The Dogsitter

“So you’re the dogsitter.”  

The voice is deep, authoritative, rumbling. The screen door slams shut, hinges squealing. The back of my neck vibrates like a tuning fork. I’m underneath the kitchen sink, sweat dripping into my eyes. I arrived in Hamtramck, this sub-city of Detroit, after midnight, stumbled straight into bed, and woke at dawn to take the dog for a walk and unpack the U-Haul. I need more sleep; I need a real meal, not just a stale bagel and a bowl of matcha, in order to be in my right mind. No wonder I’m having outsized reactions to a simple human voice, undeniably commanding as it is. 

I scoot backward on all fours and carefully extract my bandana-covered head before standing up. I’m disgusting: my shirt is sticking to me and I’m speckled with muck from my futile attempts to fix the leaking faucet. I wince when I realize how my new neighbor just saw me: ass pushed high in the air, waving to and fro as I prodded at mysterious pipes that I know nothing about. My jean cutoffs were chosen for coolness, not decency, on this humid summer day, and my tits are free-ranging it underneath my threadbare UNLV t-shirt. 

Yet I see heat flare in my neighbor’s eyes as he surveys me with a politely neutral expression. I stop myself from yanking down the frayed hems of my cutoffs. 

“That’s me,” I say, my own voice gravelly from lack of sleep. “You must be Alex.” I point to myself. “Grace Kang.”  

We smile at each other, a little shyly.

I point at the black-and-white pitbull who is in my care for the next month, but Roxy is too busy nuzzling Alex’s calves to notice my disapproval. “Some fucking guard dog you make.” 

Alex laughs. I look up—way, way up—to meet his eyes. When my friend Cheryl mentioned that her next-door neighbor, Alex the psych nurse, could occasionally help out with Roxy, I had assumed—I hate my ingrained sexism—that of course Alex stood for Alexandra, and from there my imagination had pictured a cheerful and bubbly divorcee in her mid-to late thirties, good with children and animals, not a cool-eyed bruiser several inches taller than me who is, to put it bluntly, prison jacked. I eyeball his wide shoulders and muscled arms and wonder when he finds time to work out—from what Cheryl said, Alex works long and irregular shifts. 

“Don’t blame her,” he says. He rubs the back of his head—his hair is cut in a modified high-and-tight, the sides shaved, the top left a little longer—and then squats to scratch Roxy behind the ears. His hands are big, their touch confident. Her eyes glaze at his touch, and she drools on his feet. “This girl knows me.” 

I belatedly remember my manners. “Can I get you something? Water? A beer? Cheryl mentioned you’d stop by.” 

He steps farther into the kitchen and I can see him better now: unusual eyes, gray, but so light as to seem colorless; olive skin that looks almost golden in the early evening light; glossy hair that is the rich, bright brown of chestnuts; a calm but alert presence. Around my age—mid-to-late thirties. I’m good at guessing ages, as good at it as white people are bad at guessing mine. Alex’s features are blunt and uncompromising—a long, full-lipped slash of a mouth, wide cheekbones, a strong nose that’s been broken at least once. Plus a facial expression that’s impersonal, bordering on mean. As can happen with hyper-masculine men, his eyelashes are so lush they’d make a drag queen jealous. He’s a good nurse, I can tell. Just being around him must make the patients feel calm, although my jackhammering pulse tells a different story. I must’ve imagined the hot-eyed glance I thought I saw earlier. 

“Pilsner okay?” I take out two bottles, although mine is mostly for show. I have almost zero alcohol tolerance, but it tends to put people on edge if the hostess isn’t drinking. And if Alex is going to occasionally check in on the dogs for me and maybe fix Cheryl’s leaky faucet, I want to put him at ease. “Sure,” he says. “You want me to fix that leak?” 

Surprising myself, I flirt a little. A low, urgent tug in my belly is making me flutter my eyelashes, tilt my head. “Yes, please,” I say, smiling so deeply that my dimples appear. I drop my gaze, then peer up at him. “How many times have you done this for Cheryl?” 

Alex looks me right in the eyes. “As often as she needs.” 

That low tug in my belly turns into a hard, aching knot. The blood beats in my neck, my palms, the soles of my feet, heavy as a bassline in a grinding dance anthem. I’m the first to look away. 

I feel useless just sitting at the kitchen table and watching as Alex repairs the sink, so I offer to get us dinner. I run into the bedroom and change into a bra and clean shirt before I leave. Alex says he’ll let Roxy out while I’m gone. I’m back in forty minutes and by that point he’s not only fixed the leak, but taken out the garbage and is oiling the screen door’s squeaky hinges. 

“You’re handy,” I say approvingly as I set the table and put the takeout and a pitcher of ice water on the kitchen table. Roxy trots over to sniff me and beg for food, but I scratch the scruff of her neck before I lead her to her crate in the living room. She goes willingly and gets in her bed, circling three times before she lies down in happy exhaustion.

I return to the kitchen and make a desultory attempt to look for drinking glasses, but I keep opening and reopening the same cabinets only to reveal more chipped plates and bric-a-brac. It’s hard for me to think and I can’t tell if it’s my sleeplessness or Alex’s presence that is making me so nervous. 

Alex has finished his beer and mine. I hand him a third one, which he takes with a nod of thanks. He glances at my left hand as he pulls out a chair for me, then takes his own seat. “Your husband not handy?”  

My short-shorts and bralessness had not been enough to embarrass me,  but a loaded question and a brief look can make me turn red. I briefly, foolishly, place my right hand over my left. “It’s fake,” I confess, grinning. I find almost everything funny these days, myself most of all. 

Alex’s eyebrows lift. 

“Did Cheryl tell you how we became friends?” I ask.

Alex shakes his head. “She just said you’re here for a month while she and the wife are in Chicago. And that you’re from California.” We both turn and look at the photo of Cheryl and Deborah pinned on the fridge. It’s from the Hotter Than July festival last year; Cheryl is in her box braids and a kaftan, her bourbon-colored eyes alive with laughter, her dark bronze skin lit by the sun. Deborah, her hair short and natural, wears a dress in the colors of the Jamaican flag, and kisses Cheryl on the cheek. They are both so happy and in love that sometimes I stand in front of them and bask in their feelings, like a cat in the sun. 

“She took a writing course at Michigan State this past year.” I clear my throat. “I was on a fellowship and part of the deal was that I teach classes to earn my keep—” 

Realization dawns in Alex’s eyes and he almost, but not quite, grins. “And that keeps the horny undergrads at bay,” he says, nodding at my ring finger.

I fiddle with the plain silver band and the cubic zirconia solitaire stacked above it. “Not just them. Professors are randy as fuck, it turns out. And I just wanted…to be above the fray, I guess. So—” I hold up my left hand, wiggle my fingers. 

“Do you take ‘em off if you want to get laid?” Alex asks. His tone is bland but the look on his face is not. I find myself taking quick, darting looks at him, only meeting his eyes for milliseconds at a time. Each moment our glances catch makes me flush, as if I have taken a sip of a too-strong high-proof liquor.

He reaches out and delicately, thoughtfully places his thumb and forefinger around the ring set, rotating it around my finger. I can feel the rough edges of his calluses against the tender skin. I turn bright red, almost as if I have taken a shot of whiskey. “Where does Cheryl keep the drinking glasses,” I mumble, rising to my feet and abruptly turning away.  

“Cabinets above the toaster oven,” Alex says, and I can hear the grin in his voice. 

You got this, I pep-talk myself, wishing I wasn’t so discombobulated by him. I have survived so much; I pride myself on being able to handle almost anything, but throw an attractive man into the mix and suddenly I’m an awkward, inarticulate adolescent again. 

The cabinets Alex pointed out are very tall. I step onto a small wooden stool and open their doors as I discreetly take some deep, calming breaths. They don’t work. My mind is blank and I can’t remember what I was doing—oh right. I rise on tiptoe and push my hand deeper among Cheryl’s motley collection of housewares to try and find plain drinking glasses. I can feel Alex’s gaze on me, roaming up my legs, finally settling on my ass, the cutoffs riding farther up as I  bend forward. I hear the scrape of chair legs across Cheryl’s kitchen floor. 

“Oh,” I say, bumping my head on the cabinet shelf. Alex is behind me. I can sense him breathing, hear my own breath as it stutters unevenly in my chest. Hyper aware of my own movements, I lift my head; my hands scuttle over the shelves, awkward and crablike, as I pretend to keep looking for glasses. I am suddenly self-conscious about my backside, again. I ran track and field in high school, trained for Olympic trials in college—briefly and unsuccessfully. My booty and thighs have retained muscle and size, which make me alternatively proud and bashful.

Right now, I wonder if I’m not so much hiding my face as presenting myself, like an animal in heat.

Alex moves toward me. I can feel the glide of his breath on the back of my neck; his body heat turning me sticky and soft. He gets closer and time slows down: I feel luxurious, my muscles substantial, my skin sleek and glossy like a seal’s. The anticipation between us feels sharp and sweet as the bite of teeth into a fleshy, ripe fruit. I have been accused, in the past, of jumping feet first into situations that would be better off left alone, so right now—I wait. I wait to see what he does. 

I bite back a moan as I feel him trail his fingers along the backs of my thighs, from the edge of my cutoffs down to my knees and up again. Tension leaches from my shoulders, my spine. A moment of rationality streaks across my brain: is this happening too fast? I hear him kneel. He brushes his lips behind my left knee, my right; his tongue follows, anointing each hollow. He stands. His hands grasp my waist and massage the muscles there, the pads of his fingers digging in deeply, just a degree short of too rough. I arch my back, seeking out more of his touch, and sigh. 

He makes a noise deep in his throat and shoves his hands under the denim to grasp my ass cheeks, fingers biting into my flesh. The cloth constricts and compresses my pussy. I shudder; I push my flesh farther into his hands and I moan oh fuck yes. My nipples sharpen into dense, hard points. Dimly, I hear Alex laugh. I am an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, unable to run forward or move back. 

My new neighbor rubs a knuckle along the denim panel that covers my crotch for several long moments. I swallow, make myself take a deep breath. I have the same feeling now as I did the first time I made myself jump off the high dive at the community pool: the sense of being mesmerized by the brilliant, unreal patch of blue water so far below me, the equal amounts of terror and attraction I felt as I contemplated the fall. Is this truly what you want? is a question I have learned to ask myself before I do something dangerous or seductive or surface-seeming stupid. When I was young, the answer was almost always yes: yes to staying up until dawn, yes to $400 ATM withdrawals for middling quality drugs and deeply questionable company. Even as my head buzzes with contrary thoughts, Alex continues to pet and stroke me. My legs are trembling and finally, after endless moments of debate, my body tells my brain: shut the fuck up.

As if he has somehow heard my internal switch flip to all systems go, Alex slides one long finger beneath my cutoffs and underwear and softly, delicately probes between my swollen, wet lips. A high, keening noise escapes me and dazedly I think of baby eagles leaving the nest. He makes a satisfied-sounding grunt as he pushes the tips of two fingers inside me, but my shorts are too tight—there is only so far he can go. He removes his hand—I sigh no don’t stop—but then reaches around me to grasp the waistband, right underneath my belly button. I suck in my breath as his thumb grazes my sensitive lower belly. He grips the fabric tightly and pulls upward, hard, compressing my clit and labia so forcefully that a high-pitched squeal escapes my throat. My knees liquefy and I grab the edge of the cabinet door to stay upright. Alex yanks the fabric taut in a stern, steady rhythm with his left hand as he uses the knuckles of his right to rub at the crotch seam, right where it constricts my most tender skin.  

I make yet another embarrassing noise—a cross between a yelp and a howl—as I climax. It happens so forcefully it feels like a surprise, although it shouldn’t—it’s been a while since I’ve been touched by another person, even longer since I’ve found myself so attracted to someone. You’ve never been this attracted to anyone, a voice inside me says, but I shove it away as a gush of liquid saturates my shorts and a few drops fall onto Alex’s hand. I cry out: more. Alex unbuttons my shorts and pulls denim and underwear to my knees. He uses his hands to widen my stance a little, then turns me around to face him. 

Standing on the stool, we’re almost at eye level. I can’t quite meet his gaze. He wraps a hand gently around my neck, his calloused thumb gently stroking the divot at the base of my throat. Whatever was nervy and anxious within me goes quiet. I want to bare my throat to him so he can bite the tender, silken flesh there. He ducks his head to look into my eyes.  

“More?” he asks, his voice a low rumble.

I nod frantically. But that isn’t enough; I can tell by his expression that he needs a clear yes or no. Finally, after I catch my breath, I say, “More. I’ll say…I’ll say pipe cleaner if it’s too much.” 

His lips tremble and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he tries not to laugh. My heart does a flip at how handsome he is. “Pipe cleaner,” he says solemnly. “Got it.” 

He maneuvers me so my naked ass is perched on the edge of the counter and kneels in front of me. Without any preamble he places his open mouth over my cunt and ruthlessly fucks me with his tongue, ramming it deep and high and then writhing it against the turgid bud of my clit. His lips are firm, smooth, and commanding against my overheated skin. 

I exhale—oh oh oh—and my spine goes upright, as if electrocuted. My head jerks backward and hits the cabinet door with a loud crack; I barely feel it as this near-stranger twists and rubs his mouth and nose and chin all over my dripping snatch. Enthusiastic is too weak a word to describe the way he eats pussy; this feels like he has been told the cure for some terminal disease lies within the folds of my flesh as he tongues and laps and sucks. I come again, back-arching, then once more, and right when I am about to wheeze out the words pipe cleaner, pipe cleaner, he pulls me off the counter and half-drags, half carries me to Cheryl’s living room.

He uses his foot to shove aside the cherrywood coffee table, the decorative baskets that hold Cheryl’s knitting and magazines. He deposits me on the deep-flocked dark blue rug and motions for the bandana from my hair, once bright red and now faded to soft pink. I hand it over and he uses it to tie my wrists behind me. He pulls my cutoffs and underwear all the way off my ankles, shoves my bra and t-shirt above my tits but does not remove them. He urges me onto my belly, pressing my chest into the floor and pulling my ass high in the air. I feel him ease one broad thigh between my legs to move them apart, wide. 

He stares at his handiwork for several long moments. “Good,” he says finally, running his fingers from my asshole to my clit, lightly, over and over again. “Very good.” 

I press my forehead into the carpet. My nipples are hard enough to cut glass. As if he can read my thoughts, Alex moves forward, hard thighs behind mine. He drapes his chest over my back and uses the roughened pads of his fingers to play with my nipples: pinching, stroking, rubbing, teasing, pulling, the pressure changing from soft to deep and back again. His left hand rubs rhythmically at my clit, massages the wet lips of my pussy almost as an afterthought. Pleasure takes root in my belly and emerges from my mouth as a grunt, an ugly, raw noise. 

His erection presses into the cleft of my ass, rubbing there as he continues to fondle me. He is huge and hard and I can feel how excited he is; his flesh is twitching and moving of its own accord. 

“Condom,” I say. I want him inside me.

I listen as Alex takes his wallet from his pocket, tears open a foil packet, slides it over himself. Smoothly, almost clinically, he pushes two fingers inside me as far as they will go. I buck and thrash in response at the feel of how thick and strong he feels. My flesh squeezes and tightens around him as he fucks me with his fingers through another orgasm. Alex laughs and slaps one ass cheek, then squeezes the heated flesh affectionately as if to say that’s what I thought. I wait, anticipating his cock after Alex removes his fingers. I can feel him behind me, vibrating with intent and energy. Finally, he places his hands on my ass, then pulls, separating one cheek from the other. I’m shaking, uncertain about what he will do next. When he runs his tongue over the dark rosebud of my back entrance, then pushes his tongue inside, past the first circle of muscle, I sigh in relief and surprise. I repeat his name over and over again, interspersed with oh my god and don’t stop. Alex complies, reaming my asshole with his tongue, then sliding it back into my pussy, then back into my asshole again. 

This is mating, pure and simple—we haven’t even kissed—and I feel as if I have dived down the rabbit hole, nibbled on a drug that has turned my blood into electricity. 

“Put your cock in me,” I moan, the carpet muffling my words. 

Another slap on my ass, this one hard enough to make me yelp. “Not yet,” Alex says. 

I raise my head so I can speak more clearly. I’m sweating, hair stuck to my forehead, stray carpet fibers embedded in my cheeks. “Fuck my cunt,” I say. “I  want to come all over you.” 

Those hands descend again on my flesh, kneading, squeezing, gripping me hard enough to leave marks. My asshole contracts with excitement and a little trepidation. Alex’s hands disappear and I tremble a little. 

A few seconds go by. I can hear the rasp of our breathing, falling into and out of each other’s rhythm. Then suddenly Alex’s hands grasp my hips and I feel the wide, slick head of his cock press inside me, just an inch. He has to ram himself hard to get deeper; my flesh has started to spasm in anticipation. I emit an airless little scream—he is thick and long and the penetration feels both brutal and like a benediction. He pulls out and I moan in protest before he slams back into me, this time sinking himself another inch farther inside. 

“Your pussy’s too swollen,” he says. “You should see how excited you are.” There is a wet noise: Alex is sucking on his fingers, but I only register it dimly.

More, I want to cry, but then my eyes go wide as he sinks the full length of his cock inside me. I feel the heaviness of his wet thumb moving inside my ass. I yowl then, in joy and surprise. His left hand moves to my mons, holding me in place. He slides his fingers downward and applies pressure around my clit,  avoiding direct contact as he fucks me deep and fast with both his dick and his thumb. I’m shaking and sobbing, feeling both violated and complete, when I feel my climax starting deep in the walls of my pussy and my low back, somehow anchored both by his thumb in my ass and the hand massaging my mound. I come so violently that the muscles of my cunt grasp and stroke Alex’s dick firmly as a clenched fist; I hear his mmmmmph of pleasure and then another orgasm gathers force in my pelvis, moves outward until it is rolling through my spine, open-close, open-close, open-close ah ah ah yes god. 

Alex withdraws his thumb, moves his left hand in soft, almost sweet strokes as he milks the last bits of release from me, extending the spasms. I want to collapse flat onto the floor, but now Alex begins to fuck me in earnest, holding my hips steady as he moves fast and hard, his balls slapping against my flesh, my shoulders burning against the rug as he uses my body to completion. He goes fast—shallow, then slow—deep and then fast—deep, noisy and grunting, finally sighing yeah yeah yeah. He pauses, then hoists my hips a little higher, uses his upper body strength to pull me back and forth along his cock while his hips remain stationary. He goes quiet, and then he moves his pelvis forward hard. His cock leaps inside me like a fish caught on a hook: three times? Four? He emits a groan that sounds as if it starts from beneath the earth, his body convulsing. 

He lands heavily atop me, chest heaving from his efforts, then abruptly rears back. He unties my hands, then pulls out. My cunt spasms as it tries to grasp onto his semi-erect cock as it leaves. We lie next to each other, Alex on his back, our breathing harsh and synchronous. Tiny seismic tremors are rolling underneath the surface of my skin.  

I’m still face down. I turn my head. His profile is stern, like a medieval saint. Finally, he looks at me. “Did we even kiss?” he says, and I laugh and shake my head no at the look on his face, fuck drunk and shocked, as if he had just witnessed but not participated in what happened. 

He reaches out a hand, rests it on my hip, slides it up my torso and down my arm until he grasps my hand. He lifts my hand to his mouth, kisses the palm, bites the fleshy mound under my thumb. “Next time.” 

I smile. We haven’t kissed, it’s true, but we can; we will. This semi stranger, whom I have fucked on a borrowed floor in another city, not my own—with everything in me, I know this is just the start, that between us lies something more.

Photo by екатерина лебедь