Two months after meeting Nicole, she texted Peter a picture of three pairs of her panties neatly laid out on her bedspread and asked, "Which ones should I wear tonight?"
She was going out on a date with Julian who she'd met online. After meeting Peter, she'd left her ad up and continued responding to men.
The image of her panties and the text felt like an arrow that nicked Peter's heart. He was falling in love with Nicole. He knew she was in touch with other men. He didn't know that being "in touch," included a kind of sexual anticipation.
"But why wouldn't it?" he thought, uneasily. Peter and Nicole had, after meeting for the first time at a small coffee shop, ended up kissing and caressing in her car then going back to her place and spending the night in her big queen sized bed.
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The night before she'd texted him the panty picture, just after Peter had arrived at her place, Julian called to confirm their date. Peter heard them exchange a few words before Nicole, with an intent look on her face, one that left Peter feeling excluded, left the room to finish the call.
When she returned she didn't acknowledge the call. Instead she asked how Peter's day had gone. Peter shook his head and winced. He was overcome, hurt, and jealous.
In the few months they'd been together, he and Nicole had already spent many nights in each other's arms. They were lovers. They'd dined together, talked endlessly and he'd even met her father for a long wine filled dinner. When they were apart he was full of the kind of anxious dreamy wistfulness lovers share. Peter was smitten with Nicole. She had an easy bright smile that caused her eyes to sparkle and drew him to her. She was tall and slender, lithe, like a Paris model, with womanly hips and full breasts with small nipples that were almost always hard. She loved to write and talk about anything, though not always. At times, she was quiet and reserved and Peter felt a need to try to draw her out.
He expected a brief description of the phone call. Her question seemed a diversion, a message that she wasn't interested in his feelings. But his jealousy felt wrong, a feeling that might turn her away from him and cause him to lose her. He rationalized that this was temporary. It would end. There was something else about his jealousy, aside from the wound, something, that, were he more conscientious he would have realized.
It stirred him sexually.
That night, in her bed, he pulled her panties off and found she'd been waxed earlier in the day. This was the first time he'd seen her vagina cleared of pubic hair. He leaned back sitting on his knees to observe. Her skin there, her outer lips, looked as soft as a ripe peach. They laid flat, smoothly rounded, slightly incurving, coming together, leaving a thin slit that concealed her opening and appeared to close her up as if she were a young virgin. There was no hint of the flowering-like invitation to enter. He had not noticed this about her sex. Now this sealing up mesmerized and tugged at Peter as if her closed petals inspired a need to dispel the mysteriousness that swirled about his mind by plunging in.
With his thumb he stroked the top of her lips over her barely concealed her clit. Inside she was wet, he knew. Whenever he entered her he always came out glistening. She parted her long legs which caused her lips to part slightly. He stared at her sex, grunted with a gratitude, a sense of good fortune. Nicole must have felt this, for she rose and exhibited herself, undulating by grinding her hips in a slow nearly imperceptible circle. He rolled her thighs apart with his hands, gripping them firmly, parting her lips even more.
She arched her hips, clearly yearning for entry. Peter dipped the tip of his thumb in her and she let out a gasp, closed her eyes, parted her legs. She sat up, reaching for him, desperate, and grabbed his hips and pulled him into her. She needed him now, now, now.
Only then did the crease of her sex part and the pink wetness of her opening become visible. Peter took her.
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The next morning after they'd been awake for a while Peter couldn't contain his jealousy. For him their bond had deepened in their lovemaking and the thought of her date that night stung him. Before he walked out the door, he asked what her plans were with Julian.
"We're meeting for coffee." Nicole said and paused, gazing at him as if she knew the question was the tip of a larger flame inside him. "Are you feeling jealous? I wouldn't blame you if you were. I would be."
"No, no," Peter said slowly, exhaling and looking down.
Nicole knew he wasn't telling the truth.
"I was married for 10 years," she said. "I think we have potential but it's not healthy to fling myself into a new relationship so quickly."
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That afternoon Peter got the picture of Nicole's three pairs of panties laid out on her bedspread.
He'd stared at the picture for minutes, swallowed his jealousy, and comforted himself with the thought that she was being so open. The picture also stirred him into a state of semi- erection. After a deep breath he typed out.
"I like the pink polka dots."
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That evening, after he'd known she'd left for the date, Peter's jealously hooked him. He couldn't get Nicole and Julian out of his mind.
"How could she?" went round and round and round his mind. He was injured and the balm he needed only she could apply.
Though he knew he shouldn't, he drove to her place and waited in his car on the street outside her condominium. He texted her once, trying to sound upbeat, loving, unconcerned. Everything he wasn't.
At half past eleven she tapped on his car window, surprising him. He explained that he was sorry but he was hurt, he missed her.
"I'm in love with you," he said.
"I know you are, darling. I love you too," she said, flatly.
She invited him in as if nothing was wrong. She was sympathetic and gentle, apply her words like bandages over the wound she'd created.
They got in bed together. She was tender, as if Peter were a child who'd been mistreated and was safe at home now. She caressed his cheek and gave him a peck on the lips.
"Everything is going to be okay darling." Her speech was softer than it normally was and slowed down, affirming and relaxed. She gently refused his advances. removing his hand with both of hers but snuggling in closer to him, cuddling, caressing and kissing him but avoiding his cock which was in full upright salute, hungry for her, in need of her body's reassurance. Nicole noticed his fervor and, though denying him, cherished it as sign of a desire for her he could not squelch, the kind of desire she needed from a man.
"Did you have fun? " he asked trembling, after she'd rebuffed him for the third time.
"I did" she said, her eyes twinkling with the light that shown through her bedroom window. She pulled him close and kissed him to stop him from asking more questions. "I need to sleep, Peter. I want you to hold me while I fall asleep in your arms. You're the only man whose arms I want to sleep in."
In minutes she was asleep, snoring softly like a child. Peter lay awake. They spooned. He tried to close his eyes and relax by listening for her breath but the jealous wound opened again inside him and he felt his heart begin pounding.
He got up and crept into her closet and found the pink polka dot panties in her dirty clothes. The crotch was soaked. He inhaled deeply. The scent was like the sea, as if she'd been swimming in salt water but there was a flat smell too, one he was sure was the scent of semen. He began stroking himself while he held her panties up to his nose and breathed in the scent. Eventually, on edge, he put the panties at the tip of his cock and came, then tossed the soiled underwear back in her dirty clothes hamper. He went back to bed, though he didn't fall asleep for hours.
The next morning Nicole said nothing. He made coffee and brought it to her in bed. She scrolled through Twitter and several times hoisted her phone in front of Peter's face and said, "Can you believe the lies. Look at this."
It seemed, whatever had happened the night before with Julian was no longer with her. She was free and content which contrasted terribly to the divide Peter felt. But he rolled with her positivity. They spent the afternoon at art galleries and had an early dinner at an offbeat café.
As the day passed, Peter's worries subsided, though he wondered how she could be so loving and happy with him after fucking another man last night. The rhetorical question comforted him, at least until they said good night and she told him she had work to do and wanted to spend the night and next day alone.
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At the end of the week they went out to dinner at an exclusive steak house. Sitting close in a round booth, Peter couldn't keep his hands to himself. His urge to touch Nicole was driven by a need to close a distance between them. He reached for her thigh under the table. They held hands. He drew circles in her palm and when he wasn't touching her thigh, or arm, or fingertips, or caressing her cheek his hand went to her back where he rubbed her soothingly.
Nicole relished his touch, relished the urgency he displayed. She loved Peter's sensuality, how he touched and toyed and played with her body. It affirmed and buoyed her.
But that night, in bed, despite his ever present probing hands, and the genuine joy they'd shared over a few glasses of wine, she didn't want to have sex. She didn't want Peter inside her. She only wanted to cuddle. She wanted to slow him down at the same time she wanted to feel his hardness probing for her opening. There was something She wanted that was satisfied by her denial. It was selfish, yet whole, a need she felt he must get used to.
She spoke tenderly. "Our relationship can't be just about sex darling. I'm not comfortable with that. Let's go to sleep. I'm really tired."
And again, as she'd done the last time they'd slept together, she fell asleep quickly and began softly snoring in a deep peaceful sleep.
Peter too, eventually drifted off to sleep but woke ravenous and hard an hour later, just after midnight. He rubbed his erection, stone stiff against her thigh, grasping her tightly with his arm. She awoke, startled, and tried to push him off. Peter wouldn't move. He humped her thigh..