A week of surrender

I sat at the bar of the Driftwood Lounge on a Tuesday night, scrolling through another dating app message that went nowhere. The guy had opened with "hey" three days ago and then nothing. I typed "still there?" and deleted it again.

My name is Sienna Cartwright, I'm thirty-two, and I do corporate law at a firm forty miles from this town. I've lived here two years, and the dating pool near Knox Base is shallow and always draining. Everybody ships out or transfers before the second date.

A man sat two stools down and ordered a beer. I noticed him the way you notice people, then went back to my phone.

"Rough night on the apps?" he asked.

I laughed. "That obvious?"

"You keep typing and deleting. I watched you do it four times."

"Great. So I'm the sad woman at the bar deleting texts. Wonderful."

"Not sad. Efficient." He raised his bottle toward me a little. "Joseph."

"Sienna." We didn't shake hands. It was that kind of bar.

He looked maybe thirty-four, short hair, forearms like somebody who worked for a living. He had a rental car key on the counter and a duffel bag look about him, like he was sleeping somewhere that wasn't his.

"Here on leave?" I asked.

"Yep. Five days. I'm an engineer with the army, stationed overseas, and I came through Knox on leave before I fly back." He turned the bottle a quarter turn. "First day, so I'm pacing myself. Just want to sit somewhere quiet and not be told what to do for a week."

"That's the whole plan? Sitting?"

"Best plan there is." He took a drink. "What about you? What brings a lawyer to a dive with sticky stools?"

"You can tell I'm a lawyer?"

"Blazer, briefcase, and you cross-examined the bartender about the whiskey."

Fair. "I'm tired," I said. "Of expectations, mostly. Every date around here turns into an interview. Where are you from, what do you do, do you want kids by thirty-five. I just wanted a beer and no questions."

"Then I'll stop asking!" He smiled. "Cheers."

We sat quiet a while after that, and it was nice quiet, the kind where nobody was performing. The bartender put on some old song. Joseph paid for my second drink, a ginger ale because I'd had one whiskey and I was driving, without making a speech about it, and I let him.

Around ten he shifted his stool toward me and leaned in a little.

"Can I ask you something, and you can tell me to pound sand?"

"Probably."

He kept his voice low. "Would you be interested in a no strings kind of night? Just what feels good, nothing owed either way. I fly back Saturday and I'm not looking for a girlfriend, and I'm not going to pretend to be looking."

I should have been offended. I wasn't. I'd been on this town's ride long enough that an honest offer felt like a cold glass of water.

"Okay," I said. "Yes. But I get to say no to anything, whenever, and you stop."

"Absolutely. That's how I do it anyway." He put money on the bar. "My rental is ten minutes out. You can follow me in your own car, so you can leave whenever you want."

He talked, actually, out on the gravel in front of the house, about a bridge project in another state and a dog he used to have, and I told him about my job and my ex the paralegal, the fling I had two years back that ended fine, just quiet. Nobody out there was performing anything.

The rental was a small stucco house with a sagging porch. Inside it was clean in the way temporary places get clean, nothing on the walls, one towel in the bathroom.

"Want a water?" he asked.

"Sure."

We sat on the edge of the bed with our waters like two people at a hotel conference, and I decided to say the thing, because if I didn't say it now I never would.

"Can I tell you what I actually want?" I said.

"Please."

"I've been curious about anal for six years. And I've never had a partner I trusted to go slow. Guys either treat it like a prize they're owed or they get weird about it. So I've just never done it."

He nodded, no grin, no reaction beyond listening. "Okay. Thank you for telling me."

"That's it? No commentary?"

"Sienna, if you want slow and careful, that's the easiest thing in the world. I promise I'll take care, and I promise I check in, and I promise the second you say stop, it's done. That's not a hard ask."

"Most men make it a hard ask."

"Most men are idiots." He set his water down. "Nothing happens fast here. We can stop at any point tonight, including now, and just watch TV. Genuinely."

"I know. I'm okay. I want this."

"Then tell me if anything changes."

We undressed slowly after that, and it was unhurried in a way that made my chest ache a little. He took off my blazer and hung it on a chair, which nobody has ever done, and then we took turns, shirt, then blouse, jeans, then skirt. He was in good shape without being a magazine about it. He stopped with his hands on my hips and asked.

"Still yes?"

"Still yes."

"Then come here."

We lay down on the bed and he kissed me for a long time first, his hand moving over my back and my ribs, never rushing south. When he did move lower he stopped again.

"Can I take these off?" he asked, fingers at my underwear.

"Yes!"

He went down on me then, slow, patient, his mouth on my pussy until I was honestly soaked, two of his fingers curling up inside me while his tongue worked my clit. I came once with my hand fisted in the sheet, and he waited through it and then came up and kissed me.

"Good?" he asked.

"You know it was good."

"I like hearing it. Say it anyway."

"It was good. Really good."

He got a condom from the nightstand and raised an eyebrow, and I said yes, and I appreciated that, no speech about it, no negotiation, just a new partner doing it right. He rolled it on and entered me slowly, missionary, watching my face the whole time, and we fucked like that until I was close again, his cock steady and deep, his thumb on my clit. I came a second time and he groaned and pulled out before he finished, dealing with himself with his hand, and then he lay next to me breathing hard.

"So," I said after a minute. "About the other thing."

He rolled onto his side. "We don't have to do it tonight. There's no schedule."

"I want to. I really want to, I just want it slow."

"Then slow it is." He got up and came back with a bottle of lube from his bag, which told me he'd thought about it, and he knelt