A Thousand Other Women (Short Story)

Surrounded by others at a conference dinner, and after a little too much wine, our eyes met. First once, little more than a glance, but for a lingering that revealed our loneliness.  
     
Talk of our families and professional histories faded into the background noise of the restaurant, but before it did, I learned her name was Sylvia, and she had two daughters, 16 and 12. She was married to a professionally successful but emotionally distant husband. From me, she learned I had married young but had been divorced two years and was working remotely in a way that fit my adventure-travel lifestyle.      
     
Later in the dinner, another meeting of our eyes sealed our fate. As the group dispersed, we found ourselves walking giddily down the hotel hallway, finally arriving in my room. One would have thought we were an old married couple preparing for bed. Sylvia asked to use my shower.      
     
“Yes, of course, make yourself at home.”      
     
“Home away from home,” she said, flipping on the bathroom light and skipping a step lightly as she entered.    
     
I crawled into bed and turned out the lights. There was only the soft sound of water from her shower and a clear song echoing from the bathroom. “Sometimes I love you, sometimes I feel good,” drifted over the shower curtain.      
     
I yelled out, “Alicia Keys?”      
     
“Yes, I love her,” she replied. “My daughters introduced me to her music.”      
     
When the water and song stopped, I watched silently for her exit with the curiosity of a teenage boy.      
     
The room was dark except for the open bathroom door, and her form moved softly across the floor. I fixated on her hips and the slight pudginess of her stomach, the birthplace of two children. No doubt, her emotionally distant husband had probably satisfied his desires there as well. Sylvia pulled the covers and crawled underneath. She was silent and still on her back.      
     
I could hear her questioning breath and wondered if she was having second thoughts. I could see the silhouette of her forehead and nose. She looked slightly upward at the ceiling, and I thought it was odd that she was so quiet. I even wondered if she was praying.      
     
Her face was plain and strong. It might have been the face of a thousand other women. I smiled in the dark, knowing she could easily think the same of me. But, I also knew I had a gift bestowed by my father, and it had served me and many women well. I trusted it would serve her, too.

I touched Sylvia’s forehead with my fingertips and outlined her nose before sliding to her lips. It seemed strange that our lips had never met though we were lying naked next to each other now. She must have felt the same strangeness because she turned and moved toward me, and we kissed. Our tongues met, tips touching softly and lingering the way our eyes had lingered earlier. I didn’t sense any hesitance. I could almost hear her body whispering a soft, “Yes.”      
     
One of her breasts rested against my side, warm and soft. I resisted the temptation to explore it but let it be, growing warmer against me as we kissed again and again.      
     
My father’s gift was firm, and she seemed to sense that something had changed between us. Her flattened palm and fingertips swept across my chest several times before sliding down across my crotch and back to my chest. I felt her breath catch and our lips parted as she slid across my hardened flesh. There was another puff of air like a single pant from her lips before they met mine again. She tasted of red wine from dinner.      
     
My mind raced into the philosophical abyss as we kissed. I hated when that happened! I thought of this flesh pressing against me. She truly could have been any one of a thousand different women, and I’d know. Her breast pressing against me could be the breast of so many others.  Indeed, there had been many, so many that they sometimes formed a mass in my memory as I tried to distinguish their unique qualities.      
     
I felt a rush of sadness, knowing that this body I would pierce tonight would remain largely unknown to me. Sylvia was a unique soul and deserved to be known, but intimacy wasn't on tonight's agenda.      
     
As I placed my face against Sylvia’s warm breast, my sadness vanished in a wave of desire that flowed over me, and I knew my path forward.      
     
Sylvia rose over me, and I could see her face shining from the bathroom light. Her eyes were young and alive despite her years. I thought of what Alfred Hitchcock once said about a person not being real until he shined a light on her face. When I saw Sylvia’s face, she felt real to me.      
     
While I admired Sylvia’s plain but strong facial features, her fingers curled around my cock and slowly began to perform their magic. She tossed the covers down and stared at my shining gift, still stroking now straight toward the ceiling. She slid my foreskin down, so the head was revealed. There was a moment’s hesitation before her face slowly drifted closer to me. I looked straight down at the closing proximity in anticipation. Finally, as she stroked downward, her lips wrapped around my head, and I felt the suction of her tongue sliding against my swollen head.      
     
I could clearly see where my cock entered her mouth and thought of her sweet alto voice from the shower a few minutes before. Even now, she hummed little moans that sent vibrations into my resonating rod. It was hard for me to distinguish between her humming and the vibration of electrical stimulation within my cock, but I didn’t care. I just knew it felt good, and this would be a good place to spend eternity if there were such a thing.    
     
I didn’t believe in heaven or an afterlife and struggled to distinguish right and wrong. I did regret her husband’s loss, and I felt like I was betraying her daughters. I was gaining pleasure from the same breasts they’d sucked for nourishment, the same breasts that led their father to impregnate their mother and give them life. Despite these emotional conflicts, this physical life was all that was real. Sylvia was my little taste of heaven for a night.      
     
I moved down and touched my tongue to her swollen clitoris and tasted its saltiness. Then I pressed my tongue between the lips of her vagina, dizzy with images of the life I was exploring. Sylvia was wet with excitement, and I knew she would accept me immediately but wanted to give her more.      
     
After several minutes of listening to her sweet moans, I rose over her and pressed inside with firm resolve. Her voice cracked in a high pitch squeak that seemed to come from a small animal. Each time I pressed, she echoed with a soft squeak. My head was swimming in the sounds of her. Between the moist slurping of our meeting flesh and her girly high-pitched squeaks, the room was noisy with lust sounds.    
     
I pulled out for a moment and stared down at myself, marveling that my flesh could hold such pleasure. My cock felt heavy and strong. Sylvia stared down as well and then said in a raspy voice, “Please come back inside.”      
     
Our rhythmic ride continued, and I saw light growing on Sylvia’s face. I felt like a kid going up the click, click, of rungs of a roller coaster. Anticipation was growing with each slurpy pelvic clicking sound. I was entering a place where only the physical is allowed. Soul, personality, or humanness seemed to fade as two physical beings writhed together, seeking momentary union of one flesh. As the roller coaster continued toward the arching rails, I knew we were only human and that this was all the heaven we could grasp, though it was enough.      
     
Then it began, the roller coaster topped out, and I felt the undeniable momentum pulling us down the other side.      
     
Down, down! The roar of the coaster and shivering rails were inside my chest. Down, ever down!      
     
Sylvia screamed as she felt my thrusting become involuntary and more powerful. I was lost in the thrusting, ever thrusting into the hot fluid center of this human I barely knew. I didn’t wonder if she was happy or feeling pleasure. She was merely an object of my desire to be fully possessed in these moments. My heart pounded as my body drove itself toward the wall.      
     
Now, it was there at the tip of me. I pulled out and slid toward Sylvia, my cock blushing bright red in the warm air.  Sylvia looked at my approaching in shock, rubbing her fingers against her now empty pussy.      
     
I wanted to spray her beautiful and strong face; a face that might have been the face of so many other women. There was a moment of hesitation in her eyes and then acceptance as she saw the agonizing pleasure in my face. There was no time for doubt now. White threads jetted onto her lips, then across her eyes and forehead. She took me without expression as the pulsing continued for several seconds.      
     
Her blurry face glowed in the light from the open bathroom door. I looked at her eyes, trying to see their color, and realized she was a fog of pleasure to me, and I could not focus on any detail of her. I would never know Sylvia, nothing of the wholeness of her. She would remain a mystery, added to the mass of other humans I’ve used. But, still, she was beautiful.      
     
I fell into Sylvia and sighed as she exhaled loudly. In that moment, I knew that this little taste of heaven was enough.