Stockings
"Do you like to dance?"
The music was loud, garish, steamrolling the eardrums of the masses.
"I don't know..do you like to sing?"
"All the time..." I watch her shift back-and-forth, her sway brazen but fortified by the shot she juggled ambitiously. It was her fourth tonight.
This was her party, her time, her moment. I had watched her float down the stairs hours before in a cloud of jokes and perfume a few hours before. Groomed perfectly, and yet undone, by now she was both wild and complacently restrained. And had been following her all of this time.
"Well," I gesture ineffectively, "Come on."
She laughs, grasps me, and drags me into a sort of bouncing dance. The music has become sleazier, but she cuts through the grime of it, pure joy and life.
Too sweaty to stand the close confines, she invites me outside. The salty ocean breeze caresses our bodies.
She hovers over the sand as we look out over the cresting waves and talk about our childhoods. She listens to me as I talk about her mother, and she exposes her roots. Unique. I'm hypnotized by thuggish flashes of tongue ring, gestures, emotions.
"...And that's my life. And I like it."
"I like my life too."
"Even though it involves daily risk of tremendous injury?"
Shit. She knows what I do. I try for bravery and say, "Tables don't hurt as much after the fiftieth time."
It's a lie, and she notices it. Something catches her nose on the wind and she mutters, "Shit, something's burning..." And stands abruptly, leaving me on the beach.
We drift apart back in the house; it's her birthday, and she must minister to other fools. In the kitchen I bang into Daphne, and become enmeshed in a conversation. Badgeringly, she insisted I stick by her.
"...You're perfect for her. She's not a rat, and you're....worthwhile."
"Thanks." I shot back. "Relationships should be based on more."
With a similar effortlessness, Daph brushed her dark hair back from pale shoulders and smugly looked up at me, "Relationships have been based on little more than a kiss on the hand"
Makes sense to me.
***
An hour later and the crowd is waning. I'm beside her on the couch, trying to figure out what I could possibly say that would seem entertaining. By then her head is on my shoulder. I bend forward and cup her hand in my palm.
It's rough-palmed, worked, but dignified. The hands of a waitress who hasn't lost her sense of humor. I kiss each finger and the dried palms.
She lies back, smiles at me. "What was that for?"
I kneel before her. "Companionship." I say, kissing her neckline, "Fascination." I add, smacking her bare belly button. "Desire." I add, and pull her legs apart.
I stare then at the stockings, or, more appropriately, where they meet.
Her eyes capture mine. She never hesitates for a second.
"Eat me." She commands me. I comply wholeheartedly.
****
Alone in an upstairs bedroom, she stands before me, having tied one black stocking around my left wrist. I lay immobile, raptureized by her movements.
"Tell me what you want." She says, unrolling the remaining stocking to her toes.
"You." I say.
Damp, trembling, she climbs over me. Like a sacrificial lamb, she hangs, balanced.
"I want you too." She says, and then, firmly, pierces the heart of herself on my cock.
***
The morning. My hands have fallen away from the headboard. She lies curled up beside me, her breasts rising and falling beneath the drugged sleep of satisfied euphoria. I peel myself from her, stand, watch; filled with her sprightliness, her sarcasm, her sensuality.
I left her my calling card.
"Happy Birthday, Mandy-girl
Oh, and By the way, I do dance. Divinely."