"It's... um...." Maddy probed the little disc with her tongue, flipping it over in her mouth and feeling another burst of the strange, funky flavor hit her tastebuds. "It's kind of strong," she finished weakly, trying to find a way to describe the confection that wouldn't hurt Peter's feelings. "Kind of a strong, um, salty taste. It, uh, it could maybe be sweeter?" Maddy knew she was making the understatement of a lifetime there, but she didn't want to trash Peter's very first effort at making homemade candy. Not when she knew how hard he'd been working at it the last few weeks.
He didn't seem upset, thankfully. A little too intent, perhaps--he kept staring at her with those bright blue eyes of his, his piercing gaze only slightly softened by the tiny smile that quirked at the corners of his thin, sensuous lips. "I didn't want it to be too sweet," he replied, the condescension in his voice just below the threshold of what Maddy felt she could actually call him on. Not for the first time, she wondered if she'd even be friends with Peter if not for the geographical happenstance that left them growing up next door to one another in a neighborhood full of mostly childless couples; the blond-haired young man with the chiseled alabaster jaw had a bad habit of pretending his defensiveness was a purely rational stance, while any criticism Maddy had of his behavior was a foolish emotional response.
Sure enough, he kept going, hammering at her opinion just that little bit more than strictly necessary. "Sweet and salty is all the rage these days," he continued, lecturing her as though they weren't both going to the same culinary school and taking many of the same classes. "It's one of those flavor combinations that naturally balances each other and gives you a little contrast to prevent your tongue from getting too used to the taste. It's a candy for sophisticated adults, not kids who just want to fill their mouths with sugar, you know?"
Maddy smiled, trying hard not to make it seem forced or strained. She knew Peter wouldn't get angry with her if she pushed her arguments too far, at least not deliberately. But he was one of those men who'd never really learned how to understand his own emotions, let alone manage them, and if she hurt his feelings she'd probably be in for days of passive-aggressive sulking that would get on her nerves and make the daily experience of interacting with her roommate strained and frustrating. She'd much rather find ways of expressing her criticism constructively.
"I understand what you're saying," she began, tentatively feeling her way into the topic by finding ways to tuck the negative parts of her opinion between two positives. "And it's certainly got a, a tang to it. Kind of like saltwater taffy. But there's a lot of salty notes that are throwing off the balance, and some... some kind of funky undertastes? It's not to say I don't like it," she continued hurriedly, wanting to make sure she got to the back half of the praise sandwich she was constructing. "It's definitely a sophisticated kind of dessert. It just might wind up being an acquired taste."
The reaction was anything but what she expected. "Oh, you noticed the undertastes?" he said, his smile widening as he looked at her as if trying to peer into her brain and see the flavors she was experiencing. "I thought it might be a while before those came out. Kind of a floral note, right? With a little bit of musk to it? Almost with some of that chlorophyll tang. I had a feeling you might like that part best." Maddy tried not to wince; if anything, that weird, funky residue on her tongue was exactly what she liked the least about Peter's candy, but he was so obviously proud of it. A part of her wanted to just give him some bland, non-committal praise and go to the bathroom so she could spit it out into the sink.
But Peter had told her this was for a class project, and that meant he needed honest feedback before he fed this to an instructor who had absolutely no motive or interest in sparing his feelings. Underneath his slightly prickly exterior, Maddy knew he was really incredibly sensitive--if someone really took a Gordon Ramsey attitude to him, he'd be miserable for weeks. And even though school and its attendant competition had strained their friendship a little these last few years, she didn't want that for him. She had to press on, even if it meant denting his pride just a little.
"I... I mean, they're interesting," she mumbled, giving the candy an experimental suck to really saturate her mouth with the flavors she was trying to describe. "It's just, I think, without the sweetness to really balance it out, it tastes... um, I...." Maddy blushed beet red, suddenly recognizing the exact taste on her tongue and really, really wishing she hadn't. "Um." She gulped, very nearly swallowing the candy in her struggle to avoid letting her obvious embarrassment show any more than it already had. The conversation, awkward enough as it was, would get ten times worse if she was forced to explain to Peter that he'd accidentally made a blowjob bon-bon.
Not that Maddy had given that many blowjobs in her life. She and Peter had never been... that way together, not after growing up as friends for so many years and then jumping immediately into an intensely competitive school environment the moment they got into the adult world. And having a very protective male friend who was also her roommate tended to make it difficult to develop the kinds of relationships that involved putting a guy's dick in your mouth.
But life found a way, and a couple years back when she was a first-year student Maddy found a way to sneak off with Billy Jameson in between classes to the stairwell in the northwest corner of the building for some heavy petting. And on a few of those occasions, before she caught him heading to the southwest stairwell with Betty Loomis and dumped him on the spot, she wound up down on her knees performing a very different kind of suck than the one she was giving Peter's candy. But as different as the techniques were, the flavor was absolutely identical.
Maddy carefully maneuvered the slimmed-down disc in between her cheek and gum, taking the momentary pause to try to put together a phrasing that would allow her to very delicately bring up the question of exactly what was in her mouth without mentioning Billy or his hair-trigger ejaculation reflex. "Um... that, uh, musky taste," she murmured, knowing her face had to be redder than her hair right now. "Is that, uh, is that a hibiscus essence? M-maybe some papaya? Like I said, I think it could stand to be, to be s-sweeter, but if it's papaya, then you could--"
"It's semen," he said, dropping the sentence into the conversation like it was a cinder block in the path of a long-distance runner. "Distilled down through evaporation, of course, to get the strongest dose of its essential ingredients, and then mixed with the sugar syrup late in the candy-making process to avoid breaking down too many of its volatile components. It was remarkably tricky to do, especially since I couldn't use anyone else's semen in the recipe. Mixing my bodily fluids with someone else's would risk contaminating the vital pheromones I was trying to introduce into your system with another man's essence, and that wouldn't do at all. The whole point was to get you introduced to my taste, specifically, not just any guy's." Maddy's emerald green eyes widened more and more as he went on, but he seemed completely oblivious to her shock and dismay. Finally she couldn't take any more.
"The--the point?" she blurted out, almost sending the candy flying clear across the room with her outburst. "You, you told me this was for a class project! Oh my god, I've been sucking on your goddamn cum this whole time? Jesus, Peter, what the fuck were you even thinking?" Her hands balled into white-knuckle fists, the intensity of her outrage almost astonishing her. She and Peter hadn't gotten into a physical fight since he gave her Hannah Montana doll a haircut back when they were seven, but she was fully prepared to change that if he didn't give her a damn good explanation of his behavior.
