"Why aren't you here?" he typed.

She looked at the screen for a second with raised eyebrows.
Subtlety was lost over online conversations. "You didn't ask
me."

"I shouldn't have to ask."

"Don't be a fucking idiot."

"Pardon?"

Susannah was getting tired of this game. She hated the
passive-aggressive approach that Matt always took. She hated
always having to be the one who went to him; who kissed him
first; who pulled him off the couch and into the bedroom. It
wasn't that she didn't like being in control - occasionally
- it was just that every once in a while she wanted to be
pushed up against the wall, an insistent mouth on hers and a
hand roughly hiking up her skirt.

It had been a long time since she had simply been taken.

There are advantages to casual-sex relationships. It's a way
to assuage loneliness, or horniness, and it can sometimes be
a relief to be free to touch a friend in any way that you
want. However, the iron-clad rule of fuck-friendship is that
you only take a fuck-friend if they are so damn good at
giving you what you want that you don't care that there's
nothing else in the relationship.

Matthew, on that count, was falling short.

They had both been drunk the first couple of times they had
slept together. Sexual tension had been building in their
friendship for a long time, but neither had been ready to
act on it. Getting drunk was an excuse to not think too much
about what they were doing. They had spent a great deal of
time talking about it afterwards, honestly and openly, and
had decided, in a fairly clearheaded manner, that sex could
be a part of their friendship. Neither wanted more - well,
at the beginning, Susannah had wanted more, but pride kept
her from saying anything.

Now, with Matt angling transparently for her to come over
and seduce him, Susannah was quite certain that it was time
to find something - someone - else to distract her.

She went offline without saying good-by and got dressed. It
was 3:30 in the afternoon. In honour of National
Masturbation Month, which will never be officially
recognized by the government, she and Matt had taken the day
off to stay at home, separately, and read erotica. One of
the requirements of "taking a day off to stay home and read
erotica" is that you do it naked - and Susannah had
complied, sprawling on her living-room floor with her copy
of Susie Bright's "America's Best". She left the shades up,
in the hope that someone else might walk by, peer in, and be
inspired to go celebrate National Masturbation Month as
well. As a courtesy, she had kept her eyes away from the
windows, so that fellow would-be wankers walking by wouldn't
be embarrassed.

It was a cold day for May, and Susannah, upon leaving Matt
high and dry, decided that it was necessary for her to wear
the most complicated, severe outfit she owned. It had been
an investment in her sex life during the time when there
wasn't a whiny Matt-figure lurking in the corners. Recently,
the merry-widow-and-black-stocking-ensemble had been
relegated to the corner of her closet. It took fully three
minutes to do up all the snaps and ribbons. Her small joke
to herself was to wear an all-black corporate Calvin
Klein-esque cat suit over top - a minimal, straight-lined
affair that denied any possibility of sexy underwear
underneath. Thus attired, flat-shoed, her hair in a
waterfall of sensible straight brown down her back, she
walked out of the house and drove to the public library.

One of the most fabulous things about large city libraries
is that there is always a section on the top or
second-from-the-top floor where the aisles are far too
narrow and the lights are fickle and sullen. The librarians
don't bother spending a lot - or any - of their time there.
It's always a good idea to make some noise when approaching
these sections (that is, if you're really interested in
looking for a book) - otherwise, you will probably disturb
research into academic sexual practices.

Susannah had no intention of making noise.

In this particular library, the rendezvous-appropriate
section, on the 12th floor, was made up of bookshelves
devoted to the study of highway construction. Most of the
books were thirty years out of date, but no one had bothered
to replace them because highways are no longer thought of as
works of art. Susannah had secreted a small number of more
titillating reading material in the back row, and she
bee-lined for it, smiling at the bespeckled boy sitting in
front of the elevator.

The elevator was empty by the time she reached the top
floor. Undoing the top three buttons of her shirt and
slipping off her shoes, she padded quietly to the back of
the silent room, crept between two of the shelves and
settling cross-legged against the wall. She pulled out a
dogged-eared copy of Anais Nin, intending to wait the
requisite ten minutes or so until something happened.

Instead, a piece of paper fell out of the book.

Tell me how you want to be kissed.

"How I what?" Susannah echoed, incredulous.

Tell me how you want to be kissed. Tell me how to bite your
lips, how to suck on your tongue. Tell me where your neck is
most tender and where my fingers, on your collarbone, will
make your breath catch.

Her breath had already caught. She turned the paper over.
There was nothing on the back, nothing else written on the
front. The writing was precise and neat, the ink thick. The
words slanted deeply to the right. Susannah realized she was
holding her breath and let it out. Her heart was pounding.
Carefully, she lowered her head and peered under the edge of
the shelf in all directions. There was no one else in the
room.

Tell me how you want to be kissed.

Susannah settled back down against the wall. "How I want to
be kissed..." she murmured.

I don't want you to ask, she wrote back. Pull me up, hold me
hard against the wall and kiss me without asking how. Move
your hands first. Don't let me give you instructions. Don't
let me say no.

She tucked the note back into the book and walked quickly
back to the elevators and out of the library.

The next day was Saturday. Matt hadn't called - either he
was sulking about being hung-up on the day before or he was
in someone else's bed. Susannah didn't care. She showered
quickly, dressed quickly. Because the merry widow was the
only satisfyingly sexy outfit in her closet, she opted to go
underwear free, a decision which meant an extra five minutes
in the bath shaving carefully.

She was too nervous to smile at the elevator patrol-boy on
the way up.

The bottom two floors of the library were hectic, but,
again, by the time she reached the 12th floor the elevator
was empty. When she stepped out into the stacks, the silence
seemed thick and musty and ominous. It took a moment for her
to pull off her heels. By the time she had walked to her
corner, it seemed that the room was deserted. She couldn't
help but feel a twinge of regret.

But the Anais Nin book was gone.

"Damn!" she swore softly. And suddenly, she realized that
someone was standing behind her.

"Are you looking for this?" and a hand held the book out to
her.

"Yes." She started to straighten and the lights cut out. The
book fell and hit the floor. Susannah's heart was racing.
Fingers wrapped around her waist and pulled her up, pushed
her back to the wall. A hand grabbed her wrists and pulled
them high above her head. "No instructions" the man
whispered, and his breath was hot against her ear. Fingers
began tracing their way over her jawbone, down her neck. Her
earlobe was caught between a pair of teeth. She moaned.

"And no noise either." His voice was cinnamon-deep. A tongue
began to move across up and down the edge of her ear. The
hand had moved down her side, skipped her breasts, glided
over her hips. It moved back up slowly, moved under the edge
of her shirt, began tracing figure eights on her stomach.
Fingers whispered across her hips and Susannah whimpered.

"I said no noise."

"I'm sorry." Her breathing was ragged.

The man leaned his body against hers, pushing her tight
against the wall.

"Do I have to keep you quiet?"

"I," she reminded him, a little shakily, "told you not to
ask for instructions."

A mouth was lowered to hers. A tongue reached out and darted
around the shape of her lips and flicked into the corners.
He bit her lower lip between his teeth. He let go of her
wrists in order to use both hands to pull her hips tighter
against his.

One part of Susannah's mind registered the fact that this
was a dumb idea, an entirely dumb idea - that she shouldn't
have come to the library; that this man could be a murderer,
could have a million diseases; that the only person she'd
ever indulged in casual sex with was Matt and she preferred
stable relationships.

She started to pull away.

"And I'm not going to let you say no." he said.

Her hands were pulled up again. He backed away from her a
little and pulled off his belt.

"Oh God." Susannah whispered.

He used the belt to tie her wrists together. There was a
hook on the wall where a cable had once run and he secured
the loop of the belt against it.

"Do you normally rape women in libraries?" she asked,
thinking she should be a little angry.

"Is this rape?" He was smiling. He leaned in to kiss her
again. The kiss wasn't gentle.

Susannah felt herself flush, felt her body tense and coil
and her cunt throb. His hands were moving up and down her
belly, sliding a little higher each time. He finally reached
the bottom curve of her breasts, and his fingers stayed
there a long time, stroking the soft skin with the pads of
his fingers, with his nails, pulling his palm up over the
skin and purposely missing her nipples. Her arms ached as
she arched her back.

"Please..." she whispered.

"Shut up." The hands left her body and the shock of them
leaving was painful. She was kissed once more, quickly,
before a piece of cloth was pushed into her mouth, and
another piece tied across it and around her head. Her shirt
was unbuttoned and pulled off. The hands fell on her
breasts, on her nipples, the mouth moved against her neck,
bit its way down to her breasts. A tongue snaked around the
tips of her breasts, flicked them hard. Teeth scraped over
the nipple. Hands tugged off her skirt.

"I," he purred, moving back up to her ear, "am going to take
you. I am going to lift you onto me and push into you hard
until you can't help but move against me. I'm going to use
my fingers on you at the same time and you will be sucked
into your body. Nothing else will matter. You won't be able
to scream, or moan, or gasp."

And he did. Susannah felt herself lifted. She braced herself
on tiptoe as his cock hovered at her lips, pulled back,
hovered, pulled back. She tried to push herself down onto
him, but he anticipated her and moved down with her, out of
her reach. He put one of his fingers into her mouth and then
down to her clit, moving it with the skill of someone who
knows what they are touching, knows how it moves and lives
and how to stroke it carefully, quickly, lightly, until the
world narrows to that one small space - until that one small
part of the body expands to become the universe, becomes
large enough to live in. He pushed into her and Susannah
felt the shock of being filled by something a little too
large. He moved in her and continued to flick her clit and
she did feel herself sucked into her body, out of her mind,
out of any possible mental space that had room for her to
analyze what was happening.

And then the world started to tunnel and she couldn't think,
couldn't breathe, her hips moving of their own accord, her
hands pulled too tight above her head, his mouth on her
breasts, his hands riding with her as she condensed and
condensed and condensed until something imploded and her
body registered the shock-waves.

And he too was moaning against her and grinding hard into
her and Susannah realized that he must have put on a condom
because she didn't feel the bitter hot spurt of semen and in
a moment of clarity was thankful that it wasn't quite as
reckless a situation as it could have been.

The world rushed back into place and she realized that her
wrists were hurting fiercely from the leather belt. He was
still crushing her against the wall, his breathing slowing.
She realized that he hadn't bothered to take off his shirt,
and that his pants were simply pulled down far enough to
give him room to move.

The man pulled out of her, adjusted his clothes, unhooked
her hands, leaving them tied, and disappeared. Susannah
collapsed. The lights were still out. Alone in the dark, she
struggled to get her hands out of the belt, then pulled off
the gag and stepped back into her clothes. She replaced the
book on the shelf, grabbed her shoes, and felt her way
through the dark to the elevator. On her way down, she
looked at her watch.

She'd only been on the top floor for fifteen minutes.

The elevator boy looked at her curiously when she stepped
out.

"You're not finding what you're looking for?" he asked.

Susannah grinned. "Oh, I found it. Thanks for asking." She
walked out into the late afternoon sun and the world was
suddenly worth dancing down the sidewalk for, underwear-less
and deliciously sore.