Lawrence Block - Getting Off

And in certain respects it was easier to be with a woman. She always felt the slightest bit shy the first time she undressed in the presence of a man. It was a sort of reflexive timidity, and it never lasted long, but it was always there. Tonight though, when she was about to do something she had never done before, and thus had every reason to be apprehensive, the act of disrobing had no attendant shyness.

Because she’d been comfortable undressing in front of women ever since she’d been a little girl, changing in and out of gym clothes at school, getting into a bathing suit at the beach. Angelica looked her over while she undressed, but other women checked you out all the time; if they weren’t interested in you sexually, then they were sizing you up as potential competition.

Whatever it was, she was entirely at ease. And if she had any anxiety about joining Angelica in bed, any concern that she wouldn’t know what to do, that was gone in no time at all.

Angelica made it easy for her by taking the lead, which was no real surprise. Their roles in this performance were a given, with herself as the bottom and Angelica as the top. “Just close your eyes,” Angelica said, in case there was any doubt, “and lie back, and let me love you.”

Easy enough to comply. Easy enough to give herself up to Angelica’s hands and Angelica’s mouth, and, really, what could there possibly be to object to in any of that? There wasn’t a thing Angelica did to her that hadn’t been done by men, and if some of those men had been awkward or clumsy or in a hurry, not a few had known what they were doing and done it with skill.

Angelica, a woman herself and the experienced lover of women, knew what to do and how to do it, and picked up cues from her responses. And Angelica was in no hurry for her to arrive at her destination. Instead she kept taking her to the brink, keeping her right on the edge, then easing back and letting her cool down just a little before she started in all over again.

There was an element of torture to it, because she reached a point where she really wanted to come, and yet it was all so exquisite that she didn’t want it to end. It was a little unsettling to have a lover who was so utterly in control of her responses, and at the same time it was quite wonderful.

Oh, and there was something she hadn’t been expecting. Angelica’s spit-lubed finger, finding its way unerringly into her bottom. And moving in an insistent rhythm, but not the same rhythm Angelica was employing elsewhere. Jesus, the woman was playing her like an African drum. With a tap tap here and a rat-tat-a-tat there, and, omigod, oh, yes…

Don’t stop , she thought. Please don’t stop .

Jesus, did she speak the words aloud?

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to stop this time, she was going to come, yes, and she kicked her feet and thrust with her hips and cried out, because why not, men liked it when you made a little noise, so why shouldn’t a woman like it, and what difference did it make who liked what, because she could no more hold back her cries than she could hold back her orgasm.

Yes!

Was there anything more beautiful than two women making love?

If so, he couldn’t imagine what it might be. He was not, in ordinary circumstances, a voyeur. He could neither imagine himself as a Peeping Tom, lurking at bedroom windows in the hope of a glimpse of the forbidden, or as a spectator at orgies, watching others having sex. Watching a man with a woman, or a man with a man, held no appeal for him.

But two women, that was somehow different. And when one of the women was his woman, his Angelica, the appeal was irresistible.

And this one, this Missy, this doe-eyed ingénue, complemented her perfectly. He couldn’t imagine a more ideal partner for his magnificent wife.

He’d given them a few minutes in bed before leaving his den and taking up his position behind the Japanese screen. He was barefoot and the floor carpeted, so no one could hear his footsteps, and the screen was so situated that his brief passage from the doorway was invisible to anyone in the bed. Even so, he’d walked lightly and quickly, and held his breath until he was where he wanted to be. Then he put his eyes to the tiny viewing slits, and saw the two of them, and he’d been watching them ever since.

He never tired of watching Angelica bring a partner to climax. She loved to tease, and he sometimes suspected that he was no less the object of her teasing than the woman upon whom she was performing. He fancied that he could feel what Missy was feeling, that her excitement was his excitement, and when she came he felt a tremor of the spirit, a sort of psychic equivalent of orgasm.

And now it was Missy’s turn.

And now it was her turn.

As she lay quietly beside Angelica, giving herself over to the afterglow, she was struck by the sudden undeniable awareness that she was being observed. She could feel him there, behind the Japanese screen, could feel his eyes on her. She had the urge to look over there, even to wink at him, but she suppressed it. She was, after all, sweet young Missy, who could not possibly suspect Angelica’s well-heeled traveling man was even in the house, let alone in the room with them.

So she couldn’t acknowledge his presence. But she could damn well give him something to watch.

She rolled over on her side, kissed Angelica’s mouth, put a hand on Angelica’s breast, caressed it, then ran her hand over the flat stomach and down. Angelica was smooth as silk, she must have had it waxed, and was that a lesbian thing? Did they all do that, and was she herself less desirable for having hair there? If so, she thought, the woman had done an Oscar-worthy job of concealing her distaste.

Still, it was something to think about. Touching it — and she couldn’t seem to stop touching it, not that Angelica gave any sign of wanting her to stop — touching it was quite irresistible.

She’d wondered if she would know what to do when her turn came, but could see now that she knew everything she needed to know. She knew what she liked done to herself, for starters, and she had just learned what Angelica liked to do, and could thus be presumed to like done in return.

And her fingers were eliciting the desired response. She found things to do with them, and got the woman off that way, because teasing was Angelica’s trick, and she sensed that she would not want to be teased in return. And then, while Angelica was still in the throes of orgasm, she put her mouth to work.

She’d thought that she might not like doing it, but she did. And, from what she could tell, it turned out she was pretty good at it.

Angelica certainly seemed to be having a good time. She could only hope it was fun for the guy behind the screen.

Brady, perversely, was thinking of something else.

His eyes were glued to the action before him, and he was paying close attention to what they saw. But his mind had slipped almost a year into the past; while he watched one thing, he remembered something quite different.

The boy.

His name was Darwin, and he was their first — and thus far only — male playmate. It had been Angelica’s idea, and she’d made the suggestion several times before he agreed to it.

“For variety,” she’d said. “To test your limits, stretch yourself a little. And so that you can experience what I have every time, utterly dominating someone like yourself.”

He protested that he wasn’t gay, wasn’t bisexual, didn’t find himself attracted to men. “Curiosity,” she’d said. “You’ve had your cock sucked; what’s it like to suck one? You’ve fucked women; what’s it like to fuck a man? Or get fucked by one?”