Masha Ch. 1

"Who is Tim?" asked Masha. Shit. I had wanted to tell her about him myself.

"Tim is Kelsey's boyfriend."

Masha suddenly seemed very upset. She saw Rick and I noticing and played it off. "Damn," she said, forcing a laugh, "so much for the threesome idea."

"Tim might not mind a threesome," I said, trying to keep it light, "but I think it'd have to include him and not Rick."

"But we can't have a threesome with Tim," Masha exclaimed. "I don't even know him!"

"Oh, sure, you know Tim," said Rick. "He's that film major. Made the movie about trash."

"Tim Wakey?" said Masha. Rick nodded.

"Oh," said Masha, looking crestfallen. "He's a really nice guy."

"You don't have to look so upset about it," said Rick, laughing. "Did you think he was single? 'Fess up! Were you tryin' to steal Kelsey's man?"

"Something like that," said Masha, getting up and heading for the bar.

"Geez, I didn't think he was that cute," Rick said to me. "No need for her to get all worked up about it. There are plenty of better looking guys around."

"Hey!" I shouted. After all, he was my boyfriend. "He's cute enough."

"Evidently," said Rick.

We were quiet waiting for Masha to come back with our drinks. Rick and I were only 19, so we couldn't get them ourselves. In fact, all but two of the six cast members were sophomores. Most of the college bars had strict rules about buying drinks for others, but Phoebe's was not a college bar, so they were pretty easygoing.

Masha returned and handed me a glass of wine without looking at me. Rick drank Coors Light or some such atrocity. Really, it was hard to believe he was trying to be an actor. He had frat boy written all over him, but he was likeable in spite of it. He was very down to earth, which I liked a lot after spending so much time with people who thought they could actually become characters in a play.

"Anyway," Rick said, "who wants to host the cast party?"

"Rick, we haven't even started rehearsals yet!" I said.

"Yeah, are parties all you think about?" said Masha.

"Well, yeah," he said, "what else is there?"

In spite of her mood earlier, Masha seemed to enjoy the evening. After a while, we all ordered chocolate mousse and some other desserts to share. The kitchen closed at ten, but they served dessert until midnight. Masha and I were at a table with Rick, and the others were at two tables on either side of ours, so we all passed the plates back and forth.

I wanted Rick to leave so that I could talk to Masha about Tim. I knew, however, that Rick, being a party boy, would likely outlast both of us. I took matters into my own hands.

"I'm tired," I said, yawning and stretching. I tried to make sure, during the stretch, that Masha would see a little skin, but she was not even looking. "I'm going home." There was a chorus of boos.

"C'mon," said Rick, "It's Friday!" I told him I had to meet my scene partner at nine the next morning, and then I began to gather my things. I glanced at Masha to see if she would get up. I could not force her to be alone with me if she didn't want to talk. After a second, to my great relief, she announced that she would walk with me.

"Who's gonna buy my next drink?" said Rick, a little too loudly.

"Keith or Josh will get it for you," she said. Keith was the other senior in the cast.

Masha sidled up to me. "Ready to go?" she asked. I looked at her empty hands.

"Don't you have any stuff?" I said.

"No," she replied. "I'm in an anti-stuff phase. Don't you think," she said as we walked out the door, "that there is just too much stuff?"

"Well, sure, but where do you put your money and your ID and your Chapstick?"

"I put it in my pocket," she said. "If it doesn't fit, then I have too much."

I thought about that as we walked.

"You know," I said, "This bag is really heavy. Maybe you're right. But what about books?"

"Surely you've noticed, Kelsey, that all the books we need for class are plays, and they are very small."

This was true.

"In fact," she said, "they can fit inside a coat pocket or an overall pocket, or you can just carry them. But why put them in a bag? A bag is just a hider of stuff. You have bags so that you can deceive yourself about what you have and what you need. Every year these freshmen come in with bigger and bigger bags. They put more and more stuff in them. Eventually they don't even know what is in the bag. How could you need something you didn't even know was there?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Trust me," she said. "Eliminate your stuff. You'll be amazed at how free you feel."

"Okay," I said. "Maybe tomorrow." I was not just going to leave my bag on the street, after all. We walked in silence for a while. I looked at her profile in the streetlights and felt myself grow wet.

"Why did it bother you?" I asked her. "About Tim, I mean."

No answer. She walked faster. I kept up.

"Look," I said, "I wouldn't be asking if I didn't want."

"Kelsey," she stopped, turning to face me. "I think you know why it bothered me. I don't think I've ever been more clear. It was stupid of me to assume you were single. I am a grown woman and can deal with not always getting what I want. Let's leave it at that."

Before I could say anything, she started talking about Tim. She said she knew him fairly well. She'd been in a class with him her sophomore year, and one of her housemates was an actor in his trash film.

"I didn't really like his trash film," I told her, surprising myself. I'd never admitted this to Tim.

"Why didn't you like it?" she asked.

"Well, no good reason, I guess. But, trash. You know. Pretentious to make a film about it, don't you think?"

"Yes, I think," she said, grinning.

We had reached our parting point. Masha lived in a house east of campus. My dorm was on the western edge. I wanted to tell her that Tim and I had talked about her, but I knew that it wouldn't matter. Pursuing me now would feel to her too much like what she had done with Peter. So what she said next surprised me.

"Kelsey," she said, "you and Tim-how serious are you?"

We'd talked about marriage.

"Not at all," I said.

We both knew I was lying.

For the next few weeks, I could think of nothing but Masha. I did not see her, but saw her desirability unfolding before me like a new understanding of the sun-brighter and larger than any fathomable quantity, distant and untouchable, yet all that I could see. I exercised frantically. I put my image of her at the end of the treadmill and ran. This was the only activity that allowed me to feel as if I were doing anything at all. Eventually, I understood marathon runners. It was not masochism that drove them. It was desire.

Three weeks after our drink at Phoebe's, Rick was having a party. I knew I would see Masha there. The night before the party I had class until 6, then dinner with Tim, so I did not get to the gym until 9. I ran a long time, searching within my image of Masha for a clue as to what was happening to me. I tried to reconcile Tim's views on love with my own. I knew that I was not in love with her. I was just beginning to like her. And I loved Tim, but had denied him sex more times than I could count. I could not imagine ever refusing Masha. In the throes of appendicitis I would want her.

When I could not run any more, I stumbled out of the gym and fell backwards onto the grass. I closed my eyes and rested there, gasping desperately for breath. I pushed my hand across my stomach and felt my sweat, wishing it were hers. I opened my eyes and, seeing the stars it struck me. Tim was onto something, but he was wrong. The entire world was wrong. Love and lust were not the same thing. Lust was better. The Hallmark hierarchy was all screwed up. We were a world full of fools, talking and thinking and being moral about love when our bodies provide us with a variety of liquid proof that we are alive. To feel the sweat rise from nothing, to have my blood flow more quickly, to be miraculously slick between my legs at the thought of another person was new and implicitly urgent. Lust, not love, was the ultimate human condition. And I would likely forget about this, and go around eventually saying I was in love with Masha. But right then I knew what I was: a liquid-filled vessel in homage to her sex appeal.

When I arrived at Rick's party, she was sitting on the couch, surrounded by admirers. Tim had not come, since he and Rick did not get along. Tim hated frat boys. Rick hated pretentious film majors. Rick greeted me and offered me a shot of something blue.

"Nice outfit, Kels," he said, leering at me. I was wearing tight black leather pants and a tiny t-shirt that said "Born to be used." It was an ad for some new operating system. My engineering pals had given it to me. None of them had the nerve to wear it.

"Thanks," I said. I downed the shot, and Rick noticed me looking at Masha.

"She should have an autograph signing or something, huh?" he said.

I nodded. I was trying to figure out if my competition was mostly men or women and if they all wanted to get down her pants or just get acting tips, not that it mattered.

"Although now that you're here, in those pants, maybe she'll get a break," said Rick.

I flashed him a smile as I headed for Masha. "I don't think so," I said.

I sauntered over and caught her eye over the throng of suitors. That was all it took. She excused herself and came over to me.

"Hi," she said, trying to find an appropriate place to look. She was wearing a grayish, v-neck sweater and the holey jeans. I smiled, but said nothing. It was too noisy to talk anyway.

I started towards the kitchen, and gestured for her to follow. When we got there, I turned to her, put my hands on her hips and pushed her, hard, into the pantry door. She was leaning against it now, looking at me, her eyes glinting, her breathing irregular.

"I am in love," she said as I leaned in to kiss her, "with your pants."

When I touched her lips with mine she yielded immediately. I opened slightly, and my tongue met hers once, quickly. I heard her moan and gave her my tongue again. She tasted like wine. Soon we were making out like adolescents, sloppily and in a rush. Her hands were drawing a line across my stomach, beneath my shirt. I kept my hands on her hips, cupped around the front of them, pressing her harder against the door to hold myself up. When we finally came up for air I was dimly aware of her troubled expression, the applause and catcalls of several onlookers and my own incoherent rebirth.

"Kels," she said softly, "one of us is practically engaged."

I nodded, still unable to speak. I leaned forward, resting my body on hers. I lowered my forehead and allowed it to rest on her shoulder. She was still panting and had one hand in my hair. The other was trapped between us, still on my stomach. We stood there for a moment.

"God help me," she said, turning her head and tracing my ear with her tongue, "I want you, and if you continue like this I am not going to make it. I will implode from lust."

"I talked to Tim about you," I told her.

"I'm flattered," she said, dragging her lips along my neck. "After his name came up at Phoebe's, I was certain I'd misread you."

"No," I said, gasping as her fingers trailed downward on my stomach.

"I am fully intending to push you away," she told me matter of factly. Her hand reached the edge of my pants, and her fingers curled inside the waistband. "In just a sec . . . "

"You couldn't," I said. "I have leverage on my side."

She laughed. "It has nothing to do with leverage," she said, pulling me into her and kissing me. This time she was slowly sensual, pulling her tongue through me, groaning and pressing up into me. Finally, she let me go, and we both rested for a moment. I was sure that by now a crowd had gathered to watch us, but I didn't want to look.

"So, what did Tim say?" she asked me. "Can I have you, or are you just trying to kill me, hitting on me like this?"

"You can have me," I told her. "In fact I am going to follow you home."

"That is very sweet, but I can't--" she said, tugging me toward her by my pants and licking me, "wait. Now let me up, and I'll be right back."

I tried to stand but had leaned so far into her I had to use the pantry door to push myself up. She escaped by ducking under my arm. She went off somewhere. I turned around, rested up against the door and tried to catch my breath. I hoped she wouldn't be gone long.

After a minute, Josh came by, looking for ice. "Hi, Kelsey," he said.

"Hi, Josh." I tried to guess if he had seen Masha and I.

"From the looks of things earlier, I guess she's gone to get you two a room."

I blushed and tried to look innocent.

"You know rehearsals start Monday night, and I want you bright-eyed and bushy- tailed, so don't get carried away," he continued.

"I don't see how . . ." I started angrily.

"I'm kidding," he said, grinning. "Do what you want. It's none of my business."

He patted me on the shoulder and left. I was just beginning to wonder about him and his thinly veiled jealousy when Masha returned. She had a bag of stuff with her.

"What's up with the stuff?" I asked, grinning.

"Well, sometimes you have to make exceptions," she said. I hoped the stuff was not sex toys. With her, I wanted to use my hands. She took my arm and led me through the kitchen into a back hallway to a door.

"The thing about quality frat houses," she said as she jingled a set of keys, "is that they have wine cellars that lock."

She unlocked the door, opened it and pushed me unceremoniously inside. I walked down the stairs slowly in the darkness. She locked the door behind us, came down, and walked over to me. She pulled out some fat candles and a lighter and placed them on some crates around us. She started lighting them at top speed.

"If you don't take your time with those, we're gonna start a fire," I warned.

"I am" she said through gritted teeth "in a hurry," but she slowed down anyway.

When all of the candles were lit, the place was beautiful and haunting. It was sprawling and must have contained hundreds of wine racks, most of them about half- filled. The racks were wooden, the floor bare. Masha took out a blanket and laid it on the floor.

"I don't suppose," she said almost shyly, "that you want any wine?"

I shook my head. She knew what I wanted. The realization of what was about to happen hit me, and I found myself shaking and almost sick with it. I looked away from her to collect myself, but before long she came up behind me. I knew she was there, but still gasped when I felt her arms surround me. She nuzzled the back of my neck, and I moaned. Her hands crawled under my shirt and she rested them there.

"I have been thinking about your stomach since the day we met," she told me. She turned me around, pushed my shirt up, and knelt to drag her lips slowly past my navel.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Among other things," she said as she moved one hand up over my breast. I shuddered and pulled her up next to me.

I kissed her and pulled my fingers along her neck. Her tongue entered my mouth and played there. I could not think of her arousal any more but gave in to my own, drawing my hands quickly along her body. I traced the shape of her collarbone with my fingers. When I reached her rib cage, I ripped her shirt to feel her. She moaned into my mouth as I touched her. I flattened my palm against her side, then moved my hand slowly around to graze her breast. She gasped and took her mouth away from mine. She pushed me down onto the blanket and straddled me, looked down at me and smiled, then kissed me again. This time my tongue moved more slowly with hers, lingering there while she unbuttoned my pants. She left them on me and brought her mouth to my neck. Together we struggled to get me shirtless, and then spent some quality time making out in our bras. I could tell she was ready for more, but she was a phenomenal kisser, and I was reluctant to let her lips go anywhere else. After about half an hour of this, she started to whine.

"You lied," she said between kisses, "you are trying to kill me."

"No," I panted, "but I don't want to stop kissing you. You're just going to have to figure something else out." She could always go down on me tomorrow, I reasoned. That was the last amount of reasoning I did.

She continued kissing me, but her hands roamed my body much more recklessly than they had been. She removed my bra and traced her fingers across my nipple. It hardened instantly and I whispered her name. As she took my other breast in her hand I had to pull away to breathe. Still hovering over me, she drew her tongue down my chest and circled it around my nipple. She sucked it as she put her hand on my knee and slowly moved it upward. I was trembling and panting, afraid I would come before she touched me. She, however, had no worries, and continued flicking my nipple with her tongue. I groaned and pushed myself forward into her mouth, almost embarrassed at how hot I was.

Her hand reached my crotch and touched me through my pants. "Oh, God," I gasped. She squeezed hard, and I could feel my wetness seeping under the leather. I felt my entire body enslaved by her hand. I wanted her to take off my pants so she could touch me more directly, but I did not want her to take her hand away from my cunt.

"Masha," I breathed, "please."

She needed no further encouragement, and got me naked in a flash. She came back up and kissed me again while her fingers trailed down over my mons. She reached around and touched my lips, moaned and gave me more of her tongue, then opened me slowly and entered. She fucked me gently for a while, using two of her fingers while I pushed my hips forward to meet her, my body rushing into orgasm. She withdrew her hand as I caught my breath. I kissed her then, using my tongue to express how enthralled I was. I had never come that quickly. She played languidly with my pussy as I kissed her, then began to trace my clit with her fingers. I almost came again in that instant, but was glad I hadn't when her fingers began a slow circling. She stroked me gently and finally stopped kissing me. She rested her head next to mine and panted as she touched me. My clit felt gigantic, straining to meet her fingers as she stroked. She suddenly slowed her strokes and brought her finger to the tip of my clit. She rubbed it gently. I was on the verge of orgasm and knew that in an instant, I'd be coming for her. Then she began to stroke me faster, and I was trembling.

"Oh," I moaned, "fuck, yes." My hips again pushed forward into her hand, and she rubbed me harder until I came. The party above us was still going on, and I could hear the music pounding as I cried out her name. Afterwards, she went inside and fucked me, much harder than she had before, until I was turned on all over again.

I rolled her over and kissed her, pulling off the rest of her clothes as she struggled to keep her hand inside me. She was pressing her middle finger into my g-spot, her thumb was back on my clit, and it was difficult for me to do anything, but I wanted her.

"This is not," I panted stubbornly, just before I came again, "going to be a one- way thing." Then my body hurled me into oblivion, and I creamed all over her hand for the third time.

She smiled, her hand still inside me, her thumb still on my clit, as I caught my breath.

"I never thought it would be," she told me gently. "But you come so beautifully, and I'm not finished with you yet."

"You," I said to her in frustration, "are naked, and in none of my fantasies about you naked did I just lie here coming like this."

"Hmm," she said slyly, "that's funny. Because you did in all of mine."

She gave me just enough of herself to get me excited again. Then she flipped me back over and kissed me, having learned by now that this made me forget what I was doing. She had me again, half without my realizing it, her fingers long and subtle, touching me so skillfully I came without wanting to, and exploring my mouth with her tongue the entire time. Then finally, she let me touch her for the first time.