It took me a little while to realize it. It was probably because I was scared of him. After that second time though, I understood if only a little better what turned him on. Tom took pride in me. He took pride in my body. Men, of course, have done crazy things for me and my body, even stupid things. They wanted me, they wanted to do whatever they had to do to get me. Bobby, George, Carlos, whoever I was with loved to take me out, wanted me to wear the short skirts that showed off my ass and thighs, and the pumps that drew my legs into tight, luscious stems. They wanted me to put my belly button on display, the flatness of my stomach, wear mascara to make my green eyes shine. They wanted me to wear the shirts that pushed my tits up and out and in their friends’ faces, even when they said it was too revealing, it was exactly what they wanted. They wanted me; they wanted everyone to know that when they took me home they would fuck me as much as they wanted (they left out of the fantasy the part where it was just the once, and quickly, and I was still waiting to cum).
I started off thinking Tom was the same way. Maybe he was too shy to get a real girl, maybe he didn’t think he could ever get a girl as good looking as me. Was he really so busy that he couldn’t take a girl on a date? I learned quickly that, yes, he was that busy but no, he wasn’t shy. Tom still scared me, somehow, because there was something dangerously reserved about him. He didn’t talk about what he did, he just talked about the matters at hand. Yet it became an anticipatory fear, like an adrenaline rush…
Tom didn’t care who knew he fucked me. He wanted that fact hidden. He did want me to wear more revealing clothing at the gym, but that was to excite him, not the others. Though of course he knew what it did to the others. He wanted me to make sure no one saw me leave with him. When we were alone, he drank every inch of my body in; he touched me everywhere – everywhere – and it was always with the touch of a rough child, of a discoverer, of an explorer. He’d massage and squeeze each muscle, rub me down, hold me, kiss me, smell me – God, he must have spent the first twenty minutes that third time just breathing in the different sweaty cracks of my body. And then he put his lips on me, kissed my hips, kissed my pussy, parted my pubic hair, licked my chin.
He washed my feet, too. I didn’t get it, because he was really into my smells, but then I realized he was doing it for me. He was cleaning me. And when he entered me finally… he held on to me like I was some precious kite about to fly away in the wind.
He made me look at myself in the mirror (usually when he fucked me, but sometimes he’d make me just stand, or do exercises, but he made sure I had my eyes on my own body). He told me to watch the sweat running down my thighs, between my breasts, down my neck, on my forehead. And he watched. He watched me.
Vanity is supposed to be a sin, and with good reason. There’s nothing below the surface of vanity, and whatever looks good will eventually fade away. After the second or third time together I realized that Tom was attracted to what I’d done to myself. Even when I was a sweaty mess, even when I was red in the face, or flushed, or my hair was all over the place. He loved my body in a way that I didn’t understand. He was at once careful and possessive, rough and brutally gentle.
Tom wanted to touch me, feel me, wanted to be inside of me and taste every piece of me, hold me, fondle me. Maybe Tom did feel the same way the others did, maybe it was never anything more than physical. But Tom took physical to a whole other place. That third time, after he’d washed my feet, stroked my muscles, told me to twirl in the mirror, held my breasts, licked my bellybutton and the salt off the back of my neck, and then my throat, and explored my pussy with his fingers, that third time, after all of that, when he finally pushed his penis inside me I came so hard he had to fuck me on my knees.
* * *
Those interludes of ours were such fractional parts of my life that talking about it now it’s hard to imagine that I only saw Tom for barely two hours out of the month. When we’d first agreed upon the deal it was for one hour of sex every two weeks at $500 each, or $250 once a week, but I never really held him to the hour and we never brought up a weekly arrangement again. It was every two weeks, and $500 up front. Sometimes it was more than an hour, but more often it was less.
There was a time I remember well, if only because it did leave me sore for the next week, I think it was the fourth or fifth time we got back from the gym, when Tom really seemed exhausted. He asked for a glass of water when we got in, as he usually did, and I brought it to him, and he downed it, and asked for another, and then downed that. I asked if he was all right, but he clearly wasn’t sick, just tired. He said he hadn’t slept for a few days. I don’t know if he was serious.
He took me by the hand and led me to the couch and caressed my cheek with his finger. I brushed him away (how do I explain how and when I let him touch me? When I was in the height of arousal I let him kiss me; I’m ashamed to admit it, because that, even given my wavering ambivalence about Bobby, seemed to cross a line. Sometimes I almost loved having his hands on my face, my neck…) and asked him what he wanted me to do.
“I’m not up for lassoing the moon today,” he said. “Do you have a book to read, or would you prefer to watch TV?”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with that but he got me to take my clothes off while I figured it out. After I’d peeled my panties off my pussy lips he attacked them with his mouth, getting me as wet as he possibly could. Then he got undressed himself, ripped out the condom and rolled it down his cock. He got on the couch facing towards the back and had me climb over him and slide him in.
And that was it. We sat there together for a few minutes, with his cock bolt upright in my pussy. I started to ask what he thought he was doing but then he gradually pulled out and slid back in. Slowly. Very slowly.
We went at it like that for nearly the whole hour. Eventually I did reach for the remote and start watching television, my arms draped over his shoulders, his hands planted firmly under my buttocks, the sweat and fluids between us making our stomachs slide against each other.
By the end of another terrible episode of whatever reality show I’d happened upon I told him he better cum before I dried out. He did, after asking, as always, for me to say what he wanted me to say.
I leaned back from watching over his shoulder and tried looking him in the eyes this time. “Tell me you love me,” I said.
He reached up and laid his palm between my neck and chest in the smooth indentation of my clavicle. “I love you,” he said, and thrust up.
I felt him bulge, felt his stomach tighten and his legs strain as they pushed his cock between my lips. I looked at his face, that thankful relief that crossed over his dark features. And then he pulled out and we took our showers and went back to our lives.
Other weeks he was much more energetic. And after two and a half months of our arrangement, I was a little more indulgent, I’ll admit, mostly because it broke up the tedium of the rest of my routine.
I still worked as a secretary and occasional typist in the city, at the same indecent wage and as often as they could give me hours. I still went to the gym with Allison (and now Sara, too, who was back in town) on alternating weekdays, and I saved my money and tried not to splurge on clothes or a new ceramic curling iron (though I desperately wanted/needed one). With Tom’s bankroll I had a real chance of getting my own place, and after two months I had two-thousand tax free dollars in my account (for all of four hours of “work”). I do, but you don’t need to read the Wall Street Journal every morning to know that’s a tidy profit.
So when Tom did have me dress as a dominatrix once, I said sure. But neither of us really got off on it (we tried it both ways). I couldn’t tell you if I was having fun with Tom. He said relatively little outside of our mid-intercourse banter. The funny thing about that is that after three months this whole thing was still mysterious to me. But were we having a good time, outside of the occasional orgasm?
* * *
If I was in school, this would have been near winter break. Bobby told me how excited he was to see me after so long, and honestly I was excited to see him too. He was my boyfriend, after all, and the one I was supposed to be with. I had a very strong feeling that after he got back to town I’d tell Tom that we had to finish our arrangement. True, it’s possible we could have continued our trysts indefinitely (the money would certainly be worth it) but that didn’t feel right to me. Not that I’m one to judge right or wrong at this point, but still.
I was riding on the back of Tom’s motorcycle in early December. We’d had only occasional snow that early in winter but today was one of those weird Midwest screwballs when the weather was boiling. The breeze from the motorcycle felt so good, I wanted to tear my shirt off and let it wash over my bare breasts. I’m sure Tom would have loved that.
Once we got to my house, Tom set his helmet on the table and slipped his gym bag off his arm. He reached into it while I bent down to untie my sneakers. I watched him rifle through it and then pull something black and box-shaped from inside. He dropped the gym bag to the floor and wiped his wet hair out of his eyes.
He slipped my shoes off for me and stood up. I stared at the thing until I was sure of what it was, then I laughed. “Where did you get that?”
He gave a small, crooked smile and shrugged.