“What I hate,” Lisa said, “is men who get a good start going down on you, but then stop way too soon.”
Her dark eyes met mine. She seemed unaware of my discomfort, giggling happily as she continued her confession in a hushed voice. “This one time, I grabbed a guy by the hair. I told him I wasn’t letting him off until he learned how to have an attention span.”
She had stretched out on my bed as we talked, her thick, curly red hair pooled between her head and the footboard, and her long, brown toes pointing and flexing over my pillow. I’d already retreated to the edge, so I cleared my throat and stood. “Do you want some water?”
“That would be nice, Ellie. Thanks.”
When I came back from the bathroom with the water, she was taking off her bra, unhooking it in back and slipping her arms out of each strap with her shirt still on. Her nipples were hard. She sat up and took the glass I gave her, the soft skin of her palm brushing against my knuckles.
Lisa had come to stay with me for a while after her most recent breakup left her apartment hunting again. The first night, she’d cried in my arms and asked if she could sleep in my bed so she wouldn’t have to be alone. As gently as I could, I told her no, and then held her as she cried some more. By now, a couple weeks in, she’d gotten over the crying but not the clinging.
“This reminds me of the sleepovers we used to have in high school,” Lisa said. “But we don’t have to worry about parents anymore.”
I didn’t want to think about the lack of supervision. I settled in beside her, my feet near her head and her head near my feet. My eyes followed the muscular curve of her calves up to her knees and stopped. I was trying not to let myself give in to my longstanding habit of undressing her with my eyes. I looked around the room instead. My newfound taste for minimalism had made me take down the riot of movie posters that had covered my walls in high school and college. There was nothing to distract me from her face. “Well, I hate to be boring, but the thing I’m thinking about now is going to sleep,” I said. “I don’t think that would bother anyone’s parents.”
Disappointment flashed through her eyes. She set the water glass down on the floor next to the bed and, in one fluid motion, flipped her body so that her face was inches from mine. Her breath smelled of my natural peppermint toothpaste. “Ellie, tell me one story first. You never talk about yourself at all.”
I let half my face relax into a smile. “One story about what? Now I’m telling you bedtime stories?”
Lisa seemed embarrassed. “No, I mean... I just told you all these things about guys and sex and stuff. You never talk to me about any of that.”
I met her eyes and held her gaze, letting just a little of the truth slip onto my face. My heart pounded at the thought of the things that I could say or do. The image of her nipples in my mouth or of my lips trailing kisses up her thighs, made the air feel thick and hard to breathe. I was tired of being afraid to say anything. “I don’t have any stories about guys,” I said finally, trying not to blink or look away.
“Come on,” Lisa laughed. “You must have done something at some point with someone.” I wanted to kiss the corners of her mouth, at the spots where her lips went from thin to full.
Letting myself lie back, I took a deep breath and resolved to finish what I’d started. “I had this lover,” I began. Lisa made an encouraging sound in her throat. “Every time I got her close to coming, she would push my head away. The muscles in her legs would tighten up, and her clit would be this little rock under my tongue, and I would know she was about to do it. I’d wrap my arms around her waist and hold on hard, thinking maybe this time I’d get in that one extra lick, and she would be screaming and pushing at the top of my head with both her hands.”
I paused, trying to gauge how Lisa was reacting. Her breathing sounded a little faster than normal. My own breathing had certainly sped up. I struggled up onto my elbow and looked down at her. For once, I let myself drink in every lovely curve. I openly admired her long neck and the jaw line that traced from a soft, round ear down to a dainty pointed chin, the red-brown lips above that, the wide nose that quivered delicately with each breath. I looked in her eyes again.
“What I wanted to do,” I said, “was tie her to the bed so she couldn’t push me away, and then see how long I could go. I wanted to lick her until the bed under us both was soaked and my tongue got cramped from exhaustion. But I never got to do that.”
I watched Lisa’s chest rapidly rising and falling. Her shirt rode up, exposing her belly button and the very beginning of the fuzz leading down between her thighs. She trembled, and her eyes followed my eyes to the top button of her jeans.
“You never told me you liked girls,” she said in a strained voice.
Another deep breath for me. It felt strange that all the lights in my room were on so late at night. It felt strange to look at her without disguising my lust. I bent over her and pressed my lips to the strip of bare skin between her jeans and her shirt. She jumped. I did it again. “It would have been awkward,” I murmured.
All the times that I had imagined this moment, I thought of wooing her with my fingers and lips. I had imagined giving her a lingering massage that let me get under her clothes, then unlocking her defenses with patient, insistent lips. Now that I was finally touching her, I couldn’t make myself slow down. I undid that button and opened her zipper with one motion, then pulled down her panties and jeans with another. The clothes got caught on her ankles, and I ripped them away and took one ankle in each hand. Lisa struggled out of her T-shirt, and the sight of her totally naked knocked the breath from me. Her entire body was the same creamy brown color as her toes. Her nipples were the same dull red as her lips. The knot of her belly button poked out from her belly. She was slender, but not too gym-sculpted. Her hips looked soft and good to grab. She met my eyes and smiled, and I spread her ankles wide, diving in between.
My head landed next to her left knee, and I kissed and nibbled my way up her thigh. Right away, she started mewing and whimpering, her hips rocking up toward the ceiling and the muscles in her ass going taut. I backed away to tease her, kissing her right knee and working my way up. I paused at the top of her thigh, close enough to smell the flowery tang of her pussy, and for my breath to stir the hairs between her legs. I scratched my fingernails hard up each thigh, grabbed her pussy with both hands and pressed the heels of my palms hard against her clit. She cried out and her legs jerked. One of her heels hit the middle of my spine. I braced myself before I could fall against her.
Switching my grip to her ass, I pulled her up to meet my mouth. Even before I could get my mouth near her, she was sighing with relief and straining to spread her legs wider. But I didn’t touch my lips to her cunt. Instead, I bit into her right thigh and sucked on it long and hard. She gasped and tried to squirm away, but I had a good hold on her. After a moment, I let her fall back onto the bed and lifted my head, touching the new hickey with the tip of my finger. The mark intoxicated me. For the first time, she was mine and I had to have more. Winding my arms around her legs, I marked her on the left thigh, too. Lisa took ragged, nervous breaths. To calm her, I petted the hair over her pussy and kissed her gently on the hipbone, then ran my tongue down the crease between her leg and her pussy, once on each side. I teased her when I switched sides, letting my lips scrape through her rust-colored bush.
I sat up. “Doing all right?”
She nodded, her eyes still wild. I gripped her with both hands at the tops of her thighs and swung my thumbs up to feel her slit. She opened under the slightest touch, her labia soaked with her juices. I pinned her open with my thumbs, wondering where I wanted to put my tongue first.
“What are you doing?” Lisa asked, shifting uneasily.
“Planning. Just relax.” I settled in and tapped her clit experimentally with my tongue, enjoying her jerk and gasp. With just the tip of my tongue, I gave her a long lick from bottom to top, over her hole and clit and up through her bush. The first thing to do was explore the territory. I kissed and licked every inch of her pussy, not even particularly trying to arouse her, just tasting and looking at her. She wasn’t used to a lover really taking time. When I hit a spot she liked, I could feel her tensing and straining, trying to keep my head there long enough to make her come. “Relax,” I said over and over into her cunt. “Relax. You’ve got plenty of time to come.”
For my second pass through, my hands crept in to join my tongue. But I still didn’t focus on getting her off. I just ran my fingers over every slippery part of her. I slid each forefinger up and down through the slick valley to either side of her hole without penetrating, running my tongue around the rim and then trailing it over her clit. I heard sucking in air through her teeth and decided I’d teased her enough for now.
I took a deep breath and shoved three fingers into her hole, sucking her clit into my mouth at the same time. Right away, her pussy spasmed around my hand. I pressed my tongue rhythmically against her clit, prolonging the orgasm. When I felt it starting to wind down, I started teasing her clit in earnest, knowing it would be painfully sensitive. I twisted my hand inside her, spreading my fingers to fill her. I wriggled them inside her, and wriggled my tongue against her clit. She came again with a series of sharp gasps, and then I had what I wanted. Lisa’s body turned to jelly on the bed. Every part of her yielded to my touch and tongue.
I pushed her legs wider apart. She was quiet now except for the occasional moan from deep in her throat. I was covered in her smell, and now I started playing out the fantasies I’d had for more than a decade. I kissed each of her toes, both knees, the mound at the top of her pussy, her belly button, each nipple, and the hollow at the base of her throat. I kissed her lips, savoring the way her mouth opened to mine, and the feeling of her tongue resting against mine. I watched her face for a moment after the kiss. Her eyes were closed, and her nostrils flared. “Thank you, Ellie,” she said in a voice slurred with pleasure.
“I’m not done yet,” I said, watching her shiver at the words. I kissed down her body again. If this had happened ten years ago, I might have stopped and held her then. I might have placed my faith in the sex that we would have tomorrow. The years had taught me better. I wound my arms around her thighs and buried my face between her legs, sighing as I tasted her and breathed her in. I pushed my tongue into her again. I had to get enough to make it last.
Originally published January 2009