Encore

Yes, yes, Drew, amen!

He raised his lips from me a fraction of an inch. “Mmm, spicy,” he murmured, and he opened his mouth over me again. His tongue slid over my clit. His two invading fingers pressed upward. He hummed under his breath, into my skin; I felt the vibrations. He moved his head, and we were kissing each other now. I felt the delicious suspenseful tautening of an orgasm approaching. I wanted it…but not yet…oh but I wanted it…only not yet...

“Oh, yeah, Drew…” My heartbeats crowded together in my chest. “Oh yeah…oh…keep on doing…” The movement of his tongue narrowed and I thrust up against it. Everything in the world narrowed down to his tongue right in the center of my clit and his fingers stirring inside me that seemed to say come here come here, and I did. A long shudder of sensation rolled from my clit and from inside me, rippling up through my belly. I arched back into the pillows on which I lay. My sight dimmed. “Oh, God Drew! Oh, yeah, that’s—oh, that’s—oh, that’s it—oh, God! Right—oh, God, right—there! Ahhhh!”

In a little while the drum roll of my heart slowed. I looked down at him. His mouth was glazed with my juices. He slid his fingers out of me and sucked the excess wetness from them. I curled around so that I could kiss him. I tasted and smelled myself, strong and musky, on his lips and the end of his nose.

“Primo, honey!” I saw that he had been involuntarily pressing his erect cock against the bedspread. I was ready to feel that lovely thing inside me but to my surprise, after giving me a quick deep kiss, he scrambled off the bed and went to the dresser where we’d put the champagne. I enjoyed looking at the flex of his back muscles as he twisted the wire basket from off the cork and pulled the cork out of the bottle. It came out with a pop. He broke the plastic glasses out of their pack and filled two.

I had noted, on first seeing him, that he did not have a perfect profile. But that was just his face; as he half turned toward me, with his cock jutting away from his body at a fine fierce angle, I decided that there was not a thing wrong with his profile, after all.

“If there is any fairer sight than a good-looking naked man opening up a bottle of champagne,” I said, “I don’t know what it is.” He crossed the room wearing his smile, and handed me one of the glasses. The champagne tasted wonderful—cold and only a little sweet, and wet; just what the doctor ordered. Coming always made me thirsty. I wiggled out of my nightshirt. It was hot and sticky now that I’d broken out into a sweat; the chilly air in the overcooled room felt good for a change. I had just started to feel a little chilly again, when Drew, having tossed down a quick glass of champagne for himself, lay on top of me, all muscular and warm-skinned, nibbling at me with champagne kisses. I took his face between my hands and kissed him back. I wanted to run my hands through his hair but there wasn’t enough of it to rumple satisfactorily. He didn’t have that problem with mine.

“When did you go auburn?” he asked me.

“Last month.”

“Looks good,” he said, “Even if it doesn’t match—“ He had sat up between my legs, and he playfully twirled my lone tuft of pussy hair. He pulled my legs up onto his shoulders. “Spread ‘em, Esmé,” he said. “I can’t wait any more to fuck you!”

“You didn’t have to wait in the—Oh!” The streak of pure pleasure that had shot up inside me when he slammed it into me had taken my words and my breath away. “Liked that, did you?” I nodded. He changed his angle a little and laid into me again.

“Ah…!”

“Yeah, I think you do. Want me to do it again?”

“Yes…Unh!”

He crouched over me and stroked me with his smooth, hard piston. Everything receded from us, leaving just the movement of his body, the dreamy, Zen-like concentration that his face soon acquired, the sounds of our breathing, and the way his cock felt when he moved it inside me. He kept changing his angle every few strokes and I kept following it trying to get it back. I was caught up in an increasingly unbearable sensation of suspense; of heat, impending explosion. “Fuck the finesse,” I growled at him, “and give it to me straight!”

“You want it?”

“Yes!”

“Like this?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Like this?”

“God, yes!”

“Do it…!” he said urgently. “Play yourself and show me what gets you off!” I brought my hand down to my pussy and strummed my clit, and then I felt myself going over the edge; I was coming and there was no stopping me. I was once again ravaged by that double sensation of coming from the outside and the inside.

“Yeah, like that!” I said. “Fuck me and don’t quit! Fuck it good and hard!”

He looked down at the joining of our bodies, the action of my hand. “That’s it—I’m gonna—oh, fuck this is it—“ He surged forward, caught inexorably as I was. He was slamming it into my quivering opening, pounding me into the bed. His cry of release mingled with mine. We collapsed in a warm, sweaty heap.

A few minutes later, he slipped out of me and lay beside me, looking down at me with his head propped on his hand. He smoothed back a lock of hair that had stuck to my cheek. I smiled at him drowsily and reached up to press a fingertip lightly into the tiny dimple in his chin. He caught my finger and pressed it to his lips.

“Want some more champagne?” he said. “Sure.”

He sat up and poured some more into my glass and handed it to me; I sat up and took it from him. He leaned up against the headboard, looking thoughtful. I expected him to turn on the television. I never saw a guy, particularly a young one, who was able to last very long without the TV being on, unless he was doing something else, and we were done with that for the time being. He did not, though; he was looking at me.

“You look like you’ve got something on your mind,” I said.

“I was thinking,” Drew said, “that I’m never going to forget you.”

Well, that was it: what someone says when they intend never to see you again. It was what my heart had said when we’d parted in New Orleans. And now the end for us lay in sight; something definite. Now that it had happened, I was relieved.

“So…you’re into something serious, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“Honey. You said you’d wanted to talk to me. I figured there was something you wanted to talk to me about.” Also, I had felt the imprint of someone else’s rhythm, someone else’s sexual style, on him, as palpably as if I’d tasted her on his dick... “It’s all right. This has been the nicest bit of lagniappe I’ve had in I don’t know when. Are you all right? You’re not in trouble are you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked down at his hands for a moment. Then he said, “Sid told me Mama was rude to you yesterday. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s not hers, really.”

I looked at him, bemused. “Well…?”

“She didn’t mind that much that we hooked up. I mean, things like that happen. But after that…what she blames you for, I guess, is that ever since then I’ve found it hard to get interested in girls my own age.”

And I still didn’t know what that was, beyond that he had, presumably, been able to purchase that bottle of Cook’s legally. I was going to get all the way through whatever this was, without ever knowing.

“I don’t know what it is,” he continued. “After I met you, it was hard to focus on them. They seemed so much alike. It was like coming up to a school of fish and not knowing which one to spear.” Oho, I thought; where’d he pick that up? Opportunities for spear-fishing seemed limited in Koenigsburg. “Older women…even where they’re alike, they’re different.”

“Have there been many of them?”
“I don’t know what you mean by many,” he said. “There’ve been some. Mostly…younger than you; uh, not that you’re—“

“It’s Ok,” I said.

“The ones around your age don’t usually—it doesn’t occur to them. The younger ones, like in their thirties and forties…do you know there’s a name for women that like to fuck younger men? Cougars! Can you believe it?”

I laughed. “You must have been reading on-line ‘zines,” I said. “You shouldn’t. They’re a very corrupting influence.”

He looked sideways at me. “Was I that to you—prey?”

“No, sweetie,” I said softly. “You weren’t. Truth is, the um, gap—was as new to me as it was to you.” He was of a type that had drawn my eyes ever since the Johnson administration, but damn if I was going to tell him that. “I just liked very much what I saw, and I got lucky that night.”

“I guess we both got lucky,” he said. “You know what it is I like about ‘mature’ women?”

“No, what?”

He turned toward me and placed his hand on my stomach, a thing that never failed to make me feel self-conscious no matter who did it, and pressed a finger into my skin with each succeeding point he made. Press. “I like it when a woman makes no bones about telling you up front what she wants.” Press. “I like a woman who can talk about something besides clothes and school…” Press. “I like a woman who isn’t all bones but who likes to stay in shape and take care of herself, where she’s all kind of soft and springy at once, and I can just whale into her and have a real good time while I’m doing it…” Press. “I like never having to say ‘did you get off,’ ‘cause I know…”

“Drew,” I said gently, “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘and they are so grateful,’ I’m going to kick your sweet, darling, tight little ass all the way down to Harris County.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Present company excluded,” he deadpanned.

We laughed for nearly five minutes, curled together and rolling about like a pair of puppies.

“So what are you doing up here? And what was up with the gig you were in this evening?”

We drank some more champagne and he started to tell me about Franny Martin—Chessie, he called her, his name for her, which was short for ‘Cesca, which was short for Francesca—“She’s got that part-Italian thing going, like me,” he said. She sang, although she had not been present when I met Drew in New Orleans, but she was also sort of a de facto business manager for their band, handling the money, arranging for places to stay.

“She saw the way I was carrying on and one night she told me I was silly to go out chasing after it and possibly catch something when she had what I liked right there, why didn’t I stick around and check it out, and…we’ve been together ever since.” He was sitting upright now, beside me. He sniffed at his hand, at the fingers he had been using on me earlier. “She tastes kind of like you,” he added.

At first I thought, well, duh! Doesn’t all pussy basically taste alike? Then I thought, why should it? And Drew was in a better position to know than I was.

“Thank you, I think. But you haven’t answered my question.”

Drew looked solemn and troubled. “The gig? You know how it is when you come back home. Favors were called in. This outfit needed a bass player all of a sudden; their guy had to have his appendix taken out…I had the job as soon as Mama knew I was coming home; as soon as I got there she told me. Chessie? There’s something on her mind, I think. She…told us she needed to take a break; she said she needed some time to herself…yeah, even from me. Especially me. She…she told me that while we were away from each other I should consider myself a free man and there’d be no questions asked…”

Thank you, I think.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“In her middle thirties.”

“Y’all didn’t fight about anything before this happened?”

“No! We were getting along fine.”

“This might not mean anything, and I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but did you give any thought…I mean, were you aware of what she was using for birth control?”

“Of course” He drew back, looking down his long nose at me in an affronted way. “Damn! You think I wasn’t raised right? She’s on the Pill. I saw them.”

“Ok, Ok.” I raised my hand in a pax sign. “It’s just…sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes an illness or the medicine you’re taking will get in the way, make ‘em lose their oomph. Was she on any kind of medication, do you know?”

He sat slumped over with his chin on his hand like Rodin’s Thinker, and he thought. “Earlier…sometime last month or so…we were all sick as dogs…we didn’t know if it was bad food, or some kind of bacterial infection, but we were all on antibiotics….oh, shit!” He pulled his knees up and rested his head on them, rolling it from side to side. When he looked up, he suddenly looked five years older than he had a few minutes before. “What do I do?”

“First, you find out what’s really going down,” I said.

“My family…” My family’s gonna have a cow. Over the years, I’d heard enough from Sidonie about her people to know that some of them, especially the old guard who kept the kids in line with admonitory e-mails and judiciously written checks, had some very old-fashioned ideas; to them, if you weren’t married and turned up pregnant you went to the church or the judge’s office and you set things right.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to do whatever’s right…but I want things to be like they were. Guess I can’t have both.” He sat up straight. “I’m going to go down there and talk to her. If that’s what the deal is, I’ll make sure she talks to me—she can’t not talk to me. But…what if she was and…she already…”

“Then,” I said, “she shouldn’t be alone afterwards, even if she thinks she wants to be.”

“You’re right,” he said. “She’s got a place in Galveston…that’s probably where she’s at; I can be down there by tomorrow afternoon. Unless she’s already done it…well, if she hasn’t yet, she can’t do anything before Monday. I’ll make her talk to me somehow.” Now that he had it clear in his mind what he was going to do, he looked as if he felt much better.

Presently we both had to go to the bathroom. While he was taking his turn I turned the laptop off properly, which he hadn’t done, and put it away, and turned down the bed, which neither of us had done. We’d messed up the bedspread. I recalled having read somewhere that when they did the rooms in a hotel, while they changed out and washed the sheets, they seldom did the bedspreads. Oh, well…

He came back to bed and lay down next to me, pushing down the covers I had just pulled up over myself. He leaned over me and his mouth covered mine. I could taste myself along with the wine. He pressed close to me and pointed my nipples up with his fingers. I felt his cock, hard again, poking me in the thigh. I’d wanted to give him a hard, questioning look, but it was hard with his tongue chasing mine around in my mouth and my pussy starting to heat up again.

He must have caught some of the look I tried to give him; he released my mouth and his dark brows twitched upwards. “Hmm?”

“You want to keep on doing this? I mean, things seem different now…”

“Esmé,” he said, trailing his fingers down to my mound and twirling the tuft of hair at the top of my slit, “We’ve been doing it, haven’t we? I’m no player. I said I was going in the morning and I am. But until I leave this room, I’m a free man. C’mon, Es. Let’s take it as far as we can. We’ve got until we get tired. I’m up for it if you are.”

A few minutes later I lay flat on top of him, firmly impaled on his hard cock, its broad back and helmet ridge glancing off my sweet spot almost but not quite enough, but I could bring the tip of my clit down to rub against the base, and this was what I was doing; I could feel my flesh swelling pneumatically around his while the charge of pleasure built up inside me, fed by the act of thrusting and increasing with every stroke. His string-calloused fingers stroked my back lightly, near the spine, inching their way downward little by little. He stretched downward and slid along my slippery labia, wetting his fingers, which he started sliding up and down my crack, grazing my anus. He paused in the middle of one pass, his finger staying on my pucker.

“You still got medical issues, babe?” His finger settled on it, rubbing in a circle, a little more firmly with each circuit.

“Yes.” I tried to rise up off him. He cinched a strong arm across my back and clamped me down.

“Hey, Esmé, relax, I’m not gonna hurt you…you know, there’s operations you can have.” He continued to rub. I didn’t want to admit it, but it didn’t feel bad and I was still excited.

Still, I said, “Yeah, right.” Uh-huh. I was going to take off time from work and come up with whatever my surgical co-pay was going to be, so I could have butt sex in comfort. Now there was a lead-in. I could see the quarter-page ad in the Free Press, opposite the ads for labial sculpting and tummy tucks.

“Keep on moving on me, honey…mm, you feel good…now, is that so bad? Relax, I’m only gonna go in a little way, I swear.” He went in maybe an inch, slipping it in, pulling it out, rubbing in a circle and going back in again. He smiled at me, let go my waist and pressed the back of my head down so I could kiss him. I closed my eyes and continued to move up and down on him, a hot, tight, column of ecstatic pressure building up inside me. Stroke. Stroke. Up and down, an elliptical movement. An elliptical movement of his finger in my ass as well. Stroke. The column was golden fire; it was only as wide and as long as the cock inside me, but it filled me. Stroke. “C’mon, scratch that itch, work that hot pussy on me, fuck me good, honey…”

I dug my knees into the mattress, thrusting as if it were I who penetrated him. An orgasm approached, as unstoppable as a train. “Uhhhaahhhhhhhhhh!” I wailed when it hit me, and hunched on him, burying my face in the pillow and into his neck, clenching, imploding around his cock and his finger as well.

A few minutes later he bucked lightly beneath my weight, and patted my shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep on me, Esmé, I’m not done.” I lifted my head and looked down at him. I couldn’t believe I’d gone unconscious like that, even for a few seconds. Well, it had been a long day. “I did say that I liked never having to ask…”

I sat up. “Wooh. Well, I sure did. Man, that felt good.” I gave him a good squeeze with my interior muscles. “Well, darlin’? What now? You want to keep on with this or do something else?”

“You remember that dirty trick you pulled on me in New Orleans?”

A frisson went through me. “Yes.” I squeezed him again.

“Well…since then, believe it or not, I haven’t minded taking it up the ass occasionally. Chessie sure doesn’t mind giving it to me; she does like her toys…”

“A woman after my own heart,” I said with a chuckle.

“I guess I was lucky you didn’t bring yours out then.”

“Didn’t have any with me; I never did like to take toys on an airplane, and since 9/11, forget it!”

“You bring any with you this time?”

“Not for you.”

Drew laughed. “What, I get the Fist of Fury again? Be gentle with me this time…”

It turned out I had packed just one toy, but it was for me: a butterfly I’d thrown in at the last minute. I sat between his spread legs, which were bent and wrapped firmly around me. I had my hands well lubed up; I gripped his steely cock in one; two fingers of the other I was inching into the tight-ringed aperture of his butt. The butterfly was strapped onto my pussy, snugged onto my clit. And I’d given him the control to hold…

Inside, he was hot, smooth, and very strong, offering an instinctive resistance to my invading fingers, even though he quivered with pleasure at my touches. Very soon I had him jammed up against the headboard to where he couldn’t go any further. I had found his sweet spot, the place where I could bring him off screaming if I touched it the right way. But I wasn’t going to do it right then. I slipped another finger in, curved them upward. He went further up the headboard, with a hissed inhalation. I moved in on him, not neglecting his cock, pulling on it with a firm hand. It was so incredibly hard. Every muscle of his body was stark and defined with tension. He flicked the switch on the control, and the butterfly came on. I had it on low. He looked down at the sight of the head of his cock, flying in and out of my tight-gripping fist as I jacked him hard, the way I knew he liked it.