How many times have I watched her come to me? How many times have I peeked at her breasts and the furry mound of her cunt as she crawls to me over the foot of the bed? How many times have I enjoyed her flickering self-conscious grin as her impudent eyes betray her and stray to my cock?

She stops by my waist, beside my hairy sprawling balls and cock, and settles herself, sitting on tiny feet, manicured hands resting lightly on the arches of thighs that nearly hide her tidy pubic hair. Her breasts are elevated slightly by the curve of her dancer's back, and move slowly as she breathes.

Her hair hugs the back of her neck and I am tempted to grasp her there, to pull her head down to my groin. But it would be offensive even to me to do that. She redefines usual cliches: style, class, poise -- yet none of these words fit her. All are beneath her.

There is so much that separates us. I smell of beer and motor oil; she smells of class and money. I am hairy and bearded; she is cultivated and clean. I am plastic; she is porcelain.

I am her cock.

She is my cunt.

It is hard to imagine sweat pooling between her breasts as I rut over her, but I have seen it. It is hard to imagine the slippery sheen on her body as I hammer into her, but I have seen it. It is hard to imagine the eager way her mouth swallows my cock, the swarming of her tongue as she humps her head over my pelvis, the delight with which she gulps my come as it flushes against the back of her throat. It is hard to imagine her fists knotted into my hair as my tongue probes and laps her cunt. It is hard to imagine the sounds of her sopping cunt receiving my plunging cock. It is hard to imagine seeing her juices mingled with mine, coating her inner thighs as she sprawls, sated, gaping and oozing, hair wild and sweat-tangled, panting, whispering, "oh fuck oh fuck..."

For a tiny interval in the history of the universe she sits quietly, poised, eyes downcast, looking at her hands. There I can see the matching rings. She has never worn them when we have been together, but this time they are there, foretelling, haunting me with an expectation of unwelcome truth.

I wait.

She lifts the hand carrying her rings and traces a fingerpath on my slowly swelling cock. Reaching the foreskin she takes a pinch of flesh and lifts, enclosing me with warm fingers. I stiffen quickly in her gentle embrace, and her nipples harden in empathy.

She turns her head to me and I see tears. "I'm letting him come back," she says.

"I saw the rings." It's all I can say.

"It's not fair to the children," she says, as if I have not spoken. Her hand begins to move on me, up and down. "We can't do this any more."

"He won't fuck you properly. He won't make you come. He won't eat your pussy."

"He thinks I'm clean and pure. He wants me to be that way."

I hear a catch in her voice but ignore it. "Make me come," I say, unable to manage my anger. "Suck me. Just make me come."

"Don't," she whispers. A tear oozes along her nose. She begins moving her hand faster. "Besides, I could ask him to -- to try harder..." she offers, hesitancy wrapping her throat.

"He wouldn't. He doesn't know how. Make me come."

"You won't fuck me?"

"No," I say, watching her breasts move.

Her hand slows, stops. "Maybe I should go," she says, her voice tiny.

My mind betrays me, flooding me with memories. "Just do it," I mutter, moving my hips, sliding my cock through her slack fist. "Make me come."

She lets go of me, hiding tears with her hands.

I am remembering. I remember her prim reserve the first time we fucked, her slut-lust after that. I remember the first time I came in her mouth, how I surprised her, how readily she was angry at me for it, and how soon she wanted to suck my cock again. I remember when she asked me to fuck her ass.

She gets off the bed and goes to stand in the doorway with her back to me, leaning against the jamb. Her shoulders move with soft sobs she tries to hide. Her perfect wealthy ass is canted, twisted in a way that would get any man's eye, the same way it got mine the first time I saw her. "Whose cock are you going to suck?" I call out. "Who will fuck you in the ass? Who will eat your pussy and fuck you so hard you scream? Who will come in your mouth? He won't. You know that."

"Stop," she says, her voice muffled by distance and tears. She turns to face me. "I have to do this."

Even her pubic hair is perfectly trimmed, a narrow stripe that can hide behind designer beachwear. "Make me come," I counter, pumping my still-rigid cock.

She returns to the bed, crawling again. Seating herself astride my thigh she takes my cock in her hand and begins, up and down. In rhythm she moves her hips, sliding her slippery pussy on my leg.

I stack my fists behind my head and watch. Her right hand works my cock this time and her left hand is behind her, hiding the rings. I twist a little and reach and get my fingers into her wetness, making her gasp. I hook a finger into her and she rocks her hips harder, jerking at my cock as she does. Tears streak her face.

I am about to come and give in, grabbing her hips and lifting, guiding her over my cock. She brings her ring hand around and parts her cunt lips and lets me inside. Slippery wet and warm, she settles on me slowly, getting that dull, eyes-half-closed look she always gets when she is full of cock, when she is being properly fucked. It's a look that makes her seem animal-mindless, a look he would never tolerate -- and the only thing I can give her.

"He doesn't want you to come," I say. "It wouldn't be ladylike."

She pulls me, rolling to her back, taking me with her, and spreads her raised knees wide so that I am buried deep inside her. "Fuck me," she says.

I push hard and she grinds herself against me, locking her legs behind me, grunting, mouth agape, eyes still lidded, muttering, "fuck me..."

"I can smell your cunt," I say. "Can you smell it? You won't smell it again. You're his princess. He won't want your cunt to make that smell. He won't fuck you. He'll stick his cock in you and he'll come and he'll call it fucking, but he won't fuck you. He won't care if you come, and he won't want to smell your pussy."

I fuck, slamming hard the way she wants me to, and I know when she is ready and pull out and straddle her, grabbing her wrist, forcing her to take my slippery cock in her hand. "Make me come!" I shout.

She opens her eyes and glares at me and starts jerking my cock. Her other hand, the one with the rings, slips under me, working in her cunt.

She throws back her head and lets go a long, breathless, shuddering moan that rises into a hoarse scream. My semen falls, thick gobs on her breasts and stomach.

And it almost works; for a few minutes I don't care. 

I turn, restless on the bed. My numbed but aching cock moves as I roll, reminding me. There is a damp place on one of the pillows and I put my cheek there, finding the aroma of her sweat. She is still in the room. Her scent always remains.

I search the bed with my hands, seeking other small spots of wetness, other evidence of passion, other things to remember. I try to will time to stop, to freeze these additional moments with her.

Spring sunlight keeps barging in as trees shift shadows on drawn curtains. It is unwanted. Sunlight is a happy signal. It belongs in a happy place. Spring is a beginning, not an end.

I raise a hand to my face, inhaling the creamy scent of her cunt from my fingers. My other hand moves to my cock, which I know carries the same haunting perfume. In my pubic hair I find another damp place, right above the base of my shaft, another mark from her. In my mind I can see the junction of cock and cunt that had made this spot, the whitening foamy glisten of her juices as she straddled me, hands resting on arching thighs.

And in my memory I look up, through her kinked pubic hair, along the aristocratic curve of her abdomen, past her pinched navel to the gentle droop of her breasts, to clenched, taught nipples. My hands rise, floating into my memory's view, and cover the soft masses, finding her flesh clammy, perspiration-damp. She twists her torso, sliding her breasts under my hands, tracing my palms with hardened buds.

In the empty room I close my hand around my cock and lift it, stroking, pulling. It thickens more as I notice stickiness on my flesh, a reminder: her residue drying.

My mind fills itself again with the image of her above me, and plunders my nostrils with her cloying scent. I can hear the catch in her breath as she begins an orgasm, a small one, foreshadowing the numbing convulsion ahead for her. I envy her for that. She always comes so hard, so breathlessly.

My imprisoned cock hardens in my hand and I pull it faster, remembering the warmth and soft grip of her cunt as she whisked her hips backwards and forwards over me, tugging my cock, her saturated pubic brush painting me with her juices. Her eyes had been closed, long lids hiding impossible blue.

I press my hips up, as I had under her. My hand moves faster as memories assail me.

She had frozen, her body trembling with tension, her soft voice a backbeat for her gasps, paralyzed in anticipation, on the edge, as if afraid of the violence that was coming. Then, seeming to warn me, she inhaled sharply as it began, as I felt her flickering tightness along the length of my cock, as her stomach clenched and creased, as her legs tightened on my flanks -- and her orgasm slammed into her with shuddering waves that even I could feel.

She had fallen forward then, catching herself and bracing her arms on the wall, lowering slowly until her teasing breasts were just out of reach of my searching tongue. In the empty room my brain gives another image back to me and I can again see the tight pink buttons that had been before me as I raised my head and tasted her tender salt-skin. Below, I had lifted my hips, driving into her, punching hard, jolting and rocking her body over me while she braced herself and absorbed my lunges.

I remember feeling the head of my enraged cock emerging from within her, slipping from the last grasp of her slippery clinging vulva, then re-opening her as I pressed up again and back into her heat, driving into her with a grunt, straining to touch the bottom of her womb. I remember feeling the rise of my spunk as it gathered, poised and ready to flood her. I remember grasping her by the full rounds of her ass and pulling her down, bringing our pubic arches into bruising contact. I remember her gasp as I closed my teeth on her nipple. I remember the low moan that feathered through my nostrils as my thick cock-marrow sprang up and surged through me and into her rippling, gripping, welcoming body. And I remember, joining mine, her final gasps.

Final. Last. Over. Done. The black unruly words barge into my mind.

I raise my head and look down my listless body to my softening cock and grimace, desperation increasing my frenzied stroking until the thick crimson head is whipped by the motion of my hand. And as my hardness escapes into frustrating softness, as my thickness yields to my grip, as my voice rings out in a shout of angry defeat, semen oozes listlessly out of me, emerging almost like foam, flowing over my cockhead, down, over my hand, gone, forever.

I know she's here before she says anything. I know the sound of her car; I know her expensive perfume. I continue to twist the oil filter, pretending to snug it into place. Finally I look away from my work, unable to stall any longer.

"He said it would be okay," she tells me. Her voice takes me back against my will, dragging me into that final Sunday afternoon in my apartment.

She stands beside the hoist, as if afraid to come under the car. Her hands are behind her back, hidden by her bottom the same way her hips and ass are hidden by her proper red shorts, the same way her breasts are hidden by her expensive white silk blouse. Her eyes drop when mine meet them. Her eyelids come down, covering the black of her irises, drooping the same way they do when she's coming.

Or the way they used to. Before she let him move back into the house. Before she stopped coming to my bed.

"What would be okay?" I ask. But I already know. I know there's only one reason she would be here. I know it's because she wants to fuck me, wants me to fuck her. She wants to come, to wail, to clutch, to scratch and sweat under me.

"Okay if we f--" She looks up at me, angry. "Don't make me beg, please."

Her nipples have hardened under the silk and my lust comes back, slamming into the front of my mind like a hammer blow. All I want in this instant is to see, hear, feel and smell her as she comes. I know this hunger has never really been gone, but I can usually keep it hidden, keep it from bothering me until I'm in my bed, in the dark, alone.

I don't care. I say it to myself, in my mind, a thousand times in the space of a millisecond. I don't care that she left me. I don't need her. I don't miss her. I don't care.

I don't care. My mind has room for that chant another thousand times, and still has room for more. It has room for an image of her white silk blouse with my oily, dirty fingermarks on it. It has room for an image of the way she used to smile at me sometimes while I was coming. It has room for memories. I do have room for her in my mind and I do care. I do care.

"I didn't think you'd be back," I say.

Her face drains its blood; her color leaves. "Is there somebody..."

"No." I'm anxious to tell her that and hate myself for it. "Nobody."

"So we can -- You'll take me back?"

I feel my cock swelling under my coveralls. "You never belonged to me," I say.

"You knew my rhythms."

"I made you come." My throat closes a little, choking the words.

She pauses, staring at me. "Oh god... You loved me, didn't you?"

It isn't really a question, and I can hear her surprise: she knows the answer. I look away.

"You did," she whispers. "It wasn't just about sex for you, was it? I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter," I say, pulling a shop towel out of my pocket and wiping my hands on it. "It's over."

She comes toward me timidly. Her throat arches as she looks up, as if she's afraid the hoist will drop the car on her. I want to put my lips there, in that hollow place at the base of her neck.

"I didn't know," she whispers. "Let me make it up to you." She reaches for my cock.

The gesture demeans her. I grab her wrist before her hand gets to me and pull her along as I go to punch the button that lowers the big door.

"I'll make it up to you," she says, hurrying behind me. "He doesn't care if we fuck."

Peachy. We have his blessings.

In my office, beside the big cracked leather couch, we undress as if we're in panic. When I see her breasts and the wispy hair that coats her cunt I begin remembering the dreams I've been having since she left.

Wearing nothing but her sandals she squats before me and grabs my cock, sliding her mouth over it, sucking and rocking on it. I stand there feeling stupid, wanting to grab her head, wanting to encourage her, but my hands still feel oily and dirty. Instead I put them on my hips and watch her pale lips move along my dusky prickskin.

On her hand I see the rings, the ones she had returned to her finger that spring Sunday, the rings that had been my signal of the end of us. Her fingers enclose my cock and follow her lips and her expensive manicured fingernails seem to threaten my balls.

Even squatting, naked, sucking my cock in a dirty garage office, she is proper and cultured and untarnished. My cock will corrupt her mouth and fingers, just as it will corrupt her cunt. She will be soiled by me and she wants to be soiled by me. I am her source of perversion and her connection to the earthy place in her soul.

Her eyes come up, meet mine, her carefully cultivated eyebrows arching, questioning, seeking acquiescence. I can see her plea there; I can see that she too is lonely.

Her willfulness hardens my cock even more and I can feel myself getting ready to come. I reach and pull her away and lower her to the sticky leather, my oily hands marking her porcelain skin. It's the same dusty, broken couch where we first fucked the day she brought her expensive little red car to me a third time, to fix some imaginary rattle.

We took a test drive that day, with the top down, the wind and sun washing us with an invitation to join nature. We were close in the little car, her face near mine, her hair whipped in the wind, breasts and knees and thighs dragging my eyes away from the road. Back in the garage she bent over the couch and I flipped up her tiny skirt and pulled her panties aside to fuck her from behind. It was an auto mechanic's dream.

I watch her arrange herself. Her breasts flatten a little, but they still arch up toward me. Her nipples are extended and rigid but I know they will yield to my teeth, making her gasp sharply.

She opens her legs, an invitation. My cock hovers over her body, making a blurred shadow on her in the florescent light, as if threatening her.

The hair that mounts her groin is trimmed carefully, neat and tidy as always. But the hair deep between her thighs, in the place where she is already open and wet, seems thick and tangled as if I have already been there, pummeling her inside.

I lower myself into her, drawn in easily by her suction, up and well into her as her legs lock behind me. "He isn't fucking you?" I ask, kneading one of her breasts with my oily palm.

"It's the same," she says, grunting as she raises her hips to rub herself against me. "Nothing for me. He comes and it's done."

I press hard and hammer her a few times. That scent comes up to my nose, her scent, the one she is so quick to make. It seems her scent is our hallmark. She grunts and rubs against me again, coming hard and quickly, rapid beats against my cock, helpless gasps falling like feathers on my ear.

"You were right," she says. "He can't make me do that." She strokes my shoulders. "That smell, he can't make that happen. Only you can do that for me. And only you can make me come."

I move my hips, sliding, and without warning my cock sobs into her as I groan, my face lost in her hair.

"Be sure to clean yourself of him before you come to me," I say, pulling out. My wet cock drags across her thigh, marking her.

It comes to mind that I have not been in a public place with her. In the diner the people know me; I eat many of my meals here. But they do not know her, they do not know about her. They are reserved, quieter than usual, as if she has startled them -- or perhaps as if they feel an awkwardness, as they might in the presence of royalty. She has that effect. 

Across the chipped and stained Formica tabletop she seems small in her chair, yet her presence there realigns the room, centering it on her, adjusting its tempo to meet hers. I am tempted to shout in celebration of my discovery, of my delight in finding that I am not alone in succumbing to her elegance. I feel an unseemly pride, knowing that I am the only person in the room who has heard the sounds of this woman in passion. I am the only person in the room who has plundered her body. Across the table from me is a woman whose rhythms have aligned with mine as powerfully as the tides with the moon, and I know that no other man has been able to do that for her. As I watch her I can see her nipples, hardened beneath the black tee-shirt she is wearing, and I can remember watching her breasts rise as she pulled it over her head that morning.

She studies the menu, sipping water from a scratched green plastic water tumbler. Her lips purse around the straw. The image thrusts me backwards, flooding my mind with another way she used her lips, her hand, not more than an hour before. The fine lines on her knuckles seem to wink at me.

"What's good?" she asks, raising her eyes to meet mine.

"Fucking you." I only mouth the words, but the diner seems to go silent for a heartbeat.

Her face flushes, color rising out of her collar into her cheeks. Her breasts rise and fall as she takes a deep, involuntary breath. "Stop that!" she says, grinning, her white teeth flashing at me. "I'm starving. Besides, if you keep that up I'll come across the table after you."

Blanche appears as if signaled, as if we are in need of being rescued from ourselves. Her thick cylindrical body nudges the table. "Who's your friend, Rafer?" Her pencil is poised over her order pad, but her eyes lock on mine. I think I see mischief in them. Blanche and I have known each other a long time.

"A friend," I say. "Judith, meet Blanche."

A silent greeting passes between the women and I imagine telepathy happening. Suddenly there are no secrets. "Eggs over easy, bacon, wheat toast, short stack," says Judith, smiling. It's one of those smiles full of secrets, the kind women reserve for each other.

Blanche writes nothing. She glances at me. "Wheaties, hon?" she asks, one eye squinting a slow wink.

I feel the heat of blood in my face. "The same as the lady's having," I say, and Blanche is gone.

"What have you told her?" Judith asks, grinning.

"Blanche sees all, knows all things," I say, "but I've told her nothing."

Our eyes lock. The intimacy of the moment, the revelation of our secret, the realization that somebody now knows comes as a flood of affirmation. We have just spent our first full night together, and unexpectedly, in the crisp morning that follows, our union has gotten sanctity through the unruffled acceptance of a waitress. I smile, delight filling me, and Judith smiles back. "I'm glad you brought me here," she says. I don't answer, unable to speak.

We eat quickly, driven by hunger and an urgency to move further into the day. It is another threshold for us, our first meal together. I am tempted to linger over coffee, to prolong the time, but I am also eager for us to walk together, holding hands, to wander the aimless way lovers do.

We visit a quiet park, one of my favorite places. Dew-fresh grass lingers in shady hideaways, but we find a bench in a spot of sunny warmth and sit side by side, holding hands, watching clouds. It is early; we are alone.

"What are we going to do?" she asks.

I am tempted to snatch her from the bench and swing her in circles, but the door she has finally opened acknowledges that we are not just fuck partners, not just concupiscence, not just cock and cunt -- but it does not reveal a way to tranquility. My mind cannot shed its dark awareness of her husband, her children.

I lower my head over hers. Her lips are still sticky with maple syrup and my tongue savors her sweetness for a moment. Her hands tangle into my hair, pulling me even closer, and her breath touches my cheek. Her hips roll, urging me, pressing against my thigh, and I work my hand into the waistband of her shorts, down into the swampy heat of her cunt. She is thick with want and comes softly, pulsing rapidly on my fingers as I probe.

"I can do that for you," I say. "But I can't give you or your children what he can give. I can't --"

"And I can't ask you to wait," she whispers.

It's a question, not a statement. My silence is like a wall. I am unprepared. I have long since resigned myself to nothing more than a physical relationship with this woman, insulated from the pain I felt before.

I close my eyes, blocking out the peaceful sky.

I feel her move, I feel the press of her breast on my arm. "That was unfair," she whispers. "Forgive me."

The day spins past too quickly. We spend the morning visiting small expensive boutiques where she is regal while I am as inappropriate as a bear. I buy her expensive lingerie and the saleswomen peek at me. Judith's lips brush my ear: "They're jealous," she says.

We visit haberdasheries, where she dresses me up as if I were her doll. In the end she buys me colorful French briefs while the men in the store peek at her. We both notice and grin over our shared secret.

Lunch is beer and greasy sausage, at a sidewalk table. I am caught in the silence of melancholy and Judith seems to be the same. Our conversation is composed of brief exchanges about meaningless things: the color of a passing woman's scarf, the frown on a businessman's face.

We attract attention. People passing on the sidewalk glance at us a second time. It is our contrasts that draw this attention. Her look, the delicacy of fine porcelain, the elegance of old lace, is a stark contrast to my bulk and sharp edges. We create the impression that my slightest touch will break her into pieces -- a feeling I've had myself. Sometimes I have been afraid to touch her.

There is no fit for us. We are north and south, light and darkness, yin and yang. But in bed we are oxygen and gasoline. Each of us needs the other for this, and out of it has grown an unexpected communion.

A cold rain chases us back to my apartment mid-afternoon and there, standing on opposite sides of the bed, we undress in silence. This is not our plan; indeed, we have no plan. But as we come together our bodies blend with a softness and passion that startles me. I lie beneath her and she writhes in silence, pinioned on me, silky caresses on my cock driving me like a tuning fork: rigid, but in crisp, pure tremors.

Tears fall on me and I cannot stop them.

Copyright © 2002-2003 Sidney Durham. All Rights Reserved. May not be re-printed in any form without express written consent of the author. Do not copy or post.