Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  I snatched it out of her hand and crumpled it up, but she only smirked and turned, waggling her fingers over her shoulder. “Toodles.”

  “Cassandra,” said that low voice in my ear, tempering my anger and turning it to desire. I could wait no longer. “New York’s a long way away.” I pressed backward against him, too much white silk and beaded fringe between me and his cock for me to tell anything.

  But I knew.

  “Not with you driving,” I said as I turned in his arms.

  His chest rumbled with a chuckle.

  “I want to fuck you, Mitchell Hollander.”

  “Right back at you, Cassandra Hollander.”

  * * * * *

  Languid and Bittersweet

  It wasn’t the worst sex I’d ever had, but it came pretty close.

  No surprise, really, given that Mitch’s entire twenty-three-year sexual history consisted of one woman who had been as ignorant as he when they set out on their journey together. They’d probably fallen into some humdrum twice-a-month routine comprised of missionary position and possibly, on a frisky night, woman-on-top—before her disease had progressed far enough that even that had to stop.

  He’d been celibate for over fifteen years.

  It was just another example of a lifestyle I would never have imagined existed and that millions of people led. I couldn’t fathom why I was so attracted to the concept, to this man, to his parishioners.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed as he lay alongside me, his arm across my chest and his hand in my hair.

  I couldn’t help being amused by that, enough to shake me out of some pique. “Well,” I said, “your bite isn’t as good as your bark, I’ll admit.”

  He laughed and nuzzled my ear. “It’s been a while.”

  “Tell me something. Is this the way it was with Mina?”

  His body tensed, though if in anger I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t like Mitch to get angry over an honest question, but finally, he relaxed and said, “I don’t remember.”

  The rest of my annoyance fled. He was so different from anyone I’d ever met and the matter-of-fact delivery tore at me somewhere inside my chest.

  “How can I help you?” he whispered as his hand caressed my breast, light, soft, like a feather. I shivered because this—this I had never known, this caring and gentleness. “I hear this rumor women have orgasms all the time,” he said dryly, “but I don’t know if Mina ever did.”

  “She probably didn’t or you’d remember. You can tell.”

  “Teach me.”

  I began to smile. He sounded so unsure, so...adolescent, and I realized that he still was, in terms of sexuality once the bedroom door closed. I’d instructed young men (always at their fathers’ request), but I’d never instructed a man my own age who had a marriage under his belt with three children and a grandchild to show for it.

  It was the first time in a long time I found sex to be...intriguing.

  “Mitch,” I whispered and shifted to kiss him, slowly, alternately teasing him and giving him the full force of a kiss. He excited me, this steel magnate and longsuffering man of God with everything going on in a salsa club and next to nothing going on in the bedroom; it was new and different. Adventurous. So I’d had to marry him to get him in bed. So what? I couldn’t regret it even if the sex had been perfunctory, albeit unintentionally. There was just something about him...

  “I’m going to make love to you, Mitch. Remember what I do and use this as the rule of thumb: Whatever I do to you, odds are, I’ll like it if you do it to me.”

  “But I just finished— I can’t rebound that fast.”

  “By the time I need your cock again, you’ll be ready.” Well, that was a lie. I needed it again right now, but if my time as a plaything meant anything, it was that I could be very, very patient. I knew that in Mitch I had an eager student, a man who wanted to please. I also knew—somehow—that he had the potential of being one of the best lovers I had ever had.

  He drew me over him and down as I kissed him, deep, slow, so that I lay on him and even now he meant to keep control, with his fingers in my hair and a big, callused hand clutching my bare buttock. I let that happen for a while so I could drink in his taste, smell the musk of a powerful male sweaty from sex and expensive cologne. I caressed his face with my thumbs while we kissed, while our tongues slid and stroked.

  I gasped when his hand slid down between my legs and he slid his finger up inside me, not only because it had been unexpected but because it was electric. It was simple, that caress, and one that I’d felt dozens of times, but with Mitch...

  “You’re wet,” Mitch whispered against my chin as he kissed me. Normally I would have laughed at his statement of the obvious, but he knew it was obvious; he was starting over, using his imagination, unwilling in the end to let me teach him anything, wanting to learn on his own with a woman who wouldn’t balk at anything he wanted to try. He slid two more fingers inside me and caressed me—was it even possible to be caressed inside?

  “Tell me what you want, Mitch.”

  “I want to watch you masturbate.”

  I opened my eyes and looked down at him. “You never say anything I expect.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Stop expecting.”

  I laughed then, delighted. “Why do you want to watch me masturbate?”

  “So I know what to do to make you come.”

  “Oral sex makes me come.”

  A slow grin grew on his face. “I’d rather do that, then.”

  He rolled me onto my back until I reclined on a firm wedge-shaped pillow I’d ordered for just this purpose. His big, rough hands gripped my ankles and spread my legs wide. I couldn’t catch my breath while I watched him lie between my thighs, his hands stroking up my legs, wrapping around my hips. Then all I could see was his head between my thighs, his sandy hair contrasting sharply against the black of my neatly trimmed pussy. As I looked down my body and watched him eat me, I could feel his tongue inside me, hesitant, unskilled, sloppy.

  Eager.

  Then he found my clit and pulled it into his mouth. I gasped, shocked, startled by the beginnings of an orgasm I hadn’t expected.

  I was going to come on a lick and a promise.

  I knew how I’d taste, my juices commingled with his, and to know he tasted them too...

  “Mitch, kiss me.”

  He looked up at me, then rose up on his knees, one against my hip and one between my legs, pressing up into me. He planted one hand on the bed over my head, lowered his body to mine, pressing me deep into the pillow. His kiss was hard, masterful, and indeed I could taste me and him on his lips, his tongue. I whimpered and he turned his attention to my jaw, stroking me with open-mouthed kisses.

  The seducer had become the seduced.

  I began to come with nothing more than a bare male body pressed to mine, the scent of my own arousal in my nose, my taste on my tongue, his mouth on my jaw.

  Then I felt his knee move away, leaving me open and wanting— He slid the fingers of his left hand inside me again, driving in, the heel of his palm pressing against my clit and rocking with the rhythm of my orgasm as if I’d taught him that, which I hadn’t.

  “Come for me, Cassandra,” he whispered in my ear as it went on and on. I arched my back and cried out. I tried to tell him I was coming and why the hell didn’t he know that, but I could barely form a word much less an entire sentence. His thumb touched my clit and he bent to suck on my nipple. “Again,” he said, and it was if he thought he could command me.

  I obeyed.

  “Mitch,” I gasped as my pussy clamped around his fingers. I had to wrap my arms around his neck to hold on while I fell off the edge of the world. “Oh, God, Mitch.”

  I felt the rumble of his chuckle as I drifted down from that high, languorous, lethargic, as if I had never had an orgasm in my life.

  Now I knew what it was like to fuck a squeaky-clean Mormon bishop and I wanted to do it again.

  And again.

  * *
* * *

  Between the Moon and New York City

  March 19, 2011

  Mitch awoke slowly in the unfamiliar bed that dominated the suite at the top of Cassandra’s townhouse. Her naked body was wrapped around him, warm, soft, woman. She smelled of roses, orange blossoms, and sex. He was ready for her again, but he dreaded it.

  He’d failed.

  Spectacularly.

  For the first time since he’d come home from his mission early.

  His gut churned as his mind replayed the hours before, when he had taken her without so much as a by-your-leave, gotten his needs met, then clumsily found his way—somehow—to giving her an orgasm. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do it again because he didn’t remember what he’d done in the first place.

  Then there was the possibility she’d faked her orgasm, but how would he know? Did other men know when their wives faked orgasm? And would it matter? He supposed Cassandra would be more accomplished at it than most men’s wives.

  For the first time ever he hated the restrictions he’d accepted as a member of the Church, a man of God, a judge in Israel. He should have been better at this, better at...everything about it. He was forty-four years old and he knew no more than a twenty-one-year-old freshly returned missionary.

  And, worse. That Mina had never had that, never known that. He had never done that for his first wife, a woman he loved, the mother of his children. That, at least, he could remember.

  Never given her oral sex.

  Never even thought about it.

  If he’d known how to make sex pleasurable for her...known that it could be...

  I want to watch you masturbate.

  He groaned. Had he really said that? Because he was too ignorant to know what to do and had admitted it?

  Embarrassed, humiliated at his ineptitude, he disengaged from her to hit the bathroom. He got in a hot shower, unwilling to face her this morni— He looked out the window. Afternoon.

  She would leave him sooner rather than later, and he wouldn’t blame her.

  He started when the glass door to the shower opened and she stepped in, tall, lithe, smiling. What in the world did she have to smile about?

  But he stared at her and her smile faltered. She bit her lip. “Uh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she murmured and turned to go.

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted.

  She stopped, her back stiff. She looked over her shoulder but down at the wet floor. “Sorry for what?”

  “I’m sorry I was so bad last night. It must have been horrible for you and I—I’m sorry.”

  She slowly looked up at him, her piquant face serious, uncertain. “You’re not— Uh, you’re not sorry you married me?”

  “No,” he breathed, horrified that she might have thought that, but looking at it from a bishop’s experience in dealing with people, it was only natural. He’d been too caught up in being a man who didn’t know how to please his wife, a man dealing with a sudden onslaught of insecurities, to think about hers. “No, Cassandra. Don’t think that.”

  “You weren’t bad,” she said slowly, looking into his eyes as if to impart something important. “You’re inexperienced. That’s different. You made me come twice, one right after another. That’s rare.”

  He stared at her, trying to remember the second time. All he remembered was saying “again,” but nothing more happening than what had already happened.

  “But—”

  She turned fully then and he couldn’t help but look at her naked body. The belly that, except for some silvery striations, said nothing about having had four children. The still-pert breasts that remained silent on the issue but for the same marks. The tight, taut thighs and delicate feet. She had the body of a thirty-year-old woman, now starting to glisten with moisture, and he hardened with the thought of sinking himself in her again.

  “Mitch,” she murmured as she leaned against him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and kissed him. Long, deep, her tongue twining with his. He growled a little and pulled her closer. “Lift me up,” she whispered. “Wrap my legs around your hips.”

  He gulped, understanding exactly what she wanted and he wanted it too, but he feared turning into a selfish lover—exactly what he had been to Mina for years and years, without even knowing it.

  Because he was ignorant.

  Cassandra slid her hands up his arms and around his neck. He did as instructed.

  “Close to the wall. Press me hard between you and the wall.”

  He did that.

  She shifted so that the tip of his penis was at her entrance, but still he hesitated because one good thrust and he might lose it again.

  “Now,” she said, “drive your cock right up into me, hard, like you want to pound me into the wall. Stay that way as long as you can.”

  His heart stopped. “Cassandra...”

  “Trust me.”

  He sucked in a long breath, then did what she said. His world fell apart as he collapsed against her, to his surprise, still hard.

  “Mitch. You haven’t had sex in a very long time. You didn’t know what you were doing in the years before that. It’s not a surprise to me, and we both knew I’d be teaching you. But you gave me what I needed last night. You don’t have any reason to apologize.”

  “I don’t want to be selfish. I never made Mina do that, and I— I’m...ashamed.”

  “Oh, Mitch,” she sighed. “Don’t be. Nigel gave me the first orgasm I ever had. Think about that. I was thirty-two. I’d been married for thirteen years. I had four children. A gay man gave me my first orgasm and had to teach me how to masturbate. Had to get me to a place where I even cared.”

  He shook his head in resignation.

  “I always assumed I couldn’t have one, and truly, I didn’t care. Believe me, it had nothing to do with religion or guilt or sexual mores. Some women just can’t. Didn’t you and Mina ever talk about sex?”

  “Not until she was diagnosed. The doctor asked her about our sex life and she admitted she hated it. It was very painful. Wiped her out for a couple of days afterward. That shocked me. Hurt my feelings that she never told me. But the doctor explained why, how the MS worked. After that, there was no point. Her body couldn’t take the strain of another child and I wasn’t about to add to her pain or exhaustion.”

  “Well, there you go. If the sex is difficult, the orgasm will be, too. Even if you’d known what you were doing, you’d have worn her out just trying to get her there.”

  He gulped.

  “It’s very possible that no matter how skilled you were, she was never going to have an orgasm. Chronic pain—disease—isn’t conducive to one. It doesn’t make you selfish; it makes you both caught in a sad circumstance.”

  Mitch didn’t know what to say, what to think. So much he didn’t know because he hadn’t been able to bear thinking about it all these years, for the wanting, the need he had.

  “Notice: You’re inside me while we’re standing in a shower having a serious discussion, and you’re still hard.”

  Yes, he was, and though she had told him to stay still, he began to move. He couldn’t help it, but a slow smile grew on her face and her lids lowered.

  “You held back on me last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he murmured as he picked up his pace a little, then buried his face in the crook of her neck. He felt her hands in his hair, gentle, caressing. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Impossible.” She reached down to clutch his buttocks, digging her fingernails in. “Do you understand the difference between making love, having sex, and fucking?”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath, the vulgarity making so much difference to him now, meaning something instead of some random adjective.

  “Intellectually.”

  “So, practice.”

  “Which one?”

  “Pick one. Do that. After, tell me which one you think you did.”

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, as clear and brown and guile
less as they ever were, as they had been the first time he met her. “You won’t break?”

  She smiled. “No.”

  He slid leisurely in and out of her with deeper, longer strokes, because it felt so...good, so right, and he wanted to savor each sensation.

  Mitch took a deep breath, because in his gut, in that dark part of his soul he never wanted to acknowledge, the one that responded when she told him she wanted to fuck him, he wanted to do exactly that to her.

  “Do what you want, Mitch. Don’t worry about me right now. We have all the time in the world together.”

  So he did, crushing her mouth with his, the sound of the shower drowning out any sound of how hard he drove her into the wall. She whispered against his mouth, “More. Harder. Faster. Give me everything you’ve got.”

  He braced himself against the wall, his hands high up over her head, and tried. Her surprised gasp, her moan, “Oh, God, Mitch, yes,” barely registered, but it did and he came, his head back, being pummeled by hot water, surprised at how wonderfully violent it was—how strange it was to feel her rocking against him, grinding herself into him, her legs tightening around him.

  Cassandra seemed to hang onto him, breathing as hard as he, and he let his forehead slowly drop to hers so that their noses touched.

  “Mitch,” she murmured after their breathing had calmed somewhat.

  “Cassandra.”

  “That was fabulous.”

  “You came?”

  “Didn’t you hear me scream?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, then snapped it shut again, a feeling of deep satisfaction working its way through him. “Yeah, I guess I did. You weren’t faking?”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “I only faked for the people who paid.”

  “Oh, right,” he drawled, and felt himself smile. “You don’t lie to let people save face.”