I gave voice to that last emotion. “It’s too bad you went home,” I said. “It’s rather pleasant here now, with the place quiet. We could have talked.”
She laughed. “We are talking.”
“Good point,” I acknowledged. “But … look, why don’t you come back?”
“Huh? Now?”
“Why not? We’re both night owls. You know neither of us is ready to go to sleep. We could just pretend you never left. We could – y’know – hang out.”
“I guess, but …”
“It’s a beautiful night, you’re only fifteen minutes away, and …” My smooth come-on softened into something more sensitive. “And I’d really like it if you came over, now that I can give you my full attention.”
Her voice also became a little quieter, a little more delicate. “You’re talking me into it.”
“If you don’t, we’ll just end up yakking for two hours on the phone anyway. Why not do it face to face?” That’s what I wanted. To do it face to face with Eveline.
“OK,” she said. “Yeah. Actually, that would be nice. Very nice. I’ll see you soon.” And she hung up.
Another fifteen minutes elapsed, during which I intended to do a little more cleaning up. Instead, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, thinking about Eveline. My mind raced around from calculating when we’d first met to daydreaming about how good she looked when she was naked to wondering how her dissertation was coming along. When the doorbell rang, I was a little surprised that the erection that had developed during the how-good-she-looked-naked portion of the stream of consciousness had survived the dissertation portion quite well.
“Thanks, Jim. I’m glad I came back,” she volunteered as soon as I’d closed the door behind her. “Subconsciously, I think I was hoping all along that the night wasn’t over.” She looked me in the eye. “Did you notice I didn’t finish my beer?”
“Of course.”
“Did you finish it for me?”
“Of course.”
She removed her coat and flopped unceremoniously onto my couch – on her belly, with her feet on the armrest. Eveline and I had long ago stopped standing on ceremony, and I loved that.
She turned her head toward me, sociably, as I made myself comfortable on the floor beside her.
“So … ” I said.
“Yeah,” she concurred.
We both knew that this elliptical conversation was about “us”. Eveline and I had never been able to make up our minds as to whether we wanted to be lovers or just friends, and all roads led to that question.
We left the question lying there for a few minutes while we just enjoyed each other’s quiet company, both of us zoning out in the pocket of our long-established bond.
“Handle my ass a while, would you?” she said after a bit. “It helps me think.”
No, we didn’t stand on ceremony, Eveline and I.
I massaged the seat of her jeans, stroking and fondling her soft cheeks. “Do you really think that my caressing your marvellous behind is going to help you think objectively about our relationship?”
Her smile was a broad one. “Who said I wanted to think objectively?”
And so, inevitably, the jeans bowed out of the picture, as they had so many times before. Tonight the cotton bikini panties were pale blue with multicoloured stripes. Eveline’s ass looked like that fruit-striped cartoon zebra from the chewing-gum commercials – only significantly rounder and much, much more lovely. I told her all this, and she responded with a very un-zebra-like purr. I squeezed and kneaded her. I listened to her breathing becoming irregular. She was getting very aroused – and so was I.
Then I tickled the erogenous skin just within the elastic, and I watched Eveline’s ass wiggle its ass off.
And so, inevitably, the panties bowed out of the picture, too.
Even with her pussy now exposed, it was all about her ass for a bit longer. This is how it had been on previous occasions, and this was just fine with both of us. I couldn’t get enough of kissing those friendly cheeks, or of grazing the crack with my nose while I held her adorable legs behind the knees.
Eveline had the most satisfying ass I’d ever handled – the classic Ass Next Door, if you will (though she didn’t live quite that close to me). I’d known candy-apple asses and ice-cream-scoop asses. Boutique asses and museum-quality asses. Sturdy, bike-riding cheeks and delicate pleasure-globes. Flesh that smelled like vanilla, like berries, like honey. But Eveline’s was simply the perfect ass, in my view. What a philosopher would call a platonic, or ideal, ass – though my friendship with it, at the moment, was anything but “platonic”. It was an ass that would have seemed like a beautiful abstraction, were it not so wonderfully tangible. Its roundness never failed to attract me; its smoothness never failed to seduce me; and its responsiveness never failed to arouse me. It was an ass I could engage with all night.
But I knew how wet she was becoming. I could tell from her intoxicating giggles, and from the delicious feminine aroma that was wafting up. This wetness invited and required my fingers. I inserted a pair and Eveline squeezed them, and her luscious bottom wriggled anew beneath my face.
When it became unthinkable to continue interacting without our genitals being joined, we helped each other undress. She had not worn a bra beneath her sleek turtleneck, and her breasts rushed out to greet me. My own body appeared, thin and persistently boyish as always, when jeans and briefs and polo shirt joined her clothes in the garment orgy on the floor. Our torsos pressed together, my erection sought her sex, and we merged back onto the couch – rather gracefully, I thought, for a couple of confused lover-friends.
We mingled with ease, the vital connection freeing us from emotional ambivalence and from the desperate libidinous tension that had gripped us while we hurried to undress. Now, each moment was paradise: we basked, we wallowed, and we ascended effortlessly into ecstasy. Eveline pulled my upper body tightly against hers with one bare arm, while sensuously raising the other for me. I kissed the inviting cavity it revealed and allowed myself to become engulfed in the delirious fragrance of her flesh. At another latitude, I rhythmically jiggled her warm ass cheeks, as my cock and her cunt squirmed together like the old pals they were.
When I spouted, almost without consciousness of what my prick was doing, her undulating coos slipped over the threshold into shrieks of laughter. Her bottom, still cupped in my hand and warm with the flush of her excitement, tickled my palm with its involuntary tremors, as she quickly rubbed herself to climax against the welcoming bolster of my spent body. The methodical effectiveness of her sweet friction reminded me of the precise way she’d torn the label on that beer bottle.
She spoke first. “So,” she sighed. Then she gave a short, happy chuckle.
“Yeah,” I agreed. I kissed her hair.
Maybe the fact that we had this communication thing down meant that we were right for each other, after all.
Continuity
by Shanna Germain
The dress is gorgeous; the saleswoman suggested a size smaller than I’d planned and it went on perfectly, skimming the curves of my ass and hips just right, making me look like I have more boobs than I actually do. Fantastic fit, fantastic dress. Billy was going to love it.
Except that now I can’t get it off. It’s stuck somewhere between my breasts and my shoulders, and my hands and head are caught inside what seems to be an ever-tightening vice-grip of material. Where is Billy and his sexy-sharp knife when you need him?
In some alternate universe, this would be sexy. The saleswoman would be a smart, voluptuous thing who would use my pseudo-bondage to her advantage, the dressing room would be bigger than a postage stamp and I would be able to breathe right now. Instead, I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t time to give up this yearly fuckfest with Billy, since it seems to be more work than pleasure at
the moment.
But as soon as I think it, I realize that it’s a stupid idea – Billy and I have spent every Valentine’s day together since our divorce eight years ago, no matter what’s going on in our lives, and I know it’s something that we both look forward to. I don’t want to live with the man again, not ever, but do I want to fuck him hard once a year and see those chocolate-brown eyes of his widen when he looks at me in a dress like this? Oh yes.
My phone goes off again, a jaunty jingle that sounds, oddly enough, like dial phones used to. It’s a sound I haven’t heard in nearly a year, and it means Billy’s calling. He programmed the sound last year when I saw him, saying that he didn’t want his name to be associated with either of the other options, which he called Bach-in-elevator and rap-in-rave-party. “Besides,” he said, “This is old, like us. So it’s perfect.” I would have swatted him, but my wrists were still bound with his belt – he liked to tie me up and tease me with one hand, brushing his fingertips over the inside of my thighs, while he did normal things, like twiddle around with my phone.
We always did fuck so well. It was the other things that kept screwing us up. So we made this promise: get together every Valentine’s night. Fuck our brains out. Go back to our lives. No more, no less. It was a win-win-win: it kept us tied together in way that seemed important for both of us, it meant we got one great fuck a year no matter who else we were or weren’t dating, and it gave us a chance to vet our current partners – if they weren’t okay with the Valentine’s arrangement, then they weren’t right for us. I’ve let go of at least two potential lovers because they had a shit fit over the deal, and I know Billy’s lost more than a few women who had meltdowns at the very idea. I don’t think either of us regrets it though. Or at least, I hope not. I’ve thought, at times, about calling Billy up, seeing if he would want more than a once-a-year bang, but I don’t. I know it would ruin everything.
“Your phone is ringing,” the saleswoman says helpfully.
“Thank you,” I mumble. My voice has that grumpy edge to it that I don’t like, but that I’ve come to accept over the years as being part of me.
“Shall I get my manager?” she asks. I try to remember what her name is – Kathy? Karen? – she told me, but this isn’t the kind of place where people wear nametags and I couldn’t see it even if she did.
“Out,” I say. This is the simplest, most direct command I can think of, and it actually comes out sounding like a real word. “Get me out of this dress.”
“How?” she asks. She’s given up on the tugging, and I have this image of her standing there, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at me.
“However you can. I don’t care.”
I call Billy back without listening to his message. I’m driving back to work, Blue Tooth headset blinking in my ear, one hand on the wheel, the other fingering the smooth vinyl curves of the dress. I bought it after all, a size larger than the one I tried on. It won’t curve around my hips quite as well, but I don’t think I’ll get stuck inside it either. Nor will I have another pair of red marks on my neck and shoulders from where a confused and timid saleswoman joined forces with a rather meaty black man to yank a too-tight dress off my head with a dual tug that nearly took my ears off.
Billy’s phone clicks on, and I chime in before he can even speak. This is the advantage of knowing each other for nearly twenty years; you don’t have to waste time on preliminaries. “Billy, you have to hear what happened to me this afternoon.”
“Zoe,” he says, and as always, the sound of my name coming from his lips always makes me a little breathless. He has these great lips, big and soft, that contrast with the sharp angles of his cheekbones and his jaw, and the way he brushes them over my breasts, my nipples, saying my name the whole time, over and over, it causes a reaction that’s hard-wired into my body, I swear.
I laugh, and the sound is deep and throaty. “Of course, Zoe,” I say. “Unless you have some other ex-wife who’s dialling you back to tell you about her pre-Valentine’s day fiasco.”
Silence. But he’s laughing soundlessly, I know it.
“Well, do you want to hear your ex’s story? Or shall I tell you in person tomorrow? Speaking of tomorrow …” I’m stupidly, suddenly, all aflutter, bouncing around subjects like a coked-up insect. “What’s the plan?” We rotate each year. Last year was mine – I tend to use my house, focus on the food and the outfit and the fucking, while Billy likes to go somewhere new, dump us in some wild and crazy place. One year, he dragged me camping, which I would have hated if I hadn’t ended up tied to a tree while he curled his fingers inside me, making me howl into the night like some kind of feral creature. Another year, he rented a laser tag place and we fought and skirmished through the night before we finally fucked, wild with competition and pent-up arousal. So I’m excited to see where we’re headed. At this point, I just hope my little red dress isn’t going to be too out of place.
“About tomorrow …” he says slowly, so slowly I have time to shift gears and narrowly miss a little red Honda that is creeping over into my lane. “That’s why I called. Did you get my message?”
Something pings in the bottom of my stomach, rough and dark. I know that sound in his voice. It’s the “I have something to tell you but I don’t want to” edge. I suddenly wish I’d waited until tonight to call him. “What? No, I was … busy.”
There’s silence. Too much silence, and I take the moment to signal and find a place to pull off the road and park. My hands are shaking on the wheel, and I wipe my palms off on my pants. It’s not even hot. Granted, it’s been a shit day, and I haven’t eaten enough and I spent most of my morning mummified in man-made materials, but still. I know this reaction is all about Billy, all about what I’m afraid he’s going to say next. I rest my forehead on the dashboard, listening to him breathe through my headset, as though his mouth is actually at my ear.
I start to say something, and he starts to say something at the same time and it ends up nothing more than garble. Cars pass me, whizzing by, their sound the only thing in my ear. I wait, let Billy speak.
“There’s a girl.”
“And …?” The word comes out sounding okay, sounding off-the-cuff, like it doesn’t really matter, like I can’t imagine what would really matter about some girl, but it hurts to say it, like it scratched my throat on the way up. Such a simple word. How can it hurt so much? It’s like I know what he’s going to say, even though he hasn’t said it yet. If there’s a girl, and he’s hesitating, it must be the girl. The one who is coming to mean so much to him that he’s willing to give me up. To give us up.
I finger the vinyl dress in the bag next to me. Such a great dress. Such a waste. If I focus on the dress, I won’t cry. Or if I do, I can blame it on the dress instead of on whatever else is bouncing around in my head. After all, it’s not like I love Billy – oh, I mean I love him, but not in that way any more, not the way I did in the early years of our marriage. It’s not like I want him back. But I like being connected to him, still tied to those good years we had, to our youth. All of which makes my breath go someplace else, someplace where I can’t seem to get it back.
“Well, I really, I really like her, Zoe.”
“And?”
“And …” A breath. His. I know it’s not mine because I can’t breathe yet. “I told her about our agreement.”
“And?” Why, oh, why can’t I say something, anything else? I close my lips, vow not to say anything until I can come up with something functional and intelligent.
“She wants to come.”
My head rests on the steering wheel. There are cars going by, still. I know my breath is going in and out, in and out. But I don’t feel or hear any of it.
His voice on the other end goes staticy and then clears up. “She wants to come with us. To, you know –” For as good and direct as Billy is in bed, he sometimes can’t find the words
. I’m not sure I can either, but then they fall out of my mouth.
“She wants a threesome?”
“She does.”
“Jesus, Billy.”
“I know.”
And then there is another kind of silence. Shared. The kind where two people are on the same mindwave, where first you say that you understand the other person, and then you realize that you really do understand the other person, because for a moment you’re one and the same.
“Okay, so is this the kind of, ‘I want to check out what I’m up against and the only way to do it is to go along?’ Or what?”
“Come on, Zoe. You know me better than that.”
I do, of course. He has good taste in women. Smart taste. Psychos don’t last very long with Billy. They never have.
“I need to think about this,” I say. “I bought a dress and everything. Okay, that was a stupid thing to say, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe?” he says. “How good of a dress is it?”
“Red. Vinyl. Short as shit. I can barely get into it.”
That small intake of breath on the other end of the line, a sound I’ve always loved to hear. “Black boots?” he asks.
“The leather ones you bought me.” For our fifth anniversary. They’re still my favourite boots. Billy’s too.
“Mmm …”
“Can I think about it?” I ask.
“Of course you can think about it. She’s cute. She’s smart. She’s bisexual.”
“I still need to think about it,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “Call me tomorrow and let me know?”
“Yes,” I say. My real life is sliding back in. The clock on the dash says I’m already late getting back to work. My stomach growls grumpily at me.
Sex, Love & Valentines Page 3