A Sweet, Romantic Sex Story
"Beau Nouveau," A Vanilla short story by Jeremy Edwards
Musically Inclined, by Marty Provost (prints available at ObsessionArt.com, starting at $29.25).
As I stride up the avenue toward Barbara’s block, I think about the bottle that I’m clutching, and how it recently arrived from someplace far away.
I identify.
Barbara has a whole adoring world that surrounds her. By “world,” I really mean a handful of grad students who landed long ago at this institution with an assortment of instrument cases, and who couldn’t bear to leave when senior year ended. I am definitely an outsider, not having known her, or them, in their wild undergrad years. The memorable, inebriated experiences she and her friends shared in the dorm days have obviously resulted in some very strong bonds.
She is indisputably the center of the group. She has a bright, gentle charisma that unites and buffers and blends an assortment of personalities who might otherwise not get along. She can laugh simultaneously with you and at you, or communicate with just a glance that you are behaving badly but that she loves you anyway.
In this world, Barbara is invariably the one to get the social wheels in motion and keep them rolling smoothly. When the action is happening at her place, of course, she also supplies the food, the drinks, and a palpable “my home is your home” atmosphere. One might conclude that the others are taking advantage of her energy and her generosity. But Barbara doesn’t think of it that way, and this in itself prevents the situation from taking on that character. I admire her graciousness because it’s imbued with such sincerity.
The familiar sight of crisp shirts on hangers greets me as I pass a neighborhood dry cleaner. My parents, who operate a similar establishment a thousand miles from here, would certainly not understand why a junior faculty member in the theater department would feel like an alien among a pack of music grad students about his own age—who look more or less like him and dress more or less like him and talk more or less like him, and whose practice rooms are, for better or worse, within earshot of his office.
I don’t fully understand, either. All I know is that I’m ill at ease. For all the good the shared heritage of music and theater do for my status with Barbara’s crowd, I might as well be from the fucking art-history department.
Even the bartenders at their favorite hangouts look at me like I’ve accidentally seated myself with the wrong group. For this reason, I’ve started to sit with my back facing the bar. But Barbara is wonderful about lavishing public caresses on me, and sending “won’t you look at me adoring him” messages in all the necessary directions.
And then there are the private caresses that she gives me.
And the ones I give her.
Yes, turning the corner, I’m thinking about caressing Barbara all over—like I did the other night. About the way her breath catches when I first touch her naked body. About how her flesh seems to melt for my wandering fingers, and about how musically she moans when my tongue stripes up and down her belly.
Reliving these memories has given me a hard-on that wreaks havoc with my normally graceful gait. But, damn, it’s worth it.
***
Twenty minutes ago, when I told Barbara I was going out to get some fresh air and I asked if she needed anything, she specifically requested a bottle of the latest from France. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a Beau Nouveau,” she said with an effortless twinkle, and at least one of her ever-present buddies snorted with laughter. It’s not that I didn’t think her remark was cute; I just need more time alone with her, and the sidelines snort seemed to underscore this.
There’s a facile intimacy in this group. They’ve probably all seen Barbara in the nude—all her guy friends, all her girlfriends. This thought doesn’t bother me, though. In fact, I get a thrill out of imagining that they have.
It’s another crazy dorm party. Barbara is facedown on the floor in her bra, her panties rolled down her hips but still stretched across her pussy. She rocks from side to side while various friendly hands roam all over her round ass, cheek to crack to cheek. She creams her gusset again and again, her green eyes laughing with the ever-renewed surprise of sensual pleasure, her freckled shoulders nakedly ecstatic.
But I don’t want them to think that just because they’ve seen and possibly groped Barbara’s bare ass, her liaison with me automatically becomes their property. Still, if she encourages them to think that it does, then that’s a feature of her life I must understand and respect.
“Here he is!” says her best friend Jodi cheerily, before Barbara has had a chance to say it.
From the way Jodi looks at me sometimes, I have no doubt that Barbara tells her every bedroom detail, and I must admit this makes me seem glamorous to myself. Jodi, who is a violinist, seemed suspicious of me when Barbara first brought me into their collective life. But she began to champion me after she heard me make a disparaging quip about viola players—which, I’m ashamed to say, I had copped off the Internet. I’m grateful to Jodi for welcoming me. Nevertheless, I wish I didn’t always have to squeeze past her to get to Barbara.
As I present the wine, I decide that I’m going to give Barbara a semipassionate hello kiss, no matter how many of them are watching. (I see three, but there is always someone lurking in a corner.) I’m even prepared that they may regale us with cheap applause. Screw it—I’m going to kiss my girlfriend, and I’m even going to squeeze her bottom while I do so.
I do so.
No applause, just a little silence and a promising smile from Barbara as our lips separate. This is more like it.
“I do believe he fancies you, Babsy.” This from a London-born bassoon player named Glenn, who, I notice, has cornered the market on the Brazil nuts Barbara has set out. Glenn is the only one of them who did not arrive at this university until entering grad school. But, with a suave legerdemain, he has appropriated every last one of their tediously outrageous freshman-year stories, and he habitually tells them as his own.
I reflect on how grateful I am that Barbara has not asked me to call her “Babsy.”
It’s never clear who’s staying for dinner, who’s having the entire bowl of Brazil nuts for a meal, who’s dashing off, or who’s haunting Barbara’s place all evening. But the fact that she asked for only one bottle of wine could be a good sign. Maybe the rest of them have a concert tonight. Hooray for concerts. Tonight, I would gladly underwrite a symphony or two if it would clear Barbara’s house of extraneous musicians.
Miraculously, she clears them out at seven o’clock sharp. They are indeed required at a concert, every one of them. And I am delighted to observe that Barbara is positively eager to remind them of this obligation. She, the music theorist who passed only the minimal piano requirement, is always exempt from these affairs, which she teases her buddies by dismissing as “applied music.” Everyone likes being teased by Barbara.
It’s deliciously weird watching her in action as she efficiently evicts them. For once, she’s treating her beloved cronies like parents—people to usher out of the picture so she can indulge in the thrill of being alone with her new boyfriend. They are her family, and I am the beckoning unfamiliar. I relish the moment.
She breathes deeply and sensuously. She seems both more relaxed and more excited to find herself alone with me, reclining domestically on the couch.
So what do I do, now that her noisy friends have finally gone? Like an idiot, I start talking about her noisy friends.
“You certainly are popular,” I say earnestly. Before she can react, I follow up observation with endorsement: “And I certainly understand why.”
She downplays it. “Oh, we all just stick together.” She hesitates and looks at me gently. “It’s sweet of you to put up with them.”
I suppose it is sweet of me . . . but what leaps to mind is that it’s even sweeter of her to see it that way. And I’m struck by the fact that I never had to tell her that it requires a bit of patience for me to tolerate her friends. After all, she could have said, “It’s sweet of you not to mind them.” But she didn’t say that, because she’s sensitive enough to have gauged that I do sort of mind them—but tolerate them. I study her face as these thoughts flash across my mind, and an unusual, comforting warmth spreads through my psyche.
“I love you,” is what comes out of my mouth next.
This causes her to laugh—not skeptically, nor cynically, nor flirtatiously, nor drunkenly—but purely because what I’ve said makes her very, very happy.
Her “me, too” almost gets swallowed by our open-mouthed kiss; but, no worries, I hear it. My cock is awakening in my trousers, and I don’t ever remember being so turned on by . . . love.
“I want to be a part of you,” I whisper wetly into a little piece of ear that peeks out from luscious strands of black hair. I glance down to see that her nipples are beginning to look erect beneath her jersey.
I don’t recall ever before being so aware that I probably smell new and male and sexy to somebody. And she, I observe, smells perfect to me as I draw her closer—the fresh smell of her neck holding its own against mere hints of shampoo and perfume. And I detect that natural fragrance which wafts selectively from her femininity, under the right circumstances.
As circumstances go, these circumstances are feeling especially right.
She’s squirming against me now, stroking my sweater with an urgency that implies heat and wetness where it counts. Her breath is warm in my ear, and it seems she can’t unbutton my fly fast enough. She presses her chest into mine, contriving to tickle her own nipples by rubbing them across me. Her giggles turn to delicate nibbles as she mouths my collar line. When she pulls down the elastic of my shorts, the tall pride of my cock mirrors a confidence I didn’t know I had in me.
She’s taking all the initiative, as if to demonstrate that my mere existence is all she wants, that I need only sit here and let her satisfy herself upon me. I can’t resist pawing her sleek ass as I render it bare. But I soon turn passive again, so that she can straddle me and take me. I feel desired. I feel accepted. I feel like my face and cock and hands are all that matter to her in the world at the moment. And it may be this thought, even more than the silken pressure of her cunt working my prick, that makes me come like a warm can of beer.
I didn’t mean to come first. I didn’t come first last time, and I won’t come first next time. But this time, I seem to have been swept away by the nurturing perfection of an evening that began on shaky legs, like a newborn colt.
For an instant, I worry that I will have spoiled her rhythm by preceding her into orgasm. But it only excites her more, and she quickly rides my residual stiffness into a pleasure frenzy of her own. Her juices kiss my lap and her fingers clutch my abdomen. I am a sled whisking her euphorically downhill, the momentum more than adequate to her needs.
***
Later, the wine has been consumed, our purple teeth have been brushed, and we wiggle together in her bed, unwilling to let the evening end without experiencing each other again. I may be the new guy, but I am alone with her in her bed, alone with her in her room, alone with her in her house . . . alone with her in her cunt. Yes, it’s just the two of us in there, feeling every sensation that the others will only hear about secondhand.
This time Barbara has her moment of glory before I have mine, and the world trembles heavily around my cock while it’s still at the height of its promise. Then the promise is redeemed, and we’re both ready to let this lovely night conclude and slip, over our sleeping heads, into a lovely tomorrow.
As a post-coital joke, I say, “Goodnight, Babsy.” I may hate myself in the morning for that; but I think I’ll feel pretty good about everything else.
If you enjoyed this story you'll also enjoy
The Pleasure Dial: An Erotocomedic Novel of Old-Time Radio by Jeremy Edwards
Copyright November 2010, Jeremy Edwards
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.