Slither - Edward Lee [50]
Nora thought about it. "In truth I guess I'm a pretty shitty Christian. My grandmother gave it to me and she was cool. I always wear it under my top."
Loren grinned behind her. "I like the dichotomy. The symbol of the man who died for our sins, and you keep it between your breasts, which are the symbols of female sexuality."
She rolled her eyes under closed lids. "Loren, my boobs aren't exactly pillows of carnality."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You did admit that you're a virgin."
Nora knew he was just pecking at her for fun, which normally she went along with. But now, here, the conversation filled her with dread. Throughout her adulthood, she hadn't even been "saving" herself for the right man. I couldn't GIVE it away ... She didn't suppose she was downright ugly, and she was at least complex enough to realize that not all men went solely for Annabelle-types. Jesus, I can count my heavy makeout sessions on ONE hand. Then a worse possibility assaulted her.
Maybe Annabelle's right. Maybe I really am a great big case of permanent PMS. For one thing, what guy wants a woman whose career field revolves around worms? And for another, what guy wants a woman who's bitchy, unhappy, and cynical all the time?
But was that really her?
When she felt the cross slip out from between her breasts, she couldn't even remember if any man in her life had actually had his hands on them ...
Now Loren was doing the backs of her thighs, multitasking the application of the lotion into a pretty good massage. Nora blanked her mind of all negativity ... and felt better.
Her thoughts drifted to last night's dream: the crude sex-fantasy. It had been a gratifying dream, of course, until the end, when she'd wakened unfulfilled.
Just sex, she thought. She focused on the dream's details-the faceless night suitor with no identity. The rough, intent hands on her flesh, the urgent tongue that incited her nipples and her sex. That's what I need, she joked to herself, a man who's just a body.
A body for her.
She could almost fall back to sleep now. The Bimbo's right; Loren gives a killer massage ... Now he was working her feet, firing nerves she didn't know she had.
"The feet are an erogenous zone, you know," he said.
"Your point being?"
"Clinical reflexology. As scientists, we should be intrigued by human reproductive response systems, and all their intricacies."
"Loren, please." Slippery fingers glided back and forth across her arches and insteps. "Just be quiet and keep doing it."
The sensations overwhelmed her; she felt woozy in some carnal way. Her buttocks clenched when his hands slid back up the calves, then thighs. She knew this was absurd: she was letting an innocent back rub become much more, she was stealing something from it. She tried to imagine Loren as the lover from her dream, but then some distant moral twinge disallowed it. More sensations flowed from her thighs to her groin, somehow squeezing her sex with a lewd, hot pressure, and in another mental recess, she imagined herself turning around in the sun and masturbating, or worse, brazenly inviting him into her.
The mental alarm bell clanged louder, and the fantasy dissolved with her realization of the truth. My teaching assistant is putting sunblock on me and I'm getting horny. Nora, congratulate yourself on a new low.
"That's enough, thanks," she blurted. She flipped back over quickly, assailed by an inexplicable guilt. At least if she were blushing, her sunburn would hide it. "I can do the front," she said.
"Damn, I was just starting to have fun."
Nora frowned. I'll bet. Probably musing over the Bimbo. She rubbed more lotion on her front shoulders and arms. The tingling between her legs mocked her; she struggled for a harmless subject. "So what's on the rest of today's agenda? Are you and Miss Priss going out for more worms?"
"You heard her," he said, lying back on his own towel. "She wants more underwater shots when the light is optimum, she said. And she wants to try to get some mating shots. Probably tomorrow