It was summer, and Lauren sat beside me with a few friends (my friends in fact. She was there for me alone, to taunt and tease). She would remain for another month, after which she flew back to her natural state, finishing up her last year of college down south while cooing softly beneath her boyfriend's lips. Her left side leaned lightly against me; her legs were pulled up onto the couch, leaving one foot hidden beneath her right thigh while the other, a miraculously smooth and soft terminus to her lightly tanned leg, wheeled softly, her big toe tracing minute circles in the air. Her legs (the part of her that most aroused my desire, not due to any defect in the trim lines of her entire form, but rather due to their close approach to perfection. She once stood up upon her toes while wearing a miniskirt. The taut calves and firm muscles appealed to even the most chaste of my aesthetic impulses) were still hidden beneath the beautiful, airy lilac-blue and cruelly opaque drift of her skirt.
For two weeks she had pursued me, or perhaps pursued my pursuit, flirting effortlessly with my desire, but always denying any move I made beyond certain "arbitrary lines" (a phrase I borrow from my erratic Clio). These arbitrary lines did not prevent my finger tips tracing the full length of her thighs, or my tongue gently joining in the kisses I laid in spirals around her belly-button, but they denied me that thing I most desired, which was (and this surprised me most of all, who always believed his own bravado) the simple chance to kiss her lips. So many times I played little games that ended in the barest brushing together or our still speaking mouths, and when I felt her begin to kiss back, even lightly, the excitement I felt embarrasses me!
I knew she would spend the night (she often did) and that she would sleep, spooned beside me, with her tall, thin form pressed hard against mine. It was that sort of intimacy upon which her little game was founded. I suggested to my friends in the most transparent euphemism I could manage that they should leave. My arm was wrapped around Lauren's shoulder, holding her closer against me, exciting me until I held her closer still, looping into the kind of positive feedback that always ended in a rebuff as my hand drifted above her thigh. They left, and the moment the door closed I grabbed her shoulders and pressed her down to the couch. For a moment she wriggled around, trying more to move her legs to a comfortable position than to escape my grasp. I kissed her collarbone. Her clavicle, I should say. I never said collarbone to her, the little glimpses of the technical life I lived all around her, but never with her, delighted her too much. I moved along its gently sweeping length until I grazed her throat, my lips edging slowly upwards until I reached the line of her jaw. My kisses moved on towards her chin, my tongue barely reaching her skin before scurrying back inside. It was simply my desire to taste her that drove it out at all. My cheek brushed against her lips and she gently kissed it, making a feeble little sound that for some reason has stuck in my memory. I try now to recreate it, but perhaps only the geometry of her lips could produce that bare little smacking that affected me so disproportionately to its intent.
I placed my hand behind her thigh and lifted her leg until it was wrapped behind me. She squeezed me to her with her calf and I thrust back against her, my hardness already apparent. I moved my left leg outside of her right so she could press herself against my thigh, the movements of her body as she let herself twist into me aroused me perhaps more than it did her. I dragged my teeth along her shoulder drawing from her a little gasp that demanded more discipline than I could ever claim. I crushed my lips against hers, my hand came behind her neck and forced her to kiss me, which she did for the barest instant before forcing me away. She began to mouth the usual bit about boundaries that never meant for me to stop, but simply for me to help convince her of a technical fidelity to some distant boy. She delighted too much in my obvious desire for her to even feign the anger she so clearly did not feel. I pulled back, made a sound of exasperation I did not have to fake, and stood. She followed me to her feet, draping her arms around my neck and looking into my eyes with the confounding knowledge of her power over me, and the multifaceted pleasure of self-denial, novelty and lust.
