I moan in frustration. He assumes it is arousal, because he reaches farther along my rounded body and inflicts the same gentle touch on my other nipple. There is no milk this time; this breast is dry and useless. But it still responds to his touch, the dark nipple tightening with excitement.
This time, my moan is one of pleasure.
He palms my breast, massages it gently before releasing it and slipping his hand down to my flabby belly, stroking the rolls that were once taut skin from the growing baby inside. I never had abs to admire, but at least they were there—muscles to pull in the flab. The muscles have been cut and no longer care to hold anything in. Between the scar and my belly button is a dead zone—I feel nothing there except that peculiar sensation of weight if I’m leaning against something. The area is numb from the surgery and might always be, but I know his hand is there, running along the ridges of purple marks. “Badges of honor,” my mother calls them. What does she know? She didn’t have stretch marks with any of her four pregnancies.
He’s still touching me, still not taking the hint that I just want to be left alone. I cringe in revulsion, wondering why I didn’t slip on a T-shirt before I crawled into bed. The answer is simple, of course: After feeding the baby what little milk I had and supplementing with another two ounces of formula, I was too tired to put on a T-shirt. I was almost too tired to walk down the hall to the bedroom, and I might have curled up in the chair in the nursery and gone to sleep if not for the fear that I might snore and wake the baby.
I have told him that I am the opposite of touch-deprived; that having a newborn has made me touch-overloaded. Even the gentlest of touches, even a hug or backrub, feels like sharp nails on a fresh sunburn. I don’t want to be touched, but some part of me still longs for the connection of touch, to know I am more than a mother, than a milk-maker, than a Frankenstein’s monster of stretch marks and skin discolorations and numb flesh and that ugly scar.
“Let me,” he whispers, as if sensing the war going on inside me. The minutes are ticking away.
He slips his hand beneath the waistband of my panties and rests two fingers on my slit. He has not touched this part of me in over five months. Three months of pelvic rest followed by two months of postpartum recovery, recommended by my doctor, despite the cesarean delivery. That was something else they didn’t tell me—that I would bleed for several weeks, even if I didn’t deliver the baby vaginally. The bleeding has long since stopped, and I got the green light to resume sexual activity at my postpartum checkup, so we could have had sex by now if I had wanted to. But I hadn’t.
He does not move his fingers; he just leaves them there, straddling my pussy lips. I am freshly shaven—well, it’s been two days, but that’s still fresh for me. I didn’t shave in anticipation of having sex or because he prefers me that way, but because the hair that had grown back since the birth had been driving me crazy. I often awoke (when I was able to sleep) scratching myself. So out of practicality, I shaved. I’m all about practicality these days. It’s called survival.
I may be tired, but my newly bare pussy is responding to the fingers touching it for the first time in five months. I have masturbated a few times since the bleeding stopped, always with my vibrator, because it is the quickest (and therefore most practical) way, mostly to help me fall asleep (again with the practicality), and always when he was in the shower or feeding the baby. I didn’t want him to think it was an invitation for him to do more. But now my pussy is issuing its own invitation, moistening under the weight of his still fingers, becoming swollen.
“Is this okay?” he asks, bringing his fingers together so that they press against my opening and my now-engorged clitoris.
What do I say? No? Stop? I don’t want to have sex with you ever again? Let me sleep, goddammit? All of the above?
I say what my pussy wants me to say. “It’s okay. Yes, it’s okay.”
His touch remains slow, lazy, as if we have all the time in the world, even though we don’t. He dips his fingers into my pussy, gathers some moisture there, and drags his fingertips over my clit. I shiver. Vibrators are lovely, efficient things, but they do not compare to the touch of someone who knows me and my body. The best part is, I don’t have to do it for myself. I can lay there and let him get me off. If I were a good and selfless lover, I’d reach behind me and return the favor, stroke his growing erection as it presses against my ass. But my days are spent being a selfless mother, and I have nothing left to give him. So I am selfish. I let him touch me, and I simply enjoy it.
“Yes,” I whisper to my pillow. “More. Keep touching me.”
Despite my exhaustion, my hips begin to move on their own, finding a rhythm I thought my body had forgotten. He moans behind me, presses against me. I feel something like feminine pride blossoming, the way my pussy is swelling and opening.
He moves his hand from my pussy to fumble between us. He is freeing his cock from his boxers. I debate what to do. I had hoped he would just get me off, give me a quick little orgasm so I could get fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of sleep. It crosses my mind that if I give him what he wants, maybe he’ll get up and feed the baby, and I could buy myself another hour. An hour!
This is what new parenthood has done to me. I consider bartering my body for more sleep. Me, who used to want to fuck all the time.
But then he’s there, nestled in the crack of my ass, warm and hard and familiar, and I’m wiggling again, even while I’m trying to figure out what I can get away with and how to squeeze out a few minutes of rest.
“Baby, you’re driving me crazy,” he murmurs, kissing my neck. His cheek is rough with stubble, and his voice sounds as tired as I feel. This hasn’t been easy for him either. But his body is still his body; he still looks the same, if a little more tired and disheveled. Nothing a shower and a shave and a cup of coffee won’t cure—and I can’t even have coffee because I’m still trying to breastfeed.
I reach behind me and rub him. I’m startled by how strange it feels to touch him like this. We’d fucked like rabbits right up until I started spotting, and my doctor said no more sex until after the baby came. Even then, I’d given him blowjobs and handjobs, because regardless of what my doctor said, I was still horny as hell. But not being able to have intercourse and being told I shouldn’t even give myself an orgasm put a damper on my sex drive.
But here it is again, waking up, even while I feel like I am swimming through a fog of exhaustion.
I angle my hips down and back, pressing my ass against him as I guide him to my entrance. I don’t have the energy to get on top of him, and I don’t want him on top of me, compressing my belly—or worse, looking at me—but this, this I can do. I feel the head of his cock nudge between my swollen lips. He moans when he feels the warm wetness inside, waiting for him.
“Oh, Carolyn, baby, you feel so good.”
I whimper in reply. He feels wonderful inside me, filling me as he slides into me slowly. The benefit of a cesarean delivery is no pain during intercourse—no tender incision, no tearing, just blissful pleasure.
He grips my hips and pulls me back on his cock until he is fully seated inside me. I let out a long, low moan. This—this—is what I’ve been missing. Our position is too awkward for anything more than slow, languid lovemaking, but I still yearn for more.
“Harder,” I whisper. “I want you harder.”
He responds by lifting my leg and draping it over his hip. Holding onto my thigh for leverage, he begins to fuck me with long, driving strokes. My breasts bounce against each other, my stomach jiggles in a comic way, my ass slaps noisily against his thighs and stomach with every stroke, but I don’t care. For the first time in months, I’m not focused on any other part of my body except my pussy. And while the rest of me may have expanded and shifted in ways that might never return to normal or feel completely familiar, my pussy is wet and aroused and very, very much mine.
“Yes,” I whimper, slipping my hand down between my thighs to manipulate my clit while he fucks me.
“Fuck me, Sam.”
And he does. Where his touch has been gentle before—solicitous through pregnancy and postpartum recovery, nonsexual when helping me maneuver the baby to my breast—now he is rough, demanding, selfish. My skin tingles where he touches me, grabs me, still gentle with my breasts but firm with my hips, ass, shoulders, thighs. He pulls my leg higher and covers my hand with his own, both of us sliding our fingers along my wet slit, toying with my clit, stroking his cock as it slides in and out of me. Panting, sweaty, fucking like we haven’t fucked since—
The unmistakable sound of baby Henry waking up brings everything to a halt. Sam goes still inside me, and I bite back a cry of frustration as I strain to listen. The baby monitor next to the bed echoes the sounds from down the hall—a cry, followed by a whimper. Then . . . quiet snuffling sighs.
“Do you think . . . ?”
“Shhhh,” I say in response to Sam’s question. I fondle my neglected clit and push my ass back toward him. “Just fuck me before he’s really awake.”
Sam chuckles, but he doesn’t argue. As if resetting the hands on a clock, he resumes his hard, steady thrusts inside me. We are quieter now, more conscious of the baby who will awaken any minute, but the passion is no less. I bite my lip to keep from moaning as I rub my clit with frantic strokes, aching for the kind of release I haven’t enjoyed in forever.
Burying his head in the curve of my neck to muffle his own moans, Sam quickens his thrusts. He is close. So am I. I arch against him as the dual touch of our fingers and the sensation of his cock rubbing me just the right way bring my orgasm crashing over me. My pussy tightens around his girth, and that is all it takes for him to join me, both of us gasping and moaning as quietly as possible, riding out the powerful release we were almost denied. He squeezes my hand as it rests over my mound, and I gasp, my clit sensitive and still throbbing.
The sun is fully up now, shining on the bed as wetness pools under us. His. Mine. Ours. I whimper as he slips his cock free of my pussy, feeling empty and bereft. Though it has been months, my body remembers that feeling, and now, even though I am sated, it wants more.
As if reading my mind, Sam squeezes my hand again, sending a shiver up my spine as my pussy clenches in response. “Soon, baby,” he promises. “When Henry is sleeping through the night, we’re going to be spending a lot of time in bed not sleeping.”
Henry’s soft snuffles become louder and turn into full-fledged wails. I sigh and start to get out of bed, feeling a twinge of pain between my thighs as my tender pussy protests. Sam clasps my wrist and pulls me back down, nuzzling his face against my breasts.
“I have to feed him,” I say, my voice weary with exhaustion even while maternal need quickens my pulse.
“Stay in bed and rest for awhile.” Sam gets out of bed and adjusts his boxers. “I’ll feed him.”
I laugh, thinking better of telling him about the mental conversation I had with myself before we had sex. “Thanks, honey,” I tell him, pulling the quilt over me and tucking my hand under my cheek as he leaves our bedroom to take care of the baby.
That’s how it began. Nothing has changed, really. And yet everything has. I am myself again. Or, if not myself, my newly discovered self. My sexy, soft, fuckable, maternal self.
I smile and close my eyes. It is going to be the best nap of my life.
See and Be Seen
BY ARLETTE BRAND
It was so unexpected. Her eyes fluttered before they focused on what she thought she’d seen.
There, outside her open second-story window, twenty feet away—in the apartment building behind her own, and on the very same floor—a man sat on the edge of his bed, looking out his window at her. The light from his ceiling cast a harsh glow, and his face fell partly in shadow. Almost like a skull, she thought, his brow casting his eyes into twin dark hollows.
She expected him to flinch and mirror her own sense of surprise, but he didn’t. He sat coolly in his white undershirt and boxer shorts, his elbows resting on his open thighs, his hands dropped languidly into the space between.
Terese let out a little gasp and hopped away from the window.
She knew he hadn’t really seen anything. She’d undressed with the window wide open, but she had her clever routine. She stood with her back to the window, pulling her dress swiftly over her head and bringing her arms behind her back to unhook her bra. Then she yanked her nightshirt over her head and tugged it over her breasts before spinning back around, fully covered.
Terese never expected to see anyone at that window. For a long time she assumed the entire second floor of that building was vacant. Lights seldom glowed from within, and the shades were always pulled.
Despite his stillness and plain gaze, Terese didn’t feel as frightened as she thought she should. She didn’t feel violated, as another woman might. What made her move out of sight was modesty and embarrassment.
The modesty felt distinctly childlike—a mild shame left over from childhood, the kind of fleeting horror felt by a five-year-old girl upon discovering she’s been seen in her underpants.
Well, some little girls. Terese thought of her best friend back home, Anna-Marie. Anna-Marie, who’d been boy crazy since preschool. Terese could still recall Anna-Marie as a lanky first-grader, doing running jumps onto the laps of any teenage boys who’d let her. Terese’s own mother would occasionally be a witness to this and would chastise little Anna, pulling her away from the boys and men with nervous urgency. Anna-Marie was apt to straddle things and ride them, even the rigid thighs of seated ladies who’d let her. Terese thought it curious but didn’t understand why it pleasured her friend until years later. It was a telling preview of the sexually attuned teenager and young woman Anna would become.
Terese was not only plagued with a sense of sexual propriety but she was also ashamed of her body. She’d gained fifty pounds since graduating from high school a decade before, and her hips were too wide and her belly too thick to camouflage—not to say Terese didn’t try. She dressed in a uniform of ankle-length hippie dresses with a man’s oversized blazer thrown over them, even in sweltering weather. The ensemble covered her flaws while still giving her a sense of who she thought she was: a creative type, quirky.
She dared to swivel her head around to see if the man was still watching her. The rectangle of his window was dark. She pulled her own shade closed and turned on the television.
The next night, as she rode the bus home from her evening class, Terese found herself thinking about the man across the alley. The bus engine made her seat vibrate, and she felt a quick contraction deep inside. The rosy folds of her pussy were getting wet and sliding against each other, and the sensation pleased her.
Terese thought of her own body parading before the window, under the spotlight of a bright, cheap ceiling fixture. Part of her wanted to cringe—or rather, part of her felt she should want to cringe. With a body like hers, shouldn’t she want to cringe? But somehow, imagining herself under the gaze of this intent observer, her body became a lush and wanted thing.
He hadn’t looked away when her dress came off and revealed how her back fat folded over the elastic of her poorly fitting bra. The width of her behind, framed by her own window, hadn’t sent him fleeing. He looked—and kept on looking. He filled his eyes with her form. Whether or not he’d admit it to his friends the next day, this man—in the quiet of that late July bedroom, in the hours when working people fell into easy comas in the flickering blue light of televisions, in a corner of the city where the aroma of nearby flowering hedges competed with freeway exhaust, where the night air lay upon the skin like heavy ointment—here, this living, breathing man was watching her body.
Terese liked it.
She opened her bedroom door and flipped on the light switch, pretending she didn’t notice his window lit like honey. She saw his shadow move across his stark white wall, then watched as his pale blue boxers moved into view, and he settled onto the bed. His legs hung over the side, and he leaned forward, as tho
ugh removing his socks. It was taking him an unreasonably long time.
Terese discovered a secret angle at which she could watch him through her dresser mirror while appearing not to notice him at all. When her back was turned, he promptly sat up and turned his head to watch her. He sat perfectly still.
Terese’s heart thudded against her diaphragm. Her stomach trembled.
She recognized, oh so clearly, that she wanted him to see her.
But no, Terese thought again. It wasn’t his passive observance that she wanted. She wanted to be the one showing him.
This wasn’t like her. She’d never been into voyeurism. What’s going on with me? she wondered. Few things turned her on—really turned her on—and it frustrated her. In high school, Anna-Marie had been able to get excited over the most uninspiring things. A shirtless model on a campy birthday card, for example. Terese envied her for it. Even when she masturbated, Terese had to work so hard to arouse herself, she usually fell asleep exhausted before she could come.
But this was a throbbing, ready thing she’d seldom felt before. This was what it must feel like to be Anna-Marie. It felt as though a stream of lava ran from Terese’s solar plexus and into her panties. She had a frightening, primal urge to drop to her knees, spread her legs open as wide as they’d go, like a gymnast or a contortionist, nearly touching her pussy to the carpet, and give birth to her orgasm. She felt she might drop a balloon out of her, a balloon full and hanging low and swollen with white-hot water.
She slid her jacket off her arms and tossed it onto the sofa.
The man continued to watch. Still.
Curvy Girls Page 15
