry. Another break in my routine. Another mistake. But I wanted her to feel good. Compulsively almost. I couldn’t help but build her up even if I knew I’d fail her.
The sheets smelled like her. I got five hours.
twenty-two
Vivian
Back to the coffee shop on Olympic. I didn’t even have to ask Francine where to meet anymore. When I’d called her at the crack of dawn and said I’d just gotten back from Dash’s place, she said she’d meet me in ten minutes and hung up.
It had taken her thirty minutes to get there, but I never worried that she was bailing on me or that I hadn’t identified the meeting place. The coffee shop with the black umbrellas out front and no name.
She came back with a latte for herself and an espresso for me and stacked our phones behind the napkin holder to let me know we weren’t to be interrupted. Leaning forward in her chair as if she wanted to open my head and peer in, she said, “Tell me everything.”
“Okay, so he came to the house—”
“Did you do it? Go all the way? Home run? Do the deed?”
“No, but… other things.”
“Skip to those. Then work back.”
Francine also ate dessert first whenever possible. She didn’t believe in postponing joy. So I started at the end and worked backward as best as I could. It wasn’t easy.
“He shaved you? Why? God, please say he’s not another Carl with the hang-ups.”
“No, it was me. I wanted him to.”
“Really? And? I’ve never let a guy do that before.”
I shifted in my seat. “It was fine but…” I dropped my voice and got as close to her as the table would allow. “The rubbing. It’s like I can feel everything. I’m so aware of it.”
“Aware of what? Your pussy?”
“Shh.” I looked around. The place was dead, but there were photographs of people with ears behind me. “Jesus, Francine!”
“Totally normal,” she whispered. “You’re going to be horny all the time now.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
A bleeping rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” came from behind the napkin
holder.
“Are you serious?” Francine asked. “You gave him his own ringtone already?”
“He put it in this morning.”
I wasn’t supposed to take the call, but I reached behind the chrome box and grabbed the phones then passed Francine hers and tapped the green circle on mine. “Hello.”
“Hey, sweetapple. Did I wake you?”
“No, I’m having coffee with a friend.”
Francine smirked at me and bit her lower lip then fanned herself with her hand as if she knew how his voice made me feel.
“I can still taste you,” he said.
Down below, where sensitive tissue had direct contact with fresh underwear, I went on high alert. I wanted him to taste me again. Now.
Francine watched me over the rim of her coffee cup, half smiling.
“I’m with a friend,” I repeated because my not-aloneness was the second most relevant thing on my mind.
“When can I see you today?”
I didn’t answer right away. Dad and I were going to clean the gutters then have dinner. I was free at some point, potentially, but though my body wanted to drop everything and see him, my head didn’t want to be too available. “Today? I don’t—”
“I want to get inside you,” he said before I could finish.
I clammed up. My body started vibrating, and the shiver between my legs didn’t allow me to speak.
That dick. That cock. That huge thing inside me, stretching me to get in. I gripped the phone as if it was the last ledge before I fell over a cliff.
“I want to see you come while I’m fucking you.” His voice made pictures, and the pictures were absolutely filthy.
“Okay.” Who wouldn’t agree to that?
“This afternoon.”
“This afternoon?”
He expected a yes or no answer. I shook my brain as if it were a vending machine and words were a bag of chips that wouldn’t drop from the silver spiral.
“I have to do some things around the house with my dad this afternoon, and I should nap at some point, or I’m going to look like a ragmop and…” I now had seventeen bags of chips at the bottom of the machine when I only needed one. “The gutters, anyway, they look like hell, and the roof leaks if they get backed up and rain is coming next week, and I start work so we can’t wait.”
