Manicpixie
<This fictional story contains explicit sexual content between two consenting adults. If that’s not your thing, don’t read. For anyone else who’s wanted to read some romance in a salon setting, I hope you enjoy. >
Jesse
Jesse loved the way Casper’s hair shaped his face, the sharp point of his widow’s peak. He had a robust hairline that complimented the squareness of his ears. Even his prim little beard. She would have offered to trim it, but you don’t fix what isn’t broken, or so her daddy used to say. Even if Casper’s goatee was disconnected, it outlined his lips and chin perfectly. She loved the contrast of dark and light that peppered his beard, and twisted from his temples, the slight curl at the ends. Gray might have been off putting to some, but his hair had a luster akin to fine metalwork. The composition haunted her daydreams.
It almost pained her to cut it–almost.
The small veins of silver added a stately quality to his features, those lightly defined cheekbones, a jawline that held itself, the Roman nose that curved down when he smiled held his profile firmly in her mind. Rich dark hair with the perfect thickness, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want a fist full of it the moment she spotted him on her midday coffee break, but he was handsome underneath the hair, and not every man could pull off that bookish hipster-y professorial windswept look. Jesse knew hair, and Casper had a great head of it.
Standing behind her salon chair, she admired the older man’s reflection in her floor length mirror. His light chocolate eyes were glinting with happiness behind those thick circular rims. There was something infectious about his energy.
“It’s shorter than last time,” a good deal shorter––“but what do you think?” she asked, knowing full well that he looked good. Damn good. The perfectionist within her only enhanced what was already there. He was marble in her hands.
Casper tilted his head from side to side pretending to deliberate. Jesse rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.
His dimples gave him away. “Best haircut yet.”
She grabbed a small brush and began sweeping it against the back of Casper’s neck. She loved the soft, fine hair there and the way it trailed off the further down it went. Her fingertips grazed across him, and her mind was already racing with possibilities and ramifications, her pulse thrumming in her ears like a hummingbird on espresso.
She had kissed a client in the middle of the workday. Never in her sober mind would she ever have thought to do that, and never mind the impulsivity, it was unprofessional as hell, but the way his eyes caressed her, the way he sighed and leaned into her hands, the swell of spice in his cologne… all the caffeine must have gone to her head, because that stupid feeling in her gut only intensified, so for once she listened, she leapt. She had kissed the handsome stranger on the other side of the street, and he couldn’t even wait for his next appointment.
What did that mean?
What was next in store for them?
Had she gone too far?
Over the next week, Jesse watched the cafe with the bittersweet tease of anticipation, and almost every day, Casper appeared for lunch across the street, mug in one hand, briefcase in the other with a different bowtie for every day of the week. They shared glances. Each one a bolt of lightning to her heart. His taller figure teased her from his usual window spot, absorbed in his work.
She felt such a surge of affection for him as the sun streaked across his hair, when he brushed his parted bangs from his eyes. She’d left those long enough to rest on his ears, taking most of the length from the back in a stylish low taper, one to put those Harvard boys’ to shame. The sight of his exposed neck, the hint of fuzz, made her bite into her bottom lip, and she nearly snipped into her own finger when he’d taken to scrubbing his hands through his hair in a fit of exasperation.
She dared to wonder if he’d let her take it shorter next time, assuming there was a next time. There was so much of him left to uncover.
What was he a doctor of anyway? Literature? Chemistry? Medicine?
One sunny afternoon not long after, he showed up at her meager salon with an iced vanilla americano for her, but he’d politely refused to stay and drink his own. “Sensitive data,” he’d said. The energy between them was no less intense, and when he lingered in the doorway, she gave him an open invitation to stop by again, but her next cut and color was pulling in the parking lot.
Jesse was finishing up with the last of her evening cleaning, headed for the off sign and a bottle of Riesling waiting on her kitchen counter when he slipped in for another haircut on Friday.
The second Casper stepped into her salon, she locked the door behind him. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“How are you?” he greeted her, a little bashful, a little breathless, a little disheveled with his dress shirt partially unbuttoned and the light olive toned skin of his collarbones peeking out at her. He might have been in his early forties, but the boyish charm was undeniable.
“Good. Better now.”
His chin dipped. “Me too.”
Jesse hesitated, brushing a few untamed locks back behind her ears. Then she quickly switched to a more professional tone. “So. . . you’re here for a haircut?”
“I am indeed.” Casper ran his hand over that fine head of hair, playing along. “If you don’t mind.”
Jesse smiled and waved an open palm for him to sit down in the salon chair. Instead of pulling out her scissors and comb as usual, she bent down and kissed him. It wasn’t the gentle, sweet kiss like before. This time the doctor’s hands were pulling Jesse closer, against him, to sit on his lap. She could taste his hunger. Desire and cinnamon. He wanted her just as badly. His tongue darted over her lips and she poked hers past his straight white incisors.
She shivered at the scratch of his well trimmed whiskers dragging across her neck, his lithe hands snaking under her shirt. Skin on flushed skin. A low hum of satisfaction sounded in his chest as Jesse raked her fingers through the length of dark chocolate hair, letting her burgundy nail tips scratch along the ridges of his skull. She tugged. It felt so good sitting astride him, moving her fingers through his thick silky, soft, pullable hair. The sweet, sweet friction left her quivering. She almost forgot herself.
When Jesse finally pulled away from Casper, she smiled down at him, wet lips parted and chest heaving. “A little off the top then?”
There wasn’t any extra growth since last time, so it was inevitable that he would leave the salon with a shorter look than normal, and if he wasn’t going to oppose…
She got to work, holding several inches on end above his forehead. The shears held, ready to slice cleanly through an inch from the end. If she cut here, he’d still be able to part and style it similarly this way.
“Or more…” he offered, his naked eyes intensely fixed on her.
‘You sure?’ Her face said.
“Surprise me.”
She bit into the side of her lip. “K.”
Dark crescents sprinkled around them as she stripped the outer layers of his crown inch by delicious inch. She stopped to admire him once she’d halved it. She could have stopped there where his soft bangs curled above his shapely brows, but had offered more, and now the image of a sleeker crop lodged in her mind had her stomach fluttering.
More dark crescents fell.
Jesse then turned her attention to the sides of his head, trimming the silver streaks that she loved so much. She started to hum and then stopped herself.
“Aw, I like it,” Casper said, pinning her with a look of pure sweetness.
“You like my silly humming?”
“I do.”
Her silly, nervous habit. She didn’t know why her cheeks were so warm. What good was there in being nervous? He kissed her twice already. Clearly he was being genuine, and how could she take advantage of this flattering golden retriever of a man? Jesse shook the heat from her face to the faint ruffle of his chuckling.
She fell back into the flow of the work she loved, humming along as she worked her magic on him, making sure every snip worked to conform to his naturally handsome shape. Her touch was delicate, simple, as she ran the comb through each gathering of hair, trimming up a few stray ends.
The last part, her favorite part of the process, was to take clippers to the back of Casper’s neck, where his hair tapered down into a soft peach fuzz. She could have shaved the sides down to a slick and beautifully high skin fade—but not today. She took a finer trimmer, over comb, up and around his ears to blend the dark and light into a gradient of gray.
“There,” she said, stepping back to admire her work. She almost didn’t recognize him. It was definitely shorter now, less the sort of hair that could take a whole hand running through it, but her fingers didn’t mind. A touch of putty added volume and kept a novel, diagonal part in place. What remained of his sleek dark hair suited him just as well.
It was beyond sharp; she could have taken him right there.
Jesse swallowed hard, clenching her abdominal muscles and taking her brush in hand, stood behind Casper to dust the fine stray hairs from his neck. The tender skin of his nape poked through. She swept the hair away, her fingers following with a tremor that ran through her whole body at the contact.
The brush dropped in her apron pocket and when the cape was shaken, removed, she stepped back behind him, proudly smiling in the mirror.
“How’s that, handsome?”
“Handsome?”
“Very.”
“Ah? Well that’s all thanks to your expertise.” His lips quirked up into an irresistible smile.
Oh that was it.
Jesse lazily dragged her fingers across the back of his neck, running over the fine hairs there. She pushed her hand up and slid her fingers through his cropped hair. His expression in the mirror shifted to something serious.
“What is it?” Hand on his shoulders, she paused.
“Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “Just. . . you.”
“What about me?”
“You’re gorgeous.”
A little gasp escaped her. She was caught off-guard by this compliment, the awe in his voice had a needy feeling rippling through her, some entwining of arousal and affection. Almost compelled to do so, Jesse crawled back onto Casper’s lap to kiss him again.
His hands found her hips, while she played with his hair, ruffling and stroking it as their kiss deepened. She couldn’t believe that the handsome man she’d been noticing through the shop window for the last couple of months was here in her salon chair, moaning underneath her.
Her lips were swollen and glossy by the time they finally finished their make-out session, and it was embarrassing how slick she was between her legs.
“I should go.” He looked remorseful as he spoke, as though he didn’t really want to leave.
But she wasn’t going to stop him. She handed him his briefcase and brushed a lock back off his forehand.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked, fishing out his wallet.
Jesse laughed. “It’s on the house.”
Casper stepped closer to her, his fingers just grazing her waist.
“I’ll be seeing you soon,” he said quietly, giving her one last kiss.
“Good. I hope so.”
It was only a few days later that Casper stopped in again, this time with no appointment.
“I was going to call,” he said, as Jesse greeted him. “But I couldn’t wait. So I’m dropping in. Do you have time?”
Jesse sucked in her lower lip, composing herself. Her very core was teeming with excitement. “For you, I do. Sit down.”
His luscious, wavy hair was now so short there was hardly any wave to it at all. But the silver streaks that Jesse loved so much were still there. She grabbed her scissors and began to trim, although there wasn’t much left to trim, but that was their routine, and her fingers were itching for him. His hair felt coarser now, less silky now that the length had been so drastically cut. She nipped at the top, the sides, the blades moving with a spritely, practiced ease.
“It seems like you work a lot,” he said, watching intently in the mirror as she switched from scissors to clippers. She gently pushed his head forward so she could tend to the back of his neck.
A little higher this time…
“I guess I do,” Jesse said dreamily. “It seems like you do too.”
“It helps when you love your job.”
Her smile was easy. “Tell me what your days look like.”
Casper launched into an enthusiastic description of his work, from the most recent research findings to the grant he had just found out was approved. The cape billowed while he tried to talk with his animated hands. Particles and formulas went above her head, but she wasn’t about to interrupt him. Numbers sounded silky tumbling from those lips.
Jesse slowly stroked his hair as he spoke, only half pretending, like it was something she needed to do as part of her process. Her fingers retraced the curve of his nape, and a heat rose in her body. She loved that part of him, and she equally loved how he squirmed when she touched him there.
“Cutting edge of physics, you might say. Sorry, I was rambling. Once I start, it’s hard to stop.” Casper finished, abashed.
“Don’t apologize.” Jesse removed the cape with a flourish, and he stood to dust himself off. She wasn’t about to have any breakthroughs on special relativity or black holes, but he saw something in her worth returning for. She’d never cut anyone’s hair with such frequency. “It’s nice seeing you get so excited like that.”
Her breath was quick, the swell of her chest buoying up and down. The combination of cutting Casper’s hair, his impassioned deluge about his research…what had started as a simple crush had immolated into a deep desire.
Had she really missed him this much? Did she have it this bad?
Jesse was contemplating how to make her move, if she should make another move, when Casper’s hand cupped her face, bringing his plump prickly lips to hers. She couldn’t move away even if she wanted to. He held her close to him, moaning gently against their kiss.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go over here.”
Fingers laced, she tugged him over to the sinks where she shampooed client’s’ hair. They’d have more room there.
Jesse laid down with Casper over top of her. Hastily, she began to undo the remaining buttons of his light blue shirt, and he quickly shrugged it off. A thin sleeveless undershirt confirmed her suspicions, her bookish crush had some muscle under those blazers and bowties. His arms flexed and it was cast aside.
“Mmmm.” His chest was smooth and warm and she couldn’t get enough of his skin.
He reached down to help pull Jesse’s simple black t-shirt off over her head, revealing a thin, black bralette underneath.
“You’re incredible,” he said with a pause, words as hushed as his touch.
The disbelieving way in which he sounded just from looking at her bra made her flush.
With care he pulled off the bralette and tossed it to the ground. He lowered his face down to her perky breasts and gave each nipple a soft kiss before sliding further down. Soft kisses trailed across her stomach, and when he reached the waistband of Jesse’s jeans, he unbuttoned them deftly.
“You’re shaking.” He stopped. “Do you want to st—”
“No! No, I don’t want to stop. Please.”
Those dark chocolate eyes widened behind his glasses, and he continued with a new vigor. Jesse watched eagerly as he pulled her jeans off over her legs, and then did the same with her matching thong.
She must have taken his breath away, for he was frozen above her, eyes roaming. “Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.”
Jesse was trembling as he gently parted her smooth legs. Thank god she’d shaved this morning. Her pussy was just as smooth and all the more responsive because of it. The rush of it all was making her head spin. She glanced down to watch as he kissed the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, closer and closer. His beard tickled, but each kiss was deliberate and cushioned in soft reverence as he parted her folds. Darling kissed her clit with a feather light pressure before prodding her entrance with his tongue.
“Oh, fuck,” she muttered, her back arching, reflexively trying to get closer to his mouth.
That brilliant mouth found her clit again and massaged her in firm, agonizingly slow circles. He lapped with each shudder that overtook her. She moved her hand between her legs to press gently on his head, keeping him right where she wanted, digging her hands into the tufts of dark brown and gripping what she could. Waves of pleasure rippled over her, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt anything quite this good.
He quickened his pace.
Her hips jerked up and a soft cry broke from her lips as the pleasure surged through her veins. Invisible and paralyzing in its wake.
His tongue coaxed another involuntary spasm. Moaning against her, he seemed to enjoy it just as much as she did. Long fingers swirled a clever rhythm that pulled her under.
“Fuuuuuuck,” she hissed to the ceiling, desperate for that primal release. Eyes close, fingers reflexively clenching, she let herself unravel completely, swept away in the intensity of her climax.
When Casper finally pulled away, he gave Jesse a small smile and licked his lips. His glasses were smudged and his hair stuck up in random spikes from her grip, rapturously wrecked as she was.
“You are phenomenal,” he said, shaking his head.
Jesse laughed trying to catch her breath and regain feeling in her limbs. “Holy shit…that was. . . that was really damn good. You’re too good to me.” Her garnet hair was bunched around her face, tangled and twisted up in her sweat. His little severed hairs sprinkled all over her. “Was that my tip?”
A loud trilling tone rang out. “Shit. I’m sorry, but that’s—it’s—” Huffing in frustration as he yanked out his cell phone, his handsome mustache still glistening with her cum.
Jesse sat up on her elbows and watched him pace around her small salon in circles, in just his corduroy pants. She couldn’t help but smile, even though it was clear the phone call was not good news. He just looked so good with his fresh cut and that determined expression.
“So, I hate to do this, I don’t ever do this…but something’s come up.” Casper heaved a big sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got to go.”
The only jewelry he wore was an old leather watch with a golden face, but she had to ask. “You’re not married, are you?”
“No! No. Just to science,” he was trying to smile, to salvage, and some part of her found that adorable too, “my work. Can we pick this up again? Soon?”
She slipped back into her panties. “I hope we do.”
He stood still, shoulders slack as her hands caressed his scalp indulgently for a moment, fingertips just grazing his newly-trimmed hair. He closed his eyes as if savoring her touch. Casper opened them to lift her chin for one more tender kiss.
“See you soon,” he whispered. “Thank you for the haircut and for. . .well, just, thank you.”
Jesse crossed her arms over her bare breasts and laughed. “Casper Darling, you are too much. Go solve your mysteries of the universe. You know where to find me.”
So he did.
Only a few days later, Casper slipped back through the door of her salon, just as Jesse was dimming the lights and closing the blinds. A wave of relief washed over her. Relief and a hot plume arousal at the sight of him, standing in his work clothes, hands pressed deep in his pockets in that self-assured way of his.
“Sorry, we’re just getting ready to close,” she said coyly, taking her time to cross the linoleum floor to where he stood.
“You don’t have time for just one more haircut? Not even for a handsome guy like myself?”
Darling didn’t miss a beat, and Jesse loved the banter, the playful tenor of his voice. She loved that they had this established rapport between them, an understanding–a thing. She had had boyfriends, but nothing like this and never anything near her work. Business and pleasure stayed separate. Had to stay separate. But here he was, and now there was…this.
He must have known on some level what cutting his hair did to her, what his touch did to her.
“Hmmm…” She flicked her low ponytail back and forth, eyes trailing up and down him. “I suppose I can make an exception for you. Come on.”
Her heart was pounding in her chest as she escorted him to his chair. This night felt different, like they were on the precipice of something. She couldn’t stop thinking about their last encounter, what she was going to do to him when he returned. What he’d do to her. All the ways she could cut that beautiful hair, uncover more of the man beneath.
He watched her skilled hands curl around a pair of clippers.
“You’re really a good sport about your hair.” Her fingers stroked up the back of his neck. He twitched, almost like a reflex. “You wear it just as well.”
“Ah…well, experimentation has its merit.”
She laughed and ran her hand over the inch of volume left on top. Scissors definitely wouldn’t work as well on this length. “Is this the shortest you’ve worn it?”
Nodding, he handed her his glasses. He didn’t hold any sense of reluctance now. “Sometimes we benefit from a deviation from the norm.”
“So you’re okay with these?” she asked, trying not to sound too hopeful, as she held up the clippers. “How short can we go?”
“You tell me. You’re the professional.” Casper’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
Before Jesse turned them on, she crawled up the chair to straddle his lap, her dark blue eyes tempestuous with want.
Air hissed sharply through his craggy bottom teeth.
“Oh, I missed this,” he said softly, his pupils supermassive and encompassing as they searched hers.
Jesse tugged at his shirt collar, undid his tie, the buttons under and began to kiss him, letting her body relax against his. His hands slid over her, moving from her hips down to her ass. Writhing and muffled moaning mingled as her tongue slipped between his lips and her nails scraped along the fuzz of his head. He was already stiff beneath her.
With nimble haste she reached down to the fly of his pants. Casper didn’t object. He leaned back to free his arms from his shirt, and Jesse did the same. There was an urgency tonight, like the singularity of a moment might slip away if they didn’t act right now.
“You have no idea how badly I want you,” Casper said, gaze fixed to her naked body.
“I could say the same,” she breathed in response. “But not just yet. . .”
With her hands still grazing his scalp, Jesse angled his face to the side and began to kiss her way down his neck. His pulse raced, his breathing hitching with each brush of contact. Low moans, and short whimpering gasps which grew protracting by the time she reached his cock. And what a fuckable cock it was. Not the longest she’d ever seen, but it was substantial, erect in her hand, the pink head full and glistening, far more pleasant smelling than any man’s she’d tasted before. The dark hairs below were coarse, but masculine, and she enjoyed the teasing texture of them trailing up his lower abdomen.
Jesse’s blue eyes flicked upwards to memorize each movement of his face as she began to drag her tongue across each side of his shaft. She circled the tip, sucking as she went, attentive to each novel sound he made as she worked her way down, stretching her lips wide.
“Fuck, Jesse,” he groaned, his words incoherently strained and his eyebrows drawn tightly together. “What… how can you…fucking–incredible.”
The sounds of the street filtered in behind the shelter of her blinds. The grind of tires on asphalt, doors slamming, and people going on with other people. There was a thrill in knowing that here inside her salon, she and Casper were naked and entwined, while everyone else moved through the world, none the wiser.
When she sat up, he slid his fingers between her legs and discovered that she was already slick and warm. He looked like he was about to speak when Jesse turned the clippers on.
It took patience, easing down slowly onto his cock, hips widening and tilting to accommodate a stable one handed position. She hummed in pleasure with how well he filled her. Throbbing inside of her, he waited for her to move. The clippers buzzed loudly beside his ear.
“Are you ready for your trim?”
He didn’t dare look away from her. “Yes.”
She began to run them over his hair. Up his sideburn into the silver of his temples. Another line fell to the floor. Then another beside it, as the little teeth bit rapaciously upward. She cut around the slope of his skull, following the natural curve, one side, then the other. Rocking into him as she did, riding him while she fully exposed his nape. The tiniest of hairs left to brush against her skin, fading the 1# guard into the top of his crown. His breath was hot on her naked chest and gladly erratic in spurts. He was smiling, sharing in her pleasure.
His hair fell around them.
She cut carefully, despite the mounting pressure, the burning urge to strip him completely.
How much must have trusted her to allow for such a thing? She wouldn’t do him a disservice but trimming him poorly.
“You’re so wet,” he said with disbelief, staying still for her which was a difficult thing to do. He was simply throbbing. She could feel every quiver that took him. The ricochet of her clench and release. It was evident he wanted to just to take her by the waist.
“You make me wet.”
This deserved to be done right. She steeled herself and blended the top into a tight well shaped cut. There was still a hint of length at the peak of his hairline, but it was a drastic change from the wavy, luscious hair he’d arrived with on that first day.
The razor straight hard part was the cherry on top.
When she was done, she tossed the trimmer aside and smoothed her palms across the fuzz of his new haircut. The hair was soft now, with the silver still visible, but only just.
“I love it,” she stated boldly, sitting upright as she settled onto him again and her hips twisted fully taking him in.
He groaned loudly, eyes rolling back in a new state of ecstacy, content to let her have her greedy way with him. Her breasts bounced as she moved like a piston on top of his lap, enveloping him deep inside her.
Jesse came first, stuttering, mouth opening and closing with a wordless, pitchless sound. Her orgasm rolled its way over her shoulders and down her spine, and he followed closely behind. She was still reeling when he finished, and she collapsed against him, letting him hold her tightly against his heaving chest.
They laid like that for a moment after, their bodies spent and needy for air. She didn’t want to move from him, but she sat up, and dusted him off so he could have a proper look.
Glasses back in place, his face broke into a huge, enthusiastic grin. “Wow…”
“It really suits you.” She stood behind him, reaching up to run her hand across the back of his nearly naked neck, over the soft bristly hair. “The longer hair does too…I don’t think there’s a haircut that wouldn’t suit you.”
“You suit me.” His voice dipped into a serious tone as he turned to face her. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in. “I don’t want you to just be the beautiful woman who cuts my hair. Let me take you out.”
“On a date?” She asked, feeling uncharacteristically giddy.
“On a date.”
She tried for a quick kiss, but he wrapped her in his arms.
“I would really love that,” she said quietly, tucking herself into him. “I’d still be able to cut your hair, right?”
A bright laugh left his lips. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it.”
