Exposure

the speed of a car, or dragging at the heels of a years-long illness. In love, there’s no predicting the end, only savoring the present.
Moving down the blanket, I urge her to make room for me between her legs.
I bring my face close, detecting Caroly’s scent behind the autumn air and the wild musk of the grass. No other man has smelled her, tasted her, heard her sighs and moans, felt or watched her come. No other man has caressed her sex with his hand or tongue or cock, and none but I have been invited to. It never fails to make my pulse throb, knowing that she’s only ever been mine. The idea that she might someday gift that most intimate access to some other man… My blood pumps harder still, coursing with jealousy and possession and lust enough to ignite a fire.
Love hasn’t banished the baser flavors from our sex. As long as there’s no threat behind them, I welcome the jealousy and possession into bed with us. Security and trust are wondrous, but they don’t boil the blood the way those fearful sensations do. And I do so enjoy that frantic heat. She must too, considering all the times she’s asked to hear what my clients have requested of me.
I draw my thumb softly along the line of her sex through the silk, smiling at the way her thighs tense.
“No other man’s made you twitch as I can.”
“No man ever will.”
I let my nose glance her clitoris as I breathe her in. “We can’t know that.”
“Maybe not,” she allows, fingers combing my hair then clasping. The contact matches the tone I’ve set, just the slightest misgiving scraping a hot spark through my body.
“In case one ever gets the chance,” I say, “I’ll be sure to spoil you so rotten, he’ll never measure up.”
“That I do know for sure.”
Through her panties, I close my lips over the hardening point of her arousal, exhale to warm the spot and make her sigh.
“If I was ever with some other man,” she murmurs, “I’d have to shut my eyes and imagine it was you.”
Her words strike me twice—the first blow jealousy, the backhand flattery. Both sting hot with pleasure. I stiffen my tongue and draw it along her seam, wetting the silk. Her hand in my hair becomes a fist. I want to do everything to this woman—serve her, spoil her, dominate her, submit to her. Any dish she wishes to sample, I’m hers to devour.
Hooking my thumb under the hem of her panties, I pull the strip of lace and satin aside, exposing her most delicate skin to the night air. I feel the opposite against my own sex, pure heat and confinement. Maddening.
“Cold?” I ask.
“A little.”
“My mouth is warm.” Before she can reply, I take her clit between my lips. Any words that might have come are swallowed in a moan, the sweetest sound I know.
With a jingling of her charm bracelet, her hand takes over for mine, holding the fabric to the side. I find her wetness with a deep, firm lap, another, dozens—until I’m panting and starved, until she can’t doubt how deeply I wallow in this moment. More intimate than intercourse, more intoxicating than wine. Am I the aggressor or the servant? I can’t tell, and that’s what I’ve always loved about this contact.
My cock’s grown hard, aching as I imagine sliding inside her, slick from her arousal and my mouth, soon her release. And no condom, not anymore. I shiver. A whore’s last unfulfilled fantasy, realized only now that he’s left that vocation behind.
Against my lips and tongue, I feel every tiny mechanism of her pleasure, each pulsation, each twitch, the tensing and swelling of her flesh telling me things no words can articulate.
Is this act so different than a watchmaker’s craft? Her heartbeat like clockwork, speeding with my adjustments. Then again, no beguiling piece of brass has ever loved me back, nor sighed in ecstasy as my fingertips wound it tight or snapped it snugly closed. My hobby will change soon enough—drawing me out, not keeping me in. But this, I think, penetrating Caroly with my tongue as my thumbs trace her lips, this will remain my art. Her pleasure is my masterpiece, honed nightly but never complete, never beyond perfecting.
I’m flooded with her scent, scalded by her heat on my lips. I’m dying of a sexual hunger deep in my belly to taste her, to imagine how good she’ll feel around my cock and to know I must wait. I flick my tongue against the swollen nub of her clitoris and gently draw two fingers along her seam, back and forth, back and forth, then finally slip them inside.
“Didier.”
As always, my name in her voice hits me like a crop. I’d scale a mountain on bleeding palms and knees to feel the sweet sting of those syllables. I’d bankrupt myself, endanger and degrade myself for the sensation, and yet she gives it freely.
“Caroly.” I whisper it against her sex and the fingers grasping my hair tighten. Soon enough she’ll be holding my arms or raking my back or guiding my thrusts with her smooth, soft palms on my hips. I doubt I’ll register any of it. Not tonight, not with every particle of my consciousness focused on that long-forbidden prize. My cock surges as I imagine it. My mouth grows more aggressive. Her thighs tense and one heel rubs along my spine, trembling and giving her away. Her feet always tell me when she’s close—restless as fidgeting hands.
“Oh.”
There’s so much I can read into that breathy syllable. Volumes.
Don’t stop, it tells me. Keep doing that, exactly that, please. Please.
And I obey. Normally I might back off just as I sense her wishing for me to continue, draw it out so her eventual release is a blinding, desperate necessity. I can be cruel that way. But tonight I’m as needy as I am controlling. I keep my tongue thrumming, keep my fingers delving, keep