The Unmentionable

All characters are at least 18 years of age. Heck, just to be safe, they're all over 30.

*****

As she finished up the household bills and logged out of the bank's website, her own hand surprised her, gently easing across her upper thigh. It felt good... weirdly, unusually good, as though she'd never rested it there before, never had the pleasure of sensing the toned muscles she'd built through years of running. The softness and strength of that leg, warm beneath taut denim, came as a revelation to her fingers and palm.

Whose hand are you? she thought with a little interior laugh. And what do you think you're doing on my leg?

In response, seemingly of its own volition, her middle finger slid over and down, just above the seam that ran the length of her inner thigh. There, it drew three tingling, unhurried letters that brought her eyebrows together and made her breath catch a little, and it replied silently, What I can. What is permissible and possible and as close to what you asked as I can manage.

She swallowed thickly and whispered, with barely any breath, "Okay, now you're making me nervous."

I'll stop the instant you want me to, said her hand. Just lift me up and look away. But there's nothing inappropriate about this, nothing that goes beyond this moment in this room... there's nothing in this except what you know you deserve, just for being you and for being human and decent and kind. Lift me up and look away if you're afraid. But if you trust me, then relax and let something beautiful and clean and proper happen as a gift to yourself and a gift from me.

She bit her lip and filled her lungs deeply with air that seemed to freshen in each passing second. Somewhere in the back of her head, her mind gave its permission, and then that finger trailed firmly, deliberately up the seam on which it rested until it reached the crease between thigh and groin. There it paused a moment and burrowed in the hollow above her...

Femoral artery, it said, making her suppress a cackle.

"Oh, you're bad," she told the finger as it moved on and was joined by those to either side of it, gently massaging the right edge of her labia majora in tiny circles.

No I'm not, it said. That's not what this is about at all. I am good and you are good, and that's why this is okay.

She nodded and then gasped a little as the fingers moved firmly and surely to press inward right at the root of her zipper. Her other hand moved too, then, lazily drifting its fingertips across her belly's left side, descending from the thinner weave of her t-shirt to cross the hump of her belt and set her lower abdomen a-tingle.

The thumb of her left hand hooked into her waistband, while the fingers spread and her wrist rotated to glide them over the soft flesh above her womb. Her right hand continued its insistent pressure along the denim and stitching that covered her panties and her clit. Heat and hunger swelled up from her genitals in a hormone wave that set her chest on fire.

Let me feel, said her hands.

Sliding up along the fabric, maintaining pressure the whole way, her right hand joined her left, to sinuously loosen and undo the belt buckle, and pinch and twist to pop the button of her jeans. Although still held by clenched rows of zipper teeth, her pants surrendered their clutch at her waist, letting her flesh breathe, letting her hands untuck her shirt.

Letting the right one descend with maddening patience along the softness of her belly to the elastic of her panties and then, at last, just the fingertips, inside.

Strangely, once there, they felt... different. Larger? Stronger? Or perhaps just more curious and less casual than when she moved them there in a typical masturbation session. She felt an eagerness in those digits, an anticipation at the nearness of her curly bush, the next border in unexplored territory after belt and button and waistband.

They touched, they teased, and she breathed a little faster at their obvious enjoyment of her springy thatch.

"Lower," she mouthed silently. The fingertips told her, shhh, and crept downward. As they went, she discovered her other hand pressed against her ribs and climbing, questing, then rising like a hot tide up her breast, thumb flicking at the spot where her nipple lay within her bra. When the stiffening nub rewarded her hand's efforts by protruding against the fabric, the thumb circled it slowly in time with the finger-joint progress that her right hand made, crawling down through the nest of her pubic hair.

She made no sound when her middle finger found the soft valley at the south end of her bush. But staying quiet took some effort. That first touch, feather-light, then a slight pull back and then a more assertive, sure exploration - her cunt flared at the attention, and she marveled at the way her swelling clit felt new to the finger, how the finger felt new to the flesh it tested and touched.

So very beautiful, her hands told her with their searching. So made to be touched, so intended to receive this pleasure.

The middle finger continued on, flanked by her index and ring fingers, each of which attended one side of her mons, working the mounded flesh gently. In circles that matched her thumb's areolal orbits, the central fingertip brushed delicately at her labia, touching them as something new and treasured. More and more boldly, it sought, dimpling the slit between her lips and finding the glossy moisture of arousal starting to flow within.

"Oh!" she said, as his finger dipped in, probing. In a flash, her left hand darted from her breast to her mouth, where two fingers entered, met her tongue, and came out wet. Then they dove into her panties after her other hand, and before she could think, she felt his tongue on her clit, damp and tender, touching, tasting, and thinking, I can't believe I'm really getting to do this for you. It's so wonderful.

Shallow and deep and shallow and deep, his finger sought her pleasure within the enfolding flesh of wet, soft, multi-textured vagina. His other hand drew the cleft of her mons up and open, putting just the perfect tension on her engorged clitoris as he tongued and tickled it. Her eyes closed, and the room disappeared around her, and she became the focus of an attention and desire that transcended herself. That told her: Your perfect ecstasy is important to me - is, in this moment, the only thing that matters.

She found herself squirming helplessly at the plunge of his finger, the determined affection with which his damp tongue teased the hood of her clit. She moaned deep in her throat and worked her hips like she was being fucked, except that this was better than being fucked - this was being worshipped, having her sexuality placed on an altar that said it was exalted and holy. If the ceiling had opened up and let through a beam of sunlight, it would have felt exactly like this: warming and golden and calling her toward Heaven.

Then the orgasm came, everything she could have asked for or hoped for or dreamed of or wanted: singular and pure and given just for her. Selfless. Arising from a need that would not be denied, a need to communicate to her the worth and worthiness of her femininity, her sensuality, her personhood. The power of it, the length of time she spent suspended in its pleasure, the physical qualities that made it uniquely its own moment - these things mattered so much less than the why of it, its origins in a joyful appreciation of who she was and an unsuppressible, anxious yearning to make things better.

When it had washed her clean and she came back to herself, she eased her hands from her pants and rested them on the curve of her belly. She didn't know what to say or think. This had been right, and yet she thought it should feel wrong. It had been beautiful, and yet she thought she should feel sullied. She didn't understand how she could be so at peace with what had just happened.

There is within us, her hands said, that which is one. We all have it, everyone, everywhere. All I've done here is to help you be touched by that part of you that is also me. You have given me no gratification, only taken this creation, born out of my wish to help, and used it, by yourself, for yourself, to satisfy your own physical and emotional need. Faithlessness is found in the indulgence of desire. It is not faithless to attend to a need whose neglect will end up breaking you inside. Those around you will be happiest if you are strong and whole. And if the part of you that is me supports that, then a thing of beauty and goodness has been achieved.

And then the sense of otherness departed in a way that said it could never really depart, and she did up her pants and her belt, and she found that the day that stretched before her looked suddenly brighter and more manageable.