Carnival

Still panting, he relaxed his hands and let me up. His cock slid out of my mouth, glazed and somewhat deflated. I sat up and used a finger to dab excess cum out of the corners of my mouth and blinked my eyes. Drew lay sprawled on the settee with his head resting on the back. His eyes were closed and he looked completely blissed out. Then he opened his eyes and sat up, reaching for and handing me the remains of my glass of champagne.

"Thanks," I said, drinking it down. When I had drained the glass he poured me another and filled another glass for himself.

"That felt great," he said. "That was primo!" He gave me his dazzling smile again, and I felt absurdly pleased with myself. I figured that in his line of work, blowjobs were an expected and commonplace reward, like the bouquets of red roses that conductors and soloists in the more staid musical genres received after the concert, and I was glad if he thought I'd done him good.

By unspoken agreement we moved to the nearest bed, taking the champagne with us, but not bothering about the heaps of clothing we'd left around the settee. We lay cuddled together. Drew ran his hands through my hair and kissed me from time to time. He got his hand partially stuck under the underwire of my bra, and said, "C'mon, get this off," and when I reached back and unsnapped it, he gathered up my breasts and tongue-flicked and suckled my nipples until I was panting and whimpering and moving all over the bed. I treated him the same way. His dark-rose nipples were as hard as little erasers, and when I flashed my tongue over them it made him shiver and gasp. He pressed me down on the bed and started kissing a trail from my breasts down my belly, stripping my panties off and pulling my thighs apart with his hard, warm, hands.

"Mm, you smell hot," he said, sniffing appreciatively. He grabbed one of the pillows off the head of the bed and stuffed it under my ass. He lowered his mouth to my upraised cunt and gave it a long, complicated kiss. His tongue strummed my clit and figure-eighted in my wet furrow. I shifted and nudged it against him as if it were my mouth kissing him back. My center tautened and clenched, and clenched, and I let out a gusting shout and told him don't quit yet, and he didn't. Just as if he had ignited a string of firecrackers, I went off three more times in rapid succession, something which had not happened to me in many years. We continued our interesting kiss, his mouth against the one between my legs, until I was shuddering and incoherent. He raised his head and looked at me, dazed, his mouth glazed with my juices.

I could hardly talk, except to say, "I want you to fuck me now."

He got up and leaned over me so he could kiss me. I licked my juice off his mouth. He sat back and put the tip of his cock to my slit. "Damn," he said. "And I thought it was going to be a boring evening." I gazed at him, breathing hard. I squirmed closer to him, trying to get closer, get impaled. "Talk to me. Tell me just what you want me to do to you."

"You want me to talk dirty to you?" I said.

"Yes. Yes, I do." He smiled.

"Put it in me," I said.

"Put what?"

"Your cock. Stick it all the way up my cunt. Please. Now." He did. I felt it slide against the sweet spot inside me when he did. He settled completely inside me, all the way up to the root. He leaned over me, looking down into my face.

"What happens next?"

"You fuck me. Move inside of me."

"You got it," he said. He drew back and shoved it into me, hard. I gripped his arms. He had me spread out in a slightly uncomfortable position, but it let me feel that contact with my sweet spot and watch him as he moved, see his face as he gave himself over to the sensations he was feeling. At some point, he tensed and shivered inside me and I thought he had come, but he carried on; he must have pushed himself to the very edge, felt that edge and pulled back. He kept up that almost unendurable slide and scrape against my spot, and I knew I had to have it again. His pace had picked up; I figured he was going to really do it this time.

"Damn that feels good, Drew! Keep ramming that beautiful fuckstick up my pussy. Oh, that's lovely. Mm. Yeah. Put your thumb on my clit, I want it now oh, yeah, stroke it stroke it stroke it—"

I broke around his cock like a wave, as the bifold roar of sensation took me from the inside and the outside simultaneously. This was where I always needed action and force, just brutal ball-slapping cock slamming into me and making my climax roll on the way a wave that crosses another wave extends your ride. I wrapped my legs around him and thrust against him. I wrung his cock with my cunt muscles. "Ah, God, Drew, fuck me, fuck it good! Now! Do it now! Move, honey! Fuck me till I fucking split! Unh! Right! There! Now!" And he did it now, gasping, groaning, his beautiful mouth drawing open in a rictus of ecstasy.

We fell in a sweaty, exhausted heap. I could feel waning flutters as Drew finished inside me. The roar of our hearts quieted to something we could hear over.

"You—talked me—right into it," he said. He was collapsed on top of me. He still had not got his breath back. "Wow! What a ride! That was something. I don't know what I expected, but—man, have you ever got a tight grip!"

I gave him a heartfelt Kegel. His eyes widened. "I work out," I said.

In a little while we ended up in the shower. We'd both had to go to the bathroom, and taking a shower seemed to be a logical next step. I loved an après-sex shower with a man; the way the water made the combined smells of our sex juices revivify before washing them down the drain, the way when you kissed the water that got into your mouth tasted sweet next to your saliva, the slipperiness of soap and the squeak of clean skin (unless you were showering in Baton Rouge, and then you never felt rinsed off)—the potential for further mischief you could get into…

When you contemplate mischief with someone, especially when you've only recently met them, it's as well to make sure that his idea of mischief is compatible with yours.

We were doing a half-assed job of washing each other off. He was washing my back, and had progressed to my backside. He massaged it with a soapy hand.

"You sure have a muscular butt, Esmé," he said.

"Thanks, I think," I replied. He slid a finger into the upper part of my crack.

"Tell me—is your ass as tight as your pussy? I bet it is."

"It might be," I said, "but don't go there."

He pressed up close to me, and I could tell that he had started to recover from his last climax. "Why not?"

"Because I'd rather you didn't. Isn't that enough reason?"

He was distracting me by caressing my breasts with his other hand, and licking and nibbling at my neck and my ears. "Ah, c'mon, Esmé. I bet you'd like it."

"I bet I wouldn't. Don't go there, Drew."

He was sliding his finger up and down my crack, the pad of one string-hardened finger grazing my hole with every pass. In another minute, he had his finger, well lubricated with soap, up my ass. That was OK, but I knew I didn't want anything bigger going in there.

"Now is that so bad?" He was maneuvering me so that I was caught between the tub enclosure wall and his body, which made me nervous.

"No, but that's all I want in there."

He was still finger-fucking my ass, and I was starting to get excited in spite of myself; nevertheless, that was not the part of me I wanted him in. I could feel his stiff cock nudging against my thighs and buttocks, and I nudged back against him, parting my legs, hoping that he would remember the perfectly good port of entry he'd used before; I wouldn't have minded him stallionizing me. He had stopped stroking my body with his other hand; too late, I realized what else he was doing with the soap. The finger was withdrawn, but then in one lithe movement, it was Drew's cock that entered me.

"Damn it, Drew…"

"Oops," he said. I could tell he was smiling. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

If it had just been his finger, it would have been all right for a while; or if he had been fresh. But this would be his third climax and I knew this one would take the longest, and I was going to be in pain before he was done. I was starting to be in pain already. He had me squashed up against the wall of the tub enclosure, with his hands hooked under my shoulders. He transferred one to my pussy and I concentrated on that feeling. I felt myself tighten up but it was hard to identify why. I was on a knife-edge of sensation, between the pleasure his hand was giving me and the pain his cock was giving me

After a while he said, "You really aren't enjoying this, are you?"

"Oh, honey, I'd like to enjoy it, but truth is, I—"

"All right." He slid out of me. "But you're not leaving me like this! Let me finish." He backed me to the wall, his cock poking at my pelvis.

"Let me clean that thing off before you put it anywhere else," I said, grabbing hold of it and soaping it up. I closed my fist hard around it, and he surged forward.

"Hey, that'll work," he said. He turned us around so that he was leaning against the wall instead of me. "That'll work fine. Jack me off, Esmé." I continued to slide my soapy hand up and down his cock. "Mm, that's nice. But do it harder." He stood braced, his hips jutting forward, away from the wall; his legs parted, their muscles tensed. "Harder, harder for God's sake! I don't want gentle. Come on, jack it like you mean it, I can take it, that's what it wants, that's what I need!" His voice had become an urgent snarl. "God damn it, do I have to do it myself?"

I snarled back at him. "No fucking way," I said, and hauled away at it as if it was not even made out of real flesh. His face had assumed a closed, ruthless look and I knew he was close. I stood close to him; I had my other hand, liberally soaped up, behind his balls, rubbing that hard area back there that guys probably include when they are telling you how long their dicks are. Millimeter by millimeter, I worked my hand back further. I could feel his balls tense up. Turn about is fair play, I thought.

I turned him about with a vengeance.

The water from the shower poured down on us, roaring like jungle rain, unheeded. We were both of us squashed together in the bottom of the bathtub. Drew had his knees drawn up and he was resting his head on them.

"That's interesting," I said brightly. "I'd never actually heard a man scream before. Not in real life, anyway. Only in the movies. And then, someone was hurting him."

He did not look at me.

"I'm not sure you didn't," he said.

"Uh-huh. I suppose that's why you came like you'd been thrown across the room."

"I was coming anyway. Jesus! Warn a man when you do that. And just one finger at a time, for Christ's sake."

"I warned you," I said. "I said, 'Don't go there,' didn't I? What part of 'Don't go there' did you not understand? You're a hard-fucking little bastard, aren't you?" I laughed a little. "I just wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine." I was still hurting a little but I didn't care. "A man's got a sweet spot, too, and yours just got stirred up a little. Man! The way you looked, and, mm, mmh!—that sound you made—I will remember it to the end of my days, I swear. The end. Of. My. Days."

He raised his head, and looked at me. The water fell through his hair, onto his face. Water stood in his dark-amber eyes. It gave him a drowned look, somehow.

"You'd let me in your other two holes, I thought I'd go for all three. I really thought you'd get to liking it if you just gave it a chance."

"Oh, hell, Drew," I said. "I should have communicated with you better. I didn't want to bore you with my medical issues." It was what old folks did; they bored you with their medical issues. Probably all someone like him ever had to worry about was injuries to his hands, bad food taken on the road, the odd sports injury, and STDs. "I'm OK, you'll be OK, and by the way, I pity the guy who ever tries to bugger you without an invite. He'll be lucky to get back what he put in. As it is, I'm glad I don't make my living doing microsurgery, I'd need another week of vacation before I could go back to work." I put my fist under his chin and raised his head. "We're still friends, right?" He gave me an oblique look. "Right," I said for him, and turned off the water.

We got out of the tub and dried ourselves off silently and abstractedly. I didn't know what he was thinking; I was thinking still of the way his face had looked, the way he'd reacted, when I'd entered him. It had been so unguarded, so strong, so fine. His face a mask of ecstasy/agony. That scream in a voice that was surely never meant for screaming. Every time I thought about it, it felt like something arrowing through me and it felt good.

"You hungry?" I asked him.

"Now that you ask, I am," he said. "I'm 'bout to starve."

In the mini-fridge at the wet bar that I had been avoiding using, was a quarter of a muffalotta sandwich I had been unable to finish at lunch, and a bunch of cruelly expensive, out-of-season Champagne grapes I had bought on impulse in the French market. Drew looked askance at the grapes but inhaled the muffalotta as if it had been a petit four. I looked in the folder of restaurant menus the hotel provided. It was late, and there is never any hope of getting decent New Orleans cuisine during Mardi Gras, but you can always rely on Asian food, and that's what we did. We ate seated at the small table in the sitting area, he kilted in one of the hotel towels and I in my favorite old white terry robe I'd lifted from another hotel than this one. He wolfed down an order of Kung Pao chicken, while I ate the fresh spring rolls he'd ordered with it and decided he didn't like. We didn't talk much; we were too busy eating, and Drew had found the remote and turned on the television.

It was late. Time for bed and fresh awkwardness. I wasn't quite sure what I remembered about the etiquette of spending the night in a situation like this. Drew got into the bed I had been using, and I got into a short, thin silk nightgown and considered whether I wanted to lie next to him or sleep in the other one.

He held out a hand to me, looking appealing, and said, "Come on in here, Esmé. I'll be good, I promise." So again we were like old friends, cuddled together, still watching TV, and not talking about anything much except what we were looking at. He flicked through a bunch of music video stations with the air of someone who wanted to keep on top of what was going on in the business.

Suddenly I realized that he had quit saying anything for quite a few minutes; he was too quiet, lying warm, heavy, and inert next to me. The remote he had been holding fell from his limp fingers. It had been a long day for him; after an evening of hard work, having then been well fucked and well fed, he was down for the count. I studied his face as he lay there asleep. I noticed the translucent edges of his incisors, that I could see when mouth fell open a little; and the way the roots of his eyelashes could be seen going up into the skin of his utterly smooth eyelids. Even the beard hairs poking out through his skin looked soft, although I knew they were not. A kid, I thought; in a moment of irrational panic I wanted to sneak over to his clothes and get out his driver's license and make sure he'd been telling the truth about his birthday, that his picture wasn't a profile shot. Naah, I thought, he's not that much of a kid. Just so much more so than I. I felt a rush of tenderness for him. I leaned down and kissed the end of his slightly outsize nose. A curled hand came up, and like a baby or a kitten, he vigorously rubbed the end of it; then he turned on his side and wrapped himself in deeper slumber as if it were an extra blanket. I turned off the light.

Sometime later I woke to find that Drew had spooned himself behind me, and I could feel his cock nudging between my thighs. I stiffened, unsure of his intentions. He snuggled closer, tugged up the bottom of my nightgown, and repositioned my leg. Knowing fingers fluttered the lips of my pussy. A sleepy murmur in my ear: "Is this the right place?"

"Mm-hmm," I said, and backed up to him, snugging my ass against his thighs. He entered me, the tip of his cock sliding against my anterior wall, where the sweet spot was, his leg slipping between mine. I reached down for his hand. He found mine; he tucked my fingers between my labia, bracketing my clit, laying his hand on top. We started a sweet, sleepy ride, with him pleasuring me from the inside and the two of us pleasuring me from the outside. I felt him tense, shudder and spurt inside me. His teeth were set lightly in my shoulder. He continued to stroke me with his still-hard cock, and our fingers, and I came, profoundly, blissfully sighing and whimpering. Poleaxed, I fell asleep again. I thought there was something that I really needed to see about before I dropped off, but I couldn't remember what it was and if it involved getting up, I was too relaxed to.

Dawn, and I had to get up. I had to pee, and Drew was sleeping like the single man he was, swastika-style all over the bed, leaving very little room for the single woman that I was.

I thought about everything that had gone down last night, and felt nostalgic already. I knew that this encounter was a one-time thing. Most of this man's life was ahead of him, and too much of my life was behind me. We'd had a good time. I wondered if we might have time for another round before breakfast, but wasn't going to get my mouth set for it. It wasn't Mardi Gras anymore. It was Ash Wednesday, and soon Sidonie would be stirring us all up. Later I figured she'd want to find us a church somewhere and have ashes imposed on us. By that time, Drew would be back at work. Just as well, when I reflected on the general craziness of standing next to him in line while a preacher smudged a cross onto our foreheads, thinking, remembering…I still had to think how he'd join the rest of us for breakfast. I wondered what he'd tell his fellow musicians about his evening.

When I came out of the bathroom I remembered what it was that I should have seen about before falling asleep: I should have locked the door on my side between my suite and the suite Sidonie and Gavin were sleeping in. I had not, and now I stood, paralyzed, watching the knob turn.

The door opened and Sidonie came in, wearing a bathrobe that was a twin of the one that I was wearing; she had acquired it at the same hotel.

"I just cannot drink like I use to could," she said. Her face creased in the momentary agony of one who feels a bolus of hydrochloric acid trying to climb up into her throat. "It tears up my gut. You got an antacid?"

I went and peeled her one from the roll of Tums I kept in my purse. She took it and crunched it gratefully.

"Thanks," she said. Then, "Whoo-ee! Do you ever look like you were rode hard and put away wet!" She grinned her trademark lecher's grin. It looked like it should have hurt; her lips looked raw and blurred on the edges. There were deep shadows under her eyes. Her hair was as tangled as a witch's.

"Ha! You should talk," I said. "I suppose I shouldn't ask what you were up to!"

"I was with my husband, whatever I was up to. I'm glad you found some action last night. I see that he bites…" Her gaze had fallen on where the collar of my robe had fallen aside. Perhaps Drew's teeth had not been as light in my shoulder as I'd thought. She looked over at all our clothes, in haphazard heaps around the loveseat. "And that he's still here. Oops! Sorry. I'll leave you now. Bring him to breakfast, if it suits you. Um, by the way, what did you do with my cousin?"

While I was taking a deep breath and opening my mouth to think of a good answer, the Italian faun in my bed stirred, and stretched. A neatly made foot, not a hoof, extended from beneath the bedclothes. He rolled onto his back. His head pressed into the pillow as he stretched, and then it lolled to one side where his face could be seen, looking unbearably sweet as the sleeping young always do. His mouth fell a little open, and a beam of early morning sunlight sneaked between the curtains and fell on his face, shining on the corner of one of his incisors like a diamante.