Magdalene (41 page)

It was the first time in a long time I found
sex to be...
intriguing
.

“Mitch,” I whispered and shifted to kiss
him, slowly, alternately teasing him and giving him the full force
of a kiss. He excited me, this steel magnate and longsuffering man
of God with everything going on in a salsa club and next to nothing
going on in the bedroom; it was new and different. Adventurous. So
I’d had to marry him to get him in bed. So what? I couldn’t regret
it even if the sex had been perfunctory, albeit unintentionally.
There was just something about him...

“I’m going to make love to you, Mitch.
Remember what I do and use this as the rule of thumb: Whatever I do
to you, odds are, I’ll like it if you do it to me.”

“But I just finished— I can’t rebound that
fast.”

“By the time I need your cock again, you’ll
be ready.” Well, that was a lie. I needed it again right now, but
if my time as a plaything meant anything, it was that I could be
very, very patient. I knew that in Mitch I had an eager student, a
man who wanted to please. I also knew—somehow—that he had the
potential of being one of the best lovers I had ever had.

He drew me over him and down as I kissed
him, deep, slow, so that I lay on him and even now he meant to keep
control, with his fingers in my hair and a big, callused hand
clutching my bare buttock. I let that happen for a while so I could
drink in his taste, smell the musk of a powerful male sweaty from
sex and expensive cologne. I caressed his face with my thumbs while
we kissed, while our tongues slid and stroked.

I gasped when his hand slid down between my
legs and he slid his finger up inside me, not only because it had
been unexpected but because it was electric. It was simple, that
caress, and one that I’d felt dozens of times, but with
Mitch...

“You’re wet,” Mitch whispered against my
chin as he kissed me. Normally I would have laughed at his
statement of the obvious, but he knew it was obvious; he was
starting over, using his imagination, unwilling in the end to let
me teach him anything, wanting to learn on his own with a woman who
wouldn’t balk at anything he wanted to try. He slid two more
fingers inside me and caressed me—was it even possible to be
caressed
inside?

“Tell me what you want, Mitch.”

“I want to watch you masturbate.”

I opened my eyes and looked down at him.
“You never say anything I expect.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Stop expecting.”

I laughed then, delighted. “Why do you want
to watch me masturbate?”

“So I know what to do to make you come.”

“Oral sex makes me come.”

A slow grin grew on his face. “I’d rather do
that, then.”

He rolled me onto my back until I reclined
on a firm wedge-shaped pillow I’d ordered for just this purpose.
His big, rough hands gripped my ankles and spread my legs wide. I
couldn’t catch my breath while I watched him lie between my thighs,
his hands stroking up my legs, wrapping around my hips. Then all I
could see was his head between my thighs, his sandy hair
contrasting sharply against the black of my neatly trimmed pussy.
As I looked down my body and watched him eat me, I could feel his
tongue inside me, hesitant, unskilled, sloppy.

Eager.

Then he found my clit and pulled it into his
mouth. I gasped, shocked, startled by the beginnings of an orgasm I
hadn’t expected.

I was going to come on a lick and a
promise.

I knew how I’d taste, my juices commingled
with his, and to know he tasted them too...

“Mitch, kiss me.”

He looked up at me, then rose up on his
knees, one against my hip and one between my legs, pressing up into
me. He planted one hand on the bed over my head, lowered his body
to mine, pressing me deep into the pillow. His kiss was hard,
masterful, and indeed I could taste me and him on his lips, his
tongue. I whimpered and he turned his attention to my jaw, stroking
me with open-mouthed kisses.

The seducer had become the seduced.

I began to come with nothing more than a
bare male body pressed to mine, the scent of my own arousal in my
nose, my taste on my tongue, his mouth on my jaw.

Then I felt his knee move away, leaving me
open and wanting— He slid the fingers of his left hand inside me
again, driving in, the heel of his palm pressing against my clit
and rocking with the rhythm of my orgasm as if I’d taught him that,
which I hadn’t.

“Come for me, Cassandra,” he whispered in my
ear as it went on and on. I arched my back and cried out. I tried
to tell him I
was
coming and why the
hell
didn’t he
know that, but I could barely form a word much less an entire
sentence. His thumb touched my clit and he bent to suck on my
nipple. “Again,” he said, and it was if he thought he could command
me.

I obeyed.

“Mitch,” I gasped as my pussy clamped around
his fingers. I had to wrap my arms around his neck to hold on while
I fell off the edge of the world. “Oh,
God
, Mitch.”

I felt the rumble of his chuckle as I
drifted down from that high, languorous, lethargic, as if I had
never had an orgasm in my life.

Now I knew what it was like to fuck a
squeaky-clean Mormon bishop and I wanted to do it again.

And again.

* * * * *

Between the Moon
and New York City

March 19, 2011

Mitch awoke slowly in the unfamiliar bed
that dominated the suite at the top of Cassandra’s townhouse. Her
naked body was wrapped around him, warm, soft, woman. She smelled
of roses, orange blossoms, and sex. He was ready for her again, but
he dreaded it.

He’d failed.

Spectacularly.

For the first time since he’d come home from
his mission early.

His gut churned as his mind replayed the
hours before, when he had
taken
her without so much as a
by-your-leave, gotten
his
needs met, then clumsily found his
way—
somehow
—to giving her an orgasm. He knew he wouldn’t be
able to do it again because he didn’t remember what he’d done in
the first place.

Then there was the possibility she’d faked
her orgasm, but how would he know? Did other men know when their
wives faked orgasm? And would it matter? He supposed Cassandra
would be more accomplished at it than most men’s wives.

For the first time ever he
hated
the
restrictions he’d accepted as a member of the Church, a man of God,
a judge in Israel. He should have been better at this, better
at...everything about it. He was forty-four years old and he knew
no more than a twenty-one-year-old freshly returned missionary.

And, worse. That Mina had never had that,
never known that. He had never done that for his first wife, a
woman he loved, the mother of his children. That, at least, he
could remember.

Never given her oral sex.

Never even thought about it.

If he’d known how to make sex pleasurable
for her...known that it
could
be...

I want to watch you masturbate.

He groaned. Had he really said that? Because
he was too ignorant to know what to do and had
admitted
it?

Embarrassed, humiliated at his ineptitude,
he disengaged from her to hit the bathroom. He got in a hot shower,
unwilling to face her this morni— He looked out the window.
Afternoon.

She would leave him sooner rather than
later, and he wouldn’t blame her.

He started when the glass door to the shower
opened and she stepped in, tall, lithe, smiling. What in the world
did she have to smile about?

But he stared at her and her smile faltered.
She bit her lip. “Uh, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she
murmured and turned to go.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

She stopped, her back stiff. She looked over
her shoulder but down at the wet floor. “Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry I was so bad last night. It must
have been horrible for you and I—I’m sorry.”

She slowly looked up at him, her piquant
face serious, uncertain. “You’re not— Uh, you’re not sorry you
married me?”

“No,” he breathed, horrified that she might
have thought that, but looking at it from a bishop’s experience in
dealing with people, it was only natural. He’d been too caught up
in being a man who didn’t know how to please his wife, a man
dealing with a sudden onslaught of insecurities, to think about
hers. “No, Cassandra. Don’t think that.”

“You weren’t bad,” she said slowly, looking
into his eyes as if to impart something important. “You’re
inexperienced. That’s different. You made me come twice, one right
after another. That’s rare.”

He stared at her, trying to remember the
second time. All he remembered was saying “again,” but nothing more
happening than what had already happened.

“But—”

She turned fully then and he couldn’t help
but look at her naked body. The belly that, except for some silvery
striations, said nothing about having had four children. The
still-pert breasts that remained silent on the issue but for the
same marks. The tight, taut thighs and delicate feet. She had the
body of a thirty-year-old woman, now starting to glisten with
moisture, and he hardened with the thought of sinking himself in
her again.

“Mitch,” she murmured as she leaned against
him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and kissed him. Long, deep,
her tongue twining with his. He growled a little and pulled her
closer. “Lift me up,” she whispered. “Wrap my legs around your
hips.”

He gulped, understanding exactly what she
wanted and he wanted it too, but he feared turning into a selfish
lover—exactly what he had been to Mina for years and years, without
even knowing it.

Because he was ignorant.

Cassandra slid her hands up his arms and
around his neck. He did as instructed.

“Close to the wall. Press me hard between
you and the wall.”

He did that.

She shifted so that the tip of his penis was
at her entrance, but still he hesitated because one good thrust and
he might lose it again.

“Now,” she said, “drive your cock right up
into me, hard, like you want to pound me into the wall. Stay that
way as long as you can.”

His heart stopped. “Cassandra...”

“Trust me.”

He sucked in a long breath, then did what
she said. His world fell apart as he collapsed against her, to his
surprise, still hard.

“Mitch. You haven’t had sex in a very long
time. You didn’t know what you were doing in the years before that.
It’s not a surprise to me, and we both knew I’d be teaching you.
But you gave me what I needed last night. You don’t have any reason
to apologize.”

“I don’t want to be selfish. I never made
Mina do that, and I— I’m...ashamed.”

“Oh, Mitch,” she sighed. “Don’t be. Nigel
gave me the first orgasm I ever had. Think about that. I was
thirty-two. I’d been married for thirteen years. I had four
children. A gay man gave me my first orgasm
and
had to teach
me how to masturbate. Had to get me to a place where I even
cared
.”

He shook his head in resignation.

“I always assumed I couldn’t have one, and
truly, I didn’t care. Believe me, it had nothing to do with
religion or guilt or sexual mores. Some women just
can’t
.
Didn’t you and Mina ever talk about sex?”

“Not until she was diagnosed. The doctor
asked her about our sex life and she admitted she hated it. It was
very painful. Wiped her out for a couple of days afterward. That
shocked me. Hurt my feelings that she never told me. But the doctor
explained why, how the MS worked. After that, there was no point.
Her body couldn’t take the strain of another child and I wasn’t
about to add to her pain or exhaustion.”

“Well, there you go. If the sex is
difficult, the orgasm will be, too. Even if you’d known what you
were doing, you’d have worn her out just trying to get her
there.”

He gulped.

“It’s very possible that no matter how
skilled you were, she was never going to have an orgasm. Chronic
pain—disease—isn’t conducive to one. It doesn’t make you selfish;
it makes you both caught in a sad circumstance.”

Mitch didn’t know what to say, what to
think. So much he didn’t know because he hadn’t been able to bear
thinking about it all these years, for the wanting, the need he
had.

“Notice: You’re inside me while we’re
standing in a shower having a serious discussion, and you’re
still
hard.”

Yes, he was, and though she had told him to
stay still, he began to move. He couldn’t help it, but a slow smile
grew on her face and her lids lowered.

“You held back on me last night, didn’t
you?”

“Yes,” he murmured as he picked up his pace
a little, then buried his face in the crook of her neck. He felt
her hands in his hair, gentle, caressing. “I didn’t want to hurt
you.”

“Impossible.” She reached down to clutch his
buttocks, digging her fingernails in. “Do you understand the
difference between making love, having sex, and fucking?”

He took a deep, shuddering breath, the
vulgarity making so much difference to him now, meaning something
instead of some random adjective.

“Intellectually.”

“So, practice.”

“Which one?”

“Pick one. Do that. After, tell me which one
you think you did.”

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes,
as clear and brown and guileless as they ever were, as they had
been the first time he met her. “You won’t break?”

She smiled. “No.”

He slid leisurely in and out of her with
deeper, longer strokes, because it felt so...good, so right, and he
wanted to savor each sensation.

Mitch took a deep breath, because in his
gut, in that dark part of his soul he never wanted to acknowledge,
the one that responded when she told him she wanted to fuck him, he
wanted to do exactly that to her.