I.
Lucy and Ricky sat next to each other at the small table in the corner of the dimly lit Italian restaurant where they often stopped for dinner when Ricky wasn't working. The food was very good, but the quiet, dark atmosphere was the real reason they had chosen it as a favorite. Much of their time together was spent at the club, surrounded by Ricky's musicians or patrons of the club, with only a few stolen moments on the roof or in his dressing room to call their own. But they lived for each of his nights off, when they had uninterrupted time together.
They'd been seeing each other for just over a month and the exchange of 'I love you's' between passionate kisses had become commonplace. Although Lucy wasn't yet aware of Ricky's plans to marry her, she knew that their commitment to one another was growing stronger with each passing day. So, too, grew their physical attraction to and desire for one another.
As they sat at the table, their conversation about that day's events was quieted by the soft kisses that started to occupy their lips. As Ricky's arm embraced her and his other hand rested on her knee, Lucy's heart quickened and she started to feel the now familiar tingle in the space between her thighs.
She remembered the first time he had caused the stirring in the deepest part of her; he had been able to do so with little more than the caress of his tongue against hers and the feeling was quickly followed by a pleasured throb. She had caught herself wishing that he would move his hand inside her leg and quell the needy passion that gripped her. When she had gotten back to her apartment that night and changed out of her clothes, she took great pains to shove her silk panties deep within the laundry, not wanting her roommate to notice that they'd been thoroughly drenched in the smooth fluid that flowed gratuitously through her, preparing her to receive her young man's physical love. On that night and the many that followed, she had remained desperately empty.
So when Ricky's hand slipped absently above her knee, Lucy rested her hand gently on the side of his face and kissed him, her tongue twisting with his as she stifled herself from actually asking him to make love to her. All at the same time, she longed to do just that but was also mortified that she wanted so very much to do so. The way they kissed and touched each other flew directly in the face of all that her mother and society had told her about being a proper lady. And she'd never strayed from those lessons until she'd met Ricky.
As the lights dimmed in the theater, Lucille felt her boyfriend Tom's arm slip around her shoulders. Even though Lucille had moved out of her mother's house and to the city more than a year earlier, she was still inserting herself into Lucille's life. She had arranged for her daughter to go on a blind date with Tom, something which Lucille had hesitantly agreed to. Finding that she hadn't intensely disliked him, Lucille had continued to see him. Since she hadn't been out with anyone else since, she guessed that meant he was her boyfriend.
As they watched the movie, Tom pulled Lucille closer to him. She turned to look at him and caught his green eyes looking at her in the dark. When he leaned closer to her and his lips met with hers, she didn't flinch. He'd kissed her goodnight before, but it seemed as though he meant for something more substantial now. It wasn't bad, she thought to herself. After a moment, Tom's tongue glided against her lips, looking to meet with hers. She obliged him, more from curiosity than any feeling of love or longing for him.
As they kissed, she sighed. To Tom, it was the sigh of a woman who was intoxicated by his skill. But the reality was that Lucille was disappointed. The kisses in the movies were so full of passion and intensity. She knew they were just actors on a screen, but she imagined that had to be what love looked and felt like. She had wondered if kissing Tom would spark a great love in her, if she would suddenly feel incapable of living without him. As their kiss broke and she looked again into his eyes, she wondered no further. This was going nowhere; Tom was just the same as every acceptable boy from a good family which her mother had hand-selected for her.
As Lucille contemplated this and tried to figure out how best to diplomatically tell him that she didn't think they should see each other romantically any longer, Tom leaned in to kiss her again, this time with his hand sliding alongside her breast. Her eyes widened and she reflexively pushed him away. "What are you doing," she hissed softly.
Tom smirked. "Come on, sweetheart. You'll love it, I promise," he whispered.
She stood up indignantly. "No, I won't because I don't love you!" Her voice carried in the theater, to which a loud chorus of 'shhh' responded. Embarrassed, Lucille walked quickly up the aisle and out to the lobby, with Tom following quickly behind.
Once outside, with the rain pelting the sidewalk beside the doors, Tom grabbed her arm. "Where do you think you're going?"
Lucille's blue eyes stared him down fiercely. "Tom, I don't think we should see each other anymore. I don't love you, so I think we should both move on."
To her surprise, he began to laugh. She narrowed her eyes, confused. "What are you laughing at?"
Tom shook his head and looked at her as though she were stupid. "Love?! Who said anything about love? I don't love you, either, but I've been buying you dinner and taking you to movies for more than two weeks now. I'll be damned if I'm not going to get any return on my investment! Now come on, you're a beautiful woman and I'm a good looking guy…"
Lucille's mouth fell open as she struggled to believe what she was hearing. "You're a jerk," she finally exclaimed. She turned and left him standing in the lobby as she walked out into the rain.
Reluctantly, Lucy's lips parted from Ricky's as she tried to slow the frenzied pounding of her heart.
He smiled at her. "I'm not helpin', am I?"
She laughed softly and laid her head against his shoulder. "Oh, Ricky, if you wanted to make love to me right now, I wouldn't stop you," she whispered, quite forgetting herself. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand as though she could've shoved the words back in.
Lucy raised her head and looked at him again. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to say that, really I didn't!"
Ricky was still smiling, biting his own lip gently. "You maybe din't mean to SAY it, but I think you mean it…"
Her cheeks grew very red and she looked down, unable to answer him because she was afraid to admit to him that he was right in his assessment.
He lifted her face to look at him again. "Sweetheart, you dun't have to be embarrassed about it, you can tell me anythin'. And…if it makes you feel any better, I wanna make love to you more than anythin' in the world." He kissed the tip of her nose gently, something that in and of itself was not overtly sexual, yet it caused Lucy's heart to leap all the same. When his eyes met hers again, they were warm and soft. "I dun't wanna say too much yet, but if it's alright with you, I can promise you that'll happen soon."
"It's alright with me," she whispered, not breaking her gaze from him.
Ricky smirked. "Wanna go to the movies?"
Lucy giggled. "What will we see this time?"
He shrugged nonchalantly, again an innocent act that for reasons unknown to her was incredibly attractive. "Who cares, let's sit in the balcony and neck."
Lucy blushed again. The theater, of course much darker than the restaurant, was another favorite location. But she'd be hard pressed to relay to anyone which movies they'd been to or what any of them were about. "It's alright with me."
II.
Ricky and Lucy walked to the theater, which was only a few blocks from where they'd had dinner. They walked slowly, hands clasped, talking about their plans for the following day and the show that Ricky was rehearsing.
When they arrived, Ricky, true to his word, asked for tickets to the very next show to begin, not even slightly curious about what it was.
Enrique wasn't sure why he was bothering to take this girl to a movie. The film was an import from the States, and although it would either bear subtitles or be dubbed in Spanish, the only thing the locals ever did during American movies was use the darkened environment to paw at each other.
He didn't necessarily find fault in it, but he wasn't exactly crazy about the girl he was with. While attractive enough, she was very shrill and openly looking to snare herself a husband. She'd originally had a date with Enrique's brother, but when an opportunity for a well-paying job came his way, he begged Enrique to keep his commitment for him. When Enrique joked that he wanted to know what would happen if he fell in love with her, his brother laughed and said he wasn't worried about that happening; he said he didn't suspect that anyone would fall in love with anything but her ample chest, for which he was dating her in the first place.
Enrique regarded that comment as a crass joke until he met Anita. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, like most girls on the island, and as physically gifted as his brother had said. From the moment she'd opened her mouth, she didn't stop talking, mostly about her married sisters and how she wanted to be one herself.
Enrique hoped that bringing her to the movies would give her reason to finally stop talking. Although that was achieved, he hardly called his plan a success, because she assumed that he would all but conceive her first child right there in the theater. From the moment she kissed him, he wished she would go back to talking at him.
He managed to halt her ambitions long enough to tell her that he was planning to go to America the following month and that he didn't want to lead her on. He thought that surely this would be the perfect deterrent until she whispered of her happy readiness to go with him.
It took the rest of the night to convince Anita that there was no possibility that he could bring her to Miami, capped off by a swift slap to his face for apparently leading her on.
As Enrique walked home, rubbing his cheek, he wondered if he would ever understand women. Perhaps his uncle and brothers…and the rest of the Cuban male population…were correct; maybe it was just easier to sleep with them than to try to know what to do with them.
When Enrique returned to his family's small house to find his brother asleep, he roused him by tossing a bucket of water over him, thanking him for a lovely evening.
Finally in the dark with the woman he loved, Ricky pulled Lucy into his arms and kissed her. She happily allowed his tongue to sweep over hers, running her fingers through his hair.
He wanted so much to touch every part of her as his lips softly moved over her neck. For just a moment, he wished that he were the kind of man that most people assumed he was, so he could do with Lucy what his body screamed for. But as he kissed her and occasionally stopped to look into her eyes, telling her how much he loved her, he realized that even if he had been so inclined, he would've changed for her, anyway.
III.
Ricky shut the door with a slam as he walked into his dark, studio apartment later that night. He had to slam it or it wouldn't fully close. Anyway, the strenuous act would burn some of his sexual energy, or so he'd hoped.
As he sat on the small bed under the skylight, he knew it hadn't worked. The way he felt in that moment, if Lucy had been sitting on that bed with him, he'd have taken her right then and there.
He stood up again, feeling like a caged animal, and removed his clothes, tossing them in a pile on the bed as he went to the shower in the corner of the room.
As he did nearly every time he left Lucy for the night, he let the cold water stream over him. Ricky leaned against the wall and grimaced in pain, his testicles aching to release the pressure caused by his passion. As the water cascaded over his shoulders, down his chest and around his thighs, he wished mightily that the drops were instead his love's fingers against his skin.
His hand wrapped around his rigid shaft, visions of her naked figure underneath him in the dark. He bit his lip nearly to the point of drawing blood as he imagined his hands exploring the round globes of her breasts, roaming the curve of her hips as he drew her up to meet him, feeling her tight center close around him as it formed to the shape of his manhood. His heart raced, nearly able to hear her voice echoing around him, crying out to him for more. He could almost smell the scent of her perfume as he pictured himself kissing her neck and nuzzling her ear. Finally, he groaned audibly as he reached his peak and spilled the fruit of his desires down the dark drain, relieved that he was free of the tensioned pain, but disappointed that he was not laying against Lucy's flush, naked skin at the time.