Curio Vignettes 05 Exposure (3 page)

“
Oh
.”

There’s so much I can read into that breathy syllable. Volumes.

Don’t stop
, it tells me.
Keep doing that, exactly that, please. Please
.

And I obey. Normally I might back off just as I sense her wishing for me to continue, draw it out so her eventual release is a blinding, desperate necessity. I can be cruel that way. But tonight I’m as needy as I am controlling. I keep my tongue thrumming, keep my fingers delving, keep the rhythm steady and the intensity building slowly, slowly, as her pleasure winds tighter, tighter.

I’m close
, her rubbing feet tell me.
Don’t stop
, begs the shaking hand gripping my hair. Her hips shift, meeting the push of my fingers as they might my driving cock.

A throaty, tremulous moan rends the darkness, tingling down my back. She flutters against my lips and I slow my mouth and strokes, drawing her climax out, out, out until she jerks from the contact, pleasure turning to pain.

Smiling, I let her go, caressing her calves as she relaxes back against the blanket. I kiss her inner thigh, then its twin. “Good.”

She clears her throat, sounding delirious. A sheepish giggle brightens the night. “Yes, very good. Just like always.”

“I beg to differ.” I sit up and she does the same, scooting close between my legs so I can shelter her in my arms from the breeze. I nip at her ear. “Nothing like always. Out here, under the stars? Away from the flat?”

“True. But you still make my legs all wobbly, just like always.”

I stroke the bumps rising along her thigh. “More shivering than wobbling, it seems.”

“I don’t mind. I haven’t seen this many stars in ages… I took this for granted, growing up in the boonies.”

I kiss her neck, my wonder wrapped up not in the cosmos but in her closeness, her smell, the promise of what’s to come. She reaches a hand back to stroke my hair.

“You’re not thinking about stars,” she says. “I can tell.”

I run my nose up and down her nape. “We’ve got something far more rare than a clear sky to enjoy tonight.”

“What if I was sadistic and made you wait?”

“I would never cook for you again.”

A dramatic gasp. “Now that’s just mean.”

“Tonight then?”

She turns, kissing me. “Of course, tonight.”

“Where? Here?”
In the darkness, all our senses are heightened…

But she says, “In the bed. By the light of the fireplace.”

And in an instant, I know she’s right. It can be no other way. On soft, dry sheets, by the heat of the hearth. I need to see her face, and she mine. What’s more, I think with a hot tremor, I want to watch the moment when my bare flesh claims hers. And I want her to watch as well.

And what I want matters
, I remind myself. With this woman, my desires count.

For years I’ve molded them to complement my clients’ needs, or cast them aside entirely. I’ve stifled them for the sake of longevity, warped them to cater to borrowed appetites. It’s a hard habit to break, setting aside my old roles. They became my identity, in time. I was a chameleon, adapting to the wants of whoever came to my bed. A mirror revealing their deepest, darkest needs. But Caroly’s told me she doesn’t want that—not every night, at least. She wants to be with
me
, not merely a reflection of her own preferences. A true lover, not merely a performer.

And I need, I desire, I want. I’m a man, not a machine.

A heart beats in my chest, muscle pumping blood, simple as brass and oil but warm, so warm. I fear and I hurt, and one woman in a hundred has cared to know it. Asked to see it. And though I’ve bared far more than simple nakedness to her before, tonight I’ll bare it all.

As Caroly cinches her pants, I gather the blanket, tucking it beneath my arm. Hand in hand, we stroll through the grass and wildflowers, back toward the light.

Her thumb rubs my knuckles and I return the gesture, suddenly shy. When did I last feel so nervous before sex? As a teenager, surely. In another life. Yet here I am, stiff from a breed of anxiety I’d forgotten about—the exciting kind, full of anticipation, not dread.

It’s cool inside. I hadn’t noticed before, when the sun had still been dawdling on the horizon. The cottage boasts no modern heating system, only the fireplaces.

“
Alors
.” I shut the patio doors behind us. “I’m afraid I’ll have to defer to you, my rugged companion.”

Her brows rise.

I confess, “I don’t know how to build a fire.”

“Oh, it’s easy. I’ll teach you.”

There’s a rack of wood beside the bedroom’s stone hearth, and Caroly disappears for a moment, returning with a bin of old newspapers.

“Always make sure the flue’s open.”

I kneel beside her to see what she means.

“Otherwise the room will fill with smoke. I’ve forgotten that step. It’s the worst.” She rolls up her sleeve and fusses with a squeaky lever.

Next she shows me her father’s patented arrangement of crumpled balls of newspaper and stacked logs—smaller sticks on the first layer, thicker ones crisscrossed on top.

“Now we need matches.”

After a search, I find some on the living room mantle.

“And all you do is light the paper,” she says.

I strike a match and hold it to the newspaper. We sit back on our heels and watch as the flames spread to the smaller kindling, yellow tongues licking.

“Ta da.” She balances a metal folding screen on the hearth. “You’ve made a fire.”

“I assisted.”

“Now we just have to keep an eye on it and add a fresh hunk of wood when it starts to peter out.”

A branch cracks and shifts, sending orange sparks chasing up into the chimney.

How nice to be taught something by Caroly. Something practical, that is, beyond the lessons she’s offered regarding my capabilities, out in the wider world.

I imagine us strolling around art galleries and museums, she teaching me terms I’ve never heard before, enthusing about the thing she loves most. Strange, catching myself looking forward to such outings, and with only a hint of fear tainting the idea.

When people speak of prostitutes needing to be saved from their vocation, they mean danger, exploitation, degradation. It was never that for me. In turns, I offered my clients therapy, escape, affection, decadence. They didn’t take—I gave. I liked giving. Too much.

If Caroly saved me from anything, it was my own lack of momentum. She dragged me from the quicksand of my slow, passive decline into inevitable hermitdom, from a reality I hadn’t stepped back from enough to even fully see. I’d enjoyed the sinking, the snug safety of my descent. Had we never met, I’d have eagerly drowned in all that reassuring immobility. But she made me choose my life instead, and I took hold of the rope. It seems I’d rather stand shaking beside her than atrophy in comfort, all alone.

Since I’ve rejoined the outside world, I’ve found there are benefits—benefits beyond keeping Caroly in my life, which can’t be discounted by any means.

I’ve noticed that the days are longer. Not simply because time passes more slowly when you’re distressed, but because the world is suddenly bigger. There are so many things to see and hear, so many new faces to study. Staying inside, it was like eating nothing but chocolate for three years. Reliably lovely and pleasing, yet my palate grew lazy. Each meal blended into the last. Outside, it is like a buffet. So much variety it shocks the senses, and though I don’t love every flavor I’m fed, the choice is dizzying. So frightening, often, but also so rich.

We rinse the soot and wood flecks from our hands in the kitchen, switching off all the lights as we make our way back to the bedroom. She tosses two pillows before the crackling hearth and takes my hand. We sit cross-legged side by side, the fire nearly too hot but all the more exotic for it, with the cool air at our backs.

After a long, spacey silence, I ask, “What are you thinking of?”

“I’m thinking how lovely it would be if life was just like this.”

“Like what?”

“Just this.” She rubs my thigh. “Sitting in front of a fire at night, drinking wine. Someplace so quiet.”

“You’d miss the city.” This place suits me more than I’d ever imagined, but Caroly loves culture and shopping and events, cafés and parks with interesting people to watch. She likes the bustle, content to quietly observe, curator that she is. We’re not compatible that way. If this love stays in bloom, what shape might a compromise take? A home on the outskirts of a smaller city? Where she could leave in one direction for the activity when she wished, I in the other, seeking calm and relative solitude. It’s not such a terrible arrangement, as long as we each play tourist in one another’s outer lives now and again, and keep our time together inside stoked and glowing.

“I wouldn’t be so opposed to leaving Paris.” She turns to meet my gaze. “As long as I could find a satisfying job somewhere. Maybe we have a few more places to visit in the next year or two. See what it’s like in Nice or Lyon.”

“Your career should come first.”

“My career’s about being part of the art world, and making enough money to live. It’s important, but I don’t want it to the exclusion of you being happy.” Saying the words makes her bashful, I can tell. She’s not used to baring her heart to people, especially not men. Some wounded child inside her fears she’ll be mocked for admitting she cares for someone. Instead I kiss her mouth, proving her earnestness will always find a welcoming ear with me.

“We’ll stay in Paris for the foreseeable future,” I tell her. “If I can acclimate to the outside there, get back to how I used to be, when I was functioning…”

“Then you could make it anywhere,” she finishes. “Well, except maybe Bangkok or New Delhi.”

I laugh. “Yes. I think Paris is as frantic as anyone can be asked to suffer.”

“But in a few years, who knows?”

Who knows, indeed? Who knows where we’ll be sitting, what view beyond the windows? Who knows if it’ll even be just the two of us, or if…

I let the thought trail off. A curiosity for another night, another month, another year or more. Tonight there’s enough fire to foster between our bodies, by the glow of the one we’ve laid in the hearth.

I study her smooth complexion, gilded in the flickering light, the shadow of the screen’s lattice dancing across her face.

“Yes?”

“I remember the first night we met.”

“So do I.”

“There was a screen then too, only we sat on different sides.”

She smiles, her blush all but lost in the firelight.

“Oh yes, so shy once again. Like I haven’t seen a much different smile on those lips since March.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” she says, feigning innocence.

“You’ve changed. You’ve opened like a flower.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“You’ve hatched. I’m more like a weak bear after hibernation, stumbling half-blind out of its cave.”

“No wonder we’re both so shaky sometimes.”

A soothing silence settles between us. As much as I’d like to freeze the moment and linger in it for ages, my body grows restless. It hasn’t forgotten what’s still to come, and with my nerves silenced, my libido’s whispers rise to insistent murmurs.

I turn to Caroly, closing her hand in both of mine. “Let’s go to bed.”

She smiles, nodding. “Let’s.”

Chapter Three

I stand first and help her to her feet.

She looks so beautiful, my chest tightens. Her eyes dart to the bed, but I stay where I am and reach for her face, cradling her jaw, my focus darting between her eyes.

“Yes?”

“You look different.”

“Oh?”

“You look… I don’t know. I look at you and I think,
she’s mine
.”

Unable to drop her head, she averts her eyes instead.

“I’ve never looked at someone and felt this before. This mix of recognition and surprise. Like I understand you so well, yet there’s so much I still want to know.” I pause, laughing. “I’m not making sense. But I mean every word.”

Her gaze returns to mine, eyes shining from more than the firelight. I wipe away a tear and lean in to kiss her forehead. Her arms close around my waist and I fold her in a tight hug, planting another kiss on the crown of her head.

The bed sits to one side of the fireplace, half the quilted comforter warm and lit by the fire, the other shadowy and cool. I coax Caroly to lie on the fire-lit side, and she lets me strip her pajama bottoms for a second time. She sheds her top, skin adorned by satin and lace, some pale color burnished bronze in the fire’s glow. I peel away my shirt, muscles tensing in the coolness of the room. The soft cotton of my pants drops away, and hot as the crackling flames may be, they’re nothing compared to the heat in Caroly’s eyes.

I toss my clothes toward the bureau. “I’ll never grow tired of the way you look at me.”

“I’ll never get tired of watching you undress,” she says with a guilty smile.

Naked, I join her on the bed, sitting up against the headboard and urging her to do the same. She tucks herself tight to my side and I kiss her temple. “It’s been a long while since you’ve asked for a story.”

She tenses against me. Since I told her I planned to give up my clients, she’s all but stopped asking about them. Perhaps before, when she assumed I’d never consider leaving my vocation, asking me about my experiences was her way of making peace with the unseen women who shared her lover. She enjoyed those bedtime stories. I hope it’s not guilt that’s made her stiffen this way, guilt from worrying I’ll regret sacrificing my experiences, forsaking all others for her alone.

“Let me tell you about a client I used to know.”

A pause, then a wooden, “Okay.”

I lean close, drawing my fingertips along her arm. “She came to me this spring. A virgin, if you can believe it.”

Realization softens her expression. I palm her breast, thumb stroking slowly until her nipple stiffens and her lips part.

“She told me she wanted to experience sex with a beautiful man. The kind of man she didn’t think she could ever have for keeps.” I was prepared to go on, but suddenly tears shimmer in her eyes. I still my hand. “Have I upset you?”

She laughs weakly. “Of course not. I like that story best of all.”

“I have another, if you’d like to hear it.”

She nods.

“It’s about a man, this one.”

“Is he French?”

“He is. And he was a terrible coward who hid inside, because the bullies in his head told him to. His only real friends were clocks and pigeons.”

“I know this one. The man was very, very handsome. And an excellent cook.”

“He hid in his lonely little tower for years and years, until a leggy blonde American woman—”

Caroly snorts.

“—came to rescue him.”

“Oh yes. By forcing him down the tower steps every morning and down the street to ye olde coffee shop.”

“And they moved to the countryside and lived happily every after.”

She turns to plant a kiss on my shoulder. “That was a very good story. But I think maybe we ought to get busy writing a new chapter tonight.”

I take her cue when she lies down, straddling her hips and dropping to my forearms, kissing her lightly. I’ve been hard on and off for an hour, but now, looming above her, my cock grows stiff as stone. Her smooth, soft palms run along my sides and back and thighs, just as they have a hundred times before, but never quite like this. New space, new light, new texture under my knees and new smells mingling with her familiar vanilla-amber perfume—wood smoke and autumn crispness.

When I shift my legs, she does the same, hugging my thighs with hers, calves tugging at my backside. I know this request well, and for once I grant it without making her wait, lowering my hips and letting my erection brush her mound. She rewards me with a tiny gasp, clasping my shoulders.

Cocking my hips, I angle my shaft between her thighs and give a slow, long stroke against her clothed sex. Her moan makes me lightheaded. I drop to kiss and nip at her throat.

“This answers my question,” she mumbles. “About whether you’d be relaxed enough on this trip to…you know.”

I push up on my arms. “It’s easy, with the way you look at me. We could be in some hotel in the heart of the city, with the din of the Champs-Élyssées coming through the window, and as long as you have that look in your eyes, I’m ready.” We both know it’s a lie, of course. A pretty lie, one we’d both like to believe, but it’s different here, undeniably. Quiet, calm, dark, easy. The peace I’ve worked so hard to create in my little cell in the honeycomb called Paris. An entire countryside’s worth.

“Lie on your side,” Caroly whispers.

I do, tucking my lower arm beneath her head and its pillow, pulling her close with the other. She strokes my chest and kisses my neck, and I feel myself turning helpless, desperate, rabid—a thousand conflicting things at once. No one’s ever made me feel so wanted, so longed for, so treasured as she does. She waited for me, she’s said. Avoided men for ages, then sought me out as a rejection-proof point of entry into the world of sex. Now she loves me, somehow. Wants me just as deeply as she did before those carnal initiations. Wants me as so much more.

It’s as comforting as it is terrifying, because in such a short time I’ve come to care for her in a way I hadn’t known possible. With it comes a fear I’ve blocked since the passing of my mother. I love Caroly so much, if I lost her, a part of me would turn brittle and crumble to dust, leaving a hollowness I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve tensed, and she notices. She stops caressing to embrace me, surely thinking some tentacle of my agoraphobia has snaked between us, to turn me so rigid and unsure.

“I’m fine,” I promise, and smooth her curls. “Just feeling so much. All good things.” Good things chased with a fear of loss, but such is life. And I
have
a life again, a proper one. The fear is a thing to rejoice in. Proof that I can still love this deeply.

“Maybe we should get you out of your head.” She strokes my hair, gazing into my eyes. I want to swim in those blue irises, dive deep and emerge under a pitch-black sky, riddled with stars.

I steal a kiss. “Maybe we should.”

Another kiss, and she welcomes my tongue, making my cock throb with impatience. Her hand runs down my neck and chest, over my stomach and between my legs to clasp my erection. I gasp, the sound swallowed in the kiss. I fumble to return the touch, but she grasps my wrist, halting me.

“You’ve already made me come, remember? Let me spoil you for a little while.”

Kind words, but I hear mischief in her tone.

Let me torture you for a little while
, I translate. The anxious virgin I met in March must have been a figment. The woman here on this bed with me now is too fearless, too eager to possibly be the same Caroly. My progress has been slower and more halting, but I limp steadily onward toward a functional life, her hand always there, guiding me.

The tender thoughts dissolve as she urges me to lie back, edging her way down my body.

I put a hand to her arm. “No. I’m too close already.”

“Just for a minute.” She’s on her knees between my legs, palms slipping over my chest, stomach, caressing my hips, my calves, up the insides of my thighs. I moan, helpless, and gather her hair in my hands.

The barest glance of her fingers jolts my cock. A stroke and I’m shaking.

“Just imagine how good it’ll feel,” she murmurs, then my crown slips between her warm, soft lips.

“
Oh
.”

Needing a distraction—a chance at lasting longer than a minute—I conjure the first time she did this to me. She’d wanted to try sooner than I’d thought wise, considering her inexperience. It ended in tears. Now the fingers wrapped around the base of my shaft are strong and confident. She swallows half my length in a breath, pure slick heat. No hesitation.

“Yes.”

I made you this woman
, I think, and my pleasure folds in on itself, too strong and potent to ignore. I hold her curls loosely, following the bobbing motion of her head.

“Softly,” I beg.

It feels so good, so absurdly good, I have to laugh. “Where on earth did you learn this, beautiful girl?”

She frees her mouth just long enough to smile at me and say, “From a very patient man.”

Another minute I let her spoil me, then I know it’s too far.

“Enough,” I whisper. “Please.”

I’m released, as relieved as I am disappointed. I can’t stand to wait another second, but she escapes to tend to the fire, laying a fresh log on the pile. The flames rise and, as she returns to the bed, the fire glowing in my body spikes as well.

“Take off your underwear.”

She smiles, kneeling, and reaches behind to unhook her bra. It joins my clothes on the floor and before she can get her panties off, I’m fairly tackling her for the chance to strip them. They’re gone. She’s beneath me, hands on my arms, gaze on my face.

“I think it’s time,” she whispers.

I nod. She shifts her legs outside mine, tilts her hips. It’s so much like the moment she invited me to take her virginity. So like it, yet utterly new. She releases my arm to draw the side of her finger up and down my cock, and my sentimentality dissolves in a tide of lust. I lower my hips so my shaft is along her wet lips, and I start to move. She grasps my shoulders with a moan.

My attention is nailed between us, unbudging.
This is so wrong,
my conscience mutters as my flushed flesh strokes hers. With no latex veiling my cock, a flash of instinctual panic stiffens my spine. I’ve done just about everything a person can in bed, but this feels truly forbidden. Pornographic. It fills me with awe and shame and a hundred other exciting emotions.

Without warning, Caroly reaches between us, clasping me, drawing my head up and down along her lips. I curse, so shocked my arms nearly buckle.

“Let me feel you. Please.”

I nudge her hand aside and steady my cock. I take a deep breath, then another.

And I push inside.

She’s hot, soft, taut, wet. Everything I’ve been fantasizing about, multiplied. For the longest time I hold us there, my cock buried as deep as it goes, impossible to distinguish my pulses from hers. Slow as the moonrise, I draw myself out, memorizing every sensation. Back again, just as deep. I shift to my elbows and drop my forehead to hers, overcome.

“You feel so good. So, so good.”

“So do you.”

But she can’t have any idea how sweet this is. How slick and warm she feels around me, how utterly different this familiar moment has become, with nothing between us. Nothing.

My throat’s so tight I can barely get the thought out. “I’ve never felt this close to anyone. Ever.”

She cradles my head, kisses my mouth. “No?”

“Never.” I edge my forearms closer to her ribs, coaxing her thighs a touch wider with mine. “Does it really feel different to you?”

“Yes.” She pauses a moment. I know that look. She’s struggling for words that won’t make her blush too deeply. “The friction’s different. More…explicit.”

“Really?” I still my hips, smiling. She nods, and I ease my length back, nice and slow.

“Really.” She kneads my backside, tugging. I ignore the request, maintaining my glacial pace. This moment will only come once. Let us both luxuriate in every inch of my slippery flesh driving into hers. A rare occasion indeed, for both of us to be experiencing something together in equal wonder. I’ve felt this before, but it was so long ago and so taken for granted, I know it only as an intellectual fact. A more powerful fact is the one I uttered only seconds ago—I’ve never, ever felt so close to anyone. I want to slip inside her body, far beyond the mechanics of penetration. I want to feel what she does, see what she does. It seems I nearly can.

I slide my arms under her back and press our cheeks together, she breathing in my ear, I in hers, and I begin to thrust. Her thighs hug my waist tighter, her hips mirroring mine, deepening each thrust, lengthening every withdrawal.

Barely realizing it, I’ve begun moaning. Deep, needy sounds, set to the rhythm of our sex. I hear my name between her labored exhalations. Those same breaths warmed my neck the very first night we did this, steeped in this same awe. I can never give her what she’s given me—exclusive custody of her sexual experiences—but I can give her this moment, this virtual first.