Tight Women in Hard Places

by Alicia Night Orchid

He pumped in and out. I rubbed furiously. I made myself a vessel. I gagged when he came. He withdrew and sprayed my face and glasses.

  “Oh, yeah, baby,” I managed.

  I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. I screamed when I came. I didn’t give a shit who heard.

  June 27, 1970

  Dom Pedro Palace—Lisbon, Portugal

  Dinner was exquisite. The two bottles of red wine, luscious as the countryside. Afterwards, we talked and drank some more, enjoying the view from the highest hill in Lisbon. We overlooked the city and the ocean beyond. You could fall in love here with the right person. Kamenev is erudite and soft-spoken. He’s married, of course, but like many marriages, his has lost steam over the years. He told me that he’s a scientist, but withheld that he is the depository of secrets that could destroy the world. We’re making slow progress, but I have only two more nights with him. He walked me to my room and kissed me at my door. I pushed my breasts against him.

  My psychotherapist was a thin, bird-like woman. She wore her hair in a tight bun. Reading glasses perched on a long, narrow nose. Her dark eyes burned bright. “And this man, do you feel affection for him?”

  I considered the question. I didn’t dislike Streeter, but neither did I find him an interesting companion. He was not all that imaginative in bed and hadn’t read a book since high school. He was barely alert to current events, more informed about the drinking habits of his coarse friends than the War on Terror or presidential politics.

  “I like fucking him,” I said.

  “What about his girlfriend?”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you ever consider that he’s betraying her? That this is the kind of man you’ve chosen to engage with?”

  “We’re not engaging. We’re fucking. Besides, what goes on between him and his girlfriend is none of my business.”

  She scribbled in her notebook. “Your last two relationships have been with men well below your social status. There was that traveling salesman, that graduate student. Why do you think you’re drawn to men like this?”

  I shrugged. I was the one paying her $150 an hour. “I don’t know. Their expectations are low. It’s easy.”

  She eyed me over her readers. “It’s risky, promiscuous, and demeaning.”

  “Maybe I like playing the slut.”

  “And why is that?”

  I’d been in therapy before. She wanted me to say it was because I was insecure and had low self-esteem. She wanted me to say it was because my parents had been self-involved narcissists.

  I was not going to make it that easy for her. “Because I like it dirty. It’s more exciting that way.”

  She didn’t blink. “But why is that?”

  I leaned forward. “Because my mother was a spy and lied about everything.”

  She set her notebook aside and checked her clock. “We’ll have to explore that next time.”

  June 28, 1970

  Dom Pedro Palace—Lisbon, Portugal

  I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking of the job ahead. I will seduce Kamenev. I will ensnare him with my sex. Then, I will tease out his secrets. I’ve done it before. I will do it again. It’s a job. But if it’s just a job, why am I humping the bed? Why am I wet with desire? What kind of lover is he? Kind and caring? Rough and demanding? What unrequited desires haunt his soul? Will he want my mouth, my cunt, my tits, my ass? As morning draws near, I position a pillow on the bed in front of the mirror. As the sepia tones of dawn bathe the room, I ride the pillow as if it were Kamenev. Fuck me, I groan to my reflection. Come on, fuck me.

  My sister called about the journal. She’d returned to the house and visited the attic in search of old photos. She noticed the journal missing.

  “What journal?”

  “You know damn well what journal.”

  “Look . . .”

  “Always with the lies, Kate. Always with the secrets.”

  “Well, if you knew, why’d you ask?”

  June 29, 1970

  Dom Pedro Palace—Lisbon, Portugal

  What now, my poor, sweet Kamenev? Last night, dinner, wine, and dancing. Then to my room. Once inside, I dropped to my knees, unzipped and unfurled him. I slid my dress off my shoulders. He sat on the bed, me at his feet.

  “Your breasts,” he whispered.

  He kneaded and tweaked, while I licked and bobbed. He thrust into the cleavage, hard and slippery with my saliva.

  “Yes,” he said behind closed eyes.

  I should have known—a tit man.

  I gathered him into me, rising and falling. He grunted and spurted, then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. He lifted me up, laid me across the bed, and pushed my skirts over my hips. Then he devoured me, flicking mercilessly at that most sensitive flesh, probing me with his fingers. Until, until. My God, so shattering.

  Forty years old and I’ve missed so much in my own tepid marriage. Afterwards, as we lay smoking Turkish cigarettes, he confessed. The Libyan was blackmailing him. His daughter at the Sorbonne was in danger if he didn’t help the terrorists.

  Streeter had another woman. I’d seen them together on campus. She was pretty and blonde. She laughed when he talked to her. I never laughed at his stupid jokes.

  This new man, I met at the Holiday Inn. He was a retired businessman, cool and self-possessed.

  “I know you,” he said over our second drink.

  “Really? Have we met before?”

  “No, but I know you. You’ve been looking for a man who will use you properly. All those others were amateurs.”

  “Use me?”

  The back of his hand traced my jawline. “Like the slut you are.”

  I felt loose and uncertain inside. “You don’t . . .”

  “You want to be used, don’t you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ll take you lower than you’ve ever imagined. I’ll punish you if you don’t comply.”

  “I . . .”

  “You’ve been waiting for this all your life.”

  I glanced about the bar. “Will I be safe?”

  “Only as safe as you want to be.”

  My heart thundered in my chest. “But you said punish.”

  “That’s what happens to bad girls, isn’t it?”

  I bit my lower lip. “God yes.”

  July 5, 1970

  A Safe House—Tel Aviv, Israel

  The Israelis. They shot the Libyan and abducted Kamenev and his daughter. I’m taking him back to the States. Boris is furious at the double cross. Late at night, Kamenev visits my bed. He rests his head on my bosom. I hold his cock in my hand, a bird about to take wing.

  My mother’s affair lasted two years, at least. After two years, the journal ended. I stopped seeing my therapist. My Master suggested I don’t need her anymore.

  SNOWBOUND

  Kate folded jeans and cords and placed them in her old Land’s End bag. She added turtlenecks, sweaters, and socks. Although they were leaving for “up north” within the hour, Josh’s clothes still lay in a pile. Since she’d stopped picking up after him, he’d resorted to what he called recycling.

  It wasn’t all that charming.

  But she’d be damned if she’d help him out. And she’d be damned if they left a minute after three o’clock. If he wasn’t packed and ready to go, he’d have to spend the weekend in the clothes on his back.

  Finished with her own packing, she went to the window and looked out onto the red-brick street. Most of the students had departed for home and the upcoming holiday earlier in the week. The usually bustling campus was deserted, except for faculty and a few graduate students like her and Josh. The emptiness of the campus was accentuated by the bare trees and cold, gray skies. Fallen brown leaves gathered in gutters, swept up by a cruel wind.

  Snow threatened.

  That’s why they needed to leave on time. Otherwise, they risked being stranded in the snowstorm that brewed to the north and west. And, God knew, they couldn’t afford a night on the road. Besides,
about the last thing she wanted was to spend a night alone in a hotel room with Josh. Here, in this sad, little house on 8th Street, she could avoid lying down next to her husband by pretending to fall asleep at her computer. She could storm into the living room or lock him out of the bedroom.

  But stuck in a hotel room, there would be no avoiding him and no avoiding the chasm that had opened between them.

  A chasm of his making.

  She saw him coming, gangly arms swinging, head bare, his backpack weighing him down. Although four years had passed since their marriage, he didn’t look a day older. Unlike Kate, who was struggling to complete her doctoral thesis, Josh thrived in academia. Even with the constant three-day beard and long, black hair that hadn’t been cut in months, he looked as smart and handsome as the day they’d met.

  But it wasn’t his looks that had attracted her to him. It was his keen mind. From the moment they’d met, she’d wanted to bend her body to that intellect, rub her sex against it like a cat rubbing against a warm pant-leg.

  She might know French existentialist literature, but he knew quantum physics and understood the way subatomic particles fit together to create the universe.

  It was like being married to God.

  He pushed through the door, accompanied by a gust of cold air. “Hey,” he said.

  She frowned at him. “You’ve got five minutes to get your shit together.”

  The other woman—barely more than a girl, actually—had been an undergraduate student in the physics lab Josh taught. Sasha was Asian with long, black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and unexpectedly large breasts for someone so petite. Kate discovered their affair through a video clip attached to an e-mail sent by Sasha’s distraught boyfriend.

  Han secretly taped them making love with a well-placed nanny cam.

  The video showed Josh and Sasha entering an off-campus apartment. Dressed in a short skirt and blouse, Sasha led him by the hand, giggling. She turned and they kissed. His hands slid down her back and over her buttocks. She unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest. She sat on the bed and unzipped his jeans. She took his cock in her mouth and began sucking—all the while, those beautiful eyes searched his face.

  Josh told her to get on her hands and knees. She obeyed, burying her face in a pillow, thrusting her buttocks high in the air. He lifted her skirt, revealing that she wore no panties. He swatted her hard enough to leave a visible handprint. She yelped into the pillow.

  “You’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you?”

  She turned her face to reply. “I didn’t get my homework in on time.”

  He smacked her again. “You’ll do better next time, won’t you?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  He dipped his hand into the furrow between her legs. “You’re wet, little girl.”

  “You make me wet, professor.”

  He smacked her harder than before. “You’re such a nasty little girl.”

  “Oh, yes I am.”

  Josh pumped in and out. She pushed against his fingers. “Is this why you didn’t get your homework done? You were too busy playing?”

  “I masturbate and think of you all the time, professor.”

  Josh applied his free hand to her thighs and ass. Red marks appeared. Sasha wailed.

  “You fuck yourself in class, while watching me, don’t you?”

  “I get so wet, listening to your lectures. I squeeze my legs together until I come.”

  “You do it in the bathroom after class, don’t you?”

  “I can’t wait to get to the bathroom and shove my brush inside my cunt. I wish it was your cock.”

  “You play with yourself in the library when you should be studying, don’t you?”

  “I play under my skirt until my cubicle smells like sex.”

  Josh worked his fingers faster. Sasha’s movements became frenzied. Her face darkened.

  “You think of me when your boyfriend fucks you, don’t you?”

  “He doesn’t fuck me like you do.”

  “Are you ready to be fucked hard and true, little girl?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Fuck me, professor. Teach me how it’s done.”

  Still in his jeans, Josh knelt behind her, slipped on a condom, and pushed inside. She wailed louder and shuddered against him.

  Josh smacked both cheeks. He made a ponytail of her hair and pulled back on it. “You were supposed to wait until I said you could come, you little slut.”

  “Please, professor. I couldn’t help myself.”

  Josh drove his cock deep and hard. Sasha whimpered and spasmed again.

  Josh rocked against her. “You want my cum, nasty girl?”

  “Oh, God yes. Drown me in it, professor.”

  He withdrew and removed the condom. “You’re so nasty,” he said, stroking himself.

  “Do it, professor. Please, come on my ass.”

  “Finger yourself, little girl. Show me how bad you want it.”

  Sasha rubbed between her legs. She pinched a nipple through her blouse. The squishy sounds of her arousal filled the air. Behind her, Josh jerked and bucked. His face contorted and semen leapt from his cock. It sprayed across her ass and onto her lower back. She cried out and orgasmed a third time.

  After they’d both regained their senses, Josh chuckled softly. He lay down beside her and kissed her mouth.

  “You are so hot,” he said.

  “I love that game,” she said with a giggle.

  “We should do this in the classroom,” Josh said. He stuffed his cock inside his jeans.

  “Oh, I’d like that,” Sasha said, rising onto one elbow.

  “I better get going,” Josh said. “I’m picking Kate up from the library.”

  “You better save yourself for me, mister.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Here, the video clip ended.

  Kate watched it, then watched it again. She confronted Josh when he returned home that evening. While she stood over him weeping softly, he hung his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  “Fuck you,” she told him.

  The snow started on the north side of Indianapolis. By the time they turned off of I-465 onto Highway 31, the sky was dark with flurries. Kate called her mother in South Bend. She could imagine the woman, a high school teacher, sitting on a barstool in the kitchen of the house where Kate had grown up.

  “Mom,” Kate said. “This is looking pretty bad here. How is it by you?”

  “It’s coming down pretty hard. We’ve already got three inches and they say we could have a foot by morning. They say the temps are supposed to drop overnight.”

  “A foot,” Kate said to Josh out of the corner of her mouth.

  “We better find a place to stay.”

  “Josh thinks we should pull over,” Kate told her mother.

  “How’s the road?”

  “We can still see it.”

  “I hate for you to miss being here with the family tomorrow morning . . .”

  “I hate to miss Grandma’s holiday waffles. What does Dad think?”

  “Here, talk to him.”

  Kate waited for the gruff voice. He was the owner of the local Toyota dealership. “If you don’t make it tonight, you’ll miss the holiday. There’s another storm on the way after this one.”

  “There’s another storm on the way,” Kate relayed to Josh.

  “You’ve got front-wheel drive in that Camry,” her dad said. “Just remind Josh to turn into the skids.”

  “He’s a physicist, Dad. He probably knows that.”

  “Anyway.”

  “I’ll call when we get closer.” She closed her cell phone.

  “We should stop,” Josh said. “It’s getting hard to see. The wind is picking up.”

  Kate stared into the swirling chaos of white beyond the windshield. “I want to make it home for the holiday.”

  “So, what’s next?” she’d asked two days after showing him the video clip. “If you want to be
with her, I understand.”

  “I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”

  “That’s why you were fucking Sasha, right?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t go looking for it.”

  Kate stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her breasts. She’d hardly slept or ate. When she wasn’t crying, she was pacing the floor, trying to find the courage to leave.

  “You didn’t go looking for it?”

  “I’m not saying I’m innocent. I made a mistake. But it was a one-time thing. It won’t happen again.”

  “Professor,” she said, mocking Sasha’s words. He wasn’t really a professor. He was waiting to hear back from the universities to which he’d applied for a position.

  “Kate, please.”

  “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  He looked awful. She supposed he hadn’t slept either. “You know I’m not that kind of guy.”

  At least that was true. Both of them were smart and physically attractive enough, but also socially awkward. They’d studied together and been friends for months before going on a real date. He’d taken her to a tele-lecture by Stephen Hawking. A week later, she’d invited him to a reading by and reception for Joyce Carol Oates.

  While the famous author read from her latest novel, he’d taken her hand. Later, in his dorm room, after he’d finished describing string theory to her, she’d stood and silently stripped. She’d decided it was time to lose her virginity and this was the young man she wanted to lose it to. Ten minutes later, with him spent in the condom she’d supplied, he confessed it was his first time too.

  His fling with Sasha was as much a betrayal of their shared geekiness as it was their marriage.

  “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  Josh sighed. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Not yet. I’m not done punishing you.”

  North of Peru and Grissom Air Force Base, the wind picked up. It buffeted the secondhand Camry, making it difficult for Josh to keep the tires in the ruts.