He Calls It Love, She Sees It as Home novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Kitchen Table

Jack gives Iris her first kiss and her first orgasm against the kitchen counter, and when she asks if it is like this for everyone, he lies.

Nothing else happened that night.

I lifted her off my desk, told her to go to bed, and stood in the hall until I heard her door close.

Then I sat in the dark with the key against my chest and my hand over my mouth.

The next evening she cooked.

She hummed over the stove, a tune from the one radio station we got, and she moved around my kitchen without looking where anything was.

She had braided her hair tighter than usual and put on the blue shirt that buttoned down the front.

I watched her from the table and pretended to read the vet report.

"You're staring," she said without turning around.

"I am."

"Is that part of lesson one?"

"Lesson one is a kiss."

The spoon stopped.

She turned the burner down to low, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and walked to me.

"Where?"

"Here."

I pushed back my chair and pulled her down onto my knee.

She sat sideways across my thighs, one arm around my neck, and she was warm all the way through the cotton.

"I don't know how," she said.

"You don't have to know how. Just open your mouth a little and follow me."

I kissed her.

It was slow at first, my mouth against hers, my hand at the back of her head holding the braid.

She went stiff and then soft, and then she made a small sound in her throat that went straight down my spine.

I licked at her lip and she opened.

Her tongue touched mine, shy, and she pulled back an inch.

"Oh," she said.

"Again."

She kissed me again and she learned fast.

She learned the angle, and the pressure, and how to breathe through her nose, and when she got it right I said, "Good girl."

She shuddered all over.

"Say that again."

"Good girl."

Her fingers dug into my shoulder.

"Why does that feel like that?"

"Because you like being told you're doing it right."

"I do."

"I know you do."

I had taught her to figure interest and to drive a tractor, and I had watched her light up every time I said she'd done it well.

I had always known exactly what it did to her.

Now I used it.

I opened the top button of the blue shirt, and the second, and the third.

She wore a plain white cotton bra from the catalog, the kind that was meant to be sensible.

Her breasts were full and heavy, and they strained against it.

"Can I?" I said.

"Yes."

"Say what you're letting me do."

She looked at me with her lips wet and swollen.

"You can look at me. You can touch me."

"Where?"

"My breasts."

"Good girl."

I pulled down the cups.

She sat in my lap with her shirt open and her bra pushed under her breasts.

Her skin was tanned to the collar and pale below it, and her nipples were small, pink and already tight.

I brushed my thumb over one.

She gasped and her whole back arched toward me.

"Jack."

"I know."

I took it in my mouth.

She cried out, and her hand went into my hair and held me there, and I sucked and flicked it with my tongue until her heels drummed against the chair leg.

I did the other one.

She was breathing in short pushes.

"I feel it everywhere," she said. "I feel it between my legs."

"That's where it goes."

"Does it go somewhere?"

"I'll show you."

I stood with her in my arms and set her on the edge of the counter by the stove.

The soup bubbled behind her.

She sat there with her shirt open and her legs hanging, looking at me, and I put my hands on the buttons of her jeans.

"Lift."

She lifted her hips, and I pulled the jeans down to her knees, and then I didn't take them off.

I wanted her to feel how exposed she was.

Her underwear was white cotton and damp through the middle.

I put my palm flat over it, hard, and she jumped.

"Oh God."

"Look at me."

She looked.

"That's wet because of me."

"Yes."

"Then you tell me when it's too much, or when it's not enough."

I rubbed with the heel of my hand and found the place with two fingers through the cotton, and I pressed in small circles.

She stared at me with her mouth open.

Her thighs began to shake.

"It's not enough," she said. "Jack, it's not enough. Please."

"Please what?"

"Please do it harder."

I did.

I slid my free hand under her and held her hips against the counter and rubbed her fast, and her head dropped back against the cupboard.

She said my name again and again.

She said please.

Then her breath stopped, and her whole body went tight, and she came with a long, broken cry that I felt through my palm.

I kept my hand where it was until she stopped shaking.

She lifted her head slowly.

Her eyes were wet, and she was smiling.

"That's what it is," she said. "That's what they wrote about."

"Yes."

"I didn't know it would feel like being known."

I had no answer to that, so I kissed her.

She tasted like the tea she had made, and she kissed me back hard, already sure of herself.

When I let her go, she looked down at the front of my jeans and then at me.

"You're hard," she said.

"Yes."

"Is that because of me?"

"It's always because of you."

I hadn't meant to say that.

She put her hand on my chest, over the key.

"Will you teach me about that, too?"

"Not tonight."

I buttoned her shirt myself, one button at a time, and she let me.

The soup had boiled down to half.

We ate it standing at the counter, knee to knee, and she told me about a book she wanted me to find her.

Halfway through the bowl, she looked up and asked, "Is it like this for everyone?"

"What?"

"For other people. Does everybody get to feel this?"

The honest answer was that most people felt it with whoever was handy.

I wanted her to think it lived only here, at this table, with me.

"No," I said. "Only with the right person."

It was another lie, and I let it stand.

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