Work Text:
“Going with the flow,” you answer but all hope has evaporated.
“I can't,” she says. Then, “I was brought up in Croydon.” You ask what that means but she's turning, apologizing, walking away.
You don't chase after her. You don't say another word. The elevator chimes but you don't get on. You stand, hands in pockets, and wonder how you read her wrong. First Olson, now Reed. One wanted more than you and the other doesn't want you at all. Or if she does, she doesn't know it.
You used to be better at this: gauging the seductibility of women. Maybe you overreached, estimating your interest was matched by hers. Don't take it personal. Wonder, instead, how it could have gone differently.
-
First, you'd step onto the elevator. Hold your breath while a beat passes. Watch her reluctance be eclipsed by something eager, something curious. Her decision this time brings Reed to your side. Exhale. The hard part is over. The door closes and her shoulder brushes yours. Wax poetic. Call it tactile persuasion. In the confines of the elevator you smell her perfume. You smell her fear. Tell yourself you need this, the escape of it, a warm body to remind you that there's more to the world than the horror of your work.
Smile when the elevator stops. You want this: Dr. Reed and her reservations. Coy, polite Reed with dark wet eyes and a mind full of second thoughts.
Stride out confident. Don't look back to see if she's following; you can feel her shadow stepping into yours. Unlock the door to your room, open it wide and inviting. Slip the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob. Exhale.
You're standing in the middle of the room, in a pool of pale light and deja vu. In shoes, you're both the same height. Kiss her, tentatively, vaguely, your hand reaching behind her, drawing a line up her nape to pull the ponytail loose. Reed's hair falls to her shoulders, India ink shining in the tremulous light, fragrant, feminine. Pause to push a strand behind her ear. Your senses are still alert for the tiniest jerk of resistance, the hesitancy that might mar the potential of this night.
Kiss her again, counting, waiting so that when it doesn’t happen—when she wraps her hand around the back of your head instead, the salt of the margarita burns the corners of your lips and your mouth deepens. A pang of shock, the precise thrill you've sought, rises in you, mercury in a thermometer with only one way out.
Her tongue spars with yours until you're breathless, drowning, slow to surface for air. Your open mouth lingers near hers, breath like steam, the pulvinate swell of her bottom lip touching yours. Crush your mouth to hers just once more, hard, to feel her push back, to feel her drink the want pouring out of you. Open your eyes. This is a kiss that speaks for other parts of the body. Bracket your hands on her hips. The tilt of her against you is more than compliance. It's the reciprocity you read, it's willingness.
Let her begin to undress you. Watch like a bystander, sensing this is her first time. Discard your blouse to the mute beige carpet. Trace the hem of hers, lifting it slowly, your eyes holding hers. Don't stare at the pattern of black lace that borders the brim of her cleavage. Don't notice a mole there or make it a focal point of your attention. Kick off your heels and bend to unzip her boots.
You both pause at the buttons and zippers of each other's trousers. Undo your own, lifting each leg out with grace. Let her do the same. Feel like girls in a locker room after gym class.
With a kind of exposed-wound insecurity, Reed sits on the edge of the bed. Tell her to breathe. Reach and touch her face, dragging the back of your hand down until your nails rest under her chin.
“I've never–– ” she starts, but your index finger silences her, an exclamation mark punctuating her closed lips.
“Lay back,” you say. “And breathe.”
Wonder if you can unclasp her bra with your tongue. Kneel instead. Hook your fingers in the waistband of her panties and pull. Sigh, relieved when she lifts her hips, just slightly, to let them go all the way off.
Loiter between her legs, coveting the crimsoned glistening spread of her. You'll feel her flinch when you make first contact, your lips warm and sinking into the crease of her thigh. She can't see you, can't intuit your plots and plans for the evening. Every muscle in her body is tense, wound tight in anticipation. Nothing compares to the suspense you can elicit with the faintest intimation of a touch. Your hands, on the outsides of her thighs, retreat. You breathe into the heat radiating off her center. Her hips pivot then, like a reflex, making the mound of her sex rise, suggesting itself, impatient. Bow your head, lapping, finally, the length of her labia. Repeat the motion, steeling your tongue, stroking in an indistinct rhythm until you can see her toes curl in your periphery.
Her knees sway apart and then together. Turn your head to leave a trail of lipstick blotches from the bend of her knee down. Enough foreplay, you think and centralize your focus to her clit. Seal your lips around it and suck, roughly at first. Then more exact. You'll hear her gasp. Don't relent. Plunge deeper. Remember your fingers. Dip one, then two into the slick, tight clench of her. Curl your knuckles. Daub your fingertips until they settle into synchrony with you mouth. Feel her react. Reed's head tosses from side to side, all the tensed muscles quavering. There are no words, just helpless, strangled sounds you can only halfway hear.
Your tongue's a taunting pendulum between her legs. Your nose is cramped into an obscure crevice. You can feel her clit, pulsing like a beacon against your upper lip, demanding attention. Engulf it again. Devour it. Drive your fingers deeper until her back arches off of the bed. You'll hear your name escape her lips. Taste her orgasm, the beginning, middle and end of it, the heady musk of it. Steady your long, even strokes with the flat of your tongue and don't stop. Don't ever stop. Draw the orgasm out, like a sketch composite of something heinous and perfect and long overdue.
Rise minutes later, flushed and panting, a sheen of her lust coating your face. Collapse prostrate at her side. Wait.
Reed crosses and uncrosses her legs, languorously. She turns on her side and stares at you: your freckles, your eyelashes, the worried parentheses etched on either side of your pout. Negligible details. She watches your chest rise and fall, watches the blushing glow of your cheeks evanesce. Braced on an elbow, she leans in and kisses the corner of your mouth, the point of your jaw, your neck.
She shifts abruptly and you assume she's moving down but she doesn't. Her leg rises and moves over you and so does she, settling astride your hips. She resumes on your neck, pecking and sucking intermittent. Your hands, irresolute about where they belong, rest low on her back, grinding her hips into yours. You're not sure you've ever been straddled by a woman before but the weight of her, the sticky gravity of the two of you together like this, makes the world narrow to this hotel room, this moment.
Open your mouth to say something, something you shouldn't say, or to scream. She's reaching behind you, awkward and stretching but rewarded by the audible disconnect of your bra clasp. Let the straps glide off your shoulders. Feel naked and smothered and smitten. Thread your fingers through her hair as her face descends to the plain of your chest, concentrating on the delicate anatomy of it: areola, nipple, the place where your rib cage softens into breast. Watch Reed sink into the soft white dune there. Trail your nails up her spine, digging them into her shoulder blades as she sits up and the full weight of her seesaws against your pubic bone. Slur something unintelligible. Feel dangerously close to some invisible bluff when she moves off of you, smiling. Those obsidian eyes see through you. They don't blink. Her mascara's smeared and you wonder what you must look like, smudged makeup, dilated pupils, mussed hair.
She is on her side, inching closer, and you turn on your side, mirroring her because you think, you hope, you know where this is going. Her thumb is pulling at the edge of your panties, shoving them down. It's just one side but it's enough.
Reed's palm moves down and onto throbbing wetness between your legs, drawing circles, experimentally. Inhale and hold it. Lunge your hips toward that touch, into it until it's inside you, finally. She pulls out too soon but the heel of her hand slides over the swell of your clit, and Reed strokes it repeatedly, fluidly, until you shudder and your head lolls back. You're dizzy like this, impossibly close when she thrusts two fingers into you again. And again. “There,” you whisper and “fuck” because nothing else feels this good—because men never do this right. They rub your clit like it’s a spot that needs removing. But not us. We know exactly what it feels like when you graze the flat of a finger softly over a clit and down to the opening. There’s a river down there and it has a course; it tells you what path to take. That valley was made for fingers.
Your hand seeks her out, almost involuntarily. Your fingers plunge into her. You still haven't seen her come. You felt it. You tasted it. But you want to see her face when you force it out of her. You want to watch her as she does this to you too, to play her like an instrument while she coerces this shameless release out of you.
Your hand's moving frantic, fingers strumming inside her, thumb dabbing at her tender nub. She has you there, so there that you close your eyes, bear your neck to her. Your fingers become insistent, fucking into her, telling her how you want it. Reed pushes deeper into you, her nails scraping. She pushes faster, harder, until the pressure is too much and your hips sway the wrong way. You still your buried fingers as your orgasm grasps and tugs at her hand. Your muscles seize and flutter. Cant your hips. Breathe obscenities into her mouth. Writhe as the pleasure moves through you.
The muffled, wet sound of her fingers swimming in your sex returns you to reality. Your vision focuses and she has a smirk on her face. It's pride, you think, your eyes low-lidded and the edges of things blurry. Your fingers are still inside her. Reed's thighs are close together, squeezing. You haven't the energy for another slow ascent. You apply delicate precision to your strokes, watching her face, waiting for the tremors that presage climax. She kisses you in a way that seems to demand slowness. You respond by alternating slow motion with quick, sharp thrusts. You find the place that makes her keen and you hammer hard against it until her muscles clutch at you. She makes a hoarse incoherent plea, squirming into your hand. Move close to kiss her but sink your teeth into her bottom lip instead.
-
There, you think, drowsy in the dim afterglow. You withdraw your fingers, the tips pruned in the most impure way. You can still feel her inside you though you know she's not. One arm is behind you; the other is eloquently thrown across your hip. Your legs are tangled with hers and you leave them that way. You look at her dark hair fanned across your white pillow case and you close your eyes. Imagine what you could say. Think of kissing her goodnight. Fall asleep instead.
In the morning Reed will be gone. You'll feel relief in her absence. Until you start to doubt the reality of last night. Worry it was all a dream. Look for evidence that it wasn't. Decide to take a shower when you can't find any. In the mirror, after you've slipped out of the robe, notice lipstick stains spattered from your shoulders to your navel. Smile. Know: it happened.
-
-
-