One Night One More Time

For Jason.

I am lying.

I am lying to my husband, because he doesn't know I'm here, and I am lying because I am lying prone--no, supine--on this bed, this marvelous bed that has been made just for me.

Geoff is lying next to me on his side, with his head resting on his curled bicep, and he's watching me. It's just about all I can do not to crawl under the blankets; I feel vulnerable beneath his eyes, naked in all the worst ways, though I still haven't lost my clothes--yet.

His eyes are dark and intense, belying the studiedly calm expression on his face.

"What?" I ask finally.

"I can't believe you're here," he says.

Me, neither.

It's weird, to hear his voice. We've only known each other online, through pictures. The pictures, it turns out, haven't done him justice, but men are terrible at choosing pictures of themselves. Either that or they just don't know what women are looking for in a picture. But we're not visually oriented the same way men are, and maybe there will always be a disconnect there. Maybe men are just as disappointed in women's picture-selection abilities. A woman will comb through an archive of three hundred snaps before she finds one that will minutely represent the image of the ideal self she holds in her mind. God only knows how men pick the pictures they post on social networking sites.

I tell him this.

He asks, "So, I don't look like my pictures?"

"No," I say. "You look better." And he does. He's quite beautiful to me--men don't like that word attached to them, I've noticed, but still, it works. The reality of him is taller, solider, more muscled than picture-Geoff. His grin is more disarming in real life. His eyes are clearer. And then there's his voice...

I close my eyes against the late afternoon sunlight streaming across his bed, across the crisp white sheet-edge folded over the soft green flannel comforter. His pillows are down, and when you fall back into them, you sink for about a mile. It's exactly like my fantasy. The first time he told me that he was fantasizing about my lips wrapped around his cock, I countered with my vision of us lying in bed and talking together--down, flannel, crisp white sheets, and all.

I rather thought my fantasy was the more intimate.

I feel a gentle touch on the hair at my temple, and realize he's finally bridged the gap between us. He didn't hug me at the airport, and I didn't hug him. We didn't hold hands on the way to his car, or in his car. We didn't even brush against each other on the tour of his house. There was just the moment when we almost touched, when I could feel his body heat behind me when I stopped in the doorway and stared at the bed, made up exactly like I'd told him--a far cry from the thread-bare percale and ancient polyester pillows that he'd told me he slept on when I'd asked one time, high on the fantasy that I'd not yet divulged to him, and wondering if there was some remote chance he was my secret bed-soulmate.

The impulse to lie down on that bed was too strong, fit too well with the surreal nature of this meeting, and I went and laid down on the side of the bed furthest from the alarm clock. And he joined me.

And now, finally, he is touching me.

I feel the contact all the way down to the center of my body, like I am a candle and someone has pulled a burning wick through me. And he's just stroking my hair. I can't even imagine what it'll be like if we come together.

If. More like, when. Who am I kidding? I've flown twelve hundred miles to see him, and my husband doesn't even know why. Though I suspect Ty knows. He ought to know. He's known that it's been coming, for years--ever since he cheated on me.

"Tell me," Geoff whispers, "about humiliation."

He's told me about his most humiliating experiences. All of them. It's how we met, it's how we bonded. We both list humiliation as fetishes, and both with caveats. "Some humiliation," his profile says. "A certain degree of humiliation," says mine. We have a lot of the same limits, the same boundaries. We don't want or need total degradation. Neither of us likes the thought of water sports or Cleveland steamers or anything like that. But we both crave more humiliation than regular people.

And we found each other.

"Two nights ago," I say, "when I came home from work, I went upstairs to change. And Ty was waiting. He bent me over the bathroom sink, ripped apart my pantyhose, and squirted lube in my pussy. He fucked me from behind, and when he was ready to come, he pulled out and blew in the crack of my ass. Just--held himself there, oozing cum onto me, and at the end, wiped his cock on the inside of my cheeks and left me there. Never said hello, never said he loved me, never said anything." It's hard to say all those words aloud. I only falter a few times, though; mostly I can fake the confidence I need.

Hoarsely, he says, "How did that make you feel?"

I laugh. "Besides the obvious?"

"Besides that."

"Hot. Used. Embarrassed. I could see my face in the mirror, and saw how I looked."

"Why was that embarrassing?"

"I--didn't think I looked attractive."

He rolls a little closer to me then; I can feel his weight on the mattress. His breath is on my cheek, sneaking into my ear, and he whispers, "But you were attractive. To him." His breath is warm and minty. He's obviously just brushed his teeth.

God. I've been wet--and terrified--since I got on the plane. Since before that, even. And now it's even worse.

"What else?" he asks. "What else about humiliation?"

"Lately?" I ask. "Nothing that I haven't told you already."

He lies next to me, silent now, and his fingers are gone from my hair, and the seconds stretch out with my nerves.

I wonder if which of us is going to actually be able to do it. To touch the other one first, to fuck them, to give them the humiliation they crave. I wonder if it will be me doing something awful to him, even though I'll hate it, or if it will be me that gets to lie there and twist and blush and maybe even cry, even though he'll hate it.

Or maybe, it's outside of both our natures to humiliate, and maybe this will just be a weekend like all the weekends we've spent online, spurring each other to new heights of anticipation without ever creating release for the other or really, even, for ourselves, no matter how many times we come.

I think for a moment about how lucky I am that I have Ty. Geoff--as far as I know, and who knows, maybe he's a big ol' liar--doesn't have anyone, and hasn't had anyone for a couple of years.

I open my eyes, sit up, swing my legs out of bed. "Let's go to dinner," I say. "Someplace dark and smoky."

"But you don't smoke," he says, confused, and not just by the smoke issue.

"My treat," I tell him.

#

In the car, while his eyes are firmly on the road and not on me, I say, "I don't know what you expected for this weekend, but I don't know if I can do it." And I watch his hands grip the steering wheel tighter for a moment, and I think, "That's done it, I've pissed him off."

But he's not pissed, exactly. He says, "What do you think I'm expecting?"

I can't say it all out loud even with him not watching me, so I joke a little. "A jack-booted thug?"

He shakes his head. I watch. I love the shape of his skull beneath his skin, the way his neck muscles rise out of the plain white collar of his otherwise boring button-down shirt. "I just want you, as you are, and with what you bring. Sexy and..." He glances at me out of the corner of one eye. "Sexy," he says again.

I think about playing amused at this little redundancy, but the truth is, I'm overcome by his attraction to me. Not even in the days of our courtship was Ty so explicit about finding me attractive.

"It won't bother you if I can't..." I trail off.

"Say it," he says, but it's not an order.

"...if I can't strap on a dildo and fuck you in the ass?" There. That was pretty bald. I'm blushing. It's funny, because we talk explicitly online all the time, but I'm always the one pushing the envelope of words, saying "cunt" where he says "pussy," saying "cock" instead of "penis." But it's very different to say these things out loud.

He flushes red instantly, and I realize, well, perhaps there are some kinds of humiliation that cuts both ways.

"I can't say I wouldn't enjoy that," he says. "But I've been in a constant state of arousal since you told me you'd bought the ticket. I can't even imagine being disappointed." Then he asks the hard question. "What did you think of the bed?"

And I know it's as hard for him to ask as it is for me to answer. "I think that's not your usual bed style."

"Correct," he says. "That bed is just for you. My old stuff was sort of threadbare. And, once you told me about your fantasy, I couldn't stop thinking about the pillows, and the sheets..."

We're both red again, but now he's turning into the parking lot of a dark bar, whose only lighting seems to be the neon in the window explaining that they have beer and that they're open. I get out of the car before he can come around and let me out, like he did when we got to his house. I'm not much made to be patient for gentlemanly crap. We walk into the bar together, and I do let him hold that door for me.

Inside, we grab a booth, sit opposite each other, and order drafts and the burger of the day. While we're sitting there waiting for the food to come, I realize that I've made a tactical error: we're not in touching range, except if we hold hands, and that seems like a coupley thing to do. We're so not a couple. If things were different and we'd met in college, we'd probably have been friends. We probably wouldn't have dated, as we aren't quite the right personality types for each other. At least, that's my theory. In any case, holding hands across the table wouldn't be right, wouldn't feel right.

Without a word to him, I slide out of the booth and come around to his side. I slide in, bumping my hip against his, and belatedly, he makes room for me. I cozy on up to him, thigh to thigh, and I twine my lower leg around his. We're both wearing jeans, so it's not much contact, and yet, it is. He sits, ramrod straight, like he's afraid to move. We have to fix this. I have to become more comfortable with him and he with me, or I'm just going to have a serious freak-out or something, so I glance around the bar--which is dark and just a little smoky, as requested--see that no one is watching, and take his hand. At first, I just hold it in mine for a moment. Then I lift the palm to my cheek, which he cradles for a moment, until I turn my lips and plant a kiss in the center of the palm. And then, again flicking my eyes around to make sure no one is watching, I place it right on my breast.

His eyes widen, and he swallows visibly. I can't really make out the state of his erection through the stiff fabric of his jeans, but I hope I haven't erred. I suspect that I haven't when his thumb begins to circle my nipple through the thin fabric of my shirt.

The waiter is coming towards us, but I remain brave, and don't drop Geoff's hand away. Geoff has other ideas, though, and slides his hand down my waist to rest on my thigh, where it remains while the waiter brings condiments and fresh beers. When the waiter turns back to the kitchen, though, Geoff surprises me with an opportunistic caress of my inner thigh coupled with a grazing of my pussy with the edge of his hand. He doesn't meet my eyes, and in that moment, I see him both for the shy man he proclaims to be, coupled with the significantly less shy person as I have experienced him.

Emboldened by his obvious desire, I turn my body to face him, press myself against him, reaching up to kiss his cheek. I linger in that position for a moment, and whisper in his ear, "When we're done here, I want you to use me."

And he groans. And it's such a rich, full sound, so incredibly yearning, that if I hadn't been wet already, I would have gone so in an instant. My pussy is aching at this point--I think all the blood in my body has rushed there, to feed my nerves, to turn it into an apex of pure sensation. His arm snakes around my waist and he presses me to him, and his mouth takes mine in a moment of fevered, wanton disregard for propriety.

He tastes good--a little cold and a little sour-hoppy from the beer, and probably exactly like I taste--and his five o'clock shadow scrapes my upper lip and nose, and it's awkward in the way any unstudied first kiss is awkward, but he's good at this all the same. He understands how to assess how I'm kissing him and adjusts his pressure, and he keeps good tension, too; tension on the lips is important. No pucker and it's a dead fish on your mouth, too much pucker and it's like kissing a pig's anus. Lovely thoughts to be going through my mind at this point, but I've been so disappointed by first kisses before, and I'm not disappointed by Geoff. I just want to taste him forever. Gently, I slip my tongue into his mouth, and he meets it with his, strokes it, and reverses it, chasing my tongue back into my mouth. My heart hammers in my ears like I've climbed fifteen flights of stairs, maybe more.

I'd forgotten what a first kiss could be like, obviously, in my years with Ty.

The waiter sets the plates down with a clatter before us, and we break apart, coughing, laughing, apologizing.

#

In the car again, I point out there are no working street lights in the bar parking lot.

"True," Geoff says, and starts the car. It's only when I put my hand over the gear-shift to stop him from throwing the car in reverse that he realizes what I'm saying. I'm shimmying out of my jeans as we speak--my panties go with them--and he turns the ignition off and moves his seat back. I come across the center console, unbuttoning his fly as I come. I straddle him and delicately pull his rock-hard cock from his shorts. He is nearly dead silent.

"Breathe," I remind him, and his breath comes out explosively, and his hands clamp down on the armrests while I handle him, stroking his cock and positioning it upright.

"I wanted this to be--" he starts.

"Doesn't matter," I say. "This is the practice round. This one doesn't count. This one is where you use me."

"Are you sure you're not using me?" he asks dubiously, but at this point, I'm sliding my swollen, aching cunt down around his shaft, and it's so much thicker than I'm used to that I have to go slow and let myself adjust, and he is whimpering deep in his throat, not talking anymore, and I'm whimpering too, a little.

When I sink down all the way to the base, I stop for a moment, and now it's my turn to remember to breathe. I can't stop myself from gripping him with my pussy, and he groans, breathing sharply through his nose. In the dim glow of the city, I can see his eyes are tightly shut, his nostrils are flaring. I know he's forcing himself not to come.

"Just for practice," I say firmly, and now I move on him. "Use me. If you even think about holding back, I'll--"

"Okay," he says, sounding strangled, and his arms come around me, fingers digging into the flesh of my buttocks, and he is bucking beneath me frantically.

There's almost no rhythm, but what there is makes my clit throb furiously. I know he's going to blow, that there's no chance to pull this one out into a win for both of us, but you can't keep a man on edge for six months and expect endurance. At least, I don't. I may not come in this moment, but I'll come with the memory of this moment--Geoff's urgency, the thrill of how and where this is happening--for years down the road. It's just a little delayed gratification.

"Sandra," he cries, almost a whine deep in his throat. I cradle his face in my hands.

"I told you," I say. "I told you to use me. You'd better come, if that's what you want."

"I don't want--" he starts, but he's still moving against me, under me, and forcing me forth and back on his cock, until he stops, clutching me, burying his face in my shoulder, like he's so ashamed, like he can't look at me or let me look at him.

I feel the pulse of his penis inside of me. He's coming. It's over.

"Fuck," he says, and I realize that in giving him the gift of a one free orgasm, I've managed to humiliate him. I didn't give him a chance to prove his masculinity, I guess.

Considering that I wasn't altogether certain I'd be able to come through on humiliating him during this trip, I decide to call it a win.

I kiss his forehead and climb off of him. The smell of our mingled emissions is heavy in the car. I sit on my jeans, clenching my legs together to keep from oozing cum and my juices everywhere. He's sitting really still, leaning his head against the headrest, eyes closed. "I--" he says, and stops.

"I know," I say gently. "Home, Jeeves."

#

Back at his house, I get out of the car with my jeans over my arm and my panties wadded in my hand, and saunter inside with just my hanging shirt-tail to cover my ass. I don't care what the neighbors think. They aren't my neighbors, anyway.

Inside, though, I forbear to sit down on the furniture in my state, and go to the bathroom to clean up. When I come out, Geoff is staring intently at his iPod, clearly picking a play list. I sit down on the edge of his sofa, hands folded neatly over my bare knees--I left my discarded jeans and panties with my overnight bag--and watch him. Other than the mild rumpling of his shirt, he looks pretty tidy, pretty unfucked.

After a few moments, and without looking up from his iPod, he says, "You're shaved."

"Yep."

"I thought you didn't shave."

"I don't, normally."

"Did you shave for me?"

"No," I say, brutally honest. "Ty asked me to, a few weeks ago. I just have kept up with it."

"Oh."

I raise an eyebrow.

"I was just surprised. By the whole thing, actually." He looks at me sideways, but briefly.

I consider him for a moment. I consider my own brazenness, as well. I'm a little surprised, too, at what I made myself do in the car, and that I'm sitting here without pants on. "Why surprised?" I ask.

He doesn't answer for a moment. He slots the iPod into his stereo dock. Really nice jazz comes out over the speakers, not too loud.

"I thought--" and his voice almost breaks, but he steadies it and continues "--that we'd be in the bed together."

"It's about what happened in the car."

"Not so much what happened, but that it happened first." He looks frustrated, and not a little pink. His hands are clenching and unclenching by his sides, and I think maybe he doesn't even know he's doing that.

And right then, I'm pretty sure I feel too much for him for this to be a good idea, but I'm here, and my flight home isn't for twenty more hours, and I want him like I haven't wanted anyone in years. I go to him and slip my arm around his back, comfortingly--but no, that feels too impersonal or matronly or something. So, I untuck his shirt in back and slide my hands up inside, next to his skin, rubbing him gently as I lift my face to be kissed. And he does kiss me then, tenderly. "I wanted it to be like your fantasy," he says, and it's a whisper.

"It's not over yet," I point out. "Come to bed with me." He grinds his hips against me at that, and I can feel the erection. I spin out of his arms and lead him to the bedroom. The jazz follows us down the hall, and we climb into the crisp white sheets and collapse into the pillows. He turns out the lamp, but the hall light is on, lighting him only in profile. He cuddles me against his side, and we lie together.

After a time he asks, "Why did you do that?"

"Hm?"

"In the car. You didn't even... you didn't even come."

"You once told me a story," I say. And that's all I have to say. He twitches uncomfortably next to me, stiffening, drawing away, but I roll over and clamp down on him like some sort of sea creature, twining a leg in between his, folding my arm with his arm.