I don’t realise I have dozed until one of them moves. It’s Nathan under my arm, my arm across his shoulders, Nathan up beside me on the pillows. His eyes are closed, sleeping, so I think, in his sleep nuzzling my side just below my breast, with his lips. It’s a cosy sensation. Intimate, tender. I resist opening my eyes until the touch becomes a tickle and I squirm away.
It’s three am and the candles on the floor, spread around the bed, have burned down, some of them gone out. The cd player is quiet. The room is quiet and hung with the last of the incense. One of them has smoked a cigarette. I don’t like that, not in my room. If they want to smoke in Nathan’s room, that’s fine. I’ll light some more incense later.
Nathan opens his eyes, glances up at me, his eyes glimmering in the soft light. There is an odd appeal in them, something I don’t comprehend. For a minute I think the fool might love me, and I tweak his nose. The moment I’m sure he loves me he would be out of here, banished from my bed forever, or at least until he didn’t love me any more. I don’t want to banish him. I enjoy having someone I can call, at any time, to come and visit me and make me feel nice.
And he’s good at making me feel nice. He’s not at all athletic, body pale and plain and almost hairless except for the fuzz around his penis. He doesn’t need to shave much, his face smooth for days. I like his sandy hair, the wave in it when it gets too long, when he doesn’t bother to comb it. I run my fingers through it when I come. I brush it while we watch television together, Nathan sitting on the floor between my knees, and the softness of it makes me want him. It is this, that at these other ordinary times I enjoy the presence of him, that makes the sex with him good for me.
He kisses me, the side of my breast, and I stroke his cheek. I don’t want sex. I’ve had enough. Some nights when I bring him to my bed he wants me three, four, five times. I let him do as he pleases. There are times when I’ve got my period and pimples on my chin and hair like straw, feeling like shit, the unsexiest woman on earth, my whole world going wrong, and there’s Nathan adoring my breasts with kisses, telling me I’m beautiful. How can I refuse this? I don’t.
Andris moves and I realise he’s lying with a leg over my feet. I pull them out, ease the toes. I have to think, which one made love to me tonight? I don’t let both of them do it, not in the same night. I’m not like that. Though I know they want to sometimes. It’s fun to see them decide who gets the pussy. I prefer Nathan, but I don’t say so. If it’s not Nathan, then anyway he’s the one I kiss. Andris makes me come, but it’s Nathan’s hair that I pull and stroke.
Andris the photographer. He has a heavy black beard and bright crimson lips so when he pouts the whole arrangement looks like an aroused vulva. He spent months trying to get me to take my clothes off for him, to take pictures. Now lately he’s got it into his head he wants to photograph my pussy. He thinks up poses that will reveal me to him. I avoid them. He gets excited and has to put the camera down and eat me for a while, and I spread, shamelessly. He thinks if he can get me panting I’ll do it. So I pant and he fetches up the camera and before he can stop it shaking I shut my legs. No you don’t. I’m the frog who won’t sing. One afternoon I got into a gymnastic pose and covered myself, just, with a hand. He photographed that and there’s a print on our refrigerator. My father hates it. My mother says I should shave more.
Andris is a photographer because he’s a voyeur. Or he’s a voyeur because he’s a photographer. Either way it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. There are times on the bed when he sits away and just watches. Something takes his fancy, and I can see him ask himself, How do I capture that? We are similar in this. A face peering over my bush is a very sexy image. While I should be having orgasms, I might find myself wondering, How do I write that?
I hear a murmur from Andris, and Nathan squirms against me. I see why. We are in a triangle on the bed, Andris with his head resting on Nathan’s calf. He gently touches Nathan’s erection, swirls his fingers around it. He presses with the palm, massages the loose testicles, holds them flat. Then his fingers glide up along the shaft once more, to the glans, warming it with a feather-light caress.
Nathan squirms because it is pleasant. And his whole body flows with the same pensive undulation as whenever my mouth first goes over him. He watches Andris, his hand on my breast. I move to sit up, to watch them, and his hand follows, won’t let go, holds my breast tight. He presses his cheek to it. He likes what Andris is doing, but he needs me. Andris masturbates him slowly and Nathan squeezes my breast a little tighter. I move for him, put the nipple at his lips, and he closes his eyes with a small moan of submission, suckles at me. I touch his face and he’s like a child, sucking greedily. As he sucks he pushes with his hips, pushes his penis back and forth through Andris’s fingers, getting faster as though the sooner the better. But Andris knows better, slows him down.
Andris pushes Nathan’s penis across out of the way, holds and thumbs the glans, kisses his belly, bites the skin. He flicks his tongue at Nathan’s testicles, jostling them in the loose sac, licks between them, noisily. He kisses behind, hard, presses his lips and does something that makes Nathan jerk and arch his back and moan into my nipple. His scrotum shrivels and hardens. He breathes heavily through his nose.
He fills his mouth with my nipple, sucks me hard, and I am learning that he must be very sensitive just there under his balls, where, if he were a girl, his hole would be. I’ve never gone there. Never bothered about it. And I’m as piqued as intrigued that Andris knows something about a man’s oral pleasure that I don’t. But of course, why not. I defer, and watch, getting freshly wet.
And that is very sexy, a bearded, bristling mouth slipping over a penis. Nathan tenses, relaxes, tenses. He opens his eyes and again there is that strangely boyish appeal. I wonder, ‘Do you want me to do it. With him.’
He pushes up, angrily. Annoyed with me. He is telling me he is not a coward, I shouldn’t presume. And I don’t like this sudden rejection. Of the two I would call Nathan my lover. I touch his arm, want him back at my breast, but he shrugs me away, sits up. Andris, unconcerned, is busy in Nathan’s lap.
Nathan leaves me, goes down to play with Andris, pushes him over onto his back. Andris nearly falls off the end of the bed. I make room for them, and they take the time to get comfortable, Nathan crouched over Andris at my feet. I hug the pillows.
Perhaps tomorrow, with me not around, if they do this again, there will be sexual violence and aggression, raw masculine lust. I don’t see any of this. I see a tenderness and affection. Like this they make love to one another’s penises, kisses and licks and little sucks directly on the glans. Nathan looks deliciously vulnerable, his arse in the air, cock stretched down into Andris’s mouth. Andris’s penis is short but very hard and thick, and Nathan sighs and swallows all of it, then holds and pats and looks at it as if he’s never seen a cock before.
Andris is the first to come. Nathan is not so brave after all. He masturbates Andris hard, points the penis away so it shoots down onto the bed. Almost immediately Nathan draws a sharp breath and shivers, closes his eyes, head falling limp from his shoulders. Something very nice is happening. He groans out loud and claws Andris’s thigh, pulls himself from the tormenting mouth and comes in the air, his unattended cock jerking madly with the spasms, spraying everywhere.
He is still panting, softly, not yet recovered, and climbs away from Andris and slumps next to me as though exhausted. Without a word, Andris too seems very tired, gets up and leaves, gone to his room.
I kiss Nathan, hold him tight. He snuggles close and wants my breasts again.
Sapiens © 1999 Lara Nickles. No duplication, copying or redistribution without express written consent of the author.