The Devil May Care

"Oh, a little here and there," I admitted. Only for an hour and fifteen minutes, six days a week, at a gym that charges me $125 a month. I smiled. "How nice of you to notice." I looked over at him and could see evidence that he did like the way I looked. "So, have your inhibitions about oral sex been fixed?"

He grinned at me. "I can think of a good way to check." He rolled over and gave me a peck on my thigh.

Hmm. Was this ethical? Shana was my best friend, and Andy her boyfriend.

Andy gave me another peck on the thigh. Actually it was more than a peck, and its more advanced location satisfied me, Andy no longer had any reluctance about putting his mouth where it counts.

"Hold on, Buster," I said, taking hold of his hair and lifting his head out of its new trajectory toward my crotch.

"Huh?" he looked at me with some serious puppy-dog eyes. "I thought you could help me test it out."

"Nope. You need to take your new talents home to Shana," I said with all the conviction I could muster.

He sat up and scratched his head. "Yeah, you're right. Still, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Once dressed, we met back at my front door.

"I really do want to thank you," he said. "I'm still skeptical about who," he paused, "or what she was, but I never will forget the therapy." He gave me a little friendship buss on the cheek, and then he was out the door.

** * * * *

Two days later I got a voice message from Shana. She wanted to talk.

Was she pleased with Andy's new willingness to kiss the kitty? But how much did Andy share about his therapy session? Was she upset that I had taken things into my own hands? Had Andy said anything about Red? I put my trepidations on a leash, and after a walk around the block, they were content to sit quietly in the back of my mind.

It was Shana's day off, so I went over to see her about two o'clock. She met me at the door in a robe with a glass of wine. "Come on in and join me. Let's get in the hot tub." It was her favorite spot, and we had had "vino in the vat" many times before. The tub was just outside on a small, enclosed patio screened for privacy, and Shana often tubbed nude, especially once the sun went down. I'd kept a swimsuit in the extra bathroom. But with no current inhibitions, I decided to throw caution to the wind.

Shana arched her eyebrows at me when I unwrapped my large towel and slid naked into the water beside her. "You are getting awfully bold in your old age. I think I'll join you." She stood and doffed her skimpy two-piece. "Ah, that's better."

She opened a bottle of white wine and poured me a generous glass. I noticed there was another bottle sitting empty beside the wine cooler. After taking a nice long sip, I looked at her. "So, what are we going to talk about?"

At first she said nothing and just stared past me. Finally, she took another swallow of wine and sighed. "Andy and I have been having trouble."

I figured it was better to play dumb, so I waited a little for her to go on. However, she seemed to have lost the thread. What else if not sex therapy sessions, are friends good for? Finally I asked, "What kind of trouble?"

"I ... we...." She hung her head a moment then took another slug of wine. "We were having trouble because Andy didn't like to ... you know ... lick me." Her face was red; discussing intimate details of our friends' and relatives' sex lives was different from discussing her own.

After another sip of courage, she continued. "He went out and got some kind of therapy so he could, you know, go down on me. Last night he went right to it, but I was so, I don't know, nervous I guess, that I couldn't get into it. Finally we just quit." A little tear trickled down her cheek.

Not sure what to say, I leaned forward and gave her a hug. "Hey, it's okay. I'm sure you guys will work this out."

"I know, but he goes out of his way to get help to please me, but then ... he can't please me." She finished with a rush and buried her head in my shoulder, sobbing.

I held her in my arms until she had stopped sobbing. She snuffed and backed out of my embrace. "Thank you, Elizabeth. I don't know what I'd do without you." She retrieved her towel and wiped her face — and took another sip of wine.

My position while I'd held her had been a little awkward, and I straightened up and stretched out my arm. She set down her wine glass and slid over beside me. "I'm sorry. I was just inconsiderate. Here, let me help you get the knots out."

She reached for my shoulders and turned me away from her so she could massage the muscles. She rolled my shoulder and then worked her thumbs into the muscles on either side of the top of my spine. It felt good. In fact, it felt very good, since my shoulders were tense. I told her about how this morning I had gotten an email from my boss, Mr. Brenner, about an error I had made on the Murcheson account, and bemoaned having to spent three of my precious vacation hours getting everything straightened out. By the time I'd finished, the muscles were relaxed and Shana was finishing up. "Oh, thank you. You don't know how good that feels."

"Mmmm, maybe I do," she whispered in my ear. "Your skin is so nice and smooth. I like rubbing you."

What do you say to something like that? By this time I was into my second glass of wine, and I felt the lift of euphoria shutting down the worry cells in my brain. Shana's hands were soothing, and she let them trail down my arms. She nudged me to turn toward the wall of the tub. Moving a towel to the ledge, she said, "Lean on that and let me rub your back."

She didn't have to ask twice. I rested my arms on the towel, then my head on my arms. Shana moved behind me and started rubbing my back. Thoughts of just relaxing were diverted when I shifted to straddle one of the tub's many contours, and it brought my sex near one of the water jets. Casually, I let my left leg shift forward just a little, and Bingo! — a clitoral bull's eye.

I was warm and relaxed, Shana was rubbing my back, and the wonderful ripples swirled and tickled and teased in a delightfully endless pattern of stimulation across my lips and clit. A week ago, I would have been completely mortified by this situation, but now I just went with the flow — so to speak.

Shana upped the ante quite considerably by sliding her hands off my back, trailing them along the sides of my breasts. She stroked around them, then up to the tips. Catching my stiffened buds between her thumb and forefinger, she squeezed both nipples at once. Instantly, my orgasm burst forth out of my sex, and Shana pulled me over the edge into complete insensibility by pinching my nipples in time to the spasms that rolled through my body.

I'm not sure how long it took me to start thinking again, but it wasn't too long. Shana had pulled away from me and was sitting back with a strange look on her face. Was she having second thoughts about what she had just done? Right now I didn't want her thinking, so I slid over to her and pulled her into an embrace. I gave her a warm kiss and whispered, "Thank you."

She looked at me, lost in a fog, so I gave her another kiss. That one penetrated, and she kissed me back. Then she kissed me back enthusiastically. I started stroking her hair with my hands, tracing down her arms. Her wet nipples poked into my slippery breasts; I captured one between my fingers and gave it a gentle squeeze. She groaned in my mouth, and I took that to mean she enjoyed it. I tried the other one with my other hand, and that one was working too.

By now she was panting, and I encouraged her to slide up out of the water and on to the platform around the hot tub. My towel was nearby, so I flipped that out so she had something soft to lie back on. There was something I wanted to try. I got between her legs, and she looked at me dumbly. "Let's see if this works," I said and lowered my mouth to her vulva.

This was new territory for me, but by now I knew what I liked, so I tried the same on her. I give her bush a little kiss, and then let my tongue trail out over her moist flesh. She was wet from the water of the tub, but I immediately found a different kind of succulence to the flesh between her legs. She had a tangy-sweet nectar flowing from her sex, and I lapped it up. Evidently I got it right, because her legs started to tremble. Encouraged, I moved up to find where her clitoris sprouted out between her soft, sweet folds.

Hearing her mumble, I raised my head. "What?"

"Oh, right there!" she gasped.

I paused.

"Please?" she said.

I had paused because Andy was standing in the doorway, a few paces behind Shana. He was naked, his large cock nicely hard, and he was stroking it while he watched us.

He winked, raising his finger to his lips to urge me to silence.

Okay, if he wanted to get his rocks off watching me pleasure his wife, I could do that. After all, I had watched him with Red. Of course it wasn't the same at all, but rationalizations are quite simple in the throes of passion.

I resumed zeroing in on her clit.

"Unh, unh, unh," she chanted with every stroke. Even as I was tempted to count how many it took to get her off, she erupted into a climax that shook the hot tub. Her legs spasmed up, squeezing my head, and I steadfastly remained in place, feeling the little pulses slowly die away under my now-stationary tongue.

When her legs finally released me, I moved up to snuggle and kiss her, but she had started crying by the time I got there. She saw me and wailed, "Oh, I'm an evil pervert!" She turned away from me, and that's when she saw Andy. "OH! No, no, no..." she chanted to herself, curling into a ball on the walkway around the tub. She clutched at the towel, and rolled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth.

Andy went to Shana and tried to comfort her, but she just wailed and tried to pull away. He looked at me desperately. "What can we do?" he pleaded.

I hated to see her like this. After all, it was just sex. She must have felt what we had shared was wrong. Forbidden. Taboo.

Aha! What she could use was a little therapy to help free her from her inhibitions, and I knew just the therapist. In fact, the four of us could have a fine party once we got Shana calmed down.

I called Red.