Once in a Lifetime

by Bliss, Harper

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When we drive into San Francisco proper in the a hire car we picked up at the airport, a bout of nerves hits me. But then Rosie yells something from the back seat and I’m pulled into the present again, away from the memories that have crept up on me on this journey.

  We’ve come to spend a few days with Troy in the city. Leigh’s city. I thought about getting in touch, because it’s been years now, and surely we can be civil to each other, but I have Suzy and Rosie with me, and we’re here as a family, and meeting up with exes doesn’t really fit into our plans. Also, after all these years, I’m still not sure how I would react to seeing her again.

  No, this trip is about family. The one Leigh never wanted. I’ve never been to San Francisco, but I presume it’s a big enough city to not have to worry about inadvertently running into relocated exes. And we don’t need a guide because we have Troy.

  It’s late when we arrive at the hotel. After we’ve freshened up, had a quick bite and put Rosie to sleep, Suzy and I are huddled on the bed together. I flick through the channels absent-mindedly, until an old episode of L.A. Law comes on.

  “I love that show,” I whisper to Suzy. I don’t tell her Leigh and I used to watch re-runs religiously together.

  “Oh,” Suzy hums.“Hey, was that an episode of Sons of Anarchy you just flipped past?”

  “I don’t know. You want me to go back?” Our arms touch.

  “Not if you want to watch this.” Suzy moves her arm away from mine. She’s trying to say yes by saying no again. It drives me crazy when she does this. She re-adjusts her position so there’s a gap between our arms.

  “It’s fine.” I hand her the remote.

  “No, you choose.” She hands it back.

  Ostentatiously, I change the channel.

  “You didn’t have to do that, babe.” She leans into me again and focuses on the men on the screen riding their motorcycles, in which I have zero interest.

  I don’t know if these minor irritations are normal in relationships. Suzy moved in a few months ago, and I’ve caught myself suffering from rising levels of aggravation over nothing in particular ever since. They’re not fights or arguments that we have, just tiny displays of not seeing entirely eye-to-eye on everything. Not that we have to, but sometimes it gets on my nerves that Suzy can so easily manipulate me into getting her way.

  I wouldn’t have asked her to move in if I hadn’t considered our affair full of potential. I’ve had to give and take—mostly give when I really wanted to take—but it works well most of the time. When she got fed up with living above her brother’s bar, and the noise and nuisance that comes with that, and said she was going apartment hunting, I decided not to make the same mistake twice. And I wouldn’t have to leave my apartment if I asked her to move in.

  Suzy has been good for me. And her timing was impeccable, what with Troy having just moved out when we met. Rosie adores her and vice versa. Our sex life is not as adventurous as I would like it to be, but at least we have one. She’s easy-going, often messy to an extent that I have to keep myself from dangling a nonchalantly cast-off item of clothing in front of her and ask, “Are you really going to leave this here?” But I know she will just shrug it off, tell me what I want to hear, and do it again the very next day. Some people just don’t have neatness programmed into their genes. That, too, I’ve learned to live with.

  We had the conversation after we’d had sex a few times. I had tucked my head in Suzy’s armpit post-orgasm and lay staring up at her breast, trailing a finger around her nipple.

  “You’re making me hot again,” she whispered, her voice still husky from before.

  “That’s the idea,” I said, decreasing the circumference of the circles my finger drew.

  “Oh really?” I felt her shift against me. “What are you going to do to me?”

  I pressed a kiss against her side. “I was wondering more what you would do to me.” I took her nipple between my fingers and pinched—gently.

  “Plenty of naughty things if you keep that up.”

  I squeezed harder.

  “Ouch,” she yelped, but there was humor in her voice.

  I continued to squeeze.

  She pushed herself up and looked down at me. “You’re asking for it,” she said.

  “Yes.” Something unclenched between my legs.

  “Okay then.” The tenderness she kissed me with frustrated me.

  “Kiss me harder,” I demanded.

  She did, but it still wasn’t nearly hard enough. I grabbed her by the back of the head and pulled her roughly to me.

  When we broke from the kiss, which had been more biting than kissing, she looked at me earnestly. “Why so rough?”

  “You think that’s rough?” I drew one eyebrow into an arc.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware, but you’re always doing this when we make love.”

  Of course, I was aware. I was doing it for a reason. But I knew I couldn’t bombard her with my wishes. I’d learned my lesson from being with Amy. “Yes, I think I’m aware.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is you want me to do, so I can stop guessing.” There was no annoyance in Suzy’s tone, which was a good sign.

  “Okay.” I sat up a bit. “I like to be dominated. Tied up. Taken.” The words came easier than I’d expected they would, perhaps because I’d had many years to practice them in my head.

  “You want me to tie you up?” Suzy scrunched her lips together.

  “Only if you would be open to that. I don’t want to force you.”

  “I don’t know. I guess I would need to think about that. Maybe read up on it.” I hadn’t anticipated that sort of careful reply from someone I’d come to know as free-spirited and daring.

  “Okay.” I was starting to feel self-conscious. This was not an easy ask. “I would appreciate that.”

  No more sex was had that night.

  Suzy canceled our next date. She claimed her brother needed help in the bar because one of his staff had bailed on him. “Come by,” she said. “But we won’t have a lot of private time.”

  I was paranoid enough to check up on her. If it hadn’t been for our conversation a few days earlier, I wouldn’t have. Perhaps I thought I’d find her in a corner of the bar, curled up with some ‘literature’ instead of bartending a rowdy crowd. But she was indeed pouring drinks and working the customers the way she so easily could.

  We were at my place on our next date—a home with many memories.

  “Did you have a good read?” I asked, injecting some cheekiness into my voice. I didn’t want our upcoming talk to be too heavy in tone. After all, what we were discussing was one of our main sources of fun.

  “I did.” She regarded me with those glittering eyes of hers. I’d fallen hard and fast for Suzy and I sat there fervently hoping I hadn’t put our blossoming relationship on the line because of my question. “Very informative,” she teased, and I felt it in my belly.

  I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth and waited for her to say something else. Perhaps because I had brought up the subject, I had to be the one to carry the conversation forward, but the nature of it, the coming out as explicitly submissive, prevented me from doing so. I wanted her to know what to say and do instinctively. If that was a mistake on my part, I didn’t perceive it as one at the time.

  “I can do certain things, but, Jodie, I’m not sure what you think of me, or what kind of person you think I am, but this sort of stuff doesn’t come entirely natural to me.”

  “I understand that.” And I also already knew. If it had come natural to her, she would have shoved me against a wall already while delving her fingers under the waistband of my panties, and had me, on her own terms. “I’m just asking if you’re willing to try.”

  “I am.” She inched a little closer. “I can tell this is important to you.”

  I wasn’t looking for a second Leigh, nor a second Amy. Just someone with a few qualities of both.

  Suzy tried. S
ometimes, lying with my hands tied up and her smoldering gaze on me, she managed to bring me out of myself. And maybe it wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to be, but she made the effort—and I could hardly expect her to be Leigh, who’d had the great advantage of unearthing this side of me, and making everything she did to me a shocking surprise. The effort she put in was enough for me for a long time because all other aspects of our relationship pleased me, and at least she wasn’t afraid to talk about it. Perhaps that was the open-mindedness I’d recognized in her at Henderson’s that day Troy left.

  But now, in this hotel room in San Francisco, Suzy already half snoozing next to me, I can almost feel Leigh’s presence. Or the promise of her presence. The way I did on nights when Troy was with his dad and I couldn’t get to our apartment fast enough because I knew she’d be waiting for me—waiting to do her worst to me. And she always, always did. Like that day not long after my thirty-second birthday when she was waiting for me by the door.

  “Give me your stuff, I’ll put it away.” She knew I wouldn’t be able to relax if she just had me drop my coat to the floor. “Go into the bedroom, take off all your clothes. Don’t lie down.”

  I hurriedly did what I was told and waited for her to join me, idly standing around, but not even touching the bed with my knee for support. I heard her shuffle around and then she walked in with her hands behind her back.

  “I got you something, but you can’t see, only feel.” She had a wicked grin on her face. Back then, I hadn’t told anyone yet what she did to me in the privacy of our bedroom. Not even Muriel. I just couldn’t. I was afraid that some of the magic would go if I shared it. I was also still heavily processing the discovery of my own well-hidden needs. “On the bed. On all fours,” she commanded. “Face away from me.”

  No kisses or other displays of affection had been exchanged yet. They would follow later. Softly and extensively. This always came first.

  I crawled onto the bed and waited some more. I could hear Leigh put something on the chair next to the bed and remove some of her clothing.

  By the time I felt her lean her weight against the bed, my clit was engorged, and I was ready. At least I thought I was.

  She waited a few more seconds. I heard something rustle, felt her weight shift, and then nothing but excruciating, exquisite pain. Leigh had always spanked me with her hands, a belt, or a flogger up until now, not with… I didn’t really know what it was. Only that its impact was wide and heavy and stung my cheeks like they would never recover.

  I braced my body for the next blow, but to no avail. The pain crashed through me even harder, my flesh stung, and tears sprang from my eyes.

  “Maybe you should count,” she said, her voice emotionless.

  Bam. She hit me again with what I was starting to believe was a paddle. “Three,” I said.

  “Oh no, no, no.” I heard her huff out a disdainful breath. “Start from one.”

  I didn’t know how many more of these I could take.

  “One to ten. It’s very simple,” she said.

  Ten more? Surely she couldn’t be serious? Surely my ass was striped bright red already and well on the way to pleasing her.

  She slapped me again, hitting only my left cheek. The pain vibrated through me, connecting with my clit. Wetness oozed from me. Before Leigh, I had absolutely no idea pain could feel this good. That, if someone pushed me the right way, I could take just about anything. Leigh had always known.

  She alternated between my cheeks for number two and three and paused for a few seconds before launching into number four, five, and six in quick succession.

  By the time I had to say “Seven” my voice came out too muffled.

  “Again, Jodie,” she said. “And count properly so I can hear you.”

  Leigh was never one to show mercy. That’s what I liked about her the most under these circumstances. The way I could always count on her to make me dig a little deeper, to look for an even greater rush of pleasure than the one I was growing accustomed to.

  I counted out the last three blows, agony converting into excruciating bursts of pleasure in my flesh. Then, nothing again for a few long minutes. I didn’t hear Leigh move and she didn’t say anything. I knew she was admiring her work, something I reveled in even more. Her glance on my ass. I knew what would come next. Meanwhile, a thick, slow pulse had taken over my pussy lips, converging in my clit.

  Where I had expected to feel her fingertips run over the tortured skin of my behind, I was startled by the sensation of something that was not made of flesh. Instinctively, I turned my head.

  “Look ahead,” was all Leigh said. “Or else.” Or else. So much of what she triggered in me was based on the words ‘or else’. And I was always ambivalent about them. Eager to please, but also curious as to what new heights they would take me. Sometimes, when I didn’t obey, when I pushed boundaries, she saw through me and said, “I know what you’re trying to do and that doesn’t work on me.” But, sometimes, she gave in and indulged me with another round of spanking, or an extra finger where I wasn’t expecting it.

  That day, I had no desire to determine what lay behind her ‘or else’ and I stared in front of me, at the curtains, of which the pattern was just a collection of smudges through my tears.

  It only took me a minute to figure she was trailing the tip of a dildo over the curve of my behind. The only thing I didn’t know was if it was one from our collection or a new toy. And if new, how wide and big it was.

  I could hear her breathing become labored—just the tiniest display of losing composure. I never let on that I could tell from the speed of her breath when she was going to start fucking me. I kept it as a secret that served me well. As a tiny means of clinging on to a sense of control.

  Soon after, the tip of the dildo reached my pussy lips. It slipped through easily.

  “Spread wider,” Leigh said and tapped my bottom with a few fingers. A gesture that normally wouldn’t hurt, but brought tears to my eyes after the paddle strokes she had delivered earlier. I slid my knees as far apart as they would go.

  Without further ado, she slid the toy inside of me. Gently at first, so I could get used to it, but it didn’t take long for her thrusts to become bolder, demanding more of me. I felt the dildo’s girth splay me open, but for Leigh, I always took it easily.

  The skin of my behind burned, and the strokes she delivered with the toy touched me and filled me and satisfied me and I didn’t need my clit to be touched. Leigh’s mantra, almost from the very beginning, had always been, “Your clit is for quickies. I want to earn your climax.” She never failed to do that.

  Then, while fucking me savagely, she flicked her fingers against my ass again. Not hard, but with enough gentle force to have the pain re-ignite. It spread through me like wildfire. It started as pain but then changed into a stinging warmth, a blanket of delicious hurt covering me. She kept hitting the same spot with her fingers and with the dildo inside of me until all my thought processes crumbled and I was just a body being taken.

  Everything around me turned to liquid heat and painful pleasure and the highest highs of abandon.

  When I came, my muscles spasmed, clenching the dildo deep inside of me, and the pain radiating from my ass washed over me like a wave that cleansed me of everything that had accumulated in my brain since we last fucked.

  After, Leigh hurried to my side, looked into my eyes briefly, before kissing the tears from my cheeks. We lay like that for a long time, until most of the pain had subsided, and all my tears had dried up. Afterward, she let me fuck her, but in a much more subdued way, because neither one of us needed it to be any other way.

  Suzy’s completely asleep now, and on the TV something is being set on fire. I change the channel, hoping to catch the last of the L.A. Law episode, but it’s gone to a commercial break, and I’m not sure I should be watching it right now, what with the trip down memory lane I’ve already taken.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Will you please tell Jodie
about us…”—I don’t immediately know how to quantify my relationship with Troy—“…meeting up.” By the time he’s preparing for his final exams, more than two years after he first contacted me, we’ve been seeing each other almost every month. As it turned out, I did have spare time to bestow on another human being. Of course, these hours I spend with Troy can’t be compared with courting a lover. Yet, I find myself anticipating our meetings, often in student bars in Berkeley where I stick out like a sore thumb. Because of what he represents in my life. A small part of Jodie. The more we see of each other, the more of Jodie I recognize in him. His sense of social justice, I gather, is much more evolved than his peers’.

  “I don’t know how she will react.” Troy came into the city to meet me. I considered inviting him to my house, but something stopped me.

  “I understand that.” More than I let on. “But it doesn’t mean she shouldn’t know.”

  “What difference does it really make, Leigh?” He rips tiny pieces off a paper napkin and fidgets with them endlessly. “Mom’s in New York. You’re here.”

  I don’t know how to explain this to Jodie’s son. I can’t even properly explain it to myself. “It just feels wrong to do this behind her back.”

  He waves me off, as he’s done so many times already. I try not to inquire about Jodie too much, but sometimes it happens without me thinking about it, or he blurts something out about her, and the conversation automatically meanders in that direction. More often than not, we just chit-chat, and on occasion, I find myself thinking we chat like, perhaps, a mother would with her son. Although that really is taking it too far, especially given what has happened between Troy’s actual mother and me. But when you’ve sat up with a boy when he was seven and had the stomach flu, and when you’ve taken him to soccer practice, and spent hours with him assembling puzzles and Lego constructions, part of that lingers in your soul.