Coming Soon

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  “Just look,” I say as he inches closer, his nose drinking in my musk. I imagine myself through his eyes, a wild thatch of dark, curly hair, my folds gleaming and heavy with blood. A little whine escapes his throat and he clenches his fists in his lap, but he doesn’t move to touch me. I’m proud of him. I’m not an easy sight to resist.

  Ever so slowly, I snake my hand down my chest and between my legs, and I trace my slit. I am drenched and ready, muscles tensing and begging for release. When I pull my touch away, teasing both of us, arousal glistens on my fingers. I offer him my hand and he studies it before flicking his gaze up to my face, checking for permission. “Go ahead,” I say. I feel myself trickle down my legs as he sucks my fingers clean.

  I consider touching myself more and making him watch. I am shaking with pent-up need, my orgasm threatening to spread like a glass of vodka spilled across a bar. It wouldn’t take much—I am an expert at getting myself off. But no, too much has gone into this, too much planning and restraint to rub one out like I’m alone in my bedroom with the lights on and my roommate’s music blaring next door. I ease my hand through his mussed hair, the hand he just licked clean, and I pull him forward against me. He mashes his lips against my cunt and feasts like he is starving.

  I cling to his head for stability, a ragged yell escaping my throat. His tongue laps my clit, pressing and sucking and dragging. He isn’t precise or methodical—he is desperate and possessed, my pleasure feeding into his and his pleasure feeding into mine. I loop a leg over his shoulder, my heel pressed against his back. “Fuck me with your hands,” I order, and he does, he pumps his fingers into me and worships me with his mouth.

  My orgasm is hard, a brutal electric snap of tension. It pummels me, scorches me, leaves me gasping and soaked. He doesn’t stop eating me, only tightens his hands at my hips, while I convulse and break against the wall.

  I press my palm against his forehead and he relents, pulling back to look up at me. My juices are smeared across his face, his lips streaked with shine as he pants.

  “Thank you,” I gasp.

  His brows furrow and I realize I’ve fallen out of character, but he leans forward to press a kiss against the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. “I like you like this,” he murmurs across my skin. His breath sizzles like hot air against a frozen window.

  “I like you like this,” I say. I can feel his lips curve against me, a furtive little smile. “Would now be a good time to give my two-weeks notice?”

  He laughs, his voice still heavy with surrender. Instead of answering me, he takes my thigh into his mouth, and he bites.

  AFTER

  Katrina Jackson

  Dr. McBride told me this could happen. All the books and online articles I’d read said this was a more than probable thing I’d have to contend with. My best friend told me to expect it. I thought I was prepared.

  I wasn’t.

  Stupidly, I assumed my life would be like all the women I saw in the TV shows and movies, and six weeks after I gave birth, my sex life would go back to normal. I had an entire post-birth plan tucked inside my brain like my hospital go-bag had been tucked in my closet. When the baby was six weeks old, Damon and I would take her to his parents’ house for a sleepover and then he and I would have a nice dinner, a few glasses of wine, and really loud sex all night long. It would be like nothing had changed.

  Instead, on our daughter’s six week-aversary, I cried when we dropped her off at Damon’s parents, I couldn’t fit into my favorite little black dress, and I broke down weeping on our bedroom floor half-naked. Hormones. Damon had been terrified. All he could do was hold me. Eventually we ordered pizza and fell asleep on the couch halfway through a movie all our friends had told us we’d love.

  Reality met my naïve imagination and won.

  We tried again two days later without babysitters, big plans, or reservations. I woke up and turned over in bed to find Damon watching me sleep.

  “What?” I asked in a dry, cracked voice.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  My laughter was a dry wheeze. I was still groggy from sleep, I felt like a dried-out corn husk, and my silk bonnet was sliding off my head; beautiful was not the word I would have used to describe myself first thing in the morning. But Damon was looking at me like he used to when we first met, and I let him lure me awake with the familiar seduction in his eyes.

  His hand slid under the covers. His fingers brushed lightly along the bare skin exposed from my tank top riding up while I slept. His fingertips felt like electricity and my body seemed to come to life. For a handful of moments, I felt like myself again, like Eva instead of Mae’s mom, a role I was still figuring out.

  Damon’s hand moved across my torso. His fingers rubbed smooth circles over the new stretch marks that had blossomed across my belly and hips like artwork. I didn’t hate them, I didn’t love them—they just were—but in that moment, I had the strongest urge to watch Damon’s lips and tongue trace each striation marking my soft brown skin. I thought I could be convinced to like them if I saw that.

  His fingers slipped into my pajama pants, caressed my hip, walked around my thigh, and played at the seam of my legs.

  “This okay?” he whispered to me.

  We were lying with our heads on our respective pillows, watching each other. The sun was just rising in the sky, filtering through the sheer curtains in our bedroom.

  “Yes,” I whispered back and lifted my left leg, opening myself to him.

  His fingers moved to my underwear, rubbing up and down the crotch, sometimes circling just over the hood of my clit, sometimes pressing at my opening; teasing touches he knew I loved. There was no urgency, even though we didn’t have all the time in the world anymore. Mae was a good sleeper, but she’d be up in about half an hour. I could hear her light snores through the baby monitor. I wanted to tell Damon to hurry up, but I trusted him to set the pace and make what little time we had worth it.

  Eventually, his hand moved to my waist, just under the soft handful of flesh my cousin told me is the hardest to get rid of after a pregnancy. I groaned in anticipation when his hand pushed into my panties, his fingers sifting through the soft curls over my mound and down over my lips.

  I normally loved his hands on me but this felt different. I couldn’t pinpoint why so I shifted my hips closer, silently asking him to touch me with just a bit more pressure, and he did. He stroked me from clit to opening and back again, teasing me into full consciousness. Arousal came to life in my stomach and pulsed outward to invigorate all the changed parts of my body: the soft roll of flesh at my waist, larger breasts full of milk, aching nipples, and slightly broader hips.

  He caressed my pussy slowly over and over again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And then I felt what was wrong. I was dry and Damon’s caresses were starting to hurt.

  “Is this okay?” he asked. His voice sounded different. It had been soft with sleep and sweet with arousal, but now it was deep with worry, unsure.

  I nodded my head in sharp, almost jerking motions because the warmth of my desire had turned into something else, something tinged with anxiety and fear. “Keep going,” I said. My voice sounded different too, strained and high-pitched.

  Damon brought his hand to his mouth and sucked his fingers before putting them back in my underwear. His touch was heavier now as he focused on my clit, rubbing the pads of his index and middle fingers over the bundle of nerves that had never let me down before.

  It worked, kind of. My stomach tightened as desire wound through me and built and rewound and rebuilt toward . . . nothing.

  Damon kept rubbing me, but the orgasm I felt just over the horizon never materialized. There was no warm rush between my legs, no clenching muscles inside my pussy, no wracking spasms. My body kept preparing for a release that never came.

  Eventually, his touch started to chafe again. I shivered, shifting my hips away just as Mae’s sleepy cry came
through the small speaker on my bedside table. Damon and I jerked away from each other as if we were doing something wrong, and it was hard not to think that we had been since I felt colder and more tense than when I woke up.

  “I’ll get her,” I said quickly, practically jumping out of bed.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, um, she’s hungry,” I said, straightening my clothes.

  “You sure?” he asked again.

  I looked down at my chest. I was already leaking. “I’m sure,” I said, trying not to run from our room.

  “I’ll make breakfast,” Damon called after me.

  “Okay,” I called back, tears already pooling in my eyes. Apparently, I was a wet mess everywhere but where I wanted to be.

  None of the books had prepared me for this.

  Mae’s sitting up and scooting now. All the baby books say crawling is right around the corner.

  She’s drooling a lot and sometimes fussy. Teeth.

  She sleeps through the night most nights.

  She loves mashed sweet potatoes and rice porridge and for Damon to sing her to sleep. She prefers Stevie Wonder.

  Sometimes I stand in the door of her nursery, watching my husband rock and sing our daughter to sleep with a smile on my face and this hollow pit in my chest that I don’t know how long I can hide.

  I want Damon to touch me, but after months of trying, I’ve become skittish. I pull away from his hugs prematurely. I stay up late to clean or work or whatever, just to make sure he’s asleep before I crawl into bed beside him. I pretend to still be asleep in the morning until he’s gone, and I keep my skin covered, just in case he touches me and I get warm and then hot, but never boil over.

  Every day Mae’s growing and changing, and every day my relationship feels like it’s dying, and I can’t help but feel like it’s all my fault.

  “Babe, I’m home,” Damon calls as soon as the front door opens.

  I know that already. I used to listen for the sound of his wheels shifting the gravel outside and start to get wet as soon as I heard that familiar crunch. Before Mae, we used to spend a few nights a week just fucking each other for hours after work, ordering a late-night dinner because sex was far more important than cooking. And then we’d get up bright and early the next day as if we’d gotten a full night’s sleep. I can’t even fathom that kind of energy anymore.

  I smile at Mae sitting in the middle of her playmat on the living room floor, surveying her toys like they’re her kingdom, and I wish my own life was as simple.

  “Is that Daddy?” I coo at her. She smiles her gummy mouth at me and her face lights up at the sound of Damon’s voice. She shrieks when he walks into the living room and wobbles on her butt as if she’s about to fall over.

  “Why are you so loud?” Damon asks her playfully, which only makes her laugh louder.

  I can feel him behind the couch—behind me—and I jump when he leans over, his warm breath on my cheek. The spicy scent of his cologne used to turn me on; it still does, mentally, at least. But the lines of communication between my mind and body are on the fritz, and even being reminded of all the parts of him that used to bring me joy makes me want to cry, because I don’t know what’s changed.

  “How was your day?” he whispers, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Okay,” I say, unconsciously turning my head toward his mouth. I rub my cheek against his soft lips and softer beard, wanting to linger there for as long as possible. This small touch isn’t enough but it doesn’t make me feel broken. My eyes catch on a small bag he places next to me. “What’s that?”

  “For you,” he whispers.

  “You didn’t have to,” I say automatically.

  “You don’t even know what it is yet. Open it when I put the baby down, okay?”

  I turn around to look at him with bunched eyebrows. “What is it?”

  Damon bites his cheek and flutters his lashes at me. When we met at a singles mixer for Black professionals in Atlanta, I remember being irrationally annoyed at how long and curly his eyelashes were. It made him pretty and delicate in a way few men appreciate, and it felt like a waste, so I told him so. He’d laughed and batted his eyes at me, and I was a goner. I still am.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see,” he says, brushing his mouth over mine.

  He stands up straight, his face switching from simmering lust to glee as his eyes turn to Mae. “You walking yet? Got a job? 401K?” he asks her. She laughs obliviously, so happy just to see and hear him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him crouch on the floor in front of her, but my focus is on that small bag next to me.

  It’s all I can think about when we sit down to dinner. It’s still on the couch while I clean up Mae’s toys and put the living room back together, and Damon gives Mae a bath. I fight the urge to peek inside as I take it with me upstairs. In our bedroom, I find Damon kneeling next to our bed, moisturizing Mae’s skin and putting her pajamas on while she shrieks in happiness.

  “How’d she do?” I ask. I set the bag on top of our dresser and place her evening bottle next to it.

  “She peed on me as soon as I dried her off,” he says with a soft, proud chuckle.

  “I thought she’d outgrown that,” I say with a smile as I sit next to her on the bed. Mae reaches for me, and I give her my index finger. She grips it as hard as she can, and Damon and I stop to watch her. She yawns. He slides his hand to my knee and squeezes.

  It’s moments like this that make me want to cry the most. No one warned me about how devastating it would feel to have everything I wanted only for my body to betray me.

  Damon squeezes my knee one more time before he stands. “Come on, little girl. Let’s get you to bed.”

  She’s too tired to giggle, but she kicks her stubby legs at him. I watch him pick her up and walk to the door. He grabs her bottle and turns to me.

  “Don’t forget your present.”

  My eyes shift to it, and I nod. I force myself to wait until the baby monitor picks Damon’s voice up before I snatch it from the dresser with shaking hands and settle back on the bed. I peek inside and my mouth falls open in shock. I dump the contents on the bed with blood rushing in my veins. The small vibrator is thin and metallic and the bottle of lube has a vulgar etching of a flower on the label. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  Damon and I haven’t ever been into toys. We’d never needed them, so why bother, I always thought? Over the past few months, I’d read so many articles about postpartum sex that recommended sex toys and lube, but the thought of trying something new when I just wanted things to go back to normal was overwhelming. I convinced myself that if I bought a vibrator, I’d be admitting defeat. I’d be accepting that I’d never be normal again.

  I also had so many questions.

  What kind of toy should I get?

  Vibrating?

  Clitoral stimulation?

  Silicone?

  Should I get one for myself? Or to use with Damon?

  Would he feel inadequate if I needed a toy?

  What brand of lube is good?

  How much lube is too much?

  Should I order online or go in-store?

  Where’s the closest store?

  What’s a good brand?

  What if I can’t come without a toy ever again?

  I guess I have answers to some questions now, but so many more form in my head that I’m as confused and intimidated as ever. But when I pick the thin vibrator up and feel its light weight in my hand, it makes that electric feeling I’ve been running from roar to life again.

  “Is that okay?” Damon asks and I startle at the sound of his voice. He’s standing in the doorway, his hands shoved into his pants pockets and a nervous smile on his face.

  “You tell me,” I whisper.

  “It hasn’t been okay,” he says carefully, walking into the room and closing the door behind him. “I don’t know how to give you what you need,” he says, “but all the articles I read suggeste
d that . . . maybe . . .” His voice trails off.

  “You read articles about me not being able to come?” I ask with raised eyebrows.

  “I read articles about all kinds of pregnancy and baby things. Do you know babies have to learn how to swallow food?” he asks with wide, terrified eyes. “She’s so damn fragile.”

  I nod.

  “So are you,” he adds in a quiet voice. “And that’s okay.”

  I bite my bottom lip to stop from crying.

  “The woman at the store said that might be a good size, not too big, but with strong vibration.”

  “And the lube?” I can’t look at him while I speak.

  “She said people should use more lube even if there aren’t problems,” he says, again oh-so-carefully. “Also, it’s flavored.”

  I swallow loudly. “That can’t be good for . . . you know . . . inside.” I stutter like a virgin.

  “I made sure to get one that’s safe for internal use too,” he says.

  I look at him now, and I can tell by the awkward smile on his face that he’s nervous, too. He’s as unsure and off-kilter as I’ve been and I wonder how I never noticed that before.

  “So, we . . .” My voice trails off, and I swallow again, my nerves paralyzing me for a second. “We can do this together?”

  Damon’s swallowing throat is as loud as mine. “If you want to. But you can use it on your own if you feel more comfortable. I just—”

  “No, I want you here,” I blurt out, because I do. “I’ve missed you.”

  His shoulders slump in relief. He smiles at me. “Good. I want us to figure this out together.”

  Hearing him say these words is like a tiny shot of courage and I force myself to embrace it.

  Damon’s eyes are on me as I stand from the bed. It’s hard to make taking off a sweatshirt and old, ripped, oversized sweatpants sexy, but I try. My movements are slow as I toss the sweatshirt and tank top underneath onto the floor. I push my pants over my hips. They’re so big, they fall instantly to my ankles, and I step out of them.