The Arrangement

The following short story represents a letter sent by the author to an online friend with whom he has enjoyed a long relationship without any physical contact. He has always kept her informed of any offline recreational activities he enjoys and she has reciprocated in kind. This letter was written as a report of one such offline meeting of which she had taken part in the planning. She was aware of a previous "accidental connection" at an earlier conference and knew that the author was planning to meet his "conference paramour" at this event.

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She was black. An incredible shade of black I was not accustomed to seeing in any social or business setting. Not chocolate. Not café au lait. Not the mahogany of the professional models who grace the covers of Ebony or Elle or even Vogue, but a rich, deep, dark, ebony hue that this old man's eyes had never had the pleasure of appreciating in the flesh, so to speak.

As she paced back and forth in front of the assembled conference participants, cordless microphone in one hand, the lighting often cast her skin color into the blue-black indigo range of the spectrum. She was extraordinary in her carriage as well. She was not a tall woman; but she was a big woman, perhaps only 5' 5" tall and most likely 145-150 lbs. She was purposeful in her movements and let everyone in the assembled group know that she was a force to be reckoned with.

Her most incredibly attractive feature was her hair - long, inordinately long, jet black and brilliantly lustrous in the overhead lighting. Her entire face was set in an inky frame that solidified the idea in my mind that this was a hugely sexual being. A thin sheen of - of what? Perspiration? Natural skin oils? Whatever it actually was, it turned her skin into a shiny obsidian that reflected the light from the small spotlights in the ceiling directly back into my eyes and stunned me with a smothering effect.

I stiffened at my table as her eyes found mine, locked for a second, then moved on to another target around the room. Had there been a moment of recognition there? A moment of communication? I felt it; but I did not understand it.

My reason for being here in suburban Philadelphia at a conference of advisers and counselors from colleges and universities in the eastern part of the state was simple: I intended to get laid; again. Let me digress a bit here, dear reader. Approximately nine months ago I attended a similar conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania and met an incredible woman with whom I enjoyed an afternoon and an evening of truly romantic passion. For some reason, our goals at that very moment meshed so that both of us attributed the electric charge that surged through us when we were first introduced, as a sign that something else - something much more definitive - was about to take place in our commingled lives.

We learned about each other during a long, luncheon discussion. We learned that we were both married to partners who no longer cared for the physical side of a relationship and had supplanted that factor with other things - in my wife's case, the spiritual life of a fundamentalist church group, in her husband's case, an overwhelming vicarious experience in watching sports of any and all kinds. We looked at each other quite naively and expected that we would feel something and walk away from it at the end of the day. How wrong we were!

Our afternoon and evening were spent in a romantic hotel room with snacks and treats and an unbelievable marathon of sexual tenderness. She very quickly accepted the fact that at my age, actual intercourse was a sidelight to the big event and relaxed into a receiver's role to my repeated onslaughts of oral attention. This, for some odd reason, had become an honest-to-God fetish with me over the past ten years or so. I find that I much prefer to ravish a woman orally - repeatedly - than to engage in any form of genital copulation that would be less than satisfactory to her. After a few polite protests, she understood that I could be fulfilled emotionally by providing her repeated peaks and valleys of delicious orgasm with fingers, thumbs, lips, teeth and tongue. It became evident that she was enthralled with the idea that she could take all she wanted from the afternoon and not be fearful of having let her partner down in her part of the bargain.

What I have failed to mention to this point is, she was black -- my very first black woman of any consequence in a loving, physical relationship. And I learned very quickly in that long afternoon that black is, indeed, beautiful; and there is a taste and texture difference, which simply cannot be described by a mortal man with a limited vocabulary.

When we parted, we arranged to meet again at this particular conference. She would, again, be moderating a discussion panel and I would be a willing participant in the audience - until after the conference; and then my participation would take on a different attitude -- or so we thought at the time.

Somehow, we lost contact for a while. E-mails dropped off in their frequency and I assumed that the interest had been fleeting on her part and she had decided that the rendezvous in Philadelphia was a poor idea. I accepted that. She had much to lose in her position, and I was treading on thin ice in my own marriage as my wife had already allowed suspicion about my online activities to take over her life. She had become a private investigator of the enth degree and had actually confronted me with her suspicions. So I, too, was not too certain this would be a good idea.

Two days before the conference, I heard from her. She was sexually delirious with the idea that we could have the opportunity to renew our passion and told me she was quite anxious to connect in Philadelphia. I could not say no. I could not tell her that in the meantime I had met someone else online and had planned to meet that woman at the hotel where the conference was to be held.

I was, indeed, in a quandary.

So, here I sat in the conference hall, watching this new woman walk back and forth across the stage, comparing her to the one I had met some months ago. Opposites, to be sure. Where my first black involvement had been tall, willowy and café au lait in color, this woman was short, compact and as black as the inside of Hades. I wondered where my "friend" might be. I supposed she was conducting a seminar in one of the other meeting rooms, but had not yet seen her. I hoped she would make contact soon and we could slip away for lunch to make plans. I had already reserved a room upstairs and hoped that we could arrange things so that she and I would skip all afternoon sessions and retire to our romantic tryst for the entire afternoon. My sordid plan was to tell her, then, that I could not stay the evening because of family problems and make her afternoon one to remember for a long time. That way, I could meet my new online partner for the evening and hope that my physical stamina would withstand the attention of two women.

But I did not see her anywhere during any of the refreshment breaks, in the halls between sessions, or at lunch when we were ushered into the huge banquet hall. I scanned the crowd with anxious eyes but found only the woman from that morning weaving her way through the tables toward where I was standing. I paid little attention to her and continued to search the crowd for my lost lover. I even moved out of her way when she approached the table where I was standing.

She, however, did not move; and she stood directly in front of me and extended her hand to take mine, saying, "I think we have a mutual friend."

The details of our lunch conversation need not be reproduced here in their entirety. Let it simply be said that we adjourned to a small Italian restaurant a block away for some privacy (her suggestion, not mine) and shared an antipasto. Her contact was deliberate. My previous romantic liaison had informed her about me, about my propensity for a particular type of sexual stimulation, and the fact that I would be at this conference looking for her. At the last minute, she could not be present and thought that this woman might be an apologetic substitute for me.

I was stunned, to say the least. To think that two women had actually discussed me. To think that my performance in a romantic interlude had been the topic of several evenings' conversation between friends. Actually, I was immensely flattered. And apprehensive.

And here was my way out; a way to clear the way for the already-scheduled meeting with my online friend. I could very simply be polite in my refusal to become involved. I could easily explain to her that last February's activities were a one-time-happening. But I didn't. Why didn't I?

Simple. This woman exuded more sexuality than any woman I have ever met. She was so animal-like in her appearance - almost predatory - that I was mesmerized and agreed to everything she proposed. She explained she could only stay the afternoon since she was traveling into the city for another appearance that evening. This, of course, fell directly into the plan I had cooked up for the day, anyway.

We returned to our hotel and I led her to the room I had arranged. What was her plan for the afternoon? This was not a romantic liaison, as had been the one in Hershey. This was a deliberately planned afternoon of sex -- simple, unadulterated sex. I honestly did not know if I was up to it. For the first time in my life, I had doubts about what I was going to be able to accomplish.

She wasted no time at all in giving me clues as to her intentions. She was wearing a beautiful beige cashmere business suit and removed the jacket to reveal a matching beige silk blouse. Her breasts were huge and stretched the silk to its limit. I could see the lace on the tops of the cups of her bra, also beige it appeared, contrasted starkly against her dark skin. I am not a breast man. I have never been a breast man, or boy, or teen. I much prefer a woman's nether regions - those regions not seen by many, hidden from view until the woman decides to reveal them for her own reasons. But, in this case, I was stunned. My gaze could not be torn from those melon-shaped hills pressing for release from their lacy prison. I resorted to a juvenile phase and whispered, "Oh, my God!" She laughed and lifted them with her two hands and asked if I liked them. I responded in the affirmative, and she remarked that she had heard I was not usually attracted to a woman's breasts.

I gave her the short version of what I did prefer and stepped closer to her in the thought that I would now take over the direction for the afternoon. No. It was not to be. She put her hands against my chest and told me to relax on the side of the bed, that she was responsible for the afternoon and that our mutual friend had described exactly how she should go about pleasing me.

Argue with her? You've got to be kidding! I sat down on the edge of the bed and simply watched as she removed the articles of clothing she had on. Small brown heels, straight beige skirt, (no stockings), half-lace cup bra, (a later peek while she was in the bathroom gave me the size of 42D), all laid carefully on the back and arms of the overstuffed chair at the other side of the room. Each trip to the chair and back to stand in front of me brought me to a higher state of rigidity and readiness, I must admit. I was totally enjoying the "show" so to speak.

Standing in front of me in only a pair of French-cut beige panties, she put her hands on her hips and asked again if I liked what I saw. I informed her that she appeared to be the most delicious woman I had ever seen. Her breasts were large, as I said earlier, but appeared to sag very little. They simply imposed upon her chest as a resting place for their wondrous roundness. What struck me, though, was the appearance of her aureoles and nipples. Coal-black, and huge. When I say 'huge' I mean the aureoles must have measured at least 3 ½ or 4 inches across. And the nipples were nearly ¾ of an inch long. I looked at her face (yes, I tore my eyes from that feast) and asked, "May I?" She laughed and lifted them for me so that they pushed together even more and I experienced a newfound surge of sexual excitement. I touched them and found the skin to be as silky as one could imagine. I allowed the fingertips of both hands to slide along their sides and find the aureoles to draw circles around them, watching them swell and crinkle as the nipples extended themselves like black diamonds, hard, stiff, begging to be kissed.

She murmured, "Oh, shit!" and then giggled a little, which made her breasts move in such a way that I thought I was going to lose it. Of course, I immediately leaned forward in my seated position and captured a nipple in my mouth, sucking it in as deeply as I could. I rolled the other nipple between thumb and forefinger as I bit and licked and flicked and sucked the other.

She yelped and moved back from me, taking her treasures with her. "That's not quite what I had planned, Edward," she laughed. I looked her up and down again and noticed that there was a definite wet spot in the front of her panty crotch. Well, I was having an effect whether I thought so or not. She must have noticed my stare and asked if I would like to help her out of them. Of course, I agreed, and she stepped close enough for me to stroke my hands across the expanse of silky material that covered her ass and then around to the front panel where I slipped my one hand between her incredible thighs and cupped her mound, squeezing slightly with my thumb pressed against the bump at the apex of her swollen lips. I could see how puffy she was through the panties, but what I had actually not taken notice of before (and this is truly out of character for me) was that she was unbelievably hairy at the front of her mound. I breathed in and knew that we were about to embark on something very special. Her aroma was striking. It not only invaded my nostrils, it assaulted my entire olfactory sense, bringing a sharp, delicious pain to my salivary glands, which immediately began to produce liquid. They knew I was in for a wonderful taste experience.

She playfully slapped my hand away and told me to hurry before she ruined a $20 pair of silk "drawers." I obliged by rolling her panty waistband down along her hips and when it reached mid-hip, I began to realize what I was in store for.

Her bush bulged upward and outward as I released it from its silky trappings. It was monstrous - monstrous in size, not in appearance. There was so much hair! I wondered how she ever kept it trapped inside a bathing suit when she went swimming. It narrowed from a very wide-topped triangle down into the dark valley between her thighs. Her legs were not spread at all and I could not see much else between them, though I strained to look. In one swift motion, her panties were around her ankles and I was helping her off with them. I brought them to my nose and mouth and enjoyed the scent and the taste for a moment before she reached for them. I leaned back and held them out of her reach. "No, dear thing," I said, "these belong to me now. Didn't our mutual friend tell you that?"

She laughed again, and she said that she had been warned not to wear a matching set of underwear because she would not get her panties back. She leaned down to kiss me lightly and said we would discuss that later. Now, she murmured, it was time for dessert. She pushed me back onto the bed, crosswise, and walked around the bed and actually pulled me by the shoulders to a point where my head was almost hanging off the other side. She bent and kissed me in that rather awkward position and asked me if I was hungry. I murmured into her lips that I was ready to eat anything she had to offer.