A Zoning Bylaw for Desire

The first time I noticed you, really noticed you, was during a debate about municipal zoning laws. You were leaning back in your folding chair, arms crossed, a little smirk playing at the corner of your mouth. Everyone else was droning on about setback requirements and property values, but you were looking at me like we were the only two people in the church basement who understood how absurd it all was.

I’m seventy-eight years old. I’ve been married to Harold for fifty-three years. I have grandchildren who are finishing college. I bake casseroles for the bereavement committee and I know exactly where my burial plot is. I am not the sort of woman who gets noticed, not anymore, and certainly not by a man like you.

But you kept looking. And you kept teasing.

“Delia, you’re awfully quiet tonight,” you said after the second meeting, falling into step beside me as I walked toward the parking lot. “Usually you’ve got something sharp to say about Robert’s theories on public transit.”

“I’m conserving my energy,” I told you. “Robert requires a lot of patience.”

You laughed, and the sound of it did something to my stomach. You’re tall, over six feet, and you carry yourself like a man who still plays tennis or swims laps. You told me you were seventy, and I almost didn’t believe you. I told you I was seventy-eight because I thought it would put distance between us, a polite little fence of numbers.

It didn’t work.

The third meeting was last Thursday. We discussed the library renovation bond, and you sat next to me the whole time, your knee occasionally brushing mine under the table. Every time it happened, I felt a jolt of electricity that I was sure everyone could see. I couldn’t concentrate. I kept losing the thread of the conversation. Margaret asked me twice if I was feeling all right.

When the meeting ended and people started gathering their coats, I stayed seated, pretending to organize my notes. My hands were trembling slightly. I was hoping you’d come over, and I was terrified you would.

You leaned down, your mouth close to my ear, and whispered so quietly that no one else could possibly hear.

“I’d like to lick your cunt, Delia.”

Then you straightened up, turned, and walked toward the door without looking back.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. The words echoed in my head, ricocheting off everything I knew about myself and my life and what was appropriate. My face was burning. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

When I finally turned around, you were at the door, and you glanced back at me. Our eyes met. I must have looked completely stunned, because something flickered across your face—satisfaction, maybe, or hunger. Then you pushed through the door and disappeared into the night.

I sat there for another thirty seconds, my hands gripping the edge of the table. Harold would be waiting at home, probably dozing in his recliner with the television on. He would ask how the meeting went, and I would say fine, and he would nod and go back to sleep. That was our life. It had been our life for decades.

I grabbed my purse and walked outside.

The air was cool and damp. You were standing near the corner of the building, hands in your pockets, waiting. I marched up to you with all the indignation I could muster.

“That was completely inappropriate,” I said. My voice came out breathless instead of stern.

You didn’t say anything. You just looked at me, and I could see it in your eyes—you knew. You knew I wasn’t really angry. You knew I’d followed you outside for a reason.

I opened my mouth to say something else, but you stepped forward, put your hands on my waist, and kissed me.

I melted. There’s no other word for it. Your mouth was warm and insistent, and your body pressed against mine, and I could feel the hardness of you through your trousers, grinding gently against my hip. I made a sound against your lips—a small, desperate whimper that I didn’t recognize as my own voice. My hands came up and clutched at your shoulders. I kissed you back like a woman who hadn’t been kissed properly in forty years, which is exactly what I was.

When you pulled back, I was dizzy.

“Come with me,” you said. “I live two blocks away.”

I should have said no. I should have remembered Harold and the casseroles and the burial plot. But I didn’t. I nodded, and we walked side by side through the quiet streets, not touching, not speaking, the tension between us crackling like static electricity.

Your condo building was modern and anonymous. We rode the elevator in silence, standing on opposite sides of the car, but I could feel your eyes on me the whole time. When the doors opened, you put your hand on the small of my back and guided me down the hall.

The moment we were inside your apartment, everything changed.

You didn’t offer me a drink or give me a tour. You grabbed me, lifted me, and carried me to your bedroom. I gasped and clutched at your neck, and then I was on my back on your bed, staring up at the ceiling, and your hands were on the button of my slacks.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, but I didn’t try to stop you.

You pulled my pants down and off, taking my underwear with them. The air felt cool against my bare skin. I started to sit up, to cover myself, but you pushed me gently back down.

“Stay,” you said.

And then your mouth was on me.

Not on my mouth. On my thighs. You kissed the inside of my right thigh, then my left, working your way upward with a patience that made me squirm. I had never—never—experienced anything like this. Harold and I had been married young, both of us from good conservative families, and sex was something that happened in the dark with minimal fuss. A man’s mouth did not go there. That was not something we did.

But you were doing it. Your tongue traced a line up my inner thigh, and I made a sound that was half moan and half sob.

“You’ve never had this before, have you?” you murmured against my skin.

I shook my head, unable to form words.

“Then I’m going to take my time.”

You did. God, you did. Your tongue explored me with a thoroughness that was almost clinical, mapping every fold and crease, finding places I didn’t know could feel that way. I was gripping the bedsheets, my hips lifting off the mattress, and when your tongue finally found my clit, I cried out so loudly that I clamped my own hand over my mouth.

You didn’t stop. You licked and sucked and teased, and I was making sounds I’d never made before, animal sounds, desperate sounds. I was climbing toward something, some peak I’d only ever approached alone in the dark with my own fingers, and I was terrified and exhilarated and completely out of control.

Then you grabbed my arms.

Your hands closed around my wrists and pinned them to my sides, pressing me down into the mattress. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t cover my mouth or push you away or do anything except lie there and take it.

And I went crazy.

The orgasm hit me like a freight train. I arched off the bed, my whole body convulsing, and I screamed—actually screamed—into the quiet darkness of your bedroom. You kept your mouth on me the whole time, drawing it out, making it last until I was sobbing and shaking and begging you to stop.

When you finally lifted your head, I was wrecked. Completely, utterly wrecked.

You crawled up my body, and I could see your face in the dim light from the window—triumphant, hungry, still not finished with me.

“I’m going to come on your chest,” you said. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded, because what else could I do? I was beyond saying no to you.

You knelt over me, your knees on either side of my ribcage, and I watched as you freed yourself from your trousers. You were thick and hard and slick with your own arousal, and you began stroking yourself while looking down at me. I was pinned beneath you, my arms still at my sides where you’d left them, and the feeling of powerlessness was intoxicating.

“You like being held down, don’t you?” you asked, your voice rough.

“Yes,” I whispered. The admission felt like a confession.

Your hand moved faster. Your breathing grew ragged. I watched your face, the way your jaw clenched and your eyes darkened, and then you groaned and I felt the first hot splash of it hit my skin. You came in thick pulses across my breasts, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. I lay perfectly still, letting you mark me, feeling more alive than I had in years.

When you were finished, you looked down at what you’d done, and a slow smile spread across your face.

“Clean me up,” you said. “Use your mouth.”

I hesitated. The request—the command—shocked something deep in me. I had never done that. The thought of it felt degrading, wrong.

“No,” I said, and my voice was small.

You didn’t argue. You didn’t try to persuade me. You simply reached down, grabbed a handful of my hair—not painfully, but firmly—and guided my head toward your still-hard cock.

“I said, clean me up.”

The feeling of being overpowered, of being made to do something I’d never imagined doing, sent a fresh wave of heat through my body. I opened my mouth, and you pushed inside.

The taste was strange—salty and bitter and intensely intimate. I gagged slightly, but you held me there, and after a moment I began to move my tongue, cleaning the last traces of your release from your skin. To my astonishment, I felt myself growing wet again. My thighs pressed together involuntarily.

“That’s it,” you murmured, stroking my hair now instead of gripping it. “Good girl.”

The praise undid me. I sucked harder, taking you deeper, and I could feel you responding, growing fully hard again in my mouth.

You pulled me off you with a wet sound and pushed me back onto the bed. This time, when you positioned yourself between my legs, there was no preamble, no teasing. You entered me in one smooth thrust, and I gasped at the fullness of it.

“Look at me,” you said.

I opened my eyes and met your gaze.

You began to move, slow and deep, and I wrapped my legs around your waist and held on. This was nothing like the frantic, silent couplings I’d known all my life. This was deliberate and consuming and absolutely filthy. You told me things—what you wanted to do to me, what you wanted me to do to you—and every word made me hotter.

“You’re going to come back,” you said, your hips driving into me with increasing urgency. “You’re going to come back to this condo, and I’m going to tie you to this bed, and I’m going to do whatever I want to you.”

“Yes,” I gasped. “Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I’ll come back. I’ll let you tie me down. I’ll let you do anything.”

You fucked me harder, and I felt another orgasm building, different from the first one, deeper and more primal. When it broke, I clenched around you so tightly that you groaned and followed me over the edge, spilling inside me with a shudder.

We lay tangled together afterward, both of us breathing hard. The sheets were a disaster. I was a disaster. And I had never felt better in my entire life.

I should have felt guilty. I should have been thinking about Harold, about my marriage, about the fifty-three years of fidelity I’d just thrown away. But all I could think about was the weight of your arm across my waist and the way my body was still humming with pleasure.

“I can’t believe I did that,” I said finally, staring at the ceiling.

You propped yourself up on one elbow and looked down at me. “Which part?”

“All of it. Any of it. The part where you made me—” I couldn’t even say it.

“Use your mouth?”

I nodded, feeling my cheeks flush.

“Did you hate it?”

I was quiet for a moment. Then I shook my head. “That’s the problem. I didn’t hate it at all.”

You grinned, that same cocky grin you’d worn during the zoning debate. “Then you’re definitely coming back.”

I laughed, and it surprised me—a real laugh, bright and unguarded. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“I’m sure of you,” you said. “I’ve been sure of you since the first time you rolled your eyes at Robert.”

I turned my head to look at you. In the dim light, with your gray hair mussed and your expression satisfied, you looked exactly like a man who had just gotten exactly what he wanted.

“I’m bringing clean sheets next time,” I said.

Your eyebrows rose. “Next time?”

“If I’m going to be tied to your bed, I want to know the linens are fresh.”

You laughed and pulled me closer, and I let myself be held. Outside, the city was quiet. Somewhere, Harold was asleep in his recliner. But in this room, in this moment, I was someone else entirely—someone who got tied to beds and had orgasms that made her scream and let men whisper filthy things in her ear.

I liked her. I liked her a lot.

“Thursday,” you said. “After the meeting. Bring the sheets.”

“I’ll bring two sets,” I said. “We might need them.”

And when I finally walked home through the pre-dawn streets, my legs still shaky and my body still singing, I was already counting the days.