Aftplay
Sudden emptiness as he left her body, cool air replacing his hot weight, and a blue pulsing ache in her groin still demanded completion.
When she reached over, he offered his hand. His fingers curled slightly as she brought them between her thighs. Her folds were wet with her own arousal—he’d worn a condom. His touch glided in the slickness, warm and steady, rolling around and over her clit, finding a rhythm that matched hers.
“Yes-ss…” Her hips jerked. As pleasure swept up her spine, her head turned on the pillow and she saw him watching her get off. He grinned like—like. What was the word for how wide and happily and contagiously he grinned?
Once her breath returned, she said, “It hit me I’ve never slept with a guy who liked sex before.”
His hand moved up to her stomach, following the pulse of her afterglow. “Okay, you’ve got to unpack that for me.”
Grinning, she skirted her fingertips over his hip. She loved to unpack things, and he knew that.
“Oh, they liked orgasming—at least they complained when they felt like they hadn’t done it recently enough. But they wanted to get there as soon as possible.”
He opened his legs wider so she could reach between them, stroking the inside of his thigh. “Mmm.” Maybe a response to her touch, but also encouragement to keep talking.
“They treated every other step in the process like an impediment. The idea of exploring, drawing things out, continuing them—absolutely no interest.”
His next sound seemed interested as she circled his cock, contentedly flaccid and bare—he’d stripped the condom off fast, then, in the moments before she took his hand to get herself off. He was efficient. Competent (competence was hot). But he didn’t rush the stuff that mattered.
“I love how you use time,” she said. Then wondered if that made sense. Her words didn’t always make sense in the fifteen minutes on either side of coming.
“Thank you,” he replied—a little moany, and he shifted so her exploring fingers could move across more of his balls. “I like how you use it, too.”
She leaned over to kiss him. A short kiss, tender, close-lipped but sensual because in these circumstances, how could anything you did not be sensual? But tongues in mouths would be a distraction from her fingertips tracing the crease of his sack.
Somehow he didn’t let either her mouth or her hand distract him from the conversation.
“Sounds like you’ve been unlucky in the past,” he offered.
“Yeah.” Her finger made a coiling pattern that mirrored what he’d done on her body. Since this was on his balls and not his clit—poor guy didn’t have one, and his cock would be too tender for her to play with for a few minutes yet—the results weren’t as dramatic, but he hummed.
“Rushing through sex with you seems like a waste of your natural gifts,” he said then.
She laughed; on either side of orgasm, his words made sense, though they often came out in unexpected combinations. Hard to tell sometimes if he was tongue-in-cheek or completely sincere. Probably both: he meant it, and he’d say it like a toastmaster rather than not say it at all.
“For that matter, I know some guys don’t want to hear about previous partners.” She added, not caring if she sounded like a feminist manual, “and that is a reasonable boundary, so if you—”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Especially when you’re slagging off on them. Please talk about my superiority.”
She rose on one arm as her hand traveled farther between his legs. He trembled when she touched the delicate skin between his scrotum and asshole. Perineum. Or, cruder, taint. Why did these so-fun parts get so-not-fun names?
“Did I ever tell you about the guy who found vibrators too kinky?”
“No way!” He lifted one knee higher, and his chin too as his head fell back. “Yes way to what your fingers are doing, though.”
“Great.” She kissed him again, tasting a bit of sweat at the corners of his mouth. “I mentioned bringing one into bed since he didn’t like to do oral, which, again, everyone’s got a right to boundaries, but—”
“So how were you supposed to get off?” he asked.
“Exactly! I guess he hoped his cock would do it.”
He rolled his eyes, though she couldn’t tell if it was in exasperation or delight as she pressed on the spot she’d heard you could reach the prostate through.
She eased off, inched back, running her index finger across his ring of muscle, then in circles over it. “How’s this?”
“Weirdly good.”
So she kept it up. “It’d be convenient, I guess, if I came from penetration. Also kind of boring.” She smiled, but then it bubbled in her, more remembered aggravation. “And when I mentioned we’d need lube, thinking especially if he didn’t do oral or want toys around, he was just like, ‘There’s lube on the condoms.’ Sounding really uncomfortable. We didn’t have sex that night, and then he told me that he considered anything kinky if it involved more than our two bodies and a condom. And he didn’t want anything kinky.”
“Probably just added the condom ‘cuz he knew he’d be an asshole if he didn’t.”
“Right! So I ended things. Shouldn’t have let it get that far, really.” She bit her lower lip. “I feel stupid, sometimes, remembering relationships I tried to make work before you.”
“Hey now. You didn’t know what you didn’t know. Didn’t know what you were missing.” He grinned. “And yeah, that’s working.”
She pulled her hand away just long enough to squeeze a dab of lube on it, so there was less friction as she stroked from his ballsack to his hole. They kept the bottle conveniently close.
“I mean, boundaries, sure. They had a right not to do that stuff. But then they got so upset when I didn’t want to be involved. Or upset with themselves when the One Sex—” she deepened her voice sonorously on the capital letters—“didn’t work. Another guy, he tried to get inside me one night…this was before I discovered lube…and it wasn’t happening at all. I wanted it to happen.”
A moment of skepticism seemed to cross his face. Maybe one crossed hers, too, as she saw that moment in hindsight. He knew what she was like when she really wanted something to happen.
Speaking of happened, his cock had started to respond again, stirring as it filled from the root up.
“To his credit, he didn’t push. Literally. He held still and I tried to work myself onto him and when that didn’t go anywhere we had oral, to make up for it, I guess. But he laughed at us afterward like it was some embarrassing failure.”
He hissed through his teeth.
“Good or bad?” she asked.
“Good what your fingers are doing. Bad that guy’s attitude.”
Her fingers kept up the good. He felt fascinating under her touch, warm and tender, slick with the lube, which glossed down his trace of hair, his muscles trembling and jumping. His cock curved now, pointing toward his stomach.
“It’s like they had a checklist they had to perform off of. Mostly about using an erection. And the only part of my body that mattered was the hole they could put it in. So it was a short list. All about dicks.”
“Dicks,” he echoes. “Though…” The venom with which he’d called them dicks drained away, maybe because of his generous nature, maybe because of some minuscule fraternal feeling, or maybe because what she was doing felt so good that he extended only kindness to the world. “Well, they probably were never taught—”
“Neither was I! I learned!”
She worried, for a second, that she’d gone too shrill. But he seemed unbothered.
“Yeah, you did learn. You’re…teaching me…”
He pressed his feet into the mattress, angling his hips for her to reach more easily. She sat up.
“If they admitted ignorance it might be something else. They didn’t care that they didn’t know. Completely uncurious. Which seems, to me, uninterested.”
“They didn’t…like…sex.”
She took in the sight of him: thighs splayed wide, her fingers in the shadows between them, his cock—her wrist brushed the underside of it—flushed and full. She looked beyond that, though, at all of him, his chest jumping with his breaths, the tendons in his neck, the incredible expression on his face.
And how his sensitive skin felt under her fingertips. And the smell of both of them filling the room.
“There are stories…legends, even…about a woman having sex in the dark, with someone she thinks is her husband but then it turns out he isn’t.”
“Right,” he said—trying to keep up with her, and panting as if it’s a real race. Her own chest shuddered as something stirred in it. “Like, King Arthur’s mom. Her husband was dead and she didn’t know.”
She nodded. “And all I can think is, those poor women.”
“On so many levels.” He made a face, sympathetic and distressed, and she hurried to get to her point.
“Right. Because…well, the part I get stuck on is, was there really no difference? Of course if you aren’t expecting, or you’re in denial—but the stories never get into her psychology, and it’s like we’re just supposed to expect one man touched her in the same way as any other. It’s all so fucked up. I’m sorry for going there. Just—it’s that I would know whether you were the one making love to me,” she said. “How you move. Where you touch me. Those little, um, tricks you do. Even if we were in complete darkness. Even if you’d have had to come back from the dead.”
The distress left his face like darkness at sunrise. She blinked, her mouth twisting with a wave of emotion she hadn’t expected. After all, she’d just been stating a fact.
Her fingers had slowed. She kept them at that pace for a bit, giving them both time to ride the wave, to feel it through.
“Well, I knew what I was signing up for when I met you,” he said. “Under ‘core beliefs’ on your profile you’d written Pro-choice, but if you aren’t, remember cunnilingus never caused an abortion.”
Face going hot, she said, “Yeah, I was trying to make a point. How people just assume abortion is a problem for those of us with vaginas to worry about—and only for us, despite the fact that our vaginas have to encounter another specific organ for pregnancy to be an option. But without that organ—or if it’s involved but without a pregnancy risk, even—it’s not considered ‘sex.’ Which is appalling. So I wrote that in a fit of rage.”
“Well, it signaled to me that you were pro-choice and passionate about cunnilingus, so. Accurate.”
“Definitely. But it’s not snappy enough to put on a T-shirt. I’m sure ‘Cunnilingus causes no abortions’ would just confuse people about the point I was making.”
“Maybe. But your tits would look great under the n’s. Or maybe the i’s?”
She laughed. “Maybe I’m supposed to smack you for that, but I like you admiring my tits. Among other things you do with them.”
“Same. Not sure I’d mind you smacking me, either, in the right circumstances.”
“Pervert,” she said delightedly.
But these circumstances were right for something else.
She traced her finger over the head of his cock, gathering the natural lubricant beading there. Not because they needed it—this gel lube was amazing—but for the fun of it.
“Little farther back,” he said. “There. There.”
“Thing is,” she said, finding a new rhythm, “maybe because they never learned otherwise, those other guys took anything I said about sex—even trying to figure out, like, boundaries and what we wanted—either as if it were incredibly awkward or as if it were dirty talk. Foreplay. Ironic, because they had no interest in actual foreplay. But then, neither do I. I don’t believe foreplay is a real thing.”
“Put that on a T-shirt,” he said.
“They couldn’t talk about positions that work for me—and here you’re still carrying on this conversation coherently.”
“Coherent might be exaggeration,” he said, in between sharp breaths, “but thanks.”
“Well, it also keeps you from finishing too quickly.”
“Not a concept…those other guys…were familiar with?”
They laughed until she snorted. “Yeah. Sex like speedrunning a video game level.”
“It can be fun to talk while horny,” he said. “Stretching it out. And just…just, being with you. Body and mind.”
Which must be why she hadn’t killed the mood when she climbed on her soapbox. Because this was talk about sex but it wasn’t sexy, was it? She sometimes had trouble telling where her intellectual interest and her arousal began or left off. Like, his initial talk with her about getting tested and how he brought his own condoms with him because of a latex allergy, that was dry. Thrillingly dry. His honesty and practicality left her giddy.
“I like being with you, too,” she said.
As she moved her fingertip over his hole, the pucker flexed.
“Would you?” he asked.
She almost said something about stretching things out, but this was a time to be…well, dry. Figuratively. “Really?”
“Only if you want to.”
Shifting over him, she nodded. “Yeah.”
She didn’t worry about it being unclean or taboo or whatever. She wanted him to be comfortable, so she slicked on more lube to be safe. He pulled his thighs up and back, baring himself to her, and smiled, and said, “Thanks—and oh, wow, please” as her fingers went in, slid deeper, began to move.
If nothing else she’d have done this out of curiosity. Because this was a kind of sex she hadn’t had before, though maybe he had, and this was a part of his body she hadn’t explored to this extent, and she liked his body and she loved sex.
She said it out loud: “I love sex with you.”
He was close around her knuckle, that muscled rim, but not too snug to move, and inside he wasn’t, as she’d half-worried, pornographically tight. He felt dark, and silky, and very warm. She turned her wrist, crooked her finger in a way she’d read about. His prostate was a little harder to find this way, by touch alone, but once she did there was no mistaking it.
“Fuck yes,” he said. “Keep doing that. Fuck. Please. Thank you. Oh, wow…”
Distantly she was aware of how her own thighs tingled with excitement. How her skin and muscle went taut and liquid at once. But her focus was on him, how it felt inside him, the rhythm building as his hips rolled to meet her strokes, his own hand moving over his cock, the shuddering that signaled his approaching orgasm—
Until spurts of white fountained over both of them, from hips to nipples, and they were laughing about it and a little shaky and grinning so much it hurt.
“Incredible,” he said, reaching for tissues, handing half to her. Once he’d cleaned himself off, he grabbed another to wipe sweat from around his eyes. Then he looked at her for what felt like the first time in hours. “You look amazing,” he said.
Her nipples didn’t always get hard during sex. But now just grazing one with her tissue set off fireworks.
“I am so turned on,” she said.
“Well…let’s do something about that?”
She lay down and stroked his back as he lowered his head between her legs. The first warm lap of his tongue, although it was slow and gentle as she usually liked to begin with, made her yelp. More fireworks.
“It’s good,” she panted to him. “I’m just so turned on.”
“Hey,” he murmured, nuzzling her thigh. “Does this, um, maybe this is how foreplay is supposed to work? To get you ready for the…playing part?”
She wondered if he was angling for her to slap him—playfully, of course. Still. “I was already playing,” she said. “I had fun making you come. I loved it.”
“Mmm,” he said in agreement, then “Mmmm,” as he tasted her. His tongue circled her clit and she pressed up to meet him.
He lifted his head so abruptly she missed a breath.
“Huh?”
“Sorry. I just. Had a thought.”
“Wanna share it?” Because they didn’t need to end this too quickly. Because she liked hearing his thoughts.
“I am going to get so turned on from eating you out.” His nose traced one line along her thigh, his lips another. “And then…”
Her smile spread wider. So did her legs. “Then I can help you do something about that.”
“Not sure how many times I can come in one afternoon.”
“I’d love to find out.”
“Mmm, I bet.” He moved up her other thigh. “Even if I don’t come, you’ll find something fun.”
“Yes.” More play. More sex. No ‘fore’ or even ‘after,’ just turns in a game, and maybe not even turns, there were lots of things you could do to one another at the same time—his cock inside her, sure, but also their hands moving together, or maybe she could give 69’ing another try, as something more than a consolation prize. As its own trophy.
Whatever happened, it would be an easy game to win, just by playing.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” he said. “Or more a good one. A virtuous cycle.”
And then he wasn’t talking because his mouth was moving in a virtuous cycle of its own.
“Oh,” she said, the breath dragging out of her lungs like silk sliding across skin. “Oh… It’s a good thing we both like sex.”
Biography
T.C. Mill is a writer and freelance editor living in the Midwest, which is one answer to the question “What do you even do with a philosophy degree?” Her stories have been published by Bright Desire, Cliterature, Bust magazine, and in Cleis’ Big Book of Submission 2 and Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, vol. 2. She’s a co-founder of the New Smut Project micropress, which releases collections of literary erotica. More updates about what she’s doing next can be found at TC-Mill.com.