Proficiency by Doc

He was into smells and textures and colors and tastes.  She played with them, joyfully working like a painter with her palette of options.  Sometimes she combined the natural notes and ones she called ‘artifice’.

She had him caress her nylon/Lycra tights.  She encouraged him to touch her soft cotton T-shirt.  She put their pillows in silk cases.  She covered him in a warm wool blanket when he dozed off on the sofa – the soft wool one.  She let him run his hands across her skin because she knew he felt the variations as electric signals overflowing like crashing waves into his brain.  One wave after another.

She could do that.  She could affect him.  She had power.  She was able to make him feel.  She had access.

She used odors, too.  “Rub me good… and now put your hand to your nose,” she ordered.  He did.  It smelled of her, and of the perfume she’d asked him for on her birthday. “Next time I’ll wear the Opium,” she announced.  Next week was the anniversary of … of… the time she’d had her hair done the way he liked it.  She only consented because she figured out that letting it fall free was another pathway into his heart.  She didn’t care if it were up or down.  He did.  So why not?

Her hair.  She knew it was silky and fine – a pain to keep in place.  Still.  It was part of her.  He liked it.  He ran his fingers through it – when she let him.  She seldom let him.

His patient suffering was not her problem.  It was his.  Long ago she had decided that running his fingers through her tresses was to become a rare treat for him.  He was easy.  With her hair she could so easily arouse and tease him that it wasn't fair.  She liked that – not being fair.  She liked advantage.  She played to win.  It wasn't that she played a zero-sum game in which he lost when she won.  She was glad to see him follow her lead.  Her hair, like that of Rapunzel, was a ladder – which he had to stroke and then (if she pleased) – a way into the labyrinth of a heart that she kept hidden.

She had many secrets… many tools… and under all of her manipulative shape-shifting she knew her own core.  She was a woman. He was not her owner.  He was a canvas.  A place on which she could paint.  And create magic.