A dovelike sound from above encourages John to explore further. His licks are deliberate. No matter how she rolls her hips or presses into him, he keeps his own pace, nuzzling her stiffened bud or nibbling at her sweet lips or pointing his tongue and, only when she is no longer expecting it, pushing it into her cranny.
At last, a pause. He stops to watch her. She is adrift on a cloud-sea of pleasure, with her eyes closed, swaying gently on the table. Tenderly he collects Hiroe from her uncertain perch and gathers her into his arms. It is a sweet feeling to have her there, this warm, heavy, girl-shaped bundle with her temple pressed up against his chin.
He touches her cheek and she nuzzles, catlike, against his hand. He traces the outline of her lower lip – the very fullest, pinkest part. Her mouth opens and, fluidly, his thumb slides in. At the new sensation, her eyes open as well. They follow the path of his digit as he draws it away and glosses her lips with it. So he lets her have it back, and her eyes fall closed once more.
“That’s a good girl. Suck it.”
Another small sound escapes Hiroe. Her hands tighten on his knees.
“Suck. With that pretty mouth and those cheeks all hollow. Do you have any idea how many times you’ve shown up in my dreams like this, you little carp?”
She moans for real this time, wanting nothing more than for him to slide his hands down under her skirt, under everything, to touch the very core of her and finish what he has started. All those nights she had lain in her bed, with her own hands wandering through her garden, are nothing compared to the distilled essence of desire that is coursing through her now.
And so her need expresses itself in the movements of her lips. They close upon the narrow part of his thumb and he twists, enjoying the feeling of her tongue fluttering against its very tip – a heady sensation, even without her pert bottom pressed enticingly into his groin. Still, he knows Hiroe is expecting her gift, so he lets the digit pop free and uses his hands to slide her panties down. He tucks the hem of her skirt carefully into its waistband and gazes down at her from above, at her mound and the beautiful thatch of hair that graces it. Hiroe feels open and exposed, but the rustle of the paper bag distracts her.
He takes out an ordinary sea sponge, golden and no larger than his palm.
She wants to ask, tries to, but he shakes his head no, and the movement is transmitted along his jaw and through the obsidian waterfall of her hair. Her eyes trace every movement of the sponge, from the bag, in a low arc past the table, to the floor with its tray and teacups and kettle of water, no longer steaming, only warm. The kettle is as shallow as her breathing. It has a wide opening in the top, large enough for him to dip the entire sponge inside. He soaks it and squeezes just slightly. There is no other sound in the room, in the teahouse, or perhaps in the entire world.
Water is falling in drops now, from the sponge and onto her young and sensate skin. The first two drops, fat and rapid, alight on her stomach and splatter there. He goes back and squeezes out the sponge a little more. The next few drops are slower. They fall on her belly, her mons, and then on her pink and jutting centre. She hisses at the teasing contact. She struggles to get free, beating her stockinged feet against the tatami. But his other arm is locked about her waist and there is no way to free herself without hurting him.
He waits, with the sponge in his upturned palm, until she is finished struggling. Then he turns his hand over and begins again.
The next drop falls exactly where he wants it, and so he braces his forearm against her bent knee and lets the sponge hover there as he watches the subtle interplay of gravity and tension. Hiroe is keening softly in his arms. He soothes her with murmured words. Nonetheless, each tiny impact makes her body jerk. Soon she is digging her nails into the long muscles of his thigh, and of the arm that binds her, her head rolling from side to side. He goes back for more water. Again he lets it drip against her core and again the struggle begins. But after a time, her breathing quiets down. He can feel her heart slowing and, in the tiny movements of her eyes, sense her attention wandering from the sponge between drops. The water is cool now, as it trickles along her slit to the sodden pillow beneath her. She cools as well, and her sighs are frustrated.
“What’s the matter?”
“John, I – I don’t think I can____________________”
“Don’t think you can what?”
“You know,” she says shyly, half-turning to press her cheek into the row of buttons on his shirt.
“You can say it.”
A sigh. “Come,” she breathes at last. “I don’t think I can come like this.”
“Well, who said you were supposed to?”
She pulls away to look at him. “But -”
“But what?” he remarks, tenderly untucking her skirt and smoothing her hair into a semblance of order. “Oh, I see. You thought that due to the elegance of the surroundings I was going to, maybe, deflower you here?”
“I -”
“Or perhaps that this was all about your pleasure? That there wasn’t something bigger wrapped up in all of this?” John regards her with a bemused expression as he squeezes out the last of the water and returns the sponge to its paper home.
“But… you want to.” She reaches for that forbidden part of him, and at her delicate touch he springs instantly back to full erection.
“You,” he says, pointedly removing her hand, “need to learn some patience.”
She regards him with a dark, shifting kind of expression. “All this time I’ve waited for you and you’re telling me I need to learn patience?” “All these months of teasing me, you mean.”
“Teasing you?” Her expression hardens and she chokes the words out, rising up onto her knees, small fists angled away from her body.
The instant stretches out into a moment and then into a longer time. The dim lighting along the floor etches years into her face and her frame trembles, but it is her eyes that finally enlighten. The pain in them – he’d never seen it before.
He opens his arms then. She is reluctant at first but then comes into that longed-for circle. A kiss and she trembles in every part. A hand beneath her skirt and she sighs. This time he goes directly to her slippery cleft, working her still-swollen nub with a trio of careful fingers until she gasps, until her hands tighten on his crisp, white sleeves and she coats him with her essence, at last turning to muffle her impassioned cries against his chest.
When her eyes blink open, he has another kiss for her, soft as a cherry blossom on the sacred space between her brows.
“Hiroe,” he says at last. “I’m sorry. I promise – no more games.”
So that when her small hand closes around the hardness that still pulses at the root of him, and when that member leaps in her hand like a fish, he surrenders, at last.
Drift by Christopher Hart
It was a hot summer night and I was at a party in a large, dark garden somewhere, nowhere in particular. The hosts might have called it London, only because they didn’t know what else to call it. But it wasn’t London. The garden was too big.
It was later summer, everything sighing and dying, the most lethargic and dreamy time of year. BMWs and Jags snoozed and purred on the gravel drive round the front, and round the back, light spilled out from the open windows and across the lawn and caught our champagne glasses as we stood around in the darkness, the air filled with murmurous insect voices. I couldn’t even be bothered to drink much, and I never did like champagne. Filled you up with gas, made you feel like you were about to take off. I was very bored.