Suite Encounters

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  She closed her eyes. She had to get past the strangeness, the chill of this anonymous room, the unusual position, the glint of bright noon sun peeking through the window.

  The warm tongue shifted its rhythm now, circling her pleasure spot with a slow stirring motion she loved. Her breath came faster and her thighs began to shake. She was melting, melting into the sheets, her belly humming. She’d crossed over, to that place where nothing else mattered but this hot, pulsing sensation between her legs. A few more flicks of that tongue and she might take the final step, up and over the edge.

  But that’s not how she wanted it to end.

  “Stop. Right now,” she barked.

  He pulled away. She opened her eyes to study him, to see if he had changed. His mouth glistened, his eyes were glazed. He’d crossed over, too.

  “Lie on the bed.”

  Without a word, he followed her instructions.

  She sat herself down beside his outstretched body, solicitously, as if she were nursing him for the flu. “Do you have a condom with you?”

  He looked confused. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because a bad boy like you who fucks naughty sluts on his lunch hour needs to remember to wear a condom. You don’t want to take anything nasty home with you, do you?”

  He stared at her, speechless. But Isabel figured she had to allow for that. All the blood had gone to his dick, after all.

  “Fortunately I happen to have brought one along for you. Smart businesswomen have to plan ahead.”

  “Yes, they do,” he agreed, watching docilely as she ripped open the condom wrapper and rolled it on him. How many years had it been since she’d done this? Then she remembered, with a pang of selfishness, that it would certainly save her some mess in the end.

  “Listen carefully,” she cooed as she swung her leg over his belly and positioned his cockhead at her opening. “I’m going to ask you to do a little multitasking now, Mr. Talbot. I’m sure your demanding job has trained you well for that. I’ll sit here, still and quiet, while you suck one nipple—the right one—and play with the other one with your left hand. With your right hand, I’d like you to tease my asshole, nice and slow, until I come on your cock.”

  His cock twitched in her hand and he made a funny sound in his throat.

  “Is that amenable to you, sir?”

  “I believe so,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Then go to it.”

  Just as instructed, he leaned up and took her nipple in his mouth. His left hand tweaked the other nipple, sending sizzling jolts straight to her pussy. Still and quiet, that’s what she’d promised, but in spite of herself, Isabel squirmed, instinctively grinding her clit into him. There was nothing strange or new about this. The pleasure of this dance was profoundly familiar, timeless. His right hand circled around to her back, gliding along her spine to the furrow of her buttocks. One finger delved lower, soft and teasing. She felt a cry rising in her throat, but she held it back. Still and quiet, that’s what she’d be. But when he found her hole, circling the exquisitely sensitive ring of muscles as if he were stroking a pet, her cunt muscles convulsed around him and she groaned. Loudly.

  Fuck my twat. Fuck it hard.

  He arched up to meet her in perfect response to her own desperate thrusts. He was a fine multitasker indeed—sucking, tweaking, teasing hands and cock and tongue working all at once. And she was working, too, slamming her clit against his belly, arching her back to offer her breasts for more. She couldn’t be still or silent; it was all too hot, too much. She felt the heat gathering in her belly, shooting up her spine, exploding from her throat in a hoarse scream.

  Fuck, I’m coming, oh, god.

  He followed behind her, his fingers and tongue still working diligently as her contractions faded. Only a soft, rhythmic grunting and the slower, deeper glide of his thrusts told her he’d shot his wad into that condom.

  Her chest still heaving, she opened her eyes and gazed down at him. He looked good, his flushed face framed by the pure white of the pillow. He smiled. She smiled back.

  They weren’t strangers anymore.

  That was the real reason she’d done this. Simply that. Isabel realized it now.

  “Jesus, that was hot, Izzy,” he said.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Alex, my dear,” she replied with a saucy smile.

  He rolled the condom in a tissue and tossed it in the trash can by the bed. “I haven’t worn one of these in twenty years.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said, snuggling against him. “It was so easy luring you away from your office, I wondered if you were such a soft touch with all the women who are hard up for a loan.”

  “Only ones wearing red corsets. Rest assured, this is the first time I’ve ever done something like this.”

  “It’s part of Tracy’s assignment, you know. And you thought it just meant you had to do the dishes.”

  “I’m starting to think this therapy thing was a good idea after all.” His smile faded. “By the way, is there a problem with finances at the store?”

  She laughed. “Actually, we’re doing very well.”

  “That’s because you’re such a good boss.”

  “Just good?” she said. “I’d say fucking amazing.”

  Her cocky reply slipped out before she could stop herself. She’d never bragged about her management skills so openly before. But the gleam in Alex’s eyes told her he very much approved.

  It was yet another first time today. She had a feeling she could get used to this.

  AIR-CONDITIONING. COLOR TV. LIVE MERMAIDS

  Anna Meadows

  He first saw her through the glass, turning in the water so her hair whipped behind her. She’d grown it out. It billowed and rippled to her waist. It must have taken her an hour a night to comb it. She never used to let it grow past her shoulders, or the Santa Anas would tangle it so bad she couldn’t even get it into two braids. He’d never told her how much he liked it that way, all wild and weedy from crawling through the grass to catch ladybugs or spinning on the tire swing. He’d watched her from the tree house then, her hair fanning out like black sea oats.

  He knew the shape of her body, not so different from the summer they graduated high school. She had that same softness in her thighs—he could see that even through the mermaid tail, covered in sequins the color of a peacock. But if he didn’t know her by her body, he would have known her by how her hair spread out in the water, the same way it did in the pond back home, like she was falling.

  “House beer’s half off,” the bartender said. “Looks like you need it.”

  Daniel ordered one but didn’t drink it. He was still watching her.

  He’d been on his way home to visit family for the holiday weekend when he saw the sign on the side of the highway. MERMAID MOTEL. HOME OF DIVE IN THE DESERT. AIR-CONDITIONING. COLOR TV. LIVE MERMAIDS. He turned off and got a room—he was tired enough that if he stopped, it’d have to be for the night—because the last two words on the sign made him think of Lila, turning underwater in the pond.

  “One day I’m gonna be a mermaid,” she’d said every time she came up for air. She always had on a one-piece, because her mother never let her wear anything else. “Only putas wear those two-pieces,” Mrs. Ramirez would call out the window as they got on their bikes. It just made Daniel want Lila more, thinking of her belly staying pale as her shoulders browned. Her costume at Dive in the Desert may have been her first two-piece, a bra so heavy with teal rhinestones it flattened her breasts, and a mermaid tail with a fin so big that carrying it around must’ve tired her out by the end of her shift.

  Dive in the Desert was the bar in the downstairs of the Mermaid Motel, fifty-nine dollars a night, and that was in the high season. The filled seats in the bar usually numbered more than twice the daily check-ins at the Mermaid. The bar was on the trucking highway, the Ocean Floor Onion Rings were supposed to be the best in the state, and when a mermaid came out, the house beer was half off. The owner once
had big plans, a nightly show with a half-dozen mermaids all flicking their tails at the long-haul truckers. But after he got the kitchen up to code, he only had enough money left for a secondhand aquarium, just big enough for one mermaid, two if one of them was Lila. She was so short that she fit in the tank with one of the other girls. That was why the owner had hired her, even though she had little boobs and her hair hadn’t quite been long enough at the time.

  “It’ll grow,” Lila had said, standing in his office in her jean shorts and a ten-year-old T-shirt from the Grand Canyon. “My hair, I mean.”

  Lila was still learning, but now she knew how to flip in the tank, twisting her hips like the older mermaids taught her. “It makes all the little jewels get the light,” Yolanda had said. Lila was usually with one of them—she was good at getting out of the way, even with that big tail—but today she was on her own. The other mermaids had family to see for the holiday weekend, and while most places got booked up, nobody was making the drive to the middle of the Mojave to check in to the Mermaid Motel. Even the long-haul truckers went home if they could get the time off. The bar would be almost empty if it weren’t for families making pit stops on road trips to somewhere else. The bar was getting more orders for grilled cheese sandwiches than gin and tonics. The little girls came up to the tank and pointed, and the boys tapped on the glass like Lila was a fish. She waved as she swam past, blowing a kiss with a string of little air bubbles.

  Through the glass, she saw a man standing by himself at the other side of the bar, as far as he could get from the tank and still watch her. He had hair the color of the masa de harina Lila and her mother used to mix with water to make corn tortillas. He was about the right age, twenty-five or so, same as her, but she knew it wasn’t Daniel. She’d thought she’d seen him at least ten times since she started at Dive in the Desert. Every time a young-looking guy with hair the color of sand-soil showed up in jeans, she’d see the blur of him through the water and the glass, and she’d think it was him. But every time she surfaced enough to peek over the edge of the tank, she was wrong. By now she’d given up looking and didn’t come up until she needed the air so much her lungs grew tight in her rib cage.

  The ketchup-and-french-fry crowd thinned out. Her shift ended. She rinsed off at the showerhead behind the bar, shielded by stacks of old crates. She left the costume on to rinse it out, the fin folded under her feet. Her eyes stung with the salt, and the turquoise sky blurred into the terra-cotta of the desert.

  She shut off the water. Her vision was still a little fuzzy, but not enough that she didn’t notice the man standing just on the other side of the crates. She startled. It wasn’t the first time a drunk man had tried to watch one of the mermaids rinse the smell of the tank out of her hair, but they were usually looking for Sarah Jane, with that hair so blonde it looked white in the light of the tank, or Yolanda, with her breasts that spilled into her sequined bra like batter into a muffin tin.

  Lila held her hands over her costume top. “Get out of here.”

  “All right,” the man said. “But I’m waiting you out. I’ll be in the lobby.”

  She recognized the voice, a little lower than she remembered, but with the same slow, even rhythm.

  She rubbed her eyes to get the last of the salt out. “Daniel?”

  The shape of him came into focus, a Polaroid developing. He had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, like always. Without pockets, he never knew what to do with them.

  She laughed, and he slipped in between the stacks of crates and put his arms around her, like he would with a friend he hadn’t seen in a while. But it didn’t feel right. He and Lila had never been that way.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Just stopped for the night,” he said.

  “Nobody stops here unless they get a flat or an overheated radiator.”

  She smelled like rock salt and desert and sky, a scent that was waiting on her skin when they were growing up, but now was as strong as open lilies.

  She held her hand to the front of his shirt, damp now, and sticking to him. “I’m getting you wet,” she said, and laughed again.

  “I don’t care.” He held her again, but this time her mouth ended up on the patch of his shirt just over his collarbone. Her wet fingers pulled down the collar of his shirt, and she put her lips to the base of his neck.

  She took in the scent of him. He still smelled like wet grass, like he slept in it every night. She stood on her toes to move her lips up his neck, the balls of her feet gripping the ground through the fabric of her tail. She tasted the light dusting of salt that perspiration had left on his skin. His hands gripped her waist, and he stopped holding her like a sister or an old friend.

  He picked her up like she was something strange and pretty he’d found on a beach hundreds of miles from the desert. She put her arms around him, feeling the warmth of his back through his shirt, and kissed the rest of the salt off his neck. Her tail dripped on the asphalt and then the dry dirt parking lot. When the sun hit those tacky little rhinestones, they shimmered on her body like malachite. The men getting some air outside the bar were too drunk to notice, the women at the motel check-in desk too bored. A girl on the way to the car with her family pointed and said she saw the mermaid, but her mother didn’t look, and said no, the mermaids were inside in the water where they could breathe.

  The door to Daniel’s room fell shut behind them, and he laid her down on the bed. Her hair and her tail soaked the sheets, and the whole room smelled like salt water. He helped her wriggle out of her tail and freed her breasts from her costume top. She’d wanted to be a mermaid worse than anything else since she was five years old, but right now shedding the weight of all those sequins made her feel like he’d woken her body up from a spell made of blue light and a shimmer of green. Like having his hands on her damp skin had turned her naked and human so she could part her legs.

  She pulled his jeans down only as far as she needed to, and she slid under him. He hesitated, sure she couldn’t mean for him to do that. He’d brought her back to his room to see her and touch her, to check her face and body against his memory and make sure he had it all right. But she put her hand on his back to tell him that, yes, this was what she wanted.

  The soft ache of opening for him had the feel and color of something she wanted to taste, so much so that she almost made him pull out of her so she could put her mouth around his erection. She didn’t. Instead she dug her heels into his lower back. He was gentle and slow, like she always guessed he would be. She loved that about him, like she loved how his hands were always in his pockets and how his hair was always just long enough to get in his eyes. But it made her so impatient she wrapped her legs around him tighter, lifting her butt and the small of her back up off the bed and closer to him so he was all the way inside her before he meant to be.

  He caught a gasp in the back of his throat. She kissed him, and he eased her lips apart with his tongue. He was still inside her, but they laughed softly, just breathing, no real sound, because it was the first time they’d kissed since he’d shown up. It was the only part of it all that they’d done before, and they both wondered how they could’ve gotten so far without their lips touching.

  She tightened around him, and they couldn’t laugh anymore. The muscles inside her tensed and released, a rhythm she couldn’t help, and he couldn’t help finishing. His hand was already between her legs by the time he did. He traced his fingers around the little slick-wet pearl that made her thighs tremble the more he touched it. He couldn’t remember when he started thinking of it that way, as her pearl. It was years before he ever touched it, years after the first time she said she wanted to be a mermaid, maybe sometime the summer after high school when she lived in that black one-piece. It had been strapless, her mother’s one concession about swimsuits, so he’d been able to watch Lila’s shoulders darken over those months.

  Lila curled onto her side, pleasure blooming between her legs. At first she tried not to
scream, then she remembered that nobody was out at the Mermaid Motel on a holiday weekend. The rooms on either side of Daniel’s were probably empty. She let herself, and she could feel the shiver that her cry sent through him.

  He held her as her breathing evened. She wondered if she should say thank you when a man made her feel like that, the same as if he held a door open or remembered what kind of chiles she liked.

  Daniel kissed her back and caught the faint scent of the water in the tank. “Salt,” he said. “Not chlorine?”

  “Salt’s cheaper,” she said.

  The hum of the air conditioner mixed with the sound of the ice machine turning over. It was a little like the buzz of the generator boxes and telephone lines in the neighborhood where they’d grown up.

  “How’d you find me?” she asked.

  “You were always saying you wanted to be a mermaid,” he said. “How come you didn’t tell me where you were going? One day I called and your mom just said you’d moved out.”

  The ice machine died down, but the air conditioner still called up the memory of lawn sprinklers. They’d talked about going to a hotel together, one day when they were older, but they’d meant one in the city, one nice enough that they didn’t put VACANCY and PAY-PER-VIEW on their signs. But lying with him like this was putting Lila a little more on the side of cheap places with neon sides and bars next door.

  “Why’ve you been hiding?” he asked.

  “You were in college,” she said. “Was I supposed to think you’d come back?”

  “Yes,” he said. He never had asked her why she didn’t try going too. He’d always had two guesses and didn’t like either one. Maybe she didn’t have the money and didn’t apply for scholarships. “We don’t take charity from los gringos,” her mother always told her. Or maybe it was because Mrs. Ramirez was always saying that girls shouldn’t get too smart. But by then it was already too late for that. Lila was always smarter than Daniel and everybody else. She’d figured out how to lock her bedroom door with a skein of yarn and a few hairpins. She’d sewn old textbooks back together when the ones the school handed out were so worn the pages were falling out. That was how he knew, when she said she’d be a mermaid one day, that she’d do it.