This is the first time.
She wears a dress from her closet, the material smooth and clinging, holding her curves like a lover’s hands. It wraps around, ties at the side, dips low in the front. If the wind catches it just right, it’ll also show off the black lace garter belt she pulled from her drawer and the span of bare skin at the tops of her sheer stockings. She hopes he’ll like what she’s wearing, but she dresses for herself. This is how she feels best, sexy underthings beneath a dress any woman might wear. Of course, she’s not any woman. She’s herself.
She waits without moving, despite the urge to pace. She stands at the window looking out at a parking lot, trees beyond it. Cars pull in and cars pull out. She couldn’t tell you the make or model or colour of any one of them. She looks but doesn’t see. She waits and waits, every moment tick-tocking through her, while she tries without success to slow the beating of her heart. It throbs in her chest, her throat, her wrists. Between her legs and, just like that, she has to close her eyes and put out a hand to touch the wall and keep herself from falling.
When the door opens behind her, she almost can’t look. All of this is real now. Everything they’ve talked about but never done is going to happen in this room, and she’s afraid that when she turns, he won’t be the man she’s been imagining. That she won’t be the woman he’s expecting.
If she never opens her eyes, will that make this less real? Or more? There’s only one way to find out, and no fear can keep her from wanting to know. She opens her eyes. Turns.
He’s smiling, thank God.
‘Tess,’ he says.
It’s not her real name but a secret joke between them. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin. He says she could be a milkmaid like the one in Thomas Hardy’s famous book; sometimes she calls him Angel as part of the game.
It’s a little awkward in these first minutes with the door shut and locked behind him and the big bed between them. He doesn’t move right away; she’s afraid if she takes her hand off the wall she’ll have nothing to keep her from going to her knees right there – and there should be something that comes before that. Some dialogue. Some pretence, maybe, that this is something more than what they both know it really is.
Because he doesn’t move, she does. One, two, three steps towards him across the soft carpet that threatens to snag the heels of her shoes. She thinks he might say something then, but instead he takes her in his arms and anything that might’ve been awkward has no chance to grow.
‘Hi.’ His lips brush the side of her neck.
It’s not technically the first time he’s touched her, but it lights her up. Sets her on fire. Turns her inside out.
She forgets how to breathe.
His hands settle on her hips and toy with the material of her dress. The hem inches upwards on her thighs. His smile drifts along the slope of her neck to the sweet spot at the curve of her shoulder.
She takes his hand, curls her fingers against his. Moves it over her hip. Slips it inside the slit in her dress, between her legs.
He breathes in when he touches her bare thigh, the top of her stocking, the metal and elastic clip of the garter. When she curls his fingers against her cunt, he breathes out. It’s her turn to smile.
He pulls away, just enough to look at her face. When he opens his mouth to speak, she seals off whatever it is he means to say with a kiss. Their first one. Mouths open, tongues stroke, there’s the chance their teeth will clash but they don’t.
‘You taste like chocolate,’ she murmurs into his mouth.
Then his fingers shift, and the words are gone. He slides beneath the lace. Finds her clit, the pressure sweet and perfect, just right. She doesn’t mean to bite him, but her teeth catch his lip. She mutters an apology but gets out only one syllable before he’s kissing her so hard she can’t be sure if the blood she tastes is his or her own.
She doesn’t care.
His hand is on the back of her head. His mouth on hers. His fingers slide against her, then oh fuck, inside. All the way, thumb still pressing her clit, and she has to grip his shoulder, bury her face in his neck. She bites him again. This time, she means to.
If this had been something sweet and slow, both of them taking their time, something with blowing white curtains and scented candles, music playing in the background, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But there’s nothing slow about this, and the only music is the sound of his belt unbuckling, the snicker-snack of the zipper going down. The only smells are her perfume and his skin.
Somehow, his shirt is pulled off over his head and tossed aside. His pants go too, kicked off and forgotten as a couple of steps take them to the bed. She’s on her back. Mouths fused, he’s on top of her for too short a moment until he pushes up onto his knees to undo the tie at her side. He opens her dress, and she watches his face.