Too Good to be You

"Please, sir, I want to swallow your come!" There was a warble in the last syllable as another spank landed. They both knew how close she was, and Keith was guessing the combination of the spanking, the fucking and being treated like a submissive was going to make it a strong one. She made another, less coherent plea for his come, felt another spanking land on her ass, and felt an orgasm land in her belly with just as much force and shock. The sight of her shuddering and grinding on top of him made Keith's cock ache.

"Don't stop," he ordered her.

"Please give me your cum!"

Her voice crumbled with the sensations sizzling through her, and she rode hard, groaning as loudly as she ever had. If anyone were walking past on the street, she knew, they would have heard every noise of her moaning and begging, and the idea was shocking. Shocking in a way she really, really liked.

"Please," she huffed, pounding out the last few seconds of her orgasm against his lap. She felt him lifting her off and she moved quickly to get it in her mouth. This time she only took the head past her lips, and used both hands to give him tight, slippery strokes while he filled her mouth with salty gushes. When she was sure he was finished, she glanced up to catch his eye, and let the entire mouthful dribble out. It made a little puddle on his balls, and another one on his stomach.

"You are such a good girl," he managed to say.

"May I lick it all up, sir?" she asked politely.

"You may."

Stuff like that. It made her feel like she could be somebody's fantasy, and it was addictive. She slurped still-warm semen off of Keith's dick and her own fingers, and he watched her like it was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. She hoped she didn't drag it out too long before she finally swallowed it all and licked him clean.

"Oh," Keith remembered when they were back inside but still mostly naked, "I got you a present." He stepped into the dining room and brought back a wrapped package, which Mary ripped open, curious. The box had a logo for a lingerie brand that she had only experienced through ridiculously dramatic ads in Vogue, before. She had to hold up the item in the box to figure out what it was.

"Oh, my god," she said, turning it over. She didn't even know what it was called (a corselette? A merrywidow? Wasn't she supposed to know these things?) but it was a slinky black thing with a bustier on top and garter clips at the bottom. In with the tissue in the box was a matching pair of panties and a new pair of stockings.

She'd never been given lingerie as a gift before, and it was a bit of a turn-on. The gift itself looked fabulously sexy and expensive. She looked at Keith, dazzled. It was exactly what she wanted—exactly the kind of thing the new Mary would own. It made her other new underwear part of a real wardrobe.

"Keith," she said finally, "thank you. This is gorgeous." She squinted at the stitching between panels of lace. It looked like it cost a fortune. She was going to have to find a dry cleaner. Hell, she was going to have to get a wax.

There was something about the look in his eyes that she adored. No excitement and no lust, in that moment, just a kind of possessive, dreamy want, like he could watch her forever. She wondered if she was blushing. "I want you to wear things that make you feel as beautiful as you look," he said.

Mary huffed a hungry breath and rolled her eyes, flopping onto him in a hug.

"How are you so perfect?" she asked him. She kissed him, too, and considered asking if he wanted to have that orgasm all over again, this time with her in costume.

He swayed with her. "I keep wondering exactly the same thing about you."

***

Mary paid for Allison's coffee the next day, mainly out of spite. Her bank account had dipped into overdraft sometime in the last week, so their eight dollars worth of flavored lattes, just like her last pack of gum, came with a $25 charge from her bank. Getting a wax before she wore that new lingerie for Keith was out of the question. She couldn't even put more money on her bus pass. Reinventing herself, it seemed, wasn't going to come cheap. Better yet, she'd managed to drop her phone getting off her bus, not just spiderwebbing the screen but killing it. But Allison wasn't going to see any of that, she reminded herself.

First thing, Mary had greeted her and complimented her new dye job. For some reason Allison had switched from her naturally gorgeous, autumn-leaves red to a simpler light brown with highlights. Just like her own color, Mary realized a second too late to point it out.

"Oh, thanks," Allison said with a feeble laugh, "Joshua said he wanted to see me as a brunette."

"Well, it's a great color on you," Mary said, realizing they were already off to a grim start.

"Thanks. And hey, check you out with the bangs," Allison said, "You look good." Good, not great, Mary thought. She'd been hoping for "great".

"Are you working today?" Allison asked, indicating Mary's outfit with a wave. A simple, short blazer and a blouse.

"Not today," she frowned, realizing that hadn't exactly been a compliment, "My boss is out, so I'm just running some errands."

"Oh. Well, you look nice." Allison said. Still not "great".

"Thanks," Mary said, "it's been a crazy couple of weeks, huh?" They found a metal table for two outside and set their purses down. Allison had been such a regular feature in Mary's imagination lately, it was strange to have her there. The last four weeks were the longest they'd gone without seeing each other in years. Allison didn't like to be the one to speak first, in things like this, but they both said some variant of "what's up?" at the same time, and Mary waited for her to go first.

"Hey, I've missed hanging out with you. The apartment is a lot different without you."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Mary said. "What are you guys doing with the other room?" Meaning her own room, the one where she'd slept, often with Joshua, for the last year.

"Not sure yet," Allison said, "Maybe kind of an office, and we could put a guest bed in it. It's just Joshua's boxes, right now." She was watching Mary carefully to see if she was stepping in a topic she shouldn't. "Speaking of which, don't let me forget I have a box of your stuff in my car."

"Oh, okay."

"Anyway, how are you?" Allison asked. "What's going on in your life?"

Mary put on her most carefree smile. "Oh, you know. Busy. Working a lot. Seeing friends. Doing a lot of stuff I'd been putting off, I guess."

"Oh, yeah?" Allison said with genuine interest. Mary realized she'd made that last part up, unless buying nicer underwear and getting bangs counted as things she'd been putting off. So she wasn't ready for a follow-up question. Really, she'd been putting in her hours at work, watching slightly more blowjob videos online, and letting Keith spoil her.

"Just seeing the city, really," she said finally, watching the cars and people inching down the road outside the patio, "there's a lot to do here, if you just look for it."

Allison joined her in the people-watching. "Yeah. It's amazing how stuck you can get in a routine and not even know it."

"Totally."

They glanced back at each other, not quite sure where the score stood.

"I know I'm the one who started seeing Joshua after you guys broke up, and maybe was a shitty move. Really, I just..." Allison got a faraway, almost bored look when she tried to pick her words, "I almost wish things could go back to the way they were."

Mary wrinkled her nose. Of all the things she'd thought to herself in the last few weeks, she had never once wished things could "go back to the way they were". And what was Allison being so sad about, anyway?

"Are you still staying at your parents' place?" Allison asked to break a silence she didn't like, "They basically kept your old bedroom like you left it, didn't they?"

Mary watched the way her old friend prodded at the remains of the relationship. Let her squirm, she thought. She pretended to get a text on her clearly-broken phone.

"Yeah, pretty much. I'm actually on my way out," she lied, "My boyfriend and I are talking about moving in together. He's got a big condo kinda near the beach, and we're getting pretty serious." Watching Allison's eyes for jealousy but seeing only surprise, which wasn't nearly as good.

"Wow. Already?" Allison said doubtfully. "Was this somebody you knew before?"

"No," Mary said, "we actually met a few days after I moved out. I'd been out at bars for that whole weekend, then I was at Target getting groceries, and we just started talking and totally clicked." This was a totally amusing story, and Allison wasn't giving her the reaction she wanted at all.

"Well, just be careful," Allison said. "You don't want to, you know, get stuck in something because of a spur-of-the-moment decision." She said that with more sadness than a real friend could have missed, but Mary just gave her a dumb look.

"Um. I don't know where that came from. You just heard about him two seconds ago."

Allison shook her head, "I didn't mean it like that. I just mean it's okay to have a rebound or two, is all. You and Joshua were together for a long time."

Mary gave Allison her customer-service smile, and Allison knew it.

"Yeah, no. We're getting really serious," Mary said, "Keith is a great guy. Honestly, I don't know why I waited so long to get back out there. He treats me way better than... well. You know." Subtle enough? My boyfriend is better than yours. Enjoy the leftovers. "We're doing great."

"That's great." Allison said. "Good luck with it, I mean."

"Hey, same to you guys," Mary said with unmistakable venom, "I mean it." Then, on the spur of the moment, she leaned forward and said, "You know what would be so much fun? We should have you guys over for dinner sometime! You'd get to meet Keith, and he'd get to meet you. It would be so great to have us all together."

Allison cringed. The last thing she wanted was to put Joshua, Mary, and Mary's new boyfriend in the same room together, and Mary knew it. But what can you say to a dinner invitation?

"That would be great," she surrendered.

The box of Mary's old things from the apartment didn't weigh much, for the size of the box. Allison had handed it to her on the sidewalk, maybe wishing it had been a less shitty gift, and they'd said their goodbyes. Mary went through it and tried to feel any attachment at all to the things that used to be hers: A dozen hair ties, a coffee mug she thought was Allison's, a charger from an old phone. Endless, half-finished packs of gum. And at the bottom, a loose stack of scuffed DVDs that she, Allison, and Joshua had watched dozens of times, burning away the evenings of more days than she could count.

Why even bother packing up a box with this garbage? And who the hell was Allison to tell her it was "okay to have a rebound," anyway? She was so over Joshua he wouldn't even recognize her. She left the whole box in a dumpster in the alley. By the time she got to her bus stop she was crying.

She wanted to call Keith to come and pick her up, even though he was at work. Maybe he could take a long lunch, or something. It was only eleven. She reached into her pocket and cut her finger on the broken screen, remembering. Without her cell working, she didn't even know his phone number.

***

"God knows," Keith said, pulling onto his street, "last night she didn't feel like introducing me to her family, and today she hasn't felt like answering any texts. So, we'll see if it goes anywhere."

"Yeah, but you remember being that young, right?" Estelle asked. She was flipping through a slick-covered report in the passenger seat, trying to circle something in pen.

"How do you mean?"

Estelle frowned. "Like, something new could be the absolute most important thing in your life every couple of days."

Keith parked on the street and got his bag out of the back seat. "Maybe. I'm just wishing I could get one relationship to turn into something serious."

Estelle smirked. "And that's why you're banging 25-year olds, right?" Then, seeing his expression, "sorry."

Keith unlocked the front door before he noticed Mary sitting on his front patio. Estelle had noticed, and was about to point her out.

It wasn't what Mary had planned, but she didn't have much of a plan at all that day, beyond some vague intention to make Allison jealous over coffee. She'd spent the last fare on her bus card to get within a mile of Keith's condo, then walked all the way up the hill in the heels she'd only worn to one-up Allison. He wasn't home, so she climbed over the balcony rail in her skirt and stockings, and that's where she'd been for the last few hours.

"Hi, Mary. What's going on?"

And there was Keith, naturally showing up with company, who was naturally both a beautiful woman and an actual grown-up. This woman did not have runs in her stockings, Mary thought to herself, because this woman did not climb into balconies after walking a mile in impractical heels. And everyone got a good look at the idiotic girl sitting next to a broken iPhone and a pile of gum wrappers on someone else's patio furniture.

"Um. Hi," Mary waved, wishing she could disappear. She hoped she'd managed to smear the tracks of tears out of her makeup, but she knew she looked pretty terrible either way. She held up the shattered phone as if it might help her case.

Keith sized her up and said, "Let's all get inside," then disappeared through the door and unlatched the sliding glass door to let her in.

"Estelle, meet my girlfriend Mary," Keith said. Estelle had a wonderful customer-service smile. She must have been in sales.

"It's nice to meet you," she said, and you could almost believe it.

"Estelle, let me get that binder for you, and then we can..."

"Yeah, I'll go over it and we can wrap up in the morning." She said. "At the office," as an afterthought, for Mary's benefit. The two women waited next to each other in diplomatic silence while Keith rummaged for a binder. When Estelle had left, Keith stood watching Mary.

"I'm so sorry," she said, breaking down, "I broke my phone and ran out of bus money and my old roommate was just being such a..." but Keith held up his hands for a pause. He hadn't seen her miserable before, he realized.

"Mary?"

"What?" She stared at the floor. This wasn't something the new Mary was supposed to do at all. She didn't know why she'd decided Keith had see her like this. But there was no revulsion in his look, at least. Maybe a little worry.

"Why don't you run a bath while I mix us some drinks, and you can tell me all about it then?" he said.

It wasn't the first time Mary had been impressed with Keith's ability to solve problems. He'd swapped her phone's SIM card into a spare phone, too, and she'd made a quick call home to check in. A cranberry vodka later in a bubble bath (you could use conditioner for that, she learned,) Mary felt a lot more like herself. Or like her new self again. It was getting hard to keep track.

"So he wanted Allison to dye her hair to look like yours?" Keith was sitting on the bathroom rug next to the tub with his shoes off, drinking something with ice cubes and gin in it.

"Yeah," Mary laughed, "and she was just so, like, droll about it. I mean, she's my friend, I guess, and I hate to see her unhappy, but..."

"But what can you even do?" Keith said.

"Exactly." Mary closed her eyes and floated. She was short enough to stretch out in most bathtubs, but this one was huge. "Hey, can I tell you something kind of awful?" she asked.

"Sure." Keith re-crossed his legs. Mary angled her face to hold one ear above the water, and the water traced a line around her cheek and neck.

"Right after I broke up with Joshua, or I guess right after he started seeing Allison,"

"Which was pretty close together, right?"

"Yeah. Like, days. But one day I was at the apartment, packing things up, and Joshua was supposed to be helping me, but he was mostly just talking about Allison. And at one point, he just looks at me and he says," Mary dropped into a mock boy-voice, "'you know, you should really ask Allison for tips on blowjobs'. Like- like that's any kind of a thing you would actually say to someone."

Keith whistled. "Whoa. Yeah, that's one you don't get to take back."

Mary laughed. She hadn't laughed about Joshua before, and it felt good. Just at that moment, it didn't seem so bad. If she could just stay in a warm bubble bath for the next couple of weeks, she thought...

"Keith?"

"Yeah?"

"When you were introducing me to that lady from your office..."

"Estelle. Yeah?"

Mary peeped one eye open. "Did you call me your girlfriend?"

Keith smiled and sipped his drink. "Yeah. I guess I did."

Mary closed her eyes and let her face sink in the water until just her nose and her mouth peeked above.

"I liked it."

Wrapped up in a men's bathrobe, Mary had sipped tea on the couch while Keith made salad and sandwiches for them. Dinner almost slowed to a stop with all the kisses they snuck on each other between bites. Keith had told her she should keep some clothes in the apartment, and it had made her heart skip. She remembered lying to Allison about moving in, but what if it really happened?

"What's the matter," she asked, "you don't want me lying around your place naked all day?"

"Sure I do," he said with a smile, "I just can't send you home like that."

She was already giving him that smile, though, crossing her legs on the sofa to let her body peek through the bathrobe. She felt for the bulge in his pants with her toes, and asked him why he was wearing so many clothes, anyway.

It pained him to realize how little he really knew about Mary. She could be so sexy and so confident, but there was a girl underneath it all who could really be hurt. He'd been dating for so long. It seemed like every woman wanted a vacation from herself. And he could see so clearly who Mary wanted to be: sexy and mysterious and full of surprises — The opposite of what she'd been for all that time she'd spent with her last boyfriend, becoming the dependable bore he wanted her to be. Wasn't that the definition of a rebound?

And he wondered again what all the Joshuas of the world knew that he didn't; Why was he always the vacation, and never the one who made her feel like she was home? In mid-kiss, he stopped and stared into her eyes and tried to say all of that. But the words weren't there. And Mary was too hungry for him to wait. She led the way up to the bedroom holding his hand. If this all ended up just a memory, he though, was that really so bad?

Mary switched to her hand while an acidy burp worked its way out, but then went back to taking down Keith's dick, kneeling in the space in front of his bed. Her nose was running in a way she hoped was more sexy-gross than gross-gross, because the mess of cummy-tasting phlegm in her sinuses made it hard to breathe at all, let alone with his dick in her mouth. But she heard him groan her name and felt his fingers in her wet hair, and breathing was overrated anyway.

There was just that little bend, right past the back of her throat, that she simply couldn't get him past without gagging, tonight. She could've sworn she'd done it before.

"Because I need to give the messiest fucking blowjob you've ever had, sir," had been her answer, that night, for the "and what's so special about this blowjob?" game. It was a direct quote from a porn video they'd watched on her phone a week before, but if he'd noticed, he hadn't let on. So far, she'd been as good as her word, covering his cock with spit as sweetly as she could manage. It made him slippery. Except for a little heartburn from triggering her gag reflex a couple of times, she really liked it. Keith was pretty clearly enjoying it, too.