Tony seemed relieved. “So,” he began again, “what was your sex life like with Randy? Good? Mediocre?”
“It was good – great, in fact. We were both adventurous and liked variety, so we were always mixing it up, you know, new positions, new toys, lingerie, kink . . .”
“Kink?” Tony perked up considerably. “Define kink for me, or your version at least.”
“Well, let’s just say there sometimes was rope, a blindfold, and/or spankings involved. We liked to go at it occasionally in places where we might get caught. We had a flogger, a cat o’ nine tails, and a riding crop. Some restraints. Three or four kinds of nipple clamps. Those kinds of things.” She stopped for a minute, then said, “Actually, we more or less had a Dom/sub relationship in private.”
Tony was sitting up on the edge of the sofa, listening intently. Then he asked, “So, do you have limits?”
“Well, sure, don’t we all?” Nikki sounded kind of put-out.
“So where do you draw the line?”
Nikki thought for a minute. “Well, mine are pretty far out there, but there are some things I just won’t do. For instance, if it involves pee or poop it’s pretty much out of the question.”
Tony made a face. “Me too. Not interested and not going there.”
She laughed. “Well, good, because if you wanted to go there, you’d go there alone!”
Tony laughed, then took her hand and pulled her over to the sofa to sit with him. He just couldn’t stand being that far away from her anymore, not with the conversation they were having. “So, what will you do? I’m guessing all the standards.” Nikki nodded. “Anal?” She nodded again. “Oral?” She nodded enthusiastically; he felt his cock start to stiffen. “Ever been fisted?” She looked mildly surprised, then said, “Yeah, Randy and I tried it, but we never could manage. He just wasn’t patient enough.”
A hum set up in Tony’s mind. He felt like he’d hit the jackpot. It sounded like she was open to pretty much anything, and he was getting too excited thinking about all of the things they could do, or try, together. “So you said restraints. Do you like being restrained?”
“Actually, yes, I do. Can I be completely honest here?”
“I wish you would.” He wondered what was about to come out of her pretty, pink, extremely hot mouth that would make him even more glad he was a man.
“Okay, to be completely honest, I like pain with my pleasure. I don’t want anything to do with needle or blade play, nothing that draws blood, but I need an ache to have a screamer. Sometimes I want to make love, but most of the time I just want to fuck, and fuck hard and fast. If you’re not giving me what I need, I’ll tell you. And if I don’t like what you’re doing, I’ll tell you that too.” She took a deep breath. “As long as you treat me like a princess everywhere else, you can treat me like a whore in the bedroom and I’ll take what you give me and come back for more.”
Tony felt like the air was getting heavier and it was getting harder to breathe. Then he realized maybe it was because he was holding his breath. “And how many times a week could I expect this call to action?” He wished he could cross his fingers without her seeing.
She looked at him from under her lashes and said, without hesitation, “Based on past experience, I’d say maybe a couple of times a day, but at least daily. Unless we’re both really, really busy.” She licked her lips, and he almost came undone. “Anything else?”
Tony was having trouble articulating. He finally managed to breathe out, “Nope. I think that about covers it.”
“Are you extremely put off? I mean, does what I’ve told you change anything?” She looked a little worried. “Are you afraid you’ve gotten yourself involved with some kind of freak?”
“No, baby. The only thing it’s done is to make me even more determined to make this work,” he emphasized, taking a deep breath. Shit, I could really do with a glass of bourbon right now, Tony told himself. “So now I guess it’s my turn?”
“Yep. Run with it.”
“Okay. Well, Dottie was my first and only. Sort of.” Nikki made a puzzled face. “I’ve told you how we met. When it came to sex, neither of us knew enough in the beginning. We fooled around before we got married, but we never actually had sex, just lots of heavy petting. Then when we got married, she made it clear on our wedding night that she had limits.”
“What kind of limits?”
“Everything. I wasn’t supposed to touch her, just kind of hover above her, put it in, thrust a few times, and we were done. There was one position – missionary – and no other. And god forbid I mess up her hair. Which brings me to one of my pet peeves.”
“What’s that?”
“Do not – I repeat, do not – tell me not to mess up your hair or makeup. Take that shit off before we get into bed. If I’m gonna fuck you, I want to be able to fuck you without worrying about ‘messing you up.’ I’d like to screw you with wild abandon, not watch out for your hairdo.”
Nikki grinned. “You don’t have to worry about that. I never sleep in my makeup – I think better of my skin. I was kind of worried about you seeing me without my makeup, but now, based on what you just said, not so much.”
“Hey, remember where we met,” he laughed, then waited, head cocked to one side.
“Oh, yeah. The gym. I guess if you could see me like that and still want to go out with me . . .”
“Exactly. A moot issue. Anyway, that was the extent of our sex life. In the beginning, we had sex maybe once a week. After the first year, maybe once every three months. Eventually, I just quit asking. Of course, when she wanted to get pregnant, that was different, but the limits still applied.” Tony had a pained look on his face, and it bothered Nikki that talking about it still caused him so much grief.
“You realize that was her, not you, right? That the not wanting sex was no reflection on you?” Nikki asked, trying to get him past the pile of garbage memories.
“Well, that brings me to what I need to tell you most. I hope you’re still with me when I finish.” Worry clouded his beautiful face. “Remember when I said I’d only talked about sex with one other person, and you assumed it was Dottie, and I said no?”
“Yeah?” She couldn’t imagine where he was going with this.
“Okay, so here goes.” Tony sat back on the sofa and tried to get comfortable, but that was a losing battle. “So, you said it – I wasn’t sure it was all her. I thought maybe it was me, my lack of experience, something like that. A couple of years ago, I started to think maybe I’d eventually want to get back into a relationship, even though it seemed like a long shot. And I started to think about the fact that I was over fifty-five and still had no clue about most things sexual. I mean, I watched porn videos and looked at magazines, but I knew most of that stuff wasn’t real. And I started trying for a way to learn more. So I did the only thing I could think of – I hired a hooker.”
“No shit!” Nikki laughed. “How’d that work out?”
“Better than you’d think.” Tony still looked surprisingly serious. Nikki got her giggles over and settled down, so he continued. “I hired an escort from a company there in town, bought a big box of condoms, took her to dinner, and then went to a hotel room. When we got there, she asked me what I wanted, and I told her I didn’t have any idea. Then I explained to her why I’d hired her, that I was hoping she could teach me some things about sex.”
“And? Did she?”
“No, but she said she knew somebody she’d recommend. She made a phone call, kissed me on the cheek, and thanked me for dinner without taking any money from me, then told me to sit tight and Cinda would be there shortly.”
“Cinda?”
“Yeah, I guess it was short for Cinderella; I’m sure that wasn’t her real name. Anyway, there was a knock on the door, and I opened it to a woman who was mid-forties and pretty ordinary-looking. She told me her name was Cinda and she’d be glad to teach me whatever I wanted to know. She said she could do ten sessions, and they’d be rigorous –
we’d work from ten at night to six in the morning. Eight hours at a time of whatever she thought I needed to know or whatever I wanted to learn. I said yes, so we started right then.
“She started out with an anatomy lesson featuring both of us, then started showing me things about my own body that I never knew. It was totally and completely mind-blowing to me – this woman seemed to have zero shame, and she was willing to teach me. I thought there might be hope for me yet.
“After the show and tell, she asked me what I had and hadn’t done. The ‘had-dones’ was a pretty short list. She said she wanted to get things off on the right foot, so would I like a blow job. I’d never had one, which she thought was pretty amazing, so she dropped to her knees and gave me one right there on the spot, which I thought was pretty amazing. I was standing when she did it, and I damn near collapsed when I came.”
Nikki laughed out loud, and Tony grinned. “Anyway,” he began again, “when she was finished, she told me it was her turn, and taught me to perform cunnilingus. She scared me to death when she came – I’d never given Dottie an orgasm, so I thought she was dying. She thought it was hysterically funny. We got back up on the bed together and she explained the mechanics of male and female orgasm to me. Before she left that first night, we had plain vanilla sex, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Plus I knew we had nine more sessions to go. You can’t begin to understand what that was like for me.”
“What else did she teach you?”
“Everything. At least seventy-five different positions. All kinds of ways to give a woman an orgasm, with my hands, tongue, vibrators. Using all kinds of sex toys, lubes, creams, anything you can think of. She taught me about orgasm denial, how it can help a woman who has trouble having orgasms to have huge, earth-shattering ones. Cock rings, penis pumps, things like that. How to use a suction device to enlarge the clitoris, make it more sensitive. The ins and outs, literally, of anal sex; how to prepare a woman who’s never had it before, dilating techniques, lubes to use, everything. Some bondage, rope play, safe use of restraints. And she had some really strict rules,” he added, taking a deep breath.
“What do you mean?” She noticed that he seemed to be getting tense.
“I don’t know exactly how to say it . . .” he mumbled, looking at his hands.
“Just spit it out. If we’ve come this far, you should’ve already figured out that you can tell me anything,” she told him matter-of-factly, and he believed her. So far, she’d turned out to be the most open-minded person he’d ever met.
“Well, she believed if you were going to do it to somebody, you should allow it to be done to you. And if you wanted it done to you, you should have to learn to do it to somebody else.”
“Meaning?”
“She brought a friend in to assist. A male friend.” There – he’d said it. Nikki’s eyes got a little wider, but she didn’t say anything. “She said if I wanted to have anal sex with a woman, I should know what it felt like. So her friend helped us with that.”
“Are you trying to tell me you took it up the ass for the team?” Nikki asked, incredulous and, as usual, blunt as hell.
Tony blushed. “Yep. Not as bad as I thought it would be, either. Not sure I’d ever want to do it again, but now I know what it feels like to somebody else if I fuck them in the ass. Great way to drive home a point, pun intended,” Tony said, and chuckled a little. He still looked a little embarrassed. “Does that completely freak you out?”
“In a very positive way. I’m trying to imagine, and it’s very hot,” she practically purred. “And I’m very impressed.”
Damn, he thought, this woman is incredible. I can’t believe she’s not running for the door, but if she’ll hang around now, I guess nothing will scare her away. “So then she said if I wanted to get oral sex, I should learn to give it, because if I did, I’d know what the giving was like, and I could teach a woman how best to do it.”
“And you gave her friend a blow job, too?”
“Yep. Also not as bad as I thought it would be, although I don’t think the taste of ejaculate is something I’d want to experience very often.”
“I can’t say the same thing.” Nikki’s eyes went kind of glassy. “Frankly, I like the taste of cum. Sometimes I crave it.” Nikki nibbled at her lower lip, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Tony struggled to stay in control until she told him, “Go on. Please.”
He waited a minute, trying to remember where he’d gotten to in the conversation, then started again. “So that’s kind of how it went. She taught me to fist her, taught me to do some very basic restraint techniques, some light BDSM stuff, flogging and the like, and nipple torture. We had a three-way with the male friend, and then another night, she brought in a female friend and we did a three-way. She also taught me how to take a woman from giving me a simple blow job to letting me fuck her throat.” Tony watched as Nikki instinctively put her hand up to her neck, letting her fingers slide down almost to her cleavage, and he thought he’d come unglued. This was going much better than he’d expected. If he was getting this much of a charge watching her reactions to this discussion, how spectacular would the sex be?
“You have to understand,” he said, catching and holding Nikki’s gaze, “this wasn’t lovemaking. She was a lovely, warm, friendly woman, but it was very clinical, almost mechanical, for her. She was instructing me and I was learning. She asked me on the last night if I felt confident about my abilities. I told her I’d never felt more confident in myself, or more virile, for that matter. Then she said, ‘I’ll tell you a secret about women that every man should know.’”
Nikki waited; she leaned toward him, and Tony was enjoying watching the look of anticipation on her face. Finally, she blurted out, “Oh, for the love of god, tell me what she said!”
“She said, ‘What every woman wishes you knew but won’t tell you is that, deep down inside, every woman wants her man to take control of her in the bedroom. She craves it. She wants to be dominated, to be pushed to her limits, to be taken to where she can’t stand it anymore and then taken just to the other side. She wants her man to let her choose a safeword, and then she’ll try her best to never use it, to take everything he gives her and beg for more. Treat a woman to that raw maleness, that masculinity, and make her enjoy it and feel cherished and loved, like she’s the most desirable woman in the world, and she’ll feel safe with you and let you do anything with her and to her that you want.’” He stopped for a minute, the questioning in his eyes warming her face, and asked, “Nikki, I have no idea – was she right?”
It took her a minute to catch her breath, then she forced out in a whisper overflowing with longing, “Oh, baby, she was one hundred and ninety-eight percent right.” She was pretty sure if she didn’t change gears, she was going to come right then and there. Tony watched her squirm; he knew what was going on, and he loved it.
“So, let’s talk about deal breakers.” Tony attempted to break the sexual tension by taking the throw from the back of the sofa and spreading it over Nikki’s lap, and she was definitely glad for the change in the conversation.
“I’m assuming you have some or you wouldn’t have introduced the topic?”
He stood. “I do.” Before sitting back down, Tony refilled their wine glasses. “My number one deal breaker is cheating on me. I simply won’t tolerate it. Period.” His tone was stern. He tried to get comfortable on the sofa and started again. “There are far too many things out there now that penicillin won’t kill. I’m responsible for too many people, their jobs and their lives, to take chances like that, and I won’t be with somebody who exposes me to that kind of danger.” Nikki nodded her understanding.
“Number two is being untrustworthy. I have to be able to trust you. I get lying about something like a Christmas gift or a surprise party, but if it’s a lie to cover up something wrong or at least questionable, then I’m extremely intolerant. I can’t be open and honest with somebody who’s not open and honest with me.”
> “Number three is my family. You’ve got to get along with them. I know they’re not perfect. My youngest brother’s wife, Caroline? They were horrible to her when she and Bennie first met; they’re still not very kind. I knew it wasn’t her; it was them, and Bennie and I called them on it. That wasn’t her fault. But if you’re being generally rude or hateful to them, bitchy or mean or whatever, that’s just not going to fly. If there’s a legitimate problem with you and them, then we’re going to have a problem, that is, if you’ve contributed to it.”
“And number four is as big as number one. I will never again be in a relationship where sex is withheld. No discussion, no negotiation. If you were in a terrible accident that left you completely debilitated, or had a horrible illness, like cancer, where you were incapacitated or in disabling pain, that would be one thing. But to withhold sex for spite, or meanness, or from general disregard or lack of love, nope. I’m done with that. I lived with it for sixteen years, and I won’t do it again.”
With that, Tony put his wine glass on the table beside the sofa and asked, “Yours?”
Nikki looked thoughtful for a minute. “I’d say the cheating thing for me too. The fucking everything in sight thing wouldn’t bother me that much, but I’d be terrified you’d come in and tell me you’d fallen in love with somebody else. That would kill me. And even without that, I couldn’t take the pressure of the competition. I’ve always been able to hold my own sexually, and if you found somebody you liked better than me in the sack, well, I can’t imagine you could, but I couldn’t compete with her if you did. And I guess my second one is like your trustworthiness issue. I couldn’t take it day in and day out if I felt like you were sneaking around or hiding something from me, or if you were lying to me all the time. Those are about all I can come up with. I can work with anything else, as long as you’re trying. Oh, and by the way, my safewords: Stop is red; slow and question, yellow; and go, green. And I have a hand signal for when I can’t speak,” she demonstrated, showing him two fingers raised in a “V.”