Apartment Stories Ch. 04

The girl from 3D knocked on the door.

We exchanged greetings. She asked, "Is Fredrik around?"

Fredrik had overheard the conversation and approached. The girl gave him a beseeching look. "Would you mind if I asked you for a favor?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"I have a leaky faucet in the bathroom and I don't really trust building maintenance. Can you help? I have the cartridge and everything. I'm just not confident about installing it, even with YouTube."

The girl was right about building maintenance. Shoddy workmanship met general creepiness in the form of the building's handyman, nicknamed the hedgehog because of his resemblance to Ron Jeremy. His real name was Don. His real name and the jeans that he wore slung low, especially when working beneath sinks, inspired more than one tenant to quip about the "crack of Don".

"I can walk you through it. Best way to learn."

The girl smiled. "That would be fine."

On his return, he told me a little about the girl's apartment. He wasn't a gossip, but a large photograph seemed to have captured his attention. It hung just above the headboard of the girl's bed, he said. The door was open, he insisted, before I could tease him about looking for leaky faucets in all the wrong places. He said it was a black and white photograph of an arm and the side of a breast cast in heavy shadow. The arm carried the impression of ropes embossed on the skin. He suspected that the photo was of the girl in 3D, but there was no way of knowing for sure.

"It was a very striking photograph," said Fredrik. "Evocative. I can't help feeling that I've seen it before."

I shrugged.

"I think she might be a kinky one," he said in an exaggerated stage whisper, eyes wide. Fingers doing some kind of weird dance.

I didn't respond, not wanting to encourage him, but thought: Good for her.

"Kinky," he said again before stowing his tools in the closet. "Into shibari, probably."

So, to Fredrik. Henry was the name that was on all of his IDs and official documentation. In real life, Henry went by his middle name, which was Fredrik. He'd been going by Fredrik for decades, ever since he and I started going steady (as was the terminology back then) and later married. My name is Henrietta but I went by Henny. After several months of Henry/Henny jokes and general confusion, Henry volunteered to go by his middle name. The fact that my middle name was Gundula prevented me from being so selfless. Fredrik wasn't so accommodating and flexible that he wasn't secretly pleased when I took his surname when we married. We were of a generation where such things were never questioned. Besides, he sacrificed his first name for me. It was only fair that I would give up my maiden name.

As mentioned, Fredrik and I had been together for a long time. Long enough that it felt like our marriage could qualify as an exhibit in a small community museum as a artifact of a bygone age. People sometimes asked me the secret to a happy marriage, as though being four-decades-married made me some kind of oracle. Depending on who was doing the asking, I would answer with "communication" or "common goals" or "ennui". To my closest friends, who never would have asked anyway -- because TMI, as the kids say -- I would have answered: "Be the canvas upon which your partner paints his fantasies".

At any rate, no one wanted to think of two old farts painting fantasies on anything, let alone the other's body.

He caught me as he was leaving the bathroom. "Ah! I left you something."

I sniffed to make sure that he hadn't left me a bomb. It wouldn't have been the first time.

"It's on the counter."

No bomb then. He grinned. Then I made the connection. It was play day.

"It's play day," he said unnecessarily.

On play day, the shot-caller or Dom-du-jour usually left some thematic hint for the other somewhere in the apartment. A teaser. I peeked into the room, curious to see what my dear Fredrik had come up with.

Sometimes, he would leave a collar for me. Maybe cuffs. Maybe a crop or flogger or a butt plug, just to give an idea of what was planned. I often chose some of those same things, being all about equality, but sometimes opted for massage oil if I was feeling selfish and worn out.

Other times, he would leave me lingerie.

Occasionally nothing, if the Dom simply didn't want to play, wanted vanilla, or forgot.

We alternated. At the beginning of the month, he got to choose. At the middle of the month, I did. Either way, we tried for two play days a month, when one of us would act out with the other whatever was on our minds. We'd done this for several decades. Painting fantasies.

It worked. It kept things interesting. Encouraged imagination. Kept atrophy at bay. I didn't always like what he came up with, but I always pretended to. Nothing killed creativity like indifference. Nothing killed one's love life more than a lack of creativity.

Sometimes he left me a collar and cuffs, sometimes lingerie. And sometimes, costumes.

Today was the latter.

I stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I didn't want to ruin his fantasy by making a face or groaning. The package had a photo and I couldn't help rolling my eyes. At least Fredrik had selected a plus size. Too often, he would get all distracted by the models online and forget that I wasn't the twenty-year-old waif with an actual waist that I used to be.

Out of the plastic sleeve slipped a few scraps of vanishingly sparse fabric. Somewhere, I thought, an imprisoned Uyghur seamstress would cringe at the prospect of me wearing her handiwork and wonder about the general depravity of the West if only she knew. Then again, maybe she stole from the factory so that she could paint fantasies with her lover as well. You never knew about people.

So there I stood in the bathroom, a sixty-something year old woman, gawping at a Catholic schoolgirl's outfit -- or at least a man's perverted version of one. Made in China, the label read, as it did for just about everything these days.

The outfit consisted of an impossibly thin tartan band aid of a skirt and a top that consisted of matching tartan lapels and see-through fabric everywhere else.

The top of my face featured rolling eyes. The bottom, a faint smile.

"I see you've found the outfit," he said when I emerged.

I nodded.

"Good," he said. He rubbed his hands together and actually giggled.

God bless him.

The beauty and the sorrow of having grown old is the memory of our younger selves, the things we allowed ourselves and the things we denied. With age we denied ourselves less, but of course we were capable of less too. Parts of me had surrendered to gravity. Parts of me testified to overindulgence and under-utilization. Same with Fredrik. Without the benefit of having known each other in our respective primes, I doubted that either of us would have looked at the other now with much of a lustful gaze.

Back in the day, I was firm and proud breasted. Flexible. Fredrik said that my personality had pull, like a planet. I'd never been compared to a planet and wasn't sure what to do with that bit of information, but I was sure the sentiment came from a good place.

Knowing that we now had more road behind us than ahead, both of us were committed to wresting as much pleasure from life as possible. When the stars aligned and my body allowed me to move into forgotten positions and when Fredrik could maintain an erection without the chemical intermediary that he has so far shunned for reasons of pride or embarrassment, we got on like the youth we once were. I knew then that the young could teach us nothing, however smug they were with their toned bodies and cloying self-assurance. There was likely not an inch of us that the other hadn't explored in countless ways many times over -- an image, I'm sure, that would send the young screaming into celibacy.

That evening, as he was preparing supper, Fredrik asked, "When do you see the doctor?"

"Not for months. Why? Do you have some ideas?"

It was always safer to ask. I bruised easily even when Fredrik remained on the right side of my limits. Bringing bruises to a doctor was never a good idea, particularly for a woman. You could talk all you wanted about safe, sane, and consensual until you invited someone else to make that determination and they decided that none of those terms could possibly apply to what they were seeing.

"I always have ideas," he said. Then he asked me to get changed.

I had hoped that he would have asked much later. Later, when the lights were dim and I'd have less time to look ridiculous. Evidently he wanted me dolled up for dinner. As I stood before the mirror, I felt young and stupid in the outfit but knew that Fredrik wouldn't see me that way. Maybe he had a point. The top did wonders for my cleavage. And the bottom was a screaming, wanton invitation. I paired the ensemble with garters, stockings, and the kind of high heels I only wore when I felt they would spend more time pointing at the ceiling than walking on the ground.

Fredrik looked up as the percussion of heels on hardwood announced my return. His eyebrows shot up and that blessed, familiar look of hunger crossed his face as his gaze raked over me. That he could still lust after me and that I could arouse that feeling gave me a momentary rush. I felt young again.

I settled into my usual spot at the dining room table and he poured us glasses of red wine.

Halfway through the meal, he set his cutlery aside and asked, "What are young Catholic girls allowed to do?"

"Nothing fun unfortunately."

"What about naughty Catholic girls?"

"You mean like me?"

He nodded hopefully.

"Blowjobs," I answered. "Anal if they have a misguided notion of virginity. All else if they don't believe."

"What do you believe?"

"I believe in pleasure."

"That's my girl," he said. "And what kind of naughtiness have you been up to?"

"Aren't you more interested in seeing what kind of naughtiness I'm capable of?"

"I am."

"Good. That list is longer."

He laughed and my heart warmed. Humor had always factored into our intimate lives, certainly more than the look of earnest constipation that graced the faces of the porn actors we sometimes watched.

After the dishes had been cleared, a task made all the more time-consuming by the shameless groping he engaged in, Fredrik poured us both a healthy measure of port and led me to the living room.

He tossed a cushion to the floor in front of him and sat down.

I stood there feigning incomprehension.

"Show me how you kneel. Pretend you're praying for good grades."

From between the armrest and the cushion, he retrieved a leather-wrapped cane. He had been planning, I thought. "We could deal with sin and penance at the same time."

I knew what he had in mind. "That would certainly be more efficient."

As gracefully as I could, I knelt in front of him, my knees on the cushion. I knew he liked to watch, particularly from this vantage point. A guy thing certainly, but I could understand. I got off on seeing his head between my legs. I eased my hands up his thighs and unbuttoned his jeans. He raised his hips and I slid his pants and underwear from him.

It was a good sign that he was already at half mast before I'd even started in earnest.

Like a promise, he rubbed the cane against my ass as I licked the head of his cock.

Tonight at least, tartan seemed to be his thing, or maybe caning my ass, or maybe caning my tartan ass, because half mast became appreciably fuller.

"Ooh," I exclaimed as a schoolgirl might, touching his cock tentatively. "I don't think I can possibly manage."

"Try."

I stroked him, exploring his cock though I knew it like the back of my hand. I traced the veins with my fingertips as though they were routes on a map. I teased the little slit. I weighed his balls. Pressed a knuckle between them and his anus because that always made him weak. Through it all, he rested the cane on my shoulder.

Full mast.

I shuffled a little closer to him and he leaned forward. The cane left my shoulder and eased down my back, coming to rest just below the hem of the skirt.

I licked his balls for a while before drawing one into my mouth and playing my tongue over its surface.

The cane tapped. Not hard. Just enough to remind me that it was there.

My hand cradled the top of his shaft and I licked the underside from balls to tip. Then I reached for my glass and took a healthy sip of port. Before swallowing, I descended on him, splashing my tongue around the glans, baptizing it the best I knew how.

Another tap, a little harder this time, indicated his approval.

"Tuck the hem of the skirt into the waistband," he said.

I did without releasing him from my mouth. He wanted more of a canvas to paint on.

At that point, I swallowed the port and started in earnest. So did he, taps coming harder and more frequently. He swelled in my mouth, his hardness a compliment.

I didn't do that sloppy spit play that seemed so popular on the internet. Instead, I kept things nice and tidy, focussed on the act rather than pretending I was some kind of slobbering Pavlovian dog.

Soon the room filled with the percussion of the cane on my ass. It would only get louder. I wondered how parents with children or inquisitive teenagers managed this. The more I got him going, the harder he struck me, the louder the noise. Interesting feedback to a point.

I gazed up at him, the head of his cock trapped between my teeth. I wanted him to know that while he might be wielding the crop, my teeth weren't exactly harmless either.

There were definite advantages to having fellated the same man for decades. I knew the size, the texture, the girth, the taste. I knew the tells. I'd long ago vanquished the gag reflex. I could go down all the way and stay there. What Catholic schoolgirl could do that? Well, the popular ones, probably.

Although he wasn't into inflicting pain or humiliation, he did like my reddened ass cheeks and the cross-hatching that the cane imparted on my skin. I liked the reminder every time I sat in the days that followed. It often inspired me for when I would next lead the play day. He knew that he was often repaid in kind, yet that seldom discouraged him.

I alternated my technique in the way he liked -- teeth followed by lips and tongue, slow and sensual followed by fast and intense. All the while, the cane provided its increasingly intense feedback. He was an emphatic conductor at times.

I descended on him completely. A particularly hard thwack caused my throat to close around him and I almost lost control. I retreated, swallowed, and swirled my tongue around the tip again.

I eased off after that, partly to protect my ass -- which was feeling hot -- partly to keep Fredrik fresh for what was to come. I had ideas too.

Finally I rocked back on my heels while stroking his slippery-slick length in my hand. He set the cane aside.

"Since you seem all fired up, perhaps we should consider the holy trinity. Seems fitting, me being Catholic and all."

His eyes widened. Usually he was the one to ask. Usually I said no. "Really?"

"It's been a while."

"It has."

The holy trinity was the stuff of legend in his mind, like the Garden of Eden, virgin births, or me squirting. The holy trinity had been attained only a handful of times, often when I was a little tipsy, always after the discomfort of the last time had faded from my mind. Neither was the case this time. Perhaps I was in a giving mood.

"We're a third of the way there," he observed.

"Thirty-three percent. Hardly a passing grade. I want to do better than that. I want a hundred."

It occurred to me that I was taking charge when, by rights, Fredrik was supposed to be calling the shots. I glanced up at him. He didn't seem overly put out.

"I know you're capable of great things when you set your mind to it," he said.

"I mean to apply myself," I said. "To you."

I crawled up to the sofa, straddling his legs. His erection rested on his abdomen.

He pinched my nipples through the flimsy fabric of my top. Not hard, but enough to get my attention and set off a spark of need.

I raised my hips and moved closer, reaching down to place his cock at my entrance. Then I set my forearms on his shoulders.

"Is this what you want?" I asked.

He nodded.

I allowed just the head of his cock to enter me. "You shouldn't be abusing your authority this way."

"I don't care."

Another inch slipped in. The goofiness of the outfit fell away and I immersed myself in the role, feeling the same rush of headiness and trepidation that a young girl in this position might. "What if the headmaster knew that you were fucking one of his students?"

I lowered my hips just a little more. Halfway there.

His hands bracketed my hips. "He'd want you too."

"But I don't need him, do I? You'll take care of me?"

It occurred to me how easy men were. Give their cock a warm home and they were putty in your hands.

He untied the top I was wearing, exposing my breasts. I rose a little, bringing my chest to the level of his mouth. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it too. His lips closed around a nipple and he sucked and nibbled. I thought back to when we were younger, when we'd just become parents. Occasionally he'd partake of the milk in just this way, not greedily but out of curiosity. It had been a novelty. Sometimes I asked him to suck on them when my ducts were blocked and my breasts ached. Then one thing would lead to another. It was an odd feeling, an inherently nurturing act rendered sexual.

He sucked hard, as though trying to coax my glands back into service. For a moment, I wished I could again. One of the many things I wish I'd done more when I had the chance.

But a young girl in a school outfit would likely have none of that context, and so I gave myself up to the simple pleasure of it, him sucking and me rising and falling shallowly on his cock.

"I think you have it in you," he said, "to do really well."

I bottomed out and tightened around him. "You feel good, sir," I said.

He leaned his head back, his eyes closed, his hands still on my hips. I knew he was focussed on the warmth that enveloped him. Eventually I established a rhythm, rising and falling, swivelling and angling my hips just so, seeking those hidden spots that, while elusive, I knew existed. He fit me well, a hand in glove.

And so I played with him, taking my time, experimenting. After all these years and still experimenting.

"If you keep this up, I won't make it to the last part."

I'd forgotten about him, lost in the rhythm, awash in sensations and the pleasure of being filled. I hadn't noticed his breathing, the way he rose up to meet me, the pinched on his face that told me he was close.

"And I will have gotten a mediocre grade. Sixty-six percent. I won't accept that."

I rose and the glistening length of Fredrik's cock fell back onto his belly. I traced its underside with my fingernail. It twitched obediently.

"How do you want me, sir?" I asked.

Without a word, he got up, led me to the side of the sofa, and draped me over the armrest. The bed would have been more comfortable, but this was his day, and if he wanted me like this, so be it.

He left me for a moment and I heard him rummaging around in the bedroom. I closed my eyes and waited.

Soon Fredrik's lubed finger played around my anus, dipping shallowly in and out it. The finger alone felt like an invasion enough and I, as always, couldn't imagine being able to accommodate his full girth.

As he readied me, I eased my hand between my legs. It was awkward, but I managed. If anything, I needed the distraction from what was to come.

He spread my cane-reddened cheeks and I felt the tip of his cock playing on my anus. I took a deep breath. He pressed a little and I concentrated on relaxing, thought loose billowy thoughts. The first inch or two were always a challenge. After that, I knew I'd be fine.