by Megan Hart
“It’s sort of…oh…” She breathed out on a wave of pleasure as his thumb rubbed her clit in small circles. Her thigh muscles leaped and her hips bucked the tiniest amount. “Flattering.”
“I want to taste you,” Matt said in a low voice.
“Oh, God, please do,” came Melissa’s answer as she opened herself to him further.
No anxiety, no fear, no embarrassment. Nothing she’d ever come to expect from a first time with someone. Matt slipped his fingers out of her and replaced them with his mouth and lips, his tongue, and Melissa shuddered to the very edge of orgasm almost at once.
He pushed his hand under her ass while he lapped at her clit, then used his tongue to provide the same steady pressure his thumb had been giving. Tension built, up and up. She shook with it, but Matt held her still.
Melissa looked down at his face buried between her thighs. Matt had his eyes closed. He made a long, low sound of pure desire, like she was the yummiest thing he’d ever tasted.
Melissa went over. White-hot waves of desire swept over her. Her clit pulsed under Matt’s talented tongue as she came, fingers clutching at the sheets, hips bucking. Her vision went hazy with the ecstasy.
She cried out his name.
He followed her through it, easing off just right when the pressure would’ve been too much, but keeping his mouth teasing her through all the aftershocks. When she’d quieted, her breath still coming a little harsh in her throat but her body no longer twitching, Matt kissed her belly and moved up over her body to find her mouth.
“Wow,” Melissa murmured, boneless and sated.
Matt chuckled. “Good?”
“Mmmm, yes.” She opened her eyes and rolled to face him. “Unbelievably.”
She thought he might be more insistent, then, about getting some for himself, but Matt just gathered her close and rolled them so he was on his back with Melissa supporting herself against his chest to look down at him. This gave her an excellent view of his erection, which beckoned the touch of her hand.
He hissed when she took him in her fist, a look almost of pain flitting across his face. “Fuck.”
Melissa, mindful of what he’d said, gave him a gentle, downward stroke, then slid her hand to cup his balls. “I’d like to repay the favor.”
“I’ll never last,” he warned her, but with a grin. “And Melissa…I’m not one to turn down a good blow job…”
“You’re sure it would be good, huh?” She stroked him upward, and Matt’s dick throbbed delightfully against her palm.
“Yeah. I know it would. But I know that I’d shoot off in about two sucks.”
“Hmm.” Melissa pretended to think about that. “That wouldn’t be much longer than it took me.”
They both laughed at that, though breathlessly.
“This feels good,” she told him as she let her fingers drift up and down his length. “I don’t mean the orgasm, though I have to tell you, Matt, it was spectacular.”
He buffed his fingernails against his chest. “Thank ya, thank ya.”
“Just…this. Altogether.”
He looked at her seriously, then drew her to his mouth for a kiss. “Yeah, it does.”
“I want to make love with you,” Melissa told him. “I don’t care if you come right away, I want you inside me.”
Matt groaned, but grinned. “Quality, not quantity. You promised.”
Melissa reached into her nightstand and pulled out a box of condoms she hadn’t had occasion to use in forever but was super grateful to left in the drawer when she’d pulled out the rest to take along to the lab. She didn’t want to get up and go to her purse, all the way out in the living room. She held up one of the condoms, then another.
“Color preference?”
“None,” Matt said.
“Blue,” she said with a grin and tore open the package. She studied his erection carefully as she sheathed him in latex, her grin getting bigger at Matt’s frustrated groan. “There.”
She’d had first times that were more like gymnastics meets, her partner trying to impress her with how many positions he could bend her into, but this time Melissa simply threw a leg over Matt’s hips and straddled him. She reached between them to guide his cock inside her, settling all the way on it so slowly they both groaned at the same time.
He filled her up, all the way, delectable pressure against the back of her pubic bone making her clit start to tingle again. She made a murmuring noise of pleasure, then again when Matt put a hand between them to press his knuckle to her clit.
His eyes were bright, his lips parted and wet. “You like that?”
“Yes.” Melissa rocked her hips.
Just as she hadn’t been anxious about being naked in front of him, now she had no fears that she wouldn’t please him with the motions of her body. In fact, she didn’t think about it at all. She simply moved. What felt good, she did. When Matt groaned or shifted or thrust at the way she moved, Melissa did it again. And again.
Their bodies worked in perfect time. She moved up as he pulled out; she pushed down when he thrust into her. Slowly at first, then faster. With every thrust his hand pressed her clit with just the right amount of pressure.
“I want you to come again,” Matt said through slightly gritted teeth.
“I’m going to,” she breathed, and gave herself up to the pleasure.
It didn’t hit so hard this second time, instead creating slow ripples of ecstasy. Matt thrust deeper inside her. The pleasure built and burst. This time she didn’t cry out his name. This time, it slipped from her lips as easily and sweetly as the orgasm he was giving her.
This time, he said hers, too.
After, Melissa found herself tucked up against him as naturally and easily as if she belonged there. She lay on her side with Matt’s arm around her, his breath puffing every so often into her hair and the warmth of him lulling her into a sated doze.
“Melissa,” he said quietly after a few minutes.
“Yes?”
His arm tightened around her, just a little. “Do you think the experiment was a success?”
She smiled and turned to him. She kissed him. “Yes, Matt. I do.”
Chapter 10
“Margaritas and hot wings on the way.” Matt tipped a bottle of Corona toward the view.
White sand. Blue water. Booze, just like his frat brothers had promised. And as for babes…
“Thanks, baby,” Melissa said, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. She kissed his shoulder. “I’m starving.”
Well, he only needed one.
SEVEN SWEETS AND SEVEN SOURS
Seven Sweets and Seven Sours
I have a suitcase packed and ready to go.
It doesn’t hold much. A pair of black trousers I took from my brother Jacob’s room. One of his white shirts. A pair of socks. I’ll wear the pair of hiking boots I bought from the local English department store and have hidden behind the chicken house, where my Dat will never find it. My Mam might have, if she hadn’t passed on last year. She was the reason I hadn’t left, but she’s gone.
For now, I wear my plain brown dress and the white mesh prayer cap. The ribbons dangle down my back along with my thick braid. My legs and feet are bare. My toes, dirty. When I live among the English, I will never have dirty feet. I will cut my hair short and never wear a dress again.
Hannah’s house is dim and cooler than the late August day outside. Today is not baking or wash day. I brace myself for the possibility that her mother-in-law, Rebecca, will be in the kitchen when I come in through the back door, but the room is empty. From upstairs, I can hear the faint sing-song of Hannah’s lullaby. She must be nursing the baby. He is only four months old, and will sleep after she finishes. We will have an hour or two before he wakes.
I’m too eager. I take the stairs two at a time, my bare feet slapping the wood. I’ve been told too often I talk too loud, run too fast, argue too fiercely. My father scolds that I’m not womanly, and that’s the tr
uth. I am not a woman, even if I wear the dress and grow my hair long and do the baking and washing, even if I have managed to learn, sometimes, to bow my head the way a woman should. I have never been been a woman.
“Mary,” Hannah says as though she’s surprised to see me.
I told her I was coming over today. She didn’t forget. She always pretends she is surprised when I arrive. I understand why. In case there is someone to overhear us, she needs to be able to pretend she didn’t know. She’s never told me that, but I understand her. We’ve been friends since we were infants in our Mams’ arms. I know her better than anyone ever will, even if Hannah will not admit it.
The baby in her arms falls away from her breast, his small mouth lax in sleep. He suckles the air for a moment before going still. Hannah puts him to her shoulder as she stands from her seat in the rocker in the corner. Her hand rubs along his tiny back until he belches so loud we both laugh, and she hushes me with her eyes alight with glee.
“Don’t wake him,” she says.
Silently, I stand aside while she settles the baby into the cradle near her side of the bed. He stirs but doesn’t wake. She turns to me without a word.
We never speak about the things we do when her husband is away in his wood shop. Hannah, I think, prefers to tell herself that every time is the last time. Even though I know she feels guilty about it, and I know she intends that every time should be the last, it has never yet been.
Until today. Today is the last time I will savor her seven sweets and seven sours. I know it. Hannah does not.
When I try to kiss her mouth, she turns her face. Her eyes close. Her head falls back, giving me access to her throat with my tongue, my teeth, my lips. Her throat works with a moan, and I back her up to the bed. She’s expecting me to push her onto it, but instead, I pluck at the hook-and-eye closures on her dress.
“What are you doing?” Her eyes wide, Hannah puts a hand over mine to stop me. She says the words in Pennsylvania Dutch.
I answer in English. “I want to see all of you.”
Hannah shakes her head, and as I step back and begin to undo all the hooks of my own dress, she averts her eyes. Even when I am naked in front of her, she won’t look. I shiver with feeling of freedom and say her name.
“If Ephraim comes home —”
“He never does.”
“Someone else could come,” she says.
Like putting the suitcase behind the chicken house, this is a risk I’m willing to take. Once again, I move to tug at the closures on her dress. This time, she lets me. She shakes when she stands naked in front of me, and of course I pull her close. Our bodies align. I’m only a little taller than she is. She can bury her face against the side of my neck. I stroke her naked back. I unpin the thick coil of her hair so that it falls to her hips.
I lay her back on the bed, and she covers her eyes with her hands, but her thighs open for me the way they always have, since that first time so many years ago. It was rumspringa then, our time to run “wild,” and we’d been drinking from a bottle of cheap vodka someone’s older brother had bought in town. We’d stumbled home to share her sagging bed in the smallest room, covering our giggles with our hands, imagining her parents would not hear us or know what we’d been doing. They’d turn a blind eye to the alcohol. They would not have done the same of what we’d done together in that bed.
“Look at me,” I tell her now. My voice is hard and firm and low, rough. It is not a feminine voice of soft murmurs and gentle request. My voice is a command. A man’s voice, and Hannah responds as she would to a man who’d spoken.
She pulls her hands away. Her lips are wet from where she’s licked them. Her nipples are tight and hard, like my own, but Hannah’s breasts are full. Weighty with milk. Her soft belly, rounder than mine, is criss-crossed with stripes from childbirth. I love those marks, the way I love everything about her body.
When I lift her foot to my lips, she gasps and tries to pull it away, but I hold her tight and press a kiss to the sole. I nibble her ankle. Her calf. By the time I make my way to her knee, she is panting softly and rolling her hips upward. I take my time to relish every single inch of her.
“Seven sweets,” I say with a tiny, sharper bite to the softness of her inner thigh. “Seven sours. All of your flavors.”
It’s a reference to the “tradition” of Amish dinners featuring seven sweet and seven sour dishes. It’s not a true tradition at all, it was created to promote tourism, but the tourists who flood this area in search of an authentic Amish meal have come to expect it, so it’s become common enough for us, too. And it fits, here, because Hannah is an entire smorgasbord of flavors, scents and tastes.
The tangy musk of her center sends a rush of heat through me. I inhale her, again and again, until she wriggles and protests, but with laughter. Her giggles turn breathless when I slide my tongue along her savory folds to find the tight, sweet knot of her pleasure. I close my eyes, drinking her in. The sweets, the sours, everything about her in this moment. My own body tenses, clutching at nothing. On the bed, I grind my pelvis against the plain white sheets as I kiss between her legs, again and again.
Hannah opens for me like a flower that follows the sun. And I’m the bee, sipping at her nectar. She floods my tongue with it. Sweet, slippery fluid drips down her thighs and covers my mouth and chin; I cannot get enough. I lap in slow, steady strokes of my tongue. That little bead of flesh swells between my lips. My tongue dips a little lower, pushing inside. Hannah shudders, but muffles her cry with a pillow over her face. I replace my tongue with three fingers, sliding deep inside her.
The first time we did this, I could only slip a single finger inside her, but time has passed. I don’t think about the reasons why her body can accommodate me better, now. To think of that in this moment would make this wrong, and I won’t believe it is. No matter what anyone might say, no matter if getting caught means we will be shamed and shunned. What Hannah and I do now is not wrong. It is the best and most pure expression of love I have ever known.
Against the bed, I grind, grind, grind. It’s different than how I do it at home when I’m alone. There, I use my fingers to slide between my thighs and find my own pleasure spot. Here, with Hannah, my body wants to move and thrust in time with what I’m doing to her with my mouth and fingers. In my mind, with her, I am complete down there instead of feeling as though this emptiness inside me is echoed by my real and literal opening. With Hannah, I feel more like the person I know I am than any other time, and so I groan into her sweet, hot flesh as I push myself against the bed and imagine what it would be like to push inside her. Not with my fingers, but the way a man would.
The rush of desire takes my breath away. I can’t think beyond it. Everything inside me focuses on this, the rising wave of pleasure that builds like a storm. The thunder will crash, the lightning will strike. But first, I want to make Hannah shake and cry out. I want to feel her body clutching the invasion of my fingers. I want that sweet little knot to pulse beneath my tongue. I want her to break apart underneath me. I want us both to shatter, together.
I slide my fingers faster. Twisting. I ease off the pressure of my tongue and lips so I can sip at her honey. Tasting Hannah truly is all the sweets, all the sours. She is tangy and musky and different than the way I taste and smell the times I have lifted my fingertips to my nose after touching myself. I would know her by this scent. By the flavor. In a dark room, with a hundred strangers, I would know Hannah by the in-out hush of her breath.
Her body tenses. Her hips rock. She’s begun to make those tiny, mewling and desperate sounds in the back of her throat, muffled by the pillow on her face, but I can still hear them. The sharp intake of her breath. The low moan. The sound of her ecstasy pushes me to grind harder against the mattress. I am almost there. So close my body trembles. My rear cheeks clench. My toes are curling. I can’t focus on her, not this close to going over the edge myself, so I slow my urgent thrusting.
I want to be able to remember
every twitch and clutch of muscles. Every sound she makes. Every second of this has to stay with me forever, because I know this is going to be the last time.
A harsher, guttural groan slips out of her. Hannah claps a hand to the back of my head, holding my mouth against her as she writhes. Her sweet and sticky slipperiness floods my tongue. I can’t breathe; I can only breathe. She has never moved this fiercely beneath me before. I almost can’t hold onto her. I definitely can no longer hold back, myself. As Hannah gives one last hard thrust upward against my mouth, her body tightens around my fingers. Everything inside her bears down. Clench, release, rapid squeezes. I thrust against the mattress. I shake. I cry out into her fragrant deliciousness and spill over into my own final writhing desire.
In the aftermath, I want to fall onto the bed next to her and sleep, but we don’t have that luxury. The baby is already stirring. We’ve nearly woken him. Hannah leans over the cradle to check, but so far he’s settled back into dreams. She looks at me over her shoulder.
“I need to get dressed. You, too. Hurry.”
I don’t move, not at first. Then I sit to pull my knees to the side so I can lean close to her. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Not yet.”
“Mary, I have to,” Hannah mutters. She’s back to not looking at me.
I flinch at the sound of that name. When I am away from here, when I’ve cut my hair and started dressing in men’s clothes, I’m going to choose a brand new name. I don’t know what it will be, yet. But it will be new the way I will be new.
“Another moment, bitte,” I say. Please.
She doesn’t protest when I slide up to her back and press my chin into the curve of her shoulder. My arms go around her to cup her breasts. She sighs and twists to face me as we lay back on the bed. When she pulls my head down to her nipple, I close my eyes and take it in my mouth. After a moment, there is a new flavor. Hot and sweet. If I could lay here forever, both of us naked, if I could live with Hannah this way always, she could nourish me. I would take care of her better than her husband does. He provides for her and for their son, but I would love her better. I already do.