Jennie

The next day, I make a resolution.

I will not meet Lisa after work. I will not let her touch me. I am not, will not, be this needy, grasping creature she's turned me into. After a sleepless night, I must accept that the cooling-down period I long for isn't going to come on its own. I have to take that step. I have to go cold turkey. Even if the thought of going for one day—and the rest of my life—without Lisa's hands and mouth is almost enough to make me jump off the Southstar Building.

Almost enough. I have to stop this while I'm still at "almost."

I wish I could say that I spend the day in a state of cool collectedness. I wish I could say that I don't give Lisa Manoban a passing glance. Instead, I find myself jumpy as a nervous cat, keeping at least ten feet of distance between us.

Surely she notices. After all, for our last encounter, I was the one to call her. Doesn't my sudden coldness seem strange?

If she is surprised at my behavior, she makes no sign of it. Her demeanor is as professional as always, with no hint of our secret lurking in her eyes. She's always been good at that. It has frustrated and thrilled me to no end.

The day goes by. At about four, I am on my sixth cup of coffee and thinking that I am really doing quite well, considering. I can be proud of myself. I'll get through today. And I'll get through tomorrow as well. I'll take it one day at a time.

I hear the sound of footsteps. Lisa enters my office, looking down at a notepad. She has a pencil in her mouth. The pink eraser tip rests on her bottom lip. I imagine her doing that to my nipples and spill my fresh cup of coffee everywhere.

The coffee is scalding hot. I jump back from my desk with a bona fide yowl as it soaks through my blouse onto my skin beneath.

Lisa's eyes snap up from the notepad. Her eyes widen when she sees the dark liquid staining the pale green of my blouse. I can't bear whatever she's about to say, so I snap, "I've got a spare in the filing cabinet," which might seem like a strange place to keep an extra blouse, but I have an extra pair of shoes in there, too, and I can't handle this today.

I head toward my bathroom, close the door, and yank off the blouse. One of my favorites. And my skin hurts from where the hot coffee splashed it. What a marvelous state I'm in.

The door opens without a knock and Lisa enters. I gape at her.

"Found it." She kicks the door shut behind her, tossing me the turquoise blouse she holds in one hand. Then she turns and locks the door.

I catch the blouse reflexively, staring at her back. My heart hammers beneath my abused skin.

"Did you hurt yourself?" she asks, her voice full of gentle, genuine concern as she turns back to face me.

I stare at her while my heart goes faster yet. She smiles, steps forward, and reaches out to press me against the wall.

"Let's have a look." She glances down at my reddened skin, which I do not think I can entirely blame on the scalding coffee anymore. She tsks. "Jennie. You've damaged one of my favorite things."

My brain, already half-paralyzed, completely stalls on that. I drop the blouse in shock. Really? Her favorite—?

But she doesn't follow up. Instead, she leans in to whisper, "But you're not hurt down here, are you?"

She unbuckles my belt, unzips my pants, and slides her hand inside. The friction of her hand, the pleasure of it, sizzles up and down my spine. We've never done it during office hours before. Always after. I can't bring myself to point this out, since it might mean Lisa stops, and if she's taking a risk now, then that means—that means I'm not the only one who wants to take risks.

"Nobody saw me come in," she whispers, "but they're still out there. We have to be quick." She moves her knuckles against my panties. "And we have to be quiet."

I'll be anything. I'll do anything. How could I ever have thought I could give this up?

Then she moves her hand out of my pants and pins both my hands against the wall. Before I can protest, she leans in and presses her forehead against my own—and wedges her thigh between my legs.

"Now," she breathes, her breath tickling my lips, "go."

I go. I can't stop myself. I grind and rub against her thigh, knowing that my underwear is the only thing preventing her gray slacks from getting as ruined as my blouse. And though I know we cannot dally, I am still disappointed at how quickly I throb and shake against her. It feels incredible. And as always, it is not enough.

I realize, when I am finished, that I am probably hurting her hands from squeezing them so hard. At least I kept quiet, although it was a near thing.

"You okay?" she whispers, her mouth so very close to my own.

What would she do if I stole a kiss?

Before I can do more than think about it, she steps away, flushed. "I said, you okay?"

"I'm okay," I croak.

"Good. Wait a couple minutes before you follow me." She opens the door of the bathroom, pokes her head out, looks both ways, and vanishes as quickly as she came in.

I don the new blouse with shaking fingers and look at my old one. Stained. Maybe my dry cleaner can get it out.

Holding it to my lips, I feel the silk. This blouse and I are two of a kind. Both of us stained and waiting for something to help us pretend we're not.

I continue to avoid Lisa, at least as much as one can avoid one's own personal assistant. It mainly involves not making eye contact. But her thigh was firm between mine. Her breath was soft on my lips. And her hands were so surprisingly strong—

Once you start breaking rules, it's easy to keep going. It's easy, at eight p.m., to just walk past Lisa's desk without a word, head to my car, drive to my apartment, change my shirt, sit in my living room, and send her a text.

Bring me the Jung file.

Then I sit in my armchair and wait. And wait. And wait. One minute passes, two. How dare she? And then—

On my way.

My phone drops into my lap from fingers gone suddenly nerveless. My mouth goes dry. She's on her way. To my place. The place she chose for me with unerring precision about what I like. She knows more about what I like than I do; she has from day one, and I don't understand how she does it, I don't—

A knock sounds at my door.

Stunned, I look at my phone. It can't have been that fast. But sure enough, the display shows that over fifteen minutes have passed since she texted me. Apparently, our arrangement also turns time into something without meaning.

I rise on shaky legs and head to the door. Lisa stands there, holding a case file and looking at me as tranquilly as if nothing were going to happen. So maybe it isn't.

The thought is absolutely unbearable.

I can't speak. I set my jaw and jerk my head backward, toward the interior of my apartment, and turn on my heel to lead the way. After a moment of agonizing silence, I hear the door closing and the sound of footsteps following my own.

I lead her to my new bedroom. Unlike the living room, which is unnervingly to my tastes (all thanks to her, I learned from an incensed Hermann), the bedroom is still fairly generic: my bed, some bookshelves, a side table, and a lamp. I haven't had time to make it really mine, and yet I still feel more at home here than I ever did in the Paces house.

Lisa follows me in. I turn on the lamp by the bed; I do not want full light. Then I turn to look at her. She stands by the open door, the expression on her face calm, perhaps blandly curious. She shows absolutely no indication of throwing me onto the bed in a frenzy of passion, or, indeed, a frenzy of anything at all. I feel like an idiot. A desperate idiot.

Now, she'd whispered while I'd straddled her thigh earlier, go.

I don't care about looking like an idiot. I do not give even half a damn. I undress while she watches me in silence. Of course, she makes no motion toward her own clothing. Would she undress if I asked her to, if I asked to see her body? Or would that be crossing a line? Better not risk it.

Finally, I am naked. Not even a necklace or a bracelet on me. Lisa looks me up and down, her cheeks a little pink, but her face otherwise unreadable. I look back at her, willing her to do something, anything.

"Twice today, Jennie?" she murmurs. "I'm spoiling you, aren't I?"

My voice sticks in my throat. I can't speak. I need her too much to speak.

"Guess I'm feeling generous." Her husky voice rolls through me like a warm ocean wave. "Even though you're being so shameless tonight. Such a bad girl."

Then she steps forward and sinks gracefully down to her knees before burying her head between my legs.

I nearly fall over. As usual, the sight of her kneeling before me is enough to drive me half-mad, and the first touch of her tongue is all it takes to complete the trip. She does not want me to touch her, so instead I put my hand back against the wall for balance while her mouth turns me inside out.

Then, just as I am about to come, she stops.

I whimper. She pulls away, wipes her mouth, and says, "Lie down on the bed."

I sit on the edge but find myself remarkably hesitant about lying down all the way, spreading myself so naked before her when she's fully clothed. But Lisa does not give me time to be hesitant for long, because then she kicks off her shoes, straddles me, and pushes me against the mattress, and oh my God, oh my God, she is kissing my throat, my shoulders as languidly as if we have all night. I wonder if we do.

She puts her hand back down between my thighs, tickling gently, and then sliding a finger in. I arch into her touch with a moan. Our bathroom encounter did nothing to take the edge off. I'm already so close, and her teasing little kisses have done nothing to help.

She moves up to bite my earlobe and then whispers, "Don't come."

What? "I—" I moan again when she rubs her thumb against my clit. "Oh!"

"Don't come," she repeats, almost gently. "If you come, I leave you here and go home." At the next movement of her thumb, I very nearly panic. I reach down and grab her wrist. She pauses.

"Don't," I gasp. "If you—I'll—"

"That's up to you, isn't it?" she says. "Those are the rules. As soon as you come, I leave."

"Then—then don't—" Don't fucking do everything you can to make me come, I try to say. But my mouth isn't working. All that comes out is, "Oh—please—"

"Now," she breathes, "hold on." And then she begins to kiss her way down my body, the touch of her lips electrifying me even more than her fingers because it's new, her mouth on my skin, waking it up as she goes, bringing it to life. But she does not stop moving her hand, and before I know it, I am on the edge.

"Stop!" I beg. "Please!"

She pauses. "Stop?" she asks. "You want me to go?"

"No—I just, you can't—"

"If you tell me to stop, I'll go," she says calmly, her big brown eyes looking up at me, swallowing me whole. She licks my collarbone before adding, "And if you come, I'll go. So, like I said, hold on." She glances meaningfully up at the headboard. She's got a point. Before I can think twice about it, my hands flail upwards until I grab hold of it. The stretch in my arms distracts me, a little.

Not enough.

She bends to one of my breasts.

Oh God. I remember the tip of the eraser on her lips this morning. That lucky goddamn eraser, I'd thought, and now she takes her sweet time, nibbling all around my left breast, pausing for gentle licks and sucks. I ache, I ache. Why won't she—

She takes my nipple in her mouth without warning and laves it with her tongue over and over. That wet heat. She keeps moving her fingers, and the rhythm is perfect, so perfect that I'm—I can't, I can't—

I turn my head and sink my teeth as hard as I can into my own arm. The pain, sharp and bright, works, and I realize I have actually drawn blood.

Lisa pauses. Her eyes go wide. For the first time, I have surprised her. She lets go of my breast long enough to say, "Wow."

"Don't—" I manage and then swallow until I can add, "stop."

But, to my horror, she does, sitting up and pulling away. She pushes her hair back from her face, and for a moment, she looks uncertain. "Uh, I think I'll tone it down, if you're going to rip off your own skin. Sit up and…and face away from me."

It's useless to protest. She'll leave if I push her, so I obey. My arm aches. If matters get too intense again, I can focus on that.

Lisa kisses the nape of my neck, just barely touching her mouth to my skin. She knows what those ghostlike little kisses do to me. She's trying to drive me insane.

I shiver, but at least, without her hand between my legs, I am not a second away from orgasm. Two seconds, maybe, and that makes all the difference. Her hands slide around me while she kisses my neck, my shoulders. She cups my breasts, taking my nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. She twists them in time with her kisses.

Oh. This is…oh. So different from what we usually do. It makes all the difference in the world to be naked, to feel her against my skin, to feel her touching me in places she has avoided until now. I can almost fool myself into pretending we are making love. But she's clothed, and unmoved, and we're not.

Then she begins to kiss and lick her way down my spine, and I stop caring. I arch my back, and she slides her fingers away from my breasts, down my belly, into the V between my thighs. All of a sudden, the orgasm is back, lurking in the flashes of light behind my eyelids.

"Oh," I say, trying to give her some kind of signal, "I, I—"

"Lie down again," she whispers, and I turn onto my back with terrifying eagerness, grabbing again at the headboard. And once more she bends to my breasts with her fingers busy down below. "Don't bite yourself this time, okay?"

God, then what the hell am I supposed to—what do men do, when they're trying not to come? Sports scores, I've heard. I don't know anything about sports. Instead, I try to remember my first deposition in as much detail as I can.

It works. If I can call this "working"—writhing in agony beneath her, panting and moaning and pleading without shame. I can't even open my eyes. I am all tension, my muscles locked in permanent quiver, and if I come, she'll stop, and this will be over, and I couldn't bear it.

She bites her way ever so gently down my ribcage. "Poor Jennie," she says, and I can feel her smiling against me. "You want to come, don't you?"

"N-no," I say, and it might even be true.

"You know it'll be good, don't you," she murmurs. "You know after waiting this long for it, it'll feel so good."

I sob wordlessly.

"Beg me," she says.

"Buh, beg—"

"Beg me for what you want. Maybe I'll give it to you. Maybe I won't."

"Take off your clothes," I gasp before my brain can catch up with my mouth and tell me what a terrible idea that is.

Her mouth and fingers pause.

"No, Jennie," she says. "No, I won't." She nips the side of my breast punishingly. "We have a deal." She moves her fingers again, and I feel the double spike of pain and pleasure. "Besides, that wasn't even begging," she adds, sounding playful now. "Tell me what you want and beg for it."

Please get naked. Please don't find another Somebody. Please never stop doing this to me. Please kiss me, oh please, do that. Do all that.

"Please let me come," I whisper, because I cannot endure this a moment longer.

"Really?" She seems surprised for the second time tonight. "You sure? Say it again."

But only one word will come out. "Please," I say, moaning it like a mantra. "Please, please, please—"

"All right," she whispers, her voice making me quake. "Hold on for one more second—"

That second feels like it lasts a year, and then I feel her mouth between my legs, sucking my clit, while her hands reach up to cup my breasts.

My body jerks so hard that I'm astonished I don't snap the headboard in two with my bare hands. I hear my own voice screaming, echoing off the walls as I come. I've never done that. I can't be contained. No. I won't survive this one. She's killing me with this one. It won't stop. I can't stop. I—

She stops licking and hums, fluttering her tongue against me, and my voice chokes and dies as the room goes gray. It only flickers for a second—nowhere near as long as that time she had me with my head hanging down off the edge of the desk.

I'm hyperventilating. I might really pass out if I can't stop, if I can't calm down. But I can't. I can't stop panting. I can't stop shaking. She notices and strokes my hip. "Shh. Take a deep breath. In: like that. Now out again."

I try my best. She sits up, reaches out, and disengages my hands from the headboard. Once I relax my arms and legs, I feel better. The room's stopped spinning.

"There, now," she whispers and bends to kiss my cheek. "There, now."

And then I do it.

I grab the back of her head, I force her mouth down, and I kiss her, hard and ungracefully. I don't think about it; I certainly didn't plan it. And if she would only kiss me back, then I'd— I don't know what I'd do. I'd do anything—

She grabs both my hands and pins them to the mattress, sitting up, turning her mouth away from mine. I cry out in protest, leaning up after her, trying desperately for more. She looks down at me, and her eyes aren't playful anymore. They're wide with shock.

"Um," she says. It seems I've made the worst mistake possible, and I really wonder for a second if I might cry.

Then she bites her lip. "Do you, uh…do you need that, Jennie?" she asks.

Hope flares inside me so brightly that it's almost painful, it almost burns. "Just once. Only once." I mean it. I can live with once. I can't live with never.

She pulls away, causing me to panic, but then she nods, her expression never changing. She lets go of my hands and bends down.

I try not to go mad with greed. I slide my fingers into her hair, clasp the back of her head, and revel in the kiss. I can't get enough. She licks into my mouth, strokes my tongue, my palate, and I move my mouth against hers, keeping my eyes closed so I can better focus on how it feels, every moment of it. My head feels like it's on fire. It was worth the wait, this kiss, there is nothing in the world like her mouth—

Lisa pulls away with a hiss. Still straddling me, she turns to the wall and sighs.

My lips tingle. She's stopping. I try to summon a moment's worth of regret for whatever I just did wrong. It's not coming.

"Dammit," she mutters, raises one leg, and sits down next to me on the bed. She crosses her legs. Her toenails are a pale lavender. I've never seen her toes before.

She's certainly never seen so much of me. Without her on top of me, self-consciousness takes over. I sit up, too, and curl my knees up to my chest. "What's wrong?"

She's not looking at me. "I don't know. No, I do know." She sighs and glances at my shoulder. Her eyes widen. "Jesus!"

Once she points it out, I notice the stinging pain. I glance down and wince. I've certainly created what will be a magnificent bruise. I wanted her to bite me, but I never expected that would turn into biting myself.

"It's not important," I say.

She squirms and pulls her own knees up to her chest. "It's important to me. I didn't mean for you to get hurt."

"It's not your fault." I keep looking her in the eye. "I make my own choices."

For a second, silence reigns as we stare at each other. I'm starting to get chilly. She says, "Should we stop?"

The cold seems to penetrate me until it covers every cell in my body. I squeeze myself into a tighter ball before I can stop myself. She notices, so I suppose that's my answer.

She sighs. "God. I don't know what I was thinking."

I can't make myself relax. My face probably looks awful. "For my part, I don't know what you're saying."

"I'm saying—" She looks up at my ceiling, apparently praying for strength. The soft glow of the lamp catches on her blonde hair. "I don't know why I thought we could just do this casual thing. But I also didn't know…" She gives me an uncertain look. "I didn't know you wanted to kiss me."

I can hardly deny it, can I? Even if I'd really like to. "Why did you assume I didn't? I never said that."

She seems disbelieving. "But when I said you couldn't kiss me, I thought you were into the idea."

I'd looked like I was "into" it? Well, I hadn't protested, that much was true. Still, she's got a long way to go if she thinks people are so easily read. "What made you think that?"

"Because—" She worries her bottom lip. That lip tastes so good. "For you, it meant you weren't, you know."

I sneer. "Responsible for my actions? Let's leave that fiction at the door, shall we?"

"Gay."

We stare at each other again. I'd like to think I didn't hear her correctly.

"Or bi," she adds quickly. "Or pan. Someone who's into other women, anyway."

The cold begins to coalesce inside me and forms a solid lump in my gut. That's why her rules are what they are? She thinks I'm in some kind of deep denial about my sexuality? But I'm not. Of course I'm not.

I'm too cold. I roll off the bed, fling open my closet door, and pull out my silk bathrobe. I wrap the robe around myself and tie it before spinning to face her. "Why do you keep bringing this up? Why does this even matter to you?"

"Because you matter to me!"

The words land between us with even more force than gay did. Absurdly, ridiculously, a sudden flare of heat banishes the ice in my body.

I matter to Lisa?

Whatever expression is on my face must not be terribly encouraging. Lisa's eyes widen, and she whispers, "Shit," before she uncurls and makes to get off the bed.

"Wait!" I hold out a hand and sit down on the edge of the bed. My shoulder aches. I can feel the imprint of her mouth on my neck, my shoulders, my love-starved body. "What do you mean?"

"Leave it alone," she snaps. "I'm such an idiot, I can't believe—"

"You're certainly an idiot if you think you can say a thing like that and leave. Lisa…" What is she afraid of? I take a shot in the dark. "I'm not angry."

She glares at me. Apparently, that's not what she's afraid of. "Glad to hear it, but I am. Angry, that is. At myself, not you." She hunches her shoulders. "I knew this was the last thing I needed, but I walked right into it anyway. I've never learned a goddamn thing from any fuckup I've ever made."

The words make me uneasy. Does Lisa have a lot of relationship…fuckups in her past? And moreover—does she think I'm one of them?

Am I one of her fuckups?

Lisa looks at me again, and her eyes glaze. Without a word, she reaches out and pushes a long lock of my hair back over my shoulder. Her fingertips brush my throat, and I gasp as heat galvanizes me all over again.

"You're just so beautiful," she whispers. "You're amazing. You've been driving me crazy since day one, and I should have run when you kissed me in the elevator, but I couldn't." She cups my face in her hot hand. "You hooked me."

Her touch turns me into an idiot. It's the only reason I choke, "You hooked me, too."

Her fingertips go still on my face. I fight not to flinch. Why did I say that? How could I have admitted something so stupid and raw?

"Yeah," she says, "looks like I did." She leans in.

We shouldn't kiss. We do anyway. It's the answer to all our questions about how we can be doing this ridiculous thing. That answer is: We can't not.

Am I dreaming? Can I really be feeling like this, all fireworks inside, after a lifetime of mediocre encounters? So many people must go through life without knowing this passion. I didn't even believe it existed until I was in my forties. Surely nobody who's tasted it could give it up.

"You wanna touch me?" Lisa murmurs against my lips.

Really? Of course I want it. She's going to let me? Of course—of course I want it.

Why can't my hands move? Why can't they reach out and grab her hair again, or her shoulders, or cup those magnificent breasts? I want to touch them, those soft, round, womanly—

Gay. The word grabs hold of my brain and rattles it like a martini shaker. She thinks you're gay. Or bi, or—whatever that other word was, she thinks—

She insists on it, in fact. No matter what I say. And I'm not; I can't be, I simply cannot be. It's too complicated, too messy, and too unthinkable that I'd have gone through my whole life without knowing something this earthshaking about myself.

"No," I whisper, pulling away.

She looks at me in obvious disbelief. "Jennie?"

"You're wrong." I can't look at her beauty. I'd do something I could never forgive. I look at the wall beyond her instead. It needs artwork. My Klimt Danaë print, perhaps. "About me. About what I am. I'm not gay. I'm…I'm not bi, either."

That seems like a ludicrous thing to say under the circumstances, but the words ring terrifyingly true. I'm not bisexual. In a moment where nothing else seems certain, that does. And there's no need to think about it any further.

"What? Jennie, come on." Frustration ripples through her tone. "What are you saying? You want to stop?"

"I-I don't want to stop this," I say. "That is, if you want to continue. Our arrangement is, is satisfactory as it is, isn't it? Now that…" I clear my throat. "Well, now that the parameters are less restrictive."

"Less—" Lisa raises an eyebrow. "You mean now that you get naked and I kiss you."

My face catches fire. If she's going to rub my nose in this, try to shame me, then that just might be the one thing that can jolt me out of this after all. "You didn't seem to hate it." I turn to gauge her reaction.

"Hell no, I didn't." She crosses her arms over her breasts. "But you don't want to touch me in return?"

I do. She must know that. She won't make me say it, will she? Not when saying it means… I look at her, my hands shaking. Let me do it. Just don't make me say it.

Her gaze softens, and for a second I think she will. "You're not ready yet, are you?" she says softly. "Well…I can wait."

"Wait? Wait for what?"

She begins to slide off the bed. "You don't have to say anything you're not ready to say, Jennie. But I don't want to be touched by somebody who's pretending she doesn't want to do it, like she's just doing me a favor."

I can't deny how reasonable that is, and yet a lump is still stuck in my throat.

"I can wait," she repeats. "I mean—I can't lie. This is kind of the most exciting thing that's happened to me in a long time. My life's been shitty," she blurts out. Then she looks surprised, and a bit chagrined. "Uh, not that this wouldn't be amazing if it hadn't been. I'm just trying to say—"

"Your father." The words come out more gently than I could have imagined when I'm wound up this tightly inside. All of a sudden, I find myself curious about her father. Did he know his daughter was gay? Was he supportive?

"Yeah." She tucks her chin down as if trying to hide, like an attractive turtle. "And some other stuff. It's been rough. And this, with you—like I said, I'm hooked. But that's all." She holds up her hands and lifts her chin again. "I'm not asking for anything more."

There's no reason the words should make me feel desolate. But it makes sense that Lisa wants nothing more profound than this. What else would there be for her to want?

Can I even give her that much, when she wants me to admit something I can't?

"Right," I say hollowly.

"Yeah. Right. Good." She slides off the bed and tugs her blouse down while I try not to stare at her breasts. "So I'll see you at work tomorrow?"

"You will." Nothing's changed, has it? Nothing has to change.

She looks me up and down with a familiar gleam in her eye. The throaty note of command returns to her voice. "Wear a skirt. I'll wanna look at your knees."

When she leaves, I'm glad to be sitting on the bed. The knees in question are undeniably jelly-like.

The door closes. The sound jolts me back to myself, and I look around my new bedroom without really seeing anything in it.

I can wait, she'd said, leaving me with a couple of key questions I'd lacked the courage in the moment to ask.

Wait for what? I should have asked. And let's not forget:

For how long?