The Virtue of Patience

On January 2nd, 2009, Jeremy Sykes stepped into the crowded elevator that took him to his office on the 44th floor. The passengers were bundled up against the winter cold. Some looked tanned from recent winter holidays in warmer climes, but all exuded that air of barely contained ill temper that inevitably haunts everyone who has had a Christmas break.

He shuffled, as politely as possible, to the back of the car, mindful that a great many passengers would alight long before the elevator reached his floor. Jeremy closed his eyes and made a mental list of all the tasks he should, no matter how reticently, complete by the day’s end. If he were to be honest, his life was a very long list of things he didn’t want to do.

Only when the bell chimed at the first stop did he open his eyes and remember that he hadn’t pushed the button for his floor. He reached awkwardly through the crush of passengers toward the panel, but there was no chance of reaching it. With a mumbled apology, he leant forward, trying to reach, but to no avail. Finally, he asked if someone would push it for him. It was then he noticed the small, rather unremarkable woman standing in front of him.  Not facing, as so many people do, the closed steely doors, but side on. In fact, the entire side of her body was pressed up against the front of his. As he drew back his hand it brushed the front of her blouse and, with that rare clarity that only settles on mere mortals every once in a blue moon, realized he had grazed a covered but extremely erect nipple.

“Sorry,” he muttered. Even as he said it, his heart began to race. Jeremy glanced down at the woman in front of him. Being almost a head shorter than he was, it was not easy to see her face. Instead he gazed down over her head, at the neat slope of her neck. Her dark hair was pulled up with some sort of clip, and wayward silky wisps lay against the pale skin of her nape. Inexplicably he could not pull his eyes away from it, and his heart went thundering on.

The reaction embarrassed him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t already have a perfectly good wife. In fact Elizabeth was, in Jeremy’s estimation, the perfect wife. Their sex life was full and adventurous, they communicated easily, their intellects were delightfully compatible. So why was he reacting like an adolescent who’d never been laid? And why was he doing it over a very unremarkable woman in a crowded elevator.

All this didn’t stop his blood from rushing, nor did it pacify the uncomfortable swelling in his groin. Worse still, with the woman pressed against him as she was, there was no way she would not notice if he were to develop a full erection.

Seconds ticked by. The elevator door opened and disgorged passengers. But it seemed that, for all the people who got off, at least as many got on. Jeremy’s hope for a little more personal space died a slow death in the shuffle and jostle of the upward commute.

A puff of airconditioned breeze moved the tendrils on the back of the woman’s neck. Her scent, human and warm, skin-close and sweet, wafted up to him. With mortifying predictability, blood pumped into his groin, swelling his cock by degrees. This, Jeremy thought, was ridiculous. It was also a subtle sort of hell.

By the time they reached the 28th floor, his erection was rampant. Surely, he thought, she could feel it against her arm. As he formed the thought, she moved. Not, as he hoped, to exit the car, but a slight shrugging of the shoulder, which drew her arm upward. Only with a monumental effort did he manage not to gasp. The contact was so slight and, somehow, so powerfully pleasurable, as if no one had ever touched him before. The intensity of the sensation shocked him.

She shrugged again, and then, after a minute or so, a third time. Each movement caused the back of her lower arm to graze over his painfully hard cock. It twitched of its own accord, pressing back against her. Jeremy closed his eyes and imagined screaming: ‘Stop it! Stop it right now!’ at the top of his lungs. It did nothing to quell his hard on.

Then, in what seemed like time trapped in a vacuum, she moved again, this time to raise her hand. The back of it slid up the length of his throbbing cock, each of her knuckles edging deliciously over him, before reaching and taking a firm hold of the shoulder strap on her purse.

With a loud chime, the doors opened and the woman eased her way through the crush of passengers and out the elevator. The devil exited Jeremy Sykes’ life on the 38th floor.

In the hallway on floor 44, he tugged at his tie and took the first really deep breath he’d taken in what felt like hours.  Then, eschewing his office for the privacy of the executive washroom, Jeremy locked himself into a stall, freed his cock with a muffled groan, and stroked himself to orgasm in less than a minute.

* * *

It wasn’t until he was crammed against the far wall of the elevator the very next day that Jeremy remembered the previous day’s incident. In truth, he wouldn’t have remembered it at all had the very same woman not been standing in front of him. It would have been impossible for him to pick her out of a line-up since he had never had a decent look at her face, but her hair, the edge of her brow, and the long sweep of her neck was enough: it was her. The day before, her blouse had been white. Today it was a shimmering pearl grey silk. There was a cruel irony in the fact that, although he could only see her face from an idiosyncratic angle, it was very easy to look down the front of her blouse. God in heaven, Jeremy thought to himself. What have I done to deserve this?

He told himself not to look, but the more he forbade himself from doing so, the louder the singing of blood in his ears. Finally, as if giving into Eden’s serpent, he let his eyes drift down. From any other vantage, there would have been nothing to see; the shirt was quite modestly buttoned. But Jeremy’s perspective offered him an intimate view of the edges of her bra cups – a darker gray lace – nestling two perfectly shaped ivory globes. More painful still was the way her nipples, clearly erect, tented both the fabric of her bra, and the silk of her blouse. His hand itched to brush past them. But he’d pressed the button to his floor as he’d stepped into the elevator. Nonetheless, he toyed with the idea of pressing the button to some other floor, just to have an excuse to feel the hard little nub of one nipple graze the back of his hand again. It didn’t matter that he’d never do it. His mind began to play the event, the sensation, the transgression, in slow motion over and over. He shut his eyes to make it stop, but it only made the images more vivid.

He was hard again. And without a doubt in his mind, he was sure she knew. Someone jostled near the front and the movement transferred from body to body until she was nudged against him with a small, almost inaudible squeak. His cock twitched back hard against her arm. She could not fail to notice it. Jeremy waited, his gut churning, for the inevitable turn of her head that would presage a dirty look and rapid movement towards the front of the elevator car. What happened instead was extraordinary.

A shrug of her shoulder telegraphed the movement of her arm and, in the very next second, Jeremy felt the back of her fingers press and slide up and down his covered erection. His breath caught sharply in his throat. The elevator bell chimed, a few people got off, and the car resumed its upward journey. So did her fingers.

Up and down they glided, slowly, surely, from root to the tip. His cock, which had always had a mind of its own, pressed back against her fingers like an affectionate cat. The blood thundered in his ears. A prickle of sweat formed on his sternum. Jeremy did everything he could not to push his hips forward and grind against the nameless woman’s touch.

On the 38th floor, she withdrew her hand, whispered a politeness to the people in front of her, and stepped off the elevator. On the 44th floor, Jeremy hardly made it to the washroom to free his aching cock before he exploded all over the tiled wall in a gasp of relief.

* * *

To say that this strange and pleasurable torture went on forever would be an overstatement, but as the days went by, Jeremy grew to anticipate his morning elevator ride with more and more excitement. By the end of the month, he was hard before he walked into the lobby of the office tower. He had imagined her bare, he had imagined fucking her from behind over his desk. He had ejaculated between her breasts in dingy stairwells and over her pale, round, pert buttocks in deserted parking lots. He had heard her cry out as she orgasmed and had felt the delicious grip of her cunt around his cock as she did. In reality, all he had was a very precise inventory of her shirts and bras and a strange, mosaic-like composite of what she looked like. But, as his mind filled in the gaps, she became, in his estimation, the sexiest woman to walk the earth. Unfortunately, he didn’t even know her name.

On the 14th of February, after much internal discussion, he was overcome with the urge to speak to her. The problem was, after so many days of allowing her to stroke his cock through his trousers, it was hard to decide on the appropriate opening remark.

After the usual ‘hello’ brush of her fingers against his groin, he bent forward and down until his mouth hovered only inches from her ear.

“Um…hello,” he whispered.

The moment he’d said it, he felt ridiculous. And her answer, a rather irritated toss of her head that sent the wicked little tendrils on her neck into new positions, did nothing to calm his feelings of inadequacy.

He felt her fingers withdraw. For a moment of blind panic, he imagined himself reaching for her hand and guiding it back to its proper place, but before he could even reject the idea, the fingers were back. Not to stroke him, though. He felt a tug, and then one more, and it was with another wave of panic that he realized she was pulling down the zipper of his pants. The wave of exhilaration mixed with terror almost made him faint. Bees buzzed in his head, his throat constricted. Slowly but surely he felt her fingertips slide into the gap, through the opening of his boxers and touch the bare skin of his cock. They lingered a while and then skittered along the rigid shaft. He would have sworn he could feel the whorls of her fingerprints. When she reached the tender underside of his cockhead, Jeremy was almost sure he was going to explode. The shaft twitched wildly. His balls were swollen and heavy with the threat of an impending ejaculation.

Oh, christ! He groaned, pleaded, whimpered in his head. Forcing himself to breathe, swallowing down the metal taste of fear, consciously edging his body away from what seemed like an insanely high precipice, he settled in to the tantalizing rhythm of her scurrying fingertips.

* * *

On the first of April, Jeremy took fate into his hands. Had he noticed the date, he might have reconsidered, but life had grown strange for him. Not that the morning elevator ride had interfered with his work, or in any way negatively impacted on his marital relations. On the contrary – all the fantasizing he indulged in gave him new ideas for how to please his wife in bed. She certainly seemed happy with him. Although, if he had to be honest, he was not quite as interested in early morning sex as he had once been. But since Elizabeth had never been all that keen on it, there really wasn’t anything to complain about.

Still, things had changed significantly for Jeremy. From the time he set off for work in the morning, until he unburdened himself in the executive washroom, he was – to put it bluntly – all cock. It occurred to him that although the mysterious woman in the elevator might not want conversation, she must surely desire some reciprocation for the attention she was giving him.

Much like the talking, Jeremy found it hard to fathom how he should begin to touch her. It would be, he considered, reasonably easy to do it without attracting attention, but every idea he conceived of as a possible point of initiation seemed too overt. After all, she had started so subtly. And was it too late for subtleties on his part? Would it seem ridiculous to stroke the small of her back while she danced her fingers over his bare cock?

As he drove into work that morning, the thought of touching her obsessed him.  He was glad of his overcoat as he strode through the lobby because he was more painfully hard than ever.  When she threaded her way into the elevator, and took her usual place in front of him, Jeremy inhaled deeply, catching the citrusy notes of whatever it was she used to wash her hair, and rested his hand gently on the swell of her ass. He was glad that spring had come and she was wearing a business suit jacket instead of her winter coat. It only took a few seconds for the warmth of her body to seep through the lighter fabric.

Jeremy could tell she was surprised, because she didn’t unzip him and begin her usual fingertip dance until they’d passed the 15th floor. Although this meant less contact time, the thrill of having his hand on her body sent delicious waves of scintillation through him. He was agonizingly hard and oozing drops of precum over her fingers before she gave one shockingly direct squeeze prior to departing.

* * *

Over the following days, Jeremy made subtle but notable progress over the landscape of her rear. He had harbored hopes that perhaps she’d accommodate him by wearing a shorter skirt, but this didn’t happen. Toward the end of the month, he decided that the skirt needed raising. He craved the same skin-to-skin contact she had with him. He wanted to feel her heat, her moisture, to subject her to the same delectable sensations he was enjoying. So, after a few slow circular rubs of her derriere engineered to hike her skirt a little higher, bent at the knees and reached down behind her, blindly feeling for the ubiquitous kick pleat. As he slid his fingers between the slit and drew his fingertips up the back of her thigh, the hand on his cock froze and withdrew.

He was dimly aware that she was rummaging around for something in her own suit pocket, but the thrill of having met bare skin above the stocking line was too distracting to notice what she was doing. Moreover, as he drew his fingertips up higher, he felt the indisputable humidity of arousal. She was more than just a little wet between the legs.

So it was with considerable shock that he felt her take a steely grip on the wrist of his marauding hand and push it away, stuffing a small folded piece of paper into the palm as she did so.

When Jeremy reached his floor, his repair to the washroom wasn’t for the usual bout of frantic masturbation, but to read the note. He fumbled the tiny square open and read.

Not yet.

That’s all it said. Like an idiot, he turned the page over to see if there was more on the back. Only after he had settled himself to the fact that there was no more information to be gleaned from the little missive did he notice that his fingers smelled of her juices. It wasn’t an aroma he could describe with words. It just smelled, very strongly indeed, of her. The lack of touching in the elevator was forgotten, as was the absence of any significant communication on the note. He locked himself into a stall, pressed his fingers over his nose and mouth, and beat off to the scent of her cunt.

* * *

Jeremy behaved himself for another two months, letting his hand rest possessively on her ass for the duration of their contact. In early July, she surprised him one morning by curling her fingers around the shaft of his cock and giving him one, slow, tight stroke. By September, it had built to four.

The woman seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense just how much Jeremy could take before he went off in her hand. On several occasions she had come so close, he had had to reach up and hold her wrist to still her. But every day she pushed him just a little further.

He regretted that the days turned chilly and she began to wear her winter coat. Although he had never attempted to touch her intimately again, he enjoyed the warmth and – yes – the comfort of cupping her pert behind as she stroked him.

On the 20th of December, the day before Christmas holidays, the morning ascent began as usual, but Jeremy noticed the change almost the moment she slipped her fingers into his open zip. They were less casual, more focused. Her strokes were just a little faster and she had angled her body in a slightly different manner that allowed her more latitude and significantly more privacy.

Just as Jeremy thought he couldn’t take another stroke, just as he was about to grab her wrist to stop her, she tilted her head up and looked straight into his eyes. In that moment he was lost. Without a word, a sound, or even a harsh breath, he came, spurting jets of hot semen into her hand.

She didn’t get off at the 38th floor but held his weakly pulsing cock her grip. As they approached his stop, he looked at her meaningfully. She smiled back and withdrew her sticky hand.

“Next year,” she whispered, “it’s my turn.”