The Last Bridge in Pittsburgh Ch. 05

I was, surprisingly, free the following afternoon, even though I'd told Kate I might not be. I had gone into work only for it to be once again totally empty except for Calpurnia. Cal was still hunkered over the synthesizer, and waved me off when I knocked on the door. I scrubbed and sterilized the few petri dishes I hadn't gotten the day before, and headed home. I hoped the lab was back soon - I wasn't getting enough hours in to make my insurance quota. I texted Kate on the way.

> Free in an hour if you are.

It was over an hour before I got a response.

> On shift til 4. Meet at yours? My place is a mess. Have any more wine? ;)

* * * * *-

I spent the afternoon ripping wires out of the walls of the second and third floors. I had finally figured out how to cut the rowhouse's antiquated double-breaker, which made the whole thing much less dangerous. Almost fun, really - you got to pull on the end of a cable and hear it slither through the walls. And I was going to make a bundle off of this old copper wiring - more than enough to pay for new superconducting cable.

I was spooling up the results of my work for the recycling folks when I heard the door slam. I peered over the railing to see Kate in the foyer.

"Hey. You free? Had a really bad day at work. Come drink with me?" She pulled a flask out of the hip pocket of her jumpsuit.

We scrambled down to my temporary basement apartment to get out of the heat. Kate sat on my bed and took a big gulp out of the flask before passing it to me. I sniffed at it suspiciously while she collapsed backwards onto the lumpy futon. Good god, whatever was inside smelled like an oil spill. I passed it back to her.

"Want to talk about it? Your day, I mean?" I sat down next to her.

Kate scowled. "I really, really, don't." She took another drink from the mystery flask. "I didn't come here for therapizing, I came to be distracted." My first instinct at hearing this - concern - was quickly muted when she unzipped her jumpsuit and began taking off the t-shirt underneath.

There's this thing that women do - where they cross their arms in front of them to take off their shirt in one fluid motion - that will never cease to amaze me or turn me on. I've never seen a guy do it - women must pass it down from mother to daughter, with other secret female skills, like how to put their hair up to dry after a shower in that towel-bun thing. Anyway, in a single second of pure grace, Kate was topless but for a black sports bra, and I was incredibly hard.

She could tell, too. She pushed me up to lie against the headboard and straddled me.

"Tell me to stop if I'm going too fast, OK?"

She didn't really give me a chance to respond. I guess it was good that I had no plans of stopping her - she immediately covered my mouth with hers before kissing my neck and pulling my head to hers for the same. At first I thought we might just reprise the previous night - an extended makeout session - which was fine by me. After a minute or so of necking, though, I felt her hands wander. First, her left on my wrist, pulling my hand to her breast, and then her right, beginning to massage my cock through my pants.

I happily brought my other hand to her chest as well. Even constrained as it was in the tight sports bra, it was clear that Kate was incredibly well endowed for someone with her diminutive frame. I squeezed and hefted them in awe, before beginning to pull and tweak her nipples through the material, drawing moans and more passionate kisses in response.

I was broken from my tit-induced reverie by the sensation of my work pants being shucked off and my boxers being pulled down, as well as the crinkle of a condom wrapper.

"Could you give me a hand? It's been a while since I've put one of these on." Kate frowned, awkwardly attempting to roll the condom on the wrong way. "Really, it's just been a while since I've fucked someone with a dick, you know?"

I happily helped her. When I was done she pushed me back down onto the bed and swung her leg over me, lining up with my cock.

Her lips closed over mine again as her cunt engulfed me.

* * * * *

We fucked until sunset. Specifically, she fucked me - riding and grinding on me like nobody's business. After an interminable amount of time, I could take no more and was nearly about to cum, but not wanting to be finished so soon I lured her off my cock with the promise of cunnilingus.

Kate's cunt smelled almost sweet, with that slight tang of iron some women have. She was a little hairier than I was used to, her coarse bush tickling my nose. I didn't mind - more than anything, I was thrilled to get a chance to eat some pussy after something like a year with Sara. I devoured Kate ravenously until she warned me she was close to the edge herself, when I let her back on my dick - where she rode to a screaming climax.

We repeated this carnal cycle either three or four times. To tell the truth, it all began to fade together in a throbbing mishmash of pleasurable sensation. Something that did stand out was Kate's expression - having started with an intense look, almost a scowl, her face faded to a punch-drunk smile as she rode me.

Finally, she collapsed on the bed besides me.

"Only fair that I finish you off. Hand, cunt, what?" She lazily asked.

"Hand, if you don't mind." I said. I had a plan - I was going to try to aim myself to cum in her mouth. OK, not my most complicated plan this week.

Kate rolled onto her side, stripped the condom off me, and wet my somewhat chafed cock using a hand slick with her own juices.

"This was fun. We should do it again soon. Maybe with that other girl you're seeing, if she's into that?" She meant Sara - apparently she'd seen her coming and going.

"She's out of town - Arizona."

"Good god, what for? Do people actually live in Arizona?"

"Taking care... of parents-- place--" I mumbled, focused on my impending orgasm. "I don't know if she'd be inter-"

I suddenly felt my climax approaching and shifted my body down the bed a bit, pointing my cock higher, just in time to erupt. I closed my eyes and the world was lost to me for several seconds. When I finally opened them, hoping to find a tranced Kate. Instead, I found her face and chest covered in cum - and her eyes and mouth screwed up tight in a look of disapproval.

"My hand slipped." Kate let out through tightly pursed lips. "I really don't like cum. Can you get me a towel?"

I laughed a little. "Sure thing."

I jumped over to the kitchenette and grabbed a washcloth, which I wet.

On the way back, I snagged the wine bottle from the previous night.

As I gently toweled off Kate's face, allowing her to open her eyes without getting jizz in them, she looked up at me almost sleepily as the majority of my load sparkled, milky-white, against her black bra.

"Would you like some wine?"

* * * * *

"You enjoy fucking me."

"I enjoy fucking you."

"You enjoy pleasuring me."

"I enjoy pleasuring you."

"Fucking me makes you happy." Kate gave off a kind of intense, almost angry vibe at times. Perhaps I could help her be a little more at peace with the world. And/or my cock.

"Fucking you makes me happy."

"Fucking me is fulfilling."

"Fucking you is fulfilling."

OK, enough screwing about.

"You want to eat my cum."

"I.." Shake, shake, shudder.

No-go. I sat and thought. "What do you have against cum?" I mused softly aloud.

"Tastes bad. Nasty aftertaste." Kate responded.

Wait, _what_? I didn't know I could ask subjects questions. That was really a game changer.

"Why do you think cum tastes bad?"

"Only had once. First boyfriend. Tastes of bleach. Saltwater. Bad."

Maybe I could convince her that my cum tasted different. Hell, there _was_ some actual variation, right? I had a friend in school who drank several gallons of OJ a week - this was back before Florida started flooding - because his boyfriend supposedly preferred the taste of him that way.

"My cum tastes good."

"Your--" shudder. That was a no.

Well, I guess I could force the issue through repetition. I'd done that once with Sara, and it had _seemed_ to work. But that was before I knew I could ask questions.

"Why don't you think my cum tastes good?"

"Never had. Assume bad from past experience."

It was odd how the answers to questions sounded when in the flat monotone of trance -not just robotic, but syntactically suspicious. Anyway - she assumed my cum tasted bad? You know what they say about assumptions. Looking down on her cum-plastered chest, I knew immediately what I'd do.

"Everyone's cum is different."

"Everyone's cum is different."

"Any given semen might taste different to you."

"Any given semen might taste different to me."

"You will try a little bit of my cum, just to see what it tastes like."

"I will try a little bit of your cum, just to see what it tastes like."

* * * * *

When Kate came to, she looked around blearily. I gave her a little space, taking the wine bottle into the kitchen where I hid it behind the cleaning supplies under the sink. Looking over, I saw Kate reaching for her phone, only to have her arm cling to her sports bra, still wet with my jizz.

For a moment that lasted a week, she froze, looking at my milky emission. And then, with deliberate slowness, she scooped up a glob of it with a finger, coolly considering the jism with a skeptical expression. Slowly, she licked the finger clean.

Lights out.

* * * * *

"What does my cum taste like?"

"I don't remember."

Well, that sort of made sense. She'd gone unconscious when it'd hit her tongue. Perhaps not remembering a taste was better than assuming it was bad, according to the rules of Kate's brain.

"My cum does not taste bad."

"Your cum does not taste bad."

Nice. No pushback at all. It seemed the trick to overcoming resistance was to find a way around it, rather than powering through.

"The more you have, the more my cum tastes pretty good."

"The more I have, the more your cum tastes pretty good."

"Kate - scoop up the jizz on your chest. Eat it. Realize how good it tastes."

Kate reached down, robotically, to awkwardly shovel more of my semen into her mouth. Each little blob she spooned in caused her pupils to shudder, as if she was going into trance all over again. As she ate I continued to talk to her.

"My cum is the best that you've ever had."

"Your cum is the best that I've ever had."

"You enjoy drinking my cum."

"I enjoy drinking your cum."

"You're always willing to drink my jizz."

"I'm always willing to drink your jizz."

"You fantasize about my cum."

"I fantasize about your cum."

"You'll drink my cum whenever I want."

"I'll drink your cum whenever you want."

* * * * *

If I had spent the first half of my week a bit of an anxious mess, the latter half was spent in a sexual haze. Kate and I spent the next two days practically wrapped around each other. She had limits - she declined to suck my cock, for instance - but for the time being, I was satisfied with the forceful, energetic and insistent brand of fucking Kate embodied. Perhaps it was so satisfying because at the end of each athletic lovemaking session, Kate would scoop up my cum and eat it, slipping herself back into a suggestible state.

I used these as opportunities to strengthen my suggestions. I also used them as a chance to try to figure out what it was that made a trance end. I tried waiting several times, but Kate took an incredibly variable amount of time to wake up - between two minutes and over an hour. The only solid result I'd gotten was that I'd been able to snap her out of the suggestible state by slapping her ass while she was under - drawing a confused moan as she came to.

Between all the fucking and "science", Kate and I hung out quite a lot. I suspected this was because she wanted to be able to jump me at short notice, but I found myself growing to appreciate my diminutive neighbor. She accompanied me as I continued doing demolition on my own house, eventually lending me a hand as I pulled wire and started on removing the rotten kitchen cupboards.

Kate's story was quite interesting - she'd fled the south a little before me, when New Orleans flooded. On her way north, she had been drafted by FEMA to serve as a nurse in their field hospitals. In addition to winning her a franchise, it'd put her at the front of the line when the FRA started and began moving people into abandoned housing in Pittsburgh. She had quickly grown frustrated with life in Pittsburgh, though, when due to caps on resettlement hires she was unable to find a posting as a nurse, being forced to take spotty EMT shifts instead. This had led to her getting involved in all sorts of community organizing, including her recent push to get our area declared a formal neighborhood and not a resettlement area.

Kate was also perhaps the first person in my life who had no qualms talking about sex. It's funny, because I'd slept with plenty of folks who had no problem having sex, yet somehow Kate was the first really to not have any hangups about discussing it. I learned about her long string of exes - mostly women. I learned about sexual positions that made my joints and spine scared of her. And she spent quite some time giving me pointers on both the theory and practice of cunnilingus.

In darker moments, though, Kate would sometimes rant about her most recent ex - always referred to spitefully as 'the Bitch'. Honestly, I wasn't totally sure I understood what had gone on - Kate was clearly working through some stuff while she vented. I took it that, after nearly a year of a satisfying relationship where Kate was being dommed by her ex, Kate had expressed interest in turning the tables, having realized a desire to domme herself. Apparently this ex had immediately dumped her on hearing Kate's desires, and cut off contact soon after.

I had to agree with Kate that it seemed like a shitty move. At first, somewhat lost, I tried to talk her through these upset moments. After a day or so, though, I learned the best way to help her was a rug munching or a thorough necking.

Eat your heart out, therapists.

* * * * *

I woke up on Sunday to a note from Kate that she was working a shift. I got up, thinking I would start doing demolition of the upstairs bathrooms, but quickly collapsed at my kitchen table in front of a bowl of cereal and imitation milk.

I was tiredly nudging flakes around my bowl, pretending they were little boats lost at sea, when my phone rang. I flipped it over to see that it was Sara.

"Hi sweetie!" Her voice sparkled through my basement apartment, making my heart speed up just a tick.

"Hi there! I'm so glad to get your call - I've really missed you!" Wow, my tone sounded pretty lonely for a guy who had spent the last couple days screwing his neighbor.

"I'm so glad you picked up - I just need a moment off from everything here. Give me a second, I'm going to go into the basement where Ava can't hear me." Thumping and then the sound of bubble wrap being stepped on could be heard.

"It's been bad, huh?" I said, a little chagrined. As the guy driving them and a truckload of their stuff back to Pittsburgh, I had really been hoping they would be harmonious.

"No, no, we haven't been fighting or anything. She's just... a lot. I guess it's hard to explain." She gave a long pause, as she sat on what sounded like a beanbag. "You know how when we were teenagers we'd have, like, insanely strong opinions but no, like, critical thought?"

"I dunno" I said, not sure where this was going. "If anything, I've grown more unreasonable over time..."

"And, like, no ability to engage in planning. Like whatsoever."

"I really think we had different experiences in high school, babe."

"I don't know" Sara sighed. "I guess I'm still trying to figure out her whole deal. She confounds me. She's been in the corps for five years, I sort of figured that would mature her, you know? Other than making her some sort of muscular freakazoid."

"What are you talking about?" I paused for a split second. "Uh, I mean with the immaturity. Not, the... muscular bit." Yeesh. Nice save.

"It's a bunch of little things, I guess. She won't help out with two-person tasks, even when I ask nicely. Not that she's not working, she just won't respond to polite requests. Of any kind. And! She keeps sneaking out at night to hook up with people. Like, it's our first time chance to spend any time together in YEARS and whenever we're not busy packing she runs off to fuck random locals!" Sara's tone had changed from annoyed to hurt.

"I'm really sorry, babe. That sucks. I know you were hoping for some quality time with her. Have you been able to get any time in while packing?"

"Ugh, I tried that today. Remember what I said about planning? I asked her what part of Pittsburgh her new place was in. I thought, you know, I'd tell her about her neighborhood, good spots to eat, stuff like that. And - get this - apparently she doesn't have anyplace to stay until her program starts."

"Wait, isn't that in, like, September? She's at CMU, right?"

"Yeah! The end of September! That's five months without a place to stay. I asked her what she was planning to do and she said, quote, 'she'd figure it out when she got there'! I swear to god!"

"You should tell her about how it took me years in the camps to get assigned a house here." I snorted derisively.

"Oh - I'm sorry - I didn't mean - " Sara scrambled, thinking I was hurt. I had been sensitive about my refugee designation with her before.

"No, no, you're good. I just - yeah. She sounds like a handful, is all. I'm sorry you've got to deal with all that."

We shared a companionable silence.

"I really miss you." Sara blurted out.

"I miss you too." I replied. As I said it, I felt in my chest how true it was. "I miss holding you."

There was a shout in the background.

"I have to go," Sara said hurriedly. "Call tomorrow?" The call ended with a beep.

I sat at the kitchenette table for a several minutes, watching the sun stream through the windows near the ceiling. Just as I was about to get up, my phone pinged and I unscrolled it to two texts from Sara.

> I miss you holding me too. Always feel so safe and warm. <3

And then, a less innocent one -

> And, I miss sucking your cock. Looking forward to you getting down here! ;)

I should have felt guilt, in that moment, for having twisted her mind into texting me things like that. But I couldn't feel that anymore. All I felt was a mix of wistful love... and my hard cock pressed against the leg of my jeans.

* * * * *

Authors' note - Please reach out with feedback, comments, suggestions or other thoughts! Your input is very useful in improving my writing and deciding where to head next!