How Not To Fall (12 page)

“All right?” he asks again, his eyes watching mine.

“Oh,” I say, trying not to close my eyes, trying to focus on his blue ones when my whole brain wants to notice what it feels like to have him inside me. “Yes.”

He's begun to go a little deeper now, sliding with longer strokes, and I feel his thigh move between mine, pinning down the one on the mattress. Still I have this leg in the air and no idea what to do with it, but I'm caring less and less.

“More?” he asks, his fingers tightening in my hair.

“Yeah,” I whisper.

He slides deeper and my hand moves on my clit while his hand strays over my breasts and abdomen. I make a noise, and he kisses me. “All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Annie,” he says. “Oh, you feel amazing.”

All I can say in response is, “Ah.” There's so much sensation, from my hand on my clit and his hand moving over my torso and his eyes so close to mine, watching me, and, above all, the utterly unique sensation of him moving inside me. He's
inside
me.

“I really like that,” I say finally.

“I like it too,” he says seriously. He kisses my ear, my throat, my mouth. My pelvis rocks in rhythm with his movements, pressing from the sensation of him inside me to the sensation of my hand and back again.

“More,” I say.

“More?”

“Yeah. Charles. Can you be all the way inside me?”

His answer is a snarl and a grunt. His hand moves to my shoulder, presses down on it to brace me, I realize, as he begins to fuck me fully. My breasts bounce with it, and I find my hand has begun pressing down on my clit without my ever deciding to. I can scarcely interpret all the sensations I'm experiencing, but the familiar rising tension in my lower abdomen finally forces my eyes closed. My attention collapses to a few hypersalient sensations. The subtle bounce of my breasts. The pressure on my clit. The wet, hot slide of Charles moving inside me.

“Oh my god.”

“All right?” he asks again.

“Please don't stop.”

“I won't stop,” he grinds out. “I want you to come, Annie. I want to watch you come while I fuck you.” He keeps talking even as he kisses me, kisses my face, the crests of my cheekbones, along my eyebrow, my temple. He's murmuring about sweet and fucking and come and so, so, so . . . And still the pressure on my clit, and the bounce of my breasts, and his thigh heavy and warm between mine, the slippery friction of him inside me, all pulling me toward orgasm. The movement of my hand on my clit seems out of my voluntary control, and I'm pressing harder, moving faster, building up layers of pleasure.

When I realize I'm holding my breath, I exhale in a gust but then inhale with a wild gasp and hold my breath again. When I can finally exhale, I breathe, “Charles,” and then barely draw another breath before my diaphragm locks again and I'm caught between inhalation and exhalation, my mouth wide open.

“Not yet,” he commands.

“What?” I'm breaths away from orgasm, and he's moving over me, without withdrawing from me, and shifting between my legs. He leans over and takes my hand, grips it in his, pressing it into the mattress by my shoulder. His other hand is on my face. His eyes are on me. He's not moving inside me; he's just holding me here, his pelvis pressed against my clit and his cock buried deeply, fully inside me.

He kisses me briefly. “All right?”

I can't answer; I just blink at him and gasp for air. He grins.

He kisses me again and says softly into my ear, “You want to come, my Annie?”

“Yes,” I can barely say. “I want—”

He interrupts me, kissing me, putting his tongue in my mouth and fucking me in a sudden storm of fast, deep thrusts. With every movement, his pubic bone rubs against my clit.

I open my eyes and meet his. His eyes are dark, his jaw tight as he kisses me. He holds me, fucks me, holds my gaze, grips my shoulder, grips my hand, still fucking me even as my hips lift and push and writhe against him. I pull my hand from his and wrap my arms and legs around him and lift my hips off the mattress, desperate to press him as deep into me as he can go.

With a groan, he wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me bodily from the bed, my arms and legs still wrapped around him. The movement makes me dizzy in my desire. He's fucking me, fucking me even deeper, on his knees, holding my entire weight upright in his lap, pressing my body against his while I grind my pelvis. Both of his arms braced tight around my rolling hips. His arms are shaking around me, and my legs are shaking around him, trembling at the precipice.

And then I break open. Without a sound beyond my disbelieving sigh, my body cracks and crumbles like an avalanche. I grip and flail and pant. I dig my fingernails into his shoulders, I bite him, I'm wild to keep him in me as I fall to pieces around him.

The writhing has not yet ended when I feel him cross a threshold. “You are . . .” he says through a tense jaw. “I can't . . .” He doesn't tell me what I am or what he can't. When he comes, he shouts hoarsely and then bites my lip so hard, I taste blood and I love it. He lifts up under me, rises up on his knees, kneeling as he would at an altar, fucking into me, his arms trembling around my hips and his forehead against my throat. He throws me back down on the bed in silence and, with three final thrusts, he kisses me, one hand pressed into my jaw, the other fisted in my hair.

“Jesus,” he says into my ear, out of breath.

My limbs are melting around him. We're both breathing hard. When I open my eyes, I see that for once he's not watching me. His face is utterly peaceful, eyes closed, the faintest smile on his parted lips. I put my hand on his face, and he opens his eyes then, kisses me briefly, and rests his forehead against mine, eyes closed.

“Oh my god, Annie,” he says.

We lie together like that, warm, limp, and breathing, for a long time. Somehow the silence and the tangling of our breaths feel as though they're tying me to him, linking us together in a way that our joined bodies alone never would. This
is
a big deal. In this moment I know tonight will link me to this man, to this breathing body over mine, forever. When at last he opens his eyes and, with one hand, brushes my hair away from my face and tucks it behind my ear, I ask him quietly, “Is it always like this?”

And then he smiles at me, a warm, affectionate smile that I will never, ever, in my whole life forget.

He says, “It's never like this.”

W
e do it again in the morning. Compared with last night, it's quiet, calm, simple. We wake up, and it's as if we're already in the middle of it. I turn and kiss him and pull him over me and open my legs, and he slides easily into me. It's so easy. It's so simple, the simplest thing in the world for him to angle his pelvis so he's pressing against my clit while he fucks me. I'm learning what the tension in his body means, and the more aroused he gets, the more aroused I get. He waits for me. I come easily, no hesitancy, no delay, just easy response to the pressure of his body against mine. And as I come, he accelerates his movement and comes too, and then he lies on top of me, kissing me and kissing me and kissing me.

At last he lifts his mouth from mine and says with a sigh, “I have to go to work.”

“Well,” I say. “I guess we couldn't actually have sex all day anyway.”

“On another day I'll be happy to try,” he grins, and he gently, slowly pulls out of me.

And from there, it turns into a morning. Like, a regular morning. As if I haven't just spent the night Losing My Virginity. I don't feel like I've lost anything at all, to be honest. I feel just a little bit more grown-up, I feel taller, I feel . . . mostly the same. Also: sore, just a little.

He takes a shower and I make the coffee and we make out in the kitchen while the toast toasts—he's clean and I'm gross, but he doesn't seem to mind at all. When he sits down to breakfast, he says, utterly practical, “You're teaching tonight?”

“Yup.” I sip my coffee.

“And I've got my climbing group. May I see you tonight, afterward?”

“Um, of
course
.”

He smiles. “Why don't I come over to yours tonight, if you like, for a change? Around eight?”

“Sure,” I say. “As long as you're okay with Margaret being around.”

“Fine by me if it's fine by her,” he says easily. Then he adds, less comfortably, “She knows about . . .”

“Oh god, she knows,” I say. “She's been hearing about me lusting after you for years.”

His smile goes crooked at this, and he blushes. “I hope . . .” he says, and stops. Then he tries again. “I hope you'll be glad about this, years from now. I hope you'll remember this—remember
me
—with pleasure.”

In answer, I do my best to distract him from leaving, but he peels me off him and ushers us out the door. Leaving the apartment together is easy. It feels natural, like we've always done it this way.

I ride home—an interesting experience, postcoital—and find Margaret in the living room.

“Holy crap,” I announce.

“Me too!” she says. “Who should go first? Oh hell, I should! We're engaged!”

“Oh my god!” I squeal like a little girl and hug her, and we jump up and down while I say, “That's amazing! Oh my god, that's so great!”

She tells me all about Reshma's proposal, which happened in front of Reshma's parents, who cried and hugged them both and called Margaret the Thai American queer femme daughter they never had. It's a really big deal that Reshma's parents—her lesbian moms—are so welcoming and accepting, because Margaret's own family hasn't gotten there yet.

“So?” she asks, once we've squeed enough over her news. “How was it? Did you have wild and crazy sexytimes all weekend?”

“He's been so amazing.” I explain about the bases and the hiking and climbing and sleeping and finally . . . last night.

Her face is a mixture of curiosity, empathy, and a little bit of horror as I explain what it was like. She's a gold-star lesbian, and just the idea of a biological penis is a little gross to her. I can understand that, I guess.

She tilts her head to the side, thinks, and says, “Maybe I just have no idea how guys work, but it seems weird to me that you'd have such a different number of orgasms from him. Isn't that sort of unfair? Or is that just how it works: The girl has way more orgasms than the guy?”

I fret about that for a minute, my lip between my teeth. “I don't know. Do you think Google could tell us?”

We look it up, discover something called “the orgasm gap,” and generally learn that it's way more typical for a guy to come more often than a girl.

“Oh,” Margaret says.

“Huh,” I say.

But the whole conversation has planted a niggling worry in my brain that no amount of googling can quiet.

 

That night my ballet class must have no idea what the hell is going on with their teacher. We
battement
to “Gangnam Style” while I prance around the studio like a K-pop superstar singing, “Heeeeey, sexy lady.” It's our last class, so I allow them to chalk it up to me psyching them up for next week's rehearsals and performance. We spend most of the class running their piece—I'm not polishing their technique at this point; I'm focused on building their confidence and their artistry. Most of the students hug me at the end of the class, and so I'm feeling blissed out with affection and a sense of purpose when I get on my bike to go home.

By eight I'm showered and excited and waiting for the doorbell to ring.

He knocks instead.

I open the door, smiling like a goon, and he's standing there, gooning right back.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say. “Come in.”

He does, saying, “It's okay with Margaret that I'm here?”

“Totally okay. Oh—we ordered pizza, it's on its way. I hope that's okay.” I close the door behind him.

“Sure.”

“Good climb?” I say.

“Yes,” he says.

“Good.”

“Good class?”

“Yup.”

“Good.”

We're standing there, grinning at each other like dopes, when Margaret comes down the stairs.

“Hiya, Momma Duck,” she says.

“Margaret.” He nods, and I swear he looks just the slightest bit shy.

“Pizza'll be here soon,” she says as she wanders into the kitchen. “You want a pop?”

“Sure,” he says, his eyes on me. “Oh, I brought you ...” He pulls the Wodehouse novel from his satchel.

“Hey!” I say in thanks, taking it. And then the doorbell rings—it's the pizza. I lead Charles back to the living room while Margaret talks to the pizza lady. I wave him to a seat on the futon and say, “I played ‘Gangnam Style' in my class tonight.”

“In a ballet class?” Charles asks.

“That song is important sociopolitical satire!” I say.

If Charles and I have A Song, it's this one. See, “Gangnam Style” was a giant thing at exactly the same time Charles joined the lab—and when I say
exactly
the same time, I mean that the day we met, at the very moment he walked into the lab for that first meeting in August, Margaret and I were showing everyone in the lab, Professor Smith included, the “Gangnam Style” dance. We had been playing the You Tube video over and over for a week in our apartment, learning it. There we were, dancing, and then there he was.

At the end of the song, Professor Smith introduced us this way:

“Charles! Welcome to the madhouse. This is Annie, Head Duckling, and Margaret, who's a hatchling, new to the lab this semester, like you.”

And she introduced him to us, the ducklings and the grad students, this way:

“Ducklings, this is Dr. Charles Douglas, your new Patrice. You should probably wait a few weeks before you start addressing him as Momma Duck.”

I never did call him Momma Duck. He stood there, looking beautiful and serious, and I felt foolish. All the grad students and most of the undergrads called him Charles right away, but to me he was Dr. Douglas. It took me a year to get over that.

And now here he is on our futon, waiting for pizza and saying, “I'm sure the sociopolitical satire is why you played it.”

I walk over and straddle his lap. “You remember that first day?” He nods and puts his hands in my hair and gives me that warm, fond look that seems to grab me by the heart and tug me closer to him. He says, “I thought,
They're going to think I am the world's biggest wanker
.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I thought,
What have I done?
”

“Did you regret it?”

“Not even for a second,” he says, and then he adds, “I like you on top of me.” He pulls me toward him and kisses me.

And just then Margaret clears her throat and says, “Pizza, you guys.”

I don't really want pizza. I want to take off Charles's clothes and fuck him right here. I want my tongue thrusting into his mouth in the same rhythm that his cock thrusts inside me. But I crawl off his lap and sit beside him on the futon as Margaret pulls slices onto plates for us.

“I was just telling Charles I played ‘Gangnam Style' in my class tonight. You remember when we did the thing?”

Margaret snorts through a mouthful of pizza. “Oh my god, I forgot all about that! That was hilarious.”

It's easy, the three of us hanging out together. Margaret has always liked Charles, Charles has always liked Margaret, and she's so glowing from her engagement, pretty much nothing in the world could make her cranky. In fact, she spends less than half an hour downstairs with us, mostly talking about her weekend, and then she goes back to her room to call Reshma, whose semester isn't over yet. They'll be on the phone for hours.

And so Charles and I are alone.

In the living room.

On the futon.

I turn my eyes to him and find him watching me. Without a word, he pushes me onto my back, his hand on my throat, and kisses me lightly, tiny, soft, slow kisses on my mouth. For a moment I let him draw me under, but then I take a deep breath and struggle to introduce the niggling topic.

I say, “I have an unsexy question.”

“Okay,” he says, still kissing me.

I pull away enough to ask, “You wanna meet my parents when they're here? I'm not trying to make it all awkward, but, like, if you want to, they're pretty cool.”

“Sure,” he says, creating a little distance too. “Will they be at the department reception? I can meet them there.”

“Yeah, perfect,” I say. And then, “Um.”

“Hm?”

“So, also? I was thinking about it and, uh, I think I'd rather we didn't do stuff while my parents are here. Is that okay?” I ask, cringing.

“No problem,” he says easily.

I say, “And can I ask a beginner's question?”

“Of course.”

“Am I having, like, a
really
lot of orgasms? Or is this typical?”

“You are having a genuinely spectacular number of orgasms, young Coffey. You are having orgasms by the barrel, by the hogshead.”

I make a mental note to look up what a hogshead is and say, “And you are having . . . way fewer orgasms than that.”

“I don't know what the actual ratio is, but it's a largish one, yes.” He gives me a cockeyed grin and starts biting along my jaw.

“There are even times when I come multiple times, and you don't come even once.”

“Not even once,” he repeats, and kisses behind my ear.

“Is that . . . That feels lopsided to me, and maybe a little unfair?”

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” he pronounces against my neck.

“Well, maybe that's what I mean. Are you coming less because I lack ability, or because you have less need?”

“Sweetheart, watching you orgasm is more pleasurable to me than having my own.” He's running his lips and tongue over the notch under my earlobe.

“Really?”

“Oh yes,” he says, and his voice is quiet but definite against my ear.

Still, I have this niggling dissatisfaction. I explore it in silence as he nuzzles and nibbles, and I finally wonder aloud, “Well. It's maybe unfair in the other direction then. You might not want to come more, but I think maybe I want you to come more. I feel like I'm handing over an awful lot, and you're maybe like . . . holding back?”

“This is the losing control thing?” He's kissing my throat now.

“It's, like . . . you take over my whole body and make me come over and over again, but you hold off and stay in control and
choose
when you come.”

He stops kissing me. He pulls away, looks at me. “Yes. It doesn't come naturally to me the way it does to you.” He brushes a hand over my hair and kisses my mouth. “You let go so easily. You hand your body over to me with such trust.”

“What would it take for you to do the same thing?”

He's silent for a long time, a thinking silence, so I wait patiently. . . and I am rewarded. He says, “Do you remember when you asked me to tell you one of my barbaric thoughts?”

“Yeah.”

He raises an eyebrow, and his hand wanders over my chest.

“You want to tie me up?” I say. “And . . . make me come, I think you said a hundred times, so that when you finally fuck me, I'm exhausted and limp?” I pause and then add, “You don't mean literally a hundred, right? Because even having just four makes me feel like a heap of mashed potatoes.”

“Not literally a hundred, no,” he says, and there's a tension in his voice that stirs me.

“I want to do that,” I say. “Let's do that tomorrow.”

He shakes his head. “Maybe we can try something like that later, maybe after you've had a bit more time to get to know what you like.”