"No, I know what you said, I'm just not sure what you meant. I don't think we've gotten boring, things just have gotten busy, that's all." James started to reply, and then cut himself off. He sighed and started again.
"Boring wasn't the right word for it. I'm sorry. There's just only so many times I can watch "The Office" without getting a little bit numb to everything."
I stood just outside the tiny kitchen, forearms pressed against the cheap linoleum of the countertop, watching James as he washed my dishes. It was one of those habits that you don't notice about a person until the roaring fire of passion has burned through into glowing coals of stability. He hated to leave dishes in the sink, and would wash them unprompted. A small part of me wondered if he resented the fact that my ADD meant the sink--and surrounding countertops--often held a bevy of half-empty glasses, salad bowls, and the occasional paper napkin. But if it bothered him, he never complained.
Instead, James stood in my kitchen in just joggers, a hand towel thrown over his bare shoulder. He placed the last glass in the drying rack and turned to face me. I connected with his eyes, and he interlaced his fingers with mine. I looked down and inhaled deeply.
"I know, babe. And now that I'm getting my feet fully underneath me in the new job, I can start to cut loose a little more."
In the past year since James and I had attended the conference in Raleigh, we had both made slight career changes. James had moved outside the classroom, taking a job as an administrator in a newly opened elementary school at the request of his former principal. At the same time, I accepted a position as a training and development coordinator at a software company. While the clientele was certainly different than my days as a high school math teacher, functionally I was doing the same thing--attempting to convince a captive audience to complete tasks they ultimately knew they'd get credit for regardless. At least this way, I got better health insurance and 401K contributions.
James moved around the counter, stood behind me and placed his hands on my waist. His fingers toyed with the waistband of my underwear, drifting underneath. I placed my palms on the top of his hands, preventing him from teasing me any further. I felt his breath on my neck as he whispered in my ear. "Besides, I need to meet these new work friends of yours. I'm sure you've told them all about your hot little trophy boyfriend, and they're dying to meet me, right?" I pressed back into him, and turned to whisper back.
"Not really. Besides, how am I going to sleep my way to the top if they know I'm bedding an elementary school assistant principal every night?"
His hand plunged into my underwear. "You know, they're looking at bringing back corporal punishment. I might need to practice my spanking skills."
We both cracked, our laughter shattering the sexual tension we had been building. I spun around to face him. "You know you're a fucking weirdo, right?"
"So what does that say about you?"
I responded by handing him the glass I had been drinking from. "One more to wash, then maybe we can practice."
James set the glass behind me on the counter, then picked me up and set me on the counter as well.
"Dishes can wait. What time does your roommate get back again?"
"I've told you, it's not going to play out like that if she walks in on us. You're not that good looking. I mean, maybe if she caught me solo, but you'd ruin the vibe."
"I'm down to try and find out." He pulled the oversize T-shirt up over my head, and traced his way with kisses down from my collar to my breasts. His tongue flicked lightly across my nipple as his thumb worked small circles over the thin fabric of my underwear. I felt myself starting to melt as my nipples hardened and I squirmed in anticipation. He hooked his index fingers back under the waistband of my underwear, and I instinctively lifted my hips to help slide them off. He shot them like a rubber band across the apartment's living room. His hand now returned between my legs, this time with the electrifying feeling of skin on skin, as his fingers toyed with my lips in a delicate figure-eight.
"I mean, I guess there's only one way to learn." I wanted the words to come out confident and in charge, but instead they came out breathy and desperate. I leaned into the feeling and ran my fingers through the hair on the back of his head. I rolled my hips against his hand, as he began to work his way back from kissing my chest to kissing me behind the ears. He tugged lightly at my earlobe with his teeth and involuntarily I moaned and pushed hard against his palm. I could feel the heat radiating from me, a desperate yearning for relief. I gripped the back of his head hard and pressed my mouth down onto his shoulder, finding purchase on the skin and muscle. I tried to keep from biting down too hard, but found the taste of iron in my mouth soon after.
"Fuck, Yvette."
"Sorry, sorry, just--oh fuck."
My apology was cut short by his middle finger sliding into me, curling up against the soft tissue of my pubic bone. As his finger curled, his palm pressed hard against my clit, pulsing and rubbing in a passionate duet.
"Is this how you want her to find you? Naked on the countertop, begging for me?"
I tried to protest, but the words wouldn't rise. Instead, I bit down on my lip hard and stared at him with soft eyes. "Mmhm." The words were a quiet assent to our shared fantasy.
He wasn't wrong, either. Vanessa and I had met shortly before I left education, and the slow sprout of what I thought was just female friendship had grown into a blossoming girl crush before setting in as a full-fledged realization that maybe I wasn't as far to one side of the Kinsey scale as I had once believed. She was taller than me, with long dark hair and a Japanese cherry blossom tattoo that curled from her hip up her rib cage. If I was the human embodiment of a Pumpkin Spice iced coffee, she was an espresso from a place where the barista wore suspenders and waxed his mustache. She worked as a trauma nurse for the local hospital, and thrived on the adrenaline and excitement.
"I can't help it, I've alway been risky," she once confided in me while we nursed beers on our living room couch. "It's a blessing and a curse."
I wanted so badly for her to catch us, to find me a sopping wet mess on our countertop. I wanted her to push James to the side, to show him how it should really be done as she sent me tumbling over the edge, like a loose rock on a hiking path crashing into the water below.
I also didn't want to shoulder all the rent on my own if it went sideways, and those two urges kept me in constant tension. Meanwhile, James derived a sense of pleasure at winding the string of desire around those two posts and seeing how much tension I could handle before I snapped.
I gripped tighter now on the back of James' head and pushed it downward. I wanted him to taste me, but more I wanted the warmth of his mouth, the fire of his tongue, the roughness of his beard against my thighs. I bucked harder against his face, feeling the stiff hairs of his mustache scraping against my skin as his tongue lapped hungrily between my legs. The occasional squirm now locked into a steady rhythm, writhing against his mouth and hands. I felt the muscles in my calves begin to tighten, and the tension climbed. I crossed my ankles behind him, and clenched down with my thighs around his ears. I moved my hips faster and faster as my mind wandered into fantasy. I imagined Vanessa standing behind him, her hands on my legs as she played director to the performance in front of her.
