Date; Kiss; Home.

After the locks click and hum, and the windows begin to frost, we still sit, holding hands across the gear shift. Your hand is balanced on top of the shaft, fingers curled around my own. The sleekness of your skin against mine reminds me...

***

Earlier - perhaps in the restaurant after the show, snuggled against one another in the booth - our hands found each other and began to tease. I started to stroke your wrist, to emphasize a point, and then traced your palm and the web of skin between your finger and thumb when you responded. Your eyebrows arched when you countered what I had said, but you didn't stop speaking. By the time you had finished your argument, your fingers were creeping underneath the cuff of my jacket, tickling the soft part of my wrist. You smiled when I took a breath and collected my thoughts; your fingers had found the tender spaces between mine, and were mimicking an imagined coupling as I tried to speak.

***

The windows are fully frosted now, and the glow coming from the dashboard console throws a quirky reddish light on our faces. You push my hand toward me, and mid-sentence, brush my knuckles lightly against the fabric of my blouse over my breasts. The texture of the knit and the pressure against my nipples stalls my speech, makes my breath hitch momentarily, and then I continue telling you my thoughts on the show:

***

In the middle of an epic Act II, our fingers had become tangled up. You had leaned over to whisper something silly – perhaps how the sax player's love life was as messy as his rendition of the song – and put your hand over mine, as if to anchor yourself to me physically in the hopes that it would anchor us together mentally. I turned my hand over beneath yours and pressed into your fingertips; we stayed locked together until the next dance break, and then began tracing the curves of fingertips and knuckles, slipping about one another in the darkness of the orchestra section while the tap dances and duets rolled across the stage. At the first blackout, a mere hour and ten into the act, you plunged your fingers between mine, at once clasping my hand and penetrating it. The woman in front of me, with the frozen-in-time hairdo, turned around at my gasp.

***

Using my hand, my fingers, almost like a tool, you trace the baseball diamond of bare skin above my breasts, running around the frame created by my blouse, jacket and scarf. My fingers tingle as you run them across my collarbone, and I break off in the middle of a sentence when you let my hand go and begin to stroke just above my breasts with your own finger. The silence surprises you: until now, I've been a marvelously self-conscious actress, and it is only now that I slip and lose track of my words. Your hand stops moving, hovering above my blouse. I can feel the heat of your palm, hear your breathing, before you ask,

"Should I go on?"

There is no need to ask whether you mean to go on with your analysis of the show or with our lovemaking: they have become lost in each other, any distinguishing features stroked and talked away. In response, I arch my back and push my breasts into your palm. There is a moment, just before your hand molds to me, when your mouth goes to form a word and cannot find the proper shape to take. Seeing this, I smile, and only then does your hand relax against me. As your lips form a round growl at the softness of my flesh under the blouse and bra, your fingers curve in, closing around first the base of my breast and then sliding gently, carefully, to circle my nipple. Before my eyes close in a clench that mirrors the clench of my thighs at this new tease, I see your wrist bend up, the pianist's delicate bend that means you are playing.

***

When we walked into the theater – so afraid we would be late because of the miserable traffic, but, amazingly, there with 25 minutes to showtime – you wanted to steer me through the crowd to the box office. Past the producers and writer-types, past the scholars who wanted to make an appearance, past the actors who wanted to do anything just to be seen doing it: my hands full of clutch purse and coat, you smilingly fit your hand into the curve at the base of my spine, just above my ass, and taught me the choreography of walking together. After we had the tickets, your hand stayed there, gently commanding my movement while we meandered through the courtyard and lobby. We stopped to read the artist biographies outside the doors to the theater, and I arched my back, pulling the curve of my spine away from your hand momentarily. You leaned in to whisper to me as I stepped back and uncurved my back, and somehow we pressed against each other from shoulder to hip for a second before your hand rediscovered my back and I stepped forward again, suddenly conscious of the milling audience behind and around us. Your whisper still snuck into my hearing,

"Later, cherie."

***

Your fingers have tightened to an excruciating, pleasing pinch around my nipple, and your breath comes close to my ear, swooping down to my neck and the sensitive line of skin beneath my earlobe. As your mouth fastens on my skin, your hand pulls away and I reach out to pull you back to me. In a rush of movement and stroking and whimpered sighs, we land locked together, foreheads touching, hands locked about each other's faces, clasping, caressing. Your fingertips creep up the back of my neck, loosening my hair until the clip falls out onto the car seat and the bundle of curls falls down my back and over my shoulders, tickling your wrists as your hands slowly cradle my head. Our breathing slows, lips barely touching. The warmth of your breath painstaking melts into my mouth, softening my lips to your touch, as we begin to kiss.

Your fingers tighten in my hair, pulling me back from your mouth and lips and tongue. An open-mouthed growl of protest slides out of my throat at the loss, and is silenced by your hands as they slide beneath my scarf, over my shoulders. They hover above my breasts, your fingertips resting on my heated skin, as if you are asking permission. I have to untangle my hands from the folds of your jacket to run my hands up your arms, wrap them around you and say,

"Please."

***

At three – in the morning; we haven't left the car yet – my skirt is ruched up around my hips, and my shoes have long since tumbled into the darkness of the passenger side footwell. There are toeprints on your windshield where my feet brushed and pressed and wriggled against the glass while your fingers strummed my clit, frosted reminders of the heat we have created in your car. My scarf has dropped off of me, and is crumpled between my back and the seat; my jacket, thrown into the back seat over papers and boxes and an ancient tape player. Even in the warmth of the car, my nipples are spiked and tender, and chafe against the knit of my blouse. The lips of my cunt are throbbing and wrapped around your fingers, hugging you as you fuck me speechless, while my hands warm your cock and tease the sweet ridge underneath your cockhead.

"Darling, I need to –"

as your fingers plunge into me and I have come home.

For you, DB, from C.