Come In Come In My Roving Friend

"Are you with anyone?"

Ivy always texts me a few days before she comes into town, a courtesy. I've always answered the same way, and even broke off relationships in their infant stage to answer honestly. "No. The key's still under the mat."

She's supposed to arrive early, so I leave my door accessible while I'm at work, a pretty ballsy thing to do in my "up and coming" neighborhood. It's beyond frustrating that - even after working the late at the restaurant - I return home with her nowhere to be found yet.

I'm in bed asleep by the time she knocks on my door. She must have caught the red eye.

After thinking I probably wouldn't see her until the next day, I leap out of bed, run through my little apartment, and fling the door open eagerly to hug her sparse frame to me more tightly than she expected.

The wind whooshes out of her. I release her sheepishly, my own wayfaring stranger.

"Phượng, finally," she greets me after she catches her breath. I love how she says my name. She bothers to pronounce "Phượng" with the correct Vietnamese intonation, so my name sounds different than every other part of her speech. "Horrible trip. Horrible long trip. All the way from Innsbruck. And all I could think of the whole time was getting here to you."

"You're here now," I usher her into our little oasis and shut the door behind her on the rest of the world.

She looks politely at her watch. "It's awfully late and I have about 19 hours of travel on me. It's cool if you want to go back to sleep and hang out in the morning instead, once I've showered and all." Another courtesy. I'm meeting her at my door wearing only a sleep tee. My intentions are clear.

Not dignifying the suggestion of abstaining even for a few hours, I lose the tee shirt and wrap my wrists behind her neck to kiss her quickly. From the incredibly minty fresh taste of her mouth, she definitely didn't expect me to choose to wait.

She tosses her old canvas messenger bag, dull hiking backpack, and beat-up rolling duffle bag in the corner by the couch and kicks off her old sockless sneakers. She's a well-paid business consultant and so I could never quite reconcile the disparity between her stained hoodie and cargo pants worn for travel and her sleek suits that she'd wear for work on the following days.

I finally asked her about her broke stoner style during one of her latest visits. She laughed, "You'd want to be comfortable too if you took a hundred flights a year. Besides, with some of the places I have to go, it's better not to look worth robbing." Other than the $250 bluetooth earbuds poking out from behind her loosely-gathered thick blonde hair, she could pass for a PhD candidate traveling for research. Or a work shy couch-surfer.

Tomorrow she'll wear some elegant outfit and her pretty hair will be in its sharp power bun. Oddly, she still seems like the same person to me, but I can see how she projects the aggression and confidence necessary for success in the cutthroat profession she chose.

But, for the night, she doesn't need to be a shark. We can just be old friends who enjoy one another's company without strings.

She was almost too gallant for us to get together at first...

We'd met two years earlier, conventionally enough at a bar. She was honestly looking to get a drink in a comfortable setting. I was admittedly on the prowl.

"Hi. You seem to be all alone?" I sidled up to her, ready to take down new prey. To be clear, not a looking for a simple one night stand by preference, but a pretty new girlfriend.

"Do I? That's right. You can't see all my imaginary friends, can you?" Ivy answered with a straight face.

"Uh, no I can't." Crazy or witty, I didn't care. She was hot enough to offset nearly any drawbacks in her personality. "Are they as sexy as you are?"

"You'll never know, will you?" she laughed and I was hooked.

"Well, what brought you all out to the bar tonight?" She was a touch out of place, much too expensively dressed in her tailored slim pantsuit for a Seattle gay club, especially on a Monday night.

"Just a few drinks, some atmosphere, maybe some people watching," she answered, friendly but not encouraging.

"I'm a person." I didn't want to throw a line, but I felt I only had a few more exchanges to move our conversation in a flirty direction. She finished her glass of brown liquor, but didn't set it down on the bar. "Anything in particular you'd like to watch me do?"

"I'm afraid you'd be watching my plane take off tomorrow morning, whatever I watched you do tonight and however much I'd most certainly enjoy the show," she declined me as chivalrously as possible, swirling the non-existent liquid in her empty glass. I'd never felt so complimented in rejection previously.

I was so flattered that I got pretty forward, "Maybe I don't care about tomorrow?"

"Don't you?" She turned from her dry glass to look at me, both immediate desire and deeper longing in her sea-grey eyes.

"If tonight is all you have to offer, I'll take tonight." I'm still not sure if gallantry or opportunism moved me, but I wanted whatever time she had to give, no matter how short.

Ivy smiled broadly, something I got a sense that she didn't do too often. "Then we should go soon, because I have to be back at the Grand Hyatt and packed in time for the 6:30 shuttle to SeaTac for my 8:45 to Hong Kong." She laid two twenties on the bar and set her empty glass on top of them.

I took a beat. That single sentence dumped too much information on me and raised a ton of questions. What job did she have that put her up in the Grand Hyatt? And sent her to Hong Kong on a Tuesday morning?

My face must have given away my curiosity, because she followed up. "I'm a SHRM-SCP/FSA for an HR consulting firm specializing in reallocation of human capital. It's dull and depressing work, but the pay is good and constant and the travel is global and constant." About half of that made sense to me. "Still and all, I was more trying communicate that the 'tonight' that I have to offer you is really more like 6 or 7 hours..."

I checked my watch. It was 10:30. That bit about the 6:30 shuttle registered through the mess of other details.

Her long lean hand slipped into mine and I led her out of the bar and down the busy street to my crummy street level apartment. (Between Pine and Pike, a few blocks east of the 5, if you're curious.)

I'd been hoping to meet someone, so I'd cleaned up my place extra neat and tidy and it was definitely presentable. But I pondered whether her outfit cost more than my rent and if she'd feel safe in the much much more sketchy locale than the Grand Hyatt.

"I know it's not-" I started to apologize. She released my hand, traced her fingertips up and down the back of my close shaved neck so that I trembled, and kissed me sweetly on the lips.

"You don't have to explain your real estate choices to me. You don't have to understand my line of work. You don't even have to have a bed. Any reasonably private space and I'm in." Her hand stopped moving on my neck, but she kept walking me forward. "I'll fuck you right there on the carpet, if you like."

"I have a bed," I answered peevishly. I couldn't deny liking her touch though. And if she insisted on sex on my living room floor, that wouldn't be a dealbreaker.

"Good. I do hate rug burns." She kissed me again and bit my lip lightly. Her tongue, lips, and teeth were wonderful. "Show me to your bed?"

I obeyed immediately, taking her hand again and bringing her through my kitchen/laundry room/dining room/living room combination and into my bedroom, which is thankfully pretty large. My queen size bed fits nicely and I have a walk-in closet.

Ivy took my shirt off over my head as I turned to face her and she pressed her lips to the newly exposed flesh she found, even as she unclasped my bra and removed the cloth barrier to her questing hands.

I attempted to return the favor, but couldn't get her suit jacket off without her assistance. She halted my pawing efforts by bending to take my left nipple in her warm mouth while she pulled off her jacket and unbuttoned and slipped her white dress shirt off herself. I managed to unclasp her bra and she shrugged out of that too.

Her breasts are a gorgeous handful, but I didn't get to know them very well in the moment. Ivy pushed me back on my waiting bed and stripped me of my sneakers, jeans, and panties. Her head dipped directly into my freshly naked womanhood.

The sight of her blew my mind, this worldly and successful woman I'd just met kneeling to eat me out - nude from the waist up - on my cheap carpet in expensive charcoal slacks and black pumps. It was a weird sight. Weird, but provocative.

The thought ran away from the forefront of my brain as her tongue slid inside me. I usually prefer more foreplay, but the breakneck pace felt right in the moment.

She backed out and pressed in repeatedly, moving her tongue with a speed and fervor that suggested her taste for pussy had been denied for too long and her hunger drove her.

Not that I objected. Ivy mayn't have "eaten out" for some time, but she knew what she was about and the line between sex and foreplay became unimportant to the point of invisibility as she tonguefucked my willing snatch and her hands stroked every square inch of skin they could reach.

Her tongue traveled north through my bush to lick the smooth skin she found. Meanwhile, a finger nudged the entrance to my channel, only a single knuckle within me. Her intent eyes peered up at me in silent question.

I nodded, definitively positively.

Two fingers slowly pushed into my body. Her other hand massaged the back of my thigh. Her tongue traveled south again, dancing among my folds.

Her two fingers pumped faster.

My hands dug into my sheets and I groaned out my support for her efforts. Doubting my own luck, I avoided any actual speech that might conceivably spook the beautiful blonde steadily sailing me over the horizon.

That horizon neared quickly. My back arched steeply. My toes curled and uncurled. My eyes rolled back and a rogue wave capsized me, dragging me down into inescapable and inexpressible pleasure in the wake of my release.

I passed out like a sexual neophyte, laying helpless as a turtle on my back. Ivy kicked off her pumps and climbed onto the bed with me, caressing my face and arm and kissing my chest and shoulders.

Finally getting my breath back, I addressed the highest priority in my mind, "We need to get your pants off."

Through my sporadically opening eyes, I saw her dazzling smile. "Can you even lift your head?" she asked doubtfully.

"That," I took a breath and wetted my lips, "is wholly immaterial."

Her fingernails grazed my scalp as she stroked my hair. "Okay. If I finish undressing, can I hold you for a while?"

"Yes!" I breathed emphatically, loving her fingers in my short black hair.

Her smooth bare long legs soon rested against mine, partially because she kept her word and removed her slacks and, presumably, a pair of underwear. Partially because she rolled me bodily onto my side and spooned in behind me. Her arm wrapped around my abs. Her fingertips idly traced over my hip.

"What's your name?" she asked. The way she held me and breathed me in, the way she spoke softly to me, I wondered if she didn't miss intimacy as much as she missed sex in her lonely life.

"Phượng. My parents emigrated from Vietnam," I explained reflexively, a lifelong habit.

They'd actually immigrated to Canada. I'd attended San Diego Culinary Institute (SDCI) in my late teens and stayed on in the U.S. by myself. But that was a longer conversation that we'd have on another of her visits.

"Phượng," she luxuriated in the pronunciation of my name, "I'm Ivy."

"Well, Ivy," I started feeling more gutsy, "You have exceptional oral skills."

"You got me hungry, Phượng," I could hear the smile in her voice, "What are all these?" She kissed one of my many tattoos, the word "Archimagira" under a skull with a santoku knife and a ceramic hone as crossbones.

"No one takes a chef seriously unless she has a few tattoos and scars. At best, the assumption would be that I can't do more than prepare the five frenchies."

"Five frenchies?"

"French mother sauces."

"Ah."

"What ink do you have? A calculator on your bicep?"

"I have no tattoos."

"Lemme just confirm that for myself," I playfully suggested and sluggishly rolled to face her. My energy level had revived somewhat, but not enough to make good on the proposal.

"Uh huh. Big talk from a woman who took the better part of a minute to turn over."

"I was savoring the feeling of my body rubbing against yours," I sweet-talked her as I met her heated gaze.

"Charmer." Her sea-grey eyes closed as she kissed me.

Her sure tongue - still tasting of me - confidently greeted mine and slipped easily into my eager mouth. Her uncallused hand stroked my lower back elicitingly. Her lips were surprisingly agile, pressing firmly into mine.

Unusually passive in my lassitude, I Iet her be the aggressor, blissfully receiving the affection and sensuousness she bestowed.

After basking in her ardor for a while, my own passion rose and my energy finally met the level of my interest. I bit her bottom lip and she grinned.

"Feeling it again, huh?" she broke off the makeout session to giggle.

"Yes," I flashed a rakish grin too, "Now on to your ink inspection, Miss Ivy."

I started just under her chin and showered devotion all over her body. Licking my rapid tongue over her ribs. Popping a peach pedicured big toe in my mouth and sucking. Kissing the tender inside of her forearm. Running my tongue the length of her slender neck.

Ivy simply accepted my attentions, moaning and mewling as physically inclined by my actions and quietly murmuring her general approval.

I nuzzled into her pretty blonde hair. Her shampoo smelled of fresh eucalyptus. I whispered near the ear I'd nibbled earlier, "I'd like to go down on you?"

"Please?" she entreated. "I'm so wet."

As opposed to her subitaneous lovemaking, I took a leisurely approach. My tongue left trails of saliva over her lower abdomen, hips, mound, and thighs. Hands palmed her cheeks. Sharp teeth nipped silky pale skin.

My hot lips found their way to her hot lips. I nibbled and tugged her labia, licking inside and out of her open and plumped petals and producing pressure with a small fraction of my bite force.

My shoulders pushed her shins back so that her heels damned near pressed against her ass. She still managed to wiggle and rock, her lust moving her. I played my sprightly tongue along her seeping slit. She broke her resolve when I penetrated her as my nose brushed her clit.

"Please, Phượng?" she outright begged, "Please stop teasing?"

I like receiving oral, but I love giving much more. Second only to the culinary arts are the cunnilingus arts, and I am a consummate cunnilinguist.

But she begged so sweetly that I stopped my dawdling and hurried myself to her pleasure.

Her taste - silken ambrosia - coated my tongue. I slid my - as previously mentioned - wetted tongue into the source of her wetness, deep. Once, twice, thrice.

Ivy keened, libidinous and distressed at once.

I licked higher, abandoning her dribbling channel for her vellicating clitoris. Around and around in circles, fishtailing, flicking, tapping. I even varied my breathing pattern to push and pull air over the thousands of densely concentrated nerve endings. Clits are so fun to play with.

"Phượng! Phượng?!" She needed me to stop playing.

I grew serious and lashed the twitching little bundle mercilessly. She squealed, she screeched, and she screamed as she came thunderously.

With no hesitation, I went back to lapping up all the new dew I found from her toned inner thighs to all the way up inside her. My hands laid idly on her flat stomach.

I let her unbend her knees though and her whole rangy body collapsed, as though she hadn't gotten relief like that for her pent up desire for a good while.

Ivy moved a little to put her still trembling hand on mine. The gesture was so sweet and so human that it drew my bright brown eyes up to her lovely face with its fine features. Her lidded eyes called to me beseeching, her velvet lips parted soundlessly, and her smooth skin glistened exquisitely.

With great reluctance, I gave into sentiment and quit her tasty pussy to be with her more comfortingly. I crawled up that hot body and laid atop her gingerly. Dotingly, I snuggled in under her diamond jawline. My hands slid between her shoulder blades and my soft sheets.

Ivy inhaled deeply and sighed happily. Utilizing a reserve strength of will, she managed to raise both her arms simultaneously and flop them onto my naked back.

Eventually, one of those arms raised again and she began gently stroking my smooth hair. "Hey."

"Hey," I answered.

"Thank you," she said graciously.

Normally I'd fire off a snarky retort to a silly comment like that, but she spoke with such sincerity. "You're welcome."

She murmured something into my black hair. Her free hand fondled my ass. I hugged her more tightly and we both laid peacefully in my warmed bed.

"May I please have your number?" she asked into the crown of my head, breaking the silence, "I'd like to text you when I come back to town."

"You have a girl in every port, huh?" I challenged as I cocked my head up to see her sylphlike face, "Am I joining your many fans?"

"No," Ivy answered softly with color rising to her cheeks, "I haven't been with anyone for quite some time."

"How soon can you be back in Seattle?" Her forlornness endeared me and I rubbed my face into her warm chest, feeling a bit of regret for forcing her embarrassing admission.

"In about six weeks," she consulted her phone, "I'll be here for four days, but the last two are on a weekend and I'll just be waiting for my next flight. Do you work for a family restaurant?"

"No. My mom runs a nail salon and my dad runs a laundry mat, so the only option for me to strike out on own was food service," I shot back sarcastically.

"Oh, oh, no," she abjured cutely, "I only meant that you might be able to get those two days off if you worked for a family restaurant where the management cared about your happiness. I'd like to spend as much time as I have to spend with you."

"I get Sundays off already," I smiled. "It's not technically a family restaurant, but my head chef and I are close. I'll ask about the Saturday."

"Your restaurant is closed on Sundays?" Her long lean fingers trailed through my soft black hair.

"No. The chef/owner comes in with her own team on Sundays," I waved off the subject, but thoroughly enjoyed the petting, "It's a whole thing."

"I don't have to leave for about 40 minutes. Why don't you tell me about it while I give you a massage?"

"Deal." You thought I'd turn down an unreciprocated massage out of principle? She's the chivalrous one, not me. "But, first..." I took her phone and punched in my number, with my first name "Phượng" and the last name "HotSeattleChef" into her address book. Then I snapped a picture of the two of us - shoulders up - for the contact photo.

She kissed me impetuously, stood, and nudged me to roll onto my stomach. Strong hands rubbed my neck, my shoulders, the backs of my arms, hands, feet, ankles, calves, and thighs, and my back, lower back, and ass.

Her powerful hands actually relieved a surprising amount of strain from my kitchen-tensed muscles, as much as I would expect from a real massage therapist. A few stray kisses landed on my hot skin, but the massage stayed wholly professional otherwise. She even managed the personal restraint to ignore my blatantly spread legs.

Ivy certainly noticed the nonverbal request my opened legs represented though and whispered, "My Uber is on the way and I want neither to get you off that fast nor to leave you hanging. If you'll flip over though, I think I have time to work your quads and adductors."