by Jeremy Edwards
(05/27/09)

Oh yes, her conversation was entertaining, her opinions were interesting, and her manner was easy and friendly -- once you got used to the low level of filtering. Her hair, which was the color of an oak bookcase, curved to a couple of adorable points in the vicinity of her chin, and her smile was a smidgen off-center. But despite her appealing qualities, no little voices were whispering to me that Cordelia was the one.

Sometimes circumstances will do the work that the little voices neglect. A snowstorm, if you can believe it. She and I were the only ones left in the office when the roads became impassable, and she lived within walking distance, which I did not. She even had a spare room. It would have been ridiculous, insulting even, for me to refuse her offer of hospitality.

"Isn't sex funny?" Cordelia asked, as she joined me at her kitchen table for a cup of tea.

I recovered quickly from my surprise. "Sometimes. But, ideally, humor is not the primary effect."

"I meant that sexual chemistry is a strange animal. Take you, for example."

It always makes me nervous when a person says that to me -- "Take you, for example." Especially with words like "strange" and "animal" in the same breath.

But Cordelia obviously had no compunctions about launching into a discussion in this manner. "You and I work together every day," she said, "and I never thought of you as -- well, you know, that way -- until you phoned in from another city. I told you I thought your phone voice was sexy, remember?"

I allowed that I did have a vague recollection of this. I didn't consider it necessary to tell her that I had masturbated upon the memory countless times.

"So now, there I am, unable to see you the same way ever again, just because of the arbitrary circumstance of your having gone out of town." She tapped the back of my hand. "Isn't it odd how things can be arbitrary but still significant?"

"Is it significant?" It was a question as much for me as for her.

"It is to me," she replied without hesitation. "And that's the other funny thing...You've known for weeks now that I groove on your phone voice, but I still have no idea what you think, erotically speaking, of my voice or face. It's none of my business, of course, but I feel like I need to know."

She needed to know.

Cordelia continued. "Do you recall when you had to call me at home on my day off last week? To ask where those files were? I was actually touching myself, listening to you. I didn't even notice I was doing it while we were talking. But then I hung up the phone with my left hand and wondered what had become of the right one. It was in my panties, Henry."

It gave me a peculiar feeling to hear my name used in such proximity to her panties. "I'm glad you found it," I managed.

A brief look of concern flashed across her lively face. "I'm not embarrassing you, I hope." It struck me that this was one of those things that you should probably just leave unsaid, if you haven't already said it by a certain point in a certain conversation. At least she hadn't put it in the form of a question.

"Let's change the subject," she suggested. "Do you think men get as much pleasure from sex as women do?"

"This is your idea of changing the subject?"

"Seriously -- what do you think?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to seduce me by engaging in abstract discussions of sexuality?"

"No, and put that eyebrow down. I'm engaging in abstract discussions of sexuality because it's what I do. If it has the effect of seducing you, that's all well and good, of course. But that's not why I'm doing it."

I realized that if her sexy talk didn't seduce me, her brisk wit might. Maybe she realized this as well. But the beautiful thing was that I knew she would behave in the same way, whether or not she expected the behavior to draw me in.

"You still haven't answered the question," she coaxed. "Please tell me what you think. I need to know."

I wasn't necessarily convinced that she needed to know this; but it wasn't difficult for me to warm to the topic. "I don't think men can hold a nipple to the level of pleasure women are capable of. I've done a little reading on the subject, and I'm given to understand that women can experience layers of pleasure as complex as the folds of the proverbial vulva. I've been led to believe, in fact, that what we men experience as an 'orgasm' is merely a gentle breeze compared to the epic, mindblowing tapestries of ecstasy that women can enjoy."

My eloquence seemed to take her by surprise. "Are you making fun of me?" She smiled, indulgently.

"Not at all. You wanted my opinion, and opinions are something I have plenty of. I haven't even finished." And I proceeded to tell her how one girlfriend, in a spirit of good-natured postcoital chitchat, had told me that she thought a woman could probably get more sexual pleasure out of taking a piss than a man could get out of the best orgasm of his life. And how, having had the privilege of watching this particular lady take a piss, I had believed it, at least insofar as it pertained to her specifically. "She wasn't putting men down," I explained to Cordelia. "She just thought men were at a biological disadvantage. She felt a little sad for us because, she supposed, her thinnest, most generic orgasms began where my finest ones left off. I could only fucking imagine."

Cordelia thought in silence for a minute. "I'm not sure if I would want to urinate in front of you at this stage in our relationship, Henry."

"I don't recall requesting that you do so. Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point was that my friend made such a vivid case for feminine sexual pleasure that, even though the sticky results of my recent arousal were still visible on her person, her description of inconceivable feminine quantum-leaps of joy nearly brought me to another boring little male climax."

"Do you envy us?" Cordelia asked.

"What good would that do?" I rejoined.

"Damn. I don't have any wine on hand. I'd really like to have some wine tonight."

I took the non sequitur in stride. "Another attempt to seduce me?"

"That's a side issue," she said honestly. "Wine first, men second."

"I noticed a wine shop on the corner. I think it was actually open."

"Oh! You're right." She brightened. "The owners live above the store, so bad weather isn't a problem for them."

When I arrived at the wine shop, I saw right away that bad weather was anything but a problem for the owners, who had not heard me come in. The woman, who was seated on the countertop, pivoted her body wildly to kiss her man fully on the lips, as he leaned in from a standing position behind the counter. I wondered if she realized that her lilac-colored panties were gloriously exposed beneath her skirt.

The two of them were lost in the kiss, eyes closed, and he probably had no idea that she was wriggling open-leggedly for him as they embraced. Then, just before I coughed to telegraph my presence, I saw her quickly touch herself across the sexual center of the panties. Aha, I reflected. So she, at least, knew how far apart her legs were spread for her guy. I felt my cock acknowledging the genuineness of what I had just observed.

This had done it for me. Cordelia and I could be like this couple. I desperately wanted us to be like them. The leisurely parade of seduction within Cordelia's apartment had made some headway with me, but had not pushed me over the edge into a snowbound romp. But this chance, voyeuristic moment in the wine shop had suddenly made me crave intimacy with Cordelia in a way that the sojourn in her apartment had not. My intrusion into the wine store dalliance was, I reflected, an event at once arbitrary and significant. Ah well, I reasoned -- all roads led to Rome. I could barely wait for the flushed, giddy merchants to ring me out and send me trudging back to her.

After we'd cleared the table, Cordelia announced that she was going to get ready for bed. She left the room, and I sensed an awkward ambiguity lingering in her wake. She had unquestionably been coming on to me earlier; but she was unpredictable. Perhaps it would be the guest room after all. Perhaps, for tonight, we would merely masturbate in harmony over thoughts of each other. I knew I would certainly do my bit.

I heard the sound of teeth being brushed. Then Cordelia returned to the living room.

She still wore her black silk jersey. But all that remained below the waist was a pair of black bikini panties, which served primarily to highlight the perfection of her ass. I noticed that the shape of her bottom suited her overall form ideally in both breadth and convexity, and that the cheeks, protruding from the panties, seemed to shout "Squeeze us!" And the place where each thigh gave way to its neighboring buttock looked eminently kissable. I could imagine the warm, fragrant environment of the black-panty-clad region that waited, unseen, between her legs.

"Oh," I stated inarticulately, after an even more inarticulate gulp.

"What?" she questioned, feigning innocence. "I told you I was going to get ready for bed."

"True," I conceded. "But I didn't know what you wore to bed."

This time it was she who raised an eyebrow. Then she turned her back and walked methodically across the room -- ostensibly to adjust the volume on the stereo. Her ass, in motion, took all the attributes I'd observed when it was stationary and brought them to a higher level. As I gazed on her kinetic beauty I couldn't help clutching the front of my trousers.

We met in the middle of the living room, somehow knowing at last that we were on the same page. Cordelia's laughter was gleeful as she unzipped my fly.

"Don't worry," she said sweetly.

I hadn't been worrying, but it felt nice to hear her say it.

"Relax. I'm going to stroke your dick, Henry, and I won't let go of it until you've come all over the silk on my tummy."

So I relaxed -- from the waist up -- and let her stroke me, while her energetic ass jiggled in my hands.

As Cordelia gently delivered my pleasure, I wondered if perhaps I was destined to love her. I felt weirdly emotional when I spurted, as advertised, onto her belly.

"My bedroom." The invitation was succinct but definite. And so it was in her bedroom that I began to lick along and around the gusset and leg-holes of her panties, until even the places my tongue had not touched were visibly wet.

The moist panties came off. Licking the now-pantyless territory between her thighs, I found that I wanted to please Cordelia more than I'd wanted to please any other woman. There was something so essential about the deliberate way she had wanted me tonight. Maybe that was why her cunt tasted so hyper-real to me, as if her flesh and her juice had more substance to their flavors than any I'd previously tasted.

She must have taken close to twenty minutes building toward her orgasm. My tongue and fingers were going numb, but my sexual consciousness was alive with feeling. When her upper body began to thrash on the mattress and a near-infinite quantity of the syllable "fuck" flowed out of her mouth, I felt the mysterious female ecstasies made almost tangible to me. I studied the way her skin turned pink, the way her toes clenched, the way her eyes diminished in focus but intensified in emotion.

I decided I would have to ask her to use her analytical talent and ready vocabulary to tell me exactly what it felt like -- later, when she would have access to words other than "fuck." I would ask...because I needed to know.

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