Time flew and before John knew it, it was nearly 2am. The old John would have relied on Mary to give him her number, not wanting to impose, and then would have kicked himself for being so passive.

John did not judge the old John too harshly, but he was different now.

“Hey…” he said, catching Mary’s eyes, “I feel like we’re really hitting it off. I’d really like to keep getting to know you better. I’m not interested in rushing anything, or putting any pressure on you, so I just thought we might exchange numbers so that we could stay in touch.”

Mary looked like she might faint. “So, um, say— I’m sober, are you sober?” She was speaking really quickly.

John wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at, but he was, so he nodded.

“Great, because, um, our gift bags have fancy condoms in them, and I spent the whole plane ride here reading your smut, and I was thinking, if, only if you want to, of course, but, do you want to fuck?”

“Oh,” John said. It was like he tripped and fell into a vat of hot wine, or all the ginseng kicked in at once, because his heart was suddenly flittering in his chest and echoing in his dick. “Yes. Definitely.”

She took his hand and practically dragged him back up to her room, flitting with nervous excitement.

John shared her giddiness as she locked the door behind him and pulled him over to the bed.

“It’s a common misconception,” she said, “that a woman’s wetness is synonymous with her arousal. Not all arousal involves wetness, and not all wetness is a sign of true subjective arousal. But, in this case,” she hastily wiggled her skirt up over her hips, revealing soaked panties, which she kicked off onto the floor before falling back on the bed, “I’m really fucking wet and aroused.”

John’s mouth instantly watered. “May I taste?”

“God, yes,” Mary said.

Her intoxicating scent washed over him and John wasted no time applying a long, soft lick to her vulva. Her inner labia were puffy with arousal, her clitoris enlarged and emerging slightly from its hood, and he let his tongue swirl there for a moment before starting again from the bottom.

“Ohhhh, yeah,” Mary said, “Just like that…”

She talked him through what she liked just like Felix had. And, because of Felix, John had no anxiety about Mary’s climax or lack thereof. He just focused on trying to make her feel as good as he possibly could.

“Just like that… god. Fuck. Don’t stop. Don’t stop!” Mary screamed, a deep and visceral sound that came from the very core of her as her legs clamped around John’s head and her whole body shook violently. As instructed, John did not stop, until Mary’s legs relaxed and her hand found his head, and she said, “Okay, give me a sec…”

John did, and before he could wonder what was next, Mary was digging around in the gift bag, her arousal seemingly greater, not lessened, for her recent climax. She grabbed a condom and tossed it to John. “Would it be okay, if um, I were really impatient?”

“Absolutely,” John said.

“Good because I want you to fucking fuck me right the fuck now!”

“Yes ma’am.” John started unwrapping the condom.

“Hurry uuuuup,” Mary whined.

A jolt of heat pulsed in John’s sex, and he wasted no time with teasing as he quickly shrugged off his suit and rolled on the condom.

Mary practically pulled him down on top of her, but he paused as his tip rested against her entrance. “Is there anything that I should know about what you like or don’t like before I start?”

Mary whined. “You’re teasing me on purpose, aren’t you?”

“No, I value your pleasure and your consent.” He was telling the truth, but he smirked anyway.

Mary huffed at him. “Ugh. Fine. I don’t always like it rough but right now I do, so you can go as hard as you like. Don’t put anything in my mouth that you don’t want me to bite. I might try to make you come but that’s because I think it’s hot, not because I’m trying to hurry you. PIV doesn’t make me come, so don’t worry about it. I’m gonna moan a whole bunch. Does that about cover it?”

John’s arousal was throbbing through his whole body, frothed to a fever pitch by Mary’s words. “That about covers it,” he said, and slipped inside.

She was so hot and wet and soft, even through the condom. Her muscles clenched immediately around him, grasping for sensation, even as he just lingered there a moment, taking her in. The smell of her sex still lingered on his face. Her makeup was smudged, her hair in disarray around her, her dress still bunched up around her waist, and John thought he’d never seen anything sexier.

He started a long, slow thrust and reached up a hand to massage Mary’s breasts, one at a time. He continued long, slow thrusts until Mary whined, “C’monnnn… please fuck me… you’re killing me!”

John obliged and picked up the pace, though he didn’t have much confidence in his endurance. He thought about what Arya said, and focused on breathing deeply. He visualized what he wanted, which was to fuck Mary for a long, long time without his sensation building towards climax.

It worked fairly well, and John lasted far longer than he expected. It was hard, really hard, with the way that Mary was panting and moaning and begging. Just like when he’d face fucked Arya, the movement of his hips and the hot wetness around him told his primal brain that he should ejaculate as quickly as possible. As John reached the edge, he slowed. He’d milk one more wave out of this.

Mary pouted up at him, the picture of absolutely desperate sexual frustration, and he grinned mischievously as he stopped altogether, just savoring the feeling of her around him. She squeezed him and he gasped, staying still for as long as he could until the sensation drove his hips to thrust again.

Then he stayed slow and smooth, letting his arousal ebb a little bit, and letting Mary re-sensitize.

Then, with a visceral growl, John fucked her as hard and fast as he could.

Mary screamed with delighted overwhelm, grabbing at the sheets around her, eyes rolling back in ecstasy. “Give it to me, give it to me!”

“Fuck!” John’s hips thrust forward one more time, that muscle contraction setting off the cascade that pumped wave after wave of cum into the condom as he trembled inside her wet heat, her muscles still contracting greedily around him as if trying to milk him dry.

John was tempted to linger there but it would be poor form to risk the condom slipping, so he mustered his strength and tipped off of her, collapsing onto the bed next to her in a sweaty heap. She admired her handiwork in the condom, gently running her fingers over his shaft. John quivered, the sensation incredibly intense, but she stopped before he had to ask her to.

It may have been less consideration for him and more her own urgency, because she put one hand to her breast and the other to her labia, and as John basked in his afterglow, he watched her masturbate. Her eyes were closed and he wondered if she was thinking of his writing, as she came again, and then a third time, before finally heaving a sigh and sinking back into the bed.

John gently took up the hand that had been in her sex and licked her wetness from it, and Mary moaned in sleepy bliss.

“That was… amazing…” she said, eyes fading shut. “Was it… good for you?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Eleven out of ten. Would recommend.”

Mary giggled sleepily. “That’s what you said… about the box…” and then she was asleep.

John took a moment to situate himself, tucking into the sheets and pulling them over Mary, too. It was almost hard to believe that her cute, peaceful face could contain such lewd intentions, and he loved it. He wondered if she worried about being too forward, the same way she worried about being too intelligent. He would have to tell her that she shouldn’t worry at all. 

John was hardly a gender scholar, so he couldn’t comment much on whether it was that the definition of ‘feminine’ should be expanded, or that Mary should not put herself so much in that box to begin with.

To John, Mary was Mary. She was herself. He was far less interested in boxes, definitions, or adjectives than he was in getting to know her. He would ask for her permission to write out this encounter, for them. Perhaps it would do her well to see herself through his eyes, just as it had been incredibly therapeutic to see himself through Felix’s.

He thought of how he might describe her curves, her lips, her urgency, her moans, how he might possibly articulate how aroused she had made him feel. A gentle heat lingered as he drifted off to sleep.

That night, he dreamed that he and Arya and Mary and her man with the flower sleeve tattoo were on a sail boat together, out on the open sea. For a while, they tended the rigging and called out nautical terms, but that quickly dissolved into group sex on the deck: John passionately kissing Mary, Arya riding her counterpart, and a soft wind rolling over them. 

His view shifted to the third person, as it could in dreams. He drifted up and back, zooming out, and he saw that the side of the boat read Bon Voyage.

The next morning, he awoke to Mary in bed next to him. She now wore his shirt, which she must have recovered from the floor. He smiled and kissed her and felt deep in his bones that it was a start of a long journey together.

As it turned out, he was right.