Page 89 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
I stand in front of her, my T-shirt dotted with dishwater, the sunlight pouring in and showing everything. Every gray hair of mine, every fine line around my eyes. Every place where her near-black hair reveals the subtlest hint of light brown, a barely there freckle across her nose, the shallow cleft in her chin. This isn’t a game played in the dark or a moment stolen with our tweed or lipsticked armor in place. This is stripped of all pretense, all gloss, the honesty of it undeniable. I see it in her seeking eyes, in the hesitation parting her lips.
But then that sharp, hungry Maddie comes through. Her eyes drop from my face to my shoulders to my hips and the thick length already starting to stir there. Her tongue comes out and dabs at her lower lip.
“Tell me,” I say again. “Make me.”
A flush is blooming on her neck. She exhales.
“Take off your shirt.”
Chapter Thirty
Bram
Iobey Maddie and take off my shirt, reaching behind my head and pulling it off from the neck. I fold it and put it on the counter. The way her gaze goes ardent and keen at the sight of my bare torso has heat crawling up my thighs.
“I love the hair on your stomach and chest,” she says on a sigh. “Fuck, it’s hot. Take off your pants too.”
I should feel self-conscious undressing in the middle of my kitchen in broad daylight, but there’s only eagerness to do what Maddie wants, to gratify her, and when she makes a happy noise at the sight of my dick and my (just as hairy as my chest) thighs, pleasure surges in my belly. I love giving her what she wants.
It takes her a moment to speak, but not like she’s having second thoughts. More like a general surveying the field, choosing where to outflank the enemy.
“Stand just there.” She picks up her latte, leans back on one hand, and uses the mug to indicate a spot by the entrance to the dining room with the air of someone gesturing to movers where to put a couch.
I obey, of course.
It’s a good spot for someone to stand naked; from here, I can see into the living room and parlor and into my office, I canfeelthe open space of my house around me, the distance to the walls, the brush of air currents from the house’s little system of easterlies and westerlies, the unfiltered sinfulness of standing naked in full daylight in an open space. But it’s also shielded by various angles from view; despite the many tall windows in the house, there’s no danger of neighbors or passersby seeing anything other than Maddie slouched on the kitchen island, one leg now dangling idly over the edge as she sips from her mug. If they happened to notice the sultry curve of her mouth, or that her eyes are glintingly fixed on one spot, well. They would never be able to see why.
I stand with my feet apart and my hands at my sides, ready for her to make me do whatever she wants. Which I have a guess about, but coarse satisfaction still floods me when she says in a clear imperative, “Jerk off for me.”
My cock is hot to the touch when I take it in my hand, hot and swollen enough that the first brush of my fingers has pleasure rippling through my stomach. Maddie watches with undisguised gratification as I take a moment to collect myself, cupping my balls, running a hand up to my chest.
Well, itwasa moment to collect myself, but now I’m preening a little bit, showing off. Spreading my hand wide as I move it back down over my chest and stomach, letting her take in the hair she says she likes so much, the tight lines of muscle moving under my skin. I cup my balls and widen my thighs. When I start stroking myself, I don’t use the quick, efficientyou have five minutes in the shower so make them countmotions, but the long, grazingmake it lastkind. I make sure she can see the muscles in my arm and shoulder bunch and tense; I want her to see the flex and release of the tendons in my forearms and wrists and hands. I want her to see the three veins meandering thickly up my dick, like vines, scandent and seeking, and I want her to see the clear glisten of desire pooling at my slit.
She’s trying to play it cool still, her latte in hand, her dangling foot, but the mug is frozen halfway to her mouth and I can see the jut of her nipples even through her sweatshirt.
Ahhh,fuck, I like this.
I like this a lot.
Is this how she feels coloring her lips bright red? Putting on a skirt that she knows will have me hauling her into a corner at the first opportunity? I’m not an exhibitionist; I don’t have any internal craving to be watched or perceived. And yet showing offfor her, making her throat move and her cheeks pink just by existing...
That’s potent.
And it’s exhilarating to realize in my mid-thirties that I’m actually sexy to someone. Sara and I got together when I was short and awkward and stammering, my teeth everywhere, my body a mix of knobby bones and soft places.*And so nothing changed for me romantically or sexually after the muscles and the hair came, or after my features caught up with my teeth and nose. Sara loved the clumsy youngster and the big, quiet man just the same, and so I guess I never reconsidered my own attractiveness. Attempting to date after the divorce, even this attachment with Maddie—well, I know what I can do for people. Make them feel good. Make them feel cared for. And I like doing those things, honestly.
But it does feel nice to have Maddie look at me like I should be on the cover of a magazine. Like she’s memorizing the sight of me to rub her clit to later.
“Go faster,” she says. The mug has been abandoned and she’s scooted to the edge of the counter. Her chest is moving up and down under the sweatshirt. “I want to see how you do it when you’re getting yourself off alone.”
“Can I come?” It seems important to ask her this, to know exactly what she wants.
Her eyes are so, so dark with pupil now, despite the light filling up the house. “No,” she says, her voice shaking a little, with lust and maybe with the power of it too, the ability to deny me something we both know I want. “Not yet.”
“Then I won’t,” I say, although I’m already in the danger zone, already feeling that pull deep in my groin. The shimmering mirage of relief just a few hard pumps away. I take a breath and try to steady myself as I wrap my hand securely around my cock and start working the thick organ with the kind of strokes I like in private—steady, short, rough. You could set a metronome to how I fuck my fist, and Maddie seems to have set her heartbeat to it, judging by the fast heave of her chest and the unconscious squirm of her hips.
I’m there so fast, my balls cinching up and my thighs trembling, and I feel the first dangerous swell of my penis, the tight, angry knot at the base of my spine, and I yank my hand away with an agonized noise, my ribs jerking with futile, uneven breaths.
Her breathing is just as uneven, her lower lip wet from licking, her right hand up and kneading her breast, as if it’s aching and needs relief.
