I know her name is Janice because a long time ago we’d been acquaintances, then lovers for a night, and then I didn’t see or hear from her again. At the time a mutual friend told me that she’d left to become part of an “intentional community” in South Carolina. Someone else said she’d gone back to New Zealand. I’ve thought about her a lot since then always assuming I’d never see her again, but here she is in San Francisco, 3000 miles away from Northampton, Massachusetts, seven years later, lying naked in front of me.

It’s as though she’d materialized out of thin air and her entrance into the studio was almost as sudden. Only forty minutes ago, Rob, our instructor, had wearily announced that the model had called and was running late. Then Janice ran into the room fifteen minutes later. Instead of going into the bathroom to change into a robe as is the custom, she’d simply stripped off her clothes and hopped up onto the platform with an apologetic smile at Rob and started moving through a series of quick poses with barely a glance at us. I’d recognized her the instant she’d appeared in the black-curtained doorway and my heart had started hammering so hard I was worried that in the concentrated silence of the studio people would turn and stare at the sound coming from my chest.

Now she’s moved on to longer poses. I’ve been sitting five feet away from the chocolate softness of her right thigh for the last twenty minutes, trying to draw as my palms leave wrinkled blisters on my paper. I’m holding my pencil too tight, my head is buzzing like a hive of bees, and I feel warm and swollen as if warm honey is running down my spine and filling the crotch of my jeans. Visions of that night seven years ago run through my fevered mind in vivid loops.

There was a party on a summer night so warm and humid that it rubbed against the skin like a wet cat with a fever. It was a Friday get together at Vincent’s place, a forty-five minute drive into the countryside outside of Northampton, Massachusetts, and a particularly large crowd had shown up, filling the downstairs of his roomy Cape. Soon after I’d walked in, Tina, Vince’s excitable girlfriend, had cornered me in the kitchen and spent a long time telling to me about her latest idea for a documentary about some indie band that I’d never heard of. Gerry, who’d just finished his degree in Environmental Law at Yale, and a few of his buddies from his Ultimate Frisbee team held an aggressively jocular conversation around the refrigerator, guarding their stash of microbrew.

After enough of the sangria in the big stained stockpot that served as a punchbowl had disappeared, someone had put on a mix of old funky favorites and people started dancing. I was drunk enough to get over my usual shyness but not enough to totally embarrass myself, at least not more than anyone else that night. We danced in place on the shag carpet of the dim room, shuffling around and bumping hips with whomever was beside us, grinning at each other with open, purple mouths. Feeling my buzz, I’d playfully hip-checked the girl to my right a couple times before turning to look at her. I almost wished I hadn’t.

It was Janice and she looked so beautiful I’d felt self-conscious then in spite of my buzz. Her unruly hair, her white tank top glowing against her dark skin, the small, black star tattoo on her shoulder, and the cargo pants riding low on her slim, snaky waist made her look tough in a commando sort of way. She was barefoot though and she smiled up into my face, her full mouth stained with wine, and I was overcome with foolish abandon. I took her fingers in my swampy palm and gave her a spin, but instead of coming all the way back around she only went around halfway and then pulled my arm down across her body as she ground her ass back into me.

Like other overly self-restrained people, I have a tendency to go over the top in moments of abandon and then feel awkward about it, act strangely and just generally fuck up whatever good thing might be happening to me. This was one of those rare moments when I felt like I might avoid acting like an dork. She looked over her shoulder mischievously, threw her head back on my shoulder and reached up to cup the side of my face, her grin turning to an exaggerated sexy pout. We were dancing together now, her small body moving sinuously around me. I laughed in her ear trying to let her know I wasn’t taking any of this too seriously even though the warm swelling in my crotch was giving me away.

As the song began it’s repetitive loop and fade out, she turned to me with the rim of her empty clear plastic cup gimbaled between her thumb and forefinger, pinkie held high and cocked an eyebrow towards the kitchen. I followed her, side slipping through the sweaty bodies packed in and around the Ikea furniture, towards the florescent glow of the kitchen doorway.

I knew Janice through a friend of Gerry’s. We’d been to at a lot of the same parties that year and there’d been more than a few times when I’d searched her out across a dim room only to find her looking at me and we’d locked eyes for a few breathless seconds. I had no interest in joining the flock of hopeful men who always seem to be in orbit around her though, so I’d intentionally kept my distance. I’d always made a point of playing it cool around her, later indulging in fantasies that slicked my belly with cum.

She sloshed her cup around in the bottom of the stock pot. “Oh my god, it’s hot in here!” She waved her free hand in front of her glistening face.

“Let’s go out onto the deck and get some fresh air.” I suggested. It’s awkward and challenging trying to have a casual conversation with a woman who you’ve pictured riding you’re aching erection with wild abandon.

“Sure.” She turned and fumbled with the heavy sliding glass door and I followed her out into the warm, damp night air. She turned her back to the house and leaned out over the rail of the deck. I came up close enough beside her so our shoulders touched and we looked out at the long slots of light thrown out over the the dark lawn by the windows behind us.

“How’ve you been?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Yeah, I’ve been really good,” she said. “I just got back here day before yesterday after being away for a while. I’m dealing with some culture shock and jet lag, but I’m good!” She cocked her head slightly and looked over at me with a smile that I imagined might suggest something more than just commiseration over the difficulties of travel.

I was nervous in spite of the red wine sloshing around in my head and my mind went blank for a long second. She must have recognized my panicked expression because she said, softly “Don’t worry, you don’t have to make conversation.” It was an assurance not a dismissal, but I felt embarrassed non-the-less and grinned sheepishly.

“Thanks, sorry, I’m just a little drunk.”

“Obviously not drunk enough” I thought to myself. Out loud I said “So, where were was it that you just got back from?”

“I was in New Zealand mostly, but went to Australia too – also spent a few weeks in Bali and then Thailand.”

“Cool. Did you travel alone?” The music was muffled but still loud and I found myself raising my voice more than I wanted to.

“Yeah, but I have a friend in New Zealand so I was able to stay with her.” She smiled without looking at me.

“Cool.” I felt encouraged by the lack of reference to a boyfriend or even a male friend which usually amounts to the same thing, at least I guessed that it did in Janice’s world. “Are you back living in town?” I’d been to one party she’d hosted in small, hot apartment above the Korean restaurant on Main Street, and could still picture her taking a drag on a joint and pressing her lips to Gerry’s as he’d inhaled the smoke from her open mouth. I remembered being surprised by feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut.

“No, that place was a sublet. I’m looking if you know of anything.”

“I can’t think of anything right now, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

I watched her pick at the flaking wood of the rail. “Where are you living in the meantime?” I asked.

“Come on, I’ll show you” and grabbed my wrist and led me down the wooden steps and across the grass to the thin line of trees at the edge of the lawn, through a narrow break in the underbrush and into the meadow beyond.

“Ok – what, you’re sleeping in the woods?”

“‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.’ You read Walden Pond?”

“In high school I think.”

“Well, it’s kinda like that. You’ll see – come on.”

I followed her through the waist-high grass. The air was still and close, distant sounds deadened in the humidity. My heart was hammering in my ears, a heady mixture of euphoria and nerves. I decided not to make conversation, try and relax, and enjoy whatever might happen. She silently laced her fingers into mine and led me, weak-kneed, up and over a little rise in the meadow.

Hands are really hard to draw and I struggle to capture the delicate way Janice’s right hand rests on her collarbone. Her skin is moistening under the hot lights, seeming to darken and deepen like oiled wood. I take a deep breath, turn the page of my sketchpad, look up and take in all of her at once. She lies on her back, her right arm sprawled over her head, left arm folded against her small, soft breasts, legs bent at the knees, her right leg crossed over the left. The dark mound between her legs is in deep shadow, the floor lamp throws an orange glow across her right hip. I lick my dry lips, wipe my damp palms on my jeans and try to focus.

We stumbled through the damp grass down towards a large pond, its surface still like black oil. I could make out few trees marking the far shore like dark clouds on the near horizon. Bullfrogs grunted in the shallows nearby. In front of the pond stood what could only be a tepee – a tall white cone of canvass glowing dimly in the darkness ahead.

“A tepee!? Really?!”

“I know – like something from a hippie commune, right? It’s actually really nice inside,” She met my enthusiasm with a big smile. “Vince’s letting me stay here until I find something.”

“Can you swim in there?” I asked, nodding towards the pond.

“Sure, want to?”

“Yeah, I feel pretty hot and sweaty still.” I’ve never been overly shy about being naked in front of strangers, at least when it’s for recreational purposes, and I figured that considering the direction that things were going I should be brave and take a risk.

I kicked off my sandals, took off my t-shirt, and then pulled down my jeans and underwear as a unit and kicked them aside. Janice stood there looking at me, a startled expression on her face.

My scalp prickled in fear and shame. Maybe I’d assumed too much and now I was a drunk, skinny, naked guy standing there in front of a beautiful woman who would keep her clothes on and be forced to say something kind but discouraging.

“Gotcha!” and she clapped her hands, and laughing madly at my panicked expression.

“I’m sorry, but your face was really too funny!” and with that she pulled off her tank top and stepped out of those cargo pants. There was no sign of underwear.

She looked so much smaller and vulnerable out of her clothes, somehow more girlish than I’d imagined. Her breasts were small, shadowy fruit in the night, her nipples black punctuation marks. The darkness clung to her narrow waist and flowed down to the diffuse softness between her legs.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” She hooted and ran into the water up to her waist and then knifed under the black surface.

I answered with a yelp of relief and sloshed in after her. The water was almost as warm as the air and velvety on my skin. Ducking under I swam towards her, opening my eyes in the inky blackness hoping to find a foot to grab in retribution. I couldn’t see a thing but came up right beside her eliciting a squeal.

“Hey.” she’d whispered softly and then with shy smiles we kissed, lightly at first and then urgently, drawing in deep sighs and gasps of each other’s wine-tainted breath. We treaded water, our mouths locking and parting as our heads bobbed unsteadily to the rhythms of our paddling hands and feet.

We crawled up the muddy bank and stood on the low wooden tent platform that jutted out in front of the tepee, our lips, tongues and damp bodies pressed together in deep kisses, my hard cock sandwiched between our bellies. Her full bush of pubic hair pressed against my thigh, course and warm. I let my fingers settle in the soft hollows behind her jaw as she fucked my face with the hard tip of her tongue.

We broke away, breathless, and she turned away and flipped open the flap of the tepee “Come on!” she coughed, trying to clear the huskiness from her voice. I followed her as she stooped to enter the low opening, restraining myself from reaching for the curves of her ass and the dark cleft between. My heart hammered in my ears as I straightened up in the hot, pitch-black space.

“Just a minute.” She put a warm palm against my chest and then disappeared into the darkness. There were some rustling, fumbling sounds, and then a match flared as she bent and lit a couple of small candles in sooty glasses. There was a futon decorated with a rumpled sleeping bag. A few thick books were scattered on the low table next to the bed and a large faded green duffel bag had been pushed up at its head to make a kind of headboard.

I hesitated for a moment, not awkwardly, but just to take in all of her total nakedness. Her skin was still damp and looked velvety in the buttery tongue of the candlelight. I stepped forward and cupped her small face in my hands as I kissed her. I wanted to put my mouth all over her, to lick, taste, suck and smell every succulent part of her, every part that I’d imagined and hungered for. Her soft open mouth pressed into mine again and again. I sucked each of her full lips into my mouth in turn and bit them gently as I reached down to cup her small breasts in my shaking fingers. She groaned and pulled me down onto the futon on top of her.

She gets to her feet for a standing pose, a contrapposto, hand on her cocked hip, turning her head to the left looking out over my side of the room. I want her to look at me now, recognize me. I want to leap up and say something. My charcoal pencil starts to trace the contours of her face, lips bracketed by smile lines, glossy, arching eyebrows. I will her to glance down and see me.

I was on top of her, the length of my shaft ground against the course hair of her cunt and I ached to lift my hips and plunge myself into her. “No, not yet, wait.” she whispered, so I sat up and straddled her hips. She smiled up at me, biting her lower lip. She cupped my ass in her hands and pulled me up towards her mouth. I resisted for just a moment, leaning down to suckle her dark nipples. She arched her back and moaned but pulled me forward until I was over her shoulders. She craned her head up off the bed and gave my bobbing cock a quick, playful lick, taking the glistening clear drop clinging to the swollen head onto her tongue with a smack like licking a drop of honey from a fingertip. I chuckled, and she did it again, with an even more exaggerated smacking sound. I loved the the way she was playing with me, making me laugh. I felt relaxed but at the same time so turned on that my body was humming like a tuning fork pressed to a piano lid.

She stuck out her tongue and cupped my ass cheeks, pulling my purple head down to her open red mouth. My giggles dropped to a deep groan as she closed her full dark lips around the shaft and pulled all of me down her throat as I let out a startled gasp. She looked up at me, the corners of her eyes wrinkled in a smile. I reached back and without being able to see what I was doing, let my hand softly move between her thighs and down to her mound. I felt her spread her legs wide and her pussy opened under my fingers, a wet slippery cleft. I kept my touch soft as a blind man’s, gently brushing her hot wet folds with my fingertips until she lifted her hips to grind and crush her clit hard against my palm as I curled my fingers into her dripping cunt. My cock popped out of her mouth as she sighed and closed her eyes.

I was desperate to taste her so I turned around and knelt beside her, but she pulled my leg over her head so we were in the sixty-nine position with me on top, my ass in her face, my throbbing glans bobbing against her chin. I felt open and vulnerable and I shivered in excitement. “Please.” she gasped. I felt her hot breath on my balls, her hands clenching my ass cheeks.

Her pubic hair was damp and glistening in the paraffin light, her swollen labia full and slick and I pressed my face between her thighs to kiss her. The cumin-like smell of her wet pussy, mixed with the pond smell of damp grass and ferns was intoxicating and I lapped at the entire length of her slippery lips. She squirmed and moaned under me, her hands fumbling and tugging at my cock. I wanted to open her up like a ripe mango and slurp until her juice flowed down my chin, so I lifted her legs, pressing her thighs back against her chest, tucking her knees behind my arms. She was spread completely open below me then, pink and shiny as the mouth of a conch shell.

Swirling my tongue around her swollen clit, I explored her pussy with both my hands, dipping my fingers into her opening, then pulling back to gently brush the velvet skin of her ass cheeks and the inside of her thighs with glistening fingertips. I flicked at her hood with the tip of my tongue and then leaned in and fucked her with it, sticking my tongue out as far as I could, pressing it in deep enough to taste the vinegary tang inside her. Her hips shuddered under my mouth and her nails dug into the small of my back.

When my fingers found her ass, slippery with her own juice, she moaned around my shaft that was now deep in her mouth. Touching her in her there, her most sacred spot, and watching my finger disappear into that tight anemone of an orifice excited me so much I had to lift my hips to pull my cock out of her mouth for fear I might cum from the sight of it. Her hot ring of muscle grasped at each of my knuckles like a small, hungry animal.

“Oh yeah, that feels good. Fuck!” she moaned as I pumped my finger slowly in and out of her ass and nursed at her clit like a nipple. Her hands tugged at my throbbing rod, and then I felt her fingers pressing firmly into my perineum. Startled, I looked back down the space between our sweaty bodies and watched as a rivulet of clear pre-cum flowed from tip of my cock into her cupped fingertips. Again she pressed and then pulled her hand up my shaft like a teat, milking more pre-come onto her fingers. Then I felt her warm dripping fingers on my asshole. She was going to give as good as she was getting. “Yeah?” she asked.

“Ok!” I gasped. I’d imagined being inside her so many times but this was something new, far beyond my late-night fantasies. My body felt hungry for her in a way I’d never imagined and I wanted her inside me, filling up some empty space inside me that she’d only just discovered. I felt her finger press firmly and gently against my ass. I took a deep breath and felt her slip inside me, slick with my own juices. I brought my tongue back down on her clit and it seemed like out bodies were fused together, like we had completed a magical circuit, our lips sucking, tongues swirling, fingers fucking each other into one long, wriggling, orgiastic mass.

Her finger pressed deeper and I felt like I was going to pee and cum at the same time. She gently rubbed me deep inside and sucked my shaft deep into the back of her throat. Pressing my face deeper into her slick flesh, I swirled my tongue around and around her swollen clit and then I heard myself moan into her as I began to cum, involuntarily thrusting back back and forth between her finger in my ass and her sucking mouth. I felt her gulp at my cock as she ravenously drank down every drop of cum. And then, still holding me tightly in her mouth, she began to cum, her ass grabbing my finger in fluttering spasms. Her thighs came together and squeezed the sides of my head. I could hear her gasp and roar through the jaws of that fleshy vice and her hands and mouth tugged at my still hard cock in a violent flurry of hunger and release.

We rolled off each other and lay there hot and wet, breathing in the smell of candle wax and sex, and the humid summer air.

I think I remember the first words I murmured with my rubbery tongue and silly grin were “I really like your tepee.”

Now I glance up from my drawing pad and she’s looking at me. A smile pulls at the corners of her hungry mouth and I smile back up at her, my scalp prickles with nervous excitement. The timer at her feet starts chirping insistently, signaling a ten-minute break. She steps off the far side of dais and pulls on her shorts and tanktop, turns and walks towards me. I stand up, awkwardly straddling the bench. She looks so much like she did that night: her bare shoulders, the way her hair frames her face.

But her shoulders are bare and I’m not seeing that small, black star tattoo – there’s no sign of it at all! My elation crumbles into dizzy confusion.

“Hi,” she says, “do I know you from somewhere?”

“I don’t know, but you just look like someone I used to know. Did you used to live in Northampton? In Massachusetts?”

“Nope, I’m from the East Bay.”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met.” I clear my throat. ” I’m Oliver.”