Exposure

by McKenna, Cara

  “You speak just fine.” And I like her accent, as she does mine. I like when we lapse in and out of the two languages, creating some hybrid all our own. Why shouldn’t that be the case, after all? We met as a virgin and a prostitute. Everything has evolved through the perfect mix of fluidity and awkwardness, an absurd but happy coupling. It seems only natural our speech should be the same.

  “Is this our future?” I ask, leaning on the table. “Lovely trips and lovely nightly cheese and wine tastings?”

  “I hope so. What else could anyone want?”

  “I can think of other things.”

  That earns me a grin. “Such as?”

  “Things I’ll show you once supper is finished.” I take a deep drink. “So much is about to change, when we return to Paris.”

  She nods. “All for the better, I hope.”

  “I suspect so. Difficult at first, but I’ll suffer for my freedom. Plus I’ve come to appreciate my home all the more when I’ve forced myself to leave it. I revel in the calm a hundred times more deeply.”

  Only last weekend, I finally agreed to join Caroly and two of her girlfriends for drinks. I was embarrassed to let strangers witness how I shake while in public, but her friends made it easy. They were hyper and crass and hilarious, and already aware of my former profession. Coupled with the wine, their shameless curiosity drew me out of the unfamiliar setting and into the forgotten pleasures of socializing.

  “I’m proud of you,” Caroly says, her tone suddenly serious.

  “I know that. You tell me every day.”

  “And I’ll keep telling you.”

  We eat in a natural, intimate silence, the night sounds serenading us through the open window. Once we’re sufficiently stuffed with cheese and bread, we stow the food and Caroly refills my glass.

  “We have to drink it all tonight. It’ll be no good flat.”

  “What a terrible burden,” I say, and take a sip.

  “I could use a quick shower, to rinse away the journey.”

  I’d normally campaign to join her, but a few minutes alone would be well spent simply breathing deeply, adjusting to this place. “I’ll go after you. “

  She kisses my cheek.

  “Once you’ve scared all the spiders away,” I add.

  “Oh, chivalrous.” She swats my arm and leaves to collect her toiletries.

  I wander the cottage, marveling at its sheer quiet. I feel very close to the earth, when I’m normally four stories up, gazing down on the ant farm of Paris from my safe little roost. Here I feel like a bird on the ground, acutely aware of what might be above, tensed and ready for flight at the slightest suggestion of danger. I can’t fly though. I can’t drive, and I can’t sprint seven hundred kilometers back to the safety of my flat. My wings are clipped.

  And yet it’s not so bad. Not so bad at all.

  Caroly finishes in the shower and I take my turn, fascinated by the old enamel tub propped on its lion paws, at the colored glass glinting darkly in the bathroom window’s diamond panes. The water tumbles from the old fixture, a heavy stream slapping my shoulders, feeling nearly brutal after knowing only my own shower for the past half decade. It’s curious, finding novelty in something so simple as water. I let it fill my mouth, thinking it tastes cleaner here. The tub is smooth and rounded, unlike the flat tiled floor of my cubicle back home. How long since I’ve taken a proper sit-down bath? Ages. I’ll have to do that before we leave.

  I shut off the taps and dry myself with a towel more thin and coarse than I’m accustomed to, another primitive distinction to add to the list. I leave my hair wet. That seems to do things to Caroly—darkens her gaze, charges it with a hungry glimmer.

  I dress in fresh clothes, a thermal shirt and a pair of fine, soft pajama bottoms Caroly bought me, insisting it was strange I didn’t own any “lazy pants”. At first they made me feel half-dressed and unkempt, but I’ve come to see the appeal. When you dress for sleep on a Sunday afternoon, you often wind up in bed, I’ve discovered.

  Caroly is in the bedroom, folding clothes and sliding them into the drawers of an old wardrobe. She smiles over her shoulder at me and her gaze catches on my wet hair—so adorable, so predictable. I’d worried this trip would have me too anxious to make much of a go at honeymoon-style sullying, but I needn’t have wasted the energy. Just that look in her eyes has me half-hard, my stiffening cock teased by the fleece lining of the pants.

  Once our clothes are put away, we meet beside the bed. I stroke her slender arms and smile down at that peculiar, charming face. Sharp cheekbones, round eyes. The hard line of her jaw offset by the impossible softness of the damp curls tucked behind her ears. She kneads my shoulders, returning the smile.

  “You look happy,” she says.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” It’s rhetorical. We both had good reason to suspect I’d be a wreck.

  She rises on her toes and our kiss is chaste and fond. I rub the tips of our noses together before she drops back on her heels.

  She bites her lip.

  “Yes?”

  “Sit on the bed with me.”

  I nod to tell her to precede me and she does. As her fingers twine with mine, I sense seriousness in the gesture.

  “I lied to you about something,” Caroly says, staring down at our hands. Her voice is quiet, warmed by an unseen smile. This is no stark confession.

  “What lie is this?” I tilt her chin up so her eyes meet mine.

  “I told you the lab work wouldn’t be done for two weeks.”

  We both took blood tests shortly after I kissed my final client farewell. Caroly’s was a bit of a formality, considering I’m the only man she’s been with, and always with a rubber. Mine was a routine matter, as professional courtesy demanded I have them done every few months. Ignorance is not blissful, in prostitution. Trust is both a necessity and a calculated risk, and I didn’t take my clients’ faith in me lightly. You can’t sleep with as many women as I have, careful or not, and remain as unsullied as a blushing virgin. Though neither can anyone realistically enjoy only a couple of sex partners without signing up for at least the odd, benign impurity. A steep tax for some, a pittance for others. To me, a perfectly reasonable price to pay for physical pleasure. For the deepest human connection I know of.

  I’ve been eager for the results. If all is well, Caroly will choose a method of birth control and our days of suffering the formality of condoms will be over. No pause before penetration, no limit to how long we can wallow in a messy heap after the deed. And of course, the sinful moment of release itself. The mere thought of it makes my brain fog and my cock swell. Few sex acts remain a delicacy to a whore, but that is one. Forbidden fruit. I crave it constantly.

  “So the results are already in?” I ask, rubbing her knuckles.

  “Mine came the other day. And I took yours from your mailbox.”

  “Postal theft is a serious crime,” I chide. “Nothing worrisome rewarded your snooping, I hope?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Good. And yours?”

  “Squeaky clean.”

  “No surprise.” I do the math in my head, calculating what this means for our countdown. Depending on what she chooses, we might be free to enjoy this new intimacy by the end of the month.

  “I lied about something else though.”

  “Oh?”

  A shy, mischievous smile, and I’m officially antsy.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “I told you, once we had the all-clear, I’d go on something.”

  “Yes?” Yes, yes, yes?

  “I did that weeks ago. Went on the Pill.”

  My eyebrows shoot so high I swear I hear them ricochet off the ceiling. “I see.” My heart is beating hard, nothing like the way it did on the train or in the car. Blood flees my head, snaking south. I swallow, feeling pleasantly bleary. “So…”

  She nods, smirking.

  “It’s been long enough?”

  A full-blown grin now. “I timed it so it would be. For th
is trip.”

  I sit up straight, frankly shocked by her genius and treachery. “Wicked girl.”

  “So whenever you want to, we can.”

  I rub her knuckles. “I’ve wanted to for months.”

  “Then I imagine tonight’s the night.”

  Chapter Two

  I’m drunk on so much more than wine. On lust and surprise, and just a trace of residual anxiety.

  “We have to finish the bottle, at least,” Caroly had said, and now I’m tapping an invisible watch, standing beside her in the kitchen as she refreshes our snifters.

  “You’ve waited ages for this,” she teases. “What’s a few more minutes?”

  “It was never within my grasp before.” I accept my glass and drain it in a gulp, set it down gruffly. “Okay. Now.”

  She laughs, still sipping.

  I joke of course. This moment has been too long in the making for me to possibly rush it now. I drop the impatient act and kiss her cheek, leaving her to finish her drink while I head for the living area. I find what I’m after in a closet, a faded quilt folded on the top shelf. The perfect surface on which to make a picnic of Caroly. I grab a throw pillow from the couch and exit through the front door.

  The night air is brisk, and I wish I knew how to do something as primitive and outdoorsy as build a bonfire. Caroly told me once that she’s turned off by rugged men, though. Having grown up in New Hampshire, she says she’s had her fill of “beer-swilling rednecks on ATVs”. Luckily for me, she wants a man who can pair wine, not construct her a log cabin. Someone groomed and genteel and housebroken. A pedigreed indoor cat, that’s me.

  Circling around the cottage and down the hillside a few dozen paces, I scout for the right place. A view of the moon, a soft patch of ground. I locate such a spot and the overgrown grass flattens beneath the weight of the blanket, the perfect mattress.

  I find Caroly still in the kitchen, rinsing the glasses. I shut off the tap for her. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside.”

  “Let me find my sweater.”

  While she does, I switch off all but a weak reading lamp in the bedroom.

  As I lead her outside, she rubs her arms, smiling. “It’s chilly.”

  “I’ll have you warm in no time.”

  “What have you got planned?”

  “Nothing so sleazy or premeditated as you plotted for me.”

  She laughs softly, and I take her hand as the light of the cottage fades completely, the fields frosted ghostly blue in the moonlight. I imagine coming back when it’s warmer. When the dark brings relief from the heat of long summer days and the night flashes with fireflies. I imagine a life in which I can move without fear through the open air, and I realize with a physical bolt that I’m living it.

  Right now.

  It shocks me so much, my feet lose their rhythm for a pace.

  “I see what you’re up to.” Caroly’s words ring clear in the pure, natural darkness. No city glow slipping between the curtains, no ambient hum of sleeping electronics, no shouts or car sounds rising from the restless streets. Just the faint light of the moon, the chirp of the crickets, ours the only voices for miles.

  She takes a seat on the blanket and I join her. We kick our shoes aside and lie down together, sharing the pillow. I stroke her cheek. Her eyes are drinking up the stars, and I roll onto my back as she is to stare into the sky. I clasp her chilly hand in my warmer one. In moments my body seems to rise from the ground, no periphery here on this hill, the black dome of night suspending us utterly. The starscape appears to rotate, spinning slowly, a vast, black, twirling umbrella peppered with pinholes.

  “I feel very strange,” I say at length. A cannabis high, lethargic and soaked in awe, a heightening of the senses, a shedding of the body.

  All of this is as foreign to me as weightlessness to a normal person. Paris makes me feel small, but not like this. The insignificance I feel is thrilling, a release that dissolves every muscle, every nerve, every cell, leaving me floating somehow. “Either that wine was spiked, or the sky is.”

  She squeezes my hand. “I feel it too. Like gravity’s gone away.”

  “Like we’ll peel away from this blanket and tumble into the blackness.”

  Another squeeze. “That’s how I felt when you took me up to the roof and told me you loved me. Like I’d drift up into the clouds if you’d let my hand go.”

  I let her words linger before I speak, not wanting to chase them away. The stars are multiplying as my eyes adjust, too many to even conceive of.

  I tighten my hand around hers. “You’ve brought me so many gifts. Beyond wine and clocks and clothes. This sky and this air, and all the doors you’ve opened.”

  A pause, then her voice returns, sounding fragile. “I’m glad.”

  “You’ve been so patient.”

  “And you’ve been so brave.”

  “Perhaps. But I needed the shove, to have stumbled out the door in the first place.” So many times she’s shoved, and so many times I’ve had to suppress my reflexive reactions to the pressure—panic and resentment—ultimately coming to recognize my disorder’s voice for the liar it is.

  “The outside is dangerous,” it whispers, selling me fear, calling it fact. “Stay indoors, where you belong.”

  Indoors, safe and snug as a corpse in a sweet-smelling, satin-lined coffin, content to decay.

  I turn back on to my side to trace her cheek, her jaw, the divot between her nose and lip.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m admiring you. I’ve never seen you in this light.”

  “Do I look different?”

  “A bit. You even sound different out here, with all my walls gone. With Paris gone, and only us left. Us and the crickets.”

  She smiles shyly, pursing her lips.

  I smile back. “Kiss me.”

  Cupping my jaw, she draws me close.

  Her mouth is soft to start, growing bolder by the moment. The way she kisses echoes that infatuated gaze she often beams at me, a consumptive lust we act as though only men possess. But even when she came to me a virgin, I saw that look, at once a gleam and a glazing, hunger peering from behind heavy lids. I feel it in the way her lips claim mine, in the lap of her tongue, how she clutches my hair. Six months ago she’d never have kissed me this way. She was a passive, receptive thing, eager to learn but frightened to act. She’s grown shameless since the spring, a fascinating evolution.

  Curious hands stroke my chest, survey my shoulders and arms, caress my belly under my top. A deep shiver moves through me, warmth gathering in its wake. I’ve been wanted before, and felt it in a woman’s touch. Countless times. But to know a lover cares for my mind and my future—my very happiness—as much as she desires my body…

  She leaves me weak. Reduces me to a joyful ruin with the merest touch. She must sense it when my mouth has lost the rhythm of our kiss and hear it in my shallow breaths. And if she slipped a hand between my legs, there’d be no mistaking it.

  But it won’t do to lose control so soon. Tonight’s finale is not one to be rushed.

  I rise to sit cross-legged, gazing down at Caroly. She looks like art in the moonlight, alabaster against the blanket’s collage, framed by the crosshatched strokes of the grass. Her blue irises seem black, her skin white as milk. Without a word, I reach for her waist to free the bow of her stretchy bottoms. She lifts her hips so I can slide them down her legs, and I see the little bumps along her thighs as the cold encases them.

  Her voice is soft in the darkness. “So it’s become that sort of picnic then?”

  I lower to my hip and elbow, tracing the hem of her panties with my knuckle. “Tell me you’d prefer more cheese.”

  “No no, this will do nicely.” She strokes my hair, everything about the moment feeling as it has a hundred times before, in my bed, yet twisted.

  We’re the same, but the air is cool and so clean, the starlight so distant, not warm and close like candle flames. And it�
�s us, only us, with more than a fortuitous Sunday lying between this moment and the arrival of my next client. There is no next client.

  I stroke her thigh, run my fingertips over the lace at her hip.

  This affair feels like none I’ve fostered before. All the ones before this were as pleasant as a beautiful song or a delicious meal. Though a twinge of sadness accompanied their conclusions, the world kept turning. With Caroly, it’s rousing as a symphony, nourishing as a banquet, but vital as oxygen as well. Should all of this end, it won’t go with any pang so simple as sadness. I’d grieve it like a death.

  I hold her hip tighter.

  No one can guarantee security. We promise it, of course. But no romantic proclamation can ensure permanence, neither can wedding vows, and even the truest love can be lost in an instant…whether that instant comes at the speed of a car, or dragging at the heels of a years-long illness. In love, there’s no predicting the end, only savoring the present.

  Moving down the blanket, I urge her to make room for me between her legs.

  I bring my face close, detecting Caroly’s scent behind the autumn air and the wild musk of the grass. No other man has smelled her, tasted her, heard her sighs and moans, felt or watched her come. No other man has caressed her sex with his hand or tongue or cock, and none but I have been invited to. It never fails to make my pulse throb, knowing that she’s only ever been mine. The idea that she might someday gift that most intimate access to some other man… My blood pumps harder still, coursing with jealousy and possession and lust enough to ignite a fire.

  Love hasn’t banished the baser flavors from our sex. As long as there’s no threat behind them, I welcome the jealousy and possession into bed with us. Security and trust are wondrous, but they don’t boil the blood the way those fearful sensations do. And I do so enjoy that frantic heat. She must too, considering all the times she’s asked to hear what my clients have requested of me.

  I draw my thumb softly along the line of her sex through the silk, smiling at the way her thighs tense.

  “No other man’s made you twitch as I can.”