With This Ring, I Thee Bed

by Alison Tyler

  “No, you don’t,” he said. He shifted, moved on top of me, taking his weight on his elbows, and looked me deep in the eyes. His expression was dark and so unbearably handsome that I melted as certain parts of me hardened to the point of aching. He started to undo my shirt, teasingly slowly pushing aside the fabric and kissing my nipples one by one, his tongue swirling around the nubs and his chin scratchy and delicious on my chest. “I’ve loved you all my life.” The vibration of his voice, mixed with the cool teasing tongue, was wonderful torture.

  “Not—” I managed to gasp “—when I spilled milk over your painting.”

  He laughed, a chuckle against my chest, which I felt all the way down to my balls; I fumbled with his jogging bottoms, pushing them down as far I could, reaching for the warm, lightly furred skin of his thighs. “No, not that morning,” he said, kissing me in small dipping motions, like sexual push-ups, each one bringing his erection into contact with mine, but frustratingly, through too many layers of fabric. “But it seems like every moment since. I love this—” he kissed my mouth “—and this—” my chin. “And this particularly.” The hollow of my throat.

  “Mark…” I gasped. “Please.” My hand slid between us, seeking his cock. If he was going to torture me, at least I could do the same. But he caught my wrist and brought my hand up to his mouth and kissed my palm, in the way that drove me wild, teasing his tongue around and around, then drawing my fingers into his mouth with such prurient and obvious pleasure and innuendo, while never taking his eyes from mine, that I wanted that moment to freeze forever, just to see him look at me that way for the rest of my life.

  We undressed each other, slowly and sensually. He was surprisingly gentle and deliberate. He punctuated each movement, each garment removed with a reward: a touch, a kiss. Every reward was graceful: light to begin with, then deepening in pressure. I closed my eyes and let him take the lead, because despite the fact that we were horizontal, the treacle-slowness of his motions against me, the patient viscosity of every movement, it all felt like a dance, a slow endlessly cyclic dance where our legs and arms could tangle with each others’ and never make a false move. I pushed my hips against him, seeking some relief, but somehow he kept his lower body out of my range until he pulled my trousers from my legs.

  Even then he had no mercy. I lay entirely at his whim, no longer able—no longer even wanting to seek him out. I felt like a banquet laid out for his tasting, and all I wanted to do was please him. He dropped his head to my stomach, tickling the hairs there with his nose and tongue. The delicate sensation seemed to set fire to everything below it, and the entire area from my knees to my waist felt electrified, and in some way separate from me. If I’d been able to float above and look at us on the bed, I had a mad, fanciful idea that I’d see sparks flying from me, enough to light the room.

  Finally naked and looking deep into my eyes, he took my cock in his hand, waited until I’d done the same to him, and we began our mutual, blissful climb. Each stroke of our hands taking one more step up a dizzying ladder of pleasure. Every now and then, his long fingers would graze gently against my balls, causing me to gasp and thrust hard into his hand. I lost myself in his hands and mouth, his hard shaft warm and pulsing in my palm, endless kisses, our bodies turning slick with sweat. Finally, I cried out as the pressure turned to heat that spasmed through every inch of me, and all I could do was let the tide of sensation pulse in his hand.

  Gradually the tide ebbed; my hand was damp with his come and I opened my eyes to find him smiling like a huge smug cat. I grabbed a sleepy kiss and he pulled me into his arms, then kissed my temple, as his fingers circled the back of my neck. “This is how I planned to ask you,” he said. “Not in the restaurant—I meant to do it later when we came home, but the others found out, made it impossible not to ask. But this is where it should have happened. With nothing between us, no table, no friends.”

  “No clothes,” I said, chuckling.

  “That’s a bonus. So are you ready for the question?”

  I nodded; I had a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t have spoken for anything.

  “James Alexander Mitchell, I love you, and I always have, I always will. So tell me, this time just for my ears—will you marry me?”

  I swallowed, feeling for a moment like that little boy who had seen his new friend smile at chicken sandwiches, and said, “Yes. I will. I meant it then, and I mean it now. I will marry you. Tomorrow.”

  He kissed my forehead, and I felt him exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath. I was asleep in moments and, when I woke, late into the night, he’d gone. On the bedside table was a little box, with a simple gold ring in it.

  As I sit on the edge of our bed, my heart is beating like a drum; now the morning is well advanced, the house is full of drama. The doorbell rings constantly, and I’ve had to hide for a moment as our extended family and lifelong friends gather to help me get ready for what they say will be the most important day of our lives. I can hardly believe it myself, that after all these years we have come to this moment, a moment I thought would never happen in our lifetime.

  It’s time, and I stand ready to open the door and go and greet my friends and family. But I pause just a moment, sitting and looking at the gold ring he left me; it warms in my hand the way I always do in his. It’s like him. Solid. Constant, enduring.

  It’s too big for my finger, but then, it’s not for me. It’s for me to give back to him. And I will.

  A Vow for a Vow

  P. S. Haven

  A new guy started at work about a couple of months ago. Derrick. Young guy. Fresh out of college. Athletic. But not a jock.

  I watched him every day. He didn’t know it. Or at least he pretended he didn’t. From my cubicle I had a direct line of sight to the copier, the copier Derrick managed to jam at least twice a week. And every time he jammed the copier, he would open the doors and pull out the tray and then stand there and stare at the thing without a clue. The doors came up to his waist and he’d stand just inside them, so that someone could theoretically be on her knees in front of him and no one would be the wiser.

  He certainly wasn’t the only guy in the office I found attractive. He wasn’t even the most attractive, really. But there was something about him. I didn’t quite know what. Maybe it was the fact that he was obviously attracted to me. When we were introduced, he’d been damn near paralyzed by my cleavage. Or maybe it was his youth. Maybe it was that lean torso of his that I just knew was ridged with tight muscles under that button-down shirt. Or maybe it was how nervous he always seemed in the office, still not quite accustomed to the world of grown-ups and eight-to-five workdays and paper jams. Or maybe it was his hands, running through his hair as he stressed so hard. Big hands. Tanned hands. Weathered past their years, as if they’d known a farm tool or two. Maybe it was how pitifully lost he seemed, here in Metropolis, as it were. Overwhelmed by it all. Bright lights, big titties.

  Derrick jammed the copier again today. And just like every other time, I finally got up and walked over and cleared it for him. Like every time, he thanked me and laughed that embarrassed, “aw shucks” laugh of his. Right then and there I decided that today was the day.

  I could feel him staring as I bent at the waist to push the paper tray back in place. I knew he could see the triangular impression of my thong imprinted on my too-tight skirt. I had bought them just for him, those panties. Panties I would have never bought for Stan. Tiny panties. Just for Derrick.

  I asked him if he liked them. He didn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to. He scanned the office and told me to get on my knees. This I had expected. I lowered myself to one knee, hidden completely between the open copier doors. I had undone the top two buttons of my blouse the moment I’d heard the crinkling paper, and now Derrick was gazing down into the deep canyon of cleavage formed by the pushup bra I’d bought for him. My newfound confidence lent my hands a dexterity they hadn’t always possessed; his belt, button, zipper, tucked-in shirt, underwear po
sing no obstacle. His erection was insistent and throbbing between my lips. He was mouthwatering. I sucked it, but just barely. I was not going to give him this blow job. If he wanted it, he was going to have to take it from me.

  I watched him for a moment, his eyes darting frantically around the office, then down at me, then around the office again. I wondered what he was more afraid of, getting busted or crushing the high school sweetheart he was still charity-dating. Whatever it was, it evaporated and he thrust his hips, sank his cock all the way in. He forgot all about his girlfriend and our coworkers. They were all at lunch, anyhow. Well, most of them.

  I had to remind myself to breathe. Before I could pretend to resist, he was fucking my face. In. Out. In, in. Out. He told me this is what he’d wanted all along. What he’d been waiting for. I wanted to tell him I knew, but he wouldn’t take his cock out of my mouth long enough to allow it. My name tumbled out of his mouth in an endless whispered chant in that deep, ragged voice of his. He told me over and over again how good it felt, how good I was, how hard he was, how ready to come I was making him.

  He reached down and took the lapels of my blouse and gave a swift tug, the buttons popping off in series like a string of firecrackers. I unfastened my bra just in time for his shaft to smack wetly between the soft mounds of my breasts. He clasped each in a big hand, smashed them together tightly and forced his cock through the snug tunnel they formed, fucking my tits. I watched, focusing on the glossy head as it crested and then disappeared into my cleavage. Finally I caught it between my lips and began to suck again.

  He nearly collapsed, bracing himself against the copier, the heels of his palms banging against the controls and prompting a steady march of crisp white papers to issue forth. He was ready. I was ready, too. Ready for him to come. Come in my mouth. And the thought of that made me feel so fucking dirty. I was going to let him come in my mouth. The words echoed in my head, the mantra: Come in my mouth. His come in my mouth. Come in my mouth. And he tangled those farmer’s hands in my hair and did exactly that.

  I prairie-dogged up over the copier doors and looked around to see if anyone was watching, half hoping they were. I felt a little bit high. Almost giddy. Derrick staggered away, drunk on endorphins, stuffing his shirttail in. I stood, wobbly on the heels I had worn for him. I sauntered back to my cubicle, slowly, smiling, savoring.

  Two down, three to go, I said to myself.

  I had been an adulterer for less than a month, and I liked it.

  Stan was eighteen when he told me he loved me. I was nineteen, and it took me two weeks to say “I love you” back. We were each other’s first lovers, and through eight years of dating and twelve years of marriage we were each other’s only lovers, or so I thought. I know Stan’s brother teased him mercilessly about the fact that he’d been with only one woman, but I felt it was just punishment for talking to his brother about our sex life in the first place. Besides, it was a fact I was fiercely proud of.

  I saw Stan’s cock for the first time on the one-month anniversary of our first date. I gave him a blow job on his great-aunt’s love seat while the rest of his family sang “Happy Birthday” to his grandma in the kitchen. He didn’t want it at first. Tried to shoo me off. Said he was scared we’d get caught. But I did it anyhow. Of course he’d wanted more later that night. So much more. But I made him wait. And he did, patiently. And for the next two decades his patience was rewarded.

  But this isn’t about my first cock. It’s about the cocks that came after. I went twenty years before my second cock. Derrick was my third cock ever. And the easiest yet. With Derrick, the only real hurdles had been logistical ones. Determining the right place, the best time. But with Stan there had been the same time and place issues, only magnified. We were both still living at home with our parents, and I had a fairly brutal curfew even at nineteen years old. Our only real time alone was spent in my bedroom with the door mandatorily open and my father doing the crossword in bed just down the hall, my mother snoring beside him. Even at Stan’s grandma’s birthday party, the problems of time and place seemed totally trivial next to my daddy and my own fear and guilt and insecurity and the promise I’d made to Amber Randall in eighth grade that we’d both wait until we were married to our respective Mr. Rights before we ever did anything remotely sexual.

  The second cock was even harder. In a lot of ways the second cock was more like my first than my first was. The first cock was all but a forgone conclusion. I had always known there would be a first cock. And then I had known it would be Stan’s. It was inevitable. But I had expected never to see the second cock, and was perfectly happy with that. Proud of that. Protective of it. The second cock was a complete and utter surprise. The second cock was the start of all this. And that second one posed a lot of the same problems Stan’s had. Even if I was no longer scared of my daddy finding out, all my feelings of fear and guilt and insecurity were still there, only now they were ten times worse. As bad as the fear was (I was scared to death that I would slip up and leave a clue), and bad as the guilt was (on more than one occasion I came within a bitten tongue of blurting out a tearful confession), the worst of it all was the insecurity. In my entire life I’d performed fellatio for exactly one man. And he loved it. He thanked God for it every time. But conversely, he had received fellatio from exactly one woman. He had nothing to compare it to. Maybe I was decidedly mediocre. Maybe I was workmanlike at best. I rarely did it anymore, so what if I was out of practice? Maybe the second cock wouldn’t be quite as impressed as Stan was. Perhaps the second cock had been serviced by many women with far more talent than me. But before I sucked that second cock, I promised myself that what I possibly lacked in skill I would more than make up for in enthusiasm.

  The second cock belonged to a complete stranger. I still don’t know his name. He was from out of state, so I’ll probably never see him again. Which is good, and sad, too, because he was sweet. He wasn’t even mad that I rear-ended his car. It was some kind of classic, too. The kind that guys like him freak out over. Blue, lots of chrome, a little too loud. He called it something with a bunch of letters and numbers. A GT-something or other.

  It was late, close to midnight, and I was on my way back from my sister’s apartment, playing midwife to her wiener dog, which was having pups for the third time in two years. The car guy and I had been sitting at a light that steadfastly refused to turn green, despite our combined efforts to convince it otherwise by periodically creeping farther into the intersection. And on one of those creeps, my phone rang. And I reached for it. And I nudged up against the back bumper of that blue GT-whatever. It wasn’t a hard hit. Not at all. In fact, we could barely find the scuff mark it had left. But I was rattled.

  Mr. GT circled his car and knelt to examine the chrome bumper, gravel crunching under his boots. He had stubble the color of concrete and wore those kind of jeans. You know the kind. Like they’d been faded by a couple summers of sun and sweat and asphalt and oil. Like the only time they left his body was when they’d fall from him into a pile at the edge of his bed, where they’d stay while he slept in the nude, slept through his alarm, and woke up in a rush and pulled them back on again.

  I offered my insurance information, but Mr. GT promised me it was no big deal. He said he could buff it out, said it was nothing to get excited about. But even if his bumper wasn’t, those jeans were.

  My stupid phone rang again. I answered, ready to explain to Stan where I’d been, what I was doing out so late, what had just happened. Before I could begin, he was doing the same, giving me some story about the alarm system at work and promising he’d be home no later than an hour from now and hanging up before I could hear if he was still at the strip club or already back at the motel.

  I was shaking, as much from my anger at Stan now as my anger at myself for hitting this poor man’s car. And the poor man stepped to me and held me by my shoulders and fixed my eyes with his own blue ones and promised me it would be okay.

  I didn’t even know how to ho
ld his cock at first. I had only held Stan’s, and had never given it much thought, really. But Mr. GT’s cock was different. The way I was laying across the passenger seat of his car, body curled around the stick shift, forced me to try a couple different grips before he finally lost patience with me and pushed my head down. And for the first time in my life, I was sucking a cock other than my husband’s.

  I don’t know if I assumed all cocks were the same or simply never thought about it. But GT’s cock was nothing like Stan’s. It was bigger. A lot bigger. Longer. Thicker. Which excited me and frustrated me at the same time. I couldn’t get as much of it in my mouth as I could Stan’s. But it was hard, straining up from his lap as if trying to push further through my lips, and I swelled with pride at the thought of making this big cock hard, as if bigger cocks took more talent to get erect or something.

  The head moved into my throat every time, choking me, making my eyes well up. I covered this by pulling free every few strokes and gasping to him how much I loved it, how good he tasted, just like I’d seen the girls on Stan’s tapes do. Hoping it would make me seem like a pro, like a woman who knew what to do with a cock, not a pretender obsessing over the details: Was I using enough tongue? Was I moaning loud enough? Should I stick my ass out? Like the first-timer I was, I cared.

  GT told me he was going to fuck me in the ass. Eye for an eye, he said. I’d rear-ended him, now it was his turn. I simply crawled into the tiny backseat and waited for him on all fours. He coiled his body through the seat backs and unfolded himself behind me. I heard the tinkling of his belt buckle, and then, almost before I realized it, he had jerked my pants around my thighs.

  He stopped for a minute just to look, and even though I still had most of my clothes on, I felt as exposed as I ever had. It doesn’t get much more naked than knowing someone is staring at your asshole. I spread my legs, spread my ass, showed him more. And he liked it.