Come in, Come in, My Roving Friend

I dutifully flipped for her, "Where'd you learn to massage like this?" Her talented physical manipulation far exceeded the cheap foreplay massages I'd come to expect. My body felt remarkable.

"I took a sports medicine elective in college that included athletic massage techniques," she explained.

"Aaungh," I groaned as my thigh muscles unclenched. "Good call."

"Just wait until-" An alert from the Uber app on her personal phone interrupted whatever she might have said, "Sorry, Phượng. That's my ride."

"I could take you?" I offered as a social nicety while she located her discarded clothes and rapidly redressed.

"That's okay," she declined as she buttoned her shirt, "There's no need to trouble yourself when I have a car waiting."

"It's no trouble," I lied politely as I unhappily watched her put clothes back on her lithe and lovely body.

Her suit jacket over her arm, she leaned down and kissed the corner of my lips sweetly. "You should get some sleep." Then Ivy kissed me once more, much less sweetly. "Also, I like the idea of remembering you all naked and sprawled out."

I winked and posed. She smiled, snapped a photo, and waved as she left.

And so she departed. And I lazed in bed most of the day, going into work later with a spring in my step, but no ambivalence.

My life pretty well marched on as it had. By the weekend, I started a five week fling with a cute redhead. It was just another in a long line of doomed short-term relationships though.

Maintaining a long-term relationship with a quality woman is prohibitively challenging for me. Although my head chef puts in a lot more hours at the restaurant than I do as her sous chef, I still work 50 hour weeks at the very least. Women I date tend not to appreciate my never having a free Friday or Saturday night, my getting home very late in the wee hours, or my smelling of long shifts spent in a hot kitchen when I finally did get to bed. I'm a hard package to sell to the type of woman who meets my hypocritically inflexible standards.

My charm, wit, and looks get me girls without much initial effort, but my demanding career loses them for me just as easily. Apparently, waking a woman from her slumber for a late night/early morning quickie without conversation isn't enough daily effort to put into a relationship.

Sure, I could try harder. But the endless sweaty 10+ hour days also leave me without the requisite pep to romantically make up for my constant absence to new girlfriends.

Even the one advantage you'd think there'd be to dating a chef, high quality meals at home, isn't something I offer a potential partner. I love my job, but I like to have the day off from cooking on the few days I have off from cooking and only prepare meals for lovers on rare special occasions.

Ivy doesn't demand anything of me though; not cooking for her, or taking her out to restaurants or shows, or meeting with family or friends, or helping her with DIY projects or errands, or some vague promise from me that I'd have more time to give her at some future point. We accept each others' professional commitments and enjoy each other without romantic commitment.

She's been such an understanding, obliging, and exemplary lover that I rarely feel compelled to even look for a proper girlfriend, one who would only suffer by unfair comparison to Ivy anyway. Still and yet, what I feel for my roving friend now isn't a sophomorically infatuated love in the classical Tristan and Isolde sense, but it's more than friendship and more than most women would or could compete with.

My level of emotional attachment to Ivy increased so slowly that even I didn't perceive it happening, like the gradually rising heat under the proverbial boiling frog.

Over the two years following our first night stand, she visited Seattle 16 times, the shortest for just an 11 hour layover. (That one I found particularly complimentary, since SeaTac is rarely a layover to anywhere.)

Following her first few visits, I'd be understandably bummed out each time such a wonderful lover left, but not experience seriously debilitating emotions. The empty feeling of her leaving has become much more pervasive as time marches on however, and now my feels feel it pretty bad.

Her longest stay was the best and the worst yet, a little over four months ago. After six straight sensual nights, I was more than just bummed at her going away again. Instead, I fought a real sense of loss and an oncoming accompanying depression. I held it together long enough to kiss her goodbye and wish her safe travels, but it was a struggle.

When she left, I slumped down the inside of my front door and cried like a bitch.

The absolute worst part was that I wasn't even torn about what to do. Maybe I'd have given up my friends, job, and city to be with her? I couldn't truly be sure. But it was a moot consideration.

She literally has no home base for me to move to. Her job is so transient that she maintains a virtual address - and thus temporary storage - in Vegas, but no real residence. No city I could adopt to be with her.

I can't conceive of breaking off what we have though. The pain of her leaving over and over is more than offset by the joy of her coming back and the anticipatory knowledge that she definitely will be coming back. So I say nothing and try to appreciate the time she does have to offer me.

Meanwhile, Ivy is here now. In my home. With me. I'll be damned if I'll start feeling sad for her leaving when she's only just arrived.

"How long do I have you?" I keep my voice as neutral as I can, willfully reducing my tone from preoccupied to hopeful.

"Can't be sure. There are... mitigating factors of which I'm not yet certain. At least three days though, if you want me?" Variable length wasn't terribly unusual for her consultation jobs, which I gather can change depending on the situation as she finds it.

"I want you," I confirm, pulling her hoodie and tee shirt off over her head. Her hands rest on my shoulders complacently as I unbutton and unzip her cargo pants and tug them down her long legs so she could step out of them.

Far from our first time, she knows I'll want to get right into her business right off the bat. Always accommodating, Ivy walks me back towards my boring brown couch by pulling me along by my hips, struggling a little as I'd resumed my kissing her with my arms around her neck.

She contentedly lets me tongue wrestle with her as we stand with our naked fronts pressed together. No longer pulling my hips, she caresses my lower back as I aggressively invade her mouth.

But then I realize that we'd stopped moving and put two and two together that we'd become stationary because we'd come abreast of the couch. For a moment, I'm irrationally irritated that she's distracted me from my purpose by allowing me to kiss her. (I admit that it's irrational.)

But I'm not rational when it comes to her and I haven't tasted her in weeks, so I push her backward to break off our liplock and get her on her back on my couch.

I take her left ankle in both my hands and set it firmly on the floor. The other ankle I placed on the top of the cushioned high backrest of my comfy couch, spreading her open as widely as feasible for my impending feast. Given her very long legs, it's wide indeed.

My hands held her pretty long legs apart, one on the front and one on the back of her spread thighs. I pressed my face right into her, licking and slurping, making her wriggle and squeal in naked pleasure.

My first two fingers slip into her hot wetness, her slick labia spread widely like her legs. My soaked digits pump her impatient pussy and awaken her sensitive g-spot. Her velvet tunnel clutches at them as I pull them free to tickle her cit instead.

My tongue becomes jealous of my fingers and my chin literally nudges them out of the way. Slickened as they are, I easily work the two fingers into her cute butt to the second knuckle.

Meanwhile, my mouth closes over her hooded clit as I hum hot breath, the reverberatory effects of which cause her to scream aloud and dig her nails into my scalp. I yelp in turn and she instantly lets go.

"Sorry," she mumbles sheepishly through gritted teeth.

"Think nothing of it," I answer cockily. The slight pain of the little half-moon stab marks in my skin aside, making her lose control turns me on more than anything else in the world. I get a surge of confidence as my racing brain floods with dopamine.

"Please, don't stop?" she begs adorably, "I need to cum."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Miss Ivy." The urgency in her voice spurs me onward and my fingers wiggle in her ass as my tongue traces circles around her clit. I turn my head to get my active mouth back to her pretty pussy so I can tonguefuck her again. My free arm I wrap around her thigh so that I can thumb her kindled clit.

And so I bring her to the home stretch. Tonguefuck, tonguefuck, tonguefuck. Clit brush, clit brush. Ass wiggle. Tonguefuck, tonguefuck, tonguefuck. Clit brush, clit brush. Ass wiggle, ass wiggle, oooh, it's a finger wiggle.

I keep the rhythms and intensities on her electrified genitals and twitching ass. Her moaned words are increasingly less coherent and her body heat builds so that sweat freely drips from her straining limbs.

Accompanied by a long groan her orgasm hits her. Ivy's whole tensed frame snaps like frayed elastic and sinks into my couch limply.

I let her leg down from the back of the couch and lift her other leg off the floor to be laid beside it. She shifts her shoulders around and lets her head loll back on the arm of the couch, knowing that I'll want to spend some time lapping at her post-orgasm sex.

I do. I lick up her moisture like a kitten devouring a shallow bowl of cream.

"Hey," she eventually interrupts me verbally, "I think you're done down there?"

I shoot her a dirty look and keep right on lapping.

She rolls her eyes and let's me follow my bliss for a while longer before warning me, "I'm going to fall asleep soon. Horrible long trip. Maybe I could do that in your bed and not hanging off your couch?"

Begrudgingly, I abandon my pot o' gold and help her to her feet. With my arm around her waist, she stumbles into my bedroom with me and I let her fall back into my bed, tucking her long limbs beneath my covers.

"I'm gonna nap a little now," she whispers, "Thank you, Phượng."

"Happy to oblige," I acknowledge as my arms go around her waist again to snuggle with her while she rests peacefully. We'll have time to talk and get in a round for me a little later. I've come to look forward to the talking - not as much as the sex - but more than talking with anyone else. She makes me comfortable in sharing about myself and draws me out with comparative ease.

On her third visit, between what should have been our last round in bed and her leaving, she asked why I picked Seattle. "Surely Vancouver has nearly the same culinary opportunities and Davie Village has nearly the same scene? I understand getting a student visa to attend such a prestigious culinary school as SDCI, but why stay in the U.S.?"

"Kinda an involved story. Getting into SDCI as a high school senior was a godsend. With my big sister in University of Alberta's engineering program, my big brother at Mcgill University studying medicine, and my little brother nipping at my heels with AP everything, my terrible grades and prospects had my parents beyond exasperated. Except as a kitchen assistant at The Westin Edmonton's restaurant, I showed no talent," I added impishly, "Well, not for anything I could legally accept pay for."

Ivy'd become used to my insulating habit of humorously referencing my sexual adroitness whenever I'd allowed myself to become too vulnerable. She glossed over the comment and asked about my employer instead. "The Westin by the art gallery?" I often forget that she'd been everywhere.

She caressed my side and hip as I kept talking. "Yeah. I worked hard and lucked into a culinary scholarship honorable at SDCI. My parents still had to pay for my room and board, but it's only an eight month program and they were relieved that I got into a reputable school somewhere and wouldn't necessarily be an embarrassment to the family. I liked that it was almost all hands on learning."

The look on her face of mixed pride and affection at my modest boasting encouraged me to tell her more.

"School rolled by quick and I had to find an externship. I applied to restaurants all over the West Coast. Most sent a generic form letter, but my head chef sent an offer letter with a company profile and chef bios, over a dozen trailing opportunities, starting pay and benefits, a promise of employment if I fit in, and a promise to help me find work if I didn't."

"That's a pretty good offer for a teenager," Ivy put her HR hat on, "Just restaurants, though? Not hotels and such?"

"The big wide world had been scaring me in SoCal and I didn't want to be one of hundreds of staff somewhere. Once I called my head chef to accept and she found out how very young and utterly lost I was, she looked after me. She bought my plane ticket and a loaded ORCA card and paid for the first month at the apartment she helped me pick out along with enough food and furnishings to get me through a payday."

"That's unheard of. She didn't try to, um..." Ivy turned her HR hat to display a less pleasant aspect.

"To get into the chef pants she bought me? No, she's a professional. She's just inordinately kindhearted. She kept her word too, and I trailed in all kinds of kitchens in 'mom and pop's' and in huge chain restaurants, on cruise ships and at resorts, in vegan places and steak houses, everywhere. I learned a lot, but I love my restaurant and I love this city, so I stayed." Here I let my knuckles play over her hip bones as I positioned myself on her to perform my favorite sex act. "I found out that girls here tend to like me, too."

"Do they?" she asked with a sharp intake of breath as my tongue drew lazy circles down her midriff. "And why's that?"

I smiled up at her in open lust, "We've got nearly an hour left. Let me remind you."

Her loving hand tousled my black hair and her sea-grey eyes closed. I enjoyed my feast and she left to meet her Uber with a broad dazed smile on her pretty face. I laid in bed, luxuriating in our sex sheets and idly wondered when the woman I'd opened up to more than any previous lover might be back in town.

That was the cavalier attitude that followed her third visit though. The very last time she'd left me - almost a month ago now - was far far worse. I technically left her on my way to work, giving me the ferry commute to Bainbridge Island to put myself back together again. I didn't do a great job, bawling in the ladies room for the majority of the short journey.

I wasn't crying anymore once I got into the restaurant - there's no crying in the kitchen - but I tore savagely into the line cooks and porters, virtually roaring to keep from literally weeping.

Now, particularly since our head chef is such a sweetheart, being an asshole is one of my main unwritten duties as her sous chef. There are unwritten limits as well though, and everyone in the brigade knew I'd exceeded them.

My head chef waited until an opportune time and unobtrusively beckoned me into her office.

"I know, I know. I'm being an unprofessional jackass," I admitted as I followed her through the door.

She didn't yell at me or dress me down at all. Instead, shut the door behind us and hugged me. "She left again, didn't she?" she asked considerately. A friend intuiting my problem and offering solace rather than a boss blowing up at me was more niceness than I could take.

"Yes," I sobbed. You know how you can keep it together when you're really upset until someone you love is kind to you? Yeah, I became a blubbering mess as she held me.

Eventually, I got control of my leaking, snotting, and wheezing. My head chef pressed me into a chair with a box of tissues, but kept her hand on my shoulder.

"Phượng, hon, why do you carry on with this woman who clearly won't make time to be with you?" Her voice was gentle and caring.

"Really? You're calling my kettle black? How is Deanna's 'art' selling?" I spat venom at her, and then felt nothing but shame at the corresponding hurt on her kind face. Lashing out at someone so softhearted and forgiving is like kicking a loyal dog and I despised myself for it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't mean that. I'm just so, so ugh," I ended my thought with something between a groan and a retch.

She waved the offense away with magnanimity, "I'm not saying that I have things figured out either, but this lack of commitment from her and repeatedly losing her to her travels is tearing you up. I worry about you, Phượng."

"I'll be fine," I lied and sniffed, my smile wry and doomed.

"Alright," she let me lie and responded to my sad smile with a sardonic frown, "we need to go finish prep in any case. Can you hold on until we shut down for the night?"

"Yes," I answered confidently and honestly. Having a good cry had helped. Nothing was solved, but at least I wasn't keeping my burdens to myself.

"Good," she smiled wanly. "I'll stand you up a few shots after clean up. Fuck knows that I don't wanna go home either."

We finished the shift, shut the restaurant down, and got shitfaced, so completely shknockered that we just crashed out in the back office. By sunrise, I was so hungover that I seriously thought I might have spent my blackout chewing cotton balls, staring into a flashlight, and wrestling the KitchenAid. Her live-in girlfriend didn't even bother to call and see if she was alright.

And so we both rolled on with our depressing love lives. Nothing got better and nothing took my mind off of Ivy's absence.

The woman in question shifts in my arms. I nuzzle her comfortingly, trying to help her relax. I know why I'm distracted and concerned, but not why she's so silent and fidgety.

"You're quieter than normal," I note solicitously, "Is everything alright?"

"I'm preoccupied," she admits hesitantly, "I have an important proposal presentation to make tomorrow and I'm not sure which way it will go."

"Wanna run it by me?" I doubt I can provide any useful feedback, but my offer is serious.

She kisses me with a passion that exceeds gratitude. "No. It's a problem for tomorrow and I shouldn't let it spoil tonight." She hugs me to her again.

"Alright, but I don't mind talking about it, if you need a sounding board." I don't like it when she's stressed out. Primarily because I care for her. Maybe a little because it makes me doubt my sexual prowess.

"That's okay. I really didn't mean to bring it up tonight," The smile back in her voice, she grows suggestive herself, "Not when there is a more productive use of my time so obviously available." She fervently kisses my hand. "How exactly would you prefer that I produce?"

She knows how much I crave cunnilingus and customarily gives me my head, so to speak. But she and I both like more variety for my turn and she usually follows my lead in those pursuits as well.

"Hmmm, an embarrassment of riches, but I'm a little drowsy too," I admit, "Maybe you can finger me and love on me a bit?"

"That, like you my dear, is very doable." She turned me on my back and laid over me, her long slender body easily extending over mine and her relatively slight weight a comfort rather than a burden in my tired state.

Wanting her to get right to business, I take her right hand and press it to my mound unsubtly. She smiles and leans down to kiss my neck as her three fingers press into my ready body and search until finding my sensitive g-spot.

Once she's got it, she thrusts her fingers in and out of my pussy to a steady rhythm that she knows from experience will be neither too fast nor too slow for me. Her thumb brushes over and around my clit in the lightest of feather touches. I sigh.