"No" Hotter By the Window

"No..."

I didn't press her on her answer. I did work my left hand down her spine and over her globe, then pressed the flesh to the side so I could see her. After a few moments appreciating the view, I withdrew from between her thighs, letting myself trace backward through that tantalizing little tuft to her folds. She was almost too slippery. I tilted my hips and pressed myself just so I could feel her moist warmth envelop the end, then stopped.

"What do you think they imagine?"

I could swear I heard her curse, but I couldn't tell what she said. She bucked toward me, but my right hand was now between us, and I held her back.

"No."

Another curse.

"Do you think they want what I have?"

She turned her head to the side. Now I could hear her clearly.

"If it's yours, then take it already."

She sounded almost angry. She was definitely frustrated.

I pressed into her. She felt different, but I couldn't describe exactly how. Perhaps a little bit hotter. Moving slowly, I savored every ridge and every contour. I could feel her gripping me. Partly, I wanted to ensure she was really wet enough, and partly, I was just enjoying how tightly she enveloped me. That lasted until I was about two-thirds of the way inside and she bucked against me again. This time, I wasn't ready, and I couldn't see any of myself between us anymore, even when I spread her cheeks as far as I could. It was my turn to groan.

"Oh my god!"

Her face was down, her elbow covering her left cheek, but I was still able to hear her grunt, "it's about time."

We pressed into each other. The warmth on my chest reminded me that we were beside a window, and we could possibly be seen. She was the one that liked to be seen, not me. A few cars drove down the street on the other side of the parking lot outside our building, but there was no one walking on the sidewalk at the moment. I scanned the buildings opposite us and felt at least slightly reassured that no one was likely to be looking out the windows with air conditioners in them. The building on the left was closer and a bigger concern. I pulled her hips with my hands and pressed into her with my thighs, using the opposing forces and my strength to stop her movements.

"Turn over."

She moved her arm from her face and turned her head further to the side. Her eyebrow raised. Certain that she wouldn't push back again, I released her hips and dropped back on my haunches, then stepped off the bench window seat so she could orient herself. She didn't actually move until I took her ankle in my hand and started moving it. As she reclined on the bench, I climbed back up between her legs. Glancing out the window for any spectators, I lowered myself over her. I was concerned I'd still be visible, but as I pressed against her legs, she kept folding them further up to her shoulders. Finally, I was pressed fully against her, her calves beside my shoulders. I was so low that even my body was below the bottom of the window. My eyes widened. It always seemed new to me, how flexible she was. I didn't actually know her when she was 20, but I couldn't imagine she was any more flexible then than she is now.

"How? How do you do that?"

She lifted her eyebrows for a moment, then smirked.

"Dance. And I'm incredible."

I smiled back. She reached down and guided me inside as I leaned down to kiss her. I pulled back and smiled.

"You are. We don't do this enough."

"No. We don't."

"You know I try. I'll try harder. I'm trying now."

She pressed her finger to my lips. "Sssh."

We kissed again and moved together. I kissed her cheek. Her throat. Her chin. The other side of her throat. Over her eyelids. As I looked up at the sweat plastering her hair to her forehead, I saw her phone on the end table. I reached for it.

"Unlock it."

She opened her eyes and looked at her phone in front of her face. Her brow creased and she looked back and forth between the phone and my eyes.

"What?"

"Unlock it."

She brought her thumb up to the phone. It only took three tries, but she had to shut Siri up after the second try, because she pressed too hard. She frowned slightly as I stopped moving in her and pushed myself up.

I put the phone on the window stool for a moment as I leaned back. Somehow, I managed to stay inside her as I tilted my hips so my right foot was on the floor and my left foot was under me. Taking the phone in my right hand, I pointed it at her and swiped to the camera. I massaged the little tuft with my left hand. Even looking at it now, I couldn't decide if it was more strip or triangle.

She looked at me inquiringly. "You want a photo of us?"

"No."

She raised her eyebrows at me.

"Yes. Not this, though."

She looked confused. Moving my right foot on the floor closer to her head to brace myself as I leaned over her, I caressed up from her mound and across her stomach and chest until the back of my left hand caressed one side of her neck, then the other. I traced her collarbone with my thumb to her shoulder, then back until my thumb reached the beginning of her other collarbone. My fingers wrapped around her throat.

"Tilt your head back."

I felt her contract around me. "What are you..."

"Tilt your head back." Brusque.

My fingers enjoyed more of her exposed throat to play with. Her chest heaved and I felt her grip me tighter. I squeezed my groin back, and she contracted again. We played this game for half a minute until I realized I didn't want her phone locking again. The camera focus box danced across the screen as I swiped it to let it know I was still here.

"This is only for you."

"What?"

I waved the phone over her. "This photo is only for you."

She lifted her head to look at me and knitted her eyebrows.

"Not just because I'm in it. This is only for you. This is only for us. Don't share it."

Her eyes searched mine.

"I remember. I do pay attention sometimes. I don't always realize at the time. You want me to tell you, so I'm telling you. If this is what you need, I'll try to give this to you. But this is me. Only for you. Us."

Her eyes stopped flitting back and forth. She stared at me.

"Do you understand?"

"I... I think so."

"Tilt your head back."

She stared hard at me. "No face, right? Even though it's just for us? No face?"

"No. No face."

Her brow relaxed and she looked at me another long moment before she tilted her head back. I tried to remember the photo as I tilted the phone, watching her on the screen. My left hand was wrapped around her throat, her head tilted back as far as the bench would allow. Both breasts were visible, so I leaned over, taking more of my weight on my right foot so I could cover most of her left breast with my arm, leaving only her right breast completely exposed. Her nipple looked like it was trying to poke the ceiling, and I wanted so much to take it in my mouth, but I was on a mission. As I crossed my right arm over my body to get all the parts where I wanted them, including my left arm on the right side of the photo, I started to realize how much effort she had put into the photos she had shown me. This was a drive, a need, deep inside her. I could satisfy more of it than I was doing, but if she put this much effort into this on a regular basis, I imagined it would always be part of her.

I squeezed the sides of her throat and, in what felt like a stroke of sudden brilliance, squeezed my pelvic muscles at the same time. She gasped.

Click.

I forgot to look at the screen. Stupid brilliance. "Do you ever get the right shot on the first take?"

"No."

I squeezed her throat again. She gasped. Click.

I squeezed my pelvic muscles again. Click.

I squeezed both again. Click. Pushing my hand up her throat, I gripped her chin. I slowly moved her head back and forth, then inserted two fingers into her mouth. Wetting them slightly with the inside of her lip, I trailed them down her chin and throat again. Her back was arched now, her chest heaving.

Click. Click. Click.

Sliding my left hand to the bench beside her throat to support my weight, I leaned over her and put the phone down on the end table, a little harder than I intended. It was hard to hold myself up with my arm above her shoulder, so I reached down to pull her legs between us again. I felt her warmth convulsing around me and closed my eyes. I didn't want to be this close to ready yet. Dropping my head, I nuzzled my face into her neck.

"I. Love. You. Do you know how beautiful and amazing you are?"

"No. Tell me."

"You know I'm not good at that kind of thing."

"Try."

"You drive me wild. Sometimes I don't show it. Okay, a lot of times. You're smart. You've traveled. You're well-read. You have an amazing sense of humor. You love art, and people, and food. You're an incredible cook. You're a good mother. You're so flexible."

I pressed deeper into her, squeezing her legs between our shoulders to emphasize the point. She convulsed again. Heat and moisture dripped around us. Out of her. I suddenly empathized with turkey thermometers.

"You're. So. Fucking. Hot. Figuratively. And literally. Oh my god, you're so hot."

She started shaking under me and contracting around me. I buried my head in her shoulder and kept moving. I have no idea if it was three minutes or ten (okay, I'm fairly sure it wasn't ten), and I have no idea if it was "still" or "again" for her, but I became aware she was shaking like a coin-operated motel bed as I wrapped my hands under her back and pulled us together. I probably squeezed her for another minute or two as our chests heaved together, my hips no longer moving. I pulled my face from her shoulder to look in her eyes. I raised a hand to wipe away the wisps of sweat-soaked hair covering her eye.

"You are amazing."

"Thank you," she said quietly. There was a pause, and her brow wrinkled slightly. "What should we do?" She leaned her head to the side. "The quilt?"

I gazed at her for a moment, and then realized she was talking about the fact that I was still inside her and couldn't stay there.

"Oh! I thought of that."

I reached behind us for the shirt I had stashed against the wall, then placed it against her. She lifted her hips up so I could push it slightly under her. As I pulled out, she looked up at me.

"You're amazing too."

Until she ended at "too," I thought for a moment she was going to say "today." We really needed to do this more often. We had work to do.

"You're going to drip too. You should wipe off with a corner of the shirt."

As I did, I leaned down and kissed her. "I loved this. We should really get rid of the kids more often. I mean, not to be mean, but this was... nice."

As she grinned in response, we heard a door slam.

"Mom?! Dad?! We're home!"

Our eyebrows flew up. Still hovering over her, I turned my head to look in her eyes.

"Do you have clothes in here?"

She shook her head. Sometimes, it was actually frustrating she liked to be naked so much. I glanced back at the door, which I had left slightly ajar behind me. I have no idea how I did it, but I managed to scoop my pants and underwear off the floor, dash to the doorway, and slide them up my legs as I kept my ear near the cracked door. The shoes could wait for later. As soon as I had finished fastening my jeans, jiggling the doorknob to mask the sound of the zipper, I left Stella bending and flexing each leg in turn behind me as I opened the door wide enough to slip out, then closed it.

"Hi kids! Did you have a good time? You're both home? I didn't hear a buzzer."

My fourteen-year-old held up his key. For a moment, I entertained second thoughts about having given him one. He looked down at his sister.

"Maddie's mom got here just after me. She and Maddie seemed like they had somewhere to be so I told her she didn't have to buzz in and I could just bring sissy up."

His ten-year-old sister glared up at him. "You know I don't like when you call me that!"

I thought a battle was about to start, when my son tilted his head and squinted at me as he spun his key on his finger.

"Where's Mom? And why don't you have a shirt on?"

He looked back and forth between me and the room I had just come out of.

"Your mother's reading. I took her some lemonade and accidentally spilled some on my shirt. She said she'd throw it in the wash for me."

Appearing unconvinced, my son narrowed his eyes and glanced at the door again. His little sister looked back and forth between us.

"Is something wrong?"

With a final furrow of his brow, my son caught the key in his hand, grabbed his little sister, and pulled her into his room.

"No. Mom and Dad are just being weird. Again."

Looking at the door closed behind them, I realized I had a precious moment. I opened the door to the study to see Stella standing next to the end table, one hand holding my shirt to her crotch, and the other holding her lemonade to her lips. She looked over at me in surprise. Holding the doorknob in one hand, I gestured wildly with the other and shook my head toward the bedroom. Putting the empty glass down, she rushed out of the room and down the hall to our bedroom. It was actually kind of funny to see her running with cloth held between her legs, but I decided that neither timing, the need for discretion, nor decorum allowed me to say anything. I grabbed my shoes, then turned to follow her. As I walked into the bedroom, a clean t-shirt flew toward my head. Grabbing it, I looked at my wife. "Distract them," she whispered as she disappeared into the attached bathroom.

Dropping the shoes and socks and pulling the shirt over my head, I closed the door behind me and walked down the hall toward the kitchen. The kids came out of my son's room.

"I want to show you something a friend found today. Where's Mom's phone? Can I borrow it?"

"No!"

Admittedly, my response might have been slightly too emphatic. My son raised his eyebrows at me again.

"What about yours? I just want to..."

I softened my tone as I interrupted him. "Don't you have your phone? I thought we made sure you had it before you left this morning? It's your responsibility."

He looked at me for a long moment, then rolled his eyes and dropped his head back to look at the ceiling. "Ugh. Fine... Yes, I have it. It's somewhere in my backpack. My battery's almost dead."

I waited.

Tilting his head to look at me and make sure I hadn't changed my mind, he grabbed his little sister and disappeared into his room. I ducked into the study and grabbed my wife's phone, slipping it into my back pocket, then grabbed our glasses and the tissues I had used as an improvised coaster. My son's door was still open, so I knocked on the wall and peered around the doorway. They were rummaging in a backpack.

"Hey, before you get lost in Youtube or TikTok or something, I need you to make sure you find any dishes in your room and take them to the kitchen. And while you're there, I'd like you to start dinner. Your Mom and I are in the middle of some cleaning."

My son dropped his head back again and let out a long sigh.

"Noooooo!"

I glanced around his room and saw he hadn't moved anything on his desk yet. He finally lifted his head forward to see if I was still in the room, and I just fixed him with my best "resolute Dad stare." We looked at each other for several moments.

"I fixed your speaker, by the way. You can take it to the kitchen and play music while you work on dinner."

His eyebrows raised. I glanced at his desk, and he looked at it, then walked over to pick up the speaker.

"It works now?"

"Uh-huh."

"Oh. Thank you."

His little sister stood up from the backpack and looked up at him, holding the phone in her hand. She handed it to him with a hopeful expression.

"Can we play Dance Monkey?"

With a horrified expression, my teen rushed past me out of the room with his phone and speaker in hand.

"Umm, noooo!"

His sister ran after him. "Please?!"

I drained the rest of my lemonade and ducked into the kitchen to drop the glasses in the dishwasher and grab the soldering station, flux, and solder off the table and throw them into a cardboard box. The safety glasses weren't on the table, which confused me until I looked up and saw them perched on my daughter's face. I let her keep them for now.

My son didn't huff, but gave me a pointed stare. "What should we make? Sissy has to help." His sister appeared too preoccupied with adjusting the glasses to react.

I looked at him. "Your mother is creative. I'm practical. I'm sure you're a practical, creative sort who can figure something out. Surprise us." I smiled at him.

His shoulders slumped. I ignored his baleful expression and retreated down the hall to check on Stella. She had a sundress on and was standing on a towel in front of the mirror, brushing her hair, which was obviously wet from a shower. I closed the door.

"The kids are going to make dinner. Is that enough of a distraction?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Make dinner?"

"I told them to start, anyway."

I put the box down on my nightstand and walked over to her, then slid my hand in my back pocket.

"Here's your phone. Remember, that one's just for us, okay? I mean, whichever is the best. I took a bunch."

"Do you want me to stop?"

Her brow was slightly furrowed, and she gazed at me with intensity.

"No. I told you before, it's your decision. I don't really understand it, but I see it does something for you. Actually, I might understand it a little bit now."

She nodded. Her expression relaxed, and I leaned in for a kiss.

"Thank you, Stanley."

I kissed her again. She raised her eyebrows at me and paused for a moment before speaking. "You know, you didn't have to unlock the phone to take those photos. You can get to the camera without unlocking."

"Well, you did the same thing."

She grinned. "I guess we were both a little distracted. Today was nice. Really, really nice. Really."

I kissed her. "Yes. It really was."

"You were different today. Bolder. I didn't expect you to..." She bit her lip. "What made you do that... with my throat?"

I searched her eyes. "I... You reacted, and it surprised me. I surprised myself. Was it okay?"

She nodded her head almost imperceptibly. I frowned, but tried not to let my frustration come out too much in my voice. "You know, you ask me to open up. To try new things. I'm trying, but I can't do it by myself. I asked if you liked it, and you never answered. You only said I shouldn't stop. Finally. It's hard for me to do this. To know what you want."

Stella rested her forehead on my chest for a moment, then looked up at me. "You're right. Yes, I liked it. You can be rougher with me. You won't hurt me. I'll let you know if you do. Sometimes I don't want to have to ask for it, though. I want you to take it. Just push me. Do what you want."

"It's not what I want. It's what you want. How will you let me know if I hurt you? Like a safe word? Like when wrestlers call 'uncle'? Besides, if you let me know when I've really hurt you, then I've already really hurt you. I don't want to hurt you."

She smiled shyly at me. "But I know you love me and wouldn't really hurt me on purpose. If you hurt me by accident, it's okay, because I can take it and I know you'll stop when I tell you. Yes, like 'uncle' — we can use that. Just... push. Make me know you're in charge. Own me. I don't want to ask. Just take me. I'll let you know if it's too much." She nestled her cheek into my shirt.

I closed my eyes for several long moments. "I'll try. It doesn't come naturally for me. I sensed you liked it today. That's why I continued."

Her breath was soft on my chest. "It was perfect. You didn't squeeze hard. You just let me know you were in control. Do that. And more." Her eyes found mine. They looked watery. "I love you."