only one way to keep me from dancing again. Come over here, darling,” Allison cooed.
“Do we have to use the floor again? My back already feels like the bottom of a birdcage. If you want me, come after me.” I turned and ran into the kitchen.
Allison ran after me, laughing. We were both giggling so much we could hardly keep running. Guess we were both racked up by the same thing, an image of how we would look to an observer, running around the apartment naked.
I barely escaped her grasp as I headed out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the foyer. It was a long narrow hall with the bedroom at one end and the door to the outside at the other.
I ran until I collided with unyielding wood. The outside door. In my excitement I had run in the wrong direction.
Allison had me trapped. There was only room for one person to walk down the hall at a time. She surged up against me, not able to break the momentum she had built up while running. The impact crushed me to the door. The wood protested loudly and the thud of my impact gathered volume in the empty halls and stairwell. Oh Christ, and with the landlord living right in the building! I was sure there would be an eviction notice for me the next day. You understand, I didn’t know exactly what time it was but it had to be some time after midnight.
The unexpected noise flipped us both. We thought it was funny. We goofed it up laughing and making guesses about what the other tenants had done when they heard the sound. Like what they had been doing when it happened and how they might have interpreted it. We were breaking each other up.
Allison stopped laughing first. There was nothing humorous about the way her fingers were probing my body. What there is to do with hands in order to achieve certain effects, she was doing. Anything else, there isn’t.
My laugh went to a grin to something quite other than hilarity. Allison had her hand behind my head, tugging a handful of my hair until my head was inclined backward. She bent over me and brought her mouth to mine. Instead of kissing me, she kept her lips a fraction of an inch away and traced the outlines of my mouth with the tip of her tongue. Playing with the contours of my parted lips.
She was using her hands and fingers to fondle me like a bibliophile examining the Guttenberg Bible. A delicious languor spread through me. My heart was beating frantically, blood spurting lustily through me, throbbing inside me that blocked out sight and sound, present and future. Only Allison and the exquisite sensations of her touch were real.
“No, no, Allison. Please, not here. Not so close to the door. The neighbors…they’ll hear us.” Some part of my mind that I wasn’t in touch with was being rational. I heard myself speaking but wasn’t aware that I was articulating, nor had any idea where the logical, coherent thoughts came from.
“They can’t hear me making love to you, baby. That’s just between us,” Allison said. She followed her words with a probing kiss and then her mouth was roving my body, just the tip of her tongue extended.
Her mouth was on my breast, the wet pink wonder teasing the tips. I was sinking further and further into ardent urgency. My body had gone slack with need and it was only the pressure of Allison’s body propping me against the door that kept me upright. I was falling limply. Allison started easing me down to the floor, not stopping her stroking.
“No. Please,” I said weakly. “I don’t want to here. Not on the floor. Not in front of the door.”
Allison’s voice was tight and husky. She had to take a deep breath before speaking. “I guess you’re right. That might wake someone.” She swayed against me and buried her head in my shoulder. “Oh, dearest, it’s so wonderful when you finish. I love the way you go out of your mind and become so free and wild and unrestrained. My baby, it’s so good to see you when you’re like that. You’re a different person, primitive, uninhibited and so completely mine. And the things you say at that time! Like they came from deep inside you where your sincerest feelings are. You say such lovely things to me then, Sloane precious. As if you had no control over what you were saying, sometimes you whisper so that I can hardly hear you, other times there are no words, just rapturous sounds, and sometimes you just let go and proclaim your ecstasy. Those times you usually call out my name. Like it was something of great beauty. Or loudly, as if you wanted to tell the world that I was the one you love.” She picked her head up. “Yes, I guess you have a point. We had better get away from the door.”
Allison helped me get up. Every bone and muscle in my body had turned to jelly. She propped me up in front of her as we went down the hall to the bedroom. Allison kicked the bedroom door shut behind us with the heel of her foot.
I was on the bed. Allison was standing next to the bed staring down at me. Then Allison was embracing me, the slippery velvet of her perspired body pulsating against me. Mouth on my mouth. Silken lips against mine. Hands and fingers stroking, clasping, fondling. Lips touching, brushing, sliding over my body. Agonizingly exquisite tongue seeking, caressing. I in the torturous ache of ecstasy, in the rapture of transport, then, quickly, knotted up with tension…release and flowing out and, “Allison, Allison, Allison, I love you. My precious darling. Allison, Allison, Allison, Allison…”
What was probably much later, I realized that sunlight was coming in the room from around the edges of the drapes. There was a clock on the bedside table. I twisted myself up and to the side in order to read its face which was turned away from me. I was very careful not to awaken Allison who was sleeping in the embrace of my left arm. I picked up the clock and brought it close to my eyes. Myopia and a hangover made me tempted to use Braille. Finally, I was able to make out the time.
“Is it very late?” a sleepy voice inquired from the other side of the bed.
“We must have fallen asleep. It’s 9:15 already. I’m going to have to hustle to get to the office in time.”
“Damn! I’ve got an appointment with a photographer for this morning. I’m due there already and I don’t even know where the hell I left my clothes around this voyeur’s dream. And I have to go back to my place to pick up my stage makeup. Oh, I hope he waits for me. I don’t care if he kills me for being so late, just so long as he’s there. He’s one of the best cameramen in the business and I’ve waited months to get this appointment with him. I need a lot of new stills for distribution on the Coast. They’re going to know Allison Millay is in town if I have to send them pictures and bios every day for a year.”
“You better have some breakfast. Posing under those hot lights will knock you out if you don’t. Remember, you’ve had hardly any sleep. Couple that with not eating and holding poses in the glare of those hot spotlights and they’ll have to carry you out frothing at the mouth.”
“You’re right. I’ll grab something to eat while I’m in the taxi. I won’t have time to sit down to breakfast.”
I let Allison have the bathroom first because she was so late. I’d never make it to the office on time but, if Judy or Happy had anything to say about it they’d be sorry. I was in no mood to put up with their nonsense that day. I would only be half to three-quarters of an hour late. They had no right to make a big deal out of that. Every human being is a little late for work once in a while. Once in a while? Face it, Sloane, I told myself, you’ve been late so often in the six months you’ve been there that the elevator operators probably think you’re due at work sometime around eleven. So what? Just let one of them say anything today and I’ll make them wish that they had stayed in bed. With my voice, I can make almost any line sound like an impeachment proclamation if I’m careful of my delivery.
Allison finished washing and was standing before the bathroom sink, putting layers of greasy makeup over the dark circles around her eyes and on the pink and blue blemishes around her mouth, the ones I had put there. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror as if she saw there some sort of hag. I should look half as ugly as she.
I got into the shower while she was making with the paint and took a quick one. Allison was combing her hair when I came out. She must have seen my reflection in the mirror because all of a sudden she whirled around toward