Sylvia – that was her name. I don’t remember her last name, but it wasn’t hers anyway – it was her ex-husband’s (or soon-to-be ex-husband’s. She distinguished between the two with a shrug.)

I didn’t really know much more than that about her, because all I ever heard her say in her halting, thickly-accented English was, “chHello, Zhay-mie. chHow are ju?” Her friends from the warehouse would tell me, “Sylvia says ‘Hello’, Jamie!” and “Sylvia thinks you’re cute, Jamie!”, but they just giggled and told me to ask her when I pressed them for more information.  They giggled the same way each time I showed up in the warehouse to fix a printer, and within a few minutes she’d appear, bouncing over to hug me ‘hello’ in a sort of lingering way that made me very aware of her pert breasts up against my chest.  Sometimes the hug ended with a glossy-lipped kiss on my cheek, near my ear or daringly close to my lips.  I liked those days.

She was a bit older than me I think, but still cute in a slender, petite way that didn’t usually appeal to me in other girls. She always looked great – she wore shirts and jeans that hugged her curves, darkened her lashes to make her speckled brown eyes pop from her toffee-colored face, brushed something over her lips that made them plump and glisteny – even while most of the other girls in the warehouse didn’t bother with more than a hair-clip and pull-over sweater.  The possibility of seeing Sylvia was enough to make me double-check each morning before I left for work that my teeth were actually brushed, my polo wasn’t wrinkled, and that I hadn’t forgotten the body spray.  I didn’t realize until much later that she was always primping when I was around, that she was always just slipping her lip gloss away in her pocket. She had half the warehouse – pretty much the female house – on perpetual lookout for me.

The pitiful part about it was that I was too embarrassed to use my four years of high school Spanish to tell her directly how cute she looked cute, how I liked the cut of her jeans or the way she put up her hair or the way her earrings brought out the gold flecks in her eyes. Our conversations always started out bursting with promise, but ended awkwardly, uncertainly.  Still, her part of the warehouse seemed to have an awful lot of printer malfunctions, and I always made it a point to be the one to answer their calls.

* * * * * * *

I couldn’t help but grin when I saw her at the office party – I hadn’t really expected her there. The warehouse staff had their own party a week before Christmas, and between the language barrier and the way some departments condescended to the warehouse staff because they were hourly, I guess they felt unwelcome coming to the office party, too.

But there she stood in the center of a gang of her friends, all clustered near the punch table when I walked in. Her face lit up and she waved, so I waved back. I headed over toward the punch table as though I meant to ladle myself a cup, but really I was hoping for a hug, even if it meant having to brave her friends’ teasing or the askance glance of an office co-worker.

I wasn’t disappointed – her arms spread wide and wrapped around my chest, I caught her around the shoulders and squeezed – and in the moment we were entwined, some kind of flowery perfume wafted from her hair and filled my nose.  Her lips found my neck and I tingled inside, but I’m sure I blushed when she held me a moment longer to wipe away a smudge of burgundy lipstick and her friends tittered.

It was worth it. I felt melty inside. I felt awkward and goofy. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t stupid, so I didn’t say anything.

“chHi, Zhay-mie.”

I loved the way her lips formed my name. Especially the ‘m’ – it was like a kiss.

“Ju look ‘an-some tonight.” She beamed with satisfaction once she’d gotten the words out.

“No, Sylvia – you look cute! Very hot!  Your dress… your hair!”  I knew I was stammering, but it wasn’t just empty politeness. I’d never seen her so made up before – her lips were a deep red, and she’d painted her eyelids smoky and dark.  Her speckled eyes gleamed and I couldn’t look away, even if my cheeks and ears flushed.  Her hair – usually pulled back into a bouncing, frizzy ponytail – now fell in shining black curls over her shoulders. She wore a green blouse with the buttons open low enough to hint at cleavage, black maryjanes and knee-highs, and pleated skirt that was possibly even more appealing than her skin-tight jeans. It was just short enough to expose a bit of bare skin above her stockings when she moved, and that little flash of brown made my heart beat faster.

One of her friends translated what I said and she pushed playfully at my shoulder.  I wish I would have finally dipped into that supply of Spanish phrases I’d been practicing whenever I thought about her, but our conversation must have drifted because an hour and a half later I was standing on the other side of the cafeteria talking to my boss and glancing around hopefully for the occasional glimpse of Sylvia and her friends. I wanted to try to talk to her again – I knew this time I’d have something worth saying, but I needed an excuse to approach her.  Anything would do, really – but I needed to be near her again – to feel the electricity of her presence.  My eyes flicked through the cliques scattered around the room, and I realized I couldn’t find her at all. I admit that I started to feel a little sorry for myself then that I hadn’t been given a better opportunity. No, really I was mad at myself for not making an opportunity – it was my fault for being such a heel when clearly she kind of liked me, too.  It was obvious, wasn’t it? I excused myself for the bathroom – it was the best place to be alone and tell myself just how many kinds of idiot I was.

* * * * * * *

She was waiting in the half-dark of the hallway outside the cafeteria, leaning against the painted cinderblock wall and whispering with one of her friends. When she looked up, she seemed …relieved.

“Zhay-mie!”

The unexpected sight of her, the sound of her voice, set my blood pumping again and made me my knees go week. Words died on my tongue. So much for resolve.

Her friend disappeared while she clopped across the cement floor, stopping close enough that I thought she was going to hug me again. Instead she put her small hand – her fingers were too delicate for warehouse work, I thought – on my chest. “I need for ju to chhelp me. In de Shipping Office. Five minutos, o-kay?” She squeezed my fingers. And then she was gone – slipped down the dark stairwell that went to the warehouse.

I went to the bathroom as planned. My heart was still pounding, and now my palm had begun to sweat. I didn’t have any reason to be nervous – except for the fact that the woman I most longed to touch had just invited me back into the furthest corner of the warehouse for god knows what. Something that involved mistletoe, I hoped, but my eager brain galloped on from there into a hundred different fantasies – and a hundred ways I could embarrass myself. I stared at myself in the mirror over the sink and forced my face to relax. My grin was rictus. I needed to stay cool. I splashed water on my cheeks and scrubbed them dry, but I still looked like a nervous dork. I couldn’t help the ‘dork’ part, but I breathed deeply until the ‘nervous’ had faded away.

* * * * * * *

The warehouse was dark, but I knew my way around just well enough to avoid tripping on the pallets littering the walkways. It took me longer than I counted on to make it the couple hundred hards to the far side, to the little office space built under the mezzanine. The lights in the shipping office were completely out; even cupping my hands over my eyes I couldn’t see a thing through the windows, so I turned the handle. The door was open. I stepped through.

A soft, small hand found mine and pulled me completely inside. The door shut and the hand crooked behind my neck and a pair of lips closed over mine and- Oh, Lord Almighty! The luscious warm heaven of my first kiss swelled within me. Yeah – I’m sure you already guessed as much, but I wasn’t exactly a cassanova in high school. As far as the girls were concerned, I barely even registered as present.

I kissed Sylvia back, first touching her arm, then slipping my hand behind her back to pull her against me and get in all the kissing I could before we were both out of breath and gasping. She laughed – a delightful, breathless sound – and then she caught my cheeks between her hands and we kissed again; her mouth opened and the tip of her warm tongue flicked out to tease the gap between my lips.

She laughed again, and this time I could hear both relief and triumph in it. “I am glad, Zhay-mie!  Glad dat ju come!”

“Yo tambien!” rolled from my tongue in an embarrassingly with an embarrassingly Anglo accent, and I leaned back in, eager for another taste of the lips I had just become addicted to.

But she pulled me further into the room instead, away from the windows and door. My eyes had adjusted to the dark just enough that I kept from stumbling before she pushed me down into the thread-bare couch in the front of the office – some patchy re-upholstered leftover from an ex-employee’s moving sale. At that moment, it was my favorite furniture in the world, no matter how lumpy it was. She settled into my lap, straddling my thighs so she could wrap her arms around my shoulders. Her lips were excitingly assertive; she sucked my lower lip between hers, nipped at my chin and jaw, and nibbled on my earlobe. I could feel smudges of her lipstick clinging to my lips and cheeks – in my mind red badge of lust fulfilled. Her scent – the perfume of her heavy black hair – the gentle, powdery smell of her makeup – and something more musky, more animalistic – filled my nose. I breathed deeply – I wanted to fill my lungs, too. My lips found her neck as she nibbled my ear, and I discovered that the soft skin beneath her jawline was intoxicatingly supple.

My kisses descended down her slender neck and she moaned, rolling back her head and arching her shoulders to bare her collarbone to me.

“Ai, Zjay-mie!” Her hands found mine on her hips and firmly relocated them upward, to her chest, cupping them over her apple-sized breasts while she hurriedly disentangled more buttons and pulled wide the neck of her shirt. Smooth, creamy-tan skin flowed down from her neck and poured into the black lacy frills at the top of her bra. Even through the cotton of her shirt I felt her nipples stiffening before she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my head down to her chest, to the swell of her breasts now straining to free themselves from their sheer black confines…

“Shh!” Her breath caught and she froze, head perked to listen.

I held her in place, my lips hesitating just at the entrance to the shallow valley between her breasts. “What is it?”

“Mierde! Vamanos.” Wrapping her shirt back around her, she grabbed my wrist and slipped from my lap to retreat further into the shipping office – and into the supply closet in the back wall. She’d just pulled the door shut when I heard the glass door to the office open and the shrill laugh of the CEO’s daughter, muffled by the closet door but clearly drunk, and the slurred voice of her date. A bright blue glow flashed beneath the supply closet door as the copy machine whirred into action.

It was completely dark in the closet, and I could feel the odd angles of boxes crowding me from either side. Sylvia’s body squirmed deliberabely against mine – pressing me into the back of the closet with her slow dance. I felt a hand press lightly against my lips, urging me to silence, while her other hand took mine and slipped it beneath her shirt. And beneath the underwire of her loosened bra, against the bare flesh of her breast. My fingers brushed her nipple. Her heart was beating heavily; her breath rose and fell with silent excitement.

She left that hand in place to slide my other hand downward, past the subtle curve of her belly, past the pleats of her skirt until I felt the warm skin of her bare inner thigh. She turned my fingertips up, between her legs, so I touched the slick nylon of her panties. She moaned – too low in her chest to be heard by the raucous couple outside – as my fingers found the wet spot between her legs and began to rub.

For a gloriously long moment my hand worked silently. I held my breath so I could hear her gasps beneath the raucus mechanical rodeo of the copier.  But then she pulled my hand free and raised it to her her face; her warm lips closed over my middle fingers and suckled.

I nearly snorted a giggle at the pleasure of it, but managed to compose myself enough for a single ragged breath.

Then her own hand disappeared beneath her skirt for a moment while she squirmed again. I waited, breathless, one hypersensitive hand still wedged between the underwire of her bra and her supple breast, until her fingers pressed into my mouth and introduced her musky tang to my tongue. I sucked her fingers clean.

Leaning in very close, she breathed into my ear, “Dju like?”

“Yes,” I agreed, too eagerly, almost hissing.

Her lips found and pressed to mine, kissing hungrily as she pushed down on my shoulders. It took me a moment to realize she was pushing me down to my knees, guiding my head down beneath her lifted skirt. I sank down to a crouch, then to a kneel between reams of paper and shipping labels, and even before my lips open testingly over her panties she was pressed against my face, pushing the slick panties and the plump flesh beneath into my mouth.

I sucked dry the moist spot from her panties while she rubbed against the bridge of my nose, then stretched the nylons to one side ran my tongue up her labia; she responded with a shudder and a groan that would have certainly been heard by the CEO’s daughter if she wasn’t so drunkenly loud herself. Sylvia leaned forward onto my face like it was a saddle, testing the weight of her hips against the strength in my chin.  She was light enough that I could have lifted her, but I don’t know that she would have cared – I licked and kissed greedily, but she pushed back with circling, impatient swipes that left the lower half of my face sticky. She kept shifting, searching for better balance and leverage, pushing my face further beneath her, hooking a leg over my shoulder and squeezing my temples between the now-slippery skin of her thighs. Beneath the supple skin I could feel cords of muscle clench. Her fingers twisted into my hair and made a fist; between heavy breaths and quick, almost pained moans, she whispered urgent encouragements in Spanish.

I had been overwhelmed by the new experience, but as I became a more confident cunnilinguist, my hands finally slid up the back of her thighs to pull her against my open mouth; she responded with a delighted growl and humped my skull.

My face was already soaked with her fluids when she finally seem to find just the right friction she needed between my tongue and lips; her swollen mount clamped down against my face and she gasped.

Then she fell. She must have grabbed something loose on the shelf for leverage, because a box clattered to the floor behind her as she suddenly slipped off my mouth. Her thighs clenched tightly around my head while I caught her hips and kept her from toppling back against the door of the closet.  I froze, expecting to hear something from the couple outside the door, but Sylvia only hissed and cursed.

“Chingalo! Down! Down! On jur back, Zjay-mie! Jes!”

I hurriedly kicked and wriggled until I was lying on my back beneath her; she frantically kicked her panties to the side and fell on top of me, dropping to a kneeling squat that shoved my pointed tongue between her labia and crammed the bulb of my nose up against her clit. She breathed through her teeth as she found that perfect spot again. She twisted down onto my face like she wanted my head completely inside her, clutching at my shirt and chin. Her thighs clenched and stiffened, her grip on my chin became rigid, and then she gasped and bit back a scream.

At last she relaxed, gasping and giggled; I sucked in my first deep breath in a minute. She slid back until her swollen labia hovered just above my forehead – she patted my drenched cheek and touched her fingertips to my mouth. “Good boy. Good, good.” I thing we stared at each other in the dark for a good minute while we caught our breath – I could feel her eyes on mine even if I couldn’t see them. Then she leaned forward again, until she could cross her arms over my stomach. Her hips glided forward; her pussy gingerly grazed my lips before jerking away. “Lamer mi panocha. Lick. Lick it. Zhentle. Zhently.”

She hovered just above my tongue, gasping and pulling away each time like my tongue was ice cold. Each time I waited until I could feel her again, just millimeters away, trembling with anticipation, and I ran the tip of my tongue along cleavage of her labia. Just before I reached her clitoris she would jerk away with a laughing yelp.

I stretched my ears to listen beyond the closet door. I didn’t hear anyone now – maybe they’d finished their ass-copying debauchery by now and we could move back out to the couch, but I didn’t get a chance to voice my suggestion; suddenly I was the one gasping. Her hands had slipped into my pants, and while she’d been occasionally squeezing at the thick lump my erection made before, now she pulled my cock free and closed her mouth over the tip.

I thought my first kiss was amazing, but I can’t do justice to this. The warmth, the wetness, the pressure of her tongue… the blood rushed from my head and down between my legs where it was needed. It was like rolling electric shock passing through me.

My hips surged of their own accord, but she’d taken it from her lips and seemed to be regarding it as a curiosity in the darkness. I felt her tongue twirl around the head before it slid down the shaft, which had become rigid and hopeful.

I groaned, and her hips pushed down against my face – my distraction had made her insistent again instead of shy. This time I had a better idea what she wanted me to do with my tongue and lips, so while her mouth plunged over the head of my cock, I flicked the tip of my tongue against the bead of her clit until she was practically grinding on my face, kneading in quick, jerky circles and muttering naughty-sounding Spanish around my erection. I loosened my tongue – she’d lost focus on my cock and now just held it by a deathgrip near the base, keeping it achingly hard without providing any release.  But she only became more forceful, forcing herself onto my lips until I paid her the proper attention and she was squealing and spasming and squeezing my chin between her thighs and ass.

At last she sat back on her heels and sighed happily. “Good. I like ju, Zhay-mie.  Me gusta mucho.” She seemed to suddenly remember her grip on my cock, because she let it go with a little pat.

“Sylvia!  What about…”  I glanced down at the my toppling toward her …and realized I could see it because the closet door was open. The silhouettes of two of her friends stood just beyond the doorway.

She laughed, and picked through her words slowly while I scrambled to button my pants.  “Ju tease me – todos los dias.  I tease ju.  Jes’ a little.”  She licked her lips and giggled as she sprung to her feet, snatching up her balled panties from beside my head. She pushed the door wide open, and her silhouette joined those of her friends’. “I like ju,” she repeated while her friends stifled titters. “Again. Ju an’ me. Pronto.” And then I heard three pairs of heels clop quickly across the cement floor of the shipping office, and hurry out the door into the warehouse.

I lay on my back and groaned.