The Personal Ad

They had met online after she had posted a personal ad on Craig's List: Married woman looking for romance, it said, if he could paraphrase.

It was a classy posting amid the no-strings-attached pleas for one night of animal sex, or the ads by women who said they were looking for a relationship, but, in fact, were just looking for a man to validate them with empty compliments designed for one purpose -- to get them out of their clothes. They both knew what would happen: They would have sex, part ways and move on to the next "love at first e-mail response."

With each conquest, they never felt better. Some felt worse.

But she was no player. Dozens of would-be suitors had responded to her post, but none had succeeded. Maybe she was too picky. Maybe she was looking for something -- romance -- that just wasn't going to happen in the internet whorehouse that Craig's List had become. Heck, maybe she should just give in and have empty sex with a stranger. Who knows? Maybe the sex would be good ... and Lord knows, she could use some good sex.

Like right now.

She sat on the sofa in front of the television. Everyone else in the house was asleep. Another of her long days -- filled with a job, school, family obligations, you name it -- had come to an end in the wee hours, but she couldn't sleep. Her mind was drifting.

Amid all of the rejections, there was one guy who kind of gnawed at her. She was sure they weren't right for each other -- he seemed too occupied with sex; she wanted to be wooed. He had a wife at home who was frigid and he wasn't about to jump into a relationship with another woman who seemed to shy from her sexuality. So, he tested her. She had a husband who didn't give her the soft love she craved. She teased him with a few sexy, sometimes baudy, comments. But in the end, she rejected him.

And now, he was back on her mind. She had kept his e-mails, in particular two explicit stories he had written for her. But she found them crude. He wrote about sex -- raw sex. One story was about a woman who picked up a man on the side of the road. The other described a threesome. Neither of those was a fantasy of hers.

Doesn't anyone write about romance anymore, she wondered.

But she had re-read the stories that day at work and now was rewinding them in her mind. She made believe the man by the side of the road with the disabled car was him. He had called her when his car had been disabled nearby. They were finally going to meet.

She reached her hand under her nightgown and closed her eyes ...

They were seated on the couch, a tray of tea and cookies on the table in front of them. She had made them as a joke because, once, to show her old-fashioned values, she had told him in an e-mail that one of her fantasies involved having tea and cookies with a man, a suitor, in a ritual from decades, maybe centuries, ago.

"Very funny," he said when he saw the refreshments. "Very funny."

She just smiled.

She picked him up after the tow truck left, and brought him home. They talked for what seemed like hours -- about her job, his job, what was going on in the world, their e-mails. She indulged his sense of humor by laughing in all of the right spots of the conversation. Every once in a while, when making a point, she would reach out and touch him on the arm, and each time it was like an electrical jolt through his body.

When she wasn't looking, he sneaked peeks at her, and undressed her with his eyes. He wondered what she looked like beneath the long skirt and the layered shirts, but since he wasn't Superman, with X-ray vision, it was all conjecture. Dark features, Small breasts. He liked that. He was never a big breast guy. He wondered about the size of her nipples. He wondered if they were erect as they spoke. After all, he was turned on. Was she also?

As she talked, his mind often wandered. He was trying to get up the nerve to kiss her. Should he? Shouldn't he? She wanted to be romanced. Did that mean she would be offended if he kissed her. Would he score more points if he held back? She had said she didn't want him. Did she? Didn't she? She was difficult to read.

He reached out and took her hand. It startled her for a second, but she realized she liked it and didn't pull back.

"Good sign," he thought. So he ventured further,

"I want to be honest," he said.

"About what?" she wondered.

"I've been sitting here for the past half hour not knowing whether I should kiss you or not. Frankly, I don't know what to do."

"Sounds like a quandary," she said with a wry smile.

"Yes, you're not very easy to read," he replied. "Think you could give me a signal?"

She thought for a moment.

"Okay," she said. "A signal."

She made a move as if to slap his face, but stopped, put the hand around his neck, moved closer to him on the couch and leaned in.

"How's that?" she asked.

He leaned over and kissed her -- one of those long, slow, probing kisses. Soft. Lingering. He tasted her. He made love to her bottom lip. They slowly pulled their mouths apart.

In that awkward moment afterward, they rested their foreheads together and smiled at each other.

When there was a lull in the conversation and the kissing, she turned on the television. They sat together, not talking ... not with their mouths anyway. He put his arm around her shoulder. She moved closer and rested her head on his chest, smelling him. He played with her hair and stroked the back of her neck. Each were getting aroused and wondering if the other could tell.

He placed his other hand on her leg. She gently stroked it, playing with the hair, occasionally moving up to gently clutch his hand for a second.

Before long, they were kissing again, and their hands were roving, each careful not to stray to ... well, you know where. Ironically, they avoided the places on each other's bodies where they most wanted to be touched. His lips moved away from her mouth and slid down her neck, stopping briefly every inch for another kiss. He moved her hair out of the way, trying to find that spot on the back of the neck that would make her wet.

He had found it. He just didn't know.

She was kissing his cheek, then his neck too. Her hands slid from his arms to his leg and back again. Along the outer thigh, then to the inner part ... so precise not to ... she felt a tingle. She had tried not to touch him there, but his erection was growing and she had unwittingly run her hand over it. He was hard. She liked the thought that she could get him hard.

He was thinking, "Touch it again. Please touch it again."

But she didn't, skillfully running her hand oh-so-close but not touching it. Eventually, he couldn't take it any more. He took her hand and placed it on his cock.

"You can touch it," he said. "I want you to. See what happens when I kiss you? See what happens when you put your hands on me?"

She slid her hand up and down his slacks, feeling it. She was incredibly excited. He kissed her again, and this time, he slipped his tongue inside her mouth. Hers met his. The tongues danced together.

Now it was her turn. She took his hand and placed it on her right breast.

"See what you do to me?" she said.

He could feel that her nipple was erect, just as he had wondered. But he also realized that she wasn't wearing a bra. He caressed the breast through her shirts, slipping his hand inside the second one.

"I want to see you," he whispered.

He unbuttoned her blouse and took it off slowly. The suspense was killing both of them. She couldn't wait for his mouth on her breast, gently licking and sucking on her nipple. His head was swirling in anticipation, too.

Then, by the light of the TV, he saw them. Small breasts. Nipples, dark and hard, the areola perfect and round. He took one into his mouth. She moaned. He made love to both of her breasts, moving from the right to the left and back, kissing the area between them.

"Take your shirt off," she said. "I want to feel you against me."

When his chest was bare, she pulled him to her. They reveled in the exchange of warmth. She loved the skin-to-skin contact. But she could also feel him in another place. With him on top of her, they kissed some more.

Eventually, she forced him up into a sitting position and undid his belt. Then his buckle. She unzipped his fly. His cock was throbbing. She reached into his boxers and put her hands on it. He sighed. "God, that feels good, he thought. It's been so long since someone else touched me there."

She explored with her hands. Its hardness. Its head and shaft, His balls. She noticed that he was shaven, but didn't say anything. She caressed it and stroked it, gently running her fingernails along the shaft. When she could hold back no longer, she took it in her mouth. There was a secret she was keeping: She enjoyed this as much as he did.

She was a pleaser in many ways. She wanted to make her man feel good. And she knew how to do it. She softly sucked on his cock, stroking it with her hand, too, as it slid in and out of the warmth of her mouth. She tasted that first drop.

Because she was concentrating on what she was doing, she didn't notice that his hand was beneath her skirt, his fingers playing with the panties on her inner thigh. He probed beneath and felt her wetness. That's when she felt him there. She took his cock out of her mouth and gasped. He stroked her. Her wetness was like velvet.

It didn't take him long to find the spot. His fingers made slow circles around it, teasing her. He could sense each time she was close to orgasm, and he stopped, his finger wandering off to another spot, near, but not there. After several times of being brought to the brink, her clit was thobbing. She was close. So close. Now, whenever his finger came near, she shifted her body -- partly to let him know she was ready, partly to make his finger touch her where she needed to be touched. She couldn't take the teasing any longer.

And when she was teetering on the edge again, she grabbed his hand and held it on her clit.

"Don't stop," she whispered. "Please don't stop."

And as his finger rubbed her faster and faster, she came. As she did, she pushed his fingers deep inside of her, fucking them. She road the orgasm, as powerful as she had ever had.

Her moans and her climax were more than he could stand. He lost control and they climaxed together. Somehow she swallowed him. His cum was hot and strong and there was a lot. But she enjoyed taking him. She was pleasing her man. His ecstacy made her cum again, the orgasms now strung together, one overlapping the other.

Her mind was swirling ...

Creak!

She heard a sound. Someone was awakening. She took her hand out of her nightgown and composed herself. The TV, some silly informercial, was talking at her.

"You coming to bed?" the voice from upstairs asked. It was her husband.

"In a minute," she said.

She looked out the window at the streetlight, and thought of him, then turned off the TV and headed upstairs. She smiled to herself.