Conquest

Lazy Sunday

It's a lazy Sunday. She sleeps until nine, takes a long bath, and then throws on a tank top and shorts and ties her wet hair into a bun, hopping downstairs to the café for a cappuccino and a newspaper. She takes a seat by the window and foregoes the style section for the book reviews, sipping slowly from her cup when he spots her and walks over in that confident strut.

"Hey you."

She looks up, searching his face, and says, finally, "Brian."

He smiles that she remembers. "So you do live over here."

Brie shrugs one shoulder. "Twasn't lying." She sets down her cup. "So tell me, how'd the great Duke scouting mission go?"

He grins, clears his throat, doesn't answer. It seems that he is not here to discuss her sister. He nods his chin. "Where exactly do you live?"

She looks up at the ceiling and points.

"This building?" He looks down at her bare legs. "That's cool."

"It's fine for now. I want a backyard and some tomatoes."

He is watching her intensely. It's possible he didn't hear what she just said.

She looks around. "So... you here with friends?"

"I was," he says. "But then I saw you, so I told them to go to breakfast without me."

She laughs a little. "Because..."

"Because I was hoping you would show me that Ladie Tomboi book of yours. I meant it when I said I was affected by her work."

Brie takes a careful sip of coffee.

"That is, if you wouldn't mind showing me. Seems like you're enjoying a morning alone."

She tips her head to the side and shrugs, and he takes the seat across from her. In the sun, she sees a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. She watches him, feigning contemplation. "Okay," she says. "Come on."

He follows her up the stairs, their shadows on the wall like a different pair of people. Something odd: she doesn't give a thought to the state of her apartment, what it might say about her, whether her dirty underwear is lying twisted on the bathroom floor.

She goes in and walks directly to her bookshelf. Behind her, the door clicks closed. Then she can feel him standing right behind her, his voice in her ear. "You're all I've thought about for the last three days. I want you so bad that I made you appear."

She turns to him, the book in her hands. He takes it and returns it to the bookshelf. "I'm too old for you," she says. "By decades."

He slides his hands up the sides of her hips. "That's why I want you. You're a woman, not a girl." He leans in to kiss her, but she palms his chest and pushes him back, all the way to the couch. He sits abruptly, leaning back, his knees spread she he can look at her. She steps into a rhomboid of sunlight casting in from a split in the vertical blinds. Her body is fully illuminated. No shadows, no tricks of the light. She crosses her arms at her waist and pulls her tank top up over her head. On the couch, his face is ardent and watchful. There could be an explosion in the kitchen and he wouldn't take his eyes off her.

She steps out of her shorts and looks down at herself in her bra and her underwear, faded pink cotton briefs worn for comfort, not for company. She reaches back and unclasps her bra and drops it to the carpet. She runs her palms down her hips, catching her underwear with her middle fingers as she goes, and there she stands before him, naked. "Still want me?" she says.

His face is serious. He nods his head as she goes to him, slowly. His body lurches, his midsection like a quivering magnet the moment before the metal flies. When she reaches him he buries his face into her navel, kissing her, his hands seeming to multiply as they run roughshod across her every surface. She catches his hands. "Go slow."

He pulls her down to him and kisses her, his tongue sharp and eager in her mouth. She runs her hand along his jaw to temper his impatience, and then she pulls his t-shirt up over his head. His body is like warm stone. She traces her finger along his shoulder, down his chest, drawing switchbacks down his athlete's abdomen, stopping at the waistline of his jeans. He sheds his pants like a man on fire. "Maybe I made you appear," she says, pressing against him. "Did you ever think of that?"

He takes her breast in his mouth, his eyes on hers, his ribcage heaving. "I want you now. I can't wait."

She shakes her head. "You have to wait. You have to touch me in a way that makes me beg for it. It's about me right now, not you."

He slips his hand down to her dark patch and looks up at her, as if for permission. She pulls his hand to her lips and sucks on his finger, guiding it back down. He begins to rub her, and she makes a little moan, kissing his neck and his chest. She pulls his final layer away and takes him in her hand, watching him wince in pleasure. She pinches his nipple and his intensity multiplies, his eyes like spirals of pleasure. He takes each of her nipples between his fingers and squeezes, and she moans, arching her back, and says to him, breathless, Come here."

He slides inside her and shudders, watching himself go in and out. He looks at her face. "I want to make you feel good. Tell me what to do."

She pulls him down to her side and gets on top of him, leaning back and drawing his hands to her breasts as she moves herself in circles.

He says, "I feel like I'm dreaming," and she smiles, doing hard little thrusts, then, playfully, she slaps him across the face. "Wake up." She leans forward, bracing herself on the armrest of the couch, her breast in his mouth, their bodies banging. She kisses him harshly, saying, "This is the part, Brian, where you fuck me very hard."

His hands are like vice grips on her hipbones, pushing and pulling, his teeth gritted with intensity. He throws her down onto the couch and climbs on top of her, pulling her legs over his shoulders and thrusting like a muscular lion. He pushes and pounds, their voices unbridled. People can probably hear them in the hall. "Oh my God," he shouts. "I want to live inside you. I want to own you."

She pushes him back and climbs back on top. "Go own someone your own age. I belong to myself." Now she is the lion, thrusting and pulling and gritting her teeth, their volume growing, the warmth inside them spreading as they climb together to the peak—he the neophyte, awing at the available vistas, a taste of what is to come, and she the elder, looking back to that sweet fertile land before choosing to pass over, spent but satisfied, into the promised land.