The holiday had been a disappointment. An overpriced hotel that could barely keep me cool, a crowded pool, and being stuck a week longer than everyone else because I had needed the cheaper flight option. This wasn’t what I had hoped for. Best of all, I was too burnt to even go outside and enjoy the one constant positive of this place, the hot sun. Instead I found myself lying naked on the floor of my room’s bathroom with the lights off. The cool tiles just about broke through the sting of my burns and allowed my mind to focus on more than the fuzz of pain. Not that there was much to focus on, lying and staring at the ceiling. If I moved, even by an inch, then a fresh wave would break across my body and inevitably my meditation would be corrupted yet again. I was hardly present, drifting in and out of thought and wakefulness.
My mind reflected back over the two weeks that had passed. When we had come out here we had done so together, a group of old friends ready to relive college for a Summer. Only it wasn’t college anymore. In just the couple years since graduation we had all moved on a lot, become more confident, more relaxed. No longer were we desperately trying to impress each other, instead we achieved for ourselves. Each had taken their own course, and I think we were all happy with where we each were. I was around people who I had memories with and we slipped into comfortable laughs and debates without having to worry about coming out on top. Hell, even any tension between the various ex-partners seemed to melt away and be replaced with a cheerfulness that had been distinctly lacking by the end of our higher education.
Despite this positive environment, though, I felt isolated. Not because I was insecure or anything, but simply because I actually missed some of the discomfort of our old college meets. I missed the uncertainty, the excitement. The not know whether you might end the night passed out on a sofa or learning how to use your tongue just right for each new person you had tumbled into bed with. It felt chaotic. It felt real precisely because it was so often meaningless. Now it was all safe. Safe and dull. I didn’t want to feel cosy, I wanted to feel terrified as I stared into a girl’s eyes and tried to work out what she wanted as she danced beside me. I wanted to chat deep into the night, only to wake up with their face on my lap, staring at my morning wood. I simply wanted something unpredictable again. I had been waiting for too long, and I had hoped this trip would unsettle me enough to start walking my own way again rather than being stuck in inertia.
However, it was relaxed. The only person who disrupted that sense of comfort was Tulip. She had arrived at college in our final year, an international student sent to see the world and bring it back with her. Initially, she had seemed like a breathing stereotype. She was cheerful, innocent, and clumsy without ever seeming foolish. And that’s the most anyone else ever knew her. Not me, though.
I don’t know what made her pick me to ‘show herself,’ as she put it, but choose me she sure did. It started one night when I was sitting on a wall smoking whilst everyone else slept. She came out quietly, walked calmly over and stood looking up at me without saying a word. I didn’t either. We simply sat and stood and looked at each other. She was wearing a typical cute ‘going out’ dress. Not too short. But tight. She had put her hair up some point during the night and wore it in a simple ponytail. Her dark lipstick glinted a little from a streetlight and her sharp eyeliner twitched each time she blinked. Without a doubt, she was beautiful. Yet I felt not an ounce of sexual attraction for her, not then. Instead I felt a total indifference. A simple desire to show her that I could not bring myself to care. I’m not sure why I had such a strong reaction to her brazen stare, but it challenged me to my core. It felt like a personal dare to even try and resist this sudden, unspoken, blazing display of confidence. Her pupil melted into her dark iris and all I saw were dark pools with white halos gazing at me steadily. She seemed curious, but in the same way that one is curious as you stare at a beast in a zoo. The questioning how you could be so similar, yet so superior, to a creature separated only by glass or bars. It irked me.
Eventually, she came up to the bottom of the wall, standing right between my legs. It wasn’t particularly high, but it brought her face near-level with my crotch. I refused to react. She annoyed me, how she so calmly moved to such an unusual place without any reason or rhyme. Our eyes held as she reached out her hand in front of me. I passed her my cigarette and she took a short drag, blinking only as the smoke hit her eyes. Neither of us made a sound and our muscles stayed relaxed. You could hear the cigarette burning in the still air. She held it in her lips and placed one of her hands on each of my thighs. Her dark eyes still peered into mine, searching. I refused to give myself away and gazed past hers, into her head.
Slowly, she dragged her hand up my thigh to my groin and gently cupped the growing bulge in my jeans. My body reacted lazily, unemotionally. My penis stiffened in my clothes in response to her touch, not to her. She moved her face closer, so it was just inches away from between my legs. It was hard for our eyes to keep meeting at this angle, but she held my look as her fingers worked my zipper. She pried open my jeans, reached in, and squeezed my hard penis out through my boxers. It sat there, bouncing slightly in the air. Tulip stilled it by placing a single finger on the tip, holding it there. My breath blew through my nostrils. I could feel the cigarette’s heat on my penis. Her stare intensified. It flickered over my face, leaving my eyes free for the first time. They returned to meet mine, and I could see a sort of satisfaction in them. She reached up, took out the cigarette, and placed it back in my mouth. And, with a small, satisfied, “mm,” she placed her lips around the tip of my penis and shut her eyes.
The warmth of her mouth instantly burned. It was as if my penis had been electrified from the very tip, sending little spasms down my shaft. My body shivered and I shut my eyes in turn. Slowly, she opened her mouth wider and began to take me. Her mouth was hot and wet, and with each movement her tongue would explore and swirl so that I slipped deeper. Eventually, she had worked her way nearly to the base without ever once having gagged or taken a break. Her breathing through her nose had become heavier, and when I glanced down her eyes continued to be shut. With one hand on each of my thighs she began to bob her head back and forth. The waves grew in intensity. The silence was broken only by breath and by the wet sounds of her exploring and claiming my penis. It was if it had become less a part of me and more a part of her, with the pleasure flowing through my body and resonating, as if receiving a signal from afar.
Her pace increased bit by bit. It was becoming too much. I refused to groan, but my body twitched. She pressed onto my thighs, ensuring I couldn’t buck into her. Faster, faster, her spit covered me and spilled from her mouth. Again and again she worked from base to tip, all the while her tongue swirling and pushing, retracting and thrusting. I felt my balls tighten in my jeans and I knew I would finish in her mouth. There was no thought of any other way. I let out a final, heavy, breath, and reading me perfectly she took one final, deep, slide down my cock and held me in her throat. Once, twice, three times I spasmed, each time shooting warm streams of semen inside her. She took it all, waited until she was sure I had finished, and in one swallow it was down, consumed.
She eased her mouth off my penis and looked back up at me. She had a faint smile, maybe more a smirk. She pushed my still wet penis back inside my boxers and pulled up the zip carefully. She seemed to move with a cool pleasantness, a sense of distant care in her actions. She looked up at me again, pressed her hand into my crotch, and took a step back.
I slipped down off the wall to stand in front of her. She somehow seemed a lot smaller now than when I had been on the wall. I closed the gap and pressed my body to hers and kissed her forehead. My hands began to slide down her back, searching, eager to undertake my turn. For a moment she allowed it, my hands exploring and caressing. But then she pressed her hands against my chest and moved back.
Our eyes stared again. She was searching once more. She smiled, a proper smile this time, and then she turned and walked away. Not back towards the remains of the party, but away into the darkness. I didn’t follow her.
This was Tulip’s way for the rest of that final year. She would find me when I was alone, when there was a quietness about me, and she would make me cum with her hands or mouth and then leave when I tried to show her pleasure in return. Initially, we were always in silence. Once we were more used to it, we would speak after. She would sit or lie next to me, my arms around her and her hair pressed into my cheek and we would have slow conversations of short phrases. They were about what we saw, what we heard, what we wished we knew. They were about nothing, which is why we liked them. I only asked why she wouldn’t let me make her cum once, which was the final time I saw her at college.
It was a party in her honour as she was leaving for home after we had graduated. It was the usual affair, only now most people were hanging onto their friendships by a thread. We needed to see other people in our lives, really. By this point, I hadn’t done anything with anyone but Tulip for months. We weren’t dating, but I just wasn’t interested in anyone but her. It wasn’t love that I felt for Tulip, nor infatuation or even lust. It was simply right, just like how when we stared at each other it felt right that the next moment she would be kissing, licking, stroking me. If only she would let me complete the equation and do so in return.
Everyone else had left. It was four thirty in the morning and the night was fading, the world waiting for the sun to make it turn. We lay on her sofa, strewn with rubbish from the party. I was completely naked, as we had taken to lately. She was only in her panties, her soft breasts pressing into my arm as she hugged it. It was always her who took off her clothes, and I never knew when she would or wouldn’t. She would let me touch her skin, stroke it, even occasionally kiss it, but she never let me touch her nipples, neck, nor groin. Her vagina remained a mystery to me, as did her pleasure. I had never pushed her, because I simply did not want to. I knew she was the one who had made the challenge and it was her who would decide how it eventually ended. Tonight, though, I wanted to know if that end was now.
And so I asked her during in a break in our intermittent conversation. She paused for a minute, and shifted her body so she could stare at me as she did so often. Our eyes held, as always. She paused for a minute, thinking and searching me. “I’m looking for something,” she said, “and I think you are it. I really do. Which is why I do this,” she gestured with her eyes slightly. She sat still again, before breaking eye contact and staring at my shoulder. “But, I’m not ready. Not really. I know it’s unfair of me, I know it’s immature, but I’m not ready.” Another pause. “I don’t mean sexually. I’ve had sex before, and I enjoy what we do. But I know that if I gave in and enjoyed what I’ve found then I would never leave. I know that I would stop growing, that I wouldn’t fight myself anymore. I would stop living as I mean to and I would simply be as I am now forever.” I watched as her eyes twitched a little as she spoke, holding steady on my skin. Her face was serious, as it usually was, but with an intensity I had only seen that first night. She was telling me more than we had ever shared in our months together and I was happy to wait. Not because I wanted to help or convince her, but because I wanted to know what those eyes meant, what they hid. She breathed and continued, “I have a lot of ground to catch up before I meet myself. I have to keep on running faster than I have been. I know that when I reach the end, I will want to stay with what I have found. To stay with you. Because I know that by then I will continue to grow, even with you. But now, now it would end me before I am ready to end.” She fell silent and stared at my shoulder. Eventually, her eyes met mine again. She leaned in and gave me a gentle, lingering, kiss on my lips. And then she stood up, put her clothes back on bit by bit and walked to her bedroom. She came back out with two suitcases and a coat wrapped around her. I realised she was leaving. She stared at me as I lay there, still naked on her sofa. I decided I didn’t want to say anything. I wasn’t hurt, I was simply waiting. And I realised that I would continue to wait. She gave me that faint half-smile, softly placed her keys on the table by her door, and walked out with a click of the latch. I fell asleep.
I didn’t see or hear from Tulip until we were on this holiday. She appeared at the hotel as everyone else trickled in from their various flights. She wore a large Summer hat, jean shorts, and for all the world looked like the self that everyone else had always known. I hadn’t expected her to arrive, but I wasn’t disturbed. Instead, I felt a slight flicker of desire. Of hope. Something that I hadn’t felt for a long time. Since she had left I had indeed waited. At first, I didn’t mind. It was as natural as when she first claimed me. But then it stretched on. I was listless. I did well in life, but it was hollow. My work was uninspired. I tried to break out of it multiple times, going out, arranging dates. But I never invited anyone home or took up their offers. It was like I had simply lost my ability to desire. Instead, Tulip sat in the back of my heart, deadening it to others. I found that I had to keep waiting for her. No matter the boredom, the frustration, the increasing despondency, I had to wait. I needed to reach that destination with her, I had to know what she found in herself there and to share it with me. It was like this intense curiosity crossed with faith had overtaken my emotions. I told myself again and again it was nothing, but despite it I had this firm belief that she knew something and that once she told me it I too would be okay. We would be okay.
Which is perhaps why I became so desperately angry when she refused to show her real self, the self I had known, to me. Instead she showed me smiles. Hugs. Laughs and jokes and innocence. She never met my eyes. She never held my stare. She wasn’t Tulip. I realised I was the end of the joke. There was no finish line. There was just me. Standing there, immobile and empty.
When she left with the others, I felt nothing. My anger had cooled. Everything I had doubted had been confirmed to me. What I had once mistaken for my self-confidence had shown itself to me for what it was: a blind sense of self. I had tricked myself into thinking that by holding a stare and sharing a night I had meant something. That she had meant something. But no. And now I am lying on the floor of my hotel bathroom watching the ceiling age.
I think what confuses me most is that I’m not really heartbroken, but rather simply having to learn that I have spent my youth as a coward. What I had thought of as exciting and daring college nights, what I had hoped to regain on this trip, was actually just me repeatedly refusing to ask for love, ducking out of trying, and instead waiting for someone else to teach me. Tulip had simply been explicit about things. Time and again I had watched as those who I could have tried to love walked out and I told myself it was what I wanted. And now I’m realising that I had simply been too scared to love in the first place. So, how can I be heartbroken now? Rather, I think I have simply become aware of my own deadness. My own emptiness. I stare and I breathe. And I wait. I wait until I can make myself stand, leave, and learn something. I wonder what it will be. Will I learn to love? Will I learn I am incapable? The air is still. The tiles are warming up from my body and my skin continues to itch from the sunburn. My chest rises and falls and my nakedness is alone.
Until I hear a faint tap at the door. I ignore it. I’ve still got another day at the hotel; if they want to try and clean they can wait until I’m gone. I’m not moving from my spot of despondency. The taps come again. And again. I close my eyes and let their rhythm soothe me. Soon, it stops. But then I hear a click and what sounds like the door opening. I freeze. This isn’t going to be too fun to explain to whatever poor housekeeper comes in. The bathroom door is open where I left it to let the breeze in. I raise my head slowly, sighing in mild defeat. And I see Tulip standing there with a key in her hand.
She is nervous. I have never seen her like this before. Her eyes are running over me, refusing to meet mine. My breath stops. I am confused, and for some reason I feel a rush of embarrassment and I move my hands over my penis, covering it from her unsettled gaze. I feel a new wave of heat on my skin. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so instantly uncomfortable before, and it feels a bit like my mind and body are going through a free fall in an endless pit. What is she doing here? Her eyes are still rapidly moving. But then they meet mine and we both become utterly still. She straightens her back. She seems to grow. I see Tulip appear before me, as she is. And then she smiles. It’s that faint, questioning, smile she has. I look at it and feel my lips twitch in uncertainty, not knowing what expression to try and form.
She steps forward but pauses, thinking. Her serious face rises up and I see her hesitate. She walks up to me, passing alongside my lying body so she is standing next to my head and gazing down at me. She is peering into my eyes, and I see she is searching again. I try to search back, but her dark pools seem blurred as my heart and mind move in unsteady gaits. Her stare intensifies and she kneels down so her face is right over mine, staring and staring. I feel her breath on my face as her eyebrows push together in focus. She moves even closer. She pauses. And then I see relief wash over her and she smiles again, this time with even more confidence. “It’s you,” is all she says and she kisses me. Her lips press against mine and my heart stops.
When it restarts, I am alive. I feel myself for the first time, and I know that she is with me. I kiss back, pressing my lips into hers. My hands move from my penis up to her face and I pull hers into mine. Our tongues mix and our heads bob as we merge. My hand moves down to her hip and I pull her body on top of mine. There is not a hint of resistance and she straddles over my crotch, her jean shorts feeling rough against my hardening penis. I stroke her hair as she begins to grind into me. My back screams at this new intense movement and I let out an involuntary groan of pain. She stops, moves away in fear. “Sunburn,” I moan. Laughter sweeps over her face like sun on a field. I laugh with her. “Well, I guess I’ll have to lie down,” she says. And just like that she unbuttons her shirt and pulls down her shorts. She is in her underwear. She looks me in my eye. “It has to be you,” she tells me. I understand. She lies back, supporting herself on her arms. I ease my back off the floor and turn so that I am crouched between her legs. I reach around and undo her bra, letting it fall to the tiles. Her nipples sit hard before me, and I gently kiss her neck. She gasps. I kiss again, a trail from one side to the other. She moans a little. I move my kisses down. Her chest begins to move faster, I can feel her quivering a little. My bottom lip brushes her nipple. Then I kiss it. Gentle. Loving. I feel it press against my mouth, the hardness of it contrasting to the soft breast behind it. She squeals a little. I kiss harder again. I move to the other. She is panting at me. Everything in her body is tensing, relaxing, squeezing and twitching, telling me everything I know. I lay her down on her back, her legs spread, and I slowly ease off her panties. I stare her in the eyes as I do so. Just as she looked at me, I look at her as I kiss up and down her thighs. She bends her head so our stare holds. I used my tongue and lips to guide me to her vagina. I feel the soft mound of her labia and gently kiss up and down the sides. My tongue flicks out, and I taste her for the first time. It is a taste I know I will need more of, indescribably intimate.
I part her a little and my tongue roams, searching for the firm bump of her clitoris. I find it and give it a slow, light, lick. She shivers. I pause and our eyes look at each other as we have countless times before. We have found what we need. I shut my eyes and begin to kiss, suck, and lick, desperate to show her the passion I have realised. My hands grip into her soft thighs, holding her against my lips and mouth as I feel her straining and trying to buck up into me. I press her into the floor, using my tongue in broad, flat, motions to hit her clitoris from every angle with each stroke. I feel myself moan into her and as I do so the vibrations send new sensations into her. Her chest heaves and I hear her panting which makes my penis twitch in arousal and anticipation.
Suddenly, she kicks her heels into my sides lightly. I assume she is enjoying it and keep going, so she digs in a little, hard enough to make me pause and raise my head. She is panting and takes a second to gather her breath to say, “Now, I need you now. Now, now, now,” she repeats again and again as she falls back onto the tiles and spreads her legs ever wider. I am eager to oblige, but take a second to watch as her vagina rises and falls as she continues to slightly buck her hips. It is slick and glistening from my spit and her arousal. It is opened up for me and perfect.
I crawl over her, placing my hands either side of her head and gazing down at her. We are blushing and she bites her lip as she stares up at me and I see she has no doubt. I lower my crotch to hers, and I feel the twitching tip of my penis brush against her. I move again so that it gently presses against her and I feel myself pulsing at her hot wetness. I kiss her as I move my tip inside her. I feel her walls spread, taking me in. I feel myself being drawn, I can’t help but continue inch by inch until I am fully inside her, staring into our eyes all the way. I begin to thrust, each stroke harder than the last. Her breasts shake and I press my chest against them, feeling them move against my skin. I wrap one hand around the back of her head, pressing her into my shoulder and letting me begin to pound. Each thrust I pant with her, interrupted by moans and gasps. My skin smacks against hers and I begin to lift her off the floor a little each time I slam in. She arches and quakes in my arms, tightening and relaxing, flexing and biting into me.
I feel myself beginning to build up, my balls tightening as I thrust again and again. The wetness of our fucking fills the room with sound, spilling onto the floor with our sweat so we are struggling to keep our grip. But nothing slows me, and she won’t let me if I tried. She grinds and thrusts up against me so our crotches are colliding again and again. I grab her hand and place it over her clit and she rubs it furiously. I feel her body tensing more and more, even as she struggles to keep it moving with and against me. I can hardly hold it any longer. I bite into her neck, hard and deep. I feel her teeth do the same on my shoulder. I scream into her as she does into me. I feel her spasm over my penis and she begins to orgasm, the waves overtaking her. As her vagina flexes with each bout, it takes me over the edge and I cum, my semen shooting inside her and filling every available space. The waves continue and we flex and jerk uncontrollably against each other, each movement the most intense yet, over-stimulating and overwhelming us.
At last, it is finished. We are finished. We collapse and curl up against each other, lying in our own sweat as my semen leaks out of her. I kiss her and she kisses me. And we stare into each others’ eyes until we fall asleep in our own aftermath, together at the finish and together for the start.
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/10oapgx/24m24f_finding_the_finish