Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,64

her appetite. I swore I could smell her on me now, the scent of dirt in rain coming up from under the table. I imagined her leaking through her skirt, leaving a wet mark on the pink banquette. I wanted it stained forever, as if to say, We were here.

CHAPTER 56

Miriam wore white cotton underpants, full coverage, the fullest of all the coverages, concealing every pubic hair, cordoning her from my wants. The underpants were basically bloomers, and I was on my knees on the floor of my bedroom, under her skirt, lapping at the cotton.

She was the one who took them off, then removed her skirt with a look of benevolence. Her pubic hair was reddish brown, and from thigh to thigh she was covered in thick, balmy swirls of it. She sat down on the edge of my bed, then stretched out on her back across my comforter, leaned her head on my pillow, stared at me.

“You are so fine,” I murmured. “So very fine.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she smiled.

“And?” she asked.

I smiled back at her.

“Gorgeous.”

I lay down beside her and kissed her mouth. Then, as I kissed my way down her naked body, I spoke to her more.

“So lush. So pretty.”

I put my face in her soft shtetl wool.

“Fucking delicious too.”

When I tasted her brine, I was hit with a feeling of timelessness, as though this had all happened before, somewhere as far back as our ancestors in Russia or Lithuania or Poland or Moldova. We were two shtetl Jewish women reincarnated, two women who had known each other and been lovers in a past life. I felt that all that had ever happened before was happening right now—and that everything happening right now would happen forever. There was a love that had always existed between women. It would continue to exist. We were propagating that love. It was radiating out my apartment windows, through the city, across the canyons, over the hills, and into the night sky.

I ate her with empathy, the way that I would want to be eaten. I teased her clit with my tongue, letting her know that I knew where her pleasure locus was, and that I would get there, just not yet. As I teased, I smelled the faintest waft of shit coming up from underneath her. It smelled like fertile heaven: peat moss, soil, sod, loam. It smelled good because it was her. She had a perfume, and this was her base note. I wanted to work my tongue all the way down, taste the sludge of her, the deepest secrets. But I continued licking her as I would want to be licked: with tiny, fast strokes on her clit, as though my tongue had a vibrator in it. I was fast and gentle. I was a hummingbird, a cicada, a flickering eyelid.

Miriam began to groan and writhe. I tongued her harder. I spelled out the word L-O-V-E on her clit. I spelled B-A-R-U-C-H-H-A-S-H-E-M. I spelled E-M-E-T and M-E-T, T-R-U-T-H and D-E-A-T-H. Then I tongued her in my own language. The words meant nothing, but they made sense to both of us. She was enjoying the rhythm so much. I was fluent. I knew exactly what to do to keep her going. I took her clit fully in my mouth, sucked until she swelled. She became a juicy piece of pulp.

Then, for a moment, she stopped moving entirely. Her moans ceased. She got still and tense. She gripped her hands around my head, and I knew that she was going to come. I wanted to fuck her with my fingers. But I held back. I would penetrate her next time.

She bucked against my face. She shook as she came. It was a fucking wonder. She said my name.

“Rachel.”

Then she moaned, “You feel so good!”

“You feel so good,” I said.

“I feel so good,” she cried.

“Good,” I said.

CHAPTER 57

I found myself eating the way I imagined normal people ate: three squares, some snacks, whatever I wanted, really, with a feeling of impunity, and without bingeing to the point of illness. There were pancakes for breakfast at the diner, pizza for lunch on my break, burritos for dinner. My kitchen counter was full of junk—Reese’s peanut butter cups, Doritos, frosted Donettes—all the food I’d fantasized about over years of deprivation. Only now I wasn’t eating everything all at once. It felt like a miracle to be able to eat what I desired, not more or less than that.