Sleep Over

(This is the abbreviated version I read at Chi Chi's Word Parlor 9/18/07 -- the theme was "Desire.")

For days later, she could still smell him on her sheets…and she couldn’t bring herself to wash that red tank.

He always made her come to him. And she never knew when he might call next. The last time he was staying with a friend in Venice because he couldn’t make rent. And he wouldn’t let her stay the night. That was two months ago. And she waited. She was always waiting.

Suddenly, she heard her cell phone sing, “If you want me to stay…” That’s his ringtone! She froze. For a split second, she thought about not answering it. Oh, who are you kidding? Don’t try to be coy.

“Hey, where are you?” she asked.

“In Venice.”

“I’m surprised to hear from you.”

“Well, surprises are good.”

She smiled. “Yes. Surprises are good.”

He asked if she was getting ready for bed. Her heart was pounding. Was he going to ask her to come over?

“Because I’d love to come up there…and…fuck you…” he ventured.

“You want to come here?” she confirmed.

“Yeah.”

She frantically raced around the apartment cleaning up. He arrived at her door so fast, she thought, that can’t be him already. They danced around each other for a while, reacquainting, not quite sure how to get started, until he finally seized her in his arms. His hands slid all over her body, down her spine, her ass, her legs. He smelled so good. He kissed her softly first, tenatively, then a little harder. His arms still around her, he walked her backward into her bedroom.

He moved with authority, in complete command of everything in that room, of her especially. Still kissing her, he pulled her hand to the front of his pants so she could feel how hard he was. It made her bold. She unzipped his pants, and slipped them off. He stroked her long, dark hair as she sank down in front of him, sucking him softly and then more and more intently.

“Mmm. You do that so well,” he moaned. She kept her smile to herself, head bent down over him, and didn’t let his compliment interrupt her performance. Holding her hair away from her face, he watched himself disappear into her mouth. She slipped one hand under his shirt and stroked his chest. His body felt rough and strong, warm and human.

“Do you want my cock in your pussy?” he asked.

He stood motionless except for his hand laid gently on her head, following her motion up and down on him. Some part of her recoiled at his words. A nice girl shouldn’t want to hear that. But the truth was she wanted exactly what he said. She pulled her mouth off him and nodded. “Yes.”

She untied the drawstring on her sweats and slipped them off while he watched. He climbed on top of her and whispered in her ear, “You feel so good. This is why I keep coming back to you. This is why I can't stay away.”

The slow, continuous rhythm of his fucking drove her into a kind of half-consciousness. She loved the feel of his weight on her, of being completely naked with him, her breasts against his chest. It had been so long since the last time they made love – how she had craved him in the interim. And it was always this way: feast followed by the severest famine. In her head she told herself, Don’t think about that now. Aloud, she cried, “Don’t stop.”

He felt her back and pelvis tense, and he held his hand under her head, cradling it as she climaxed with a little, convulsive curve of her spine. Before it was over, he made her come three times more. The last one was a surprise that traveled up her diaphragm, made her stomach, then her chest, then her neck tingle until it reached her mouth, and she could feel her lips quiver and almost go numb. Her orgasm was so intense and sustained, she wanted to smile and cry at the same time. The pleasure was like an exquisite release from torture – the torture of having been deprived of him for two months. Yes. Surprises are good. But how can he not want this every day?

When it was done, he grasped around the bed for something to clean up with and found her red tank top with the butterfly on the front. She feared he would get up and leave, as he was apt to do, depending on just how anti-social he was feeling, but instead he let his weight drop down next to her. He lay on his back with his legs wrapped around hers and she rolled over onto her stomach, half on top of him with her forehead in his neck, her hot cheek pressed against his collar bone. He stroked the skin on her left shoulder, not saying a word.

“What are you thinking about?” she wanted to know.

“Sleep,” he shrugged.

“Do you want to sleep here?” She didn’t want to insist, but she hoped.

He said, “No, I can’t,” but within minutes had slipped into a quiet snore. It was cute in that way it would cease to be after they’d been together a few years.

She lay as still as possible for as long as possible, until what started out as a comfortable position that she thought she could hold forever became uncomfortable. She wanted to stretch her legs. She wanted to scratch her nose. She wanted to shift her stomach off his arm. Finally she thought, Screw it. If he gets up and leaves, he gets up and leaves. There’s nothing I can do about it.

She shifted her weight partly off of him, their legs still tangled up together. He didn’t get up. He didn’t leave. He turned on his side and pulled the covers over them. And they slept. Together.