Kler
by William Dean © 2005

Like the grating glissando of a sharp steel blade sliding out of its binding sheath with every step, the woman with the orange-red tousle of hair and the dark kohl-rimmed eyes walked toward me. The pale blue stare abstracted me from the crowd, focused, and targeted. I smiled inwardly. These days, it’s both easy as hell and impossible to be a bad boy. It’s all a matter of perspective and moment. I stood my ground and kept expressionless.

She obviously came from a world of the extreme, where tats grew jungle-like across bodies and piercings like tiny blood sacrifices to pagan gods were common as nightmares on hot August nights. The men she was used to prided themselves on weirdness and cynicism. They posed as vampires, werewolves, demons, and punkish hell-raisers. They fucked casually and indiscriminately, affecting and discarding fetishes like the whimsical shift of popular fashion brands or now-hot, now-not rockstars. My narrow gray suit and polished loafers marked me as an interloper in such a realm, yet my very presence in it marked me, too, as either an outside enforcer or an outlaw from my own society.

Her direct approach branded her likewise. Had she eyed me with a different expression or stood aside and snickered, like the others, I would have had no doubt as to the outcome. But she did as she did, so the game began. Now, we had to decide—mutually—if the game would be war or seduction.

Either way, the first sortie would be a challenge. Women—of all kinds—always test a man. Are you man enough for me, they ask somehow. With a look, a showing of teeth, a slight tension in the shoulders. The bolder the woman, the higher the stakes as the game progresses. This one was obviously surface-bold, shown by the choices she made in hair color and clothes.

"You look...lonely," she said in a hushed voice as she stopped in front of me.

It’s a good opening ploy for testing the temperature of the waters. Some men turn away from it or simply shrug as if unable or uncaring to reply.

I flashed a half-smile. "It’s a residual thing."

Her eyes flickered. I could almost see her thoughts clicking along a new groove in her mind. So. I hadn’t replied with a cliché or a standard pickup line. I hadn’t stammered from her direct gaze or the powerful lure of her body.

"And that means?"

"Means I’ve been lonely before and you’re looking deeper than my smile." I looked aside and then back into her eyes. "I guess."

Her mouth opened, but closed again in silence. Her body shifted slightly into a more comfortable pose. At that moment, we both moved away from the possible violence of war and began drifting into the potential of passion. It’s a subtle thing, but a thing of beauty, when seduction starts. The wild energy inside gets re-directed, away from destruction and ruin; the wildness remains but changes from the projection of blood and pain to one of thrashing naked limbs and hungry kisses and bites. The ride of two people along an unknown route with only a mutual destination in common.

After such a shared and rare moment, words lose their usual definition, take on shadings and pulses out of context with conversation. It’s like saying an ordinary "Hello" to someone you’ve fucked in a wild night that you both remember. The word is the same, the meaning far different. We both knew we’d crossed over whatever separated before, but still the phrases turned this way and that, biding time like a foreplay dance in public.

But it’s a dangerous edge to walk. Some people can talk themselves—at such times—right out of a fuck. If you start spouting the inane or overtalk your ego, you might as well take out a "Loser" badge and pin it on your chest. Some guys think it’s the time to trot out the "hearts and flowers" or vaguely-remembered snatches of poetry as if spontaneously inspired to show off their romantic and sensitive nature. But if you’ve already passed that fork in the road of seduction, such conversing is superfluous at best. The best response is that of a kind of sophisticated caveman.

"You make me wish I had a cave to drag you off to." Punctuated with a firm, urgent, but not painful touch on her forearm.

She lowered her eyes—just a flash of demureness—and then raised them back up to mine with a blaze.

"I don’t fuck in caves," she said with a sneer. But it dissolved into a smile that added an unspoken "but maybe."

The edges of the world of desire are built on "but maybes." They’re temporary fortresses built with crumbling in mind. It’s human nature or, at least, humanly natural to want the "moreness" of life. Push me, pull me, just don’t let me stand where I’ve always stood. Like Morrison of The Doors crooned so long ago now, "Take me, Spanish caravan..." We want to feel the danger of passion. She wanted it. She wanted it beyond the loose sniggers of her peers in that dank, dark club. She wanted it even with a stranger from beyond her tribe, beyond her knowing. She knew I was there for the same reason. Parallel lives meeting for an impossible twining.

I asked the inevitable. "Wanna go?"

She looked around the room, saw the sideways glances, the pretended ignoring, and lifted her chin like a suddenly prideful sacrifice. It was a silent "Yes."

She grabbed up—as I suspected she would—a short, well-worn leather jacket and threw it over her shoulder. As we walked out of the club door, I felt the press of her breast against my arm, felt its soft warmth—not like the fabled electrical charge, but more like quick embrace of an intimate lover.

In the car, we laughed, exchanging names like new schoolmates. She was Kler. She spelled it to make sure I realized she was hardcore in her society. My name’s more traditional and ancient. She repeated it with a nod as if memorizing it by rote.

My apartment’s neither one style nor a cluttered maze of tossed-down living. It’s simple, comfortable, reassuring; neither an organized cubicle nor a fantasy game room. Her eyes skimmed its unfamiliarity, settling here on an unusual small sculpture, there on a three-quarter-filled tequila bottle. She pointed a long purple fingernail at it.

"Can I have some of that?"

I smiled at her settling in question. It would have been easy, but foolish, to reply with something glib. "Mi casa es su casa" or "You can have anything you want, babe." But our game of seduction was still in play.

She sipped from her glass—another subtle sign. Among her friends, she probably kicked back shots like a thirsty longshoreman, but she wanted to toy with herself, as well as with me. Once the foreplay begins, most of the pleasure is in longevity and waiting. Again, ordinary touches—like words—take on entirely different meanings. The brush of fingertips on clothing promises more brushes on skin, with hands, with lips, with the whole body. There’s a song called "The Dangling Conversation," but it’s all about the opposite to what lovers really say. The pauses and silences grow filled, not with alienation, but with projected thoughts for what words cannot articulate. You can say, "I want to touch you," but it fades to nothingness when you actually touch. It’s like the difference between asking "May I kiss you?" and simply leaning close and kissing. I think women know this better than men. I know it took me awhile to learn it’s truth.

Slowly unbuttoning her nightshade-colored blouse, her pale breasts revealed their smallness and the stiffening pink nipples. I delighted in their natural curves, lightly running my fingertips down their fullness, teasing the tips, then cupping one strongly and kissing it with a nipping scrape of teeth. Her sharp hiss was like a sizzle in the air. Our lips met with that hard force of want, teeth clashing slightly, mouths opening for exploring tongues.

In modern times, too much is made of plain nudity and the gynecological splay of genitals. The slow, tantalizing revealing—even the grope over and beneath clothing—carries its own slowed pleasure of urgency and want to the blood and the mind.

But the pace always increases as urgency grows. Her hand slid down my bared chest and grabbed at my already stiffened cock through my trousers, felt along its length, squeezed against its throb and then quickly moved to my belt. Like a perfect ballet, as her hand unzipped my pants and released my hardon, so my own fingers moved under her short skirt and teased up the inside of her parted thighs, found her wetness, and teased along her slit. My thumb moved up to stretch back the hood covering her clit while my finger began small circles over it, nudging from the sides, then swirling in complex patterns.

Like memoried younger fumbles in the backseats of parked cars or shadowed gropes in parks, we played out the roundelay of exploring each other’s body. When, at last, we tumbled to the floor, her legs opening and her arms pulling me down and into her, she had nothing but her stockings and heels on. I still wore my loosened tie, but nothing else, as if we couldn’t wait any longer to fulfill our desires and want. People laugh at the missionary position, but it has its advantages, too. I felt her legs scissor across my hips and squeeze tightly as she crossed her ankles, her arms moving beneath mine so her hands could scratch along my back muscles and spine in rhythm with the thrust and ebb of my cock inside her and then almost out, then again in. I began rotating my hips on the strokes and snaked a hand between us to dance my thumb over her clit. She nipped my earlobe and licked down my neck, her whisperings growing more incoherent, but constant.

As I dripped sweat, she drew back, catching it on her lips and licking them with a smile. She closed her eyes for an instant, then widened them, stuttered a cry, and sank back into the reverie of post-orgasm as I felt my cock seem to grow thicker and then cum. As I felt her legs relax and slacken, I rolled over on my back, pulling her atop me and ran my hands down her body, after a lingering kiss.

"Good," she said softly, brushing the sweat-plastered hair from across my forehead. "Mmmmmm." She nestled for a long moment, then leaned back, straddling my hips, then slid her hand down to encircle my softening cock. "More," she said. "Okay?"

The game of seduction began again, from another level.

 _______
© 2005 William S. Dean. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

Bio:  Who is William S. Dean? Read his bio on the Erotica Readers & Writers Association website.

  E-mail this page

Copyright © 1996 and on, Erotica Readers Association, Inc.
All Rights Reserved World Wide. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or
medium without express written permission is prohibited.