The Cougar Book

by Jolie Du Prè

  She lived by herself. No pets, no plants, no evidence of any live entities to which she was responsible for other than herself. I hardly said a word as she drove us from the bar to her house that night, and she let me sit in silence, a quiet, serene smile on her face as her wrist rested casually on the top of the steering wheel, her eyes settled on the road in front of us.

  After she led me inside, she threw her jacket over the back of a dining room chair, turned, and offered me her hand. “Nicolette,” she said simply, her lips opening in a smile. “You can call me Cole.”

  Her smile seemed to be knowing, sly, rather Cheshire Cat-ish, and I couldn’t imagine of what secret she was in possession. She was gorgeous: striking peach complexion, tall graceful figure, blond hair cut in a way that seemed to invite pieces of it to fall sexily in front of one eye. I had wondered then how old she was. I didn’t know yet that she was forty—and I never would have from her appearance.

  “I’m Zack,” I said, immediately disgusted by how weak my voice sounded. But her smile didn’t waver. I glanced around me. In the bathroom down the hall I saw a corset and several pairs of stockings hanging from the shower rod. She saw me looking.

  “I collect lingerie,” she explained, moving in front of me to the kitchen.

  “Lingerie. That’s interesting.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you think so. Some of it requires hand washing, which is why it’s in there. Would you like some tea?”

  Tea? It didn’t seem to fit the occasion. She reached into a cupboard toward a high shelf and glanced back at me. Her thin sweater slipped a bit over her shoulder and displayed a slender black strap.

  I nodded and moved back into the dining room, suddenly so nervous that I didn’t even want to be around her. Much as this situation could lead to something I certainly wanted, I was so scared right then that I just wanted to be somewhere else. I would have preferred by multitudes to be home in my boxers playing video games.

  I heard her shriek and stepped back into the kitchen.

  “Shit,” she said, looking down at her shirt. Water had bounced off the side of the tea kettle and splattered all over the front of her. I stared at the dark wet splotches, almost covering her breasts and splaying up to her neck.

  Christ.

  “I’m going to have to change,” she said, smiling at me as she headed toward the stairs. As she ascended I caught a glimpse of her sweater being pulled over her head and the shiny black camisole underneath it.

  If I had been a little more sure of myself, I would have followed her up to the bedroom and ripped off the rest of her clothes. Even despite my nervousness, the urge was uppermost on my mind. With a deep breath, I turned toward the door just as she reentered through it, and we almost collided. She gave me a glittering smile and moved past me to attend to the kettle.

  I tried to catch my breath.

  She’d put on a black, oversized, button-down shirt. The top two buttons were undone, and when she turned to take the kettle off the stove, the collar slid to the edge of her shoulder. There was no strap this time.

  That’s when I felt myself get hard. I wanted to walk up behind her and rip her shirt the rest of the way off, grab her tits and—

  “Sugar?” her voice cut into my fantasy.

  “Huh? Sugar. Yes.” Maddeningly, I blushed as I looked down. It was funny how I could clearly imagine what I wanted to do to her, but standing right there with the immediate opportunity to, I was scared shitless to try.

  Suddenly I noticed her little smile as she watched the white grains slide into the steaming liquid. Something that had vaguely been swirling in my consciousness solidified: she knew precisely the effect she was having on me. My eyes narrowed. Did she enjoy the way this was tormenting me?

  “Cream?” She turned what appeared to be innocent blue eyes to me again. I looked back at her, and the urge to kiss her became literally overwhelming.

  “Yes,” I said, and moved toward her before I could stop myself. I pressed my mouth to hers and felt her tongue slide against mine. I pushed her back against the counter and wrapped my arms around her waist.

  That was the end of what I initiated. She took over from there, dropping us both to the kitchen floor and straddling me as she pulled her still-buttoned shirt over her head. She was naked underneath, and the memory of that first glorious view of her full, round tits and the way she ran her fingertips over her nipples, can still make me hard. She had a condom in her jeans pocket, and she fucked me right there on the kitchen floor before any nervousness in me had time to catch up.

  I was never sacred to make a move with her again, which she later told me was her objective.

  Much as Cole was obviously in charge of our sexual encounters, and just about everything else it seemed, she loved to be dominated, and she was teaching me things I’d never even thought about rough sex.

  “Pull my hair,” she said once as we stood in her living room, her blue eyes trained on mine. I noticed again the effortless sweetness in her voice even amidst the edge of command.

  I reached up and clasped a handful, giving it a hesitant tug.

  “Pull it,” she said as she reached up and gripped my forearm, snapping it back once with a speed and brevity that surprised me.

  I swallowed. I pulled again with the same sharp, no-nonsense force I had felt her use.

  Her eyes glimmered. “Better. How do you like that?”

  She looked at me steadily. I wasn’t sure what the right answer was.

  Knowing my thoughts had become so common it was hardly surprising anymore when she said, “I’m not looking for a ‘right’ answer, Zack. I’m looking for your answer.”

  I wasn’t sure what that was either.

  “I like it because you like it,” I finally said.

  She nodded, eyes locked on mine.

  “And I like it because . . . I don’t know why,” I faltered.

  “Did it make you uncomfortable?” she asked, and somehow I knew despite her neutral countenance that if I said yes, she would never ask me to do it again.

  But it hadn’t. I mean, it had, but it hadn’t because she liked it. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing it on my own. I told her as much.

  “Appropriate.” She gave another short nod. “It wouldn’t be something you should do if you didn’t know someone liked it. There are a lot of things like that. Many of them you’ll be doing with me. How do you feel about spanking?”

  “What?” I immediately blushed at such a stupid answer. It wasn’t like I hadn’t watched porn. I knew some people were into spanking. I just hadn’t done it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems . . . violent or something. Or degrading.” Yet somehow I knew it wasn’t, knew it was different. But I wasn’t sure how, and some part of me seemed unable to reconcile it with that conception.

  Cole’s eyes glinted. “Sex,” she said, “has the potential to encompass all human experience. All the nuances, all the understood and not understood, may be experienced through sex. And that means there’s a whole realm of it we’re not going to understand. It’s beyond our common forms of understanding.” Her eyes bore into me like steel. “But it’s not beyond our experiencing.”

  After a moment she broke her gaze, and I noticed I had started breathing again. I also noticed my cock was rock-hard.

  “The key,” she said, lifting her water glass from the end table near where we stood, “is in awareness, respect, openness, authenticity. We don’t have to understand it all, as long as we are aware of ourselves. As long as we respect our partners. As long as we approach with openness what is happening between us. As long as we are authentic in our dealings, our experiences, our examinations. If something is uncomfortable, be aware of that and see what it teaches you. If it feels inauthentic, stop doing it. ”

  “That wouldn’t account for a lot of abusive situations where sex is concerned,” I countered. “Lots of people may think they’re aware of and like what they’re doing, but it hurts someone else or is even criminal
.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, setting her water glass back down. “But that means at least one of those pieces is missing.”

  I pondered that, as she didn’t appear inclined to expound. She moved toward me and caught my mouth with hers, and I caught my breath at the suddenness, at the heat zipping through me like lightning at her touch. She backed me up against the couch until I fell onto it, my hands groping her breasts. She pulled my cock out of my jeans and dropped her head, sucking with fervor, going after my cock as though she was possessed, like she was taking something from it she needed.

  With a final pump, she paused, running her tongue up the length of my shaft. Her cat-like eyes gazed up at me with a hard lust and a hint of something else glowing in them. Abruptly she stood up on the couch, towering over me as she pulled off her shirt and stepped out of her jeans. Underneath them she wore an impeccable red lingerie set, glimmering bra, thong, and garter belt with rhinestones embedded around the rims and matching stockings. I caught my breath.

  Cole didn’t need lingerie, but she sure knew how to use it.

  I was still tingling from the cock sucking she’d just given me, feeling practically euphoric but awaiting instructions. I watched her, not knowing what she was going to demand of me.

  She threw her jeans aside and stood above me on the couch, one foot planted on either side of my thighs. Her gaze rested on mine as each garter was individually undone and the garter belt, thong, and bra slid off one by one. I broke eye contact to look at her naked pussy above me, and then quickly flicked my eyes back to hers.

  “What do you want, Zack?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  What did I want? What did she mean? The question was a departure from the order I had been anticipating, and I didn’t know how to address it.

  I saw the smile in her cobalt eyes before it reflected in the curve of her lips. It was that same smile, the one I’d seen when she’d pulled up in her car outside the bar that night, the one she’d given me when she’d first told me her name, the one she’d flashed as she’d gone up to the bedroom to change out of her wet shirt. The one I never determined what lay behind, that was always the same for her but seemed to bring such a wild variety of things out of me. The one that, to this day, may still be the strongest mental image I have of her.

  “What do you want, Zack,” she repeated, a statement this time. “Why are you waiting for me to tell you what to do? Do you think that’s your job? Being told what to do, and then doing it? What do you want?”

  I swallowed. To be told what to do is what I wanted. How else would I know?

  Cole continued to stand above me, her naked pussy shimmering. “Yes, I know you feel like you don’t want that responsibility.” The smile was still in place. In a lithe movement she sank down onto me, straddling my body but not taking me inside her. She leaned forward.

  “But you have it anyway.”

  I looked at her tits, naked and easily within reach in front of me. I wanted to grab them. She was watching me. She ran her own hands lightly over her breasts, a lock of blond hair falling in front of one cat eye.

  “I’m not always going to be here to tell you what to do, Zack. Trust yourself. What you want is just as important as what anyone else wants.” She looked at me. “Do you understand?”

  I grabbed at her, shoving her hands out of the way and squeezing her tits, sitting up a little to yank her down on top of me. Indignation and embarrassment rose in me as I felt uncertain, wanting to show her for once that I knew something she didn’t. I wanted to show her I could know what to do, that I could do something on my own.

  I reached up and grabbed her hair, and she expelled a hot breath as I yanked it back and turned us over, pushing my body on top of hers. I reached for the one of the condoms from a pile on the coffee table and tore it open. When it was on, I grasped at her throat, administering a firm choke hold like she’d shown me how to do not long before. I met her eyes as I reached for her dripping pussy, hot molten liquid covering my fingers just like the heat from her eyes covered my entire body. I circled her clit like she’d taught me until she came, my body trembling almost as much as hers when I finally pulled my hand away.

  I pushed my cock into her and pounded, feeling the same way Cole had looked when she had sucked my cock moments before—like I was possessed, needing something that was inside her as I drilled into her. She screamed my name, clawing at the cushions around us. I yelled as I came, something I had never done before and panted as I collapsed on top of her.

  She was panting beneath me. As our breathing slowed, gently she reached and touched my cheek. The unexpected tenderness gave me pause. I lifted my head and met her gaze.

  Only once did we run into each other unexpectedly in public. Some friends and I had decided to stop at a coffee shop near her neighborhood on the way home from a concert. I saw her as soon as we walked in. Momentarily paralyzed, I didn’t know what to do. For some reason I felt uncomfortable mixing the two sides of my life: the Cole side and the non-Cole side. It was like they represented two different selves for me, and I didn’t know yet how to put them together.

  Concentrating on a notebook on the table in front of her, she didn’t see me as we ordered and sat at a booth on the opposite side of the cafe. Jake finally noticed my distracted state and, when he followed my eyes, recognized Nicolette immediately. Since two of the guys we were with hadn’t been there the night I’d met her, Jake enthusiastically filled them in while I sat in conspicuous silence. Suddenly everyone at the table was pushing, wondering why I wasn’t going over to see her. Comments about how hot she was intermingled with pointed urges for me to approach her. Finally I knew I’d rather go talk to her than listen to their horseshit for another second.

  She looked up at the sound of her name. I stood in front of her. She smiled slowly, and suddenly I knew she had known I was there. She looked me up and down before re-meeting my eyes.

  “Hello,” she said pleasantly, motioning toward the chair across from her. I sat. I tried like mad not to fidget nervously, but I know I failed.

  “Here by yourself?” she asked. Her eyes sparkled. She knew I wasn’t.

  I considered lying to her but decided I would be neither convincing nor comfortable with that. Instead I shook my head and said what I hoped sounded casual, “Nah, I’m with some friends.” I indicated them with a jerk of my head.

  She nodded, that maddeningly knowing smile on her face.

  “Hmmm.” She tipped her chair back and smiled wider. She was about to embark on some spiel, I could tell. Just once I wanted to tell her that I already knew what she told me, or thought it was wrong and could give a good reason why, or that I’d already tried it and it didn’t work. Each time, in fact, I braced myself to give her one of these responses, but each time she managed to convey things in a way that was so obviously true that I couldn’t try to dispel it without looking utterly stupid. I was never good with bullshit anyway. I would end up mad and glaring at her, at that knowing smile, small and subtle as if it existed just for me, and just want to smack her, and soon we would be wrapped together naked, sweating and squeezing and screaming . . .

  “Let me guess.” Her voice interrupted my thoughts just before my cock got hard. My thoughts veered from the hot to the dull as I focused my attention on her smooth monologue. “Your friends saw me and recognized me. You are in one of your serious moods, and possibly due to some ambivalent feelings of which I’m unaware, you felt uncomfortable encountering me in public when you were with your friends, whom you probably haven’t told much about me.” She winked as I glowered at her. “But they teased you and made you feel stupid for passing up the chance to come over here when it meant you’d get laid, so you came over even though you didn’t really want to.”

  I don’t know how the fuck she knew everything. I hated it that my behavior was so easy to predict. I didn’t know if it signified a weakness of mine or a strength of hers.

  “Why would you think that?” I thought my voice sounded
decently defiant, and I was proud of myself.

  She glanced down at the drink she was holding and chuckled. “I have supreme confidence, Zack, that someday you’ll learn not to let other people dictate your actions,” she said as she looked back up.

  I glared at her, and when she smiled again, I got pissed at the same time a jolt of arousal shot through me. I clenched my jaw and tried to look away, but my eyes locked on a blond wisp of her hair that fell across her cheekbone. I wanted her. Now.

  She held my gaze. In the span of a few seconds, all but the active desire to fuck her became distant priorities in my consciousness. My cock strained against the zipper of my jeans, and I wanted her to yank it out and take it in her mouth right there.

  She stood and swung her purse over her shoulder. She must have packed up her things sometime during our conversation when I wasn’t paying attention. She looked down at me.

  “Let’s go.”

  I stood up and followed her without so much as a glance back at my friends. She led me to her car in the back of the dark parking lot and opened the back door, nodding for me to get in. After I did, she climbed in after me and shut the door, reaching up front for the lock button.

  When she turned back to me she immediately grabbed my zipper and yanked it down. In seconds my cock was out in the cold night air, and her gaze rested on mine for just a second before she dropped her head and took the length of it to the back of her throat. I groaned and grabbed her hair. She started sucking hard and fast, and I was going to come if she didn’t stop soon. I pulled her hair gently, and she rose off me as I throbbed with the urge to explode.