“Can I kiss you?” he asked as the crowd surged around us. I opened wide for it, like a spoonful of ice cream, and melted into his scent, his face, his sweaty shirt, drooling for more of that sharp pulse from his hips.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, starting to wheel around. “I have to find my friends—I don’t see them.”
He took my hand as if we’d been dating for years, and I followed him outside, past the bouncers and into the parking lot where he paced the empty spaces.
“Shit! I can’t believe this,” he growled. “They’re gone!” My adorable smile petered out. The fun was apparently over. “They’re my only way home!”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Columbus.”
“Columbus?” I managed.
“Fort Benning,” he said. “Long way.”
“Christ, you really are a soldier. Is there anyone you can call?” I asked. “For a ride?”
He looked at me, exasperated.
“No, I’m from New Hampshire.”
“Oh, I’m from Connecticut,” I told him, uselessly.
Sobering in the humid night air, I realized that as punishment for being a slut, I’d now end up being a fucking taxi as well. The worst possible ending. “I guess I have to take you, huh.”
“I’ll pay you,” he offered, annoyingly gorgeous even when desperate. “I’m really sorry. I’m going to kick their asses for doing this to me.”
No more grinding or kissing, now just silent driving to nowhere, and work in the morning. Christ, it was already the morning. Perfect. Why had I even offered? Why didn’t I just ditch him? Not like I was ever going to see this dude again. Argh.
“You drive,” I yawned, handing him the keys.
I stared out the window of the passenger seat, disliking the dull ringing in my ears, or the awkward silence that had settled in its place. Gradually the wide, well-lit highway narrowed, and the landscape grew sleepy and dark.
“Don’t fall asleep,” I warned him.
“No I’m fine.”
I nodded in and out, startling awake to check the clock. Four thirty.
“How much longer?” I murmured.
“Halfway.”
“Holy shit.”
God, I thought. This is so depressing.
I thought about all the other Saturday evenings of my life, an infinite succession of denied pleasures, of thwarted fantasies, of finished chores and completed homework. All the bedtimes, like unmarked graves, with me suffocating under the covers as I stared into the darkness and begged my heavenly father to please make it better. I’d always done what He wanted me to do. I’d done what Justin wanted me to. I’d done what everyone wanted me to do.
So what did I want to do?
I looked over at this stranger, running my eyes along the striking line of his jaw.
To choose a better ending for once in my life, that’s what.
I tasted more of him with my eyes, the way his boxy muscles filled out his shirt, the enticing stretch of his jeans around his hips, his hand on the wheel. Wow, I’d done well. It was an indisputable fact that Mr. Every-Girl’s-Fantasy was driving my car.
Why not now?
“I’m sorry about all this,” he repeated, feeling my eyes on him. “I really appreciate it.”
We reached the barracks as the first light crept into the sky, but for a good fifty miles or so I’d been screwing my courage to the sticking place, letting all the possibilities roll through my mind, each one jockeying for a chance to be heard. Suppose I could do exactly what I wanted to do? Suppose everything I’d been forbidden to do was now fair game?
Do it. Do it now.
Reaching behind my neck, I pulled the string of my shirt and slipped it off, along with the old way of doing things. I looked down at the blue morning light on my topless chest. I felt so mortified. And so alive.
The boy did a double take but did not swerve off the road.
“Those are nice,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Will you fuck me?” I asked, shocking myself.
“Okay,” he said, reaching his right hand over to touch me.
This shocked me even more. He would? He would!
I breathed, reeling in the avalanche of implications. It was too late to back out now. Oh, no. Oh yes!
In the parking lot outside the entrance, he covered my head with his jacket, and snuck me through a chain-link gate. His arm guiding me, I caught little glimpses of the passing floor tiles as we hurried through a quiet but echoey corridor. Then his roommate was chased out in a flurry of whispers, and he brought me into his room, locked the door and removed my veil.
“We made it?” I asked, laughing nervously.
He nodded and smiled, taking a deep breath, setting my keys on a table. The room was bigger than a dorm, but more austere, more concrete. I had never been in the domain of a real soldier before. For this fact alone I covered him with kisses, moving directly into the re-removal of my top.
I stood nervously at attention as he took off his watch and his shirt, and then began filling his palms with vanilla-scented body lotion. With a half smile, he spread it across my nipples, massaging it in. Slack-jawed, I untied my pants and let them fall off too, hoping he’d rub more there, and anywhere else he wanted. On cue, his hands slid into my thighs, my belly, between my legs, pausing to weaken me with kisses.
Naked, raging wet, and fully moisturized, I rested my butt on the edge of a table and yanked off his belt and jeans, his underwear, teasing his misshapen briefs with the proximity of my parted thighs, running my tongue across the firm plane of his chest, the smooth ridges of his arms, sucking his nipples and his fingers and the shaved hair at the base of his neck. The light coming in the windows was brighter now, and I pulled back to study his face, to take in every inch of him.
“Look at you,” I moaned, pained by his beauty. As punishment for being so fucking hot, I knelt down to devour his hard cock, twisting him in my hands, bruising my lips with slow, ferocious strokes, until finally, a decision had to be made whether we’d stop to lay down or just fuck standing up.
“Anywhere,” I begged.
He picked me up, straddling my bare body against his waist, his erection threatening below like an angled spear, and laid me down in the shadowy blankets of the bottom bunk, crushing me beneath his weight.
“You have something?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, rolling over to reach for his pants on the floor, pulling out a crinkly wrapper. He ripped it open and I helped him roll the condom on, grazing him with my tongue as I went, memorizing all the unexpected shapes of his body.
We shifted back into position and I looked up at him, spreading, eager to watch his face as he slid inside me, hoping to see his embattled joy laid bare, the thread of his composure unraveling as he lost control. He pushed into me with a gruff sigh, and I clung to him through the wave of ecstasy, the slow grind, the heroin tide of openmouthed pleasure, and then the rough and insistent battering of his hips as he fought to get more, to hold back. Above the combustion of our bodies, I struggled to quiet my pleading cries, and he tried to steady the bed to keep it from slamming against the wall.
“So good,” I warned. How could it be so good? The insides of my thighs were trembling, my back arching off the bed. “I think I’m gonna come,” I sighed.
“Shh,” he reminded me with a smile, offering a pillow to scream into.
“I’m gonna come!” I called louder, pushing it aside and pulling his ass deeper, stuffing him into the spiraling pleasure, into a flash of bliss that left me wheezing and drooling into his shoulder, my hips feeding on him, weaning, growing weaker as his pace quickened, his breath raging, hammering me ruthlessly against the cinderblock wall until he convulsed and pulled out, whipping off the condom, coming forcefully all across my chest. I rubbed it into my skin, mixing it with the perfume of sweat and lotion, licking it off my fingertips like honey.
I watched his body heave, his breath slowing, a weary grin on his lip
s. He fell beside me and for a few suspended moments, we stared at the bunk above us in silence.
“You’re my second,” I whispered, giggling. “Ever.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” he replied, sounding surprised. As if I was supposed to disclose these things. He considered me, softening.
“Guess what,” he said, propping up to touch my hair. “You’re my second too. Ever.”
And just like that, I was free of the man I was supposed to marry.
I drove home an hour later, wide awake and still trembling, replaying my new collection of secrets. Oh, my God. His balls! His waist! His dick. I took a deep, shaky breath. My hands smelled like vanilla and cum, maybe the official scent of the Special Forces.
He had handed me some folded bills on the way out. “Gas money,” he’d said. But I was worried that maybe it wasn’t, so I’d turned it down flat. As if that would somehow preserve my virtue. Now watching my gas meter ticking on E, I felt pretty stupid.
Still, a one-night stand! A fling! Casual sex with a real live hottie! And I was still alive! For now.
Would there be punishment for exiting the Gates of Purity? Herpes, chlamydia, warts, something bad? But how, since right before he’d unzipped his pants he’d whispered something about how all military guys get tested, that meant he was clean, right? I believed him—how could I not? I had inspected his hard naked penis, right before I ravaged it, and it looked clean.
Clean and healthy and ready to fight for its country.
18 | After He Goes
“God let them go into every sort of sex sin, and let them do whatever they wanted to…”
—ROMANS 1:24
Hey,” she said in a husky voice, extending her hand like a guy. “Cynthia.”
“Hey,” I replied, suddenly awash with girly charm. Cynthia was the new chef at the little café where I’d just gotten a job. I wondered if she liked me. After all, I was a girl and she was a lesbian. I didn’t know how these things worked exactly. When her back was turned I looked to see if she was checking me out. But nah. She was just putting plates in the window like always. I picked them up and served them to the patio tables.
Sometimes when it got busy I went into the kitchen to help her with the food prep. It was a cramped space and we were always bumping into each other and apologizing.
Cynthia was older, maybe ten years or so, and kind of serious. To me, even the way she chopped celery commanded authority. And I found her body provocative in the most unexpected way. I’d catch myself admiring her hands and her light-colored eyes. Even in plain cargo pants and a white T-shirt, she had an effortless way of making clothes look good on her long, lean body. And that short, choppy hair, those soft pale lips. Fuck, she looked like a boy. A really hot boy. Only she wasn’t. Was I swooning? No.
Wait. Was I? Maybe I was. Holy crap.
What was it? I wondered, as I snuck another glance. I’d always noticed the details of other women’s bodies. But never with the understanding that I could have their body. Was that what lay at the core of my envy? The desire to secretly fuck them?
After a while, it was more than an accidental bump in the crowded walk-in freezer. It was Cynthia putting her hands on my hips and moving me aside as she was coming through.
“’Scuse me, darlin’,” she’d say, and I’d feel weak in a way that caught me totally off guard. I’d glance at her over my shoulder, and she’d look up in time to see it, and then pretend it hadn’t happened.
I liked the way her hair was pushed up in the front, like she’d just run her hand through it. Her T-shirt sleeves were rolled up, James Dean–style, and you could see the edge of a tattoo on her shoulder. Her hands, her gorgeous hands.
I walked up behind her and stood with my chest pressing into her arm, a little too long. Cynthia zoned out, knife paused above a raw zucchini.
“I can’t cut straight when you do that, darlin’,” she said in a low voice. She went out for a smoke after the lunch rush and I slipped out after her, plucking the cigarette out of her fingers to steal a drag. Her light eyes flashed.
“Come over to my place today, you want to?” she said. “My girlfriend’s not home.”
“Oh,” I said, woozy from the nicotine, or maybe from touching her. “You have a girlfriend?”
She looked at me plainly. “Yeah, but not tonight.”
That phrase hit me between the eyes, troubling me as much as it turned me on. Doubting seriously that I’d do anything, I found myself racing to get home after work, compelled to shower and shave my body bare. I picked out cute clothes, put on makeup and sat upright on the edge of my bed, watching my reflection in the mirror across the room.
Are you seriously going to go? I asked.
No, of course not.
Then I got in my car and drove straight to her apartment. Cynthia opened the door and greeted me with an evil smile.
A wave of heat rippled through my belly as I walked in.
“What?” She laughed, something I didn’t get to see her do very often. She rubbed her forehead with one hand. “Oh, God.”
Then she shut the front door behind us and stood there, looking at me. She lifted her hand to move my hair behind my ear. There was a look there, a request for permission as she cocked her head to the side and let me taste her. Her lips and jaw felt small and delicate, her tongue like a girl’s, like mine, but her mouth and hands were strong and insistent. She started to pull back, but I reached my hand around her neck and brought her back. My body apparently did not discriminate between boys and girls, not when the kiss crackled like that. I could barely stand upright.
Taking this as a green light, she started undressing me, fondling me, pulling my nipples out of my bra with her mouth. I looked down in fascination as her hands wandered into the waist of my shorts, where I was now as slippery and wet as I’d been for any guy. I took a step backward and wobbled, bringing her down with me onto the white carpeting.
“I’ve been waiting so long to do this,” she said, right before her face disappeared between my thighs, tugging my panties down so she could lick me over and over. I moaned and writhed, the legs of a nearby table going in and out of focus, the heat of her mouth consuming me whole. She was so hungry to get a taste of my overdone girliness, I could feel in my toes how turned-on she was, how much she enjoyed giving me pleasure and seeing me naked. With that, I lost it. I rolled onto my side, blood pulsing in my ears, hair tingling, legs numb.
“Oh, my God,” I cried, unable to move. I squinted down at her, trying to focus.
Her shirt was still on, so I figured I needed to get her up to speed. I sat up weakly and kissed her neck, pulling off her shirt, letting her know that I was ready to do it back to her now. And whatever “it” was, I knew with a sinking certainty that I wouldn’t know what the hell I was doing.
I cupped the V of her crotch in my hand, making her eyes flutter, stroking and squeezing until she fell back, where I tugged off her pants and underwear. And then, there it was, a pussy. Almost just like my own.
Oh, God.
What, did I think she’d have a dick? I had, kind of. My disappointment defied logic. How exactly did I arrive at this moment? I wondered. And how the hell would I exit it successfully, with my sexual prowess intact? I couldn’t possibly top what she’d just done to me.
Easy, I coached myself. Spastic hand rubbing. Only, use your tongue and your neck. Make friction with nonexistent facial muscles, powered by nothing but spit and grit and pure desperation. Suddenly, I had a deep and apologetic appreciation for anyone in the world who had ever gone down on a woman.
I put my mouth on her and tasted her with my tongue, musky and rich, like tasting myself. She whispered my name. But I immediately knew: I was going to suck. I didn’t know what to do. Even worse, I lacked the motivation to find out. I couldn’t believe it when, after about five minutes or so, I sat up and stopped without explanation.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shamefaced. “I’m no good.”
“That’s
fine,” she assured me. “You were great.”
I looked at her and shook my head, knowing exactly what she meant.
Cynthia still wanted to keep me around, despite my terrible performance and the threat of her live-in girlfriend finding out. We’d leave work together and escape to the dark cool of her apartment, rolling around naked in her bed. She knew how to get my body to react every time, but afterward I was always in a hurry to get up and leave. I had doubts about my ability to be a good lesbian, seeing as how every time she took off her pants, I secretly longed for her dick. For hairy arms and a body that was nothing like mine.
“Stay,” she said in a sleepy voice, her gorgeous body twisted in the sheets. “Lie with me awhile. We’ve got time.”
“I gotta go,” I said, trying to think of why. I just didn’t like the way it felt with her holding me. She needed me in a way I knew she shouldn’t. I couldn’t reciprocate. And there is nothing so worthless in all the world as a nonreciprocating lover.
“When is your girlfriend coming home?”
“Not till late.” She sighed, stretching.
“Still,” I said, trying to hook my bra, “it makes me worry.”
“She found your hair clip in the sofa cushions.” Cynthia grinned. “She was flipping out.”
“What did you tell her?”
One thing I was sure of: me and my incriminating pink hair clips did not want to be anywhere near here when two lesbians started throwing dishes at each other. I searched under her bed for my bag.
“I just made up something,” Cynthia said. “She bought it, but we’ve got to be more careful.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Careful.”
But she didn’t understand careful the same way I did. Careful meant never coming back at all.
When Justin returned from visiting Lesley’s hometown, he came over to visit me. I knew by the way he was smiling that he was all better now. In his eyes, the old recording was still on playback: living happily ever after, just the three of us—Justin, me, and whatever past-life lover happened to be in town that weekend.
Until He Comes: A Good Girl's Quest to Get Some Heaven on Earth Page 22