We chat lightly while he moves around the studio, weighing clay and settling in at the wheel. Phil wants to hear about Aisha-- my cousin, who he was friends with in undergrad-- and where else in California I have spoken-word gigs lined up. I want to hear about pottery and about his teaching at Berkeley. Now that my soul is returning to my body after the fluttery excursion of meeting a stranger, I'm pleased to find that he's easy to talk to. Fun, even. I can feel myself relaxing enough to actually take in my surroundings, and to get a good look at Phil.
He's coiled over his work like a spring. Lean and muscular. Spots of pale clay bright against his brown forearms. I can't stop watching his hands, working the wet clay up and then down again.
Anyone will tell you there's something erotic about throwing pottery. Stroking up the sides of a tall cone, drilling down into a wet centre, the careful pressure of firm finger tips pulling out and pressing in. He is so still and so insistent; slippery; prying. I feel a sticky arousal starting to coat the roof of my mouth, and I try not to show it. He's working, I tell myself. This is his work.
"--It barely pays for itself, in the end. But of course that's not the reason to do it," he's glances up at me, "Is your writing is the same as well?" And our eyes meet and for a yielding breath I'm sure he knows what he's doing to me; he must know. But then he's looking at the clay again and I'm embarrassed. He's only trying to do his job, and here I am ogling at it like a giggling teen. I hope I haven't been staring.
I've lost track of our conversation through the heat of desire and the afternoon sun, and the wheel spinning hypnotic into my thoughts. Phil's lips press together in soft concentration. We fall into silence, and then there is only the whirr of the electric fan, the thrumming of the wheel, the sounds of insects outside and the far-off static of suburb. I feel my body vibrate into the slow hum of sleep.
In my dream, the room is turning. Or rather I am turning, slowly, at the centre of it. I am slick and smooth and naked, only I cannot be naked because I am not me. I look down and see only black and shining porcelain.
A firm touch shivers up my sides as steady hands graze my smoothness. Around and around I turn under their touch, as they hold their place in firm caress. Now and again the pad of a finger glances over some little bump or imperfection and I feel each tug and pluck as if it were on bare skin or the most sensitive parts of my body. Here, my nipples tweak again and again, spinning under a thumb. There, my swollen nub is turning, ground into a fingertip. Wet probings slide against every crevice and ridge as I am made and unmade again; now the curve of a woman, nipples erect, clitoris singing; now only a dark and slippery mound, molten and yearning.
The wheel is slow and consistent in its turning teasingly under me. I feel wood grain and grooves gripping into my flesh. If I were a body I would be twitching and writhing; but I am only clay. Inert and yielding. Helpless against this thudding rhythm. Awash in overwhelming sensation.
The wheel spins on and I have never been anything but a hot mass of light and want. It is burning through me like kiln fire. Like a heat that fills everything. If I was a woman I would scream and beg and offer to do anything. But I am not a woman. I am only clay. Only wet and infernally spinning. Drawn again and again into tingling peaks and aching craters, ever further into a desperate and devouring geography.
Then, with a sliding suddenness, the hands crest and press into me. Thumbs spread me open, split me apart, driving firm into my moistness. I taste their skin on my tongue, feel them deep within my womb. Fingers curving up and down my walls, along my ridges, my slippery insides. I want to thrust up onto them, clench around them, draw them into me further and harder and faster. But I am only clay. Unable to move. Helpless as hands plunge down to the very centre of me.
Unwavering, their pressure bears up and down, up and down; spreading me out further and further, pressing higher and higher, interminably, towards an edge, a rim, where I am stretched and wide and hungry and thin. Where air and fingertip tremble across the gaping mouth of me. Where I am full and empty and aching with desire. A space filled with only the longing to be filled. A vessel for nothing but infinite need. Pulled so taut that I know I must shatter and shatter and shatter and shatter and shatter.
But then instead of shattering I splinter awake; stickily, gasping; to a clatter as a wooden bat skitters across the floor toward me.
Phil fumbles after it. "Bloody--! Sorry; sorry. I didn't think I should wake you."
For a moment his face is too close to mine, but then he retrieves the plywood disc and draws back. "Didn't quite think I should let you sleep either, but you were out like anything. Did you have sweet dreams, then?"
Some kind of a moan slithers out of me as I sit, burning behind the imprint of a couch cushion in my cheek. An unreleased climax thrumms agonizingly through my still-tender body.
"Alright there, Sleeping Beauty? It looked like a nice nap."
"Sorry," I apologize for I'm not sure what. Oh god, did I make noises in my sleep? Did I touch myself? Does he know? Humiliation seeps into the quivering mass of my need. "I, uh--" I wobble, pulverized.
"Yes, you're in big trouble. No pleasant naps in this house." My gut twists, and he winks, and he has the most perfect face in world. I could cum right then and there. I could writhe on top him. I could explode.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Unless you'd like some supper?" He almost looks a little flushed too. Is that from the heat, or something else? "I've got quite a nice red wine, I think."
"I--" I swallow thickly. "That sounds great."
He offers me one of those firm, wonderful hands to pull me up. It holds on a fraction of a second longer than it should. A finger brushes my wrist as he lets go, and lightning shoots through me. And then I school my trembling legs to movement as I follow him into the house.
