The Reader

As the session went on, Elery turning the pages with eagerness in the progress of the story, the man enjoying her voice and her youthful presence, she began to wonder about him. Without revealing any wavering of concentration in her reading, she wondered if all this was a replacement for an inability to achieve an erection? After all, he was old. Perhaps he no longer had the ability and sufficed his sensual needs by this simple act of watching her read to him in the wonderful nakedness. She considered, a woman doesn't need penetration to achieve pleasure. It arrives in such a vast array of sensual notions. Perhaps the man had discovered this kinky alternative by chance. And who was to say if maybe he wasn't experiencing a truer, more moving intercourse through the nude reading than that of the more often than naught simplistic and animalistic act of penetration?

As she continued her loquacious activity, turning the pages with a deliberation to match the cadence of her verbal rhythms, Elery began to wonder about other women who had read for him. She took a zealous pride that her delivery was not to be outdone and fancied herself the best reader he had had, regarding the act of reading with the same value as that of oral copulation. Elery wanted to believe she was the best. A twinge of jealously coursed her for a fleeting moment at the thought that another woman had occupied the bentwood parlor chair. Accompanying this thought was the notion that perhaps he was seeing another reader as well. No, she thought to her herself; I am it, most certainly, I am it. And if there are others, they will have begun their sad paling in comparison to her brilliant delivery.

Her thoughts were intruded upon by the old grandfather clock as it chimed out the end of the session, and the end of the week. They would not share the intimacy of the words and the nakedness until Monday. For the time being she felt cleansed, as if bathed in the purity of his simple desires.

As she dressed and brought herself back to being fully clothed he drew back the curtains, flooding the room with afternoon light and bringing the room back to a kind of normality, spilling the erasing light in to vanquish the dark environs of their precious secret. He then turned to her and asked, as one might a passing acquaintance, "Would you like a Brandy?"

They sat on the leather couch, laughing and regaling various stories and remembrances of life. An hour passed, with no concern for the running tab of the Town Car, dutifully waiting outside. During the exchange she learned that he had been married, and that his wife had passed away some ten years ago. There was a daughter, about Elery's age, who was a lawyer in Boston. Other than that, she learned little, except that he had amassed his wealth in businesses he said, "Bore wealth, but little in the way of genuine reward."

As she sipped timidly at her Brandy, the man drew an envelope from the desk and handed it to her. She discretely slid it into her purse. The weight of the envelope didn't cause any suspicions. He seemed surprised that she didn't open it and count it. For the next fifteen minutes, as if quieted by the shared gratification of the reading, they sipped their Brandies without words, only the ticking of the old grandfather clock filling the space. She stole looks at him, admiring the face that was growing more handsome and refined the more she looked at him, the more she listened to him.

As the Lincoln cruised her home in luxury, Elery drew the envelope from her purse. Only now did she register the slight heft to it. She opened it to see a neat stack of crisp, hundred dollar bills. She fanned through them, realizing there was a great deal more than what she was expecting. She counted them; ten one hundred dollar bills—a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars to sit naked before a man she found quite attractive and read Herman Melville.

When Elery arrived home from the Friday session of nude reading she was a little more on edge than previous visits. The routine of being naked before him as he savored her body with eyes only was taking its toll on her will. The satiation found in her fingers was proving to be but a vague and unsatisfying alternative to the reality of the flesh—specifically the flesh of the man.

In her moment of wrestling with the growing frustration of unattended arousal the phone rang. When she picked it up a male voice said hello. It took her a moment to identify the caller as one of the young men in a book club she frequented and with whom she shared an interest in several authors. As he waffled on with vague and indefinite hints at getting together to exchange some books, Elery, motivated by some deeply seated impulse, blurted out rather boldly, "Do you want to come over?"

The buoyant, affirmative response from the other end of the phone had her realizing that he thought this to be merely an opportunity to talk about books, and that if there were other intentions it was obvious he believed he was going to have to make a slow and patient gambit toward what he believed to be this most docile of women. How wrong that assessment was given her current mood of impetuousness.

Elery was way ahead of him. In fact, if the unsuspecting male friend had any hint of what she was summoning him to her place for, he might have been frightened off (often such is the case when women make the first move). After giving him her address and agreeing that he should come straight away, Elery quickly bathed and peppered her body with her favorite perfume and rose water, dappling a bit between her legs in determined anticipation. As she dressed in a silky summer dress she gave passing thought as to how to handle the impending situation. She had no interest in small talk. And for the moment she had no interest in books. All she wanted was to get thoroughly fucked after the three, agonizingly ungratified visits with the man. So wound up on female desire, Elery didn't care if her aggressive stance might find its way back to the book club's other male members with rumor and gossip about loose values and the potential labeling of nymphomaniac. All Elery knew or cared about was getting properly fucked.

When Elery's book club friend arrived a short time later, a book cradled under arm, she welcomed him into her apartment and led him directly to the couch where they settled in, Elery strategically landing somewhat close to him.

The next twenty minutes was a bit of a haze for her, as she wasn't listening to much of what he said, instead trying to decide at exactly what point either he was going to brave a pass, or, if it didn't present itself soon, just how exactly should she go about the seduction herself? So wired up and brimming with lust, Elery finally just leaned into his yabbering mouth and planted a kiss squarely on his lips. The move quieted him with uncanny effectiveness. Frozen with shock he simply stared at her as she withdrew. When Elery realized he was too timid to take her up on the obvious invitation she leaned in again, this time pushing his lips apart with her tongue and pulling him into a deep, salaciously suggestive kiss that had him instantly erect within the confines of his pants and reciprocating in awkward earnest. He jumped a full two inches off the couch when Elery reached down and grabbed his erect penis through his slacks.

In frantic, somewhat clumsy effort, they managed to get each other partially undressed. Impatient, Elery wanted only for his essential bit of manhood up inside her immediately, removing just the clothing that was covering said parts. She slid his pants and jockey shorts halfway down his thighs and undid only the bottom buttons of his shirt—creating an upside down V that perfectly framed his hard cock. She forewent any explorations into foreplay, as she was sufficiently lubricated from the past hour of fantasy and want. His groin exposed, his member was rigid with young male vibrancy, pointing attentively at the ceiling. He wasn't terribly big or terribly small. He possessed just a pleasantly normal penis that, thanking her lucky stars, was stiff and ready. Grabbing it in her hand it had a much healthier girth than the small fingers she'd been making do with the past week.

Elery surprised him further by pulling her short skirt up to her waist, revealing her panty-less and perfectly trimmed pussy. Skirt clumsily gathered up into one hand, she straddled him, using her free hand to take hold of his cock and guide it inside her with an inexplicable urgency. Her body immediately and riotously bounced its way to climax, Elery glorying in the much-needed feel of a cock up inside her after a full week of troubling arousal that went unrequited by the man with the books. Elery closed her eyes as to not be reminded of the evidently inexperienced man-boy she'd chosen to satiate her selfish needs. But, after all, he was a young man, he would be equally grateful for any woman who would allow him to take her. With that in mind she easily and swiftly quashed any guilt so that she could concentrate on the task at hand; bringing herself to climax as quickly as she could so as not to be further frustrated should this guy happen to erupt prematurely in a disastrous result of inexperience.

Elery was doing the great majority of the work, rocking her pelvis back and forth to get his dick properly situated inside her for maximum effect. When his breathing became increasingly heightened and he began to let out little guttural sounds, Elery knew he wasn't that far off from spewing his precious fluid and foiling the entire purpose of this potentially character-damning event with the book club. Despite Elery's focused determination on the cock inside her, rubbing the walls of her vagina in a ruse of raucous gyrations, Elery figured her days with that particular book club were over and she would have to find another, given that the man-boy presently inside of her would be forever, lecherously gazing at her from across the little circle of chairs they set up each week in future gatherings in order to engage erudite discussions of D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Elliot and the like.

For now none of that mattered. His scent, his skin, his generously hard cock were working their wonders inside her—coaxed along by the most willing and compliant partner he could hope for—and Elery felt the first rumbling, just at the edge, not quite assured yet, of a coming orgasm. Her own strains of breathing and animal grunts were conspiring to lead him closer to his own moment of truth. Elery truly hoped he could hang on just a few precious moments longer so that she could achieve this much-needed climax.

The young man's impetuousness and over-eagerness led to an animal-like pounding of her pussy that, although a happy physical confluence to satiate her much-aroused and under-attended needs, paled to the old man's respectful restraint and air of worldly experience. As the man-boy heaved beneath her, Elery's mind drifted off and she tried to imagine the man in his place. But the vision didn't take, as there was nothing here resembling the gentle attentiveness the man exhibited in his every move, his every gesture.

Then, as her body danced and writhed on top of him, Elery arrived at that beautiful place, that inevitable arrival to orgasm, when all is unstoppable, when one need only to maintain the faintest of physical action to land at that magical place. And so it came, rushing through the secret inner corridors of her femininity—aggravated just appropriately enough by his thrusting penis—a mesh of unity between physical stimulation and emotional surrender. For one fleeting moment, when all nerves and sensations, physical and emotional, become welded together in one glorious explosion. Elery let out a scream that scattered the pigeons loitering on the window ledge as her body convulsed in beautifully delicious, involuntary spasms and the orgasm spread out inside her as if a large feather had been inserted in her vagina and was playfully tickling her insides with a joyful sensation of full-bodied pleasure.

Elery was relieved when he finished a moment later in a heaving of exalted breathing and a final few brutally floundering thrusts that left him utterly deflated beneath her. Elery imagined the man of the books coming inside of her, then settling the full of his weight upon her in a glorious post coital embrace, thoroughly exhausted by sex and the luxuriant embrace of love. She longed for his touch. She had settled for a pale replacement, something she now knew would never suffice. And at that moment she realized, she was falling in love with the quiet man with whom she shared a completely immersive engagement of mind and body.

Only as she collapsed onto the man-boy did Elery feel the immense wetness blotting the couch beneath them. A combination of her copious juices mixed with a healthy ejaculation of semen, which, from the feel, appeared that the man-boy's balls had not been evacuated for some time.

Sloshing around for a moment in slight movements of post orgasmic heaven, Elery straightened and, opening her eyes to indulge a kiss, was momentarily surprised to find not the man with the books, but this rather impish young nerd wearing a sort of stupefied and drained expression of idiocy. She decided not to belabor the fact that this was not the man she wished for and instead wallowed for another moment in the wonderful wetness that was drowning his rapidly softening penis.

As her orgasm subsided, the last little twangs of sensation evaporating, Elery was brought rudely back to reality. The heated moment now consummated, she had the unsavory task of how to get the man-boy out of her apartment. They had just exercised what is supposed to be the most coveted act between two people, and here she was now drawing up plans as to how most efficiently and expediently extricate him first from her vagina, and then her home, with the least amount of hurt as possible.

The following Wednesday Elery turned the remaining pages of White Jacket, feeling the lovely weight of the book in her naked lap, ultimately arriving at the end. She read, with appropriately sensitive tone, the final passages of the novel; "Our Lord High Admiral will yet interpose; and though long ages should elapse, and leave our wrongs un-redressed, yet, shipmates and world-mates! let us never forget, that, whoever afflict us, whatever surround, life is a voyage that's homeward-bound! The end."

Elery then closed the book, running her hand thoughtfully over the old cover, over the gold leaf letters adorning the spine. Her words were still resonating the room, dissipating slowly as the two of them came back to the present, like lovers recovering from the transporting otherworldliness of making love. They each slowly breathed themselves back to the study from Melville's open oceans. The relationship between them, though most certainly steeped in sexuality, had taken on an air of absolute comfort. To Elery, her nakedness before the man had become but a simple and now normal aspect, like that of taking a drink, or proffering a casual gesture, or uttering an oft-used phrase. It was as natural as breathing. Sitting there, the words of the novel resounding through her, she was completely unaware of her nakedness.

Increasingly, the reading sessions, naked before him, without even the whisper of a touch from him, left her prickly with a heightened sense of arousal. As a result the ride home was often an agony as the Town Car maneuvered traffic, impeding her desire to get home and touch herself. On one occasion she had not waited and reached her fingers down between her legs to feel the moistness of her pussy, hiding her actions with her coat folded neatly in her lap.

The ensuing weeks brought continued, thrice-weekly readings at the big house on the edge of the city. When they finished savoring White Jacket, they moved onto Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer, which was one of the stories in an elegant, over-sized edition of A Conrad Argosy. It was yet another seafaring tale told through striking prose that had originated in a more genteel time of wordsmithing.

The regular visits brought about a comfortable routine; Elery would arrive via her carriage, climb the stairs and enter the quiet room where the two of them could partake of the sensual secret. With each visit she tried to surprise with new variations on the black heels and especially of what color and style of garter and stockings she would have for him. Elery delighted in his approving murmurs of "Mmm," and, "well, well, well," signaling she had once again roused his passion. As a result she had become a frequent customer to an upscale lingerie store near her home.

During the course of her readings, with Elery's voice acting like a soothing metronome of eloquently measured cadence, her fantasies began more and more to introduce a taking of decisive action of a decidedly physical nature. Despite concerns that she might alarm or, worse, possibly humiliate the man, she imagined slipping down out of the parlor chair and crawling naked on all fours across the hardwood floor, over the throw rug, to arrive at his feet in pleasured service to him. To push his legs apart and climb between his knees, unfasten his slacks and find his member among the folds of underwear, and then take him in her mouth. She wondered, if he were impotent, she would still crave the feel of his flaccid penis in her lips. Elery wondered if he would find pleasure in her performing fellatio on him, if in fact that were the case. If it was, she wanted to believe that she could do perhaps what no other woman could do and bring him out of his dormant erectile dysfunction.

How would he fuck her if he could, she wondered. Would he choose to be on top of her? Perhaps he would prefer her to stride him. Would he take her from behind? She thought, would he like to put his mouth on her. She imagined the man savoring the taste and feel of her youthful vagina the same way he so appreciated the sight of her nubile figure. Myriad thoughts of both a sensual and nasty nature filled her mind. The game now was in maintaining her reading unfettered by the more graphic images her imagination was conjuring. She culminated her fantasies with ideas of what his climax might be like and how his semen would taste, how it would feel pooling inside her.

Each Friday, after the reading, he would invite her to share a Brandy with him and they would casually chit chat in a friendly manner. Then he would hand her an envelope, which she would open in the back of the Town Car on the ride home, fanning through the neat stack of one hundred dollar bills.

On the third week of their secretive liaisons, as Elery took up position before the parlor chair—which now seemed to own a permanent place in the study—and was about to start unfastening the tiny buttons that ran up the front of her blouse, he stopped her with, "No."

The word caught her off-guard. She turned to look at him. He handed her the oversized Conrad Argosy, in which Elery had read deeply into The Secret Sharer. He then motioned for her to sit. She obeyed, settling into the bentwood parlor chair, feeling strangely perverse being fully clothed. She wanted again the feel of the crushed velvet seat pad against her naked bottom.

Unsure as to where this disruption in the order of their routine was headed, she watched the man settle back into his familiar leather reading chair and begin to unbutton his shirt. Elery couldn't hide her surprise and watched his each and every move. He slid the shirt off and carefully draped it over the arm of the chair. He then slid his feet out of his leather shoes and methodically peeled off the black dress socks. He stood and unfastened the belt of his trousers, then unzipped the fly and let his pants fall, stepping out of them and carefully laying them across the shirt. He then removed his boxer shorts.