Andi Mathis - Penny Candy

Jameson had had the decency to position himself a few feet away and behind me, and I heard his breath start to deepen and huff as he started to whack himself off. I have little interest in cocks, so I ignored him. I heard him mumble, Shit, she's in her pussy, and speed up his own action.

I moved to the edge of my own chair and unzipped my khakis and jammed my hand into my slippery slit. I wasn't going to waste any time, so I started my rhythmic thrum and felt my heart start to rev.

Pia's gal pal looked nervous. The look on Pia's face was hard, determined, and she shifted her weight on her feet, and I felt the squeeze of her pelvic muscles on my own fingers. A hand found an upper arm, a grasp I knew. Then the girfriend withdrew, holding her sex hand awkwardly until Pia lifted it and licked her own juice from her fingers.

The tour group had started to move again, the collective rumble of slow walkers turning in unison, and Pia zipped up. She was shaking a little, not with any kind of nervousness, but with the anticipatory kind of tremor that lets you know there's more to come.

At Channel Five I was hot, but Pia was nowhere to be seen. In shipping, the tourists crowded around the forklift track, as pallets of coins were stabbed and lifted, until the little trucks were nearly tipping over. Sweat ran down the nape of my neck and behind my ear. I was on the plateau, abuzz with hot engorgement, taking my strokes in practiced, long pleasure, not wanting to rush.

I scanned the screen, wishing I could see Pia, as if she might also be able to see me, and know what I look like on the veritable edge of coming.

The night before, with her tongue inside me, I had been begging, willing my cunt to swallow her, hoping that the pull and suck would never stop. But it did, and I hadn't finished. Pia had dressed in the semi-darkness, silently.

"Don't be angry," I'd said.

"I'm not," she'd answered too quickly. "I'm not sure why you're holding back."

"You can't really think that."

She shrugged. "Maybe it's me." A moment. A stare that could kill. "But I've never had this problem before."

What could I say? She slammed the front door as she went out.

I'd lost all sense of caring where she'd gone when Six picked them up in the lobby, lingering over the souvenirs and display cases of Penny Anomalies: Coins Gone Wrong. There, some penny sculptures and paper-thin coins made up a sort of Ripley's Believe It or Not of the weird and wonderful of Centiana.

I was solidly perched on my own three fingers, mixing and churning and waiting.

Pia looked pissed. She gestured at her girlfriend, sullen and threatening. The crowd had pretty much dispersed, and the lobby guard was trying not to listen in to whatever angry words were being exchanged.

I was seconds away from coming. If only Pia knew.

But suddenly, the girlfriend had hold of Pia's jacket, jerking it, and Pia reeled, turning toward the camera, and her hand went back, calculated her aim, and smacked the stranger's jaw in a hard, open slap. The girl staggered back a pace and jostled a display, knocking a jar of pennies to the ground in a shattering rain of copper.

The camera caught Pia in a sly smile, and I came all over myself.

Andi Mathisis the pseudonym of a New York academic. She is single, butch, and wears a leather jacket. Her ambitions include a successful novel, teaching in China, and raising a morally straight son. She likes women, but not cats. Her work has appeared in many lesbian publications.

"Penny Candy," by Andi Mathis, © 2000 by Andi Mathis, first appeared in Exhibitions: Tales of Sex in the City, edited by Michele Davidson (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.