“Why aren’t you with her anymore?” I asked. Cadence, what the hell are you doing? Stop asking these questions! You’re being rude!
Mark stood up. “Cadence, we don’t have to have sex if you’re not ready. It’s really okay.” He combed his fingers through my hair, studying the strands.
“I want to, Mark,” I whispered. “I really do.”
He bent down to kiss my lips then scooped me up and laid me on the bed.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded and smiled. I really was sure. I knew if there was anyone in the world I wanted to give my virginity to, it was him. I trusted him. Completely.
“I’ll be very gentle,” he reassured me.
I nodded again and felt his lips on me once more, trailing across my cheek, down my neck, between my breasts. He unfastened the front clasp of my bra and laid open the cups, staring at my hard nipples. I closed my eyes on instinct.
“‘This is the female form’,” he quoted, dragging his forefinger around my breasts. Slowly. Softly. It almost tickled, but I knew to take him seriously, so I didn’t laugh.
“‘A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot’,” he continued, letting his hand glide over my breasts. He rolled his thumb over one nipple then the other, making me gasp and squirm.
“‘It attracts with fierce, undeniable attraction’,” Mark said, and then he leaned over and licked my nipples.
I arched my body to him, begging him to take more of me into his mouth.
He spoke into my breast, “‘I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it’.” And then he pressed his lips to mine, and I panted into his mouth while his hands ran the length of my body.
“‘Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth—’” His hand was between my legs, stroking me over my panties. “‘—and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed’.”
He increased the pressure of his fingers until I moaned.
“‘Mad filaments—’” His fingers moved aside my panties and touched me softly.
“Mark . . .”
“Oh, you want me to fast forward?” he teased. “Let’s see, mad filaments and something about something being ungovernable . . . I got it.” He hooked his fingers around my panties and slipped them off, tossing them over his shoulder. “Ah, that’s it,” he said, studying me between my legs.”
“What’s it?”
He bent over me once more and whispered in my ear, “I think it’s ‘love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching’.”
I wanted to die. I cried out instead when he slipped a finger in me. He kept it there for a long time while he whispered incomprehensible things in my ear. I don’t know if he was still quoting the poem. All I know is that I couldn’t concentrate on it, especially when he slipped a second finger inside.
I bucked, and he let me. I twisted my body, and he let me. I dug my fingernails into his shoulders, and he let me. But he never took his fingers out. He kept them there, and I could feel myself stretching tight around him.
“Please, Mark.” I don’t know why I begged him.
“Cadence, I’ll take care of you,” he replied, moving his fingers in and out of me slowly.
And then he withdrew them completely and kissed down my body until his mouth was between my legs. He did things to me that brought me to the edge of what would have been a screaming orgasm, but I never got there because he stopped.
“Unfair!” I cried, pounding the sheets on either side of me.
He chuckled and sat up on his heels.
“Oh, I know what happens to you when you come. And I don’t want you passing out yet, Cadence. I have a lot of other things I need to do to you first.”
I buried my face in my hands.
“Cadence?”
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna get naked now. If that’s okay.”
I tensed. I don’t know why. Obviously I expected him to get naked with me if we were going to have sex. But I was scared to see him with no clothes on.
I realized I had a choice in this moment: I could be really immature and make him hide under the covers out of sight, or I could try something else.
“So what do you think?” Mark asked.
I answered him by sitting up on my knees. “Will you let me?”
“Let you undress me?”
I nodded. This was the “something else” I was going to try: undressing a man.
“Sure.”
I pulled his shirt over his head and threw it on the floor. I stared at his chest for a moment before tentatively running my hands over it. I leaned in to kiss him, trailing my mouth all the way down to his navel. I heard him grunt and took it as a sign that I’d done something right.
I unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his jeans. He sat on the bed and helped me slide off his pants. And then it was just him sitting there in his boxer briefs. And I was naked hovering over him, completely unsure of what to do. I thought I needed to talk it out.
“Okay. I’m gonna take off your underwear and then probably just look at you for a little while because I’ve never seen a dick in real life. As you know.”
Mark grinned. “Okay.”
“And I’m not going to try to act like I know what I’m doing, all right? I don’t know how to touch it. I have a rudimentary understanding of what it does and how it works, but I’m sure I have a lot more to learn.”
Mark chuckled. “It’s really not complicated.”
I nodded. “And I don’t know how I feel about putting my mouth on it quite yet, but that’s mostly because I don’t know how to blow a guy, so I’m just gonna see how I feel after I take your underwear off.”
“I understand.”
“And I don’t want you to scare me with it. Like, forcing my face on it or rubbing me all over my body with it. I don’t think that’s gonna do it for me.”
Mark massaged his forehead. “I won’t rub my dick all over you, Cadence.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Are you ready?”
“Umm . . . I’m gonna be honest with you right now.”
“Okay.”
“This conversation we just had? Yeah . . . not really sexually stimulating. So, um, now I’m kind of flaccid.”