The Cougar Book

by Jolie Du Prè

  I looked at her, breathing heavily, and she pulled a condom from her pocket. She seemed to carry them wherever she went. She watched me as she unrolled it slowly down my cock. Then she sat back on her heels for a moment and looked at me. Even in the dark I could see that smile lurking in her features. It was almost as though I could sense it by now.

  Just as I was about to say something, she moved forward, and I thought I heard a low chuckle just before she straddled me, hiking up her skirt and pulling her thong to the side. I reached up and pulled her down on top of me, pushing my hands under her shirt to her flesh. She rode me hard, moaning into my neck as I slid my hands under her bra. Then she sat up, blond locks swishing around her face as she bounced on top of me. I closed my eyes, knowing I was going to come if I looked at her. I heard her gasp, and when I opened my eyes she was working her fingers over her clit, getting herself off. I grabbed her thighs as I came then, too, shuddering as she bucked and squeezed around me.

  Cole climbed off me and reached under her skirt to reposition her thong as I grabbed a tissue from the box she conveniently kept tossed around her vehicle and took the condom off. She reached behind her for the door handle, and in seconds we were standing back in the parking lot again.

  She chuckled. “Thanks, Zack. Go on back to your friends.” That beautiful smile was on her face as she gave me a long kiss. With a wink, she opened the car door and climbed in, leaving me to pick up my thoughts where they had left off back inside at her table.

  I learned a lot from Cole. Some of it I think I haven’t even realized yet. I still think about her even though I haven’t seen her in almost a year. Once in a while my friends still mention “that hot older lady you slept with for a while.” But they don’t understand. What they do know about it is merely the surface, nothing of what was underneath, where the two of us were—and where no one else could see. I have no idea where she is now, but every time I stand outside that bar or find myself in the parking lot of that cafe, I remember her indescribable smile and how, for a time, she directed it at me. It’s hard to say whether the omniscience she exuded in my eyes was really there or whether it was the youth and naiveté in me that displayed it, in reflection, only to me. I still can’t convince myself that Nicolette wasn’t something special, someone who has that intangible ability to see inside people and know what they need. Maybe she thought I didn’t need her anymore. The emotional investment in me made it impossible to see if that was true. It seems to me everyone needs her.

  Sometimes I wonder what I meant to her life. It’s hard to imagine I had anywhere near the impact on her that she had on me, but I suppose it’s impossible to say. It’s just another one of the mysteries that, as intimately as I knew her in some ways, I will never know about Cole. By now I don’t yearn for her anymore, and it isn’t even painful, which was once hard for me to imagine. I still hold out hope that someday I’ll get to see her again. I’ve finally come to accept what somewhere inside me I’ve always known: If she wants it to happen, it will.

  Her Apolonio Smile

  Trish DeVene

  Kate had her eye on the checkout boy since she’d first seen him run across the lot. He’d been wearing a black store uniform and ran with smooth assurance from the automatic doors to his car. He stood at the back passenger door, fidgeting with something she couldn’t see. The slim young form of him had locked her throat—his narrow waist, belted pants, and the gentle slope that raised heat in her face. Then he’d run back across the lot, to the store, and she’d followed.

  Now, as she sat in the meeting room in the high-rise at 123 Hamilton, she ran her left thumb along the crease of her labia hidden by her blue pantsuit. The marketing director pulled up another pointless PowerPoint and her clit swelled under her fingers.

  She didn’t believe in love at first sight, wasn’t interested in love at all. She was forty-three, divorced five years, and in no way wanted a new relationship.

  What she did want was that boy at the supermarket.

  “Kate, we’re heading to Draco’s for lunch.” The meeting had ended and the marketing assistant just had to ask, again. “Coming?”

  Coming? Nearly, she wanted to say. The lights had come back on and she brought both hands back to the table.

  She shook her head. “Working through lunch today,” she said.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Matt roll his eyes. She was past forty and unmarried. That meant she was a lesbian or cold, hard bitch. That was their opinion and she heard it in the insinuating jokes. What she wanted to tell them was that just because she didn’t want them, didn’t mean she didn’t want men.

  “Drinks at Bon Suite after work then?”

  She couldn’t suppress the smile as she said no again. “Shopping tonight,” she said. Her underpants were soaked. Maybe they could smell it. Could men smell a woman on the prowl?

  For the past six weeks Kate kept working her way into the new checkout boy’s lines. She could paint these two suited co-workers a picture; lash their leering and disdainful eyes with what real beauty was. Beauty named Polo.

  Daniel stood in the doorway beside Matt. His hand crossed the opening. Was he daring her to duck under?

  “Did you ever see beauty so exquisite it was painful?” she asked

  His body slackened. “Maybe,” he said. The exit cleared as he fumbled to recall what beauty meant at all.

  She needed the bathroom on the 29th floor. It was hardly ever used because the tenants had moved out. Ever since seeing this boy, her memory played images of him from morning into the night. She needed constant release.

  “You got a guy stashed away somewhere, Kate?” Matt called. “Always with that Mona Lisa smile.” That’s what really bothered them. Like sperm battling their way to the egg, these two sensed her desire. Did they imagine that one day she’d admit to them her desperate need? The prudish librarian come undone?

  She wasn’t a prude. She wanted sex, not ownership, not conquest.

  She wanted Polo at the local grocery store. He was young, eighteen or nineteen at most, but the initial moments of guilt she’d felt flashed and passed when he had looked at her with those hazel-brown eyes—serious and more deadly than she’d imagined for someone so young. He was Latino, with a shine to his high cheekbones, and his full lips broke easily into an even, white smile. At the cash register, while he tapped and scanned, she’d imagine the taste of his black silk hair where it nibbled at his brown neck. His profile hinted at soft slopes, satin skin, a color she couldn’t name—sienna was too orange, umber too dark—something created by sun but holding the mystery and quiet of dusk.

  He was beauty in its highest form.

  When Polo’s smiles at her became more frequent, when he began insinuating himself into her space as well, she took it as acquiescence; perhaps not complete reciprocation, on his part, but acquiescence was enough. She wasn’t interested in love.

  At the day’s end, she had to pass Daniel and Matt once more. Matt leaned against the copier, twirling his key ring on his finger. Her breasts felt tight against her blouse, nipples sharp after the quick climax in the 29th floor restroom. Let them smell her desire. Their crass leering and clueless superiority could never touch it.

  She turned back to them at the door. “Did you ever witness grace in the simplest actions?”

  Polo maneuvered about the store between service desk tasks, cashier, and bagger with nonchalant ease; confident in his duties, lithe in his stride. She spent the six weeks learning his schedule, noting when he was at customer service and when he was bagging. While she waited, she continued her studies of him. His name, she found out, was a nickname for Apolonio, a name derived from the god Apollo, god of light. Sunlight pulsed under Polo’s brown skin, black hair. He was the wrap of night around fertile heat.

  Tonight, he’d be bagging. This would be the day she would accept the bagger’s polite offer to help her to her car.

  On the drive to the store, Kate kept her hands on the steering wheel. No more rubbing
away the desire. She wanted to feel it fully when she saw him. At stoplights, she leaned forward, breasts against the wheel. She unbuttoned two buttons of her blouse to let the cool, evening breeze sweep in.

  In the parking lot, she drove once past the window to spot him. Yes, there was the slender back side of him that needed to be licked and bitten. He fluidly gathered boxes of rice, bags of pasta, fit the pineapple alongside the melon, and then in a second was at the next counter, gathering, sorting, as if all matter succumbed to his wish.

  She had little to buy, but made sure it was enough for a few bags of packing. The moment she got in line, he abandoned his post at the quick checkout, slit open the first bag, and waited.

  She hadn’t buttoned the blouse; her breasts felt like waves cresting over the bra. Her hands quivered a bit as she handed over her rewards card. Each time she came, he was more beautiful. She looked at him, the dark sweep of hair over his brow, the equally dark eyebrows and lashes. He was a late-night cognac, molten earth ready to turn volcanic.

  The last of the groceries were bagged, one last slip of handle-through-handle and he placed the bags in the cart.

  “Would you like help out?” he said with his usual nonchalance, his dark eyes lingering longer than the question demanded.

  They all expected “no.” She was fully capable of handling her own groceries.

  She said, “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

  His brown eyes locked on her. He offered no smile. When he was serious, he lost all boyishness. He wasn’t the least afraid. He put the last bag in the cart and steered it toward the door, glancing back once to be sure she was following.

  The sun nestled somewhere below the horizon of strip malls, the sky holding the blush of day as night’s lavender breath descended. In this quiet light, he seemed not the black dead of night, but dusk, slow and sensual twilight. His lips would be a sparrow’s underbelly, his tongue the heart that kept the blood in rapid flow. Blood throbbed low in her as she followed him through the parking lot, watching his easeful stride, wondering how long before she could unlatch that belt that secured him.

  Popping the trunk, she brushed by him to grab a bag. Again he looked. His eyes were darker in the evening light. They stared at her, not with naïve questioning, but with assured commitment. If she wanted this, it would happen.

  She let him finish arranging the bags in the netted holder and clicked open the driver’s door. As he slammed the trunk, he had two options: to role the cart back into the store, or to leave it and come around to where she waited. She sat in the door’s opening, legs out, fishing in her purse as if to tip him.

  He walked over. “Is that everything?” he said. His left hand rested on the top of the door. It swung a little, and he opened it further, stepping closer. His pants were a black river, rippling, hinting of underwater life. His other hand met the roof of the car. Closer. Her eyes were level with his stomach that would concave when he breathed and released.

  She hooked one finger into the top of his pants and pulled him toward her. His body blocked the frame of the store. He closed the door slightly and blocked all but him from her view. Him at the waistline. His belt was buckled in the third hole. She ran her fingers across the leather, slid it from its latch. His breath caught, his stomach hardened beneath the thin cotton shirt, and she put her mouth to the shirt to breathe him.

  He smelled like sandstone warmed in sun.

  Her breath came back hot. As she undid the buckle, he didn’t move. Sound beyond him seemed to fly off with the distant jets, streaming far away. She heard the zipper; she heard another breath.

  He was hard, but she didn’t release the shaft that pressed against cotton. Raising his shirt instead, she put her mouth to a stomach of satin valleys, burnished fields warmed and feathered with sun. Her hands came around the back of him, holding the slender hips, pulling him closer. When he moaned, she ran her tongue under the elastic waistband. Her fingers slid around, pulling elastic from what it held captive. He was released, the silk tip of him against her cheek.

  The silken glans, a millimeter from her mouth.

  She withdrew a second and lowered her head so it brushed against her eyelids, down her nose, breathing the deeper scents of him. Lips on his testicles, she exhaled heat on them, flicked her tongue. And when he jerked, she took his hips again and pulled him closer. A fraction of movement would join her lips to him.

  Closer. Her first kiss of him: Polo, beautiful youth, something fresh, not yet scarred, no rejections needing recovery, no possessive ownership. Optimistic youth—demanding in its optimism. He pressed closer, his hand sliding down the window. Kate opened her mouth and let him rest in the hollow of it, so he would feel breath, sense moisture without contact. Her tongue would be a bed if he moved again. She pulled back slightly, and then flicked her tongue once on the opening, and again under the ridge. The hand on the car roof tightened, a metal protest against his palm.

  Running her tongue down the shaft, flicking again around the testicles, she looked up at his face in struggle. Around him, the world was open, people exiting cars, shoppers rattling carts; inside, his employer waited. His mouth was tight, and when he looked down at her hesitation, those full lips parted. She wanted his mouth, but instead took the shaft in her own. Tonight would be his.

  She set the rhythm, and he leaned in. His forehead knocked against the car, his hair a black wing along the roof. And when his gasp released a deep held moan, she felt the semen pulse. Her mouth closed tight around him, and she drank.

  When Kate drove away, window down, the evening air smelled like goldenrod and clover. Her jeans were tight against her clit, and it swelled in wanting more of him. She took the back roads, driving toward the black silhouette of trees against lavender sky. She drove one-handed and rubbed at the throbbing painful pleasure between her legs. Her pelvis flamed while the sky doused the day’s lingering heat. Polo. The road was deserted, and she rubbed faster. At the burst of release, her foot pushed pedal to the floor.

  She eased up and whispered his name, pressing her chest against the steering wheel in embrace. Polo. He’d be back behind his counter. He’d said, “I have to get back,” and his eyes had been worried, but his mouth had twitched a crooked smile.

  She smiled now over the arc of the steering wheel.

  The next day in the office, Matt and Daniel were a beige blur of chatter that couldn’t break the tingling smile. She drank three bottled waters, her mouth around the neck, tongue dipping in. She didn’t make it to the 29th floor, climaxing in her office chair under the pressure of her well-used pencil.

  When Kate returned a week later to the store, Polo was behind the service desk, bent over, writing something while a customer waited. He was a wash of black, with his hair over his forehead, and as she walked by, he raised his eyes with their black-lash framing. The brown eyes stayed on her while his hand still moved across the paper. He knew what he was writing. He could fulfill many tasks with simultaneous efficiency. He looked away, handed the paper to the customer, and smiled that full, polite whiteness.

  This boy had marvelous self-control and nonchalance about his beauty as well as its effect on people. He was young. The world was his.

  “Excuse me,” she said as the customer turned away. “Do you have a public restroom?”

  He stared.

  “I have a key.” He snatched a string from a hook, a tangle of keys dangling from it, and turned to the service booth exit. She followed him past pastries, past deli, through the scent of rising bread. Tonight, her lips would feel his. The throbbing in her clit rose in a wave up her chest, tightening her throat. Some beauty was exquisite enough to cause pain.

  He slid the key in the lock. It clicked. He didn’t glance back as he entered. Didn’t turn until he leaned against the white wall-sink. One sink, one stall, a silver trashcan below the towel dispenser. And Polo—legs crossed, body one sleek slope clothed in black. His brown hands rested each side of him on the white porcelain. He would make her come to him this
time.

  Either he hadn’t been as innocent as she’d at first expected, or he adapted easily to any situation. Kate felt a smile edging up. His beauty might be painful, but his youthful daring was intoxicating.

  “Will they be looking for you?” she asked, as she approached him, as she closed off the space and chance to leave.

  He stared again, his head tilted just slightly down so that he looked up under dark brows. His legs uncrossed. He wanted only one thing from her. She wanted only the same in return.

  Kate ran a finger over that tight cheekbone, down his jaw line. There was nothing like the skin of youth. His stare darkened. There was nothing like youth’s careless hunger. Her own hunger was too often seeped in questions, examinations, doubts, and tried determination. How would this feel? Their legs touched. Her hands found space on the cold white sink, beside his. What would it mean his lips against hers? She had to spread her legs around his to come closer. He didn’t straighten. He didn’t move. Her breasts pressed lightly on his chest.

  How would it feel to know those brown eyes? Their mouths were a millisecond away from losing this world. His lips parted. She felt the moan in her throat, a tingling that made her eyes water. To kiss him. His breath brushed her lips. She took his lower lip first. And at the touch, pleasure channeled through her, blood rushing to stimulate the nerves of clitoris and canals.

  She bit, and then her tongue slid along his upper lip. He was last night’s sweet clover and this morning’s sun-baked porch. His tongue flicked at hers, and she closed her mouth around his lower lip again. She opened her eyes again to his. There was no other world but him before her. Her hands found the small of his back, pulled his shirt from his pants, and lips parting, found silk beneath her fingers, found satin in her mouth. Tomorrow, she would button up her blue suit, swing that briefcase into the office, and participate in the world that lay beyond them now. But here, the universe was behind Polo’s lips, and she wanted it.