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It wasn’t meant to go like this. Not exactly.
Carol has poured Zosia a drink without asking, because the answer is always the same. If you’d like. Great. Zosia is sipping at it blandly, like she can’t even taste it. Carol drinks from her own glass. She was a few deep already when Zosia came in, and she’s feeling reckless.
They’re sitting across from each other in the living room like they did on Zosia’s first day back, Zosia on the sofa, Carol in one of the chairs. The coffee table between them. Carol finishes her drink too fast, and in the thick of the resulting head rush, she asks, “What did she like?”
It’s awful to use the third person. You, she wants to say. Because surely whoever this was…surely there’s a little of her left in there. More than just the infinitesimal fraction of her consciousness being used—surely her body has its own memory, at least.
“This individual?” Zosia asks carefully.
“Yeah,” Carol says, wincing at the terminology. “You. Before you were…you.”
Zosia fixes Carol with a level gaze. “In what way?”
Carol rolls her eyes, because she’s pretty sure Zosia knows what she’s trying to ask. She answers anyway, because she’s a little drunk. “In sex. What does this body like?”
“We’ve been very satisfied with what you—”
“Don’t do that,” Carol says. “Tell me.”
Zosia hesitates. Then she goes ahead, when Carol doesn’t waver. “She liked a slow start. Extended foreplay.”
“Tell me how,” says Carol. She already feels flushed, though maybe it’s just the whiskey. She’s being absurd. She wouldn’t make anyone else do this, would be embarrassed to do it herself. She never even really got the hang of phone sex, the barefaced statements of her own desires too humiliating to face when they weren’t hidden by layers of fictional framing or whispered in a dimly lit bedroom. But she looks at Zosia with a challenge.
Zosia takes another sip of her drink. “She liked—”
“Say I,” Carol interrupts. “Please.”
Zosia exhales through her nose. “I. I like to be kissed slowly. On the mouth and then on the neck. Hands on my body.” She glances up.
Carol doesn’t relent. “And then?”
Zosia takes a measured breath. “I react well to breast stimulation.”
Carol’s lip twitches. “Say it like a person.”
Zosia swallows. “...I like my breasts to be—played with. Touched, squeezed. Kissed, licked, sucked.”
Carol almost cringes at the directness, her own reticence reacting sympathetically. At the same time she can feel herself getting hot; she tugs at her shirt collar, but the feeling is really centered between her thighs, enough that she tries to shift on the chair, as if that will change things. It doesn’t. Swallowing, she asks, “What about when you’re alone?”
Zosia nods. “Similar, but of course a bit more limited. I like…to touch my breasts. To tease, to pinch the nipples.”
Carol’s mouth feels dry. She tilts the empty glass slightly towards herself as if more liquid will materialize, but no such luck. She glances up at Zosia, still holding her drink, half-full. She’s silent for a while, but finally says, “Show me.”
Zosia blinks. After a pause, the only thing she asks is, “Here?”
Carol nods. “Yeah.” She leans back a little in her seat.
Zosia sets down her glass on the coffee table. Then she starts almost by her knees, drawing her hands slowly up her clothed thighs. She closes her eyes—is it a natural response, Carol wonders, or an attempt to bring the memories closer to the surface?—and her hands move to her torso over her fitted T-shirt, dragging along her stomach and up to her breasts. She squeezes them gently, letting out an exhale as she does.
“You can take it off,” Carol suggests.
Zosia pulls her shirt over her head. She gets goosebumps easily, Carol knows now; she’s too far away to see them but she can imagine them on Zosia’s skin as it reacts to the cool air.
Zosia hesitates, then unhooks her bra in the back and removes it as well, letting the clothes fall in a pile next to her on the couch. Carol lets out an unsteady breath as her breasts become visible, the desire to have her mouth on them almost overwhelming. Instead she watches as Zosia returns her hands to them, slowly circling her nipples without touching them, like Carol is never patient enough to do for long. It’s mesmerizing—the motion of her fingers, the slightly parted lips, the eyelashes fluttering.
Carol places her hands on her own thighs, rigid.
Finally Zosia moves to her nipples, rolling them between her fingertips in tandem. She moans now, softly. The sound sends another wave of heat through Carol’s body; her hands tense, nails trying to dig into her thighs but scratching uselessly against the denim.
This, too, goes on longer than Carol would have done it, but she has to admit it’s kind of beautiful, watching the slowly rising tension, getting to hear the ebb and flow of her moaning as she pinches lightly and then releases, letting her body come down before bringing it back up. There’s a fading hickey on one of her breasts that Carol remembers leaving, moaning into the flesh while Zosia’s fingers thrust into her.
She watches Zosia for a bit longer, the movement of her hands, the rise and fall of her chest as her breaths get faster. Carol tries to regulate her own breathing, slowing her inhales, noting the tension in her muscles and trying to relax.
Zosia pinches her nipples again; her moaning turns to a whimper.
Carol’s voice comes out hoarse when she asks, “Are you wet?”
“Yes,” Zosia breathes.
Carol swallows around the lump forming in her throat. It feels painful. “Take off your pants.”
Zosia moves easily to comply, sliding them off and over her feet. They crumple on the floor.
As she sits up again, Carol jerks her head. “Those too.”
Obediently, Zosia removes her underwear. It’s almost comical, Carol thinks, though she doesn’t feel like laughing. A naked woman in her living room, her fantasy come to life, beautiful and endlessly willing.
Though of course she couldn’t have lied, Carol can see the truth of Zosia’s arousal now, glistening faintly between her parted thighs. Carol takes an unsteady breath. “Touch yourself,” she says softly, when Zosia seems frozen without instruction.
Zosia almost seems relieved when she brings her hands to her body again, dragging them up her thighs, spreading her knees apart as she brings one hand to her cunt, the other gripping her thigh. She’s slow here, too, dragging a finger up along her labia, sighing softly. She dips and touches and teases, and Carol feels her mouth opening, like her body wants nothing more than to taste Zosia, to lick her, to suck on her clit until she screams.
Instead she sits. Her hands are trembling against her thighs.
Zosia’s fingers finally land on her clit, moving slowly at first, drawing soft gasps from her mouth. Carol watches, the jerky motion of her chest in time with her erratic breaths, the head tilted back, the bob of her throat when she swallows.
Her pace increases as she goes, and soon it’s audible, an obscene, wet sound in the silent room—fingers against slick, tender flesh. Her sounds grow higher in pitch, more urgent, her breathing becoming more like panting.
Carol watches, breathless, and she doesn’t know what she’s about to say until it’s already coming out of her mouth: “Wait.”
Zosia’s hand stills immediately. Her head rises to look at Carol, but it’s a long moment before she manages to form the question: “Did you—need something?”
Carol’s eyes linger on her flushed chest before she answers. “Don’t finish yet.”
“Of course, Carol.” Zosia removes her active hand and rests it on her thigh. She sounds calm, but her legs are twitching occasionally, an involuntary motion.
Carol bites the inside of her cheek. “Keep touching yourself. Just don’t come. You can do that, right?”
“Of course,” says Zosia. Even now, it’s almost polite. She brings her hand back to herself and returns to the slower motions from before, though they’re clearly affecting her more now: her breathing is often interrupted with little gasps, and occasionally her hips jerk in response to an errant touch.
Carol watches carefully. Her own cunt throbs, but it’s almost background noise compared to how attuned she is to the minutiae of Zosia’s bodily reactions. Stomach and chest rising and falling with her breath. Toes curled against the rug. The careful slowing of her hand when she needs to let her body relax. The teasing is skillful, which probably is to be expected. Every time Zosia’s touched herself, every person she’s ever fucked and how she responded to them—it’s all catalogued in the planet’s collective memory.
If Carol thinks about it for too long, she’ll feel sick to her stomach. So she doesn’t. Instead she watches Zosia’s thighs tense and relax, tense and relax. The sounds from her lips are becoming something new, a breathless, desperate whining that makes Carol feel like she’s on fire.
“Do you want to come?” She knows it’s a stupid question, but her brain catches on it anyway, and then she can’t not ask.
“If you’d like,” Zosia breathes.
Carol huffs, frustrated even though she already knew the answer. “No,” she says. “No. Not until you tell me you want to.”
“Carol, you know that—”
“Then don’t,” Carol says. “See if I care.” All her nerve endings feel alight with sensation. Even the slight movement of the air, a faint disturbance with no particular source, she can feel in the hairs on her arms. “Keep going.”
Zosia does. It’s still precise, no chance of going too far, no chance of coming down. The perfect execution of what Carol asked for. Zosia’s body begins to tremble as she carefully rubs her fingers against her clit, then moves away when she gets close. There’s something beautiful about it, Carol thinks, and hates herself for it.
“Carol,” Zosia breathes, desperate, and Carol dares to hope for a moment. Then Zosia says, “I need to,” and Carol almost laughs.
“Is that how you’ve solved the problem?” She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think you need to come.”
“It’s a biological—” Zosia starts.
“Imperative? Bullshit.” Carol does laugh now, low and mean. “Will it kill you?”
“Not—imperative,” Zosia tries to argue, though she’s shaking now, her breath coming in erratic bursts. “Need. Like—water.”
Carol scoffs. “Yeah, dehydration could kill you. Can this?”
Zosia doesn’t answer for a moment, her mind—their mind—struggling with the question as her body stays on edge, as she whimpers softly. Finally she says, “Not—strictly, no.”
“Then it’s not a need, is it?” Carol says.
Zosia’s fingers stutter against her clit, and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, making a sound that could be a wail if she would let herself open her mouth. She withdraws her hand enough to speak. “I-it’s biological,” she breathes.
“But do you want it?” Carol asks again.
Zosia makes a sound like she wants to cry, fingers moving slowly against herself. She doesn’t answer.
“Just tell me you want to come,” Carol murmurs. “I can see it, I know you want it. Just say it.”
“This body—” Zosia starts, but Carol cuts her off.
“Nope, not like that. Doesn’t count.”
Zosia’s speech seems to fail her again. Her hand stills for longer than it has so far, chest heaving, hips twitching regardless.
As she begins to move it again, tears roll down her cheeks, and she looks at Carol, desperate.
Carol fears for a moment that this could be like the moment at the hospital, that she could be talking Zosia into a heart attack.
But it’s not the same.
Right?
Carol can’t help herself, can’t stop. Again: “Do you want it?”
Zosia whines, desperation in the sound. “I w—” Her voice fails her. Her hand trembles; her body jerks in response. “I wa—”
“There it is,” Carol says, breathless now with anticipation. “Just say it.”
More tears, streaming down Zosia’s face. Her voice stutters. “I w—I wa—” She sounds like a broken record, needle skipping on the same microsecond of a song over and over.
Carol watches, her chest tight. She thinks she’s shaking.
“I w—I want to,” Zosia forces out finally, gasping with exertion.
There’s something bright and sharp in Carol’s chest. “You want to what?” she asks.
Zosia whines again, trembling with effort. “I—want to come, Carol, please.”
Carol, please. It hits her in the gut, sick and satisfying.
Carol nods. “Do it,” she whispers.
It’s almost instantaneous—two or three frantic strokes of her fingers and Zosia’s body is spasming, her head thrown back, her voice transformed into something primal with the intensity of her release. Her hips jerk and thrust into her hand, and even when she pulls the hand away her orgasm goes on for long seconds, her body’s movement erratic and unpredictable, starkly different from the careful motion of her hands moments before.
She comes down slowly, chest heaving. Even as her breathing slows, occasionally a latent aftershock will seize her and cause another involuntary whimper.
Carol slowly becomes aware of her own body again. She’s painfully turned on, she realizes, and at some point her hands must have moved to grip their opposite forearms, leaving pink crescent marks dug into her skin. Her pulse is loud in her ears, fast and frantic. She wants Zosia on her knees in front of her—she wants another drink—she wants a glass of water for her parched throat.
She takes a steadying breath before looking back at Zosia, who appears disheveled and entirely spent.
“Thank you,” Carol says softly, and then: “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”