Cocktales

Jesus Christ on a cracker, even the way his tongue dipped between his teeth to enunciate the double L in my nickname was sexy. There was no fucking way I was backing out of this.

In answer, I straightened and ran my hands down my leggings as if it was a skirt I’d taken pains in selecting and not the only clean pair of leggings I owned at the moment. I grabbed the passenger door handle and gave him an expectant look. “Let’s go.”

The beautiful blue interior welcomed my body as I sunk into the seat. I had the forethought to shoot Elizabeth a “sorry, but I just got propositioned and I don’t know what’s come over me, but my inner sex demon needs to get laid,” text as Ben revved the engine and I listened to that beautiful motor purr. “Jesus,” I said.

“Actually,” he said, backing out of the driveway, “it’s Ben.”

I laughed, but as soon as the laugh left me, and I’d given him directions to my place, nerves flew through me, chasing away the butterflies. The sexual tension was still there, so there that I rolled the window down to see if we could get a little breathing room.

“So, what do you do for a living, Ben?” I made a mental note to make sure I filled out my address correctly to receive my World’s Worst Small Talk award and promptly forgot to actually pay attention to his answer. I was mesmerized by the car, by the human who drove it, and by the way he’d directly affected the sleeping bear that was my libido, with that one insanely hot kiss on his car’s hood.

He asked me, and I told him that I was a writer for a small press, which wasn’t entirely a lie … just, mostly. Yes, I did writing. But the things I wrote were often numbers about debits and credits. And it wasn’t so much a small press as it was a failing press—small because we’d had so many layoffs. But “writer” sounded sexier than “accountant” and “small press” sounded more respectable than “failing business model badly in need of an overhaul.”

After exhausting the most basic small talk, we arrived at my house and I looked at its black door with laser eyes, trying to remember if I’d even cleaned up the place recently. I was almost positive that my nachos were still on the coffee table, and my chicken pajamas were flung somewhere on the floor.

Sex pad, it did not scream. Sad but comfortable, it did.

“Millie?”

“Yeah?” I asked, turning to him.

He put his hand on my knee and even through the legging material, I could feel its warmth. “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t usually do this, either.”

My chest deflated because the pressure was suddenly gone. “You could tell?”

“Oh yeah. It was only so obvious because I’m nervous too.” He squeezed my knee. “We don’t have to do this. Like I said before, I won’t take unless you give.”

“Ugh.” I tracked my hands over my face. “I guess I should’ve asked if you have a girlfriend or something. Man, I’m so bad at this.”

“I don’t.” He squeezed my knee. “I’m assuming you’re single too?”

“Oh, so single that I practically define ‘single.’ In Elizabeth’s words, my life is so boring.”

As if on cue, Elizabeth replied to my text and I tilted my head to read my phone’s screen: oh, thank god. Let that sex demon loose!

It wasn’t until I heard his warm laugh and felt it reverberate down his arm, to the hand that held my knee, that I realized he could read it, too.

“Sex demon, huh?” he asked.

“I mean …” How was I supposed to reply to that? “I guess I wouldn’t say sex demon as much as just ‘thirsty demon.’”

“Uh huh,” he said, blue eyes twinkling in the glow from my front porch light. He looked at my door and looked at me. “How thirsty?”

Bless him for not making me feel even more embarrassed than I already felt. “She’s parched.” I pursed my lips, nodding. “And, I think I owe it to Elizabeth, you know, you make sure I take care of that.”

His answering grin was so full of charm that I was surprised I wasn’t already undressing in the car and throwing my clothes at him in a furious haste.

By the time we made it inside my house, though, the charm pushed me right over the edge and off came the clothes, his and mine in a furious rush, mingling on the floor as I pushed him onto my couch. I wished I wasn’t so impatient, because from what I could see, his body deserved an A+. But my nerves and my need mingled and translated into a frenetic energy that he matched.

His erection strained against his pants and we both stared at it before our eyes met. He laughed, and then I did too. This was probably the most comfortable I’d been having sex with anyone—even long-term boyfriends. There were no games spurning us forward, just our equal and honest desire. And since he’d given me an out in the car, I felt like all the pressure was off completely. We’d scratch our mutual itches and then go our separate ways.

He unsnapped the button on his jeans and then, time slowed way, way down. Or at least, that’s how it felt. He pulled down the zipper painfully slow and then rolled them down his legs even slower. It could’ve been the ache building within me, that painful, eager ache, waiting to be satisfied that made time move at a snail’s pace, but suddenly, he couldn’t cover my body soon enough.

“Come here,” he said, with a flick of his finger, so I did. He brushed the hair from my shoulders and placed his warm palm on my chest, down and down in a punishingly slow pace until he’d grazed over just the tips of my nipples and then moved further down until his hand was between my legs.

I had to actually force my body to still, not to push against him like we were two magnets drawn together. He grazed his knuckle over my center and it seemed as if my entire body opened to him with a satisfied sigh, my back curving off the couch and my head tilting back to open everything up to him.

While still holding my gaze, he dipped his finger inside. My stomach clenched, and my hands held him as if I needed balance, needed to hold onto him as he rocked my world with just that one finger. Over and over, he teased me, his mouth moving to my neck and down my stomach until I couldn’t take it anymore. I gripped his cock and ran my thumb over the tip—again and again until he yanked my hand away with a tortured groan.

“I hope you brought a condom,” I told him, both a request for one and a request for him to finally—blessedly—slide inside me. I pulled him back to the couch, deciding the ten further steps to my bedroom was too damn many.

“I did.” I watched in amazement as he slid it over his erection, but he didn’t make a move to bring it between my legs when it was encased in latex. Instead, he leaned down over me on the couch and licked up my jaw, biting the sensitive skin behind my tear and then he blazed his tongue down my neck; licking and sucking the entire way down.

“Jesus,” I said, surprised by the way that lit tiny little fires inside me and had me squeezing my thighs together, desperate for even a tiny bit of contact action.

“My name’s Ben,” he said again and as I laughed at his joke, he slid inside so quickly that I gasped from the instant pressure and the simultaneously instant relief.

Ben was a giving lover, I learned. He met me stroke for stroke, and even though I knew he came way before me—which I took as a compliment—he still rode me hard until the climax hit me with the force of a semi-truck, sending me sprawling off the couch and to the floor.

Wave after wave poured over me, so powerfully that I wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t somehow broken me. Was sex always like that? I couldn’t do a mental inventory of all my sexscapades, not when my leg twitched, and my chest heaved with each breath. He was breathing heavily too, but not so winded that he couldn’t pick me up off the ground with a laugh and heave me up onto the couch beside him.

“That was fast,” I said in between deep breaths, my arms deadweight at my sides.

“Uh, yeah,” he said with a pained laugh. “Sorry about that.”