LOVERS

by Roxy Harte

  In the darkness our gazes lock. She pulls the hem of my shirt, pushing it up. I know I should stop her. I should.

  I can’t. I’m paralyzed by the need I see in her eyes.

  “Tell me you want this as much as I do.”

  “You have no idea.” I gasp. “I want this more.”

  She pulls my shirt over my head and tosses it into the pile. She goes to unsnap my jeans, and I grab her hands to stop her until she says, “Please,” and then I can’t deny her.

  I release her wrists, letting her unbutton me and unzip me. I stand, shimmying them off my hips. She works her way out of her own. She steps out of her panties, dress slacks and sandals with quick kicks. It is harder for me. I have to unlace my boots. I leave my bikini panties on.

  I drop to my knees, in a position straddling her much as before.

  She giggles and flips the elastic band of my panties. “No fair.”

  “I’m shy.” I shrug.

  She laughs. “I’ll help you get over that.”

  She tugs my panties down and I let her. I panic for a second, but just in my head, wondering what I’m doing, and decide then and there that that’s what I’m about to find out. Naked and straddling her, I really don’t have a clue. I bend to kiss her and go back to rolling her breasts in my palms.

  It’s time to come clean before I make an ass of myself. “Lexi?”

  “Mmph?” she asks, pushing up on her elbows. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” I exclaim. “No. It’s me, I need to tell you something, but I need it to be one-hundred percent off the record.”

  She laughs. “We went off the record when we left the restaurant. I assure you, anything you say is not going to go into print.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest!” She sits up and grips my upper arms. I know she can feel that I’m trembling. “What is it?”

  “I’ve never…I mean…”

  Her eyes widen, and she gasps. It is really going to get ugly now. What’s worse than a poser?

  “I’ve never been with a woman, Lexi. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’m kind of a virgin.”

  She snorts, but then she realizes I’m not lying. “But what about the man you’re seeing?”

  “What we do…it isn’t…” Do I say it isn’t normal? That doesn’t feel right. It’s normal for the relationship we have. God, how do I explain this? I admit, “We don’t have intercourse. I’ve never had intercourse…of any kind,” I clarify. I go way beyond clarification when I panic and can’t stop babbling. “Not a finger, not a tongue, no dildos…I’ve never even used a tampon. Just pads. I do everything in my power to ignore that part of my anatomy exists. I insist he ignore it too. ”

  I wait for her to look at me like I’ve grown a second head, but she doesn’t. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but her eyes aren’t judging, they seem compassionate. She strokes my face with her hand and it is rough because she has sand on her fingers, but I don’t care about the sand.

  I lean in to kiss her saying, “I’ve never felt comfortable enough to have sex with anyone, and right now, I’m still petrified, but I really want to make love to you. I’m just a little clueless.”

  I kiss her and she lets me. It’s a gentle kiss though, not nearly as passion driven as the previous kisses. I worry that I’ve blown it. She pulls away and asks, “So this man and you?”

  I reveal everything. “Mutual masturbation, bondage play, power exchanges. Sometimes oral.”

  She nods, and it drives me insane that I don’t know what she’s thinking. She answers that in part when she says, “Well, it sounds like you have down the basics, just do what you know how to do.”

  I lean in to kiss her, and it feels good. I feel good, relieved. “I want to taste you.”

  She leans back into the sand, and I slide between her legs. Her scent hits me first, similar to my scent but different…earth and sea comingled…that’s the fragrance. Want, need, desire, power, compassion all rolled up into a perfume that rips through my senses and makes me feel immortal and primordial all in one whiff. I lick her slowly, a test lick, like a test drive, but holy shit I don’t know what I’m doing doesn’t even come into play with this experience. I know what to do.

  I’m giddy with excitement as I lick and taste, suck, feel…her texture calls to me. Why have I been so terrified of this? No, not terrified of this, this part I think I always knew I could do, it was that other part, the rejection part, the rolling on the floor and pointing and laughing part. Lexi isn’t laughing; she’s moaning, and it is my lips, my teeth, my tongue making her moan.

  I touch her, separating her folds with my fingers so that I can taste deeper.

  “Oh God, yes!” she cries out. “I need your fingers inside of me, Toby, please, please! Fuck me now, Toby! I need you to fuck me now!”

  Really?

  This is my fear…

  She isn’t afraid of this. She wants this, needs this…and I’m going to be the one to fuck her senseless.

  I lift my face and smile. Yeah! I shout on the inside, my primitive man doing a victory dance. Me! I can do this.

  “Please don’t stop, Toby. You’re doing great, you’re doing fine.”

  I lick her slow, anus to clit, making her gasp. She lifts her hips, encouraging me with body language. I slide a finger in real slow. “Don’t worry, angel, there isn’t a chance I’m stopping now.”

  I lick while I’m fingering her, teasing her clit with my lips and tongue, while I feel her, memorize her on the inside. My fingers seem to know the path, like they’ve been down this road before, and when her hips start bucking, I hold on to her, wrapping my arm around her narrow waist. I know we’re on the main stretch. I tease her, pumping her, two fingers now. She’s so hot, she’s steaming. I plunge, three fingers, surprised at how wet she’s getting, and then she cries out and grabs my wrist. I don’t pull out, I soften my stroke.

  “Oh God, Toby, oh God!” I stroke really, really gently and her cries match my stroke, “Oh God, godgodgodgodgod!”

  MORNING BRINGS A REALITY check when I wake up at Lexi’s place, her alarm jolting me to awareness. I’m glad she set an alarm. I’m already behind schedule and it’s only six AM. I think if I rolled out of bed immediately and started running, I could probably get a partial workout in before I have to go to the studio. My brain starts clicking all of the missing pieces of the puzzle together.

  I can’t even blame it on alcohol that I’m here and don’t remember entirely how we got here or when. Lust drunk. That’s what I was. Maybe that’s what she was too.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks.

  I open my eyes and look at her with an embarrassed smile. “Running.”

  She panics, eyes going wide, and I realize she misunderstood.

  I kiss her arm, because it’s closest to my face, and wrap a restraining arm around her waist. “No, no, no, hon, not running from you…running…it’s what I do every morning as soon as my eyes open…and the thought was, I’m not running this morning because I would rather…” I raise up on one elbow to press a kiss to her lips “…stay right here, kissing you.”

  “Oh.” She relaxes, smiling. “Good. I was trying to think of a good excuse to not race into the office this morning.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “No rest for the wicked.” She chuckles. “Guess that includes me.”

  “Finish my interview. You said you needed to tweak it before you turned it in. I have to do a quick shoot, but I’ll be in and out in two hours. We’d have the rest of the day. You could ask me all of the hard questions to make your story more compelling.”

  She smiles but reaching out to stroke my cheek her eyes look sad. “Tempting, but I really have to be good. I haven’t been the best employee since the break-up.” She grabs her cellphone and texts. “There.”

  “There?”

  “I’m officially working, starting now. Morning run with you, followed by watching you film a show, followed by a trip to
your studio to check out your artwork before I submit the final article. Should take the rest of the day.”

  I lean in and kiss her, not a soft peck, but the real deal. It’s so easy to show her my passion, so easy to be the aggressor. I don’t understand it, but I’m sure as hell not questioning it.

  She laughs. “I think I look forward to the rest of the interview.”

  MY HEART IS POUNDING through my chest and my palms are sweating as I turn the key on the door to my loft. Bringing Lexi to see my paintings is a huge step. The thought Adrian would be so proud of me floats through my mind and then whiplashes back in on itself as I realize Adrian doesn’t know about Lexi.

  Oh, shit.

  A second later it dawns on me I haven’t heard from him. Bastard! We have a fight and he doesn’t even call to see if I’m alive?

  Lexi touches my arm. “Are you all right? That’s a serious dark cloud crossing your face. If you aren’t comfortable showing me your work—”

  I interrupt the rest of what she would have said by kissing her silent and pulling her with me as I back into the loft.

  She pulls her mouth from mine, gasping as I flip on the light switch revealing walls filled floor to ceiling with canvases.

  “Holy fuck!”

  I smile, taking her reaction as an affirmation she likes them. “Good?”

  “God, Toby! Was there any doubt? I want at least three of them for my house. These are amazing.” She shakes her head. “Until I saw this…” She gestures with her hands. “…I would have never believed that androgyny could be so sensual. Your vision is going to excite the artist community more than any artist has since Georgia O’Keefe.”

  “I think that’s an over-statement.” I snort. “But thank you for the compliment.”

  “My God, you’re an artist.” She looks at me with wider eyes. “I thought I was interviewing just another fitness personality, but this is who you are.”

  I nod, smiling wider. She does get it. I feel like laughing and crying, but I suck it in, playing it cool, and watch as she makes a few phone calls and invites people to my house. Now.

  “Uh, Lexi, my place is trashed. Should people really be coming here?”

  She smiles wide. “Not people, Toby, the most influential gallery owners along the coast. After today, everyone is going to know that you are an artist.” She takes my hand. “How did you ever get started in the fitness industry?”

  “That’s a bit complicated. When I came to the United States, I stood out as a bit of a weird-o, but I’d come here to attend UCLA on a track and field full-scholarship, so I set aside my embarrassment and just started accumulating wins. I didn’t really start to get a lot of notice though until I shaved my head, shaved my times by minutes, and started competing in triathlons after I graduated. I started the local cable show for some quick cash, I needed food…and canvas…and I wasn’t ready to face a nine-to-five job.”

  She sits staring at me, I keep talking. “I’ve never dated. I work out and I paint. They became my angry lovers, each fighting for more and more of my time. I finally had to give them each a cut of me and sleep when I couldn’t move anymore.”

  “But there is the man you see,” she reminds me.

  I scratch my nose, then cover my mouth with my hand. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Her face twists between smile and doubt, but she answers, “Of course. Mark your calendar for every night, Toby Fitzsimmons, because now that I’ve found you I’m keeping you for a while.”

  I blush. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re interested, you know, in seeing me again before I say anything that might make you not want to.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” she assures me. “You can tell me anything.”

  “Okay.” I shrug and look away before facing her gaze again. “Let’s talk about Adrian, because he is a person in my life who I don’t think is going away anytime soon. First, we’re friends, but secondly, in a very non-traditional manner…we’re lovers.” I scratch the back of my neck, embarrassed. She already knows the most important parts, I told her that last night. “The first time I saw him was actually at Folsom’s Street Fair. He was doing a bondage demo, and I was enthralled. It wasn’t so much the BDSM culture or the GLBT nature of the event, watching him, the rope called to me. It was a very real physical, visual representation of how I felt at the time. Bound. Trapped. I found out he did bondage classes in LA, and knew immediately that I had to find him, so I did. When we met, something clicked for both of us. It’s always been about the rope for me, but along the way, we became friends, and he’s the only person who has ever touched me intimately…until you.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes, I think I do. I mean, it is going to sound absolutely crazy because we don’t share a romantic love, but in ways, yes, I love him.”

  Her face holds a million questions, but I doubt she even knows what to ask, so I do what I do best when I get really nervous and that’s babble. “I needed someone who would accept me for who I am, even though admittedly I don’t have a clue who that is. But when he tied me in his rope the first time, he had a checklist and we went through it together and he discovered my limitations. I set very hard limits on anything that even came close to penetration, and even though I revised other limits when I got more comfortable with him, I never changed my mind on that one.”

  I take her hand, and she doesn’t pull away from me.

  “The scene he did at Folsom was intense, and because of that scene I knew I could trust him…because the man who did the scene with him trusted him. After he tied him and suspended him, he slapped the guy, punched him. And when it was over and he was released, he broke down, he hugged Adrian and thanked him.”

  I notice that Lexi has started shaking, but I just can’t make myself shut up.

  “I needed what he was doing with those men.”

  She flushes bright pink as she demands, “Has he hit you?”

  “Yes, but don’t look horrified. I wanted him to. Do you understand? I needed the physicality of what he could do to me, the emotion he could pull out of me.”

  She stands and pulls her hand from mine.

  I’ve said too much. Shit.

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know why. Ask any masochist why they need pain and I’m certain not a one will be able to tell you.”

  “But why him? Why not a woman?”

  It’s my turn to look incredulous. “I never even considered it. I’ve always been considered ‘the freak’ by girls, why would I want to give them even more ammunition to humiliate me with?”

  She sits on the futon that doubles as my bed when I’m here and takes my hand again. “You’ve been hanging out with the wrong girls. I don’t want you to see this man anymore.”

  I tear my hand away, feeling betrayed. She seemed so understanding, so sincere. “Please don’t judge my relationship with Adrian.”

  “I’m not judging, Toby.” She presses against me, and I pull away. She slides closer, pulling me into her arms. “I just don’t want him to break your heart.”

  How can she know that he is? I haven’t said anything to her about Phelps or Bianca or any of the others.

  “He’s already hurt you. I can see it in your eyes.” She kisses my shoulder. “Can’t you see how he’s using you? Your confusion about your sexuality is allowing him to abuse you.”

  Getting angry and defensive, I stutter, “M-my c-confusion?”

  “Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Look, you don’t know Adrian!”

  She caresses my face but I pull away, wanting her to shut up.

  “Take care of your heart for me, Toby, because when you finally feel safe enough to share it with me, I’d like to have enough pieces to put you back together again.”

  HOURS LATER LEXI’S words are still ringing in my ears though I remember little else besides pleasure, lots of exquisite pleasure. I feel drugged, even though I know I’m not. Sex drunk maybe…


  The rotating ceiling fan casts shadows on the wall as it blows a soft breeze across my nakedness. I inhale deeply, the room smells of Lexi’s perfume, sex, and the muskier odor of me. I need a shower.

  “You look content.”

  “M-mm, I am content,” I say. “I also stink.”

  Still naked, she straddles me. Lowering herself she kisses me between my breasts, inhaling deeply. “I don’t think you stink.”

  I playfully push her away. “Oh yeah, I do. The ceiling fan is making that painfully obvious.”

  She buries her face in my armpit and inhales. “You smell like a woman who just had fucking amazing sex.”

  Giggling, I try to pull away as she sniffs me and growls when I try to scoot farther from her. She goes back to sniffing. Everywhere. I fidget. “This is quite embarrassing.”

  She sits up, straddled across my pelvis. “Don’t be embarrassed. You are beautiful and sexy, and personally, I think you smell amazing. I think you are the sexiest woman who has ever been in my bed.”

  I look around the room. Yep, Lexi’s bed, not my futon. “How do I keep ending up in your bed?”

  She spreads kisses over my neck, then bites, making me moan. “Oh God, that’s how. You make it impossible to think. It’s your kisses.”

  She keeps kissing. “I want you senseless. I want to make love to you.”

  Oh God. “We just made love.”

  “No, you made love to me.” She drops her head shyly and looks at me from under hooded lashes. Need speeds through me. She really shouldn’t look at me that way, because it makes me want to fill her again and again. I want to fuck her. God, it’s moments like this I really wish I had a penis.

  She chuckles.

  “God, tell me I didn’t say that out loud.”

  She blushes and smiles. “What, the part about wishing you had a dick?”

  “Oh God, I’m mortified.”

  “I think you are adorable…just the way you are.” She kisses my pelvic bone on either side. “Although, if you had a dick, I could suck you off.”

  My spine arches and I growl as her head dips between my legs. She licks my clit and I blush, hiding my face beneath my arm. I don’t know why I’m embarrassed; she’s made me orgasm three times already.