Russian Doll

"My husband had an affair."

She's never had sex with a woman before. She's wanted to, but she's been married for so long, and believes that her days belong to her family and routine. That she won't feel a new body against hers again. She is eleven years older than me, she works in PR. She is a mother and a wife and she is achingly beautiful. 

"He had an affair and I thought it was the end for us. But it actually meant we were able to talk about things for the first time, talk about the things we wanted and the things we needed. It's why I'm here now, it was his idea."

She has very long black hair. She looks effortlessly graceful, and I wonder how much time that effortless grace takes in the morning.

"My husband cheating on me was the best thing to happen to our marriage."

She's older than me, but I feel protective of her, she's vulnerable with the risk she’s taking. She speaks so confidently but I can see she's nervous and hopeful all at once. Later when I kiss her, her eyes brim with eager expectancy. It makes her look so young. I am taller than her, assertive, a decisiveness that she responds to with animation. Her body is compact yet giving against mine, more angular and masculine.

We met at a party of my friends. An everyone-here-is-probably-going-to-be-fucking-tonight party. Wide loft, low lighting, high tension. The guests were invited based on this shared understanding, mostly women, all queer, united in an aim to treat bodies with the shared worship they invoke. This common understanding produces a unique atmosphere at once calm and a certain kind of tension. 

Everyone is talking freely, but inside each conversation, like a Russian doll, is the question, ‘Do you want to fuck me?’ It takes a long while before the tension reaches a crisis; postponed each time someone jokes about what is inevitably coming next. Slowly though, clothes start coming off, people start touching, surreptitiously, then more vigorously, and people start breaking off into groups of two or three around the room.

I don’t know who invited her. She doesn’t know anyone I know, or maybe she’s just pretending. We talk for two and a half hours before I kiss her. She isn’t shy, but she is private, so we find a side room for seclusion. I like how open she is. I like how instead of pretending she isn’t married, or avoiding the question, she shows me her marriage, and then opens the door for me to climb in just for an hour or two.

I run my thumb along her jawline and she closes her eyes and shivers. It makes me want her so acutely, the sensation runs all the way from my throat to my knees. Her excitement, her nerves, her uncertainty, and her trust in me to lead her through our encounter fuels something surprisingly aggressive in me. It makes me handle her all the more tenderly. I tuck her long hair behind her ear.

Most of her clothes are already off when I lay her on the table. I drag my lower lip over her nipple and her spine lifts. I use my thumb back and forth over the other. Very softly, I move to kiss the dimples below her collarbone on each side. I hook both thumbs into her underwear and slide them off her. Each mundane action takes on new meaning when seen through her unpracticed eyes.

I let my fingernails graze the back of her thighs, from her ass up to the back of her knees; her breath catches. I kneel down, she puts her heels on the edge of the table and lets her knees fall outward. Her hands grasp at my hair, winding it up in her fingers. I can tell she’s too shy to grip it hard, though I wish she would. I breathe onto her, teasing her with inaction. She wants more but she doesn’t know how to ask, she’s still unsure of herself, and of me.

My tongue slowly dips into her, parting her pussy. It’s nothing new for me, but it feels new because it is for her and I'm drawing on her arousal. I move so softly back and forth. There is reverence in every flicker, knowing each movement is something defining for her. I wet a finger and slide it inside of her and she pitch-shifts her moans.

Knowing she is a mother excites me. Together we're reclaiming her body for something sacred, a different type of sacred to her every day, an eroticism that gives life, too. I put my finger up to her mouth so she can taste herself with me. Her lips close keenly around my fingers, her tongue is so soft under my fingertips before I take them back down to her shivering pussy.

A second finger, and a third, I beckon inside her, drawing her clit further to my mouth. I alternate sucking with sliding the flat of my tongue in a way that makes her call out to me.

"I'm going to cum!"

She sounds surprised. I work my tongue harder against her and feel her pussy pulsing around my fingers, clutching them inside of her. She grips my hair now, losing her earlier politeness. When her grip loosens, I slow my pace but don’t stop. I circle my tongue more softly now around her clit while her breathing returns to its normal rhythm. I suspect after tonight her life will return to its usual rhythm too, at least for some time.

After, she sits up with such electric joy, breathless, and youthful. She is even more striking now. She holds my gaze with grateful pleasure. I hold her. She is so little I feel like my palms are going to meet around her ribcage. I know she’s going to go back to her husband tonight, but I’m so thankful for this diversion that she’s taken with me. 

I feel like a voyeur peering into their marriage and it turns me on to be there. Knowing this night is out of the ordinary for her gives it acute significance. Something that would once have been a violation of her marriage (the erotic undercurrent of the taboo still lingers), renegotiated into pleasure. My involvement in the shift from the rule of monogamy to the rule of hedonism is sharply arousing.

She was a guest at our party and I was a guest in her marriage. I was touched by her invite and I showed my gratitude with my mouth on her body. I like to think that she’ll take the sensation home with her. 

"We should go back to the others."

The next day I wonder idly when I burnt my tongue, feeling the numbness that comes after a scald before recalling her.

Photo by CottonBros