"You step down off the streetcar and wonder just what the hell it is you've gotten yourself into. Never trust strangers; always meet in a public place; always tell someone where you'll be. All the fears that come of being a woman, all the lectures, the well-intended advice, the rules - suddenly they all seem to make so much sense! You've travelled three hours by bus, to an unknown city, to meet a man more than twice your age and with the full intention of using him to shed your virginity.
He's told you that he's sane, he's told you that if you have second thoughts you can say "Stop!" and will will stop - but he would say that, whether he meant it or not, wouldn't he?
The streetcar rumbles away, and you double-check the street-sign against the crumpled note you've scribbled. You're at the right stop. Cross the street and then turn right, it's just a half-block away, he'd told you. You gnaw at your lip, hesitating. The neighbourhood looks rundown, not safe, though there are people on the sidewalk and nobody's getting mugged.
"Well. I've come this far. It's go on, young Yasmin, or run all the way back home to Kingston."
You wait for a break in traffic, take a breath, and cross.
The building is long and low. It looks old. You push open the heavy steel door in front, wishing it were glass, an entrance that suggested welcome rather than defence. The vestibule is small and dingy, but cleaner than you'd feared. There's a long mirror on your left and, neurotically, you check your hair, wonder whether to do undo one more button or to do one more button up. After a moment's hesitation, you choose the first option; We've been talking for months! And if he is a lunatic, one button isn't going to make much difference!
You turn to the buzzer panel on your right and locate number 105. "Hart, D," reads a tilted sign beside the number. You take another breath - This is your last chance to back out, Yas! - then press it. After a brief moment, through an ancient electronic crackle you hear a voice calling something like, "Come on in!" and the door buzzes. You pull it open and step through.
Again, what you see is better than you had feared, not as good as you had hoped. A staircase rises to your right. Straight ahead, a long, dimly-lit hallway beckons. The carpeting is worn, but clean and you will your feet to move, to carry you toward your destiny. The over-wrought term makes you giggle and so serves to ease your nerves, if only a little.
You are about halfway down the hall when a door opens ahead of you. A head peaks out, followed, with a strange delay, by a body. Dark suit, pin-stripes, you realize in the dim light. He waves, then simply stands and watches you as you approach.
He smiles softly. "Yasmin. Welcome." He reaches for your back with his right hand, lays his left upon your hip and guides you through the door, lightly brushing the back of your skirt as he releases you and turns to close - and lock - the door. The sound of the click is ominous, though you realize the mechanism does not require a key from the inside.
His apartment is dimly lit. Candles flicker on the counter which separates the kitchen from a large living room. Low music, not quite jazz, not quite funk, plays from somewhere beyond the light. A long couch lines the far wall, a love-seat sits below the small window. There are painting on the wall, but it is too dark to see much of them.
"Now" - you'd almost forgotten you weren't alone; the slow-moving bass, the flickering light; your own disbelief in what you've dared, have conspired to lull you into a momentary belief this is just a dream of daring, rather than the real thing. David's hands on your shoulders dissolve the illusion like a mirage. "Now, let me look at you."
He holds you gently but firmly, turning you so that you shuffle clockwise until you are facing him. For a moment he simply looks at you, staring into your eyes.
He's not the man you'd fantasized about. Of course he's not. Not as tall, not as dashingly handsome, not an English nobleman. But there's a friendly knowingness in his smile when he finally offers you it, and his eyes betray - maybe - at least some of the tension you're feeling. He doesn't look forty-three, but you remember he told he people usually think he's 30 and you smile inside at the lies people will believe about themselves.
"Usually when I have guests, the first thing I do is offer them a drink."
"But now?"
He draws his right hand slowly the side of your throat, then along your cheek. His left hand too now leaves its perch on your shoulder, to glide down your arm, fingers spread wide, and comes to rest with his thumb just next to your nipple, not quite touching it.
"But now I think we need a different kind of ice-breaker, young Yasmin."
And he leans slowly toward you until his mouth is only an inch - a centimetre - from yours. "A better kind." He busses your lips, just a hint of contact at first. Then he kisses your upper lip, holds it; and your lower, holds it between his just a little longer. His thumb starts to draw small circles on your breast, brushing the base of your nipple, a teasing, intermittent movement. You begin to wonder if he too is afraid, if he does not after all know what to do, or when he wants.
As if hearing your doubt, he kisses you full on the lips. Not hard, but insistently. His tongue pushes between his parted lips and begins to stroke yours in delicate, horizontal dabs, as if begging admittance rather than demanding it. You open your mouth, but only a little. Doesn't he want me more than that?
As if in answer, his right hand takes hold of the back of your head. He presses his mouth against yours and his tongue, once a feather, is now a blunt spear. His teeth nip at your lips, and his free hand holds your breast fully in his palm. He squeezes it almost cruelly, sinking his fingers deep into your flesh.
He kisses you hungrily now, and drops his hand to your back then, without breaking contact with your mouth, forces your body round and backs you against the door. His right hand has found your ass, and he strokes and squeezes you in some complex rhythmic counterpoint to the motions of his mouth, his hand on your breast, fingers that have found your nipple and are, alternately, stroking and squeezing it. He presses himself against you. His penis is hard, straining against his pants, as if to escape - or as if it wants to be free to hunt for you.
He pulls from your mouth and kisses your bare throat, sometimes nipping, sometimes almost sucking, sometimes just drawing his tongue along your flesh as if each pore provides a new taste, a new and delightful texture.
You wrap your arms around him, you scrabbled beneath his jack and pull his shirt from the waist of his pants. "I can wait for a drink," you whisper.
