Five Unexpected Orgasms

She’s on the night bus when it happens the first time. It’s quick. One minute Klara’s sitting there, leaning against the window, drifting slightly. Her earphones are in. She’s listening to a podcast about serial killers, but she’s not really listening. Beyond the window the Vltava is a churning dark ribbon, studded with brightly lit boats. Everything is normal.

The next minute she feels it – a soft, insistent dragging in her groin, as though someone is pressing a hand against her crotch and pulling it up to her belly over and over again.

She sits up straight, surprised… but that makes it infinitely more acute, and so she sinks back down into her seat again quickly. For a moment she thinks she might be ill – does she need to throw up? To pee? The sensation is slight enough that it could just be her bladder.

No. It’s not her bladder. She decides that a second later as the bus turns away from the river and onto a cobbled street. The seat hums and kicks underneath her, and as it does the vague feeling, the uncertain sensation… it resolves. It’s pleasurable. There’s no doubt about that.

For a few seconds she sits, slumped, letting the tremors of the bus radiate up through her body. Ambient vibrations. Pleasant. Firm. She breathes – heated, bus-scented air; rubber tires and the polish they use on the metal handrails. She drinks it in. This has never happened before. It’s something of a novelty. Cautiously, slowly, Klara sits up and bends forward, putting one hand on the back of the seat in front of her.

For a minute or two she rides the motion of the bus like it’s a wave. She’s on top of it, tensing and releasing the muscles in her thighs. Hard to tell now whether the vibrations are in the seat or inside her. She feels momentarily awed by how good it feels. As good as touching herself. Better. Pleasure that she hasn’t even had to try for. Pleasure that has just come out of nowhere.

She only realizes that she’s about to come about a second before it happens.

There’s no time to do anything. No time to change position in her seat, to stand up, to get off the bus. Panicking, she grips the edge of the seat in front of her. Hears herself grunt, once, high-pitched, embarrassingly loud. Then it’s happening: she’s throbbing, her whole body pulsing. She’s seized by it. Held for a moment. Released, shivering, back into the almost-empty night bus.

In her ears, the podcast drones on, entirely unaware. Bodies were never found, not even after years of searching.

*

It’s almost a year before her next.

When it happens, finally, she’s getting a tattoo. A deer skull, high up on her hip – something she’s always wanted, but which she always put off for one reason or another. Thom was the latest reason. Thom who told her, “It would be a shame. You’re perfect as you are. You don’t need to… you know… decorate yourself for me.”

Klara is trying not to think of Thom. Klara is lying flat on her front on a cling-film-wrapped couch, nostrils stung by the sharp scent of ink. The buzzing, needling pain is long and slow. Steady. It sends tendrils through her body, so that she feels it in her feet and in the tips of her fingers just as strongly as she does where the needle hits her skin.

And, at first, she feels it only as pain. She grits her teeth against it. Makes herself loose and quiet, the same as she does when she’s at the dentist. It’ll be over soon. It’ll go away soon.

She’s not quite sure when the pain transmutes to pleasure. It is, perhaps, something that has been going on for a while before she notices it, but as soon as she does notice it the sensations intensify. It’s just as it was on the bus. A sudden awareness of something she’s been feeling all along.

At this point in time it has been a while since Klara came. She never did with Thom. He couldn’t make her, and she felt oddly as though she would be cheating on him if she did it to herself. But now Thom and his feelings are no longer her concern. She grips the edge of the bench. The needle buzzes against her skin. Her skin buzzes too.

For a moment, as Klara shifts on the couch, the artist pauses. “You’re good?” she says. She’s a soft-spoken woman with a scar on her throat. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” says Klara.

The needle meets her skin again, and she lets the buzzing sensation spread, become diffuse, travel wherever it wants to travel. She knows what to expect this time. She knows what’s going to happen. She controls her breathing. When she does finally come she does so without a sound, clutching the edge of the couch, fingers slipping on the cling-film. Anyone watching would simply think she was in pain.

*

The third time it happens is with Milo, although not with Milo. They’ve just finished. He’s sprawled on the bed. He’ll probably be snoring by the time she returns from the shower. She was so close, that time. She could feel it – when he put his hand in her hair and started thrusting really hard. It felt like something unlocked then. It felt like he was hitting some place inside her that he’d never hit before.

But then… then it ended. Suddenly and without warning. Heat and dampness, dripping down her thighs. Milo’s weight becoming dead and dull on top of her.

She tests the water before stepping into the shower. Nudges the tap upwards towards the red. She wants it to be almost too hot. The kind of heat that numbs your skin, makes your teeth tingle. When the water reaches that level she steps under the stream and lets it douse her, drown her out.

It’s not that Milo is a bad lover. He’s good. Sexy. Cares about her infinitely more than Thom. On paper everything seems perfect with him.

But… something isn’t right. She can feel it when they fuck. There’s a disunity there, like they’re both working to different clocks, different time zones. It’s subtle enough you’d never see it if you weren’t naked together, pressing bodies together. But when they fuck, to Klara, it’s so obviously off that she wonders how she doesn’t see it all the time.

Just like before she only becomes aware of the stirring in the pit of her stomach after a minute or two. It’s the water running over her skin, gliding between her legs, hot and fluid. She breathes in steam. Angles her body towards the stream of water like she would for a lover, letting it touch her. It runs its fingers over her.

It’s not like any boy she’s ever been with. No rough and needy, but soft, constant, flowing. It’s like one long, slow lick that never ends. And it makes her shake; it’s building towards something.

She presses one hand against the tiles. Water beats on the back of her neck for a moment, her whole body cloaked in warmth like a hug. Then she leans back. Lets it cascade over her breasts and down, down, down, hot and streaming between her legs again.

Milo doesn’t hear the long, low series of moans she makes as she comes. Milo is already asleep. She doesn’t wake him when she returns to the bedroom. It’s not something he needs to know.

*

The fourth time is in her boss’s car. It’s a BMW. So new that some of the dials still have little plastic scratch guards on them. It comes with everything you could possibly need: sunroof, air conditioning, Bluetooth stereo, parking sensors, heated seats. It’s the heated seats that set Klara off. They’re just pleasantly warm at first, and then the warmth is inside her, spreading up through her buttocks and groin.

They sit in traffic. Klara stares fixedly through the windscreen at the red lights lined up ahead of them. She doesn’t blink. Something is happening. She feels like she’s melting gently where she sits, her body becoming molten rock, lava, slow-oozing magma that glows white with heat.

Her boss is oblivious. He is telling her about the car. About how much it cost. Her boss is the kind of man who cares about things like cars, and cares about how much things cost. When Klara told him that she had moved out of Milo’s place and gotten her own flat the first thing he asked was how much she paid.

She’s fairly sure, also, that her boss wants to fuck her. He’s older than her by at least ten years. Balding. He’s had a few wives in his time. Klara has no interest in him whatsoever, but knowing that this man wants her… that appeals to her in a sleek, strange kind of way.

Quietly, slowly, she tenses her legs, pressing herself back into the seat. Pressing herself down against the warm cushion beneath her. She needs something. Some movement. The vibration of the car is too smooth. She can’t even feel the engine thrum. She takes a deep breath and tenses her thighs. Relaxes them. Again and again. Each time it feels like a wash of warmth passing through her groin.

It takes her almost the entire journey to come, partly because she keeps backing off. She’s nervous. It’s just the two of them alone in the car, and she’s sure she’ll make some sound. He’ll be able to tell by her breathing or her face what’s happening. And so when she gets close she stops, lets herself go floppy. Relaxes her legs, and lets the tingling in her groin fade a little before starting again.

It’s only when they’re almost there that she gathers the courage to do it. To push herself over the edge. It happens while they’re waiting in traffic, while her boss is telling her about his garden, and how much it costs to maintain. He hires a man, he says, who drops by twice a week to trim the lawn, rake the leaves, harvest the fruit from the cherry tree.

As she comes, Klara nods vaguely. On the outside she’s perfectly still, cheeks a little pinked, eyes glazed, mouth a fingers-width open. Inside, she’s exploding.

*

The fifth time is with a boy, which is quite unexpected. She never came with Milo – not once. Nor with any of her other boyfriends. She got close, sure, but every time she did she would will it to happen. She would grasp for it. And, of course, perversely, it would recede like a tide.

She isn’t expecting to come with this boy. He’s a Tinder date. Young and handsome and a little bit weird. He’s in a band. Collects tattoos. Effuses about the one on her thigh as he gently pulls off her leggings. Tells her it is lucky.

How does he know it’s lucky, she asks. What does he know about it? He shrugs. He just knows.

She tells him to get a condom from her bedside drawer, which he does. Before he uses it he goes down on her. He goes down on her for a long time, kissing between her legs rather than licking, kissing deeply. Lips soft, tongue firm. She’s tense at first, and then she’s not tense. Then it’s happening. She can feel it, just like she could all the times before: on the bus, in the tattoo parlor, in the shower, in her boss’s car.

Klara bucks. She spreads her legs. And he doesn’t stop. He hooks fingers around her hips, slips a hand under her backside and lifts her into him like he can’t get enough of her. Needs more. Wants more. She wants more too. She feels like a wine glass. Like a bell. Resonating. Resonating more and more with each passing second.

Seconds blur. Her vision blurs. She hears herself moaning, stupidly loud. Plaintive. But she can moan here. She’s in her own flat, in her own bed. The boy between her legs is moaning too; grunts of pleasure, sloppy and urgent.

As she comes, she arches up off the bed. Presses herself into him. It’s the first time with someone else, with another human, and she can feel him there, like an extension of her own body. The shocking intimacy of it, to share that with someone else. To not hide it. To have this beautiful storm happen in her own safe, calm bed.

Afterwards, he’s tender with her as he splits open the condom wrapper. He’s so concerned it almost makes her want to laugh. She pulls him in. Kisses him on the lips. Tastes herself there and loves the act of tasting. She’s fine, she tells him. She just surprises herself sometimes, that’s all.