Keene made them a late dinner with some of the things Mercy had purchased at the market:  American cheese omelets with sliced potatoes and onions, Brussels sprouts with chopped bacon, maple coated turkey sausage links.  They drank cranberry grape juice in tumblers filled with ice, so cold and delicious Mercy’s teeth ached.
.        “Ooohh!” she said, sucking in her cheeks.  “That’s cold.”
.        “How do you like everything?” he asked.
.        “Delicious. Everything.  Delicious.”
.        He smiled at her impishly.  “Does it taste like chicken?”
.        She laughed nervously, shoveling another forkful of eggs into her mouth.  She knew there was no room for shyness between them now, but she still felt so inexperienced.  She wondered if she would always feel this way, naïve little Mercy, blushing with embarrassment at the mention of sex.
.        “You know what you’re supposed to say?” he asked, and she shook her head.  “It tastes like cock.”
.        She made a face and pretended to sling eggs at him from her fork.
.        “C’mon, give me a break, I’m writing a teen novel.  My brain’s a little juvenile right now.”
.        “Still?” she asked, taking a bite of potatoes.  They were so buttery and flavorful, mixed with the sweet onions, she took three more mouthfuls before continuing.  He waited expectantly, patiently, while she swallowed, took another sip of juice and wiped her mouth.  “When I first met you you were writing a teen novel.  Teens and vampires?”
.        “Same one.  It’s written.  Now it’s in the final editing process.  I had a few people read it and I’m changing some things according to their critiques.  When I submit it as final copy to my agent, I want it to be as perfect as possible.  Not that she still won’t have me make more changes,” he grumbled sheepishly.  But Mercy could tell he wouldn’t mind making a hundred more revisions if it meant finally seeing a novel of his on the bookstore shelves.
.        She felt a pang of jealousy at not having a part in the process.  She knew they really didn’t know each other very well, had only this week embarked upon a course of sexual intimacy.  She certainly wasn’t going to be one of those pathetic girls who believed just because she’d seen a guy’s dick she’d also had glimpses of his soul.  His soul was in his writing.  She’d seen it, in the literary journals she’d purchased that had published his works.  But that was the polished soul, the one everyone got to see after some editor smoothed over the raw parts, the real parts, the ones unsuitable for public consumption.  Those were the parts Mercy wanted to see.  The ones she wanted him to invite her to see.  The ones very few ever got to see.  She bet if he asked how many people had gotten to proofread his writing the number would be less than those who had seen his dick.  Guys in the gym locker room got to see his dick.  Maybe some drunken bitches he’d picked up in bars during his college years.
.        Gullible virgins in book store cafes.
.        “I could read it,” she suggested, hoping she sounded casual, and not like someone who would be devastated if denied.  She kept her eyes down on her plate, using her fork to sever in half one of the sausage links.  She lifted it to her mouth, chewed, then speared a sprout, using it to trace a figure eight on her plate.  “I read a lot.  Different things, too.  I do work at a bookstore.”
.        “You’ve got the inside track, huh?”
.        She dared a glance at him, and found him gazing back, a smile on his lips.  Was that affection in his expression, or amusement?
.        And I’m a teenager, she was tempted to remind him, but pointing out that fact would most likely do little to further her cause.  Although she was his target audience, from a literary standpoint, right now she was on his radar as a sexual partner.  As much as she wanted him to be alerted to her intellectual offerings, reading a manuscript wasn’t on her short list of activities to engage in this evening.  Even now she wiggled on the kitchen chair, trying to relieve some of the throbbing between her legs when she thought of his mouth exploring her there.  She’d been anticipating her turn for over an hour now.  Was that part of the plan?  Was this all part of the sexual dance?
.        “I think I could offer a perspective you’d appreciate,” she said.
.        He considered this as he forked some eggs into his mouth.  “Maybe you could.  It’s difficult to ask people to read your writing.  I usually gather a focus group of people who don’t really know me.  You’d be surprised how many people are willing to read something by someone who’s appeared somewhere in print.  That being said, you don’t always get the most comprehensive critiques.  Although most of my friends would gladly read something if I asked, I don’t know how much a forty-year-old law professor would relate to a YA mummy story.”  He noticed her reaction and laughed.  “Yes.  It’s about mummies.”
.        Mercy couldn’t help herself.  “Oh, come on,” she said, clasping her hands together.  “Now you’ve got to let me read it.”
.        “Let you?  Oh, Mercy.”  He reached over and brushed a lock of hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear.  “The privilege would be mine.  The only thing I need you to let me do is touch you like this–”
.        His thumb lightly caressed her cheek.
.        “–and this . . . .”
.        He moved it down to her breast, beneath her shirt, grazing the tip of her nipple with the pad, causing it to become rigid with sensitivity.
.        “–and this,” he whispered, leaning forward to flick the protruding bud with his tongue.  Her pussy contracted as he closed his mouth around her areola and suckled gently.  Her nipple suctioned in his mouth, he circled it with his tongue, the sensation causing bursts of light to appear in front of her eyes.  She ran her hands through his thick curly hair, not realizing she was pushing it down towards her lower body until he raised his head, laughing against her lips.
.        “Are you quite finished with dinner?”
.        “Mm-hmm,” she said, kissing him hungrily.
.        “Luckily for you, I’m not.”
.        He slid off his chair and onto his knees in front of her.  She sucked in her breath and her bottom lip as for the second time that evening he undid her jeans and pulled them off.  He slowly peeled down her panties, caressing her legs as he slid them over her calves, through her feet, discarding them onto the kitchen floor.  He then lifted each of her legs and draped them over his shoulders.  She watched with widening eyes as he reached up to his plate and removed a turkey sausage link.
.        “Just what do you think you’re going to do with that?”
.        “Setting the bar,” he said, and she giggled, tilting her legs in so that her sex wasn’t so exposed before him.
.        “Don’t you dare!”
.        He put it in his mouth, sucking the end, then removed it and traced it along the inside of her left leg, spreading both wider once again.
.        “Keene,” she whispered, as he ran it along her thigh, feather-light, barely making contact with her skin.
.        “It’s all right,” he said softly, his breath traveling between her legs to stir her pubic hair.  He traced it over the back of her thigh, circling around her glutes, leaving dimples of gooseflesh in its wake.  When he brought it around again to her inner thigh she drew in her stomach and her vaginal walls, anticipating where it would touch next as he got closer and closer to the area at the top.
.        Suddenly his head darted forward and she felt a lash of spongy, wet warmth stab at her clitoris and realized it was his tongue.  It was one long, languid lick and she groaned, her stomach quivering.  She stared down at the mop of curly hair obstructing her view of her lap, feeling next the tip of the sausage at the lowest point of her opening.  It traveled slowly up, flicking her clit, then back down.  Each time it made its journey up and down, it went a little deeper in her folds, flittered her bud with more frequence and pressure.  There was an aching tightness in her loins, the pit of her stomach.  She grabbed his hair and pushed his face closer to her pussy, the sausage sliding further in before bending at her body’s resistance.
.        “Put your hands underneath you,” he instructed.  “Sit on them.”
.        She didn’t want to, but she complied, her heart hammering in her chest.  Involuntarily, her hips lifted, urging him to continue.  She heard him chuckle and she wobbled her legs open and closed, letting out an impatient whine.
.        “Open them,” he said.  She did and he said, “Wider.”  She spread them wider, and he placed his hands on her inner thighs, pressing them back, her ass teetering on the chair.  She felt her vagina pop up and out, as if it was floating in space.
.        “Oh!” she exclaimed, feeling his mouth once again, this time his lips closing over her pearl, his tongue cradling it, and suckling once, twice, three times, before pulling away.  She was sopping wet so that when he tried to set the sausage inside her it kept falling out.  He began slowly pushing it in deeper and she held her breath, the walls of her vagina peeling open to accommodate it.
.        “Okay?” he asked.
.        “Mm-hmm.”  Her hands balled up beneath her buttocks as she felt the thing pressing, then stop.  She waited a few moments where nothing happened, just being aware of the thing inside her, getting used to the feeling.  Then she felt it moving slightly, felt his warm breath on her sopping gash, getting closer and hotter as he ate his way toward it.  With every bite the sausage bobbed, the sensation weird, but somehow erotic.
.        The sausage devoured, he brought his mouth up to hers in a hot, maple honey kiss.  His body was between her legs, his clothing rasping against her and she lifted up her hips to hump at him, needing so desperately to relieve the burning.  She grabbed his face in her hands, his tongue rolling into her mouth, mingling with hers.  He moved swiftly down her body again, planting his face firmly between her thighs.  She twisted her body, trying to get an angle where she could watch him eat and lick and suckle.  She felt his tongue sliding in and out, lapping up and down the length of her slot.  He closed his lips around her clitty and pulled slightly, twisting it in small circles.  She threw her head back, coming with such intensity she grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked.  He buried his face further and she rubbed against him, painting his lips, his nose with her weeping hole.  He put his hands under her ass and brought her in even closer, her legs still slung over his shoulders, his entire mouth enveloping all of her.  She writhed and undulated, trying to escape the punishment of his mouth while at the same time trying to fuse with it.  Her stomach rumbled, soared while a third or fourth orgasm ripped through her, she didn’t know if they were separate peaks or one long glorious climax that dipped and climbed in intervals.  She was gasping, moaning, groaning, sounding more like a B-movie zombie than a woman in charge of her sexuality, reaping the benefits of such ownership.
.        “Oh, God!” she called out, utterly breathless.  She felt like a boneless mass of spasming flesh, her body jerking involuntarily as he finished shredding her to pieces with his tongue.  He kept his face between her legs, taking his time, lapping her up like a kid polishing off a bowl of cake batter.  After her final orgasm there was just the softness of his lips as he kissed her pussy as tenderly as he would her mouth.  There was the warmth of his tongue, the tiny nubbed texture as he stroked her clitoris in wide, sweeping licks.  She closed her eyes, her lips pressed together as deep low murmurs and long declarations of mmmmmm seeped out.
.        He kissed his way up her abdomen, the center of her breasts to her mouth, and she twisted her tongue with his, more in love with him than she thought she ever could be.  There was something to this physical act, something she hadn’t known about, hadn’t seen coming, but completely understood.  She would live her life worshipping this feeling, and the person who brought it to her.  She was his, owned by him surely as if she were his house, his car, a box of cereal he picked up at the grocery store.  There was not a moment she wouldn’t want to feel this way, not a minute she wouldn’t think about it, nothing she wouldn’t do to make sure it happened over and over again.  She would trust him with anything, let him do anything, as long as he promised to do this one thing to every day for the rest of her life.