by Sandy Lowe
“Open your legs.”
Again, I obey. I feel her fingers move across my abdomen and then dip lower. I’ve been turned on since I saw her standing at the end of the row, and it’s only gotten worse.
She smiles at me, then steps back. I have a moment of panic that this is all a giant tease. A cruel tease that will leave me edgy and distracted for days.
She grabs a chair and positions it where she was just standing. She sits down and scoots toward me. “Move a little closer to the edge.”
I suddenly understand what she’s about to do and I have a moment of a completely different kind of panic. We’re in the library. It’s public and brightly lit and someone could walk by at any moment. I don’t even know what code of conduct we’d be violating, but I’m sure it’s a pretty big one.
And yet. The panic is no match for how badly I want this, want her. I do what she says.
“Rest your feet on my thighs.”
Doing so lifts my knees and pushes my legs farther apart. Instead of feeling exposed, I feel…emboldened. I want her to touch me more than I think I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
She slides my dress up and leans forward. I hold my breath. She looks up and locks eyes with me. I nod ever so slightly. I can’t believe I’m about to do this. She smiles and returns her attention to my open thighs. She presses her tongue gently against my clit, and I shudder. The air spills out of my lungs unevenly.
Her arms move around me and she works her hands under my ass, not lifting me off the table, but holding me in place. She starts a slow rhythm with her tongue, even strokes from the tip of my clit to the opening of my pussy. Each time her mouth slides down, she goes a tiny bit farther, until she is pushing her tongue into me. She clearly knows what she’s doing.
I hear something and flinch. My eyes fly open. I look around, but it’s only us. She stops and looks up at me.
“Sorry,” I say, breathless with both fear and excitement. “Please don’t stop.”
I feel her grip on my ass tighten. Her tongue resumes its languid strokes.
I start to move with her, slow undulations that let me relish the way her fingers dig into me as well as the movement of her mouth. Just when I’m really getting into the rhythm, she shifts her tongue and quickens the pace. Her slow strokes become circles around my clit. Without touching the tip, she swirls around and around, working me into a frenzy.
I grasp the edge of the table, trying to maintain some kind of control. When she shifts her focus again, flicking her tongue back and forth right over my most sensitive spot, I stop trying. The slow thrust of my hips becomes a vibration. It’s a frenetic race to the edge and I can’t stop myself from tumbling over.
When the orgasm crashes over me, I’m not sure how I manage not to scream.
Before I have a chance to come down, to catch my breath, she stands up. I need to put myself together, to say something, but she doesn’t give me the chance.
In an instant, her fingers are where her tongue just was. But instead of touching my clit, which honest to God I don’t think I could take at this point, she slides them up and down either side of my pussy. Despite having just come, suddenly I want nothing more than to have her inside me.
I force my eyes open and find her looking at me. Her face is intent, but her eyes are questioning. She is in control of this whole thing but she needs to know it is what I want.
“Yes.”
She slides one finger into me, then a second. Holy fuck. She feels absolutely incredible. I clench around her, trying to pull her in deeper.
Her movements are slow and smooth. I realize she’s not fucking me to make me come, she’s fucking me to make me want to. It’s working. I’m completely turned on again and it takes all my willpower to keep my hips slow.
I open my eyes so I can look at her. She’s staring at me, and the look on her face is one of intense concentration. There’s satisfaction too, like nothing pleases her more than having this effect on me.
“More.”
She smiles at my request. It’s a smug smile, sexy as fuck. On her next thrust, she adds a third finger. I groan.
“Shh.”
I remember where we are and bite my lip in an attempt to remain quiet. She starts fucking me in earnest now. She pushes her fingers in so deep I can feel the pressure of her knuckles against my pelvic bone. I rock back and forth against her, desperate to come and desperate not to.
She turns her hand slightly and brushes her thumb up to my clit. Oh, God. Oh, yes. No one has ever touched me like this before. Each thrust is paired with an easy upward stroke. It’s exquisite. It’s excruciating.
The pressure that has been building starts to erupt. The quivering in my core pulses outward. Every nerve ending in my body sparks alive. Even then, there aren’t enough places for the pleasure to go. It ricochets through me again and again.
Eventually, I start to come down. My muscles continue to tremble and my bones feel weak. I realize her free arm is around me. Whether it was to hold me steady or something more tender, I can’t be sure.
She eases back, carefully pulling her hand away. “I’ve been wanting to do that too.”
I blink at her, trying to pull together some semblance of a response. “I…”
Nothing else comes out.
“You’re beautiful,” she says, “and even sexier than I thought.”
“Can I…”
She cuts me off with a kiss, then turns away. She tucks her laptop into her bag, picks it up. She comes back to where I’m sitting and kisses me again. “Maybe next time.”
I watch as she saunters through the stacks and disappears from view. I realize suddenly that I’m still sitting on the table with my dress bunched up. I tug the hem down and move to a chair, trying to catch my breath. I can still feel her mouth on me, her fingers inside me.
I look around. Another girl from our class has emerged from one of the rows. She gives me a knowing smile. Was she there the whole time? Did she see what just happened? Or is it simply because we’re both here, clearly scrambling the night before the paper is due? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. She disappears down another row of shelves and I turn my attention back to my work.
It isn’t easy. The pleasant ache between my thighs is a persistent reminder of what just happened. And while part of me is sated, her offhand comment has me thinking—hoping—it might happen again. I flip open the book that started everything and find the chapter I need. It’s going to be a long night.
That’s Confidence
Robin Watergrove
I’ve made exactly one friend in college. That’s all I had in high school too, and you know what? It’s working for me. Her name is Julie. We bonded over our anxieties about shared bathrooms.
She’s been invited to a house party and wants me to come along. Someone was griping about how gross the dorms are during the sorority rush, someone else suggested a chill night, no hazing, no competition, no drinking, no drugs, at a friend’s house in the suburbs, and it snowballed from there.
“I wasn’t invited,” I try, weakly.
“Don’t make me beg.”
“Why are you even going? Do you want to go?”
“Yeah.” Julie shrugs. “It’s the first party I’ve been invited to that’s not all about drugs and alcohol. Might be cool.” She doesn’t have to work too hard to talk me into it.
I part my hair a little farther to the side so it sweeps over my forehead like a wave. It falls into my face every time I look down. And I mostly look down. I look at my shoes when I walk, I look at my hands in my lap on the bus ride to the house, I look at the doormat while we’re waiting for someone to come to the door.
No one comes. We open the door a few inches and hear voices inside. We enter slowly, looking around like we’re timidly robbing the place, and see a group of girls down the hall, in the living room.
I see her profile first. She has long, straight brown hair. I’m immediately self-conscious of my own trying-too-hard hairstyle. The
group laughs and she smiles. It’s a small gesture, and a big statement. She doesn’t use her face to perform for others. It shows what she feels. Period. I’m staring down the hall at this girl when Julie elbows me.
“Take your shoes off.” She points to the pile of Converse and boots by the door.
I’m already intimidated. I bend down to untie my shoes, and my chest feels tight. This’ll be a fun evening.
Julie heads straight for the living room. I avoid the living room and everyone in it. I lurk in the kitchen and take way too long putting together a plate of chips and weird little pickles. The problem with social anxiety is once you flinch, you can’t stop flinching. Like some gifted Pavlovian dog, I teach my body how to respond, first try. I look through the arched doorway at the back of her head, and intimidation shocks through me again.
I’m like the people in those videos about weird fears, who need extensive immersion therapy just to stand in an elevator or look at a picture of a spider. That’s me, but with hot girls.
Put me next to a hot girl and I’m all shivers and stutters. Anyone who’s quiet and confident. Girls with no makeup and unfussy hair, who wear loose pants and T-shirts. Everyone talks about being hot for “bad girls,” and that’s what a bad girl looks like.
Bad girls are pretty understated. If she’s got big spiky hair or intense makeup or a bunch of rings in her nose, she’s like a peacock and porcupine in one. She wants you to be impressed but keep your distance. Bad girls want you to get closer. There was this one girl in high school who sat across from me in art class. She used to wait for me to look up, then she’d hold my eyes for as long as I’d let her. I never talked to her, but I fantasized about fucking her.
I’ve only slept with guys. Two guys, one who liked to use two condoms and ask me if I was feeling good every twenty seconds, and one who always wanted to fuck face-to-face because he “didn’t want to be disrespectful.” They never grabbed me or held me down and I never asked for it. But when I dreamt about art class girl, she always had both of my wrists held tight over my head. She’d bury her fingers in my pussy and smirk when I gasped.
It’s hard to look your wants in the eye, but when you spend a lot more time wanting than getting, you have to face facts eventually. I want to fuck a girl. Specifically, I want to get fucked by one who really, really wants to fuck me. I want a girl who knows what she’s doing and doesn’t ask for permission to do it. I want a bad girl.
I told Julie one night. We were talking about goals, and I said I wanted to sleep with a girl before I graduated. She said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You’re hot shit.” I hope she’s right. I’m an optimist, but I’m also a human statue around beautiful girls, and it’s hard to fuck a statue.
I’m standing by the kitchen counter, trying to figure out how many hours I can be around this human kryptonite when a tiny, muffled part of my brain speaks up. Don’t be ridiculous. Why do you make things so hard? Go talk to her. My stomach knots itself up at the idea.
I eat chips nervously, look down, and brush my hair out of my eyes. What do you have to lose? Go ahead, embarrass yourself. Baby steps.
I have so much to lose, says a stronger voice in my head, I have everything to lose. I can make myself look like a complete idiot in front of everyone here. I was not even invited to this party.
Fate makes the choice for me. Everyone in the living room starts to wander into the kitchen. Hot Girl comes in and I keep my head down. She has a sexy voice and a soft laugh. I look her over when her back is turned. Cut-up T-shirt over a tank top, cargo shorts, no socks. She’s got a smattering of cryptic little tattoos on her arms. My heart is beating in my throat. I need to get out of there.
I go to the bathroom by the front door and wash my hands twice to kill time. Then I scratch the family dog behind the ears and pretend I’m not at a party at all.
Frustration is a perfect partner to intimidation. They snare on each other like razor wire. Scream all you want, I tell the tiny voice that wants me to make a move already, I’m doing my best. And my best tonight is just petting this dog.
The dog wants to go out, so I follow him into the backyard. I hear them before I see them: a bunch of voices, giggling and talking with words that are basically giggles. I look to the left and see a hot tub full of girls in their bras.
Before I can shrink back inside, someone hits my shoulder. “You coming?”
I turn around. It’s Hot Girl. I flinch. Even tiny, frustrated voice is speechless. I say the only word in my head. “What?”
“To the hot tub.” She smiles at me and I bite my lip. Not in a cute way, more like someone just clocked me in the jaw. Hot Girl walks past me and I follow her like I’m attached by a string. I leave the dog and the open door and follow her. I don’t know how to explain that. I don’t know why I follow her.
Hot Girl unzips her shorts and drops them. She’s wearing boxers. Tiny, frustrated voice is amused. Of course she is, it wheedles me, are you sure this isn’t a wet dream? Hot Girl sheds her T-shirt to reveal a skintight tank top, no bra. Someone in the hot tub wolf-whistles and everyone giggles.
A blonde in the tub looks over her shoulder at me and says, “Get in!”
Now it’s a wet dream, the voice decides. Or a nightmare, I counter. I start taking off my clothes as fast as I can without seeming frantic. Thankfully, no one whistles at me when I get in.
I’m shivering like it’s freezing cold even though the water is warm. I’m right next to Hot Girl. We’re not touching but we’re way, way too close. My mild panic blossoms into an all-consuming panic when I realize what they’re talking about. A girl with bright red lipstick starts, “Well, my most embarrassing sexual experience was, like…last week.” More giggles.
They work around the circle; about half the stories are about sex with girls. I’m half listening, half scrambling for a story to share. I have a lot of material, but it’s all too earnest, too deeply uncool. Stories of two people who didn’t know what they were doing. Nothing like the “I accidentally had a threesome with my computer science TA” story that has everyone rapt right now.
The girl two seats down from me, the one sitting on the other side of Hot Girl, clears her throat. I look past Hot Girl at her. My eyes magnetize themselves back to Hot Girl and I take in her profile again. I’m pretty sure no one’s watching and my head is pointing in the right direction and I can’t help it. My gaze slides down off her face. Strong shoulders, pale chest. I can see her dark nipples through her shirt. They’re just below the water line, halfway between soft and peaked. I want them in my mouth.
You could make a bad girl moan, tiny voice muses. Put your hands under her shirt. Stroke her stomach, kiss her neck. Go on, bring her to her knees.
Suddenly, Hot Girl just turns her head and looks back at me. My whole body jolts. I snap my gaze past her and back to the storyteller. Can you do that? Can you just turn around and stare at someone? I feel like she’s breaking a fundamental rule. She’s still staring.
I wait a moment longer, my face now burning from the embarrassment of being caught, then look back at her. The cringe of embarrassment is closely related to the hot, defensive flare of wounded pride. Something in me prickles and I stare her down.
Everyone in the tub groans. Hot Girl and I both look toward the group.
“No, really!” Storyteller is saying. “You wouldn’t believe how bad it was. She kept screaming and saying ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ when she obviously wasn’t.” The group breaks up in a handful of quieter conversations. It seems like the embarrassing story circle is done.
Hot Girl’s not talking to anyone and neither am I. Too bad the only thing I can think to say is, “What about you?”
She turns to me with raised eyebrows. “What?”
My stomach turns itself inside out. I speak again only because she is expecting me to, not because I want to say, “What’s your embarrassing story?”
She laughs once, looks down, and shrugs. “I don’t know.” Then she sm
iles at me and I flinch. “I’m not sure. It’s all kind of embarrassing. You know what I mean? Sex is clumsy.” She laughs again with her eyes down and I laugh too.
It’s like someone has snipped a cable inside me. In a flash, the binding anxiety is gone. She seems a little nervous too.
I breathe in, feeling like I’ve finally come up for air. Then she looks up and her eyes show something I’m not expecting. They’re sharp and hot. Eyes that know what they want. They’re so direct that I feel like time stutters around me. She’s not nervous. Is she playing with me? Panic rushes in again.
“What about you?” she says.
I scoff, playing calm while my mind whirls. “I have to tell you one and you don’t have to tell me one? That’s not fair.”
Unfazed, she says, “You go first.” Her voice lilts a little when she adds, “Then I’ll feel less nervous.”
She smiles. She’s flirting. I blink. She’s flirting with me. A thrill shocks up my insides. Come on—tiny voice is growing louder—say something flirty back.
I don’t flinch when I lie, “Well, the first time I hooked up with a girl, that was pretty embarrassing.”
She says, “Oh yeah?” and her lips curl. She looks amused, maybe interested.
“Yeah.”
Another group of girls gets in the tub. Hot Girl scoots closer to me to make room for them. Her thigh brushes mine and our knees come to rest together. She says, “Tell me about it.”
I stitch together three different mediocre sex stories into one passably bad one like a fucking magician. “Well, she was hot, but she couldn’t kiss at all. She just stuck her tongue out and I had to kiss around it. And that was fine for a while, but then it was just way, way too much saliva.”
Hot Girl laughs. “I’ve been there.”
I laugh too and mumble, “So I was just like, ‘Go down on me already.’”
Now Hot Girl cracks up. She scoots closer to me again. The tub is too full and kind of loud. She tips her head toward me.