When Ben says that he doesn't mean what most people mean.
As if I never said the wordsFriday evening I was standing by the bureau, making notes when the lights went out. He came up behind me, kissed the back of my neck and put my headphones over my ears. With music blasting through my skull I went into instant sensory irony as he muscled me onto the bed, face down. Overloaded and deprived all at once as he pulled my hands up over my head and held them there while he stripped me bare. I was not permitted to help. Not at all.
I want, I want you first
Only thing that can quench my thirst
I want you first, I want you first
Striptease for me, babyIt was hours later when he reluctantly let me go, ripping the headphones from my ears and standing the empty bottles on the floor. We turned on the light and laughed at each other, for I was now a ghostly, glittery shade of white, sticky and sweet from all the whipped cream and he was smeared with chocolate and streaks of white fingertip prints from where I tried to talk him into letting me make a whipped cream bikini for him.
Striptease for me, baby
Striptease for me, baby
It was fun. It was cathartic. It was epic make-up dessert sex in high definition.
It was repeated in full last night with the music but without the condiments and without the laughter, because sometimes we are very serious, all-business. That's when Ben slows to a crawl, making me agonize over every breath, every push, every touch. Turning seconds into hours and delighting in seeing precisely how long the goosebumps will remain raised on my flesh and how many times I stop breathing, pinned underneath him, waiting in anticipation of his next move, the night fading into one of those mornings when I wake up upside-down with wild bird's nest hair and aching limbs and he wakes up with a smile, appetite sated for a very short while.
At least the next time he asks me if I want a banana split I'll know up front what I'm really in for.