"Please. Have a seat."
His hand grasped the top of the mission-style chair and pulled it away from the table, and he nodded with a smile. She returned it, eyes fixed firmly on the ground -- or any space that wasn't his own gaze, actually -- and gracefully lowered herself to the seat.
"It'll be just a little while longer," he said, his voice calm and reassuring. "Good things always take time."
As he disappeared into the kitchen, she watched him go, unable to wipe the silly schoolgirl grin off her face. Ann had met Alex after eating at his restaurant, one of the best-reviewed in town. She was immediately drawn to the way he treated cooking as an art, with an eye toward flair, toward creativity, toward making a statement with his food rather than just preparing something to cram into one's mouth.
Alex was known in particular for one dish: his pork three ways. Brined pork chops, fennel sausage, and maple-candied bacon. It was a sympathy of indulgence on the plate, an aggressive display of meat that hit ones nostrils like a javelin to the chest, resulting in an almost lustful salivation. The effect of putting a bite of any of the three options in one's mouth was a sort of orgasm on the tongue, one that lasted in real time for second but in the mind for long stretches of minutes, hours, eons -- you just wanted it to keep on and on, forever trapped in your mouth. All three pork techniques together? Ann was hooked. She had to meet the man who could create this kind of culinary magic.
Soon, Anne found that just being in Alex's presence had a sexual effect on her akin to a waft of his delicious food hitting the nostrils. It was immediate and overwhelming, something she noticed even on their first date together, and beneath her dress, her pussy dripped with wetness the same way her mouth watered for his cuisine.
"Sex and food are the same," he once told her. "You do not eat just one dish, or one style, or one ingredient. You do not eat for mere practical sustenance, as if it was a chore to be over and done with. You do not cram food in your mouth, forgetting to stop and appreciate what it is you're consuming.
"No," he continued. "Food is meant to be savored. Every stab of the fork should be appreciated. You close your eyes, you raise the bite to your lips. You savor it. You breathe it in. You let the flavors dance around on your tongue for seconds that -- if the bite is as it should be -- seem to stretch forever. You eat because it is a visceral experience, a pleasure felt by your body in a very natural, primal way, and you want to feel it in new and exciting ways each time. Yes, you have old favorites in the recipe book that you return to time and time again -- but each time you have them, it should be as if you're having them for the first time.
"It is the same with sex," he said. "It is to be varied. It is to be savored. It is something you close your eyes and let wash over you as though you are feeding your body with sensations. There are so many different ways to make love, an entire menu of options, and it is our duty as sexual human beings, I think, to give each dish its due, so to speak."
"Each dish?" Anne asked. She had always been a little reserved when it came to sex; she knew what she liked, she knew what fantasies danced around her head in quieter moments, but then there were things she'd heard about that she could simply never imagine herself enjoying. "I don't know ..."
"You never know how you will like a dish until you try it," said Alex. "You hear the term 'sushi' and think 'raw fish' -- you may even think it sounds unappetizing -- but until you try it, prepared by a master, the crude description belies the pleasure your taste buds receive. All foods are meant to be enjoyed, not repulsive, and the delights of the libido are the same way. Everyone has their own tastes, certainly ... but everything is enjoyed by someone, and I enjoy learning why, don't you?"
Anne had winnowed her eyes and smiled upon this remark, sizing up the man across from her. His sexual confidence baffled her, intrigued her, made her want to know more. She wasn't sure if she agreed or not with what he was saying ... but she found herself unable to pull away, the back of her mind racing with a million lurid thoughts.
"You sure have a way with words," she laughed. "So eloquent!"
"What can I say?" Alex said with a lopsided grin, leaning back casually in the booth where the two sat and ate on their date. "You spend a lot of time in the kitchen, a lot of stuff pops into your head. I've practically written an entire book like this in my own imagination."
"I'd read it!" chirped Anne.
"I hope you'll do more than read it," said Alex. "It's even better to live it."
And now, that's what Anne was doing. Having seen Alex for several weeks, things were going well. They'd even gone to bed, an exhilarating experience for Anne. But still, she was holding back. She hadn't totally released herself to him sexually. When she looked into Alex's eyes, she could percieve the kind of creatively--fired lust with which he saw her, but she wasn't ready for that. Not yet. Or not to this point anyway. But every time Alex touched her and left her awash with the kind of deep-in-the-pit excitement that only he seemed able to supply -- the kind that made her lips curl into a puckish grin and her head dizzy and unfocused, intoxicated by passion -- she knew it was only a matter of time.
Tonight, however, Alex was treating Anne to his other forte -- cooking. A special meal -- his three-way pork -- prepared to mark the one-month mark of the two seeing each other. The results were predictably transcendent. The first morsel Anne put in her mouth made her furrow her brow and coo in happiness. Alex had a gift, to be sure, and for right now, Anne was the sole recipient. Across the table, Alex smiled as he watched her indulge in his creation, studying her reactions, from the blatant to the subtle. He wanted to know exactly what made this woman tick.
"I have a very ... promising weekend planned," he finally told her when she had finished the dish.
"Promising?" she responded.
"Yes," he said. "I want to get to know you and your body completely."
"What does that mean?"
"Do you trust me?" he asked. His eyes pleaded with hers. Unexpectedly, Anne felt her fears melt away. All she knew in the moment was that yes, she wanted to trust him, and to please him.
"Yes." She hadn't even planned to say it. The word just leapt from her mouth.
"Good," he said, rubbing his scruffy chin thoughtfully. "You trust me as a chef, right?"
"Absolutely." That goes without asking, she thought.
"Then allow me to set this up as a sort of carnal feast," he said. "Think of this weekend as one long meal of sexual indulgence, exploring different cuisines and different dishes each time."
"Different dishes?" she asked. "What, are we going to eat while having sex?"
Alex laughed. "Would you be opposed to that?"
"I don't know," Anne said. "Now I'm curious ..."
"Good: Curiosity is important," said Alex, "but that's not what I was talking about. I was speaking metaphorically."
