Conquest

An Older Man

She feels adrift. Alien. Depressed, maybe. Why does adulthood suck? Brie stands behind the counter at The Center on a Wednesday morning, feeling like a yuck monster. She watches the first wave of clients bustle in. Look at this place, it's the ultimate cry against adulthood, at least the traces it leaves on your face and body. Adulthood sucks because it locks you into the carousel of want-need-have and it's nearly impossible to get off unless you freak out and murder your family or go live off your savings in Thailand, but even Thailand's too expensive now. The world is getting smaller, filled with yuck monsters who only mirror your own desires and deficiencies back at you from a hundred different angles 24 hours a day on Facebook and Instagram and Bravo TV. Ick, she needs an Americano and a B-12 shot. Goddamn, she's in a bad mood.

Brie can't get her little sister out of her head. It's like a riddle she keeps trying to solve: why is Alaska is in such a hurry to grow up and Brie wishing she could wind back the clock. She keeps experiencing moments of longing for something that can only be described as youth. But come on, she's not even forty. This can't be a mid-life crisis, people are regularly living to one hundred these days. Look at Grammy Birdie! She's nine decades old and showing no signs of dying. And this stuff is genetic, is it not? Sure, Grammy Birdie may not practice the same drinking and pot-smoking regimens that Brie does, but Brie just switched to a vaporizer and studies show that reservatrol, a compound found in red wine, can increase one's lifespan by up to 60%. It's possible she misread that statistic, but whatever, red wine is good for you, and she probably drank herself up the life expectancy chart a few years last night alone.

No, it's not that she wants to be younger. It's that she wants everyone younger, beautiful, and more accomplished than her to die in a plane crash. Sometimes she just feels behind. She needs to take action. Too much waiting, not enough diving headlong into—

"Hey you," Amber says, calling up her schedule. "What's happening?"

Brie shakes herself from her daze. "Oh, my 9 o'clock rescheduled so I'm just standing here zoning out. I wish I would've checked the schedule at home and stayed in bed an extra hour."

Amber singsongs, "Then you wouldn't have gotten to see the Silver Fox looking over at you."

Brie looks out into the Waitrium where he sits reading a magazine. As if he senses her, his eyes jump from the page to her face. She pulls her phone from her pocket and looks at her list as Amber sets out across the room to retrieve him. Brie watches them shake hands and then Amber leads him into the Bodywork Wing, where she will install him in a small room and leave briefly so he can undress.

The fact is, for her entire adult life, Brie's been loitering at the entrance of life trying to market herself instead of busting full force into the business of living.

***

She makes a fist and knocks lightly at the door.

"Ready," the voice calls back.

Inside, the scent of amber and the heave and crash of ocean waves. A dim lamp in the corner casts a sunset glow. He is lying face down on the table, his arms above his head, a thin sheet covering him from the waist down.

She pours a pool of warm oil into her palm and rubs her hands together before slipping them just beneath his ears and gliding down his neck, over his shoulders, onto his back, and down the spine to where the sheet forms a line. She crosses it, pulling the sheet away and running her hands down the length of his muscular ass and thighs and calves, down to his feet where she runs a fingernail along the soles before reversing her way back to the little inlet of his lower back. It is here where she places her lips.

She feels his body tense and then release as she brushes her lips up the line of his back, all the way to his ear. "It's me," she whispers.

He lifts his head and turns to see her, a shockwave of delight setting off in his eyes and rippling through his body and out to her. He pushes himself to sitting, the sheet falling down to the floor, and watches her with intensity, waiting to see what is next.

She brings her fingers to the buttons of her smock and begins to undo them, each release revealing six inches more of her naked body. Her nipples are erect, even in the warmth of the room, and he reaches out and touches one. She comes to him and kisses him, a slow, luscious exploration of the tongue that makes them grip one another with ferocity. He pulls her onto the table and astride him, his erection pulsing against her. She wants to coax him inside, but he has laid her down on the massage table and stood, going to the corner to fetch the warm bottle of oil. He pours some into the pool of her navel and uses his large, soft hands to spread the oil in circles onto her belly and breasts, and down between her legs where she is aching. He kisses her breasts and her neck and licks at her lips before he presses his mouth to her ear. "Turn over."

She turns, and he runs his hands from the nape of her neck, down her back, along her ass, and pauses there, where she waits for him to touch her with his fingers, but instead he presses his face in between her legs and inhales. She turns over again and reaches for him, wrapping her fingers around the base to draw him to her, but she is overcome with the urge to slide off the table and kneel. She looks him in the eyes and smiles as she takes him into her mouth, and he groans with pleasure, tousling her hair with his fingers as she moves her lips up and down, up and down, up and down.

"You're like a dream come true," he tells her, pulling her up to him, and he presses his finger onto her clitoris and rubs her in a way that makes her shake.

She pushes him onto the table and straddles him, and he thrusts up and into her before she expects it, and they gasp. "God you feel so good." They roll like the ocean waves, she sitting up, sucking on his fingers, he like an addict for her, low-lidded, open-mouthed, whispering, "Yeah, yeah."

They use the hour. He slides and he thrusts. Against the wall. Bent over the table, they rub and they moan and they suck each other's tongues.

Deep. Warm. Good. Yes. Now. More. Ohhhhhhh.

As she is dressing he asks her if he can see her again. She leans into him, kissing him with a searing heat, and pulls back away. "Sorry, no."