Sex where all he has is his hands and his mouth

The towel was still over his shoulder and his hands were wet — I had called him from the kitchen before he finished the dishes. He dried his palms, sat on the edge of the bed and waited. I was lying on top of the bedspread, fresh from the shower, in nothing but a T-shirt, and for a minute I said nothing. He looked at my knees. He always looks at my knees when he waits.

Our Saturdays are simple. In the afternoon he washes the floors and cooks; in the evening I decide whether anything happens, and he hasn’t been allowed to ask since Thursday. That Saturday I decided at dinner, when he set the plate in front of me and the hand holding it wasn’t quite steady. He had been waiting since Thursday. I saw it and took my time.

Then I took his right hand and laid it on my belly, below the navel. That is our signal. We haven’t used words to start for a year now: if the hand is on my belly, he may begin. If I move it away, he gets up and leaves, and he doesn’t ask questions.

He was in his cage, as always. The key was in my jewellery box, and that evening I had no plans to take it out. I wanted what has counted as sex in our house for the past year: his hands, his mouth and nothing else.

Hands

He started at the belly, where his hand lay, and went down slowly with his knuckles. Before the cage, his fingers were a warm-up — two minutes, then on to the main event. Now there is no main event, and in one year his fingers learned more than in the fifteen before it. He doesn’t hurry. He has nowhere to hurry to.

He stroked the inside of my thigh, first one, then the other, and I heard my own breathing before I felt his fingers where they were needed. The skin on his fingertips is dry and rough from water and dishes, and that is part of it too: I would know his hands with my eyes closed.

“Lower. There. Don’t move.”

He froze where I told him and held still until I began to move under his hand myself. He listens for where I breathe in and stays on that spot. Sometimes I catch myself forgetting it’s him: just hands that know what to do. I closed my eyes, and the first one came fast, from his fingers, loud. I stopped holding back long ago.

He didn’t take his hand away. He never does first.

Tongue

I took him by the hair at the back of his head and pulled him down. He lay between my legs on his stomach, and I heard the steel knock against the wooden bed frame. Quietly, once. He shifted and there was no more sound, but I knew that down there, between him and the mattress, the cage was tight, and it wasn’t going to get any easier for him in a minute or in an hour.

He works with his tongue the way he polishes my shoes: skipping nothing, never asking if it’s good. I steered him by the hair — closer, then slower, then more. The second one was longer than the first, because I was already open, and because at the end I pressed his face into me and held it there until it let go of me. Against my thigh I could feel the ring of the cage, warm from his body. It is a strange thing, to come and feel his lock at the same time. As if what he is not allowed were part of what was happening to me.

He lifted his head, his lips wet, and looked at my hand. Waiting to see whether I would take it off my belly or not.

The third

There isn’t always a third. A year ago I thought that without him inside me I would miss something, and I invented the third one as a test: if I want it, then nothing is missing. Since then I have wanted it almost every Saturday.

I put his hand back on my belly. He understood and didn’t smile — he doesn’t smile at these moments; his face goes concentrated, like a man trusted with delicate work. Two fingers inside, slowly, almost without moving. Lips on my knee. He kissed the knee and kept his fingers still, and I moved myself, as much as I wanted.

I watched him then. He was breathing through his mouth, fast. His shoulders were damp. He had taken his T-shirt off at the start, at my nod; the trousers stayed on: the cage was under them, and that evening I hadn’t allowed him to look at it. He knew I wouldn’t, and he didn’t look down. He was standing at the edge of everything he has and had a right to none of it — not to rub against the bedspread, not to ask, not to look away. The rule is simple: until I come, he looks at me. He looked. The third time I came slowly, holding his eyes, and it lasted longer than the first two together.

Knees

Afterwards I lay there and he kissed my knees. Both, one after the other. He started that himself, about eight months ago; I never asked. The knees — and “thank you”.

“For what?” I asked the first time, back in spring.

“For coming because of me.”

That Saturday I didn’t ask. I knew the answer, and I knew that for him this is his orgasm — not in his body, but in the fact that he did it with his hands and his mouth, without himself. What is in his eyes at those moments isn’t hunger. The hunger comes earlier, while he waits on the edge of the bed. Afterwards it’s something like pride, quiet, turned downward. Like a man who has done his job very well and knows it.

I ran my hand over the back of his head, where I had held him half an hour earlier. His hair was wet.

He laid his cheek on my thigh. The cage pressed against my shin, and I didn’t move away.

“I’m not unlocking you tomorrow either.”

I said it just to see. He nodded into my thigh, and I felt with my skin that he was smiling.

The towel was still over his shoulder. He finished the dishes at midnight, and I lay in the bedroom listening to the water and thinking about the friend who asked me in March: “But how do you two even manage, if he’s in that thing all the time?” I told her the truth. Very well. She didn’t believe me. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed it either.

• One signal instead of words: your hand on your belly. Easier for him to start, and you don’t have to explain.
• Steer him with your hands — by the hair, by the wrist. He doesn’t guess, he does what he is shown.
• Let the cage touch you. Steel against your thigh reminds you both how this sex differs from the old kind.
• The third time is your choice, not his reward. If you want it, the hand goes back; if not, he kisses your knees and goes.
• Don’t unlock him afterwards. His reward is that you came, and he will tell you so himself.