Honing The Talent
B Pascal
Chapter 8
The Morning After The Gail
I awoke when I felt some movement. I opened an eye, and she was on the edge of the bed, facing away from me, stretching. I could see a little side boob. It was one of the most erotic images I’ve ever seen.
She stood up and picked up a robe I hadn’t noticed, and went out into the hall, closing the door behind her. I heard a toilet flush, then what I thought was a refrigerator door opening and closing.
She came back in, dropped the robe on a chair, and snuggled up next to me. I put my arm around her again.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Half awake. You really wore me out, Gail.”
“I wore you out? Jesus, Carter, I mean I must’ve cum like fifteen times. They weren’t all big ones, but they were all wonderful. That was fucking amazing. Or maybe it’s amazing fucking. I haven’t decided yet. How do you do that? I mean, you seem to know exactly what I need to get me off. How do you know?“
This again. This here was the downside of being able to trigger all these sensations and get women to cum when I linkcast something their way. They all want to understand it, like maybe they’ve been doing something wrong all this time and have to figure it out. They need to know.
The first time this happened in high school, I was still trying to puzzle this stuff out, how to send these images and trigger orgasms, trying to understand the possibilities and the limitations. I hadn’t realized that most guys don’t usually give women orgasms, or maybe one at most. So when a woman has five or six of them, they’re stunned. They want to know, maybe so they can teach their next boyfriend how to do it.
The first time a woman sprung that question on me, I had to think fast. And luckily I came up with a story that was believable. I told her that because I liked people and liked doing nice things for friends and family (I do, in fact), I had learned from an early age how to read body language and the other subtle signals that we all give off, and respond to them accordingly.
So when we were making love, I was watching, listening, to see how she responded to what I was doing, her words, her breathing, the look on her face, the way she moved her body, and so on.
If it was positive, I’d do more of it. If it was negative, I’d try something else.
And amazingly, they bought it, because all the best lies have an element of truth in them. In fact, their boyfriends probably could figure out how to be better lovers from learning to watch the reactions of their partners. They wouldn’t be able to send an orgasm directive, but still they could probably get their girlfriends off more frequently.
So that’s what I told Gail. And she listened carefully, asking a couple of questions, then shook her head.
“You must be some kind of boy genius, ’cause I’ve never heard of anyone who could do that. I mean, granted, most of our boyfriends are dolts, knuckle-draggers barely able to construct a proper sentence, but you’d think, y’know, trial and error, lots of repetition, they’d eventually figure out some of those tricks. But you’re the only one I’ve found. I’m not complaining, you understand.”
“Imagine my relief.” She punched me lightly on the shoulder, then snuggled closer.
“I wish I could tell you how I feel now. Sorta like I’d just come out of an all-day session at a spa, mud-bath, sauna, fancy lunch, and one-hour Swedish massage with margaritas. My whole body is glowing, and I feel so good.“
“That’s what I was hoping would happen. I said before that I really liked watching you get off, it gives me a rush. And it was wonderful seeing it happen to you, you have such an open face it’s like I can see these feelings playing on it like a screen in a movie theater. And, Jesus, when I finally did cum, I came so hard that I may have passed out for a moment. It was spectacular. And draining.
“And, by the way, the best part was watching you cum with me. I was trying to understand what you were feeling, but I was distracted by my own orgasm.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure how to describe it, because there was so much going on. It was like a hundred tiny orgasms all connected together in something larger. Sorry, that’s pretty vague. But it was amazing! Be nice to have another like that before I die.“
“You’ve got a lot of time to work on it.”
“Listen, do you have to get back?”
“No, not really. I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow, but not till later.”
“You wanna stay? I’m still pretty worn out, but maybe after we get some rest we could try again. Y’know, just to see if it was a fluke or something.”
“So, like scientific method, experimentation, like that?”
“Exactly! You took the words right out of my mouth. A science experiment!”
“It would be an act of anti-intellectualism to reject the scientific method.”
“Good. We’re on the same page, then. Okay, let’s sleep for a bit and see what happens.”
“Is our experiment going to wake up your roommates?”
“Well, like I said, Tim is probably at his boyfriend’s, and Carol, my other roommate, well, I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her plans. But I’ve heard her fucking her boyfriend, so she can put up with a little noise if she comes back.”
I nodded and closed my eyes, then felt her kiss my chest, pull a sheet over us, and put a hand on my waist.
I don’t know how long we slept, since I hadn’t looked at the clock before I closed my eyes, but it was probably two or three hours. At any rate I felt a bit more refreshed when I awoke. Gail was still asleep, and I started thinking about science experiments, since she’d brought it up. I lifted the sheet and looked down at Mr. Stiffy, who was decidedly not stiff.
If that was going to be of any use, it’d better get back in shape PDQ. I had, several years ago, figured out how to get into my own head and find some of the “controls” that governed the senses.
So I could, with some awkwardness, tweak my hearing higher, improve my sight temporarily, and so on. I could also, by manipulating the blood vessels leading to the penis, cause an erection, even if I had cum recently. Not immediately, it would take fifteen minutes or so, I don’t know why yet.
So while she was still asleep I sent that request to the erectile gods and waited for results. In the meantime, I looked around the room. Lots of books and prints, I’d seen that when I came in, and there were some family photos on a shelf. It looked like maybe her and her parents. Her mother, if that’s who it was, was also short, so that’s where the gene came from. There was another picture with the parents and a guy. There seemed to be a similar facial structure, so maybe a brother.
There was one of her in—is that a prom dress?—a prom dress with some dorky-looking guy in a too-big tux looking like he’d just won the lottery.
In the corner, under a discarded painter’s smock, was a guitar case, and next to it a milk crate holding some LPs and a few CDs. The half-open closet looked overfull.
I stopped looking around because Gail was starting to move next to me. I watched her wake up. I thought, if she were taller, she’d be movie-star good looking. I mean, she was gorgeous but Hollywood almost always preferred tall or “normal” sized women. A career lost. She’d just have to make it in the art world.
She opened her eyes and smiled, perhaps relieved to find that I hadn’t, in fact, skulked out while she was sleeping. And miss the opportunity to fuck her again? Fat chance.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Yeah, actually, much better. Rest does help.”
“It does. Don’t go anywhere, be right back.”
She got up and put on her robe again, then left. I heard the same sequence of sounds again, toilet flushing, refrigerator door opening and closing, then she was back, this time carrying a bowl with grapes.
“I got the munchies. All we have is grapes.”
“I’ll have a grape if I can eat it out of your navel.”
“Ooo, you kinky man.”
“You want kinky? Do you have any bananas?”
She actually blushed, but what she said was, “Sorry, fresh out.”
“Another time.” I took a grape and popped it in my mouth. She lay back against a pillow and dropped a couple of grapes in her mouth.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Wondering what it might feel like to lick champagne off your body.”
She laughed out loud. “That’s either kinky or very old-fashioned, like drinking champagne from a woman’s shoe.”
“I’d go with kinky. I think the taste of champagne along with the taste of your body would be incredibly erotic.”
She giggled again, trying to imagine the scenario. I took a single grape out of the bowl, reached over and dropped it in her belly button. Her torso jumped a little, because the grapes were still cold from the refrigerator. She looked at me, then I leaned in and ran my tongue around the skin surrounding the grape and I heard her suck in her breath. I continued flicking my tongue, then closed my lips around the grape and sucked it into my mouth. I looked at her as I chewed it, trying to gauge her reaction.
In her epicenter she was feeling both startled and aroused. No one had done that before and it was surprisingly erotic, especially with the tongue. I took another grape and placed it carefully in her navel. I could see her torso tensing, waiting for the tongue. Watching her, I leaned in again and licked around the grape, trying not to dislodge it. Her eyes were half-closed now, and I pulled the grape into my mouth and licked her navel. I looked up at her and chewed the grape. She was breathing a little faster now.
I selected a third grape and put it in my mouth. I brought my head close to hers and kissed her.
With my tongue, I moved the grape behind my front teeth, then used my tongue to push it into her mouth. She moaned. I pulled away, just a few inches, and watched her. She finally bit the grape and chewed it. Her breath was becoming a little shallow.
“Grapes are surprisingly sensual, don’t you think?” I asked.
She nodded as she chewed slowly.
“I used to think that those pretentious foreign movies that always had a scene where the guy is eating food off a woman’s body were over the top. Now I’m reconsidering my beliefs. I think it would be highly arousing to nibble food off you. Like whipped cream. Or chocolate. Or honey.”
She was wrapped up in the imagery now, visualizing it, so all she could do was nod. It might be fun, but laundry day would be a bitch. Those kinds of kinks were only for people who had servants who did the laundry.
I didn’t have any of those things, but I could pretend, so I pretended I’d poured honey all over her boobs and was trying to clean it off. This was the type of housework I could get excited about.
When I’d cleaned both breasts as well as I was able, I moved down her body with my tongue, licking slowly. The closer I got to her pussy, the more I could feel her tensing. I noticed that Mr.
Stiffy was starting to look a bit more like its namesake.
I paused my journey at her navel and spent a little extra time there because I’d found that I liked licking her navel. Very erotic. But in due course I again headed southward and I heard her start to whimper. She knew where I was going.
I made the trip very slowly, because I wanted her to anticipate. She should still have the Rowboat baseline active, so her skin would be sensitized. To that I added Silk, an image that gave her the feeling of silk brushing across her skin, and each touch of my fingers or lips would give her a gentle thrill.
So by the time I reached the triangle of hair on her pubis, she was breathing shallowly, and sounded like she was sub-vocalizing, unintelligible words.
I kissed her pudendum, up and down as far as I could go, then licked it and she gasped. “Oh, Christ, Carter, it’s like it’s vibrating, it’s so sensitive.”
I brought my thumbs to either side and pulled the lips apart, exposing the pink interior. She put her hands on the back of my head to make sure I wouldn’t escape.
I pushed my tongue in and licked and she cried, “Oh, God, YES!” I wasn’t anywhere near her clit, so if she was responding like that she must be very sensitive. I kissed my way higher until I got very close. When I was almost there, she stopped breathing, waiting for it. But no tongue yet, just lips. I put my lips on her clit and pulled.
“Oh, FUCK, Carter, oh, yes, like that!” I linkcast her the Mineral Spring image and she gave a long moan and seemed to collapse into the bed, whispering, “Oh, Jesus, ohmigod.”
I kept that up a while longer. That particular image didn’t seem to sensitize the clit. I presumed that had to do with the intensity and type of the orgasm, but I didn’t have enough knowledge about it yet to know for sure. So I kept nibbling with my lips, avoiding the tongue, sometimes pulling the clit and letting it snap back, sometimes just brushing it.
I looked into her epicenter once again, wanting to understand where she was in the process, and found almost total relaxation, more than that, a kind of blissful state where the only thing that mattered was her sensations and how they might enhance this state. It was a kind of happiness, I thought, and I envied it. I wondered if I could induce it in myself.
So I continued, and every couple of minutes I would send her another Mineral Spring, or sometimes a Summer Breeze for variety. I looked up at her and was taken aback. She looked like she had achieved a kind of nirvana, a woman so completely happy and at peace that you would be ashamed to disturb her.
But I thought she wouldn’t mind. I wasn’t sure how much energy either of us had left, so a couple of orgasms on top of this wouldn’t be amiss. I realized that I was choosing the type of orgasm almost as much for my voyeuristic pleasure as for her physical pleasure. I wanted to see what she’d look like when I sent her the Geyser.
These metaphors are visual, and the idea of a geyser spouting is supposed to mimic an orgasm, or vice versa. For this one I selected not something like Old Faithful, but rather a thermal geyser which spouts low to the ground, sending water flooding through the area, then slowly receding.
Not so much explosive as slow and powerful.
So now instead of lips I attacked with my tongue and that set her off. She grabbed my head with both hands and pulled me in tight. My tongue poking her clit, circling it, pushing it this was and that, and above me she was shouting and groaning until she finally pushed me off, forcefully.
She put both hands over her pussy to protect it. She was motionless for several minutes, and I just lay there watching her. She really did look quite angelic and blissful, not a bit of tension in her face or her body. I wished I had a camera to capture it.
Finally, with a cough, she was back. She opened her eyes and studied me. It was a bit unnerving.
“That was overwhelming, so powerful, a little frightening, even. It left me without care—no, without the ability to care about anything except the feeling of my body. It was like my will had been removed and I was waiting for someone, God, maybe, to tell me when to move again.”
“I can’t tell from your description if that was a good thing or not.”
“I don’t know. I mean, it felt fucking wonderful, it just consumed me and left me helpless. But I felt powerless. I don’t know. I think it’s that I’ve never had one like that before, so I don’t know how to process it.”
“Maybe I overdid it. I’m sorry, I’d never want you to feel afraid or uncomfortable.”
“It had nothing to do with you, it’s me trying to understand how to catalog these feelings.
They’re wonderful, and powerful, and make my body feel like it’s conducting electricity. It’s just that the... depth of it is new to me and it was a bit scary because it was new.
“Carter, you’re a wizard. I feel great, really, I do. I’ll figure this out. Until I do, a few more like that would be good. Y’know, data collection. Science.”
“Now you’re putting me on the spot. I’ve got to top that?”
“Whatever you’re doing, it feels wonderful. So just keep doing that after I recover. In the meantime, maybe I could find something with which to occupy myself.”
She smirked at me and pushed me so I fell back on the bed. She swung her leg over me and kissed her way down my body, essentially duplicating what I’d done to her. Sure enough, when she reached my navel, she paused and played with it using her tongue. It felt great. She reached over to the bowl of grapes, which I’d forgotten about, and placed one in my navel, then ran her tongue around it. It was surprisingly arousing. I watched her as she opened her lips and sucked.
The grape popped into her mouth and she chewed it while she smiled at me.
She licked my navel a couple more times, then moved downward. I could feel my dick twitching. It wasn’t stupid, it knew what was coming.
She didn’t use her hand yet, just ran her tongue down my dick from base to tip, flicking back and forth. Then she did it in the other direction. By the time she reached the base again, Mr. Stiffy was trying to poke straight up. She extended one finger and pushed my dick back against my belly, holding it in place.
Again from the base she licked her way to the top, this time on the more sensitive underside of my cock. When she reached the top, she flicked her tongue against the frenum, just under the tip of my dick, and I groaned. She worked her way slowly south again, and when she reached the bottom she continued lower and sucked one of my testicles into her mouth. “Oh, Christ, Gail. Amazing.”
She did the same to the other one and by the time she was done I was gasping. I realized suddenly that I could feel an orgasm organizing itself. It wasn’t imminent, but it wasn’t far off. I regained my composure and set myself an ejaculation filter.
And just in time. She raised her head and smiled at me while she grasped my dick in one hand and stroked it. I said, “Oh, fuck.” She said, “Not yet.”
She raised herself a little higher and wrapped her lips around the top of my cock, while watching me. All I could do was groan. She bobbed up and down, just a half inch, so her lips brushed over the rim of my cock. Without the ejaculation filter I’d be shooting a load of cum into her mouth right about now. It felt incredibly erotic.
I peeked into her epicenter again, wanting to see how she was processing the oral sex. Right now she was comfortable, since she had very little of my dick in her mouth.
“Please, baby, don’t tease me. More. Go deeper.”
And there was the nervousness, the fear that she might gag. But trouper that she was, she pushed a little further. And was surprised to find a tiny little rush. She pulled off, then went back at it, and there it was again. It felt good.
“Use your tongue, too, baby.”
And she did. She dropped down about the same distance, this time flicking her tongue all around my dick while her lips were wrapped around my cock. And there was the rush again. It felt really good.
Fuck it, she said, let’s see what happens. She pushed deeper, with almost half my dick disappearing into her mouth, and I heard her moan. She needed feedback. “Oh, my God, Gail, that’s so perfect, your tongue is magic, don’t stop!”
So up and down on my dick, me loving the feeling, and her surprised at the pulses of pleasure that were teasing her body. They stopped when she stopped giving head, they got a little stronger when she went further in. She couldn’t quite understand, she’d never felt this before.
Later, she thought. This felt good, she’d think about it later. She dropped down onto my cock again, and this time I placed a hand gently on the back of her head, just a suggestion, not forcing her.
She got the hint. She still had that fear, but maybe it would feel good, too. Okay, now or never, she thought, and dropped down until the dick was poking at the opening of her throat, and—oh, fuck!—wow!
The pleasure washed over her, not an orgasm, but a rising wave of pleasure that maintained an urgent intensity that might later turn into an orgasm. She pulled off and sat up, and I almost laughed at the look of surprise on her face. It almost said, “You mean, I’ve been missing out on this all this time?”
“Oh, damn, Gail, that was fucking amazing. Please, more.”
She shook herself mentally and got her head back in the game, saying, okay, I know how to do this now and so far no gagging. She dropped her lips over my dick and worked her way down while I moaned and gasped. When she got as low as she thought she could go, she started bobbing up and down, while her tongue attacked the shaft.
“Jesus Christ, yes, baby, oh, yes!”
I put my hand on the back of her head again. I wanted to see what would happen. I peeked into her epicenter and found her immersed in a kind of child’s pleasure at discovering something new that felt good. She was comfortable with what she had done now, not so afraid of it. While she was thinking that, I put a little pressure on the back of her head, more of an exhortation than a demand.
She was hesitant, but she was willing to try, just a little to see what happens. She pushed a bit deeper and felt my cock pressing at her throat, imagining the gag reflex that was about to kick in and pulling back from it—except it didn’t. Instead she felt the pleasure rise and wash over her.
She pulled back, sliding partway out, then forced herself to go back down, shouting down her fear, until the tip once again pushed into her throat, and she almost came from the rush.
I thought she’d had about as much as she could process tonight, so I begged her to stop. “Please, baby, any more and I’m gonna cum, and I don’t want to yet. Please stop.”
With feigned reluctance she slid my dick slowly out of her mouth, watching me the whole time.
She gave it a final kiss and stroked it slowly.
“Fucking astounding. You were doing things with your tongue that shouldn’t be legal.” She laughed at that, but was pleased with herself.
“I’m so ready for you now I may cum if you look at me too hard.”
“Uh, uh, Carter. You cum when I say you can cum.”
“You got me pretty wound up. Don’t know how long I can hold out.”
“We’ll figure it out. What do you want to do, Carter? You got a preference?”
“I think you on your back, your legs back, and me pounding your pussy until you can’t take any more.”
“So predictable. But give it your best shot, big boy.”
I jumped down to the floor and found the other condom in my wallet. It was on in seconds. She was lying on the bed on one elbow, watching me with a half smile on her face.
I got on the bed on my knees. “Legs back, Gail.” I moved forward, my cock pointing straight at her cunt. I pulled her legs toward me so they were resting against my shoulders, then leaned forward and slipped into her pussy. “Oh, Jesus.”
It was different this time, I don’t know why. Before, I’d wanted to draw it out, giving her as many orgasms as she could handle, just so I could enjoy watching her. Now, it somehow seemed like I just needed to fuck her until I blew my load. I could make her cum a bunch of times, but I wouldn’t wait for her.
So I was pushing into her pretty hard, just to feel her pussy grab at my dick and massage it.
And as I fucked her I was reproaching myself. Why are you being such a dick, I thought. She’s a nice girl, she deserves some pleasure. I agreed with myself, she did. So I linkcast her another of the named responses, Glow, the sense that her cunt is filled up and very sensitive to the movement of my dick, and causing a warm, pleasurable feeling to radiate outwards from her pussy.
It was always fun to watch women when I sent them that particular one. It made them feel like my dick had grown in girth and length, or maybe that their pussy had shrunk. At any rate it was a tight fit, and it made the contact seem almost electric. I saw her eyes widen and her mouth open slightly when it hit her, and she moaned.
“Oh, shit, baby, that feels so good. A little harder, please.”
So I leaned forward, forcing her pelvis to point upwards and I was fucking almost straight down. That was just what she wanted and she started talking to me, telling me what it felt like, and what to do next. And while she did that, I sent her a Summer Breeze every minute or two.
“Fuck, yeah, baby, that’s it, hit it hard, I’m so close, my pussy feels so good, it... oh, FUCK, yes, I’m cumming, oh, damn. Don’t stop, keep going.”
She had her eyes closed now and her mouth was going nonstop. She had to tell me how good it felt. I added a bigger orgasm into the mix, an Aftershock, a little rumble through the body, like the aftershock of an earthquake, but with ripples of pleasure rather than the rippling of the ground.
When it hit her, she gasped, opened her eyes wide, and cried, “Oh, YESYESYES, baby, oh, that’s it, oh, good.”
I was getting a little tired now. I’d been pounding my dick into her pretty hard for ten minutes or more, and thought I was about done. I kept going a little longer, and Gail had started her monologue again under me, saying how good it felt, with the occasional instruction attached.
I said, fuck it, I’m ready. I released the ejaculation filter and kept hammering her cunt. I could feel it now, the orgasm approaching, not long now.
“Oh, yes, Gail, I love when you squeeze my dick like that. I’m so close, baby. I’m gonna go off like gangbusters, work with me.”
She ought to have one more, one that would finish us for the night, because I didn’t think I could do any more. Maybe Avalanche for her, Roller Coaster for me. Avalanche was fun. It picks up speed very slowly, just a few rocks rolling down a mountain, then they take a few trees with it, and that knocks the snow pack loose, and before you know it the whole mountainside is collapsing with a roar until it stops deep in the valley and everything’s quiet again.
I tied that to mine, and linkcast it to her. Under me, her pussy was grabbing my dick and I was helpless. I couldn’t visualize what her cunt was doing to make me feel like it did, but it was exactly the right thing, and there it was, my orgasm coming up. I linkcast Roller Coaster to myself, and as soon as I did I watched her face change as she felt hers approaching.
“Oh, God, Tom, I’m cumming again, oh, fuck, ohmigod, baby, oh, YES! YES!”
I can’t swear to the accuracy of that, because I was cumming too, and when the roller coaster hit the bottom of that first drop my head was spinning. I had no control. I think I was still fucking her, and her hips were still moving under me, but I was off in another universe for a moment.
When I got back, we were both gasping for air. Her mouth was open and she was staring at me, trying to communicate, but that was hopeless. I freed myself from her legs and lowered myself down onto her chest. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my shoulder, while she rocked me.
After a few minutes her breathing slowed, she grew quiet and her hands fell to her side. I reached down and grabbed hold of the end of the condom and pulled out of her. I was pretty limp by now, and I had to hold it on while I sat on the edge of the bed. I needed to get rid of this, but faced the same conundrum as before: I couldn’t get my pants and shirt on in order to go to the bathroom while holding the condom on my dick.
In the end, I went to the wastebasket and dug out the plastic bag in which I’d deposited the first one, and added the second. Problem solved. I got back in bed next to Gail, pulled up the sheet and closed my eyes.
I wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but when I awoke there was morning light coming in the window. I was lying on my side, away from her, and turned back her way. I found her watching me.
“Did I wake you?” I asked.
“No, I’ve been awake for a while, thinking.”
I raised an eyebrow, not wanting to pry if it were something personal, giving her the option to answer or not.
“How do you feel, Carter?”
“Me? Fabulous. A little tired. Hungry.”
“Yeah, me, too. But with me, I’ve still got this kind of vibration going on. My body feels like it’s glowing, giving off energy. I don’t usually feel this good after sex.”
She got up on one elbow and looked at me.
“I was replaying what we did last night and the thing is that I can’t remember ever cumming that many times. And the biggest ones, well, they were way bigger than any I’ve had before. They left me breathless and my body tingling, pulsing, with this kind of, I dunno, bliss, maybe. And when I thought we were done, there was another one. I don’t think I could have done anymore, they just wore me out. In a good way.
“I was trying to think just what was different about how you made love to me. And I think it was mostly the same things I was used to, except you were more into making me feel good.
Y’know, what you were talking about, how you get a rush from seeing me get off? Maybe it was because you were so focused on what I was feeling, maybe I relaxed and responded more. I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it more. Anyway, it was wonderful, way better than I had hoped for. So thank you.”
“I should be thanking you. You are an amazingly sexy and sensual woman, and it was such a joy to share that with you.”
She leaned down and gave me a little kiss.
“Listen, I think I may take a quick shower, then find something for breakfast. You want to shower with me?”
“Gail, if I get into a shower naked with you, you know where that’s going to lead. And if that happens, we’re both going to have to be treated for exhaustion. So I’ll shower back at the dorm. A long, cold shower.”
She snorted. “No willpower. Okay, lie here, then. I’ll call you when I find some food.”
She stood up, looking for her robe, and I immediately felt my dick start to twitch. Daylight made her look even sexier. By the time I was done arguing with myself whether I could do it again, she was out the door, headed to the shower.
I lay back and considered my good fortune. We knew hardly anything about one another, but I felt some chemistry there, and there was no question about her sexiness. I drifted in and out of consciousness, remembering various moments from last night with a smile.
The door opened and she poked her head in, some damp tendrils at the nape of her neck, and the robe wrapped around her. “Get dressed and come into the kitchen. There’s some food.”
So I found my clothes and got them on, and when I was presentable, I found the kitchen. “I don’t know what you usually have in the morning,” she said, “but we’ve got some muesli and milk, and wheat toast. I have tea but no coffee.”
“That sounds perfect. I’d eat tofu now if that was all you had.”
“If you still have room after this, I’ll give you tofu.”
There was a small table, so we sat and ate and talked. I was noticing that she did seem to have a vibrancy, a glow, that I hadn’t noticed last night. Maybe it was the daylight showing her off in a different way.
There was a noise behind me, and someone said, “Morning. Is that tea?”
Gail said, “Yeah, it is. Carol, this is my friend, Tom Carter. Tom, my roommate, Carol.”
I looked around and Carol looked like a walking advertisement for the before picture in a hangover remedy ad. I said hello, and Gail said, “Damn. Rough night, Carol?”
She nodded, careful not to move too quickly. “I’m not even sure what time I got home, I was so drunk. We went dancing, the girls, I mean, and maybe drank too much.”
She focused on her tea, nodded at me, and wandered off down the hall.
“I hope she feels better later. That looks like a serious hangover.”
“Yeah, Carol’s not one for half measures. She likes to commit fully.”
We talked a little more, then I told her, “I think I’ve got to go get a shower and a nap, then I’ve got some classwork to prep for. But, Gail? I’m really glad I met you. And it wasn’t just me making conversation yesterday, I really would like to learn more about art, so if you can recommend an introductory survey book, I’d appreciate it. Sometime maybe you could lead me through a museum and tell me what I need to know.”
“Deal, Carter. I’ll fix you up, turn you into an annoying expert in no time!”
She asked for contact information, and we exchanged phone numbers—it turns out her last name was Conlon—and she threatened to set up a museum tour soon. I told her that my reading the book first would probably prepare me better for the tour.
She walked me to the door, got up on her tiptoes, and gave me a long kiss that almost had me reconsidering my commitment to shower and nap. She smiled as she closed the door behind me.