She posted again. Much better.
“What I mean is, everybody has some special thing or things they like during sex, right? Sometimes you find out what they are by accident, trial and error. You trip over them. But it’s better to just tell it, get it out there, don’t you think? Because sometimes the person never finds out.”
“Kind of like a g-spot?” I said. “A sort of little-to-the-left kind of thing?”
“Kind of. What do you like, Stroup?”
“I like this, Carol.”
“I know you do. You’re not going to come yet are you?”
“Not if we keep talking. I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
I wasn’t exactly sure I was telling the truth. It was a pretty safe bet that Carol wouldn’t come even with me working her clit with thumb and forefinger which I’d been doing continually since she climbed aboard with only that one minor pause during her switch from equestrian to bronc buster. The noises she made told me she liked that fine but it was the tongue that really got to her in general. The weightlifter.
“So what do you really like? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“I’m embarrassed, Carol…”
“No you’re not. Nothing embarrasses you.”
“Our president does.”
“Bush aside, Stroup.”
“That didn’t sound right. Not under these circumstances. Was that meant to be instructional? You want to rephrase that?”
“Goddamn President Bush aside, Stroup.”
“My nipples are sensitive.”
“What? Right now? Is that a bad thing?”
“No. The left one slightly more so than the right. If you sort of nibble at it, that’d be good. But either one will do. Left or right. Your pick.”
“I thought it was only women who were really sensitive there. That’s rare in guys, isn’t it, Stroup?”
“I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing that normally comes up in conversation during the Yankee game. ‘You see that line drive? Yeah! Man! my nipples are sensitive!’”
Then I shut up because she bent over and went to work on the left one and she was so obviously a natural at it that I had to wonder if there wasn’t a woman in her past somewhere, thinking it was maybe something to ask her about later not that I minded one way or another and I could feel it travel all the way down my spine into my cock in little electric bursts. She must have sensed something because she pulled away.
“You going to come, Stroup?”
“Mmmmmuhhhhh,” I said.
“Oh no you’re not.”
And I didn’t even see it coming. There was no way to roll with the thing. It was a good one too. All of a sudden my cheek was burning and the crown on my molar, upper right quadrant, felt loose.
“Jesus, Carol! You slapped me! You goddamn slapped me!”
I had to admit it had done the trick though. I was down. Though not out.
“Sorry. Reach over and turn on the light, Stroup.”
“Huh?”
“I want to show you something. The table lamp. Turn it on.”
This was interesting.
I was going to see whatever it was she hadn’t wanted me to see so far.
At first I couldn’t figure it. She looked like a woman with all parts intact. Very much intact—and I wondered for the umteenth time what she saw in an old bum like me. Her areolae were darker than I’d expected. The navel dove deeper than my tongue had bothered to notice. That was about it.
She turned a little to the right and I saw the white smooth scar tissue over two of her left ribs, crawling toward her back a few inches below her breast. The one on top was maybe an inch long. The one below it more like three.
“Whew,” I said. “And I never felt those?”
“I hold my elbow this way, it’s hard to reach them. See? Do they disgust you?”
“Hell no, Carol. Guys like scars. We’re kinda odd that way. But what the hell happened?”
I pumped a few times and she posted just to keep things rolling.
“I was driving my boyfriend’s car one night back in high school. Some drunk kissed my bumper passing me on Route 10 and I went off an embankment. My boyfriend was so goddamn proud of that car—vintage black ‘71 Volvo, in fabulous condition. But there were no airbags back then and I wasn’t wearing a belt so I went into the steering wheel. Compound fracture of the ribs. I reached around and I could feel them sticking out of me. It was pretty…intense.”
“Intense? I would think so. God, yes.”
“I came like a sonovabitch, Stroup.”
“What?”
“I swear to God. I didn’t think it was ever going to stop. It was pouring out of me.”
“This is a joke now, right?”
“No. It was pretty embarrassing too. I was wearing these Garfield THRILL ME panties and they were just soaked through completely. And you know, the medics, they had to undress me, so…”
She let it just trail off that way. That was fine by me. I was starting to wilt again.
She pumped. I pumped. That was better.
But I was starting to get this feeling. This weird, bad association. I had the sense that what she was going to say to me next would not be about nipple nibbling or blowing in her ear.
“I get off on broken bones, Stroup. That’s my thing.”
“You do. You get off on broken bones.”
“I do. For me there’s nothing like it.”
“That’s pretty new and different, Carol.”
“I know. But I’m not the only one, Stroup. There are chat groups on the net. There’s websites.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You should check it out.”
“Sure. Why not? I’ve already been through most of the quadruple-amputee sites.”
“I’m serious, Stroup.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense, Carol. Honest.”
“So will you?”
“What? Break your ribs?”
She laughed. “No, silly. That would be getting pretty extreme, don’t you think? You could do a finger, though. I’d really like that. In fact I’m getting all hot just thinking about you breaking my finger, Stroup. Will you do that for me?”
“I wouldn’t know how, for godsakes. What if I tried to break it and just disjointed it or something? Would that be disappointing to you?”
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”
“No. I think you’re getting wetter all the time, though. Jeez.”
“I told you. I work with osteoporosis patients, Stroup, you know? They break bones every day. Sometimes I get so hot I have to go to the ladies’ room and…am I telling you too much about this?”
“It’s possible.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“I do not. If you wanted to get pregnant that would be crazy.”
“Fuck me, Stroup. Break my finger, okay?”
“I…”
“How isn’t a problem. I’ll show you how.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Not to myself. It doesn’t work if I try to do it. I chicken out. Somebody else has to. But yeah, there have been guys willing. Look at this.”
She swung her left foot up beside me on the bed. I thought that was pretty damn athletic of her. I pumped a few times. New position. Not bad.
“See that?”
Her big toe was a mess. All bent to hell out of shape. I hadn’t noticed that. Who looks at feet?
“That was Ron. He went overboard one night with a pair of pliers. I told the doctors a manhole cover fell on it. I don’t think they believed me, though. I dumped him the following day.”
She swung the leg around. We were in post position again. She pulled up high so that I was almost out of her. Almost but not quite. My shaft was suddenly very cool and wet. The glans nestled.
“Here’s what you do,” she said.
She took the pinkie of her left hand between the thumb and forefinger of her right so that the thumb pressed flat against the bottom of the second joint and the forefinger pressed down over the knuckle.