“Iris?”
Finally, I looked up and nodded.
I was fine. His chair screeched across the floor again, but this time he dragged it closer to me until his knee touched mine. He didn’t have to pull me towards him when he put his arm around my shoulder—I leaned against him all by myself. Like gravity.
“A sudden sadness is not unusual,” he said so quietly, his breath stirring the little hairs in my ear. “It’s like coming down from a high, like after you take drugs.”
“I’ve never... done drugs,” I whispered with a little smile and he broke into a warm chuckle. It was a beautiful, rich sound—not loud but it seemed to fill the room into the last crevasse between the wood planks on the floor.
“Of course you haven’t,” he replied. His smile was still crinkling his face. “You’re a good girl, a very good girl.”
And apparently, an easy one. I exhaled a shallow breath at that simple pronouncement, angled my face up to look at him and my eyes couldn’t have left much to the imagination. I moistened my lips and left my mouth open just a fraction of an inch. We were so close, I could feel his warm breath on my face, but every minute that passed without him kissing me seemed to deflate me, my chest, and my stomach. I gulped and reached for his glass, but he stopped me with a warm hand on my wrist. His head moved from side to side once and that was all it took.
His eyes didn’t leave mine as he dipped his finger into the wine. Then he brought it to my face, gently brushed the liquid over my lips. I whimpered with the sensation that fell like a drop on a dry patch of earth, greedily soaking up every hint of what he gave me.
It was only after the first impression that a little of the taste leaked onto my tongue. This was not the diluted, softened version. It stung, harsh in taste and smell. With every second that it remained on my lips, I could feel the alcohol burning into my skin and finally, I sucked my lips into my mouth and licked it off. I felt heady and light as I watched him take a sip of his own. His hand cupped my cheek, held me there, suspended by his grasp—and finally his face came closer and closer, blocking out the light from the softly whirring bulb over our heads.
Even before his lips touched mine, our noses met and something inside of me melted, broke from its egg a fresh and tender hatchling.
He tasted like wine but on his lips the burning sensation seemed at home, a perfect complement, a natural pair: snow on a Douglas fir, edge on a razor. I almost choked when his lips opened to mine and he let wine trickle into my mouth. My eyes flew open but he held me steady.
Drink. Drink.
Our wine-soaked tongues moved against each other as I gulped the liquid down, down where it burned my body and set it on fire again. When we broke apart, he took another sip and this time, I knew what to expect—how his kisses came flavored in burning liquid and dizzying heights, pushed further with each sip we shared.
I hardly noticed when he reached into his pocket and pulled out an object—metallic and familiar in the corner of my eyes. Click. Silence. And suddenly I heard someone gasp and moan, a high-pitched fragile sound, birdlike, yet earthbound. They were my moans, crackling ever so slightly on the old tape recorder. While I listened, Paul filled up his glass again and I didn’t know if my head was pulsing and red-hot from the wine or from listening to the sounds of my own pleasure. Eventually, I grew louder; the sharp cracks of his large palm meeting my flesh made me jump even now, in their ghostly recorded image as wine ran down my chin and stained his white shirt red.
A certain hazy slant captured my mind. Images and sensations flooded past in rapid succession. One moment, I was in that chair, the next his fingers had slipped under my arse and he was lifting me bodily onto the table in front of him, opening my legs like the covers of a book ready to be devoured. We didn’t speak this time but he laid me back across the table. Breadcrumbs tickled my shoulder blades until, for the life of me, I couldn’t feel them anymore, washed away by his tongue lapping at my shores.
I was moaning in unison with my recorded self: she was getting louder and more desperate with each slap but I was soon rivaling her in abandon. His fingers slipped inside of me again, smoothed by my slick juices but still they were so clearly a man’s hands. A man of olden times before men exfoliated. They were hands from an age where men worked with their hands, strong, calloused and driven. They moved in and out of me, two strokes for each recorded slap, as though they were full-note bass beats and Paul was creating a half-note rhythm fluttering over them in and out of my moaning melody.
Something toppled off onto the floor but I hardly noticed. I was grappling at the wooden surface, at my breasts, at the open air—anything that I might hold on to as my body started to billow like a sheet in the wind.