Taste Test

You've been watching the same video everyone's watching — some blindfolded couple guessing flavors, laughing, kissing when they get it wrong — when the idea walks into the kitchen ahead of you. Melody is at the sink in shorts and an old band tee, hair up, humming something off-key while she scrubs a mug. She's been your neighbor for two years and your favorite distraction for all of them. She's older than you by a comfortable margin and enjoys reminding you of it, usually with a hand on your arm and the words "sweetheart, I was doing that before you could walk." You put your phone on the counter. "I have a proposal." "Last time you said that, you wanted me to split your internet bill." She doesn't look up. "I'm listening, but it's costing you dish duty." "Blindfold. Food. You guess what I give you." That gets her to turn around. One eyebrow up, dish towel over her shoulder, mouth already fighting a grin. "You want to blindfold me in my own kitchen." "You're the one always claiming you can identify anything I cook." "I can identify everything, because you cook like a man with three spices and a dream." She dries her hands slowly, deciding, and you can see the exact second the game wins. "Fine. Rules. My kitchen, my blindfold — the silk one, none of your gym sock nonsense — and if I guess right, you do my dishes for a week. If I miss, you tell me what you actually think of my cooking. Honestly." "Honestly honestly?" "Brutally." She pulls a scarf from a drawer, hands it to you. "Tie it good, sweetheart. No cheating by peeking, which I know is your entire personality."

You tie the scarf behind her head and she lifts her chin to let you, which puts her mouth about six inches from yours. She smells like dish soap and something warmer underneath it. "Comfortable?" you ask. "Blind, powerless, and in the hands of a man who once put ketchup on carbonara." She settles onto a stool, hands folded in her lap, absurdly composed. "Terrifying. Feed me, coward."

You open the fridge like it's a crime scene, looking for something easy. Honey. You drizzle a little on a spoon. "Okay. Tongue out." She opens her mouth and sticks her tongue out, and something about the sheer cheerful shamelessness of it goes straight through you. You set the honey on her tongue. She closes her lips around the spoon, slow, and you have to think about baseball.

"Honey," she says instantly. "Cheap clover honey, because you buy the bear-shaped bottle, you absolute child." "That's the point of the game, yes."

"Point of the game is you get to watch me put my mouth on things." She licks her lips, and you know she can feel you staring because the corner of her mouth curls. "That's a point too, right? You're not subtle, sweetheart. I've seen you check out my ass over the fence. You think a blindfold changes what I notice?" "You're stalling." "I'm savoring." She tips her head. "Next. And make it harder, I'm barely warmed up."

Lemon. A thin slice, straight on her tongue. Her whole face puckers, and she laughs around it before spitting it politely into her palm. "Lemon! You animal. That's not a flavor, that's an ambush." She's grinning, still holding the sour wedge like evidence. "God, my eyes are watering under here. I look insane, don't I."

"You look incredible." The grin softens into something else. "Flattery from a man feeding me citrus as a weapon. Careful. Keep talking like that and I'll start thinking you brought this game over for a reason." "I did." She goes quiet for a second. "Huh," she says, and it's the first time all night she sounds younger than she is. "Okay. Next."

You try to trip her up with peanut butter, then coffee grounds, then a smear of the fancy mustard she keeps on the top shelf. She gets all three, and after each one she demands a sip of water "like a lady," which she drinks while making faces at you the entire time.

Then you get mean. You cut a sliver of jalapeño. She chews it. Swallows. Sits perfectly still. "That," she says, "is a jalapeño, and when I get this blindfold off, I am going to make you regret everything you have ever loved." "Take your time." "I know something spicier," she says, and her voice drops into a register that makes the back of your neck hot. "But you're not ready. Keep going. Build your courage."

You've run out of fridge. You're standing there, holding a strawberry, and she's drumming her fingers on the counter, blindfolded and radiant and clearly winning at a game you invented. "Running out of ideas?" she asks. "I can hear you thinking. It's loud."

You press the strawberry to her lips. She bites, juice escaping down her chin, and she catches it with her thumb and licks it clean without a shred of self-consciousness. "Strawberry. Farm stand on Route 9. I bought them Tuesday, so technically I'm tasting my own groceries, which makes this a tie at best." She tilts her face toward where she thinks you are. "That's five for five, sweetheart. I believe you owe me dish duty and the honest truth about my cooking."

"You're a bad winner." "I'm an excellent winner. I'm a magnanimous winner." She reaches out, finds your shirt, and pulls you one step closer by the fabric. "But I'm still hungry, and you're out of food. So here's what happens next."

"Take something out," she says, still holding your shirt. "Anything. Not food." "You want me to — what?" "It's a guessing game, and I'm undefeated, and you're going to give me one more thing to guess." Her thumb moves against your chest, slow. "You've been half-hard since the honey, don't pretend. I could hear you breathing change from here, and I've got excellent ears. So be brave. Untie the apron strings, sweetheart, and let me win one more round."

Your heart is going like a drum solo. "You planned this." "I planned nothing. I'm improvising with available materials." She lets go of your shirt and sits back on the stool, palms flat on her thighs, blindfolded, waiting. "Last item. On my tongue. Now or the game's over and you go home to your three spices."

You undo your belt with hands that don't feel like yours. She hears the zipper and her breath catches — one small, honest sound that tells you she wasn't as certain as she sounded. "Okay," she whispers. "Okay, that's — yes."

You step in close and touch the head of your cock to her lower lip. Her tongue comes out, careful, testing, and then her mouth opens and she takes you in hot and slow, blindfolded, both hands rising to grip your hips like she needs the anchor. A groan rolls out of her around you and you feel it in your spine.

"Let me guess," she says, pulling off just enough to talk, lips brushing you. "Mmm. Twenty-something. Eats badly. Has wanted this for two years and never once had the nerve until tonight." She swallows you back down, deeper, then pulls off with a wet sound. "Am I right?" "You're five for five." "Six for six," she says, and takes you again.

She sets the pace like she sets everything — unhurried until suddenly it isn't, her mouth working you tight and slick, one hand wrapped around the base of you, her moans getting less performed and more real with every stroke. The blindfold's slipped a little. You can see one eye, half-open, watching your face while her mouth is full of you, and that's it, that's the end of you.

"Melody —" She hums an answer and doesn't stop, and you come in her mouth with your hand braced on her counter and her name coming out of you like a confession. She takes all of it, swallows, and sits back wiping her thumb across her lip like she just finished the strawberry. "Mmm," she says, breathless, cheeks flushed, grinning like a cat in cream. "Correct answer. You know what that was?" "Insane?" "A tiebreaker. Six for six, and one for you." She reaches up and drags the blindfold down around her neck, blinking up at you with the filthiest, warmest eyes you've ever seen. "Because you were honest about wanting me, and honesty was the prize. Now get down here."

You kiss her against the counter, tasting yourself and strawberries and two years of fence-glances, and she laughs into your mouth and wraps a leg around you like she's claiming territory. Somewhere under you the blindfold dangles from her neck and the dishes sit unwashed in the sink, the least important objects in the world.

"For the record," she says against your lips, "you cook like a disaster and you tie a blindfold like a Boy Scout, and I want you back here Sunday." "To cook?" "Sweetheart." She kisses the corner of your mouth, patient and hot. "To lose."

She makes you finish the dishes anyway — "a bet's a bet, and I'm six for six" — and you do them while she sits on the counter in her shorts, drinking wine from the bottle, narrating your technique like a golf commentator. It's the best dish duty of your life. When you leave, she kisses you in the doorway for a long time, and the scarf goes into your back pocket. "My blindfold," she says. "Keep it safe. Sunday I'm guessing things you haven't even thought of yet."