It was afternoon. We’d fucked and slept again, and now we were awake. Sa’afia sat on my bed facing me, cross-legged in my shirt, eating the salad and boiled eggs I’d provided. The shirt was unbuttoned, and there was a tendril of shredded lettuce just above her right nipple. At some stage I was going to lean forward and eat it, but for now I was mesmerised by the way that little sliver of green swung and lifted on brown curved skin as she ate. 

I could watch this oddly intimate sight because I’d done one domly thing with Sa’afia. After we’d exhausted ourselves, I’d put together lunch in the kitchen while she had a shower. When I brought her food I’d picked up the shirt and put it on her shoulders, and she’d put it on and then made to do up the buttons. I’d told her firmly to stop that and leave the shirt open.

She’d stopped as she was told, and undid the one button she’d fastened. I didn’t read anything into that. Apart from that, I’d kept all bdsm and dominant tastes, desires and practices firmly suppressed.

She stopped eating, at last, and looked at me. I was greedier than her, and I’d finished, except for that sliver of lettuce of her breast. I was saving that. “What’s it like, being Ana’s probation officer?”

I thought. “Well, it’s, um.” I realised that there was nothing about being Ana’s probation officer that wasn’t personal. “Actually, I don’t think I can tell you anything about it. We’re like doctors.”

“Or priests.”

“Not exactly like priests. We’re not supposed to butt-fuck our clients.”

Sa’afia stared at me, a little shocked, and then the shred of lettuce shook when she laughed, until it fell another fifteen centimetres down her body, on the curve of her lower belly. I’d be happy to eat it from there, too. 

“So you can’t talk about it.” 

“Nah. Not even about the butt-fucking.” 

“Mmmm. You’re not such a good boy, not like you pretend, are you?” Sa’afia reached over and touched my cock. “But I’m not confidential. I can tell Ana about you.” 

Sa’afia was prepared to count “get your ass over here” as admiration, because she crawled towards me from the foot of the bed, pulled off the last of the covers and took my cock in her mouth. I put my hand on her head, holding gently since she wasn’t one of those submissive girls. I sighed comfortably. 

Two hours’ sleep must have helped, but it was clear that church had made her feel good, in both the virtuous and cheerful senses. She took me deeper, and nodded her head on her hard mouthful, slowly and remorselessly. I don’t understand religion, but sometimes I benefit from it. Not because of that thought, I said, “Ah god.”

I was going to come very soon unless I stopped her. Sa’afia had gone to church dressed in my clothes, still groggy with our sex-induced sleep, presenting herself in white, sitting and kneeling and sitting again on command. With the tactile memory of my cock still in her. I strongly believed that I should never desire a woman for what she represents, but only for who she is. Anything else is insulting.

Well, I did desire her and like her for who she was. Still, that kneeling good girl in church, in white: that girl was kneeling and naked now, sucking my cock … That thought led quickly to another one: how long will it take me to recover when I come in her mouth? I reached under Sa’afia’s shoulders to take her breasts in my hands while she sucked me, and hoped that my unspoken enthusiasm for her breasts might help to overwrite whatever negative thing she had decided or been told about them. I decided that Sa’afia would want to stay to find out how long I’d take to recover, and I tightened my grip on her breasts and began to thrust more firmly, determinedly. 

I said, at a critical moment, “Uh, Sa’afia, I -” But by then she knew I was about to come because I’d started. She took, swallowed and kept going, until my feet, shoulders and arms had all lifted off the bed and I could only make incoherent noises. She continued, making a fond noise you might make to a baby, until I lay back again and my cock had started to soften in her mouth.  

One of my last thoughts before my autonomic responses took over had been in praise and thanks to the First Samoan Church of Los Angeles. I didn’t speak it aloud.

 Sa’afia got up early next morning, muttering something. I didn’t argue. We’d had two hours’ sleep. I was only half aware of her leaving. I woke up later, alone. I was sad she’d gone and didn’t expect her back, but I went back to sleep. 

I was still asleep in mid-morning when she came back. She’d put her hair up and a red flower behind her ear. She was wearing my biggest white shirt with a belt, and my smallest, blackest jacket. She looked neat and tidy, and pure, like a girl at a Samoan church. It was Sunday, of course. I’d forgotten about Sundays and churches. I thought of the congregations I’d driven past at Samoan churches, and decided – despite her bare legs and sneakers – that she’d probably passed. 

I said, “Hello, you. Where’d you get the hibiscus?” 

“Tree near the church.”

“Cool shirt.”

“Oh Jaime, I’m sorry. I needed to wear black and white, and I didn’t want to wake you. It’s, well, I can’t go to church looking like I didn’t get home last night. They wouldn’t stop talking about it. I mean for years.”

“I suppose not. You slut.” She did a supermodel ‘flirt’ pose, with a twirl of hair on her finger, looking at me sideways, showing me dimples. She was full of herself, having fooled her congregation. And maybe her mother. Maybe. “Wonder slut. Beautiful slut. And it’s okay, you’re welcome. That shirt looks way better on you than me.”

Sa’afia put my jacket over the back of a chair, and began to undo buttons. “No. It looks better in, Jaime, don’t you have a clothes basket? Well, on the floor, then.”

She stripped quickly and without any trace of last night’s shyness. She skimmed down her knickers. But the bra was still the last thing she took off. I wanted to put my face between her breasts, and then my cock. But remembering last night’s shyness about her breasts, I said, “Yes,” with fervour, as applause.

So Sa’afia stood naked, not posed as anything, just letting me look at her.

I sat up and pulled the bedcovers aside. “Get your ass here. Now.”  

In the taxi we established that Sa’afia had her mother staying at her house and no condoms. My place had condoms and no moms. We went to my place. 

In the taxi Sa’afia accepted my hand under her shirt, but not under her bra, a signal that I hadn’t yet won the right to assume that we were going to have sex. Sa’afia was a good girl by the lights of the First Samoan Church of Los Angeles, when she wasn’t being goaded by her younger cousin into going out to get laid at a party.

So I consolidated what I’d won so far, with my hands on her warm, bare back while I kissed her. She sighed and kissed back. There was desire, and so we made ourselves busy.

All I had to do was not screw up, in a courtship game where I had to guess the rules as well as make sure I didn’t break them. But everything about this night, this taxi trip to my bed, was random. I’d met Sa’afia by accident by meeting Ana by accident; and on any other night Sa’afia might still have liked me, but she wouldn’t have got into a taxi with me. Sa’afia had told me about the pep talk Ana had given about girls going out to have fun. Even then, I wouldn’t have spent my evening trying to make sure Sa’afia had fun, if she hadn’t touched my mouth. We were random events. 

Inside my door, we said almost nothing until the next morning, but it seemed that Sa’afia wanted to know that I desired her. That was easy. I took off her clothes very slowly, with a lot of kissing and adoring what I found, and once I’d removed everything but her bra and knickers she was prepared to be gathered in and lain on her back on my bed.

She was content to leave me dressed while I undressed her, and to accept and give me kisses when our mouths were close. But sex was something she went along with, not something she demanded or led. She wasn’t “submissive”, and I’d already found that it’s submissive women, in the bdsm sense, who tend to be readiest to specify what they want and to be most assertive during sex. It’s a generalisation, but most men and women who do both styles of sex will recognise it.    

She had to be coaxed and kissed to get her bra off. It seemed odd to strike that shyness at this stage, and I wondered if some oaf had, some time in her life, made her self-conscious about her breasts. Her breasts were firmly heavy, one of the many kinds of perfect. Maybe she’d had more attention that she’d liked. I decided to say nothing, in the meantime. 

But she didn’t hesitate to lift her ass so I could slide her tiny red knickers down and off. She was exuberantly wet when I stroked her, and vocal, though I don’t think her murmurs involved words, when I ran my tongue down her belly and stayed to tongue slowly along the plump purple folds of her cunt. Sa’afia closed soft, slightly cool thighs against my ears, and squirmed luxuriously.