“Are you okay?” Lily asks, and for a moment I’m confused.
Why wouldn’t I be okay? I ask her what she means, and she shrugs.
“You’re hesitating”
She’s right, I *am* hesitating. The short black pencil-skirt of her uniform is already on the floor. She’s already halfway down the buttons of her neat white top– I can see the pale coral lace of her bra peeking through, even in this low light. And me, I haven’t even unzipped, I’m just sitting here at the edge of the bed, watching. Hesitating.
Lily pauses– “Are you sure you want to do this, Mr. Hart?”
Am I sure? I am, I think, but– “What about you, Lily? Are *you* sure you want to do this?”
She carries on with the rest of her buttons– “I’m perfectly sure, Mr. Hart”
“But I mean, are you *really* sure… I mean–”
A laugh, short and sharp– “I’m not a *prostitute*, Mr. Hart. Your company won’t be paying even one penny more to Atlantis for me doing this with you, and my paycheck won’t be even one penny less if I don’t”
“But–”
“It is an understanding, Mr. Hart, that I will be having sex with passengers during their journey on the *Isabella*. It’s not in my contract, but it is an understanding,” she says, “and if I didn’t like having sex with passengers, Mr. French would be more than happy to write me a recommendation to any other job in the world, whatever I wanted– I’ve seen him do it before, for other girls, and they’ve all gotten those other jobs and gone on to live other lives that made them happy– but I’m already happy, Mr. Hart. I *like* having sex with passengers”
“…with *all* of the passengers?”
Another sharp laugh– “If I didn’t want to have sex with *you*, Mr. Hart, I would have told the concierge that I was busy with another job, and they would have sent up someone else with your Pinot”– 1932 on the nightstand, bucket of ice, complimentary, thank God– she pauses again– “Or did I misunderstand, Mr. Hart? Did you really just want room-service?”
I’m stammering– “I mean–”– of course I just wanted room-service, didn’t I?– that’s all this was, wasn’t it?– I’d only asked for Lily specifically because she had been so kind helping me carry my bags up the gangplank onto the *Isabella*, and we’d shared that smile, afterwards, that gaze, and I wanted her specifically for room-service so that I could leave her a nice tip– that’s what this was, that was the story I liked.
“Or…”– Lily’s eyes narrow– “Are you really trying to say that you wish for this to be the sort of sexual encounter that begins as what appears to be a misunderstanding, so that you are not forced to confront the guilt and shame of actively wanting to have sex with another person?”
No words from me, now, shocked silence– I’ve never had anyone say anything quite like this to me before.
“I think that’s a perfectly reasonable desire, Mr. Hart– misunderstandings happen all the time, all the time– for example, I simply came in here to deliver this wine but I got the wrong room, you see?– and I forgot to knock, and here you are, a handsome young man in jeans and a floral t-shirt, and I was overcome by the sight of you, your raw sexual energy, I simply could not control myself. I could force myself upon you, if you’d like– would you like me to force–”
“No, no, that’s alright”
“I see, then”– and just like that, Lily’s rebuttoning the blouse of her uniform. She’s reaching down to the floor, sliding her skirt right back up her black-stockinged legs. “Apologies for the confusion, Mr. Hart”
“No, there’s no confusion either, I…”– I don’t know what I’m supposed to say– what am I supposed to say?
“So you *do* want to have sex with me, Mr. Hart?”
“I…”
“I want to have sex with you, Mr. Hart. I like having sex with passengers”
“I’m Martin. Call me Martin”
Lily shakes her head– “I don’t want to have sex with Martin. I want to have sex with Mr. Hart,” she says. “I like having sex with *passengers*”– there’s something in the way she repeats it, and for just the slightest moment, I think maybe I understand. Maybe.
I reach down, start to unbutton my jeans. Lily lets her skirt drop again.
And now, again, I’m hesitating. “Are you *really* sure that you–”
Lily frowns– “I like having sex with passengers, Mr. Hart, as I’ve told you again and again. It’s a part of my job, and I like my job, and I like this part of it. What I *don’t* like is taking my clothes off and then putting them back on, and then taking them off, and then putting them on, over and over while I try to convince a man not to feel guilty about wanting to be inside me”
She pulls up her skirt again, and there’s a finality to it, now– and for just an instant, there’s just this tiniest little part of me that’s happy that this is how it’s ending, that I get to watch her walk out now untouched and I get to know that I’m not the sort of man who calls stewardesses to his cabin with anything but the purest intentions– my intentions are nothing but pure, and they always were, that’s what I get to know about myself if she walks out of here right now. But that’s only part of me that feels that way. The rest of me, oh, the rest of me– the rest of me knows how long it’s been since I’ve been alone with…
Alone in the dark with…
Wearing so little on her…
Looking at me like…
It’s been so long since I’ve had anything even close to a chance like this, and it’s almost painful, the pressure against the inside of my boxers, against the inside of my jeans– it screams up at me, how dare you, how dare you send her away?– and I can feel that slightest stickiness at the tip of it, the stickiness and the almost painful pressure, and the sweat under my arms and the racing of my heart, the lightness, the tingling of excitement in my fingers and toes, and how dare I?– “Please,” I mutter, before I can stop myself.
Lily stares at me with her almond eyes, and God, just look at her. Even in the dim light of my cabin, just look at her, look at those eyes, and look at her lips, and look at her slender neck, and look at her gorgeous black hair, long and mad, wild, spilling everywhichwhere– that was the first thing she did when she came in here, undoing the neat bun I’d first seen her in, setting it all free. Look at her skin. She’s from India, or Sri Lanka maybe, or Iran, or somewhere, I don’t know– there are so many things I don’t know, I know, and I don’t want to think that her brown skin makes her more beautiful to me because I don’t know what that means about me if it does, but it does, it does, whether I want it to or not. Look at her chest. Look at her hips. Look at her thighs, thick and smooth, pressing out on the insides of her stockings like my cock on the insides of my clothes. She didn’t take off her stockings after dropping her skirt, and it didn’t seem like she was going to later, either. It seemed like she knew that I wanted to fuck her with her stockings on, somehow she knew that.
“When was the last time you had sex, Mr. Hart?”– and look at her, looking straight back at me, straight into my thoughts– and before I can even answer– “It’s been a while, I know”– and before I can admit that yes, it has– “I can tell. You’re one of those people for whom sex is a part of who you are, I can tell that– it’s not true for everyone, but it’s true for you, I can tell that, and I can tell that you have not had sex in quite some time, Mr. Hart. You’ve been missing a part of yourself for quite some time, and it’s hard for you to get back into the rhythm of it”
“…maybe”
Yet again, Lily has dropped her skirt, yet again she’s working at her buttons– “It’s funny,” she tells me, “so many people have this idea in their head that a person who has been missing sex will be starving for it, desperate, ravenous, pouncing at their first opportunity– but it’s like saying that someone who has lost a leg will be doing perfect laps the moment they first get a prosthetic. You have to learn to walk again, Mr. Hart”
Her finger are quick, now– there’s the blouse of her uniform falling to the floor, there’s that bra again, a pale coral color, lacy– her breasts aren’t large, and they aren’t small, but there’s a presence to them, I can’t quite explain, now that her blouse is gone– they command. She steps one foot, the other, outside the ring of her skirt on the floor– here she comes to the bed, here she is, sitting on the edge, right beside me, nearly naked, just *look* at her. That chest, those hips. Her waist now, too, her stomach– I don’t want to think that her tight waist and her flat stomach make her more beautiful to me because I don’t like what it says about me if they do, but they do, whether I want them to or not– those are the facts of it.
“Push me down onto the bed, Mr. Hart,” she tells me.
I reach out. I place my hand palm-down right onto her chest, right above the front of her bra, right between her breasts. I pause.
“Push me down onto the bed, Mr. Hart,” Lily repeats. “I won’t ask you again”– and I know she really means it.
So I do what she tells me. I press down hard with my hand, I push her, and she pushes back against me just slightly, just barely enough for me to have to use a little strength to get her flat on the mattress– it makes me feel strong, doing that, and that’s why she pushed back, to make me feel strong, and I can hardly contain myself.
“Now take off my panties,” she commands me. Who am I to refuse? I reach for her hips.
That’s when I notice.
Sometimes little details make all the difference. Sometimes little details mean the whole world. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just strange, but when I notice the panties Lily was wearing, it all just snaps into focus. Her panties are black, and I was sure they’d be tight, and I was sure they’d be lacy, I’d taken it for granted, I hadn’t really being paying attention to them, but now here I am sliding them down her legs and they aren’t lacy, and they aren’t tight to her skin– they’re loose cotton, comfortable, practical, room to breathe, room to move– they aren’t there for me, she didn’t put them on to look good during sex, to keep the passengers happy. She’s wearing them for her, and somehow in my head right now it means that I’m taking them off for her, too, not for me, and suddenly it hits that maybe she really *does* want to have sex with me, *me*– and that’s it, that does it, I can’t hold back anymore– in an instant, my jeans are hurled across the room, I’m up on the bed, hands and knees, I’m prying at Lily’s legs, but–
“No,” she tells me. “I don’t think you’re going to be putting that inside me, today”
I freeze– my arms go limp, and then I shuffle away a bit, create some space– “…I’m not?”– wasn’t that where this had been going?– wasn’t that what she had wanted?– what we had *both* wanted?– here I was finally admitting that I wanted it, and–
“No, you’re not putting that inside me, today,” Lily says. “I don’t think anything good will happen if you do that. I think what will happen if you do that is that you will ejaculate into me within one minute, maybe two”
“I can get a condom, I–”
“Not my point, Mr. Hart”– Lily scoots back on the bed, sits herself up slightly to meet my eyes, and so that she can reach behind herself, unclasp her bra– she’s still undressing? “My point is that if you experience an orgasm with me after not having sex for… however long it’s been… your body will flood all at once with more oxytocin than you could possibly prepare yourself for, and you will fall madly in love with me, and neither of us wants that”
What a thing to say.
And what am I to say back to it? My eyes trace up and down Lily’s body– I can’t stop them– left arm, right arm, she slips free of her brastraps, tosses it away. Her nipples are dark, larger than I expected, but pert– maybe it’s the air in here, maybe it’s the fan going overhead, or maybe it’s just mixed signals, I’ve never been so mixed up in my signals. “I… I don’t understand”
Lily glances towards the window– the shades are down, only a few slender bars of late-afternoon sunlight are coming through– she squints for a moment, and then she nods– “It’s just a little bit over a half-hour until dinner, and I’ll have to leave to help prepare, which means that you have just a little bit under a half-hour to do what you need to do”
Oh– “Oh,” I murmur– do what I need to do, *that’s* what she means– here she is naked in front of me, and she doesn’t want to have sex anymore but she’ll let me do what I need to do instead, and now there’s an odd sort of cold bubbling up inside me, I don’t like it, I’ve heard that before, I’ve been told to just do what I need to do, get it over with, there are places to be, chores to catch up on– it’s just a chore, now, suddenly, and it feels odd and cold and I… want to cry? No, I’m not going to cry. I can’t cry. There’s Lily, naked on the bed in front of me, waiting for me to do what I need to do, so I can’t cry. I’m still hard, I’m still straining against the inside of my boxers, there’s still that little bit of stickiness, my heart is still fluttering, it’s still been so so long since I’ve had anything even close to this kind of chance. I reach down for myself, slip my hand below my waistband.
“You weren’t listening, were you, Mr. Hart?”– Lily is shaking her head– “I don’t want you experiencing an orgasm with me right now. That won’t end well for either of us”– she says it with casual, scientific disinterest, and for a second I think she’s about to start explaining oxytocin to me again– “The next orgasm you have in front of a woman needs to be someone you plan on keeping around”
“I–”
“It’s not some pithy statement on the nature of relationships, Mr. Hart, it’s simple biology and experience. I’ve been doing this for quite some time”– she can’t be more than twenty-seven, twenty-eight, how long could she have been doing this? Ten years?– “I’ve seen what happens, I know these things. I’ll be sure to alert the other staff as we’re arriving, make sure they find you someone nice to latch onto”
Arriving, arriving, soon we’d be arriving somewhere– all at once, that comes rushing back to me, that I’m not just on any boat, going to just any place. I’m on the *Isabella*, going to Atlantis, Atlantis is where I’m going, but– “Where is Atlantis?” I ask– “I mean, what is Atlantis? What is the place we’re going to?”– I really do want to know, I’ve been wondering and wondering, and if it cuts the tension and that cold feeling, even better– but again, again, Lily is laughing– at me?– is she laughing at me? She’s naked and she’s laughing at me.
I like her laugh.
“Now, now, Mr. Hart,” she scolds, a waggle of the finger, “I’ve signed a non-disclosure, just the same as you have. I can’t tell you anything at all about where you’re going any more than you can tell anyone what you’re going to see when you get there– you can’t tell anyone, ever, to be precise, and I can’t tell you, now”
I’d been told to leave my cell-phone and laptop back home in San Francisco. No cameras, no tablets– nothing with an internet-connection, nothing that could take pictures or videos, or audio, even– no tape-recorders– I and my luggage had been thoroughly searched before coming aboard, everyone’s had, and we’d all signed the agreements, never to tell a soul what we did or saw, and what kind of a corporate retreat was that? Was this even a corporate retreat at all? Or were they taking us to a government blacksite? A top-secret research lab? A nuclear pile? Even Mr. August had admitted that he wasn’t altogether sure where he was taking us. “Philip French is a personal friend of mine,” he’d said. “He promised me that we won’t be disappointed by Atlantis, and I believe him. So should you”
“It’ll be another two days before we arrive, Mr. Hart, you’ll have plenty of time to wonder and wonder about Atlantis before it all becomes clear. Right now, there are more important things that you need to do,” Lily tells me, and she lowers her upper body back down onto the bedsheets, lets her breasts splay out just so, along with her hair, spilling like ink across my pillows. Her body is naked here, aside from the stockings, and just like that it has my attention.
“And what is it, exactly, that I need to do?”
She parts her legs, just the slightest bit. “What you need to do, Mr. Hart, is reach down between my thighs. Do you think you can do that?”– she parts her legs a little more, and she waits for me to approach.
“I think I can do that”
“I’m glad to hear it”
I’m crawling across the bed, along the side of her, up to her hips, a good spot to brace myself, and then I’m reaching down between her thighs like she told me to. Even with her legs spread more now, more and more, wider, I still can’t see much, not in this dim light, getting dimmer bit by bit, but I can *feel*– my fingertips are electric, the whole world lights up for me as they touch her skin. There’s no hair down there, but it’s definitely been a few days since she’s shaved herself, there’s just that slightest roughness in one direction, that slight bumpiness to the skin as my fingers slip along the mound of her pelvis, down, down into the darkness, and again it hits me, and it’s beautiful, like with the panties, that this is for her, this isn’t for me– this is something she *wants*, and fuck, fuck, what a feeling, what a fucking feeling, knowing that she *wants* this, that it isn’t just some dance.
Her legs are all the way apart now. Her head is all the way back on the pillow. Her eyes are closed. Her hands both linger on her stomach, right below her breasts. “Explore a little,” she tells me. “This is your new home until dinnertime. Feel around. Make yourself familiar. You’ve got work to do here, you must make yourself comfortable with your workspace”
“Wait, is it my home or my workspace?” I want to say, but I don’t– instead, I just say “Alright”, and then I let my fingers wander lower, and her skin is getting softer, I’m beginning to feel out the architecture of her on my way down, I’m beginning to get texture and shape and–
“There”– she stiffens, just slightly, just slightly– “Stay there for a moment, see what you think of that spot. See what you can learn”
“Alright,” I say again, and I do what she tells me. What can I learn here? The skin here is soft, and it’s smooth, but it clings to my fingertip just the tiniest bit, it’s like my own foreskin, maybe, but softer and smoother, and I can sense Lily shifting and tensing and breathing as it moves and drags. I watch her face, I watch the tautness of her cheeks, and she doesn’t open her eyes, but she knows that I’m watching, how could I not be watching her?– even with all of her naked on the bed below me except for the stockings, even with all that skin bare, those breasts, those hips, how could I be looking anywhere but her face, watching her react to every microscopic shift in my touch– her lips pursing and relaxing, her nostrils flaring just so as she breathes small and sharp, her neck tensing– it’s as though my fingers are up on her face instead, shaping her as I go.
“I have a very sensitive clitoris,” she tells me, and maybe she does, or maybe she’s just given herself fully into the feeling of it, maybe she’s just focusing on that feeling and on nothing else, I don’t know. I can’t remember anyone else reacting quite so taut as this to such a light touch, never, not Amanda or Tia or Elena, Elena, Elena, and suddenly that cold little feeling is creeping back in and Lily’s eyes are still closed, she hasn’t opened them, but somehow she can see my jaw clenching, my shoulders shrinking down into themselves, or maybe she can feel my fingertips slowing, hesitating again– “Don’t think about her, whoever she is”– how?– how could she possibly know?– “She isn’t here right now. Not her. Me. I’m here. Don’t think about who you were with her, just be who you want to be with me, can you do that Mr. Hart?”
“I can. I’m sorry”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be here with me”
“Okay”
“If you’re really feeling sorry, though, I’ll tell you what you can do,” Lily whispers, and her voice has a certain hum to it, and a certain wisp, she’s speaking with her throat and her chest at the same time, and it’s got a certain curve, too, she’s speaking with her hips, and she’s moving her hips, writhing them just the littlest bit, rubbing her most sensitive part against my fingers that aren’t rubbing it enough on their own. “You can take your fingertips and you can slide them down even lower, between my labia, get them nice and wet before bringing them back up– that’s what you can do if you’re feeling sorry, Mr. Hart”
“Yes, ma’am”– I start to slide my fingers down, just as she told me– but in a flash, her hand is on my wrist.
“Don’t call me ‘ma’am’”
“Sorry, I won’t”
She releases me again– “Well, you know what to do if you’re sorry”
I do know what to do– it was what I had already been doing when she stopped me for calling her “ma’am”– and why had I called her “ma’am”, anyways?– I wasn’t sure why I had done that, I had just done it, it had just happened, the same way my fingers are just slipping downwards again– they started slipping downwards the exact moment she let go, I wasn’t moving them myself, I’m not moving them myself, they’re just going, falling under their own weight, along the wetness of her, raindrops down a pane of glass, that’s what they are, the natural order of things, trickling down her labia.
“Mmm,” she murmurs. “Yes, just like that, Mr. Hart”
It’s so like her, isn’t it, using the word “labia”?– just like the word “clitoris”– not “clit”, she doesn’t say “pussy lips” or “cunt”, she talks about a “flood of oxytocin” coming in– she talks about things exactly as they are, I think, I think that’s who she is, she doesn’t need to dress up what she wants to say, her words are as naked as her breasts– not her “tits”, not her “boobs”, I’d be shocked to hear her call them that; her left hand has her left nipple pinched lightly between thumb and forefinger, she’s rolling it back and forth like she’s trying to get a tiny ball of clay to be perfectly round, and for a moment I wonder why her other hand isn’t doing the same thing to the other nipple, but of course it isn’t– it’s unconscious, what she’s doing, it’s instinct, it’s what she’s used to– her left hand is used to being there, on her breast, and her right hand isn’t. Her right hand is still resting on her stomach, just below her navel. It looks uncomfortable, uncertain. It looks just like how I was feeling at the start of all this.
Her right hand is used to being down where my right hand is. It’s used to doing what I’m doing. I’m sure of it, if she was alone right now, if it was just her in her cabin, in her bed, wherever she stays, alone in the dark with all her clothes on a pile in the corner, those fingers of hers paused awkwardly on her midsection would be sliding down between her labia, gathering up her wetness– and so much of it, she’s fantastically wet, she’s the sort of wet that makes just that tiniest sound, that small, slick, sound as my finger slips on by, it’s so soft, it’s almost impossible to hear, but I can hear it– it’s almost impossible for me *not* to hear, nevermind how soft it is. I am swallowed by this moment. Every sight, even in the dim light, the dancing hills of Lily’s hipbones and breasts, the valley of her neck, the jumble of her hair and her arms and branching fingertips. The smell of Lily’s body, just that little bit of sweat beneath all her arousal, her slick, salty, sweetness, and all that beneath the smell of her soaps, coconut and almond and tangerine. The sound of her wetness and her breathing. The sound of my own stampeding heart in my neck. The feeling of myself still straining, straining against the inside of my boxers, as though they might tear, that bit of stickiness growing, growing. The feeling of *her*. Her wetness, gliding, my fingertips searching, stumbling about like coming into a dark room straight out of a bright afternoon, learning the folds and edges. Even without seeing this secret place of hers, I am learning, I’m learning my new home, or my workspace, or whatever she wants to call it, I don’t care what she wants to call it, I don’t care that she wants to call me “Mr. Hart” but I can’t call her “ma’am”, I don’t care about that. Lily’s inner labia are soft and wide, they flair out like the frilly edges of some gorgeous ballgown as my finger sails down the length of them, they part so eagerly, they practically leap aside, like the gates to the kingdom flung open, and down and down and down I go, through the gates, and just like that my first two fingers are inside her.
Her whole body stiffens– for just an instant, her fingers release her nipple, her other hand stutters an inch or so downwards, towards her vulva, as though to stop me, but it hangs back, still, away from it all– for just an instant, her eyes flutter open and she’s looking at me, and I’m telling her that I’m sorry, that I should have asked first, and I’m sorry, I only meant to slip in one of my fingers– and it’s true, I really did mean to only slip in one of my fingers, and it was just that she is so wet and–
“If you don’t stop apologizing and start properly fingering me, Mr. Hart, I will get up right now, put my clothes back on, and return to my other duties”
What a thing to say.
And what am I to say back to it? I ask if she wants just two fingers or should I add a third? She answers that all this time I’m spending asking her questions is time I’m spending not fingering her, she’s already told me quite plainly that she wants to be fingered, and I don’t seem to be doing that, do I?
The inside of Lily’s vagina is impossibly warm, and impossibly wet, and impossibly soft– it does something to my head, feeling inside her, feeling how soft she is. How can anyone be this soft? It’s like the inside of my cheek. It’s like the inside of my pillow. It’s not at all like the inside of my boxers– the inside of my boxers are rough and crusty and sticky with dried and drying semen, with my dried and drying urges and beggings and I want to take my cock out from there, out of that awful place, I want to put it somewhere nice, somewhere warm and wet and soft and wonderful, I want it to be where my fingers are, and I don’t even notice what my left hand is doing to myself until Lily is scolding me again.
“Try and behave, Mr. Hart”
I let my left hand drop limp to the bed.
“I know it’s frustrating, Mr. Hart– I know you must feel desperate, I know your body must be howling at you, like you’re starving, like you’re parched, like you’re burning, like you’re drowning, I know”– but how can she possibly know?– who on Earth wouldn’t fuck this woman if she wanted it?– it seems ridiculous– “I know how frustrating it is, sitting there imagining how nice it would be, Mr. Hart, to just let go, to just take yourself in your hand and run yourself and stroke yourself, push yourself across that line, or better yet, what if I was pushing you?”– what if she was?– “What if you were between my legs right now, what if you were feeling my warmth and my wetness and my softness up and down along the whole length of yourself? What if I took pity on you, and I sat up and I leaned down and I put my lips right there on the tip of your penis, and I kissed it, and I sucked at it, and I let it finally slip into my mouth, I did circles around it with my tongue, on and on?”
“Oh, God…”– why?– why is she saying all this, what is she trying to do to me?
“There’s no point losing yourself in things that aren’t happening, Mr. Hart. Your penis won’t be in your hand today, and it won’t be in my hand either, and it won’t be in my mouth, and it won’t be between my legs, just like I told you at the start of this. None of those things are happening, that’s just a simple fact. If you can’t accept that, then you can stop touching me anytime you like, and I can put my clothes back on and–”
“No!”– I gasp, a bit louder than I mean to– “No, no, please…”
“Please, Mr. Hart?”
“Please, let me keep touching you. I want to touch you. I love touching you,” I beg– I’m begging, I’m begging, and for what? What a thing to beg for.
“Take your fingers out of me”
My face falls, my shoulders are shrinking again– I pull out my two fingers– even in the dark, they’re glistening, the thinnest threads of wetness bridging between them as they emerge. “Please,” I beg. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”
“Back to my clitoris, Mr. Hart,” Lily tells me, and just like that, there they are, like sparks of static from one place to another, zap, right onto the hood of her clitoris, both fingers.
“Thank you,” I whisper– I’m thanking her, and for what? What a thing to thank her for, but I’m thanking her and why shouldn’t I be? I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to stop touching her, never, never. My fingers are rubbing side-to-side, front-to-back, diagonally, around and around in circles, trying everything I can think of– I’m studying her face with the obsession of an astronomer, clocking her reaction to every touch, every pattern, trying to find the perfect method, the perfect trick that’ll make her the happiest, that’ll make her want to stay here, that’ll make her want me to keep touching her and touching her and touching her, I never want to stop touching her.
And her face, it delivers. Her breath is getting sharper and sharper, not quite gasping or moaning, but it speaks to me, the way she’s breathing, and every few seconds she tucks her lower lip between her upper teeth and bites down, her eyes are closed again, her left hand is back to pinching and twisting her nipple, but her right hand is back to hesitating, it’s back in that uncomfortable uncertainty halfway down her midsection. There’s something it wants to do, something she wants to be done to her, something I’m not doing. The fingers of her right hand are pulling at the skin of her stomach just the slightest bit, tugging it upwards towards her chest like she’s trying to move it, like she’s trying to move her skin– but not the skin of her stomach, that’s not the skin she’s trying to move, no, of course not, and like a flash I realize it, I know exactly what she wants. I lift my left hand from the bed, and I reach, first for her right hand, I brush my fingertips across her knuckles, the back of her palm, her wrist, just the lightest touch, I let her know that I know, I let her know not to worry, I’m going to do it, and then I do it, my left hand joins my right hand between Lily’s thighs, and carefully, so carefully, I take my middle finger and I tug back the hood of her clitoris, and suddenly there it is; the actual thing, more than eight-thousand raw nerve-endings and nothing but Lily’s thick, sweet, wetness between them and my own skin, and she wasn’t lying when she told me how sensitive she is, I can see that now, it’s beyond all doubt. Look at her, *look* at her– look at her back arching, look at her hips squirming, look at her thighs bending and flexing, look at her fingers, all of her fingers, both of her hands now, kneading at her nipples, look at her delicate mouth falling open to let out a gasp, and *listen*, *hear* her gasping, like absolute shock, like it’s never once occurred to her in all of her life that she could feel this way, like she’s never going to be the same again after feeling this way, after letting you touch her, listen to her gasping, again and again, listen to it like music, and listen to her breathing between her gasps, watch her stomach and her ribcage dip and bulge and carve out new shapes for themselves with every gasp and every breath, listen to her saying “Don’t stop”– and of course I don’t stop, how could I possibly stop?– how could anyone possibly stop?
And then I stop. She stops me. She has me by the wrist again, she’s gently ferrying my hands, one and then the other, away from her pelvis. She’s putting her bra back on. She’s fetching her panties from the foot of the bed, and one foot, two feet in through the leg-holes, she’s tugging them back up along her stockings.
“You… I…” I stammer. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know anything. “You said not to stop”
“I did,” she nods. “And you didn’t, which is good, because that wasn’t the moment for you to stop. This is”– she’s gathering her skirt and blouse from where they landed. And here I am on the bed, half-laying, half-kneeling, entirely baffled, cheeks like tomatoes, heart still pounding, cock still straining, and I can barely string two words together.
“Did you… I mean… did I make you… were you able to…”
“Did I have an orgasm, Mr. Hart?” she asks and she waits a moment for me to nod that yes, that was what I was trying to ask. “No, I did not”– she says it plain and calm, without a hint of feeling one way or the other about it, but in an instant that cold is washing over me and I’m hating myself, hating myself, and I’m staggering up onto my feet, stumbling across the room towards her.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t… I was trying to… I can keep going, whatever you need, I can–”
“It’ll be dinner in about ten minutes, Mr. Hart. I’ve got to go help prepare,” she says, and there’s not a hint of feeling one way or the other about that either, she’s just walking away from this, away from me, like I’ve just handed her a pamphlet for improving her fucking credit-score, and I’m nauseous, suddenly, why do I feel like nothing and no one?– why do I wish I’d never been born?
“I’m so sorry…”– I’m not even sure what I’m sorry for, now, I’ve lost track, but I know that I’m sorry.
“There’s no need to apologize, Mr. Hart,” Lily answers, and she smiles at me– it’s the first she’s smiled since this whole thing in here started, and it comes out of nowhere– it feels like the first time I’ve ever seen her smile at all, that’s how it slaps me– but it’s a real smile. It’s a warm smile, a kind smile. She means it. “Be sure to let me know if you need any more wine tomorrow– I’ll be happy to bring it”
“I…”
I’m dumbfounded. I’m lost, I’m adrift. But I smile back– what else can I do?
“I will,” I say, and I mean it, too– I’ll be ordering another bottle of Pinot tomorrow night, and another the night after, and the night after, I tell her, I promise her, but she’s laughing– she’s laughing at me again.
“We’ll have reached Atlantis by then, Mr. Hart,” she says. “You’ll have been dropped off, the *Isabella* and I will be well on our way back to shore. A day after that, you’ll have forgotten all about me”
I promise her I won’t, but still, she’s laughing, as if to say “They always do”– but what she really says is “Try not to be late for dinner, Chef Dianne’s ravioli is best hot”– and then she’s at the door, opening it, the harsh light of the hallway is spilling, flooding into the cabin, my eyes are burning, squinting, and then relaxing– the door is closed. Lily is gone. It’s just me, now, in a floral t-shirt and boxers, with an empty bed and a throbbing cock and a bottle of wine in an ice-bucket.
I hate wine. I’ve always been more of a beer guy.
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/mx36ug/atlantis_chapter_1_mf_the_first_installment_of_a
The level of detail is amazing. Plus it adds a certain depth to the imagination.