"I'm so wet," she whispered against his ear.
His body strained, trying to push up against her.
"Don't disturb the arrangement of the flowers," she whispered.
His mind struggled with itself. I'm a man, he thought. No woman can do this to me. I don't have to do what she says. Nothing is holding me here. I'm going to just…
But then her breasts were at his lips again and he felt himself soften back against the pillows as he grew even harder. His cock felt like it was about to burst and his eyes fluttered open and shut against the blindfold.
She let him suckle, first one then the other, over and over again, while she moaned softly against him. She liked the image of her rosy nipples descending into his mouth with his face trapped inside the deep purple velvet of that blindfold.
"This is torture," he murmured, "I can't…"
"Yes you can, Shhhhh…bring your mind back to stillness."
"This is the way of great beauty, the way of Ikebana, and only true poets understand it. It is a meditation on one's desire nature. Listen to the drums and let your heart float in stillness. Imagine that a thread connects it to a star in the heavens."
Listen to the taiko…
She placed many flowers, with great care, across the surface of his body. At the base of his throbbing cock, she created a circular pattern. Periodically she let him suckle her breasts, or pressed petals against his mouth, or took his moist tongue inside her.
She continued to kiss him softly all over his body, all around the base of his cock. It swayed and danced to the rhythm of the drumming music. She brought her breasts around it, trapping it between them.
"I'm going to come," he said.
"Shhhh, no you aren't," she murmured. She removed the chrysanthemum and replaced it with her lips, tracing over his cockhead lightly, and rubbing back and forth like a whisper. She blew and blew along it, streams of warm windy breath. Her soft breasts cupped and locked his shaft.
"Mine," she said.
She had made an altar out of his body.
We are conceptual art, taken to its highest expression.
Nous sommes les enfants terribles du paradis…
"I'm going to come, I have to," he whispered.
He was like a river, pouring currents into the sea. She smiled while she watched him, dreamily. She had consecrated his body with flowers. He looked absolutely beatific. Her canvas was complete.
"Touch me," she whispered, placing her cleft over his gardenia-filled hand. His fingers moved and thrummed inside of her to the sound of the drumbeats. Her breath was deepening, as was his.
She rippled and swayed as his fingers thrust inside her, expertly. Her head arced backwards and her eyes closed. Little whispery sighs seemed to emerge from the great depths inside her. He listened to her sounds; until his synchronized with hers, in a perfection of union under the drums. Taiko and moon; Ikebana and flute, earth and sky.
Chapter 10 — Ratatouille
"Miles, did you know that zucchinis make the best cocks?" Isabelle asked me on our first date. She twirled her angel hair pasta and looked fondly at the veggie stabbed on the end of her fork.
She had my attention. I tried to guess at a good response. Isabelle had long, wavy red hair and dancer's legs, and there wasn't much I wouldn't consider for her.
"Better than cucumbers?" I asked, rather dumbly but with great gusto, as though we were discussing favorite recipes over the back fence.
She laughed. "Hell, yes. Better than men, sometimes. Better than vibrators always. No batteries, and much more organic."
I was speechless. I had watched Isabelle pass by my office for weeks on the way to the dance studio before I found the nerve to ask her out. I was developing a serious navy-blue leg-warmer fetish by the time I just stepped into the hall and blurted out my name and invited her to dinner.
"Sure, Miles," she had said, quite casually. "But it has to be vegetarian for me, OK?"
She had looked pure and angelic with that pale white skin and the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. I researched every health food restaurant in town.
"Organic is good," I finally answered her at dinner, feeling like a 16-year old kid on his first date instead of the educated grownup that I was. "Do you peel the zucchini?" I had to know.
"Sometimes, Miles," she answered. "But sometimes rougher is better, you know?"
I thought then that maybe it was possible to fall in love with a girl who said "you know?" all the time and who wore heavy silver rings and bracelets that weighed her down, bracelets that looked like handcuffs on her delicate wrists.
I took her home to her tiny walkup-apartment at the top of an old building not far from Coors Field. "This neighborhood is not safe," I told her.
She just laughed at me. "Life is not safe, darling."
She was right, of course. There's hardly any safety in hating what you do every day for a living. When I chose the world of finance over art so long ago, I didn't know the difference between financial security and being safe.
She invited me in and lit six black candles all around the room "Six," she informed me, "is the sacred number of Aphrodite, the goddess of love." She served me hot tea on an elegant silver tray and then looked straight into my eyes and told me how it was going to be.
"A girl has to have rules, you know," she said. " I never have full sex with a man until the third date." She smiled. "By then I can always tell if they're fuckable or not."
I was 37 years old and a man of the world when she said this, and I swear I couldn't remember ever having sex before in my life, or if I even knew how.
"That sounds fair," I mumbled, smoothing my hair.
She excused herself and went to the bathroom. I confess I sneaked a look in her fridge while she was gone. Never before had a crisper looked so sexy. I counted the zucchinis-there were six. All in a row.
She came back, and her hair was tied up and she pressed one of her strong legs next to mine on the futon. Without a word she picked up a jar of honey from the tea tray, stuck her finger into it, and smeared honey all over her lips. Honey over lipstick, honey around her mouth, honey on her tongue, never taking her eyes off mine.
She stopped. "Kiss me, Miles. Kiss me until all my honey is gone."
Dear god. I started to lick and then I was devouring her, and nothing else existed but Isabelle and her mouth. Long, soulful kisses that went on forever, or maybe it was just one kiss that kept inventing itself over and over and over until I thought her rules were a tease and my hand was high on her thigh and my cock was raving wild. She paused and whispered, "You kiss like a man who is hungry. This is a good thing." And then she kicked me out the door.
I bought her things. I showed up for the second date with flowers and candy and a gift of tiny, delicate crystal ballet slippers that reminded me of her. She laughed and thanked me, but later she told me that the things she wanted in life couldn't be bought.
She was wearing a shiny white leotard, the kind with long sleeves that looked as if it would fall off her shoulders at any minute, the kind you can see nipples through in the right light, and a long, swirling, deep-blue skirt that made me want to lift it and bend her over and fuck her hard and fast. But it was only the second date, and rules are rules.
"Are you a natural redhead?" I asked, admiring her hair.
"You'll never know darling. Don't you know that dancers wax everywhere but their heads?" She laughed and lifted her skirt, slid the leotard aside and twirled and flashed me the loveliest bare pussy I will ever see in my life.
And then she led me out the door to the theater.