The Peculiarities of the Couch; a doppelganger in the most improbable of places

I’m not actually sure why I’ve come here, as we’re saddled thigh by thigh on the couch. He’s showing me the artwork of his mentor but I’m noticing the pressure of his leg against mine and the sensation of compact security haloed around me from my seat. He’s talking about something I’m not listening to and almost lackadaisically, my hand lands at the base of his neck. “Uhuh, yeah that’s amazing…” I say mechanically, masquerading the nonchalantly flirtation of my fingertips as they commence massaging his scalp. His breathy exhalation reveals that I’ve infiltrated his attention. It’s in this place that my hands start to say everything that festers in the depravity of my heart.

I know that I can court him with the malleable texture of my affection, with the heat generated from my brain to fingertips. I can weave oceans of words into touch. I can luxuriate in all his skin’s warmth, translating emotions into sweeping sprawls of caresses. I want to make him feel good because that makes me feel good. Nothing is as empowering as being a transmitter of pleasure, to coax the beast out of his sleeping haven with glimmers of hedonistic hope. 

Nothing is as empowering as being a woman honing her seductive arts on a canvas of fervent male skin.

We laugh, in a kind of feigned disbelief, as his head droops idly into my chest. Another fragmentary moan escapes in a low grumble for his mouth. At the darkest pitch of that sound, like a harsh exclamation point, his mouth clamps the milky flesh that cascades from my shoulder into my breast. He bites and bites hard, it makes me gasp and coo encouragingly. He takes another penetrative bite through the fabric of my dress, the padding of my bra, to the approximate place of my right breast’s areola. It’s a desirous, greedy bite. On naked skin, he’d christen that place purple.

We laugh, because we are friends behaving as curious friends with mischievous impulses do. There is always something askew about the way our body language synchronizes together like there’s a hidden instinct with no discernible origin. It doesn’t matter that we legitimatize a dozen reinforcements for the platonic fencing; we relocate that line more often than I can count. It’s become a game now, a kind of social chess that makes me eager to see how ingenuously I can conceal my next flirtation.

We go back and forth like this for just 15 minutes. 15 minutes of friendship muddled with distractions and vice.

There’s a demon running revolutions in the core of him; an overcharged impulse to savor the presence of women. I can see this tear at his direction and his commitments.  He’s propelled by sensual momentum and when I touch him it feels as if I am yanking him around by the very sins that define him. Touching him means I can drag him by his demons, seduce him into relieving his unquenchable desires in my hands. It’s so empowering, intoxicating to smear my intuitive touch all up and down the masculine definition of his body. I do it sweetly, calculatingly, just to watch him react and let his guard down. I peel his shirt up and graze the trail of dark hair that trims the well-developed lines  of his abdominal muscles. I look at him with simulated innocence and bite my lower lip as if conflicted by a growing sense of passion. I am not innocent at all. There is no internal conflict. This is how I play this game. I bite my lower lip because I can smell his pheromones. It makes me want to score his scent underneath my finger nails by carving my initials into his flesh.

Because we are just friends but my body jolts behaving as if I forgot.

Because, perhaps, if I remember his weakness is women, he knows that mine is men.

His lips meet mine, lifting his nuzzled face from my embrace. His mouth tastes so fresh and familiar; so inviting and devious, oscillating from the electricity of a first kiss to the familiarity of soul mates. Our kisses never had an uncooperative adjustment, not even the first. Our kisses, much like our exchanges, are about teasing, allusion, craft. His tongue just barely rounds mine and the flavor of his salvia makes my pussy response as if salivating back.

When it feels like he is slipping away from the kiss, I bring him back with my bites and nibbles. I want to devour his mouth a little more, distract him with my kisses so I can keep caressing the silk and fur of his body. Without even having to look I know that the stubble of his chin and lip are reddening the skin around my mouth. It’s doesn’t matter about the aesthetics, the abrasion of stubble makes it so painfully clear that I am kissing a man. A man with rough edges of muscularity and the smooth, deep aromas of experience permeating through his pores.

I kiss him because I like knowing that I shouldn’t.

His fingertips languidly trace the intangible line between my inner thigh and cunt. He takes his mouth off mine and smirks; my scent will radiate off his clothes when goes to see his evening playmate in 10 minutes. I laugh because it’s more likely that one of my renegade blonde hairs will stowaway on his sleeve. He stands up from the couch and pulls his shirt overhead, lingering in front of me shirtless, asking me what I think of his body. It’s so lean, so smothered in linear muscles, so strong and earnest. The type of body that could pick a woman up by her hips and shake her into orgasm. Rugged. Masculine. Beautiful. I touch the thick ridge of his oblique and involuntarily bite my lip. This time I mean it. The uninterrupted view of his torso stuns me into covetous surprise. I want to smoke out all the carnal places that will give him the sweetest pleasure.

And now I want to kiss him where his hips meld with his waist. I caress my mouth down the front of his stomach, puckering my lips into the heat hiding behind the elastic of his briefs. He laughs when I kiss right there. A laugh that holds so many words in such a fleeting sound. The evening is quickening, his mistress is waiting. Not enough time for poignant allusions, and definitely not enough time to dapple his manhood with suction and tender kisses.

I stand, kissing his mouth and grazing my fingernails across the broad of his shoulders, careening into his triceps. He makes approving, lustful sounds. He stretches his arms into fresh, navy material; he asked me what I think as he soothes the fabric across his body, admiring its cut in his reflection. The shirt accentuates the ripples of his biceps, the graceful definition of his chest. It’s the kind of shirt that advertises that he would look good in absolutely any environment, any blend of synthetics, any set of crumpled bed sheets across the country. He looks so good because he makes it look effortless.

I tell him it looks just a smidge too tight.

He slips into his bedroom and reemerges in the door frame, wearing a leather jacket, forcing the impression that the girl he’s about to see is young. I tease him about it and when I turn, shimmy my ass into his crotch.  His hands unhesitatingly go up my dress and dig into my hips while I rotate them around. In one fast pull, he yanks my thong and leggings downwards, clawing his nails into my bare flesh.

And then I hear that sound: the metallic unfastening of his belt prongs, the jangle of yearning produced from the shifting of unzipped denim. His cock is at the vestibule of my ass crack, idly rubbing around. Instinctually, I push back and swivel into his advances. For only a handful of seconds, we play around with this blatant transgression of our friendship. “Oh baby I want to but… maybe… when…” he says.

But we know that maybe’s subjective. Maybe definitely, maybe never. I coyly snap my panties back into their proper place, giggling and satisfied with my brazenness. He tucks his member back into the constriction of his grey briefs. We laugh, because we are friends, behaving shamelessly.

At his front door, he kisses me again, slowly, meaningfully. He tells me that he loves me, that’s he think I am awesome. He’s staring at my mouth as he says it, a gleam of appreciation for the complex niceties I bring into his life twinkling in his eyes. I know that he’s a charmer, a seducer with a never-ending stream of adoring words. But for this moment, I opt to believe what he says, and I let him briefly washing my psyche in his magic.

We bound together in our naturally swift paces towards our respective cars. He places his hand around the crook of my elbow, trying to escort me with his cultural antiquities. I cut off his courtship rituals; bothering with contrived formalities doesn’t interest me. On the street, I have no desire for him to soften my hard-head independence. On the street, we blithely kiss and I climb inside my car.

My movements slow once tucked into the confines of my vehicle. I watch his car abruptly accelerate to his destination before I even have the key in my ignition. In this lull of transition, my thoughts are clear, objective. We are so the same, possessing comparable histories of bloody battles fought between freedom and security. We are big egos and inquisitive minds who surround ourselves with people who can stomach our insensitivities, our identical self-preoccupations. We ply similar brands of manipulations to everything around us, tweaking details and intuitively sensing options, employing charm like a Band-Aid when we are too lazy. We have the same intolerance for restrictions on our mobility, our natural needs to wander after wonder, resenting having to justify why. On our good days we craft landscapes of beautiful social harmony; on our bad days, we are mere beasts dressed in tarnished clothes, demanding more and more and more. Everything I hate about him is exactly the stuff I hate in myself. And everything I find interesting about him rest on the hope that, despite our shape-shifting morality, his intent is pure even if he’s hands and mouth aren’t.

Maybe that is what attracts us but also why we will never have sex. We are like con-artists flashing wares and exploits, marveling at each other’s somber skills, but never really revealing the full arsenal because the thrill is in the hunt. Neither one of us is willing to forfeit anything. That is why we’re friends. But it sure is enticing to imagine that we could.

We are so the same.

Except that he is a man, rushing fluidly into the next sequence of his conquest as I watch his headlights slip over the horizon. I am a woman, lingering in my driver’s seat, readying my language, reflecting on my ambivalent heart. I know I must seek rest. I cannot keep rushing on like him. I must first birth all the thoughts he spawns inside my head.