The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

Hot Springs

Carol Queen

It was Sunday morning before I finally got out of the city, leaving the piles of books and notes that were my dissertation on my desk and closing the apartment door firmly on them. By the time I’d driven an hour north into the valley, I’d begun to relax. The leaves on the grapevines were beginning to turn, great clusters of soon-to-be-harvested fruit everywhere, but the October day was hot as summer. It was beautiful, and got more so as soon as I’d left the valley towns behind and began the drive up the old wild mountain, the road narrow, one switchback after another, and a slightly hazy vista of hill and valley and hill at every turn. Little enough traffic up there that I could take the mountain curves fast, two-handed, my car and I like one creature. I love this feeling, that I’m half man, half machine. Soon I reached the hot springs.

I was ready for a two-day soak, ready to sleep under the mountain stars, ready to be away. The springs were old sacred land, one place where the vast geothermal soup bubbling under the mountain broke through to the surface, appropriated lately as a kind of New Age resort. Still a powerful place, though, and its proprietors now tried to reinforce that sense of the sacred by dotting the place with little shrines, a Buddha here, a goddess there. Its specialness was most apparent in the demeanour of its visitors, all of whom seemed to sense and respect that it had been a healing place long before any of us were born. I lost no time in choosing a place to camp and then sliding into the warm pool, and my dissertation, already well out of mind, retreated a little further still.

I’d left the water to sun myself on the nearby deck when I saw her, unloading her car with her companion, probably her lover, by the way she spoke to and touched him familiarly, almost absently, for she seemed more absorbed in her surroundings. Perhaps a newcomer here. I caught her eye, and she let a small, wary smile slip; then they climbed the steps to the lodge. Not campers, then. I watched them leave their room to explore, strolling the grounds, locating the pools and the showers, passing me once or twice. Then they went back inside. I imagined them undressing, falling on to the bed.

But he was out before long and in the pool, and it was an hour or more before she emerged, clad in a towel. Their room key hung from one of her hoop earrings, and when she turned or shook her head, it grazed her neck, making a tiny jingle, I imagined, that only she could hear. The pool was so deep that the key’s tip touched the water, making a little wake as she glided through.

She stood alone for a while, eyes closed, feeling the warm silken water of the mineral springs on her skin. He saw her and moved to join her. Heads close together, they talked quietly for a moment, then left the pool for the sauna. I watched the door swing closed behind them.

She was probably still inside, probably lying flat on the smooth, hot wood of the benches, the heat searing into her with every breath, sweat pooling between her pretty little breasts — she had a tattoo on one, but I hadn’t been able to make it out from a distance — when he returned to the pool. He came in slowly, pearls of sweat on him, too, surveying everyone. Seeing me, he moved towards me through the water. Had he noticed me watching them?

He smiled, said hello, began to chat. He was gregarious but somehow sweet, with big blue eyes and the smile of a cherub. He asked my name, told me his, found out within a scant few minutes where I was from, where and what I studied, the topic of my dissertation, how soon I hoped to be finished, and what I wanted to do next. He and the woman were indeed first-time visitors to the springs. He talked about his work a bit — he was a nurse who cared for AIDS patients — but more about hers.

She was a sex educator, he said, who also did AIDS-related work, teaching people about safer sex. He’d been talking about her for a full five minutes when she emerged from the sauna, prompting an overly bright, “Well! There she is now!” from him.

She moved with the languor of one surrendered to relaxation. I could see the sheen of sweat on her eyes in the deepening twilight, and she carried her towel in her hand, not bothering to cover her nakedness as she approached the pool. The key swayed from her ear as she moved. Others in the pool were watching her, too.

Did I imagine the look of pleasure when she saw that he was talking with me? She slid into the water and moved towards us, laughing. “You’re such a friendly thing, honey.” When he introduced us, her attention turned to me. He told her what he’d learned about me; she asked me to tell her more about my academic work, more keenly interested than he had been.

Serious, intense green eyes. She reached to touch him but kept her eyes fixed on me. Her tattoo shimmered below the water. I thought I could make out the images of a moon and a star. Maybe I’d ask her about it later.

“I understand your area of interest is sexuality,” I said, imagining the leering way she must have heard it said before, hoping I sounded nothing like that.

“He’s been talking behind my back again, eh?” she said. She smiled at me, arched her eyebrows at him, and he laughed like a kid caught at a game and said, “Yes, I’ve been telling him all about you.”

“I used to read Kinsey out loud to my friends when I was seventeen,” she said. “The study of sex always fascinated me, but it didn’t seem a serious enough area to specialize in. . too lightweight, too dilettantish. Until recently,” she added, with a little frown.

“Until AIDS?” I asked.

She nodded. “Now it’s too real, it’s crucial. People seem to have a lot of trouble adjusting to safe sex, or else they’re in such fear that they risk losing touch with their sexuality altogether.”

What a funny pair they were. He was listening to our conversation with satisfaction, blue eyes laughing, looking first at one of us, then the other, not seeming to respond much to her great seriousness. Some sex educators manage to make the juiciest pleasures sound dry and academic. Not her: she talked about sex like it was the grail, a higher calling — passionate yet earnest, like a Marxist talking about revolution. Tempted to make a wisecrack — “Well, I bet you excelled at your labs” — I decided instead to meet her devotion to her subject with the kind of respect I’d want anyone to show about my own work.

“I have to confess I’ve had some of those problems myself,” I said. “It can be so difficult to know when to talk about safe sex, and I can’t really say I like to use condoms.” It seemed perfectly easy to talk to her about it. But he was quicker to reply than she was: “You ’re in luck — we give lessons!” he said with a big grin. Her smile flashed back but she pretended to ignore him, saying, “The real key is having a casual experimental attitude, especially at first. Take it too seriously and it’ll seem like work, not pleasure.”

I pretended I hadn’t heard him, too. I regarded them. Were they coming on to me? Her earnestness in talking, her lack of flirtatiousness threw me off, though he was certainly forward enough for the both of them. Was she a participant at all? Surely this was not just an ingenuous act. I determined to wait until she extended me an invitation to decide whether to take it.

I didn’t have to wait long. He moved behind her as she and I continued to talk, and lifted her. He held her up with one hand — easily, she was buoyed by the water — and traced her body with the other. She sighed and settled back against him. She was more near my eye level now, her breasts above water. I could see the tattoo clearly, and even in the dimming light, I could see her nipples growing hard from the touch of the cool air. It was not immediately clear whether this was a show for me; I felt a little uneasy, not knowing, nor knowing how to proceed. Was I going to be a part of this scene?

He moved a couple of steps closer to me. She was now so near that if my cock were erect — which it was beginning to be — its tip would touch her. She looked me full in the eyes, silent. I wondered what she was thinking.

“What about it?” he said at last. “Do you want a lesson?”

That made her laugh again. “You amaze me, boyfriend,” she said to him. “You move so fast. Sometimes I think you move too fast.” And to me: “Well? Since he asked — would you like to come with us?” Her eyes said, Come with us.

Decision instantly made. I touched her then, running my fingertips up her belly, across her breasts, over the tattooed crescent. She made a low sound. “I would love to come with you,” I replied, and he stepped closer again, so that she was held up by the pressure of our bodies on her. I felt four hands on me, and one of her nipples rubbed one of mine. She squeezed my cock between her legs for a second, then made way for his hand. She sighed deeply. Her fingertips slipped through the hair on my chest, freeing scores of tiny bubbles trapped there; they effervesced between us. He had my balls, holding with just enough pressure to make me want him to squeeze. I sighed, too. I wanted to kiss her.

“Let’s go before we get scandalous,” she said.

We carried her through the water, submerged hands still caressing. She led us back to the room, detaching the key from her earring as she walked, and led us inside.

Plain room, bed in centre, their things strewn about. The covers already down — she’d been napping earlier — and while she was pulling them down further, he caught her from behind, tumbled her on to the bed, and so I had to wait for my kiss. But from their embrace she reached for me.

I knelt over them, wondering where to start. The muscles of his ass were rhythmically tightening as he began to thrust against her, and she writhed against him in response. As he moved down her body, his mouth now on her breasts, she pulled me down to replace him in the kiss. Such hunger. She held my head, one fist curled in my hair and the other pulling my beard, biting my lips, tongue finding tongue.

I might have lost all awareness of everything but that kiss: teeth and tongue and lips, licking and sucking, tiny bites, feeding the heat and the hunger. But he reached for my cock and, in a couple of strokes, it swelled to fill his hand, splitting my awareness between her and him, kiss and cock. As she sucked my tongue harder, he began rubbing my cockhead with its foreskin. Wet with pre-come, it felt almost enveloped by another mouth; involuntarily, ecstatically, I thrust harder into his hand, moaned into her.

Feeling me respond to him made her hotter. She answered my moan, though I felt it vibrate in my lips and tongue more than I heard it, for my mouth was still on hers, my fingers teasing her nipples. Her hands did not stay in one place for more than a few seconds at a time; she scratched softly at my chest, tugged my hair, clutched my arms as her arousal heightened.

I broke the kiss when I felt his absence, and looked over my shoulder to find him rooting around in one of their bags. “Accoutrements,” she said, and in a minute he was back, smiling hugely, and rolled a condom on to me and one on to himself — his erection, by now, making him look more like Priapus than a cherub. And took my cock into his mouth.

And sucked, near-perfectly. Like an angel. It was just right, and I moaned again, couldn’t help it. He was jacking himself off as he sucked — I could tell he was keeping us both at the same rhythm, too slow to come, our hearts probably beating in tandem, too. His eyes were closed in concentration and bliss.

Hers were open wide, watching like a cat as the shaft vanished into, then slid out of, the tight circle of his lips. Each time the glans hit the back of his throat, I shuddered with pleasure, and she saw that, too. My fingers had moved to part her labia, slipped inside her sweetly slick cunt, and she sighed and spread her legs to me, but didn’t take her eyes off her lover, lost to his cock sucking.

“Do you like this? Do you like watching him suck me?” I whispered. I began a slow thrust into her cunt, pushing into her at the same pace he was devouring me, all hearts beating together now.

He heard me, came back to earth a little. Still squeezing my cock, he motioned me to my knees and moved up to her; she saw what he was doing, spread her legs to him and reached for the lube, and I watched as his rubber-covered dick disappeared into her. Once in, he turned back to me, mouth ready for my cock again. His sucking wasn’t quite so perfect now — he had more than one task to concentrate on — but that was more than made up for by the pleasure of watching him fuck her. She met his strokes, thrusting up, still raptly watching the cock-and-mouth dance, sighing and murmuring and moaning softly, and I watched the pink mist of her sex flush spread across her breasts and up her throat, watched her eyes widen and flutter closed as he stopped sucking me and began to fuck her seriously, harder and faster as her orgasm neared. Poised above both of them, I thrust against him, following his rhythm, imagining we were both inside her, our cocks rubbing together, held so tightly by the silky, wet muscles of her cunt. Maybe she imagined the same thing; she’d licked her fingers to moisten them and was making fast, purposeful circles on her clit; she was climbing, obviously climbing. I stopped my pretend fuck and reached between their spread legs, forming a V at the entry to her cunt, adding to the pressure on her labia, and giving him more tightness to push through. Her shut eyes opened wide for a second, acknowledging the extra sensation, and then she reached the top of her climb and rocked and released into orgasm, crying pretty cries. When she was done, I was there to kiss her.

He began his own climb after rolling her on her side, one leg drawn up to her chest, fucking her even faster, and she knew the signal, for she began a whispered litany as he tensed and bucked: “Yes, honey, oh yeah, come on, come on, baby. .” And in a soundless orgasm he collapsed on to us, grabbing for my cock again as soon as he could move, kissing both of us at once, which made her laugh.

He rolled off us, and she squirmed more firmly underneath me. At a glance from her, he pulled off the rubber he’d dressed me in before and slid on a fresh one. Then he took my cock and began to slide it up and down her cunt lips, across her clit (I could feel it hard against my sensitive glans), teasing us both by putting it in just a little way and then, just as we began to thrust, pulling out. But he could feel how badly we wanted the fuck; he didn’t toy with us for long. She moaned when I entered her, slowly, thrusting deeply in, maintaining the low song until I began to withdraw, resuming when I pushed in again. She wrapped her legs around my waist, arching up to meet me, wanting to be filled. She reached behind her head to grasp my wrists, leaned up to kiss me, hard, and the look she gave me, articulate as any words, said: Fuck me!

Slowly, to tease us both, but I wanted her hard. I could feel her nails imprinting the skin on my wrists; I shifted so that I held her wrists, and she caught her breath, moaning, “Ohhh, man. .”

If she had anything more to say, I didn’t hear it; my mouth was on hers again, and she sucked my tongue like he had sucked my cock, and her eyes didn’t leave mine. I read her arousal in them like a meter as I took her the way I wanted her: as hard, as fast as I could without shooting too soon. We were electric, thrusting into each other wildly and eyes not parting, and I wanted it to last, freezing time with our heat.

I slowed down long enough to release her wrists and raise her legs to rest on my shoulders. She took my whole weight — and the length of my cock — as deep into her as I could plunge, and she was not silent for an instant now, crying out at a particularly hard thrust, moaning and sighing, saying, “Yes, oh, oh, yes, oh man, fuck me, fuck me. .”

She slid her right leg off my shoulder so she could reach her clit; she climbed fast. I slowed my stroke a little to make it last. “Ohhh! Oh baby, don’t stop, don’t, don’t. .” Of course I didn’t, and, deep inside her, I felt her cunt begin its fast, hard squeeze. She whimpered, clawing my shoulder, and I didn’t slow, thrusting through the hard contractions, seeing her eyes register the pleasure of the first stroke after orgasm, as she began to climb again immediately, gasping and then crying out. I rode her through three comes before I lost control and shot, holding her tightly and feeling her cunt throb around me like a tight, wet fist.

He lounged next to us on the bed, jacking off. The spectacle had gotten him hard again.

Acting on a decision I didn’t know I’d made, I reached for a condom. I hadn’t had a cock in my mouth since middle school; I suppose I hadn’t given much thought to whether I ever would again. But I was clearly embarked on the sort of erotic adventure with these two that I could never have foreseen and, what’s more, I trusted them. What had she said? A casual, experimental attitude?

“Use an unlubed one,” she said when she saw what I was up to, and I managed to get the rubber on him while she watched, that cat-on-the-hunt look coming into her eyes again; I heard her sharp intake of breath when my lips touched his cockhead. I didn’t much like the taste of the latex — had a moment of regret for the loss of naked cock skin, even as long as it had been since I’d tasted it — but my mouth slid down the length of it, and I concentrated on the sensations, his cock so hard and hot against my lips. I glanced up; his head was thrown back and he was breathing deeply; she was absorbed in the vision, her fingers almost absently slipping up and down the length of her cunt lips. My cock was starting to stiffen again already; it responded to the look in her eyes as she watched me. How keenly I felt the heat of her arousal under my own skin. Energy built between us even as I felt on my lips his fast pulse beat.

He reached for my cock. I reached for her, pulled her down to join me. Together we ran our tongues up and down his shaft, kissing around him, trading our attentions from cock to balls. I played with her breasts, tugging on the nipples, feeling her response. He jacked me off with long, slow strokes.

He wanted to fuck her again. So did I, but I could wait. This time I watched for a while, hand on my dick to keep it as hard as he had left it (I wanted to be in the minute he was out). I took advantage of the lull to change condoms. When I saw her hand move towards her clit, I slipped a finger into her cunt, still thinking of both of us in her at once. So hot and tight, wet with sweet, salty cream. She got tighter when I put a second finger in her, then a third. When I began to move them in and out, her cunt stretched with his cock and my fingers. She began her whispered orgasm song again, arched up in a perfect Reichian curve, climbing, climbing. I wanted her full, fucked like she’d never been, this tattooed little sex priestess. She held her breath, mouth open in an inaudible cry, until she came, but nodded, eyes wide and on me. “Yes, yes. .”

And came hugely, once, twice, not enough, and then he stiffened with pre-orgasmic tension; I felt him slow his thrusting the instant before he came.

The minute he pulled out, I was on her, in her, enfolded. And we fucked slowly, tight in each other’s arms, soul-kissing, soul-fucking, a long time, a long time.

I rolled her over so she was astride me, and I could watch as my cock slid out of her pussy, and she thrust down on it again. She braced her hands on my chest and rode me, my hands cupping her ass. Then I had her on her back again, closer, faster, to finish.

Have I only just met her? I thought. She, silent and intense, gazed at me, engaged in her own wonderings.

They did this all the time, he told me as we all lay in each other’s arms, talking, letting the intensity ebb in preparation for my getting up, going out of the room, leaving them.

She had me understand it had been another calibre of experience this time, that it did not always feel like this. Her fingers stayed tangled in the fur on my chest, just over my heart.

Would I leave my number with them, he asked. Could we all meet again?

Of course.

Anyway, it was only Sunday night. We were all staying until Tuesday. Time to play like slick fish in the effervescent water of the warm pool, to meet under the shine of the stars, to talk, catch up in words to this deep knowing. In each other’s arms, in the arms of the holy mountain.