|
|
 |
It felt good, her sweaty skin in the air. That kind of heat was meant for losing clothes.
He bit her nipple. She put her beer on the floor, listened to an ambulance down the block, somebody in trouble, and then someone else laughing, a drunk downstairs, a voice rising over the twang of a mass-market country song. He hiked up her gauze skirt. Her underwear was moist and hot. Nylon. Not meant for the weather. There was the sweet smell of her body in that heat, salt and skin. He pulled her underwear down, making her a centerpiece, pungent, a bouquet there to fill the room. She was pale white in the streetlight, the dark around her. "I'm not going to be the only one naked," she said.
"Why not?" he said, "The impressionists lived like that, artists and models — "
"And in strip clubs," she said. "If somebody's paying. My point exactly."
When she pulled his shirt over his head, he raised his arms. His armpits were a garden of hair. His ribs swam out, bony and graphic, then sank below his skin as he dropped his arms to his sides again. He stood up. She got to her knees, reached his zipper, pulled his jeans down. His cock was already hard and straight, pressed out, free of clothes, as though aching to touch her mouth, so near. She could smell him, rich and animal, the summer night. "You don't have tattoos, either," she said. Everybody had them, now.
He bent and climbed onto the mattress. The mattress was cheap. It tipped like a sinking boat. She asked, "You're a runner?" His thighs had that runner's mark, defined muscle, slightly bowed.
He laughed, surprised. "No, not at all." He pushed himself down, mouth on her belly, then farther, finding his way through the tangle of
Her body tensed; the world pushed back. |
her untrimmed bush. She thought to pull him back up, roll away, go take a bath, wash off a long day, sweat, nylon, start again, and she said, "I hadn't planned on — "
His tongue, flicking and strong, found her clit. She forgot about stopping him, gave in, sunk back against the cheap mattress where music seeped up through the floor. Her hand, when she lifted it over her head, hit something soft — a cat, sleeping in the pillows, that ducked away — and the hippies in the kitchen laughed, and people downstairs and outside were talking and the world felt so crowded, they might as well have been on the sidewalk, naked on the street, but she closed her eyes and let his tongue lead her forward, her body warm, her head swimming. One of his hands, his long fingers, held her thigh, as though to keep her from closing her legs. The other hand slid underneath, touched her asshole. Her body tensed; the world pushed back, and those people on the street were good as gone. She involuntarily pointed her toes, then let them curl, tilted her hips, her pelvis, toward his face. Her orgasm came on fast, born of that tension and moving into the full release, waves of warmth radiating. She wanted to hold on to it, to make it last forever. She rode her orgasm, fingers in his hair. She forgot to hold back, forgot about the thin walls and howled her own siren wail, saw the cat run, then she started laughing because she couldn't help it. It was delicious.
Brautigan climbed on top of her, his cock big, thick and ready. He wiped his face with the back of his arm. He pushed himself inside. She smelled her musk on his lips. He slid his tongue into her mouth and she pulled him closer, raised her hips against his to match his thrusting, and she arched her back. They were soaked in sweat where their skin met, wet as though they'd been swimming. Then she felt a change. His cock. It turned into a soft nudge, not a thrust at all. He moved his hips sideways, spiraling, pushing in and out faster, but she knew -- he'd lost it, his hard-on.
She let him go on for a moment, then palmed his ass. She held on, to stop him. He paused. She pushed, wordlessly urged him to roll off, and he gave in.
She got up, and tried to open the windows farther, then tied one sheet of a curtain in a knot to let a breeze through. "It's too hot," she said, giving an easy excuse. The last thing she wanted him to feel -- this big, sexy guy, this man who'd come to her door, who turned her on, who made her come so fiercely she'd seen orange behind her eyelids -- the last thing she wanted him to be was embarrassed. She'd take it on, his cock. It needed plumping.
Easy.
There it was, full and eager. |
She blew air over his belly, a cooling breeze, then over his damp thighs. She put her tongue to his shaft and drew a line, base to tip, coaxing. Again. When it started to swell she sucked it into her mouth, between her lipsticked lips, and drew her mouth up and down. And there it was, full and eager, his skin taut, a vein running down the side.
In a quick move, he put his hands to the side of her face, lifted her head away. She let him. He turned. His come made an arc over his bed, over his sheets, in white pools and drops, and he closed his eyes and breathed out in a way that she could hear his breath.
When Brautigan had fallen asleep, she got up and put her clothes on. She didn't hurry, but took a minute to look out the window, down at the city. Then she left, cut through the kitchen. There was only one old hippie at the kitchen table now, one she'd recognized earlier. Usually he wore a straw cowboy hat. The hat was on a chair. His long grey-black hair had that ring of hat-head.
He said, "I know you, don't I?"
She said, "No." They walked the same sidewalks, sometimes drank in the same bars, that was all.
"Good to see you here." He waved a cigarette at Brautigan's bedroom door. "We were starting to wonder about that guy. Thought maybe he was a little..." The hippie held out an intentionally limp wrist, the universal, though dated, sign for queer. She saw now, maybe he wasn't a hippie, with all those liberal values, so much as just an old pot smoker in need of a haircut. He said, "Glad you can vouch for him."
"Vouch?" She fixed her lipstick without a mirror. She'd done it enough times before.
The hippie said, "Yeah, you know," and made the limp wrist again, gave a little swish, like maybe she missed it the first time. No subtlety.
There'd been that guy in the shadows, the man who walked like a crow, his voice full of accusation. What was that about, anyway? He wasn't good-looking at all.
She felt close to Brautigan, like she wanted to protect him, and at the same time far enough away that she had no clue who he was. She'd just, that night, learned his last name. She said, "He's all right. But I'm not here to vouch for anybody." She slid her feet into her sandals. Then she walked home alone, through the hot city, to her apartment in the back of somebody else's big house.
n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
 |
Monica Drake's fiction has appeared in the Beloit Fiction Review,
Threepenny Review, Insomniac Reader and other magazines. She teaches at
the Pacific NW College of Art in Portland, Oregon. Clown Girl is her first
novel.
|
©2007 Monica Drake and Nerve.com
|
|
|
|
