by Jason Luke
“Ann had never had a man give himself to her for her pleasure alone. She didn’t know what it could possibly feel like to be selfish about sex and experience the ecstasy of a lover who wanted only to please her. I told Ann that I wanted to trail my tongue across the hard jutting nub of her clit. ‘I want to taste you,’ I told her. ‘Ann, I want you to come in my mouth. I want the taste of you on my tongue, and I want to watch your beautiful face as it twists and contorts in an orgasm.’”
“At the last moment, I eased my hand back from within her pants and instead massaged the top of her thighs. I felt Ann strain as though desperately trying to bring herself in contact with my touch – but that wasn’t my intention. She groaned her frustration and her breathing became shorter and sharper and faster. I spun Ann around and pushed her back against the kitchen wall. Her eyes were wide and hungry. I closed on her, cupped her face within my hands and kissed her savagely.”
I stopped pacing. I stood in the silence. Finally Leticia could contain herself no longer.
“And then what?”
“And then nothing,” I said. “I left Ann like that and walked out her door.”
“You are kidding?”
I shook my head. “I most certainly am not. I wanted Ann to get the message that I was in control and from that moment on her expectations could no longer be relied upon. Instead, I wanted her to understand the art of anticipation… the unexpected, because that is truly erotic.”
The silence stretched out and then suddenly Leticia’s voice broke my line of concentration.
“Jonah…?” she began uncertainly. “How many women have you slept with before me?”
I stopped pacing, stood perfectly still, and turned my head slowly until I was gazing into Leticia’s eyes.
“We haven’t slept together – yet,” I reminded Leticia gently.
She nodded jerkily then looked down at the floor. She bit her lip, and then looked back up at me. “But how many others have…?”
I prowled across the room to her. I pressed my finger to her lips and the rest of hers words stilled before she could utter them.
I stared down into her wide eyes. “A gentleman never tells,” I said, “and a real man never boasts.” I let the words hang in the air for long moments, and then shook my head in a sudden gesture of distain.
“Leticia, sex should not be a race, nor a contest. It shouldn’t be a challenge or measured like notches on a gunslinger’s belt. Bedding numerous women is not a measure of a man’s virility, nor his prowess. It is far better to love one woman all night long and leave her panting and breathless in a twist of damp love-tangled sheets, than to leap from one bed to another every night never truly satisfying anyone.”
Leticia looked thoughtful, then nodded in slow understanding.
I went on. “The first time a man makes love to a new woman is something very special and very precious,” I said. “You can never get that moment again. Undressing that woman is like opening a rare bottle of 1811 French Napoleon brandy – it is a moment to be savored. You must enjoy the bouquet, the scent, and admire the exquisite color, flavor, and eventually the taste. A woman’s body is a delicacy to be sipped and coveted, not swilled away in a few fumbling moments of haste.”
Leticia looked to me expecting more, but there was no more. I had said all needed to be said about anticipation.
Leticia must have sensed something different in my silence. She flipped over the cover of her notebook and set it back down on the coffee table. She got to her feet and shivered like some magical spell had suddenly been broken. There was a wistful smile on her lips, and a sudden expression of anxiety.
“Would you like a drink?”
I nodded, warily. “As long as you’re not going to offer me water.”
Leticia smiled. She shook her head. “I bought a bottle of whisky,” she said, and walked towards a wall cabinet in the living room. Behind a small door was a bottle and a couple of small glasses.
I nodded again. “Very thoughtful of you.”
“I figured it was the least I could do,” she unscrewed the cap from the bottle and I watched the delicate movement of her fingers as she poured half a glass of alcohol. “Would you like ice?”
I shook my head. “No, neat is fine.” I took the glass from her and stared down into the amber fluid, swirling the contents and studying the way the light changed its color. I took a sip and nodded my appreciation.
Leticia looked overcome with relief. Her smile broadened and we stood staring at each other.
I let the silence draw out until it was almost agonizing. I happened to like silence – I don’t feel the need to talk if I have nothing worth saying, but I could tell Leticia was growing uncomfortable. She looked at me with an air of brittle expectation.
“Is there more you can tell me about anticipation?” She made a hapless gesture with her hands.
“Do you need more? Do you not have enough for you article?”
Leticia looked pained. “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “The way the editor was talking, he expects this first article to be quite extensive. I would rather give him more than he needs and have it edited… if possible.”
I stared at the ceiling, closed my eyes, then sighed. I nodded. “Do it once, do it well,” I said softly, reminding myself of slogan from the Jonah Noble big book of rules, then looked to Leticia. “Sit back down and start writing.”
Leticia settled herself back on the sofa, but I didn’t wait. I started pacing the room, stepping between the apartment door and the hallway like a soldier on sentry duty. “One of the most amazing, unforgettable things that a man can do for a woman is to give her an orgasm with no expectation other than to please her,” I said. “I have done this, and it works. I have made love to a woman and concentrated all my efforts on arousing her and satisfying her. I have been deep inside her, our bodies intertwined, watching her eyes until the moment she began to come. I have held myself rigid inside her while she groaned and cried out and rode the waves of her release until she was heaving and gasping for breath beneath me. And then – when she was breathless and contented, I simply got up from the bed and began to get dressed,” I said. “After several moments the lady I was with realized I wasn’t coming back to bed. She sat upright and stared at me, first with a look of horror, and then one of bewilderment. You see, she thought she had done something wrong. She thought she had been a bad lover for me and that I was leaving because I was disappointed. When I sat back on the edge of the bed and held her hand, I explained that I didn’t need my own orgasm – all I wanted that night was to pleasure her.”
Leticia stopped writing as my voice trailed away. She shifted herself on the sofa. “What happened then?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “The lady began to cry,” I said. “She finally understood the enormity of the gesture and she began to weep. No man had ever cared enough about her pleasure before without expecting their own relief in return.”
Leticia made some frantic notes and I saw her underline several passages. Then she looked up at me again. “What you did that night for her… did that change the relationship?”
I nodded. “What I did won her heart,” I said. “In a single instant, I transformed in her eyes from being just another man to someone extraordinary – a man that was set apart from her other lovers because of their selfishness.”
Leticia looked pensive and thoughtful. Her voice became softer and more cautious. “This lady, Jonah… was she one of the women that you told me about in the first interviews we did?”
I shook my head. “No, Leticia. This lady was just someone from my past that I knew for a brief time.” I finished the whisky and set the glass down on the edge of the coffee table.
Leticia looked as though she was deep in thought, and once again the silence in the room stretched out. I unbuttoned the cuffs of my shirt and roll the sleeves up to my forearms.
“You have a lot of stories about women,” Leticia tried to pry gently.
I nodded. “The
re have been quite a lot of women in my life, Leticia, and each one – no matter how fleeting the affair – has taught me something about sex and sensuality.”
Leticia looked reflective and her mood became broody. I watched her in the silence, sensing her mind carrying her away to places of self-doubt and insecurity.
“The biggest difference between men and women is the origin of our sexual urge,” I said so that Leticia was forced to break out of her melancholy and snatch her notebook back up.
“For men an orgasm is a relief,” I said, and then decided to explain. “Imagine an ache – some kind of a pain that never quite goes away. That’s what the sexual urge is in most men – it is something that lingers in the back of our mind almost constantly, so that when a man has an orgasm, he experiences temporary relief from the urge. But it’s only temporary. Eventually, that same ache will come back. For women, an orgasm is a release. The sexual urge in a woman generally starts from much deeper in their subconscious. Arousal is a longer, slower process like starting a fire. For a woman, the flame of her desire needs to be nurtured patiently until it reaches the point where it becomes conscious and instinctive. But even then a clumsy man can douse the flames in an instant. It’s not like the urge in men. For a woman, desire is created and once released as an orgasm, the spark must be reignited. Men are not so complex. For us there is always a flicker of arousal that can never quite be extinguished.”
Leticia scrambled to keep up. She worked, bent over her notebook, for several more moments and then finished with a flourish. She sat back on the sofa and sighed as though she were exhausted.
“Did I wear you out?”
Leticia smiled. She flicked back through several pages of her notebook, each one filled with large, looped handwriting, pausing occasionally to reread a phrase. Finally, she looked back up at me, her expression a compound of satisfaction and surprise. “You never cease to amaze me, Jonah. Listening to you… and re-reading what you just said – well it’s fascinating. You may not think what you know about women is special or unique, but I can tell you on behalf of thousands of others just like me, it really is. I doubt that there will be a woman reading these articles who will not feel the urge to cut something out and show it to their man. A lot of what you say is incredibly insightful.”
I shrugged. “Leticia, I am not revealing any great mystery. Half of the world’s population is female. This knowledge I have gained about women, sex and sensuality is there for every man to understand. He just has to ask the woman he is with and then pay attention. Every man who cares enough to want to please his partner as much as himself can learn all I have learned.”
Leticia didn’t look convinced. Her face became sour. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it, Jonah? Most men don’t want to learn how to arouse a woman. Most men want to know how to get a woman in to bed – not what to do once they are there. The world is full of guys with pickup lines and good-looking men who dress well in the hope of attracting a woman’s attention. All these guys seem to focus on is learning how to impress a girl so she will go home with them. And then they’ve got nothing! It is like men just want to get on the field, not learn the skills of the game.”
I blinked. I stared at Leticia and narrowed my eyes. “That’s remarkably insightful,” I gave praise.
Leticia grinned shyly. “You inspire me, Jonah,” she said. “In fact, that’s the secret to the success of your first interviews. The women you reached were encouraged and compelled to look and think about their own relationships in an entirely different way. You showed women that there was no need to accept a dull, unsatisfying sex life. You gave everyone hope, but also questions we need to ask ourselves.”
I shrugged off Leticia’s compliment. “All I did was tell my story, Leticia,” I said again. “It was never my intention to do anything else.”
Leticia knew me well enough now to interpret the tone of my voice and she sat back silently with a nod of acquiescence.
A sudden thought struck me and I frowned for an instant. “Can your newspaper create graphics for this article?”
“Of course,” Leticia nodded.
I hesitated for a moment. “Very well. Then what I am about to tell you would look good with graphics of gift cards.”
Leticia frowned and looked confused. “Gift cards – you mean like gift certificates?”
“Yes,” I said. “One made out for a husband and one made out for a wife. Now write this down.”
Leticia looked bewildered but reached for her notepad with the kind of expression on her face that suggested she was following me blindly into the unknown.
“Imagine a couple – a husband and wife – and for Christmas they exchange gift certificates. Imagine those gift certificates offer the bearer one hour of sexual pleasure. Are you following me so far?” I looked up and stopped pacing.
“No… I have no idea where you’re going with this.”
I grinned. “You will in a moment,” I said and then picked up the thread of my analogy again.
“When the woman hands her husband the gift voucher, the man’s first thought is to try to calculate how many times he can be brought to orgasm within the one hour. His mind races to all types of erotic, kinky places, each one ending in his relief. But when the man gives his wife the same gift voucher with the same offer of one hour dedicated to her sexual pleasure, most women will think in very different terms. For most women, such a voucher might mean an hour of sensual massage, or maybe an hour of intimate kissing and touching. Perhaps she imagines sixty minutes of being caressed, cuddled and stroked – but rarely would the woman think in terms of an orgasm. Because it just doesn’t matter to her in the same way it does to a man. Most women, I believe, would be deeply, truly satisfied if they received an hour of sensual, erotic pleasure, whether it ended in an orgasm or not. The man, on the other hand, would be furious.”
Leticia grinned wryly. “I think you’re right,” she admitted.
I held the palm of my hand out to Leticia like I was stopping traffic and she lapsed into silence.
“When a woman and a man are in bed together, the woman generally will touch and kiss the man in exactly the manner she, herself, wishes to be touched and kissed. So the woman might trail soft kisses down the man’s throat and across his chest before sliding her lips slowly across his abdomen. The man is lying with his eyes closed, wishing the woman would hurry up and just get to his penis. But the woman is making love in the way she wants him to make love to her,” I explained carefully and hoped I wasn’t confusing Leticia. “When the man kisses and touches the woman, he does so in the way he, himself, wants to be kissed and touched. That is why the guy generally thrusts his tongue into the woman’s mouth and then, a moment later, reaches between her legs – because subconsciously that’s exactly how he, himself, wishes the woman would act to arouse him.”
I felt suddenly tired. I didn’t know the time, but I knew I had been talking for several hours. I went across to the apartment window and leaned on the sill, staring through the glass and down into the guts of the city. The sun had traversed the sky so that warm afternoon light washed over me. I felt the weariness in my body and in my mind like a creeping fatigue.
I heard Leticia behind me – heard the sounds of her coming off the sofa, coming towards me. I felt her hand on my shoulder and her body close behind me.
“Wow,” she said softly. “Jonah, you have given me more than enough for the main article. I just know the editor is going to be thrilled when I get this article written and delivered.”
I nodded, and turned slowly away from the window.
“Thank you,” she said and then she tilted her head as though struck by a sudden realization. “That word kind of sums up our relationship, don’t you think?” she mused. “It seems that ever since I met you, Jonah Noble, I’ve done nothing but thank you for your help.”
I shrugged. “Think nothing of it.”
Leticia shook her head. “But I do, Jonah. I feel like whatever relationship we hav
e has always been so very one-sided.” She made to leave the room, but stopped suddenly, and as she did so her voice dropped to a whisper. She arched her back and pushed her lower body towards me. At the same time she lifted her face and looked directly into my eyes. “I think it is about time I started to repay you.”
I said nothing. Leticia’s hand lingered on my shoulder for a moment and then slowly slid down until it was pressed against my chest and she could feel my heart beating through the cotton of my shirt. Her eyes were hooded and slanted with a heart-stopping sensuality, her smile secretive. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and her breathing became quicker. Then turned on her heel and sauntered towards the bedroom, exaggerating the roll of her bottom. I watched the seductive way her hips moved. In the hallway she stopped for a moment and looked back over her shoulder invitingly at me. “Come on,” her voice was a tinkling flirt of huskiness. “I think that’s enough theory for one day. I’m in the mood for something much more practical.”
Chapter 11.
I followed Leticia into her bedroom and paused in the doorway. Late afternoon sunlight was streaming into the room. Leticia went to the big window and drew the blinds, then turned slowly back to face me and her expression became coquettish. She clasped her hands behind her and leaned her back against the bedroom wall so that her hips thrust forward and her breasts pushed out. She hooded her eyes but the flirtatious smile on her lips began to falter.
“I promised I would submit to you in the bedroom, Jonah,” she said softly. “But I don’t really know what that means. I don’t know what you are going to expect of me, or even if I am going to be able to satisfy you.”
I said nothing. I moved into the room and stood silently at the foot of the bed. I could see anxiety spreading across Leticia’s face as the silence drew out. Finally, she said softly, “What do you want me to do?”