“Don’t judge me,” Marc said. So apparently his libido is stirred by only a certain variety of Halloween costume. Duly noted. I put the little butt-exposing dress on and silently thanked Lizzie for teaching all us girls about the virtues of doing squats regularly back in ninth grade. When I nervously opened the velvet and presented myself to Marc, I still wasn’t totally convinced he was being serious.
Then I saw the serious way his pants tightened. Holy of holies. He really did have an impressive dick. I couldn’t wait to touch it again, without my chin, without a tricky condom. Maybe with my mouth. Would he respond to that, to me sucking him, the way he was responding to my legs in this? I grabbed the feather tickler from the cart and held it like a duster, gently running it over his chest and moving slowly downwards. He moaned, his voice deep.
“Ahem,” came the long-suffering worker again, and suddenly I understood why you needed to have a “no-porn-making” sign in the store. I quickly scurried back into the changing room to deal with my last few options.
Slave Leia got tangled in my head for a moment. On one hand, it’s rape culture personified. On the other, Marc actually had a nerdy fantasy? I decided that my opportunity to school him on feminism could come later. Right then, it was just nice to find we were one step closer to having something in common besides an address.
Also, several new lacy lingerie sets made it into the cart. I really hoped the things weren’t as uncomfortable as I had always assumed. Then inspiration struck.
“Since these are your fantasies, this one’s on you,” I told him. He glanced pointedly down at the egg vibrator. I just stared back. Like he was really going to tell me that the female orgasm wasn’t as deserving of his money as the foreplay lingerie sets were? Pssht. Nope.
“Should we go home and get busy? I have like--half an hour probably, before I have to get ready for work,” I said. I was still wet from my turn as the maid. I was all ready to do some more, um, cleaning, at home. And by cleaning, I definitely meant blowjob.
“It is hardly a seduction when it’s a quickie,” Marc said. Ever the voice of reason. No one likes the voice of reason. Never have. “I think it should be unplanned, anyways. Remember what happened last time we planned?”
“Ava and the condom,” I recalled. It was a fair point. However. I also didn’t want him to feel weirder about it then I was certain he already did. So I lied through my teeth. “She hasn’t said a word to me about it. I bet she never even looked down. How did it get attached to your sock, anyway?”
“Don’t ask,” he replied grimly. “Let’s get out of here.”
Nine
Swapped shifts tonight and signed us up for a class at the Culinary Center, I texted. Texted. I texted. I had Hot Marc’s phone number, and I was texting him.
Texting was an exciting new development in our pseudo-relationship. I fervently hoped we could graduate to sexting soon, but for now, this was exciting. I waited, staring at the phone, touching the screen every time it began to dim, until I saw the little wiggly dots that meant he was texting (or sexting?) back.
The dots disappeared. I waited a little longer. The dots reappeared. I stared. They wiggled. I stared. They disappeared.
Half an hour had disappeared as well. So had half my battery. I sighed, and plugged my phone in, promising myself I’d be cool. It was just that tonight was going to be my first shot at a full-on seduction, and I was certain I had all my ducks in a row. All except for the one that was him. So I needed that confirmation. Soon.
To distract myself, I pulled out my new favorite sketchpad. The one that I’d divided up all neat into variously sized panels. The one I was drawing my sitcomic in. The Screwmates Sketchbook.
Lest you think I was going all Chasing Amy here, the comic was still half fictional. Fanfiction of my own life, even. For example, the characters in the comic had been having torrid sex for some time now. Torrid, multiorgasmic sex. They had mastered, on the first try, the upside-down position from the sex store. Comic Madison (Maddy) was much bendier than real-life Madison.
Lest you think I was going all pornographic here, the sex was still off-page. It was just discussed in great detail during Maddy’s weekly coffee dates with Liza, Crimson, and Eva.
Total fiction.
Weirdly, though, it was getting a hell of a response online. Basically every time I opened my browser to upload another page, there were a thousand new followers. Crazy. Pants.
I hadn’t exactly told anyone about it, because I wasn’t sure it was real. Plus it just seemed like a really awkward convo to have, like “hey ladies, how’s life cause I think I might be internet famous now but I can’t find a statistic on how many likes you need to qualify”. No. I was not going to be that girl.
The girl I was going to be was casually sketching, inking over the best lines, erasing the pencil marks, and not at all shooting mental laser beams at my phone. Finally, it dinged.
Okay.
Whaaaaat. I had waited the better part of an hour for that?! After all that buildup. Overpromising and under-delivering had better not be his bedroom MO, I thought to myself.
When he finally got home, we put on some nice clothes and drove south to the Culinary Center in Overland Park, on the Kansas side of the city.
“Toto, we aren’t in Missouri anymore!” I said, in my best tremulous Judy Garland voice as we crossed the state line. He chuckled, but I could tell it was just out of politeness. My tummy was starting to feel weird. I so wanted this night to go perfectly, and that was fertile ground for my social awkwardness to start sprouting.
I get so strange when I’m nervous. Always been that way. I had considered taking that part out of the sitcomic, but let’s face it. If both characters are perfect, there’s no story. So occasionally I even took those two for a test-drive based on what might happen.
Today’s episode centered around the cooking class, where Maddy burned absolutely everything, and Markus found her ineptitude sexy. She burned his pants on accident, and he removed them immediately to show her just how uninjured, and yet also searingly hot, he still was.
The double entendres were some of my finest work. I sent a small prayer of gratitude up that Marc didn’t seem to know his way around any part of the internet that didn’t belong to an academic database. There was just no universe in which I could imagine him being amused by my wild speculation about his horizontal mambo.
My cheeks were bright red as we got out of the car, but he didn’t mention it and so neither did I. Only half-pretending to be a little unsteady in my kitten heels, I took his arm. How was it possible that every time I touched him, bright blue sparks flew around the point of contact? Every. Single. Time.
“Welcome to Cooking For Lovers: An Evening of Aphrodisiacs!” proclaimed the sign out front, and Marc did a little double-take. Did I mention the evening was a surprise? Well, that was how seduction worked, wasn’t it? If you knew everything that was coming down the pipeline, it would be boring and unsexy. I smoothed down my dress in an attempt to both look nicer and deal with the clamminess of my hands.