Lori pulled the slick blade of a new razor down the inside of my thigh, making a clean, kissable path between drifts of foaming gel. Then she dipped the razor in a bowl of hot water, where clots of cream melted slowly away. She liked to let the razor hover a moment or two before baring more skin, and usually had a mischievous spark in her eyes as she planned her next angle of attack. She would hold my erection in one hand, to maneuver my cock out of the way whenever she shaved close to the root of my shaft, and then would giggle as I squirmed in anticipation of the sting to come. She rarely ever cut me, though, and if she did find a freckle of blood hiding under the gel, she would bend low and lick it off my skin with the pointed tip of her tongue.
Whenever we played out this ritual of laying on a big beach towel in the middle of the floor, shaving each other before or after a hard sweaty fuck, we would talk quietly about our favorite fantasies. Lori liked to spin out the details of a long daydream for me, to keep me hard as she little by little removed the down from my balls. The eye of my penis would weep silvery drops of precome, which would trickle down Lori's knuckles, making them as shiny as if they'd been dipped in sugar glaze. Sometimes, it was all I could do to keep from knocking over the water bowl and topping Lori then and there, in the middle of her breathy reverie about some nearly impossible tangle of bodies. Most of the time, though, I behaved myself, and let her denude my groin completely before I turned her over on her back to spread pink gel all over her swollen mons. That's when I had my chance to torture my lover in a loving way, and would tell her a story from the secret library I kept locked away in my head, memories and wishes I had only ever shared with her.
This night, as I ran a fresh razor down the curve of her belly, I looked down at the small tattoo that was drawn on Lori's left breast. She'd let an old boyfriend do it for practice, one summer years ago. The design was an ourboros in black ink, the snake a little fatter than usual, its mouth clearly vaginal as it swallowed up its phallic tail. Many nights after we'd made love, I would lay my head on Lori's shoulder, to put my eye close to the tattoo, so I could watch my finger trace the rolled-up snake round and round. She had told me once that the artist had come from a locksmithing family, that his father had taught all his children how to open almost any door, and that she'd picked up a few tricks here and there. She'd described a few of her adventures, going into abandoned warehouses for private orgies with a few select friends, and about the scare she'd had once when she and a partner had almost been caught naked with come flowing down their legs, after a noisy orgasm had echoed out into the street, alerting wary neighbors. I thought about all this as I cleared away the fading billows of froth from the borderland of Lori's sex, and as I watched her breasts rise and tremble with each indrawn breath. Taking a sip of wine to take the cotton out of my mouth, I began to tell her about the idea her tattoo artist boyfriend had inspired in me months before, an idea that had grown in my imagination to become a restless desire for an adventure of our own...
The next day, I had to finish up an illustration assignment, and so I left Lori asleep in bed as I walked over to the studio I kept above a bookstore downtown. I knew it was Lori's day off from her job at a local printmaking cooperative, so I thought I would try to wrap up my work early, then sneak back between the sheets for an afternoon of sex. But, when the clock chimed eleven in the bookstore owner's office under my feet, the phone rang and I picked it up to hear Lori giggle then whisper an address. Before I had a chance to say anything, she explained, "Meet me there as soon as you can," then hung up as I was reaching for a pen. I faxed my client, made a couple of quick notes in my record book, and locked up my office after I rescued a city map from the chaos of my desk drawer.
When I found the wiggly black line on the map that corresponded to the address Lori had given me, I saw that it was all the way across town, in a wealthy neighborhood tucked into a bend of the river. I walked home to fetch my truck, then drove out along Poplar, which travels west from the middle of Courthouse Square to the ragged edge of the county. After a while, I spotted the mossy stone gate that marked the place where luxury cars could escape from the flow of common traffic. I felt slightly self-conscious in my aging Ford, until I noticed all the other beat-up old work vehicles with their beds full of lawn mowers and gas cans, all of them cruising the winding streets from one huge yard job to the next. I felt the mantle of borrowed camouflage settle around me then, making me feel like I might get lucky after all and avoid the attention of the idle rich as I invaded their enclave.
Counting the street numbers on brick-pile mailboxes and wrought-iron gates, I came at last to a giant mock-tudor mansion at the end of a shady cul-de-sac. There was a real estate sign posted on the shoulder of the road, with a board hung over the top announcing that the house was Sold. I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed that the angle of the dead end made the driveway entrance nearly invisible from neighboring houses. In fact, the lawns out here were all wide and deep enough, and so full of mature trees, that each home was more like an island unto itself than part of a bigger community. So I felt a little less nervous as I coasted down the arc of the driveway toward the carport I could see sticking out from the back of the house.
