Exposure

by McKenna, Cara

  “No man ever will.”

  I let my nose glance her clitoris as I breathe her in. “We can’t know that.”

  “Maybe not,” she allows, fingers combing my hair then clasping. The contact matches the tone I’ve set, just the slightest misgiving scraping a hot spark through my body.

  “In case one ever gets the chance,” I say, “I’ll be sure to spoil you so rotten, he’ll never measure up.”

  “That I do know for sure.”

  Through her panties, I close my lips over the hardening point of her arousal, exhale to warm the spot and make her sigh.

  “If I was ever with some other man,” she murmurs, “I’d have to shut my eyes and imagine it was you.”

  Her words strike me twice—the first blow jealousy, the backhand flattery. Both sting hot with pleasure. I stiffen my tongue and draw it along her seam, wetting the silk. Her hand in my hair becomes a fist. I want to do everything to this woman—serve her, spoil her, dominate her, submit to her. Any dish she wishes to sample, I’m hers to devour.

  Hooking my thumb under the hem of her panties, I pull the strip of lace and satin aside, exposing her most delicate skin to the night air. I feel the opposite against my own sex, pure heat and confinement. Maddening.

  “Cold?” I ask.

  “A little.”

  “My mouth is warm.” Before she can reply, I take her clit between my lips. Any words that might have come are swallowed in a moan, the sweetest sound I know.

  With a jingling of her charm bracelet, her hand takes over for mine, holding the fabric to the side. I find her wetness with a deep, firm lap, another, dozens—until I’m panting and starved, until she can’t doubt how deeply I wallow in this moment. More intimate than intercourse, more intoxicating than wine. Am I the aggressor or the servant? I can’t tell, and that’s what I’ve always loved about this contact.

  My cock’s grown hard, aching as I imagine sliding inside her, slick from her arousal and my mouth, soon her release. And no condom, not anymore. I shiver. A whore’s last unfulfilled fantasy, realized only now that he’s left that vocation behind.

  Against my lips and tongue, I feel every tiny mechanism of her pleasure, each pulsation, each twitch, the tensing and swelling of her flesh telling me things no words can articulate.

  Is this act so different than a watchmaker’s craft? Her heartbeat like clockwork, speeding with my adjustments. Then again, no beguiling piece of brass has ever loved me back, nor sighed in ecstasy as my fingertips wound it tight or snapped it snugly closed. My hobby will change soon enough—drawing me out, not keeping me in. But this, I think, penetrating Caroly with my tongue as my thumbs trace her lips, this will remain my art. Her pleasure is my masterpiece, honed nightly but never complete, never beyond perfecting.

  I’m flooded with her scent, scalded by her heat on my lips. I’m dying of a sexual hunger deep in my belly to taste her, to imagine how good she’ll feel around my cock and to know I must wait. I flick my tongue against the swollen nub of her clitoris and gently draw two fingers along her seam, back and forth, back and forth, then finally slip them inside.

  “Didier.”

  As always, my name in her voice hits me like a crop. I’d scale a mountain on bleeding palms and knees to feel the sweet sting of those syllables. I’d bankrupt myself, endanger and degrade myself for the sensation, and yet she gives it freely.

  “Caroly.” I whisper it against her sex and the fingers grasping my hair tighten. Soon enough she’ll be holding my arms or raking my back or guiding my thrusts with her smooth, soft palms on my hips. I doubt I’ll register any of it. Not tonight, not with every particle of my consciousness focused on that long-forbidden prize. My cock surges as I imagine it. My mouth grows more aggressive. Her thighs tense and one heel rubs along my spine, trembling and giving her away. Her feet always tell me when she’s close—restless as fidgeting hands.

  “Oh.”

  There’s so much I can read into that breathy syllable. Volumes.

  Don’t stop, it tells me. Keep doing that, exactly that, please. Please.

  And I obey. Normally I might back off just as I sense her wishing for me to continue, draw it out so her eventual release is a blinding, desperate necessity. I can be cruel that way. But tonight I’m as needy as I am controlling. I keep my tongue thrumming, keep my fingers delving, keep the rhythm steady and the intensity building slowly, slowly, as her pleasure winds tighter, tighter.

  I’m close, her rubbing feet tell me. Don’t stop, begs the shaking hand gripping my hair. Her hips shift, meeting the push of my fingers as they might my driving cock.

  A throaty, tremulous moan rends the darkness, tingling down my back. She flutters against my lips and I slow my mouth and strokes, drawing her climax out, out, out until she jerks from the contact, pleasure turning to pain.

  Smiling, I let her go, caressing her calves as she relaxes back against the blanket. I kiss her inner thigh, then its twin. “Good.”

  She clears her throat, sounding delirious. A sheepish giggle brightens the night. “Yes, very good. Just like always.”

  “I beg to differ.” I sit up and she does the same, scooting close between my legs so I can shelter her in my arms from the breeze. I nip at her ear. “Nothing like always. Out here, under the stars? Away from the flat?”

  “True. But you still make my legs all wobbly, just like always.”

  I stroke the bumps rising along her thigh. “More shivering than wobbling, it seems.”

  “I don’t mind. I haven’t seen this many stars in ages… I took this for granted, growing up in the boonies.”

  I kiss her neck, my wonder wrapped up not in the cosmos but in her closeness, her smell, the promise of what’s to come. She reaches a hand back to stroke my hair.

  “You’re not thinking about stars,” she says. “I can tell.”

  I run my nose up and down her nape. “We’ve got something far more rare than a clear sky to enjoy tonight.”

  “What if I was sadistic and made you wait?”

  “I would never cook for you again.”

  A dramatic gasp. “Now that’s just mean.”

  “Tonight then?”

  She turns, kissing me. “Of course, tonight.”

  “Where? Here?” In the darkness, all our senses are heightened…

  But she says, “In the bed. By the light of the fireplace.”

  And in an instant, I know she’s right. It can be no other way. On soft, dry sheets, by the heat of the hearth. I need to see her face, and she mine. What’s more, I think with a hot tremor, I want to watch the moment when my bare flesh claims hers. And I want her to watch as well.

  And what I want matters, I remind myself. With this woman, my desires count.

  For years I’ve molded them to complement my clients’ needs, or cast them aside entirely. I’ve stifled them for the sake of longevity, warped them to cater to borrowed appetites. It’s a hard habit to break, setting aside my old roles. They became my identity, in time. I was a chameleon, adapting to the wants of whoever came to my bed. A mirror revealing their deepest, darkest needs. But Caroly’s told me she doesn’t want that—not every night, at least. She wants to be with me, not merely a reflection of her own preferences. A true lover, not merely a performer.

  And I need, I desire, I want. I’m a man, not a machine.

  A heart beats in my chest, muscle pumping blood, simple as brass and oil but warm, so warm. I fear and I hurt, and one woman in a hundred has cared to know it. Asked to see it. And though I’ve bared far more than simple nakedness to her before, tonight I’ll bare it all.

  As Caroly cinches her pants, I gather the blanket, tucking it beneath my arm. Hand in hand, we stroll through the grass and wildflowers, back toward the light.

  Her thumb rubs my knuckles and I return the gesture, suddenly shy. When did I last feel so nervous before sex? As a teenager, surely. In another life. Yet here I am, stiff from a breed of anxiety I’d forgotten about—the exciting kind, full of anticipati
on, not dread.

  It’s cool inside. I hadn’t noticed before, when the sun had still been dawdling on the horizon. The cottage boasts no modern heating system, only the fireplaces.

  “Alors.” I shut the patio doors behind us. “I’m afraid I’ll have to defer to you, my rugged companion.”

  Her brows rise.

  I confess, “I don’t know how to build a fire.”

  “Oh, it’s easy. I’ll teach you.”

  There’s a rack of wood beside the bedroom’s stone hearth, and Caroly disappears for a moment, returning with a bin of old newspapers.

  “Always make sure the flue’s open.”

  I kneel beside her to see what she means.

  “Otherwise the room will fill with smoke. I’ve forgotten that step. It’s the worst.” She rolls up her sleeve and fusses with a squeaky lever.

  Next she shows me her father’s patented arrangement of crumpled balls of newspaper and stacked logs—smaller sticks on the first layer, thicker ones crisscrossed on top.

  “Now we need matches.”

  After a search, I find some on the living room mantle.

  “And all you do is light the paper,” she says.

  I strike a match and hold it to the newspaper. We sit back on our heels and watch as the flames spread to the smaller kindling, yellow tongues licking.

  “Ta da.” She balances a metal folding screen on the hearth. “You’ve made a fire.”

  “I assisted.”

  “Now we just have to keep an eye on it and add a fresh hunk of wood when it starts to peter out.”

  A branch cracks and shifts, sending orange sparks chasing up into the chimney.

  How nice to be taught something by Caroly. Something practical, that is, beyond the lessons she’s offered regarding my capabilities, out in the wider world.

  I imagine us strolling around art galleries and museums, she teaching me terms I’ve never heard before, enthusing about the thing she loves most. Strange, catching myself looking forward to such outings, and with only a hint of fear tainting the idea.

  When people speak of prostitutes needing to be saved from their vocation, they mean danger, exploitation, degradation. It was never that for me. In turns, I offered my clients therapy, escape, affection, decadence. They didn’t take—I gave. I liked giving. Too much.

  If Caroly saved me from anything, it was my own lack of momentum. She dragged me from the quicksand of my slow, passive decline into inevitable hermitdom, from a reality I hadn’t stepped back from enough to even fully see. I’d enjoyed the sinking, the snug safety of my descent. Had we never met, I’d have eagerly drowned in all that reassuring immobility. But she made me choose my life instead, and I took hold of the rope. It seems I’d rather stand shaking beside her than atrophy in comfort, all alone.

  Since I’ve rejoined the outside world, I’ve found there are benefits—benefits beyond keeping Caroly in my life, which can’t be discounted by any means.

  I’ve noticed that the days are longer. Not simply because time passes more slowly when you’re distressed, but because the world is suddenly bigger. There are so many things to see and hear, so many new faces to study. Staying inside, it was like eating nothing but chocolate for three years. Reliably lovely and pleasing, yet my palate grew lazy. Each meal blended into the last. Outside, it is like a buffet. So much variety it shocks the senses, and though I don’t love every flavor I’m fed, the choice is dizzying. So frightening, often, but also so rich.

  We rinse the soot and wood flecks from our hands in the kitchen, switching off all the lights as we make our way back to the bedroom. She tosses two pillows before the crackling hearth and takes my hand. We sit cross-legged side by side, the fire nearly too hot but all the more exotic for it, with the cool air at our backs.

  After a long, spacey silence, I ask, “What are you thinking of?”

  “I’m thinking how lovely it would be if life was just like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just this.” She rubs my thigh. “Sitting in front of a fire at night, drinking wine. Someplace so quiet.”

  “You’d miss the city.” This place suits me more than I’d ever imagined, but Caroly loves culture and shopping and events, cafés and parks with interesting people to watch. She likes the bustle, content to quietly observe, curator that she is. We’re not compatible that way. If this love stays in bloom, what shape might a compromise take? A home on the outskirts of a smaller city? Where she could leave in one direction for the activity when she wished, I in the other, seeking calm and relative solitude. It’s not such a terrible arrangement, as long as we each play tourist in one another’s outer lives now and again, and keep our time together inside stoked and glowing.

  “I wouldn’t be so opposed to leaving Paris.” She turns to meet my gaze. “As long as I could find a satisfying job somewhere. Maybe we have a few more places to visit in the next year or two. See what it’s like in Nice or Lyon.”

  “Your career should come first.”

  “My career’s about being part of the art world, and making enough money to live. It’s important, but I don’t want it to the exclusion of you being happy.” Saying the words makes her bashful, I can tell. She’s not used to baring her heart to people, especially not men. Some wounded child inside her fears she’ll be mocked for admitting she cares for someone. Instead I kiss her mouth, proving her earnestness will always find a welcoming ear with me.

  “We’ll stay in Paris for the foreseeable future,” I tell her. “If I can acclimate to the outside there, get back to how I used to be, when I was functioning…”

  “Then you could make it anywhere,” she finishes. “Well, except maybe Bangkok or New Delhi.”

  I laugh. “Yes. I think Paris is as frantic as anyone can be asked to suffer.”

  “But in a few years, who knows?”

  Who knows, indeed? Who knows where we’ll be sitting, what view beyond the windows? Who knows if it’ll even be just the two of us, or if…

  I let the thought trail off. A curiosity for another night, another month, another year or more. Tonight there’s enough fire to foster between our bodies, by the glow of the one we’ve laid in the hearth.

  I study her smooth complexion, gilded in the flickering light, the shadow of the screen’s lattice dancing across her face.

  “Yes?”

  “I remember the first night we met.”

  “So do I.”

  “There was a screen then too, only we sat on different sides.”

  She smiles, her blush all but lost in the firelight.

  “Oh yes, so shy once again. Like I haven’t seen a much different smile on those lips since March.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” she says, feigning innocence.

  “You’ve changed. You’ve opened like a flower.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “You’ve hatched. I’m more like a weak bear after hibernation, stumbling half-blind out of its cave.”

  “No wonder we’re both so shaky sometimes.”

  A soothing silence settles between us. As much as I’d like to freeze the moment and linger in it for ages, my body grows restless. It hasn’t forgotten what’s still to come, and with my nerves silenced, my libido’s whispers rise to insistent murmurs.

  I turn to Caroly, closing her hand in both of mine. “Let’s go to bed.”

  She smiles, nodding. “Let’s.”

  Chapter Three

  I stand first and help her to her feet.

  She looks so beautiful, my chest tightens. Her eyes dart to the bed, but I stay where I am and reach for her face, cradling her jaw, my focus darting between her eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “You look different.”

  “Oh?”

  “You look… I don’t know. I look at you and I think, she’s mine.”

  Unable to drop her head, she averts her eyes instead.

  “I’ve never looked at someone and felt this before. This mix of recogni
tion and surprise. Like I understand you so well, yet there’s so much I still want to know.” I pause, laughing. “I’m not making sense. But I mean every word.”

  Her gaze returns to mine, eyes shining from more than the firelight. I wipe away a tear and lean in to kiss her forehead. Her arms close around my waist and I fold her in a tight hug, planting another kiss on the crown of her head.

  The bed sits to one side of the fireplace, half the quilted comforter warm and lit by the fire, the other shadowy and cool. I coax Caroly to lie on the fire-lit side, and she lets me strip her pajama bottoms for a second time. She sheds her top, skin adorned by satin and lace, some pale color burnished bronze in the fire’s glow. I peel away my shirt, muscles tensing in the coolness of the room. The soft cotton of my pants drops away, and hot as the crackling flames may be, they’re nothing compared to the heat in Caroly’s eyes.

  I toss my clothes toward the bureau. “I’ll never grow tired of the way you look at me.”

  “I’ll never get tired of watching you undress,” she says with a guilty smile.

  Naked, I join her on the bed, sitting up against the headboard and urging her to do the same. She tucks herself tight to my side and I kiss her temple. “It’s been a long while since you’ve asked for a story.”

  She tenses against me. Since I told her I planned to give up my clients, she’s all but stopped asking about them. Perhaps before, when she assumed I’d never consider leaving my vocation, asking me about my experiences was her way of making peace with the unseen women who shared her lover. She enjoyed those bedtime stories. I hope it’s not guilt that’s made her stiffen this way, guilt from worrying I’ll regret sacrificing my experiences, forsaking all others for her alone.

  “Let me tell you about a client I used to know.”

  A pause, then a wooden, “Okay.”

  I lean close, drawing my fingertips along her arm. “She came to me this spring. A virgin, if you can believe it.”

  Realization softens her expression. I palm her breast, thumb stroking slowly until her nipple stiffens and her lips part.

  “She told me she wanted to experience sex with a beautiful man. The kind of man she didn’t think she could ever have for keeps.” I was prepared to go on, but suddenly tears shimmer in her eyes. I still my hand. “Have I upset you?”