.
                                                  ::

                                              call & response

                                                  ::

She had that wicked look in her eyes. "What," she said, smiling,
"turns you on?"

Unbidden, a photograph flickered before his mind's eye: two girls
sitting on a couch, long bare legs drawn up to their chests,
leaning shoulder to shoulder to tentatively kiss. He blinked. No.
She put her cool fingers on his hips, under the hem of his
T-shirt. "What do you think about," she said, and her thumbs
hooked in his front belt loops and pulled him closer, "when you
come?"

"I," he said, thinking of her sitting on the couch in her
lazy-day dress, the green one that hung loosely on her, with the
big wooden buttons he could idly toy with, slipping one after
another from their buttonholes almost without her noticing.
Thinking of the rough green fabric framing the freckles between
her breasts, rising and falling with a sudden sigh. Thinking of
the girl at the airport bar, wearing a midriff-baring T-shirt,
her skin like some hand-rubbed wood the color of honey, lathed
into the slim smooth curves of her belly and hips that shifted in
the loose mouth of an otherwise impossibly tight pair of faded
jeans. As she'd leaned forward, straight blond hair slithering
past her face, those jeans had peeled away from those hips a
little and he'd caught a glimpse of her candy-colored thong. He
blinked again. "I," he said, "uh."

"What's the matter?" she said. Her thumbs still in his belt
loops, she curled her fingers over his waistband, and he felt
them warming against his flesh. He felt them toying with the
button of his pants as if it were a part of him, an odd, distant
erogenous zone. "Cat got your tongue?" They pressed and twisted
and he felt the sudden release as his button slipped free. "Or,"
she said, grinning mischievously, wickedly, the tip of her tongue
licking against her upper lip, "something else?"

He felt like one of those hapless sitcom dads who opens the hall
closet door and is suddenly buried under a comical avalanche of
shoeboxes, old clothing, broken sporting equipment, packing
peanuts and wrapping paper. The black-and-white photo of the two
women dressed in old men's suits, cool and severe, their hooded
eyes lost in each other, their thickly lipsticked lips parted
slightly. The simple pleasure of lying back in bed, naked,
watching her undress. That strange, confusing afternoon years ago
in his then-girlfriend's overheated apartment, her then-best
friend lying back in his arms, kissing him extravagantly as he
watched his then-girlfriend kneel between her thighs, looking up
to meet his gaze as she opened her mouth. Sneaking up behind her
as she did the dishes and slipping his hands beneath her dress to
find nothing but skin and crisply curly hair and a surprising
finger's width of slick wet heat. The liquid warmth of her mouth
sliding around the head of his cock. The girl on the bus in the
black tank-top, with the sharp glasses and the amazing tattoos on
the backs of her hands and down her calves to the tops of her
sandalled feet. The look in her eyes, here, now. "What," he said,
thickly, and he swallowed, "what was the question again?" A
transparent ploy, but she indulged him.

"What turns you on?" she said. Her fingers tugged at his zipper,
and his distracted senses were heightened enough that he could
feel the individual teeth disengaging. His fly spread open under
the insistent pressure of her fingers, of his cock, swelling,
stirring, inflating to fill the space she made for it. He thought
about saying, "You," but didn't. That would be trite, and he felt
an urge to be honest, to take this seriously. But putting into
words how what she was doing conjured up the image of her lying
under him, of that moment when she dissolved into inarticulate
groans, shivering on the edge of coming for what seemed like
forever, her face screwed up with the effort of finally - and
suddenly tripping over the image of whatshername, the pop star,
dressed as a slutty Catholic schoolgirl, face contorting as her
hips pumped, her bare thighs flashing between the hem of her
too-short kilt and the tops of her over-the-knee socks -  How
embarrassing. He was left quite literally speechless, pawing
through the clutter of old porn magazines, of impossible movie
stars, swimsuit models, of girls glimpsed on sidewalks, of old
memories and half-formed desires, trying through all the static
to find& - her. What he thought of, when he came.

What turned him on? All of it did. Why couldn't he just say
something? She knew how flustered he was - and he knew she
knew why. He remembered a time when he'd seen her this flustered,
herself, when he'd caught her at the video store, surreptitiously
eyeing the Japanese bishonen anime, the cartoons about beautiful
young men in love with each other. How she'd grinned,
embarrassed, when she discovered he'd slipped the one about the
two police detectives into their stack of weekend rentals. How
she'd come to him once, admitting she'd gone through his
briefcase looking for stamps and found the magazine, his
once-every-couple-of-months vice. How she'd asked if she could
maybe, you know, since she'd never really seen one before. How
he'd peeked in on her, sitting in her chair in a T-shirt and
panties, her toes curling self-consciously as she flipped through
the brightly colored pages. Looking at the photos of the two
girls on the couch, kissing. How she'd rolled her eyes at the
airport when she caught him sneaking yet another glance at the
thong curling over the ski-bunny's perfectly tanned hip, an
irritant, almost, that he couldn't stop trying to catch another
glimpse of. She'd rolled her eyes, but she'd smiled, and that
night they'd chuckled about it as she wrapped her legs around his
butt and pulled him in.

He sighed.

"Well?" she said. His fly lapped open, and her fingers peeled his
burgeoning cock up and out of his shorts.

"All of it," he said. "You. Everything."

She was kneeling before him. "Tell me."

And as she took him in her mouth, he did. Somehow.

    ::

Later, after, he stroked her flank. She nuzzled his neck. "That,"
she said, "was nice."

"What turns you on?" he asked.

She hiked up then on one elbow and looked at him, and reached
down and found him somewhat more than soft. "Oh," she said, and
she lifted her leg and straddled him, and he felt her heat
against his skin. "Oh," she said. They kissed. "That's easy," she
murmured, against his lips.

                                                  ::
                                                  
                                              call & response
                                                 
                                                          --n.
                                                  ::
                                                  
/~nickurfe/
http://www.ruthiesclub.com/
nickurfe@yahoo.com

This story may be freely circulated by anyone, anytime, anywhere.

.