Caught Staring

The first week of not-freezing cold always seemed to take the city unawares; you saw people on the El still in heavy jackets, sweating because the temperature on their phones hadn't accounted for accumulated body heat during the morning rush hour. But you also saw things like girl's knees suddenly appearing beneath their skirts, or from strategic tears in their denim pants, where the week before they would have worn tights or no skirt at all.

I was sitting in my usual morning coffeeshop seat that I occupied for an hour or two before going in to my shift at the hospital, where I was a receptionist. I liked the business of this coffee shop, because it meant people were in and out, and anyone like me who lingered was doing it because they too wanted to be left alone: younger professionals with massive headphones crouched over laptops, older retirees who still read the paper every day and gossiped with their age cohort; and very few people like me, middle-aged but with time to people-watch and no family obligations to keep me run off my feet in the morning.

Somehow I had reached my late forties without ever contracting a permanent addition to my household. Well, I say somehow, but I knew with growing certainty why; and never more so than when I looked across the coffee shop at a table where two young women were sitting close, talking, and occasionally, when they thought no one was watching, giving each other a quick kiss.

It would have been unimaginable in my own youth, and I thought back regretfully to the early 90s and the lips I would have given anything to be able to kiss like that, openly and without fear. But that fear had always loomed heavily in my mind, and I had never dared to kiss a girl, or even approach one, and now I felt certain it was utterly too late. I had dated men instead, since it was expected of me, and they had disappointed me even though I had never had much expectation of them, and I had spent the last fifteen years virtually celibate, plugging away at my little job, my little apartment with its shelves of books and records and a cat bed that had lain empty for seven years now. I kept my hair, which was slowly turning from a mousy brown into something with more gray in it, in a short shag, and had started wearing glasses instead of contacts. Today I had a cardigan over my uniform of scrubs -- even though I rarely went into an operating room, the hospital still mandated scrubs for all its employees, which I didn't mind, since it took the effort out of choosing an outfit for the day, and I supposed that I must be looking more like a grandma than ever.

But it wasn't grandmotherly feelings that were welling up inside me as I watched the two girls, nursing the chai tea that was my invariable morning order. It wasn't quite lustful feelings either -- I made a habit of keeping those feelings primly locked away until I found a really good author on one of my favorite websites, and then gorged on their work until both my interest and my vibrator gave out. I suppose it was sentimental feelings: wishing that I could have had a youth like theirs, hoping that their years would turn out happier than those of my acquaintance who had been braver than me in the 90s. Envy of how normal and natural it must feel for them -- they had walked into the coffeeshop holding hands, and nobody had given them a second glance -- which turned into a reverie on how they must taste on each other's lips.

One of the girls was slender and black, with wire-frame glasses, thick box braids that cascaded down to her shoulders, and a gold septum piercing showed below her nose; the other girl was plump and white, with dyed black hair that turned purple at the tips; her lipstick was a dark crimson, and she wore heavy eyeliner and a little silver stud in her lower lip. Her glance flickered over to me, and I dropped my gaze, pretending I had not been staring at them at all.

After several people had moved back and forth between us, I felt it was safe to look again, and I looked at them and found both their eyes locked on me. I couldn't prevent a blush as I looked down at my cup; but I peeped up again through the tops of my glasses and saw them kissing again a little awkwardly, because they were still watching me.

I decided I had to do something to end the terrible flusteredness that had come over me, so I turned around in my seat, facing away from them, and ostentatiously pulled out my phone. But I was soon bored of it -- I had already completed the daily round of puzzle games which were part of my morning routine -- and dared a peep back over at the table. The black girl was looking directly at me, a sly smile on her face, while the white girl whispered something in her ear. She nodded, and licked her lips. I felt a shudder run through me at the sensation that her lips were being licked at me, and turned back to my phone.

Very shortly, however, a body interposed itself between me and the overhead light. I looked up.

It was the white girl.

"Enjoying the show, Nana?" she said. Her voice was deeper than I expected, with traces of a British accent, and although she wasn't speaking loudly I winced as though she were shouting.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," I began, but she laughed, and bent down so that her face was close to mine. I could see deep into her cleavage as her pale breasts swung in a loose top, and I could smell a faint perfume; it was a surprisingly masculine scent, I found myself thinking. Sandalwood, or something like that.

"First look's free," she said, so low that her voice was almost a purr in the back of her throat, and a thrill ran through my body, experienced as a shiver from my shoulders, but as a deep throb, like the pluck of a bass string, in my groin. "If you want more, you gotta pay."

"I beg your pardon," I said, trying to be exactly as prim and proper a middle-age career woman as I had been for the past twenty years. "Please leave me alone." I struggled to make my voice heard over the roar of the latte machine, hoping that maybe one of the baristas would divine that I was being accosted and shoo this embarrassing, uncomfortable presence away from me.

She smiled, pulling her dark-painted lips wide against her teeth, and I saw that her canines were pronounced.

"Your loss," she said. "We have such sights to show you." She stood up again, and turned.

I was annoyed that the throb in my groin had turned into an ache. "Anyone can quote Hellraiser," I muttered, more to myself than to her. "Child like that wasn't even born then."

She threw a smirk over her shoulder which told me she had heard it, but walked back to the table where the black girl was waiting, staring fixedly at me. In spite of myself, I had trouble tearing my eyes away from the plump ass of the girl who had been speaking to me, pulled into tight dark elastic-denim leggings under a light faux-fur jacket that she wore high enough as to leave every faint jiggle of those glorious cheeks visible.

I glanced at the black girl, and knew that she knew I had been staring at her girlfriend's ass. She smiled at me, and licked her lips in a pronounced way once more. She put out a finger, and curled it in a "come here" motion. I shook my head, frowned, and tried to look at my phone, but my hands were shaking and I just stared stupidly at the lockscreen until I felt it had been long enough that I could venture another glance.

They were gathering up their things and getting ready to walk out. Both of them still had their eyes on me, though, and smiled when I looked up, and gestured that I could come with them, or follow them; but I stayed glued to my seat, and they shrugged, and said something to each other that made the other laugh, and headed out the door. Even once the door had swung to, the white girl still looked back at me through it and jerked her head to the left. They turned left, and disappeared.

I licked my lips, and glared at my phone. My chai had gone irretrievably cold. I had an hour left until my shift began.

Before I even realized I was doing it, I was out of the seat and shrugging the cardigan closer around my torso as I marched out the door.

I needed to clear my head, I thought. There was still time to go back home -- I only lived a couple of blocks away -- and splash water on my face and -- and maybe get out a quick jilling session, since my loins were beginning to grumble warmly at me that they wanted attention.

But instead of turning right, which was toward my apartment, I turned left, and was surprised not to see the girls anywhere in view. They couldn't have gone far -- the sidewalk sloped up straight for blocks. I felt curiously deflated, but shrugged that I would get that walk to clear my head after all (the cold air, not remotely warm yet, just not as cold as it had been, was already beginning to sweep mercilessly through the cardigan), and began to march up the sidewalk in the direction they must have gone.

As I took a step down into the culvert that dropped from an alley into the road, an arm reached out and pulled on the collar of my cardigan, and I found myself suddenly pulled bodily into the alley, hauled past a City dumpster, then whipped around and pressed with my back against the brick of the building which housed the coffeeshop, with two girls more than twenty years younger than me but each with several inches on me in height, holding me by arms.

"Please," I babbled. "I don't have any money. Take my phone. Just don't hurt me."

"Hush, Nana," said the white girl, putting a hand over my mouth. "No shouting. Got it?"

Terrified, I nodded. Her hand was touching the bottom of my glasses and they were already starting to fog up.

"Now then," said the black girl. Her voice was higher-pitched than I expected, and I would have called it cute, even cloying or babyish, in any other circumstance. But it unsettled me even more in this moment, as I felt threatened, with every part of my body being shot through with adrenaline as my fight or flight response awakened. Every part, that is, except my loins, which only obstinately glowed hotter and wetter still, as if this was part of what they wanted and in fact they demanded more.

"Now then," the black girl repeated. "Why don't you take a good long look." She turned her face, and I was struck by the beauty of her profile, with prominent lips, high cheekbone, and a firm chin. The white girl turned to face her, and her profile too was lovely, if a little heavier in the jowl; but their parted lips came together and crushed one another inches from my eyes, and I stared in mingled uncomprehension and longing. Were they simply taunting me? Showing off that they could easily do what I had never been able to, never had the courage to, never found the right moment or circumstance or lack of inhibition?

The kiss broke, and their eyes zeroed in on me again, their mouths shining with mutual wetness.

"Now it's your turn," said the white girl huskily, and the black girl leaned in and kissed me.

For a moment I could only experience my physical sensations -- the hard rough brick of the wall pressing up against my scalp through my hair, the grip of their fingers on my upper arms, strong enough to leave bruises the next day I worried, the fresh cold air pricking at every inch of exposed skin, the wet fleshy taste of skin against skin, a tiny dribble of saliva dripping out of the shared corners of our mouths -- and then she pushed her tongue forward and I felt not just the physical sensation of but the electric sensations of desire and hunger, of ecstasy and satiation, of "oh thank god it's happened at last" and "dear god why did I wait so long this is heaven itself." I kissed back, nipping at her lips with my teeth and swirling my tongue around hers to let it know it was welcome in me. If I hadn't been held back, I would have wrapped my arms tight around her too. My nipples suddenly throbbed with the need to be crushed against the torso of the person I was kissing, joining my loins in a now perpetual complaint of need.

She pulled away, grinning, a string of drool dripping between our lips as we parted.

"My name's Stephanie," she said.

"I'm Wendy," I said automatically. I felt glazed, incapable of choosing my next action, waiting for whatever they would do next.

"And I'm Adi," said the white girl, and she leaned in and kissed me.

Her lips were stronger than Stephanie's, and more assertive, less pillowy soft and with a sharper, more acid taste. The difference between Stephanie's lip gloss and Adi's lipstick, I supposed, in the way one's brain wanders onto irrelevancies when the body is fully occupied. Because if Stephanie's kiss was a gift, granting me access to a world of pleasure and wonder that had remained closed off to me all my life, Adi's kiss was a stamp of authority, not unlike being kissed by a man (but without the stubble or roughness), claiming my mouth as her possession. She thrust her tongue in and did not let mine dance around it but pressed it down, out of the way so that hers could explore my mouth at will. When she broke away, she smiled not at me but at Stephanie.

"Yeah," she said. "She's ready."

Stephanie nodded. In one motion, they turned me around and pressed my front against the wall, crushing my throbbing nipples horribly (but also, my nipples reported, delightfully; if being pressed against cold brick wasn't the same as being pressed against a warm body it was still being pressed against something), and as I tried to look back over my shoulder to ask what they were doing, I felt fingers suddenly slip into the waistband of not just my scrubs but my panties and pull down and I could not help giving a horrified,

"Oh, no!"

Adi's hand covered my mouth once more.

"What did I say about shouting," she said in my ear.

"I'm sorry," I whined against her hand. "But please. This is so public."

"That's not a 'Stop,'" she said, with a little catch of laughter in her voice.

I hesitated, but then shook my head. No, it was not a Stop. Anyone walking by the alley would only see the dumpster unless they looked carefully, and Stephanie and Madi, who were more visible than me, were still fully clothed. I didn't think in that moment about any of the windows that might look out on the alley, let alone the doors that opened onto it, but I did take comfort that it was a blind alley, not open at the other end.

My buttocks were exposed to the cold now, and I shivered both from the sudden draft of air and in anticipation of what might be about to happen. And in the next moment, it happened.

Strong fingers followed the crease of my ass down to where my legs joined, and then sank deeply, luxuriously, into my overheated, silently gibbering pussy, which sent rockets of sensation spiraling through my nervous system, and I pressed my cheek to the cold brick and let my eyes roll back in my head as I groaned in pleasure at the touch of those fingers.

"She's so wet," giggled Stephanie from down by my nethers. "She's been dying for this."

"Poor Nana," cooed Adi, still in my ear. "Did we get you all hot and bovvered, there in the coffee shop?"

"Oh God, yes," I moaned, no longer caring about the particulars of truth, just wanting to say anything that would keep this glorious feeling going. I pushed back against the fingers and almost squealed with delight as I found that rubbing against them in one particular spot made me see stars.

"She'll come like a faucet any minute now," reported Stephanie with a laugh. "This is almost too easy."

"You like being manhandled like this, don't you, Nana?" said Adi with a devilish grin. "You want us to treat you rough."

"Oh God yes please oh God don't stop," I babbled, my hips shaking in ways that I hadn't known they were capable of as I stood on my tippy toes to get Stephanie's questing, plunging fingers in exactly the right spot once more. "Do whatever you want to me, sit on my face, use my asshole, step on me, hit me, bite me, but let me come!"

"Hear that, Stephanie?" said Adi with a chuckle. "She wants you to bite her."

Stephanie's teeth sank almost immediately into the quivering flesh of one of my ass cheeks almost immediately, and I shuddered hard against the wall, clawing at the brick until little dust particles were under my fingernails at not just the feeling of her teeth but of her lips, nose and the edges of her glasses on my ass, which after twenty years of receptionist sitting was too big to be merely nipped at.

Her fingers, meanwhile, were relentless, and then she added a slippery thumb wriggling on my clit as she corkscrewed the other fingers into me, and I gasped and arched my back further than I knew was possible, and started to scream, but Adi covered my mouth with hers so I screamed my orgasm into her mouth and down her throat and she pressed the weight of her body against me because my legs shuddered too much to hold my body up so she kept me pinned to the wall as I came and came and came on Stephanie's fingers.

The next thing I knew, Stephanie was slipping her fingers between Adi's mouth and mine, forcing us both to taste my cum. Slowly, as I sucked my own fluids from a young black girl's fingers, I descended back down to earth, into my own body, and found that I was standing half-naked in an alley with a puddle between my legs, including over the gusset of my panties and the scrubs I was supposed to wear to work. I tugged them up around my ass and saw that they looked as if I had pissed my pants. Which I might well have done; I had no idea whether I had retained control over my bladder during my orgasm.

I laughed shakily.

"I can't go to work like this," I said.

"You're not going to work today," said Adi, patting my back.

"I'm not?"

"We're not done with you," said Stephanie, catching my arm with her elbow and hugging it tight. Adi slipped her arm around my other arm on the side and they began to walk me out of the alley.

"Where are you taking me?" I said, feeling stupid but somehow trusting. Anything could happen, I felt: the world had opened up. I had plenty of PTO saved up; an email, and my shift would be covered. Miriam wouldn't be happy about it, but she'd manage.

"Where do you live?" replied Adi.

"Just around the corner," I said, walking unsteadily between them on legs that still felt like jelly. As we emerged from the alley and caught the eye of a passerby, I suddenly saw what we must look like: two young women escorting an older woman who had had an unfortunate accident. I couldn't keep from laughing shakily to myself.

"That's all right, Nana," said Adi soothingly, patting my hand. "We'll get you home."

"Oh, please," I grumbled. "I'm only old enough to be your mother."

Stephanie grinned wide at that. "How young do you think we are?"

"College age?" I looked up at her. "You're students, aren't you?"

"A few years out," said Adi. "We'll tell you when we get you home with a nice cup of tea."

"We need to make sure you're comfortable before we start sitting on your face and using your ass and all the rest of what you offered," said Stephanie in my ear. A cold-hot shiver ran through me, and my steps quickened a little. They had to change pace to keep up as I led them to my apartment.