Trapper and Emmeline (14 page)

Her legs continued to open, and final y revealed her pussy. Some of the watching men gave strangled exclamations.

They didn’t want to wake her but they were unable to restrain themselves. Her trim set of lower lips peeled open as her legs parted, and we saw the glint of moisture in the pink that was exposed. Her clit was visibly hard, like she was somehow excited in her sleep.

“Hey Emmeline—oh,
wow!”

We jumped if the chairs were wired. The scramble for normalcy was ludicrous. Forgotten books were located and picked up, computers were wakened from sleep, pretend reading resumed.

The new voice belonged to Emmeline’s friend from math class. The one who had no problem grabbing her legs. He also had no problem talking ful voice in the hushed, intent atmosphere of the study lounge. He stared at her as she stirred from her sleep.

Emmeline was deeply flushed. She tried to act casual even though she was gulping air and glowing with arousal.
How
close had she been?
I wondered.
How close to orgasm without any physical stimulation at all?
The only stimulation she truly had was the knowledge that over a dozen pairs of eyes were fixated on her, learning her in minute detail.

“Hi, Thomas,” she said with a tight voice. “Bend closer, handsome.”

She put her hand behind his head and pul ed him down to her lips.

We watched in awestruck, breathless silence.

Her nipples were achingly hard, and her pussy lips spread even wider as she sat up slightly to kiss him.

She seemed unaware of her clothing problems. As part of the same bubble of consensus, none of the surrounding men, nor even her friend Thomas, affected to notice that she was nearly naked.

When a pretty woman is having a wardrobe malfunction, an
oops moment,
the last thing you want to do is detectably notice it. For one, if the woman remains oblivious, the scene might last longer. For another thing, no man wants to be the nebbish who says, “Um, sorry, but you have something showing, and it’s making me nervous.”

The only man obviously staring was me—and I was lost in thought about a new adventure we could try. We would set her up on this very couch with one of her study partners from class. Emmeline and the random boy would cuddle, then kiss

—and then seduce into a completely inappropriate public display of affection. She would be lost to passion and indifferent to how her clothes slid around her body—even
off
her body. He would be self-conscious, sensitive to the double takes of passers-by and embarrassed when people paused to stare. But at the same time he would be spel bound, and unwil ing to forego this golden chance at Emmeline. His neurons would be firing hot, so deep in the libido range that he wouldn’t be able to think anything but “fuck it, I don’t care if I’m arrested, I’m riding this train as far as it goes.” She would be sexy, compel ing, and dazzling—and he would be enchanted, anesthetized, and swept away. He would have no natural defenses against her. He would share no responsibility for the shameful things she made him do on that love seat.

I was turned on just thinking about it, a cocktail of ambition, pride, and jealousy pulsing through my body. I’d share it with Emmeline as soon as I could, and we would add it to our pil ow talk. That was how al our sordid ideas developed into real plans. There was always an element of confusion as we forgot what was planned, and what was just fantasized about.

A few days later, that confusion threatened to destroy our relationship entirely.

Thomas made smal talk as Emmeline rubbed her eyes, stretched, fluffed her hair, and gave every other signal she was waking up. Only when Thomas noticed that some of her stealthy audience had cel phones out, and that they were holding them with elaborate unconcern—but always pointed directly at her—did he final y man up. He couldn’t very wel let this poor girl get videoed, could he?

He leaned down to whisper in her ear.

Emmeline mistook his intention and met him with another kiss.

“Um, no, I mean—” He didn’t get too far. Emmeline interrupted him with yet one more kiss, this one a little hungry.

She said, “Mmmm! What’s that taste on your lips?”

He let himself be distracted. “Chapstick.”

“Sorry, one more.” She kissed him yet again. She giggled as if this were an innocent flirt, and not something that would haunt his fantasy life for the next twenty years. “Can I have some too? Can you put it on me?”

“Put it on you?”

“Yes. You see, my fingers are asleep and I can’t do it myself.” She batted her eyes at him and held up a limp hand.

“Okay, okay-okay-okay, yup! Yup. Yup-yup-yup.”

For a moment I thought he had dropped into some kind of autistic safe-zone, but then he dug in his jeans for the tube of chapstick.

She tilted her head back and opened her mouth for him. To give him better access, she folder her arms behind her back. It thrust her head higher, but also her chest. Her breath came in long, deep rushes, as if she had just run a 5k.

The blouse slid down to her rib cage, and she stil didn’t notice her breasts out in the open air. One of the dangers of wearing a light silk blouse, she told me later, is that you eventual y stop feeling anything. You don’t know if you’re showing, you have to trust static cling. Emmeline had thought she was merely giving a peek here and there. When she saw my video, she col apsed into a chair with something between horror and amusement. (Because yes, by this point I had my iPhone permanently set on video whenever she was around.)

She also wasn’t sure what her skirt was doing. She didn’t want to visual y check, because then she would have to say,

“oops!” and cover up. The skirt was so tiny she never felt it, and had stopped thinking about it moment-to-moment. But she didn’t want to come off too prim and proper, as she put it. So she continued to ease her legs apart, in minute distances, as arousal increased her bravery, and the bravery increased her arousal.

Thomas stroked the chapstick along her lips. He worked with undeflectable, serious attention, like a surgeon operating on a wounded nun.

Any one of us watchers would have done the same. We were dying. Emmeline stared into Thomas’s eyes as he worked on her mouth. Her tongue darting out to check his work, to incidental y touch his finger when it brushed her chin.

We were completely drawn in. Our eyes were giant col ectors focused narrowly on her. We noted everything: her breath on his hand, her chest rising and dropping, and her eyes staring into his.

For Emmeline’s later benefit, I panned my iPhone across the audience. They sat with books, iPads, or hands in their laps. Their legs were crossed. They hugged their backpacks. Not a crotch was in sight, except Emmeline’s. My gorgeous girlfriend was a cock tease, generating erections in everyone around her like airborne Viagra.

Yet, somehow she maintained al the little fictions of the scene. Somehow she was stil the innocent tease. Even though her tits were out and her split, wet pussy was in open view, she stil seemed guiltless and unimpeachable.

Emmeline was a fresh-faced, wholesome,
good-natured
girl who was comprehensively unaware of her affect on us.

Anything more was
our
fault, the fault of we squalid men and our deplorable lusts. We were the ones projecting our shameful desires onto her. If only one of us had the nobility and courage to inform her about the problems with her clothing, she could fix the clothes, preserve her virtue, and go back to studying. And when that happened, her grotesque audience of self-stimulating, lustful perverts would safely disperse.

—But it didn’t happen, because she had us wal ed us. She had locked us down by not noticing our attention, and not noticing her nakedness. Everything was frozen and magical because she stil hadn’t noticed anything amiss. I’ve only seen a few other women with this level of mastery of the libido unreality field, and they were al expert teases. Stage actresses, indie singers. Like magicians, you could never be sure what was real and what was pretend.

Thomas finished outlining her mouth, and watched from four inches away as she rol ed her lips and licked them. He stared at her with hopeless longing, from a mystical y isolated, super-max solitary-confinement boy-in-the-bubble level of friend-zone.

“You’re good at that,” she told him. “You should do make-up for women, Thomas.”

“I wil ,” he said reverently. And sure enough, a semester later we learned he had enrol ed in a theater make-up class.

“Is there something else?” she said, when he didn’t pul away from her.

“Wel , you’re showing your tits. I thought you should know.”

“What?” She glanced down, and gave a loud, embarrassed squeal. “Why didn’t you tel me?”

She sat up and spun around, her legs landing on the floor—stil open. She stared down at herself in mortification.

“I’m completely uncovered, Thomas!”

She glanced up and seemingly perceived, as if for the first time, the dense pack of males surrounding her. In turn, they pretended to notice her right back, their heads turning in manifest synchronicity toward her in “reaction” to her humiliated cries.

She saw me laughing at the back of the crowd. A grin plucked at the side of her newly-glossed lips.

“I fel asleep with my clothes ostensibly off!” she cried. She choked on a peal of laughter, trying to make it into a horrified sob. “Mostly off. Like fal ing off! Sliding! You get the idea!”

“Emmeline, I’m sorry. I tried to tel you.”

“Wel , you didn’t do a very good job, Thomas,” she said crossly. “A girl needs to know when she’s naked, or she might get embarrassed. You don’t distract them with
chapstick.
”

“I’m so total y sorry.”

“What am I going to do now, Thomas?”

He came to the side of the loveseat and squatted next to her with his hand patting her arm. “You should pul your shirt up.”

“Oh!” She realized anew that she was stil uncovered. She tremblingly and ineffectual y pul ed the straps back up her shoulders, as if this were her first time dressing and she found it emotional y overwhelming. “Is this good?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. “You’re doing wel . Now the legs.”

She scooted her skirt down her thighs, which required a lot of twisting and bouncing. Of course the skirt was so short that it stil disclosed a triangle-shaped view where her legs came together, but at least her sex was safe between her clenched thighs.

She glared at us.

“If you boys saw anything, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

The gathered men stirred uncomfortably. Several made a show of turning a page or typing on their notebooks.

“I don’t wear panties because my skin reacts to detergent.” She continued. “You guys were exploiting someone with a disability!”

I final y burst out laughing.

Emmeline’s face skewed until she couldn’t contain her own laughter either.

“Kidding!” She stood and stretched. “I think I win the library today. Next time, though, someone tel me I’m showing. It’s the polite thing to do.”

They didn’t answer, though a few men nodded as if they took her advice to heart. By addressing us directly, she gave us implicit permission to stare at her as she gathered her book and bags. She bent this way and that, her shirt gaping open and her skirt sliding up.

“Thomas, wil you walk me do the research desk?” she asked. She took his hand and wrapped it around her waist. “I feel shaky. And delicate. And a little wet.”

She cast a smug glance over her shoulder at us, and left the lounge. Soon we were sitting in concentric circles around an empty loveseat.

Emmeline and Thomas arrived at the research desk, which was easily visible across the hal through a floor-to-ceiling glass divider. Emmeline gave Thomas a few thank-you kisses, then a let’s-talk-soon kiss, and then a good-bye kiss.

If Thomas had reacted with anything but befuddlement, we could have counted it as her first make-out session with a stranger. It lasted five minutes, with chatting, fluttering eyelids, and laughs interspersed with the kisses. Thomas never caught up. He never found his footing, and he never kissed back. Anybody seeing them would have thought it was a pretty girl enjoying a moment with her brain-damaged boyfriend.

Another young female student, pretty in a harried, overstressed way, strol ed through and saw the empty chair. She sat and pul ed out a book.

Then she glanced up.

Perhaps eighteen faces stared back at her, each of them configured for maximum innocence. She glanced left and right. We were al oriented toward her loveseat.

“I had a dream like this.” She stood up and bolted from the room.

Later that evening, as we lay in bed recapping the day, I felt obscurely guilty. Al day long I had been I had been thinking about myself. Emmeline was
my
secret girlfriend. I
gave
her instructions. If only
I
had a microphone in her ear. To cap things off, I told her I wanted to upload her video to a website. Any amateur porn site would do.