Harry and Barbara

By most standards, Harry and Barbara were an improbable couple. He was thirty-seven, she was twenty-three. He was city born and bred, she was a typical small town girl. He had been married and divorced and was widely experienced with women on three continents. She had had only two sexual experiences, both unsatisfactory. He was wealthy, she was not. He was well over six feet tall and lean as Lance Armstrong. She was barely five feet two with an hourglass figure.

They met at one of those insufferable business conventions that companies insist upon sending representatives to, wasting everyone's time and energy on profitless meetings about meaningless topics. Each was bored and frustrated to the point of screaming by the time they both ducked out of a session in search of a sanity-restoring drink. Naturally, they met in the host hotel's bar, which was crowded with other escapees, and Harry invited her to join him at a table he had managed to commandeer.

Barbara thought Harry was amusing, wry, and oddly good-looking. Harry thought Barbara had a stunning figure. After one drink, he suggested going to another, quieter bar. Barbara, feeling uncharacteristically adventurous, agreed.

Harry found a little place off an alley that was quiet, private, and had real jazz piped through the music system. The bar's decor featured a great deal of natural wood and leather. Harry ordered premium-brand Scotch. Barbara drank a rum collins.

Barbara liked the way Harry's eyes crinkled, and the way his mouth turned down at one corner and up at the other. She appreciated his thick brown hair lightly sprinkled with gray at the temples. His nose was a little crooked, and there was a thin scar above his right eyebrow. All in all, an interesting, not a handsome, face.

Harry found Barbara's mane of thick red-gold hair fascinating. As far as he could tell, it was her natural color. She wore little makeup. He couldn't make out the color of her eyes, which looked first blue, then green, depending on the light. She had a wide forehead, a small nose and a generous mouth. Not a beautiful face, but intriguing. Her ears, revealed by her swept-back hair, were small and intricately lobed. She smelled of cinnamon.

He found his gaze returning to the V neck of her business jacket and the lapels of her blouse that folded back over the jacket and followed the V, which gave just a hint of cleavage. After two drinks apiece, he reached over without a word and opened the top button of her jacket and blouse, showing more cleavage and the lace top of her bra.

Barbara was paralyzed. She wanted to slap Harry's face and get up and run out. Instead, she did none of those things, but simply sat without moving so much as an eyelash. She couldn't move. Harry's finger traced the line of her jacket from her neck to the top of her bra, not touching her skin. Her body felt like it was turning to water at the center. Harry put the same finger at the point of her chin and turned her face upward and toward him a little and leaned over and kissed her lightly on her mouth, tasting her, testing her lips. She found herself doing the same, exploring his lips, feeling his undemanding but deliberate kiss and responding to it in spite of herself. He broke the kiss and looked down at her.

Barbara, hardly knowing what was going through her mind, reached behind his head and pulled his mouth against hers once again, letting her tongue flick against his lips, drawing his kiss into herself, feeling her pulse quicken and strengthen until she was sure he could hear her heartbeat. His hands were on her face, gently holding her, his long fingers splayed over her ears, his palms covering her cheeks. She found her hands in the same position on his face. They held the kiss a long time before breaking apart.

"I think we'd better have dinner together," Harry said. Barbara nodded, wondering what had happened to her usual caution. Harry took her hand as she raised it to fasten her buttons and brought it to his mouth, kissing the palm lightly. "Leave them open, " he said, and she did.

Harry took her to an Italian restaurant he knew of and they gorged themselves on six kinds of pasta and a bottle of Chianti. After the meal, they walked for a while, looking in store windows and taking in the sights and smells of the city at night. They didn't touch, and spoke little.

Eventually they meandered back to the hotel where the conference was being held. They got their room keys and entered the elevator together. At Harry's floor, Barbara hesitated, then got off the elevator with him. In his room, he ordered champagne from room service, which was delivered in a very few minutes. He poured out the glasses and they stood at the window, sipping the wine and looking at the skyline winking with pinpoints of light.

When he touched her, Barbara thought she would melt through the floor. His hands were gentle on her face as he kissed her softly, moving like feathers over her clothes. His fingers found the rest of her buttons and slowly, carefully opened them. He slid the jacket and blouse off her shoulders and kissed the hollows of her collarbones and the base of her throat. She moaned softly. He slid the straps of her bra down over her arms until her hands were free of them and kissed the place between her breasts where the shadow of her cleavage began. He unfastened the back snaps of the bra and let it fall away from her body. Her breasts were exquisite.

Barbara pulled at Harry's coat until it slid off his shoulders and down his arms. She unbuttoned his vest and ran her hands over his shirt, loosening his tie and opening several of his shirt buttons. She ached to touch his skin, to thrust her naked breasts against his chest, to grind her loins into his. Her nipples ached from his touch. She could feel her panties become moist. She had no thought but to be naked, to have him be naked, and she worked frantically with the catches and fasteners of his clothes and hers. His shirt and trousers joined his jacket on the floor, and she felt her skirt drop as he opened its zipper and eased it down over her hips.

She hesitated, then took hold of his belt and unbuckled it, feeling the bulge under the cloth as she opened his zipper. He drew her hands up and pulled her arms around him and held her so tightly she felt she would never breathe again. He let his trousers drop and stepped out of them. Then he knelt down and kissed her swollen nipples, sucking on them and laving her breasts with his tongue. His fingers found the lace at the top of her panties and gently eased them down over her generous hips and swelling buttocks, sliding them down her thighs and legs to her ankles. She stepped out of them automatically, her attention fixed on his tongue and what it was doing to her nipples and breasts.

Harry picked her up and marveled at how little she weighed. He put her gently on the bed, then quickly stripped off the rest of his clothes and lay next to her. He kissed her and caressed her from head to toe and back, stroking and rubbing and squeezing and kissing and licking until his hand found her pussy and he began to massage there, waiting for her wetness to increase and her pussy lips to blossom to his finger, finding the place that pleased her most and concentrating on it with his fingers while his mouth attended her breasts and stomach.

Barbara felt her body ready itself for his insertion, waited for it for what seemed hours of tantalizing pleasure that only grew and grew until she was half crazy with desire. At last he positioned himself over her and entered her, and she could feel him inside her, growing inside her, moving inside her, felt her hips and stomach and legs responding and moving with his slow thrusts, finding the rhythm together, and she clung to his back, locking her ankles behind his thighs, feeling his slow thrusts become harder, quicker as her internal muscles began to throb and contract, her juices flowing steadily, and they moved together faster and faster until she could not hold back and felt something inside her burst like a dam and her body, beyond any control she could place upon it, jerked and heaved in huge spasms as she came and came and came and finally he too climaxed and she could feel his hot spurting essence spume up into her and she held him even more tightly as if letting go would mean her spiralling endlessly into a bottomless chasm until finally she fell back exhausted and spent and he too lay beside her, their breathing long and deep, with no words to say.