“Why don’t you just admit it?” said Laura with a sly smirk.
“Admit what?” I replied, feeling momentarily confused. Outside, the storm raged, lashing sheets of rain against the apartment windows. I gazed wistfully out at the maelstrom, wondering if we’d even make the opera that night.
“Why don’t you admit that you have a thing for my feet,” purred Laura, sitting back and crossing her legs, raising one foot and pointing the toes of her shoe at me accusingly.
“I… what?” I said, shaking my head, feeling suddenly dizzy.
Laura laughed, that enchanting, melodic laugh that made boys at college do cartwheels to impress her, the laugh that had made me want to do the same for the last four years. “Oh, Jess,” she sighed, shaking her head, “you think you’re being so discrete, but I see you, I know what you’re doing.” Her tone was one of mock admonishment.
“I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” I stammered, shaking my head. “Say, is the rain easing off?” I added, trying to change the subject.
“Honey, I’m talking about the way you’re always sneaking glances at my feet. That dopey, faraway expression you get, as if you’re self-administering ketamine! You have a foot fetish, don’t you? You can tell me, I won’t be mad,” she said, smirking.
“Laura, you’re being weird, stop it,” I said, desperately trying to change the subject.
She was right of course. Laura, my best friend since junior high was the subject of every fantasy I’d ever had since I’d known her. My secret shame, my eternal love. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved everything about her. Her personality, her artistic nature, her body, that perplexing, disarming smile she deployed to such devastating effect. But I had a unique weakness for one particular part of her. It was one thing that I thought she’d never find out about, one need that I could barely even admit to myself. I was hopelessly attracted to her feet. Those glorious sculptures of womanly perfection; her ten endlessly enticing dancing digits. My kryptonite.
I don’t where it came from, that most shocking of desires. I don’t even remember how it started. All I know is that, in the boiling cauldron of my nascent sexuality, all sordid fantasies began at the tips of Laura’s perfect toes. I’d lost count of the times I’d thought of those delicious treats as I played with myself in the dead of night, shuddering to a climax at the thought of pressing my nose into the space behind her toes, gorging myself on the exotic taste of her soles, smothering my face in the exquisite softness of her nylon soles.
Because Laura always wore nylons, without exception, she said she didn’t feel dressed without them. And so, as sure as day follows night, my fantasies evolved to involve her pantyhose. I fetishized them to the point of absurdity. I played games of “guess the color of her hose” when I was meeting her and would reward myself with an elaborate fantasy about them later in my dorm room if I guessed right. I was, in short, everything that Laura was accusing me of. And so much more besides.
I closed my eyes and sighed. It was unthinkable that Laura should ever find out that I was a lesbian, let alone that I had designs on her feet. But, somehow, she had.
The room fell silent, as Laura gazed at me, gently bouncing her raised foot up and down. Her face was heavy with a strange expression that was equal parts amusement and something else entirely, something I couldn’t place. As I peered sheepishly back at her, she gnawed on her lower lip. Something was happening there. The air in the room felt thick and charged. In my dizzy, panicked state, I assumed that she hated me and that the tension in the room was one of resentment.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” I said quietly, wishing the ground would swallow me up. There was no point in denying it. My flushed cheeks were all the confession she needed. “I didn’t want you to find out.”
Laura nodded and glanced over at the window, then back at me.
“Okay,” she said quietly, her demeanor suddenly very serious. “This storm isn’t letting up, so the opera is probably off. Which means we’re stuck here in my apartment for the night. You and me.” She paused and leaned forward, then slowly stroked her hand down her lower leg. “So, I’m going to make you an offer.”
My heart skipped a beat, barely able to believe what was happening. “An… an offer?” I managed to say, though I’ve no idea where the strength came from to say the words.
“Yes,” replied my best friend. Her hand reached her ankle and she began to open the buckle that held the thick leather strap of her shoe in place. Her hands were shaking, I noticed with a distant feeling of excitement. Finally, the buckle gave and her shoe swung down to hang from her toes. Chewing her lower lip, she lifted it off and set it down on the floor beside her, then spread her toes out, splaying them so that the tan nylon of her pantyhose stretched. “Yes, an offer,” she repeated. “I’m going to take my shoes off, and then I’m going to sit back. I’m not going to say another word. If you wanted, for example, to kneel down there and indulge whatever little fantasies you had, then be my guest. The normal rules are suspended for tonight, what happens here stays between us. I won’t judge, I won’t be disgusted.” She paused and glanced down at the floor as if fighting an internal struggle of her own. “You might be surprised at how I react.”
I shook my head, barely able to take my eyes off the sight of Laura’s naked foot, captivated by her fluid motion as she smoothly removed her other shoe. “Laura,” I sighed, “you don’t have to do this, I…”
She lifted her head and looked at me, locking her dark eyes on mine. “I. Want. To,” she said, pronouncing each word in turn to emphasize a point that I was barely grasping. True to her word, she sat back on the sofa and slid the index finger of her left hand around her lips expectantly.
I sighed and blinked, barely able to believe what was happening. I was paralyzed with desire and terror, unable to move but knowing that I surely would. I couldn’t take my eyes off Laura’s feet, off the long line of her leg and the muted gleam of her painted toes. I was only half convinced I wasn’t alone in my dorm room, conjuring up an elaborate fantasy, minutes from climax and then guilty sleep.
But then, without realizing it, I was moving, lifting up from where I sat, taking tiny steps across the tiled floor, desperately trying not to stumble on my heels. I felt distant and dislocated, observing the scene from outside my body, studying the diorama of two girls on a collision course of pure need. I watched myself stand before her, hands held stiffly by my sides, fingers closing into little fists, then opening. I saw the expression on my face as I gazed down at my best friend.
“Are you sure?” my eyes seemed to say.
“Yes,” replied Laura’s own eyes. She gave a little nod, to emphasize the point.
And then I was kneeling, the intervening moment lost in a dizzying haze. Her foot was achingly close, inches from my body. I wanted to reach out, to touch her, to end this four-year-long fantasy that I’d been living, to embrace the reality of it, but I couldn’t move.
“What are you waiting for?” said Laura, from a million miles away. Her voice was heavy, impatient, laced with as much desire as I felt in my own body. The air felt electric, charged and alive.
She lifted her foot and held it in the air before my face. I closed my eyes and rocked back, suddenly smelling her for the first time. A delicious, arousing scent of pure Laura. Part perfume, part shoe leather, part tangy sweat, her scent was better than I ever imagined. I forced myself to focus, to concentrate, to live every single second of this dizzying encounter. With trembling hands, I reached up and wrapped my fingers around her ankle. She sighed at my touch and curled her toes. I sighed my response.
“How… how does it smell?” she breathed from somewhere else. She sounded nervous, self-conscious.
“Wonderful,” I managed to say as I brushed my nose against her sole and peered at her from over her toes. She smiled in relief and continued to chew on her lower lip.
I was moving by instinct alone, muscle memory learned through years of fantasy, skills fuelled by desire. I had a checklist of things I wanted to do, like visitors to the Guggenheim might have. I kissed her first, pressing my lips against the flat of her sole. She was soft, warm, and slightly damp. Her flavor was exquisite, elaborate, raw, and alive. I kissed her again, following up with a playful flick of my tongue. She gasped and sighed. I looked up at her, suddenly sure that she would laugh and tell me this was a horrible joke, recorded on her phone for YouTube.
Instead, I saw that she’d slipped forward on the couch until the material of her short dress had gathered around her waist. As I watched, she moved her hand to the waistband of her pantyhose and slid her fingers underneath that delicate gauze, crawling down to push her panties aside and find the slippery folds of her sex.
I almost squealed in delight.
“You can too,” she grinned back at me. “I’d like to watch you…”
I shook my head, feeling suddenly self-conscious, even though my face was buried in the soft soles of her stockinged foot. But, even as I protested, my hand was already moving, mirroring Laura’s motion, slipping beneath my dress and my panties, fingers curling into that slick wetness between my thighs. A flush of pleasure rippled through my body as I pressed down on my clit, another muscle memory that I was more than happy to utilize.
I closed my eyes as I began to play with myself, and let my body and my instincts drive for a while. Like a machine, my tongue set to work, licking down the length of Laura’s sole, from the ball of her heel to the tip of her toes. I lingered there for a while, sucking her squirming digits into my mouth, soaking her pantyhose.
“Oh, god,” said Laura from miles away. “That feels so good,” she added, making my own body ache in response.
The feeling of her in my mouth was an impossible joy, the sensation of her toes moving against my tongue, the rough-smooth texture of her hose against my lips, the pervasive, thrilling scent of her in my nose. Tasting her was like the sweetest cocktail, the most debilitating drug. I never wanted it to end.
Shifting my body, I began to nibble down her arch, making her sigh and squirm above me. All the while, my hand moved between my legs, faster and faster, fingers finding a rhythm that matched that of Laura’s own. Every now and again, I would force my eyes open and peer down the length of my best friend’s leg, following that silken path to the glorious place between her legs where her own fingers moved. Her hand was a blur, tugging and pulling at her nylons as it worked her sex. I’d never seen anything so enticing, so thrilling. I was making her do that – me, Jess!
“I’m going to eat that pussy tonight!”
The thought sprang from nowhere and I gasped in response, overwhelmed by a dizzying surge of pure pleasure, shocked by the raw and visceral sentiment it expressed. Oh god, I thought to myself, I’m going to eat Laura’s pussy! Never in my wildest dreams had I ever dreamed it would happen, and not like this!
I closed my eyes and attacked Laura’s velvet foot with renewed gusto, soaking her, licking her, sucking her, smothering myself in her. She lifted her other foot and I held both together with my free hand, then dived into them, rubbing my flushed, sweating face against that glorious softness.
Without warning, I felt the orgasm rise inside me. I thought about pushing it away but couldn’t muster up the intense energy that would have been required. Instead, I leaned into it, rubbing my clitoris harder and harder, faster and faster, provoking javelins of pure pleasure to slice through my body, leaving fires of sensation in their wake. Breathing hard, on the brink of surrender, I peered up at Laura, gazing over her toes. Her face was a mask of utter desire, eyes squeezed shut, lips hanging open, chest and neck flush crimson as she fought her own internal struggle.
All of a sudden, I felt her toes curl against my face, I felt a long shudder ripple down the length of her leg. Her spine arched up, her head pushed back, and she opened her mouth in a silent, prolonged scream of satisfaction.
Then my own orgasm took me, sweeping me away in a deluge of white fire. I froze in place, muscles turning to steel, face still pressed into Laura’s soles, desperate to maximize that sordid contact. A hot warmth soaked the hand between my legs and a wave of fluid pleasure roared through my body. I felt a momentary surge of panic, a sense of being caught up in energies that I couldn’t control, of impending oblivion.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended. My head fell forward, I let Laura’s feet drop onto my lap, my shoulders slumped.
“Shit,” I said, breathing hard.
“Yeah,” said Laura, her body flopping limply on the sofa, hand still pushed down her pantyhose. Cheeks burning with the fires of desire. “Hey, Jess, can I let you in on a secret?” she breathed.
“Sure,” I replied, barely concentrating, feeling the cooling embers of orgasm between my legs.
“I wanted you to do that for so long, but never dared ask,” she purred coquettishly.
“Oh,” I said, blinking, unable to parse what she was saying, but understanding the implication on a deeper level of awareness.
“There’s something else…” said Laura, chewing her lip again.
“Yeah?”
“I kind of want to do the same to you,” she said with an impish grin.
I took a long breath and gazed over at the window. Outside, the storm was still raging. But it was nothing compared to the storm that was now raging inside me. Both, however, looked set to rage all night, and I was perfectly fine with that.
I turned back to Laura and met her expectant stare with one of my own.
“Hope you didn’t have your heart set on that opera?”