I’ve never been good at Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day is like a sport to me, or a game of skill – like the complex scribblings of some whacked-out algebra equation: something I simply suck at.
This year, work was so busy that I swear to God it was the middle of January and then bang, suddenly it’s February fourteenth — and so here I am, pawing through stringy bits of lace and foof at the mall after work, hoping to find something my husband might find the least bit attractive. Crotchless panties? I don’t have time for a wax. A tiny balconette bra that shoves my tits up and makes my nipples poke out like pink torpedos? I’m too tired for this. Pink fuzzy handcuffs? Oh please.
All around me, worried-looking men are scurrying around with boxes of chocolates and bouquets of roses and let me tell you, I envy these fuckers. They can fulfill their romantic obligations for the whole year with sugar and flowers alone. What can a woman do? I can’t very well plunk a Cadbury’s in my husband’s lap and shove some daisies at him – men aren’t motivated by calories and greenery. No, if you’re a woman, you know what you have to do.
Sex. Riotous, ferocious, crazy monkey sex. A blowjob or three at least. (I petitioned my husband one year for us to officially strike Valentine’s Day from our calendar and replace it with Steak and a Blowjob day – he laughed and said we should celebrate that too.) All wrapped up in an I-love-you bow, whether or not you’re feeling the least bit horny, crazy, or loving at the moment.
But as I said, I’m shit at Valentine’s Day. I’ve never been mushy, I don’t cry at Hallmark movies (or even watch them if I can help it) and I’ve never read a Valentine’s Day card yet that didn’t make me want to hurl. I’m into sex as much as anyone, but all the fuss and commotion and outfits and toys and everything – frankly, it’s exhausting.
I’m about to leave and just pick him up an extra Big Mac on the way home when who do I see, wandering through the lingerie section looking like a startled deer? My own dear husband. His eyes are roaming over all the scraps of erotically charged fabric on display, and he even reaches out to touch a gauzy one-piece number before thinking better of it, withdrawing his hand like the thing’s radioactive.
He’s not seriously looking…I mean, he’s not actually shopping for me? My heart starts pounding out a foolish rhythm. He knows I don’t like this crap. I know he doesn’t like this crap (hey, I said I was tired and out of ideas)…so who is he buying this crap for?
No, he wouldn’t… My husband? He’d sooner eat the living room rug than have an affair. He’s like me, we’re not interested in drama and passion and chaos, that’s just too much work.
So what the hell is he doing here?
Before I can stop myself, I barge through the racks and roll up in front of him, planting my hands on my hips. I say nothing
His face flushes bright red, and he crumples, folding in on himself with relief. “Oh thank God,” he says, putting out an arm with the expectation that I’ll come in for a hug. I stand my ground.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, menacingly polite.
He blinks. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to buy something for you.”
“Same.”
I stare at him. “You’re trying to buy me something?” I turn and flick at a sparkly thong. “From here? You know this isn’t my kind of thing.”
And just then, tears spring from my eyes and start raining down my cheeks like I’m eight years old. Fuck, fuck fuck. I hate getting weepy. But just the thought of him buying nipple clamps or whatever for some young hottie makes my heart hurt.
He looks worried. “I know. But look, I’m sorry, I completely forgot this year, and I only realized on the way home, and the gas station was out of roses and the only chocolates left were the ones with the chewy stuff in the middle that you hate, and so I thought I can’t go home with nothing, so I thought maybe I could find you a nice robe or some slippers or something…” he trails off piteously, his eyes wide and puppy-like. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of something earlier.”
I am, for the moment, rendered speechless. This is unusual for me.
This gives him the opportunity to think, and slowly his brow furrows as it puts it together. “Wait a minute…if this isn’t your kind of thing, and you know it isn’t mine, why are you looking for something here?”
I wipe dry my eyes and sigh. “Okay, so, here’s the thing. I forgot too. And I didn’t want to come home with nothing either, so I thought I’d just see if there was anything here that doesn’t scream hooker.”
He laughs. “Right. Of course. So you’re not cheating on me then, buying a slinky thing for your young lover.”
I snort. “Are you kidding? I barely have time for sex with you.”
“That’s my girl.”
“So, you’re not cheating on me, shopping for some butt floss for your side chick?”
“Is that what you thought?” He frowns.
“For a nanosecond. Maybe slightly longer.”
He smiles, and it’s the smile I really, actually, deep in my heart, love with all my soul.
“C’mere,” he says softly, and extends his arm again. This time I step into the hug gratefully. “I’m actually touched by that.”
“By what?” I say, but my voice is muffled by the big plaid scarf he wears every winter, the one that I hate and have tried to throw out but which crawls out of the donation bin of its own volition and winds its way around his neck every single year. “Which part?”
“The fact that you’re worried I’m cheating on you. I’m taking it to mean you care.”
“You know I care, Dumbass,” I retort, punching him lightly. Dumbass was my first pet name for him back in college, but I only bring it out on special occasions.
“Oh I know, Bubbles,” he replies in kind. Bubbles – as in airhead – was his pet name for me. “It’s just nice to see irrefutable proof.”
Something occurs to me, and I step back from him, smiling at him even as I calculate. “I just thought of something…”
His raises his eyebrows.
“I suck at Valentine’s Day.”
“I know, honey.”
“No, I mean…” I step closer and lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I suck on Valentine’s Day.”
I hollow out my cheeks and poke my tongue to one side, just so he gets the idea.
He laughs. “Well, then, let’s get you home!”
I tip my head towards the change room area. “How about in there?”
He pivots to look and then turns back to me. “No way.”
“Why not? There’s no one around, we can just pop in there for a few minutes. It’ll be fun.”
“But…but…the cameras…” he protests – mildly – as I take his hand and lead him towards the deserted change rooms. “They’ll see us going in.”
“So? You’re helping me pick out an outfit.”
“Not inside the cubicle with you…”
“There’s no cameras in the cubicles. Or, there’d better not be.”
I swoop down and do a quick scan for legs beneath any of the change room doors, and spying nothing, quickly bundle my husband into the first cubicle and close the door. He is a combination of flustered, embarrassed and wildly excited.
“Here, get up on the bench thingy so they won’t see your feet.” I say, shuffling around him in the tiny space.
“But then my head will poke out the top.”
“Squat down then.”
“But then you won’t be able to get to my…”
“Right, right…okay, sit down, and put your legs up on the walls.”
“What?”
“You know, just park your butt and then sort of…” I gyrate my hips in demonstration, “…shimmy around a bit so you can put one foot on either wall.”
“I don’t want to pull my groin again.”
I bite my lip and cross my arms, trying to figure this out. Couples never come across logistical logjams like this in the movies; people get busy in bathtubs and up against walls and all sorts of weird places. There has to be a solution to this.
“I could lie down, sideways,” he offers helpfully. “I could put my legs up on this wall.”
“Your head will be all scrunched up against this one,” I point. “This thing makes airplane bathrooms feel palatial.”
I’m about to let loose a heavy sigh and declare that we should forget it and go home, when something hits me. Maybe it’s an arrow from that chonky little baby with the wings, who knows, but all of a sudden I feel reckless and wild, like a college girl on her first spring break.
“Fuck it,” I declare, and sink down to my knees. “I’m going to suck your cock, I don’t care if anyone sees our feet.”
“We could get arrest—“
“Shut up,” I say, tugging at his belt and yanking down the zipper of his jeans. His cock is semi-hard and lolls around in my hand as I set him free. “There’s my fella.”
“I was really hard a minute ago,” he says, and I know he thinks I’ll take his near-flaccid state as an indication of his excitement for me.
I won’t. I know his cock like the back of my hand, I’ve seen it in all its states, sizes, shapes and levels of hardness. I’ve seen it hiding up within his body like a scared mushroom and I’ve seen it so hard it could cut diamonds. I can work with this.
“We’ll just get you nice and hard again then, won’t we?” I say, putting on my sultriest voice. I lean forward and take his cock in my mouth and suck luxuriantly on the head. His cock twitches and he gasps, and within seconds I can feel him hardening in my mouth.
I work my way down his shaft before working my way back up to lavish his head with my tongue. I smile up at him, really hoping I don’t have anything in my teeth. From the way he’s looking down at me, with that pinched look of almost-pain, I don’t think he’d care right now if I did.
“Mmmm, what a gorgeous cock,” I murmur, swirling my tongue around the crest of his head, stopping to give some extra attention to his sweet spot, right in the middle, on the underside. He lets out a moan.
“Shhh!” I hiss. Sexily. I hiss it sexily.
He covers his mouth with his hand and nods, and so I get back to work, devouring his cock and working my tongue around him even as I suck. I know what he likes. This is one benefit of a long term relationship — you get to know exactly which buttons your partner has, and where, and how he likes them to be pushed.
“That’s it, baby,” I whisper, running my tongue sloppily all over his head. I dip my tongue into the little hole and he whimpers, and so I do it again, and again, like I’m fucking it with my tongue. Where did I learn how to do this? Damned if I know. I’m just glad he likes it.
I could drag this out, I could work my way down to his balls and flatten out my tongue to lick them, but you know, tick tock as they say. We really could get arrested.
So I bring out the heavy artillery. I bust open my coat, pull up my sweater and withdraw both boobs from the confines of my decidedly un-sexy cotton bra. At least my boobs are fairly big, and so they plump out nicely, perched on the underwire of each cup. He loves when I do this. He loves looking at my boobs while I’m sucking on him, I know it’ll make him cum that much faster.
“You want to cum for me, baby?” I tease him, stroking him faster and faster with my hand so that my breasts jiggle. “I want to swallow all your cum. You got a big load for me?”
He is making incoherent sounds at this point. If this were a movie, the subtitles would read year rrrghgh hghhaaah hhunnnffff, which I take to mean yes. So I take his head in my mouth and begin to suck on it while still pumping him up and down, faster and faster, my grip stronger and tighter.
There’s a rhythm to this, and once you find it, it’s like your hand and your mouth just know how to suck and pump, lick and squeeze, suck, pump, suck, pump, squeeze…and as I’m getting into the piston action, as drool starts to spill out of the corners of my mouth, I suddenly feel like a goddess, utterly possessed by some sex demon who makes me forget how ridiculous I must look doing this. In this moment, I just want him to cum. I want that pleasure to build and build and rise to a crescendo until he’s exploding in my mouth.
“Cum for me baby,” I say, barely intelligible around his cock. “That’s it baby, give me all that cum. I want to drain you. I want to suck you dry. Cum for me…”
And as I speed up, sucking him deeper and faster, meeting the thrusts of his hips, I feel his whole body begin to tense and I know he’s going to climax. His hips are moving like they’ve got a mind of their own. He looks down at his cock pumping in and out of my mouth, and there’s a kind of helpless expression his face, like he can’t quite compute what’s going on below his waist, but he’s going to go with it.
He starts to moan and claps his hand over his mouth to try to keep the sound in. He just ends up snuffling out his breath around his fingers, his groans and grunts breaking his voice like he’s going through puberty again, and with a tremendous thrust he goes over the edge. I feel his cock surge and buck in my mouth as he empties himself into me, pulse after pulse of cum shooting safely into my mouth so as not to stain the polyester negligee someone left in here earlier.
Like a pro – or like a wife who’s learned to play her man like an instrument – I keep sucking as he cums, and with each swallow I know the pleasure is intensifying in him, making his orgasm that much more powerful. When he’s finally spent he collapses against the back wall and slides down so he lands on the bench thingy, his legs splayed out – I said he could manage that position, if only he’d listen to me once in a while.
He’s gasping and trying to catch his breath, and his cock throbs along with the beat of his heart. His poor cock. It wasn’t prepared for such a workout. I hope it’s going to be okay.
I knee-walk towards him and kiss him, tenderly, sweetly, and smile at his goggle-eyed recovery. I help him to his feet and tuck his cock back into his briefs, and then his shirt back into his jeans. I ease open the door to the change room and slide out, surreptitiously, like I’m Jason Bourne or something. The coast is clear, so I give him the military signal to follow me. He staggers forward. He’s pretty much just a brain stem at this point, and that’s okay.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, honey,” I say. “I really suck, don’t I?”
“You really fucking do.”
So I embrace it now. I suck at Valentine’s Day. I used to think that was a failing, but now I’m more enlightened, and I realize that sucking at Valentine’s Day – or rather, on it – is way more romantic than dead fucking roses and candy. There, I said it.
