Penthouse (20 page)

I was lying in total darkness on my bed, the speaker phone on the nightstand beside me. He could surely hear the desire in
my breathing.

“Peel your panties over your ass. What a peach you are! Oh, I just want to bite into you. Raise your ass to my lips, feel
my teeth and lips on your smooth cheeks. I run my tongue along the cleft until I come to the deep, tight spot where the peach
was plucked from the tree. Did you remember to push smooth green silk leaves up your ass?” he asked.

I hadn’t this time but just the suggestion of it made my heart beat faster.

“Winter is so cruel,” he continued. “In summer you will have sprouted slender peach leaves, fragrant just like the luscious
fruit.”

I fingered my asshole, breathing heavily as I remembered
last summer’s erotic adventures with fresh fruit and leaves. “I’m pulling these impostor leaves out of your ass; they don’t
belong in such a lush, ripe fruit. I rub my thumb over the hole and press in.”

Lying with my face to my pillow, my ass thrust upward, the hands molesting me were no longer my own.

“I want to peach you.” His voice pressed into me like a hard object. “Oooh, so juicy, my thumb is slick. Peach oil is the
best lubricant, don’t you think? What a heavenly scent, like nectar. Oh, now the juice is starting to flow as I push my other
fingers into your slit. Open that fruit wider, cleave you, reach in for that kernel.”

My body tightened relentlessly with every sentence. I was scarcely breathing. “Ummm, Suzanna, my peach! Let me suck all those
juices. I’m holding your ass up to my mouth, juice running down my chin, my fingers circling the kernel in the cleft, my tongue
pushing into the peachoiled hole. I’m eating you. I’ve pulped you with my tongue, pulped you with my fingers, now I’m going
to pulp your flesh into sweet, honey-melting juice with my cock.”

“Oh,” I gasped. “Peach me! Pulp my pussy… ooohhh…”

The Poet doesn’t always go for peaches, but he has never missed the mark. But then perhaps my desire is a large enough target
that it would be difficult to miss.

A couple of weeks later, dateless still, I called again. Linden’s been moved up to the eleven o’clock slot. It’s “Candlelight
and oil” this time.

“Hi! How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. A little stressed. I thought by now the new job would be less new. So far my acquaintances don’t seem to have
real friendship potential.”

“Time for some TLC, courtesy of me. I’ve got a dozen candles lit. Would you like a nice hot bath before or after the massage?”

“Let’s start with the bath. I’ve finally gotten a speaker phone run into the bathroom.”

“A nice hot tub of water.”

“Rose-scented bubble bath,” I said as I stepped into the already prepared tub. He talked to me like a lover while I bathed.
For some reason, tonight it just wasn’t working very well.

“What’s wrong?”

How can he tell something’s wrong? Can he really hear the tiredness in my voice through the hiss of the phone? I confessed
I was really too tired to stroke myself off after all. “That’s the disadvantage of this phone fantasy—sometimes I really do
need an actual massage. I can’t work myself into a lather—pardon the pun—” I interjected, splashing loudly out of the tub,
“until I’m relaxed enough to be aroused enough to release some tension.”

“Yeah, I understand. Listen, you’re in Plainsville, right?” I had, in a moment of real candor, told him where I’d moved.

“Yesss,” I answered slowly.

“That’s, what, two or three hours from St. Paul? I’ve got a friend in St. Paul who is a certified, licensed masseur.”

“Isn’t it against the rules for you to give out names, numbers, referrals?”

“Yes, but that’s really just designed to prevent sexual solicitations of any sort. This is legit. Besides, if you don’t tell,
and I don’t tell, and my supervisor is in bed sound asleep and not monitoring the call—Are you out there, Diane? Speak now
or forever hold your peace—who’s to
know?” He gave me his masseur friend’s name and number, wished me sweet dreams and good night.

I called in sick and slept late. I ended up working overtime as the next weekend approached, and felt even less inclined to
drive two-and-a-half hours for a back rub than I had when Linden gave me the referral. But I did call a friend in Minneapolis
to ask her to check the reference out for me. The next time I called Linden I got off so easily to the “Downtown” scenario
that he asked afterward if I’d gotten a massage as he’d suggested. “No,” I said with a laugh, still dizzy from the sex. “I’m
not working overtime now.”

Thinking about it later, drifting off to sleep with my hand between my legs and Linden’s voice in my head, I halfway decided
that I deserved a treat, a weekend in St. Paul. I called and made an appointment for a massage, and a reservation at a decent
hotel. It had been so long since I’d experienced an actual oiled full-body massage that it was no wonder the fantasy was drifting
away.
Next time I talk to Linden,
I thought,
I’ll be able to feel his hands more vividly.
And there will always be a next time. That’s the beauty of phone sex. It’s real human contact, but no messy misunderstandings,
no changing my life for another person, no insecurities because I’ve gained weight and more than a few gray hairs have shown
up. If someday Linden isn’t there for me, well, there will always be someone— which is more than I could say before I started
calling.

I was sitting in the waiting room of Holistic Health & Aromatherapy in St. Paul as I was having these wonderful thoughts of
sexual freedom. Then my name was called, and I realized I would now have to shed inhibitions and clothes, stretch out on a
table, and be touched all over (almost!) by a complete stranger, with his hands rather than his voice. I undressed and waited
for Steve, the masseur. As
I stretched out on the table and closed my eyes I began an imaginary dialogue with Linden, listening to his voice in my head,
talking about warming up the massage oil and what kind of massage did I want, hard or soft? I could just hear the gentle teasing
in his voice as he pressed his hands against my body….

The masseur came in about that time, a tactile aid to my fantasy. I smiled, treasuring my secret carnal thoughts. “Would you
like your massage hard or soft?” I heard Linden ask. “You know, peach massage oil is the best lubricant.”

I very nearly came at the sound of his voice. I didn’t open my eyes. I was so frozen with shock that I almost didn’t speak.
He was standing beside the table. I had heard the sound of cloth; he was clothed even if I wasn’t.

“Medium,” I managed to say, clearing my throat. “I may be too tense for a hard massage just now,” I said.

The shock was wearing off and ebbing away into a different and very familiar sort of tension as he began with my back. My
mind was racing—did he know it was me, Suzanna, the phone-sex woman? I had fallen asleep many nights fantasizing about meeting
him, actually being with him. Now I suddenly craved distance. What my body craved was a different matter altogether. My body
wanted contact. I opened my eyes. His cock was somewhere in those loose white drawstring pants, and somewhere below eye level.
I think I would have pulled that drawstring, but his massage technique had turned my tight muscles into lank, docile lengths.

I floated, aware only of his hands and the wet sound of my pussy as I was gently rolled over onto my back. I was looking right
up at him, staring right into the eyes of my dream date. His eyes were brown. He had crow’s-feet. The
stud who had split me in two, made me come so hard it hurt, was a middle-aged man, balding, nice build. He worked on my arms
in silence. Then, just as he finished my left arm, he leaned over and nipped the flesh inside the elbow with his lips. He
knew. He had to know who I was. Liquid trickled from my pussy to my anus. My cheeks were getting wet. I shifted my legs, trying
to relieve the sensation of trickling liquid. He had draped a towel discreetly over my mons, but it couldn’t hide the sound
and scent of a wet pussy.

Linden’s hands rubbed my belly all the way down to the fur. Next he moved to the foot of the table and massaged my feet. Then
my legs, then my thighs. Up, up, not quite into my snatch. Back to the stomach. Up to the breasts. I noticed how deeply I
was breathing. His breathing matched mine. Neither of us said a word. He pinched my nipples, twisted them very, very slowly.1
was gasping. My legs were spread, dangling off either side of the table from the knees down. I didn’t remember spreading them.
As Linden massaged my breasts, I moved instinctively on the table. Images of that voice, those hands, and all the ways I had
been penetrated by them, were flashing through my head. He grasped both my nipples with his fingertips and tugged them straight
up. I cried out. He slid his hand into my bush and massaged my clit for about thirty seconds. That was all it took. I came
so fast and so intensely that I felt buzzed, drunk, hallucinatory. When I finally came down, my body shook with chills and
aftershocks. Linden wrapped me in towels, soft and plush, straight from the warming rack, then leaned over, covering me with
his torso. The silence was strange.

This was Linden, right? The man who talks dirty,
evenings, Tuesday through Thursday. I had stopped shaking by this time. My whole body felt just unbelievable.

“Sweet dreams,” Linden said, his eyes dancing with mischief and delight as he turned to go.

“Tuesday, midnight. ‘Beach house,’ ” I said huskily.

He grinned and nodded.

BY
S
USAN
S
COTTO

H
e was always coming by. He’d stop by the coffee-house at least once a day, sometimes more, when Jen was working. He’d flirt
with me too, and I could feel his eyes checking me out as I steamed the milk for his latte. On days when I was wearing a loose
top I’d make sure to dip down and pick a napkin up off the floor, just to give him a glimpse. He’d pretend not to notice,
but I could tell that he looked.

When business was slow the three of us would sit and talk, mostly about music. He didn’t always agree with what I had to say,
and often, when he was making a point, he’d lay his hand on my arm, to ensure he had my full attention.

Jen, though, was his favorite. She had this long, curly red hair, its wildness restrained in a ponytail most of the time,
just the way her wildness was hidden beneath her flannel shirts and jeans. But he knew it was there. He sensed it somehow.
Which is why he bought coffee more when Jen was working than when I was.

Jen liked him. We both did. He wasn’t tall, and he was muscular, but not obviously so. The overall impression you got from
him was of a beautifully proportioned young man with a strikingly attractive face. About my and Jen’s age, we guessed. Sandy
blond hair, dark blue eyes, almost chiseled features. Lips that would rise just a bit on one side when you said something
funny.

Lots of times I wished he was the one on the other side of the counter, so I could watch him make me a latte or lean over
to get the milk from the fridge. You see, as beautiful as he was to look at head-on, the back view was even better. Sometimes
when he was walking out I’d just stare at the way his T-shirt hugged his back and waist, the way his ass filled out his faded
jeans. God, when I saw him in those jeans, all I could think of was how great it would be to do him. I could reach around
and feel that ass as it moved up and down with the rhythm of his fucking.

Jen knew how hot I was for him. One day after he’d left she picked up a napkin.

“Need this?” she asked, motioning toward my crotch.

“I’m so wet I could take the Coit Tower,” I whispered.

“Think he’s the Coit Tower?” Jen asked.

“You find out,” I suggested. “He wants you.”

Jen shrugged. “Yeah. He’s even asked me out. But I said no. He just doesn’t do it for me.”

“Unbelievable,” I told her. “Honey, all I have to do is think about him and…” I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. If I
could have slipped my hand up under my skirt, I’d have come in an instant. But two customers had just walked in.

“Well, I’m telling you right now,” I said quietly as I waited for our patrons to order, “if you’re not going to fuck
him, I will. He walks around looking like that, he deserves to be—hard.”

All evening I waited for him to come back in. Jen was working, so it was pretty much a sure bet he’d return before long. Sure
enough, around nine he showed up—in the jeans. Jen was clearing tables, so I got to take his order: large cup of coffee, for
here. Still facing him, I reached down under the counter for a cup, and as I did so, the thin strap of my sundress slid off
my shoulder. I bent forward just a bit, knowing the front of the dress would gap open enough for him to see. I pretended not
to notice what had happened, but he saw. It was just a moment, but a moment was enough.

When he raised his eyes, his gaze met mine. He knew I’d caught him looking. I smiled and slowly adjusted the strap of my dress.
He smiled back. Then he said, under his breath, “Wow.”

I wasn’t sure whether he meant me to hear it, but I smiled again and handed him the cup of coffee. He took a seat at a table
near the counter, where he, Jen, and I could talk when there was a break in the flow of customers. A couple of times I sat
down with him. I’d drape my arm over the back of my chair so my shoulder strap would slide down my arm. I’d push it back up,
of course, but every time it slipped, he watched.

At ten I was off for the night. Jen had to stay till midnight and close up.

“You walking home tonight?” she asked.

I nodded. “It’s so nice out.” I turned to him. “Walk me home? I live just up the street.”

He thought for a moment, then stood up. “Okay.”

He walked out first. When I reached behind the counter for my purse, Jen winked and gave me a thumbs-up.

Outside we strolled along slowly, enjoying the breezy summer night. The bottlebrush trees waved jauntily at us, and as we
turned off Walnut Street, I caught the scent of jasmine from the yard next to mine. I wanted to wrap myself around him and
discover his natural scent, the one he kept hidden beneath his cologne.