GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Isabelle Nathan

You never know what’s going to happen when you go out with Molly. She likes to be in charge, to set a mood and carry it through. So on Saturday night, when my best friend called and said to meet her at her apartment, I agreed without question. When Molly makes decisive statements, I rarely argue. It’s how she’s gotten me into the strip clubs out near the airport, specifically to the one geared to lesbians. It’s how I once ended up doing tequila body shots with three very attractive strangers: knocking back the liquor, licking the salt off warm skin and sucking the lime out of one new acquaintance’s peony-lipsticked mouth. And it’s how our picture appeared on the cover of a weekly paper for a piece about lesbians who were hip before certain celebrities made it hip to be a lesbian.

But I had no idea what was on Molly’s mind this evening. All she’d said when I arrived was this: “You won’t believe what I have in store for you tonight.” And now she seemed secretive and pleased with herself, which made me unbelievably nervous. I’m a shy sort of girl, myself. Shy, with a dirty mind. Was Molly going to make us enter a wet T-shirt contest? Or buy us red-eye tickets to Vegas? What was her plan? I stood in her bathroom, looking at my reflection, wondering whether I’d have the stamina to keep up with her tonight.

“What are you thinking?” Molly called from the bedroom. I turned to look over my shoulder at her. She was sprawled on her back on the bed, doing her best to zip herself into a pair of unbelievably tight jeans.

“Why don’t you put on something comfortable?”

“These are comfortable, once I get them on,” Molly groaned, “and that’s not what you’re thinking is it? That I should dress in a sack? If it is, I want you to lie to me and make something up.”

“I was actually thinking that I look washed out,” I announced, not willing to tell her my real worries about what her secret plans were.

“All you need is some sexy lipstick.” I watched as Molly inhaled deeply, got the zipper the rest of the way up, then stood and admired herself in the mirror across from the bed. Her ample ass looked divine in the denim. She grinned at me in the mirror as she gave herself a few light pats on the rear and then turned to poke through her jewelry box on the dresser. “You know where it is, Sidra. Top drawer on the left.”

I pulled out the drawer to inspect Molly’s collection, or, really, the evidence of her obsession. There were at least fifty tubes inside the drawer, all stacked neatly with their labels facing toward me. I didn’t know where to start.

“Grab the one in the cobalt-blue case.” I fumbled around until I found it. Of course, Molly had chosen a darker color for me than l normally would have, but when I put it on I discovered I liked the hue, getting into the look of myself staining my lips a deep ruby hue. I felt Molly approaching, and I turned to look at her for approval. She stood in the doorway, staring at me. “Is it too dark?” I asked.

“Did you know that women in ancient Egypt wore blue-black lipstick? I mean, like 6,000 years BC.”

“How do you come up with facts like that?”

Molly shrugged. Her shoulder-duster earrings swung back and forth. “I don’t know. Lipstick trivia interests me. The Egyptian women would think you look too pale; you think you look too dark. Call it a draw, and let’s go.”

She took a step toward me, dug her fingers through my hair and then pressed her lips firmly against mine. I leaned back against the porcelain sink, startled, my heart racing. She smelled of sandalwood and talcum powder. Her hair tickled my cheeks and I thought of putting my hands around her and pulling her even closer to me, of opening my lips to meet her tongue with mine, of sliding my lips down to the hollow of her neck and licking her there, biting her. Before I could do any of these things, Molly quickly backed away from me, slid her lips together and glanced at herself in the mirror. “We’ll both wear the same color,” she said, and then registering my surprise, added, “Can you think of a sweeter way to put on lipstick than kissing it from a friend?”

I just shrugged. Molly’s best feature is her ability to surprise. She is known for being daring. It’s why her shyer friends, myself included, are pulled to her. And I wondered, excitement building inside me, what Molly would find for us to do tonight. As she reached for her purse, I noticed the pair of handcuffs hanging casually from the strap, but I thought it best to ignore them. Sometimes, all Molly needs is an opening to change the entire course of an evening.

Still, once she’d kissed me, couldn’t I have guessed where she was headed? Was I that dense? I don’t know why I couldn’t have figured out her plans, but I didn’t.

“Molly—” I started, uncertainly. I like to be prepared. It is one of my main quirks. I always need to know what’s going to happen. This odd character flaw explains why I quiz friends about movie plots before heading to the cinema, why I can’t make it through a mystery without flipping to the back of the book and reading the ending. Now, I had nothing, no inkling as to what was going on in Molly’s X-rated mind.

“On the bed, Sidra.” She tilted her head toward her brass bed, which was covered with a shiny, satin comforter and mounds of multicolored velvet pillows. Then she continued to stalk forward, like a cat, making me walk backward until I bumped into the edge of her mattress and sat down. “Lie on your back with your hands over your head,” she commanded. The sight of those silvery cuffs in Molly’s hands made my pussy throb. I could imagine what the metal would feel like against my skin, what it would be like to have Molly in charge. Doing all the things she wanted to—and all the things I wanted her to do. But I needed her to vocally tell me, to spell it out before I acquiesced.

“What are you doing, Molly?” I whispered. “I mean, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fuck you,” Molly explained, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for one best friend to seduce another. As if I were a little bit slow not to have figured this out for myself.

It had literally been years since Molly and I were an item. I was sort of interested in what it might be like to sleep with her. More than interested; the looks she was giving me were making me hot. I could feel my heart beating, and I focused on that sensation as I stared at what Molly was holding in her hands.

“But why do you need the handcuffs?”

“That’s the twenty-thousand-dollar question,” she said, smiling, “isn’t it?”

As it turned out, Molly didn’t need the handcuffs at all. She wanted them. There’s a big difference in the world of bedroom play. I got the feeling that she would be perfectly adept at making love without toys, but the addition of extra paraphernalia added to her excitement. And this added to mine. Naked and secured to her bed with the cold steel cuffs around my wrists, I waited for her to join me. For those few moments, I wondered whether Molly was going to peel off the pants she had worked so hard to get into. Or would I be the only nude player in this scenario?

For once, I didn’t ask. It felt as if I were in a dream, and I didn’t want to ruin the magic of it. Yes, I like to ruin the endings, but I suddenly thought that maybe this was something I should work harder to change. Perhaps if I let myself go without knowing how a situation would wind up, I would have more fun during the actual experience. So I spent my time staring at Molly, seeing her in a different way than usual. More than my sexy best friend, now my sexy bed partner. But when would she stop staring at me and join me under the sheets?

She took her time, sitting on the edge of the bed and running her long crimson nails up and down the insides of my calves. This odd tickling sensation was entirely unique. I shivered each time her fingertips found virgin territory.

“For years I’ve wanted to…” Molly started, now bending on the edge of the bed to kiss where her fingers had been mere moments before. Oh, I would melt. The feel of her warm, wet tongue on me had me straining against the handcuffs, which I’m sure was exactly what Molly had hoped for.

“Wanted to what?” I managed to whisper.

Molly didn’t move her mouth from my skin when she spoke, which made it difficult for me to understand her answer. I repeated the question, and she removed her lips from me for a second, murmuring, “Wanted to taste you again…Candy.”

Molly has called me that since school when I’d had a thing for cherry lollipops. I’d always sucked one during English comp, and Molly had thought it was a cute habit. Turned it into a nickname. At least, that’s what I’d originally thought. Because, as I said, this wasn’t the first time Molly and I had been bedmates. It was the second.

On our last day of summer before starting college, she had come to my house to say good-bye, a bouquet of red cherry suckers in one of her hands. We’d gone up to the attic together, to an old sofa, and she had unwrapped one of the lollipops and had me suck on it while she’d eaten me out. I’d ended up coating her with my sweet, sticky juices. As I’d climaxed, she’d whispered, “I knew you’d taste like candy between your legs.”

But why had it taken us so many years to try again? Molly explained now as she continued stroking me. “We were never free at the same time. You were with Toni, then Michelle, then Brenna. I was with Simone, then Georgia….”

She’d left out a few names, but I realized that she was right. When one of us was free, the other almost always had a girlfriend. And vice versa. Now, Molly continued her licking games up my body.

“But I can’t wait anymore,” she sighed. “It’s been too long. I really need to have your flavor on my tongue.”

I couldn’t have fought her if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to. I lay back and savored the moment as Molly brought her pouty lips to my delta of Venus, spread my nether lips with her fingers and went to work. Or play. Or whatever you call it when your best friend goes down on you. And oh could she go down. Molly knew all the tricks, the special make-it-last tricks that you only learn after years of cohabitating with women. She pressed the flat of her tongue against my clit, firmly, until I groaned as I felt the first flicker of sexual fire burn through me. Then she left my clit alone completely and made darting circles around it until I arched my hips on the bed, trying to connect more firmly with her mouth.

This was why she had chosen to use the cuffs. They gave me a little room for action, but mostly left her in charge, which was exactly how Molly liked it. I realized once again that she was still dressed, while I was nude, and that made me wetter still. Molly was intent on bringing me pleasure, in the slowest way possible, stretching it out until my whole body seemed to vibrate.

But finally, she seemed to want to feel my skin with her skin. And she stood and stripped, losing her clothes much more quickly than it had taken for her to put them on. Naked save for her long earrings, lying on the bed next to me, her pale skin seemed to glow, like the inside of a seashell. So white that it had a sheen to it. Unlike tanned L.A. starlets, her body seemed purer for the lack of color.

I wished my hands were free so that I could touch her. But Molly didn’t seem to mind, getting her body next to mine, caressing me with her skin. She arched her back, rubbed herself on me, worked in a way that made me think of a panther, stalking along the mattress toward me. As she moved up the bed, I stopped thinking and lost myself in the feel of her, the scent of her, the warmth of her body on mine. But when she moved to the side of the bed to kiss me, I looked down and saw that her cranberry lipstick was smeared along my lower belly. This is what made me come. Lipstick kisses on my skin, prettier than anything I’d ever seen before.

I threw my head back and let the swells of pleasure break over me, burst inside me like the surf pounding against the Santa Monica shore. They shook my body from the inside out, took me away and then gently, slowly brought me back down again. Into Molly’s loving arms.

This evening, for all my fears of what she had in store for us, her plans had involved nothing but her, me and a bed. Nothing else was needed.