How Not To Fall (8 page)

“I'm saying yes, but I'm saying let's go
very slowly
. One base at a time, eh?”

Then he takes off my glasses and puts them, along with his own, on the coffee table. He looks at me again with an expression I can't interpret.

“I've never seen you without your glasses,” I say in wonder. “You look younger.”

He smiles, and I wait for him to kiss me. He doesn't. He says in a soft voice, “Well then, young Coffey, what next?”

So I put my hands on his neck and kiss him. I bite his lips. I press my chest against his and wrap my arms around his neck and in every way attempt to get my body as near to his as I can get it. I climb over him and straddle his lap, his arms going around me, his hands pressed flat against my back.

“This is not going slowly,” he says, even as he kisses me just as hard as I'm kissing him.

“Don't care,” I say.

And he lets me. He lets me push my pelvis against him, lets me lick and bite and kiss and suck to my heart's content. When I put my tongue in his ear, he makes a fantastic yelp, and when I bite his earlobe and tug, he gives a delicious groan. He likes it, the way I touch him.

Somehow he shifts so he's lying on his back and I'm lying on top of him. At last, I can lick his neck, suck hickeys into it, bite at his clavicles, all the things I've been imagining for so long. The texture of his skin, the smell of his body, the warmth and firmness of him under me, everything is beyond my imaginings. And the whole time, my hips are grinding against his.

Only when my hands stray under his shirt does he stop me—“Ah,” he says, “first base.”

“What?” I pant.

“Slow.” He's panting too. “Let's stick with first base for now.”

“When can we have second base?”

“Let's say . . . a base a day? And today is first base.”

“So tomorrow will be second base, Sunday will be third base, and then Monday is all the way, right?”

“Er, sure.”

“Okay,” I say, and I put my tongue in his mouth again and scratch my fingers down his arm. I break the kiss and say, “Can I have orgasms?”

And he says, “I don't know, can you?” like it's a joke.

“I'm practically there already, I just want to know if it's against your rules.”

He makes a strangled sound and says, “Your orgasms are never against the rules. Have all the orgasms you like.”

So I do. I kiss him and touch him and press into him until the throbbing in my clit reaches a peak, and I come, sucking his tongue desperately into my mouth and rocking my body over his. He clasps his hands over the backs of my thighs and grunts his pleasure.

“That,” he says as the throbs are fading into quietness, “was the most gorgeous thing I've ever experienced.”

“Me too,” I sigh into his throat.

We turn over, and he takes a different approach from my fairly rabid energy. While my heart is still pounding in recovery, he lies on his side and I lie on my back, and he kisses me softly, quietly. “Unless you've got other plans,” he says, spreading kisses over my cheekbones, “we've got all night. No hurry.”

“I have no other plans,” I say. On the contrary, I told Margaret that if she heard from me before Monday, something had gone wrong.

He grips my hair and uses it to angle my head to the side, and he kisses and licks along the length of my neck with a methodical slowness I find meditative at first as I rebound from my orgasm, and then gradually crazy-making as I'm pulled toward another.

He experiments with all the parts of my ear.

And then he's quizzing me on anatomy.

“Miss Coffey,” he says in a breathy version of his teacher voice, “can you name for me the morphological elements of the ear?”

“What?”

“I'll get you started,” he says, and he tugs at my earlobe with his teeth. “Lobe,” he says very, very quietly into my ear. “What else?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Do you or do you not want me to make slow love to your extremely attractive ear?” (My ears are proportionate to my feet.)

“Uh . . .” I start reciting everything I can remember from my anatomy class. “Lobe . . . helix, antihelix . . . tragus, antitragus . . . uh.” Those are all the easy ones, and they're all I can recollect through the fuddle of his tongue and teeth on my helix, tragus . . . oh.

“Mh-hm,” he hums into my ear, rewarding me with his hot breath and another tug on my earlobe with his teeth. “What else?” His tongue runs along the sensitive curve right under my lobe, but when I'm silent too long, he pulls away. “You can do better than that.”

“I remember a symbol in a cave,” I say desperately, thrusting my ear toward him.

“The cymba and cavum—I'll accept that,” he says, and puts his tongue deep into the hollow spaces of my ear. I gasp. “And the incisura,” he adds when he comes up for air.

“Fossa,” he says, licking mine. “Scapha,” he adds, breathing and then biting into mine. His hand is on my waist, light pressure tugging my shirt upward so I can feel the air of the room on my skin. His hand never touches my skin; always he touches me through my shirt. Still, it occurs to me that this could be construed as cheating. I find I don't care much. When his mouth returns to mine, I put my hand on his wrist and push downward, prompting him to touch me directly.

He responds by taking my wrist instead, and putting my hand on my own skin. He puts his hand over mine and guides it over my lower ribs, over my abdomen, down to the top of my jeans, making me feel my own body and the rapid rise and fall of my belly with my breath as he's kissing me. This, too, I have never imagined. Of all the fantasies I've had, never have I thought he might touch me without touching me, using my own hand to caress me, even as he kisses my mouth, kisses my throat, kisses my clavicle, bites at my trapezius muscle through my T-shirt. The heat of my own hand, the pressure of his—they're making my belly shudder with tension. The very fact that he is not touching my breasts makes my breasts sensitive. I lift my chest off the couch to press my breasts against his chest, but he takes his hand from mine to press me back down, his hand over my heart.

“There's no hurry,” he says against my lips. “You can be still.”

I try. I do try. But he returns his hand to mine and continues the warm caresses, until I pull my hand from his and wrap my arms around his neck. I pull him over me, and he comes to me easily, with a groan. I wrap my legs around his hips and run my hands along his back and shoulders and arms as he kisses me and kisses me. When my hips start pressing up from the cushion, he pulls away a little and puts his hand on my face. He whispers, “Slow.”

“I've wanted you for so long,” I say.

“And I've wanted you. Let's enjoy it while we've got it.”

“Please,” I whisper, my hips seeking more pressure. “Oh please.”

He acquiesces with a little noise in his throat, adjusts our bodies to slide a knee between my legs, and I press into it gratefully. With his fingertips just touching my throat and his tongue just touching my tongue in the warm, damp space between our mouths, I come again, making faint noises and rubbing my clitoris on his hard thigh.

When I open my eyes, I find that his eyes are already on me. He's been watching me.

I smile with a tremble and whisper, “This is fun.”

“This is fun,” he answers seriously. And he kisses me again, one hand at the base of my throat, the other at the base of my skull.

I could kiss him for hours. I
do
kiss him for hours. We stop to eat, and we talk, too. But mostly we kiss. Lips, fingers, hands, arms, elbows, necks, ears, face. I discover the secret of the corner of his mouth—if you just touch it with the tip of your tongue, he will, quite reliably, make the most satisfying sound, a sort of half grunt/half sigh. I learned from him that the webbing between my fingers and the inside curve of my elbow are remarkably sensitive places.

Charles hasn't come once, and I'm a little worried about that, but I haven't yet figured out how to ask about it.

I am the one who notices it's past midnight. I get up to pee—peeing is difficult when you've been aroused for multiple hours, by the way—and when I check my phone, I see that it's 12:17 a.m.

Now, Charles could, I suppose, make a case that by “one base per day,” he was not referring to midnight as the end of this particular day. I do not risk inquiring. When I return to the living room, I simply show him my phone, announce, “It's Saturday,” and take off my shirt.

I
'm not wearing a bra—bras are of no particular use to me—so I'm standing in front of him, naked from the waist up.

“Oh my god,” he says, and in the darkness I can't see his face well enough to tell what he means. My breasts are never a worry to me when it's just me, but when it comes to public display, I get a little anxious about the notable lack of them.

“I don't know what to do now,” I say, beginning to feel self-conscious. Beginning to wonder if this was a good idea.

Charles stands up too, his eyes roaming over my skin as he approaches me. He puts one hand at the back of my neck and the other on my chest, his fingertips brushing the curve of my clavicle while he meets my gaze. I've never seen this expression on his face before—almost like pain, almost like anger.

He says, “I was just thinking it was time to send you home.”

“Oh.” I frown, but then he kisses me, and I know he's not thinking about that anymore.

With his eyes on mine, he says, “You are—” He stops and blinks a few times, shaking his head minutely, and then he tries again. “You are unspeakably beautiful.” His fingers trail downward from my clavicle bone to the faint little curve of my breast, down over the nipple and along the lower curve, continuing to my waist, and then around. He puts the full flat of his hand on my back, his warm hand directly on the skin, and kisses me again. I feel his blue Oxford shirt against the tips of my breasts. I'm trembling in his arms; my knees aren't steady. I put my arms around his neck to keep myself on my feet.

“Let's go to the bedroom,” I say.

“Not a chance,” he says. “I'll just fuck you if we go in there.”

“I know!” I say.

He groans and kisses my throat, his hands traveling lightly over my back now. “At five o'clock I had very good reasons not to fuck you tonight. I can't currently remember what they were, but I'm sure they haven't changed.”

“You wanted me to go around the bases,” I say, knotting my fingers in his hair.

“Right. Right. The bases,” he says, and steps away a little to look at my face. “Shall you stay tonight?”

“Unless you don't want me to.”

“Oh, I definitely want you to,” he avers, his hands still traveling over my skin. “I've got to go to work on Monday, unlike some people I could mention, but until then it seems to me the best possible use of every minute is finding new ways to give you pleasure.”

“Yes, please,” I say.

He smiles a little. “I like the way you say that.” Then he takes me by the hand and leads me into the bedroom, saying, “The rules still stand, Miss Coffey. Is that clear? No hands or mouths below the waist. Until midnight tonight, that is.” He pulls back the covers and gestures me in.

“Are we going to bed?” I ask.

“If you mean, are we getting in the bed,” he says in a didactic tone, “yes. If you mean are we going past second base, no. And if you mean are we preparing for sleep ... somehow I doubt it.” His eyes slide over my body.

“Can I take off my pants?” I ask.

He answers by stepping toward me and unbuttoning my jeans, his hands lingering with rule-bending leisure over the task, while he kisses my shoulders and chest. He pushes my jeans down to my knees and I step out of them. I put my hand on the placket of his shirt and meet his gaze with a question.

“Go ahead,” he says, and I start undoing the buttons of his shirt.

The ducklings were right. A Greek god. “Oh my god,” I mutter as, with each button, I reveal more firmly muscled chest and abs, glowing in the streetlight through the window. When his shirt is open, I run my hands over his chest. I push the folds of his shirt apart and, wrapping my arm around his waist, I press my bare skin against his. We both gasp with it.

Before I can think, he lifts me off my feet and dumps me onto the bed. He follows me in, lying beside me, his chest pressed against mine. For a long time, we just kiss, our bodies pressed together this way.

Then I move my lips to his throat, then his shoulders. I press him onto his back and climb over him, to kiss and stroke across his chest and his ribs and down his belly. When I get to the tops of his khakis, I lick a trail slowly, tenderly, into the gap under his waistband. His belly contracts hard, involuntarily, and his hand grips onto my shoulder.

“Can I ask for something?” I say.

“Anything,” he breathes.

“I want you to come,” I plead into the dark. “I've had, like, five orgasms, and you haven't had any. That doesn't seem fair.”

“You really want me to?”

“
Really,
” I say. I crawl up and lie on him, brushing my breasts over his chest and watching the effect on his face.

“And how would you suggest that happen, given the rules of second base?” His hands are traveling all over my skin, my back, my arms, my shoulders.

My first three ideas are clear violations of the rules. I put them aside and say, “I could watch you?”

“Watch me . . . DIY it?” he says. Can you hear a person blush? I swear that's what's happening. “You'd like that?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I slip off him to his side and kiss him. “Yeah, I'd like that. I want that.”

He kisses me back, and my mouth explores his tongue. At last he makes an uncomfortable noise and says, “If you'll do it with me.”

“Have another orgasm? That's the
opposite
of the point. I want to watch you.”

There's a short silence, and then he mutters, “All right.” I feel his hands go to his pants and undo them. He tucks me into the crook of his shoulder and whispers, “Tell me one of your fantasies.”

No problem there. “Hm . . .” I say, trailing my hand over his chest and trying to select a fantasy I think he'll like—there're a lot to choose from. “There's the one where you turn up at a party and I'm all fancied up and it's like you're seeing me for the first time, realizing how irresistible I am.”

“You
are
irresistible,” he says. “What does ‘fancied up' entail?” And I can feel that his hand is moving. I don't see anything in the dark, but I can feel the rhythm of it.

“A really, really short skirt and really, really high heels,” I say.

He turns his face to mine and kisses me lightly. “Is that what makes you feel sexy?”

I shrug against him. “It's what I guess turns guys on.”

“Mh-mh,” he says, his lips still on my face. “Maybe some guys, but I like you barefoot. Barefoot and damp.”

“Oh really?” There's a useful tidbit.

“Really,” he says, gasping a little. His hand is moving faster, and I
so
want to put my hand over his, feel what he's doing. “Seeing you fresh out of the shower on Wednesday nearly killed me.”

“Then you'll probably like the fantasy I had that night, where you didn't stop in the kitchen. You didn't call it a disaster. When you pulled away, it was to unbutton my jeans. You yanked them down to my knees and went down on me right there in the kitchen,” I say.

“Oh god, I wanted to do that,” he says. “What else?”

“Well.” I lick my lips and say the rest quietly into his ear, feeling the vibration of his arm movements. “You go down on your knees in front of me and put your tongue on my clit and lick me until I'm desperate, then you pull my jeans off and fuck me on the kitchen counter.”

“Tell me how you like to be licked,” he breathes.

“I don't know,” I tell him softly. “Nobody has ever done it before. I guess we'll find out in about twenty-three hours.”

He makes an involuntary noise as his diaphragm contracts. I put my hand on his belly, and he puts his hand over mine, wrapping me more firmly in his arm. At first I think he's going to push my hand away, not let me touch him, but he grips my fingers between his, and his arm clamps around me, locking me close and tight against him. His other hand is moving faster now, and he breathes, “What else?”

“After you fuck me in the kitchen? You carry me over your shoulder into the bedroom and . . .” I stop, inexplicably shy.

“Yeah?” he prompts, squeezing me and pressing my fingers.

Blushing in the dark, I tell him in a small, uncertain voice, “I imagined you put me on my knees on the bed, and you put my hands on the wall, and fucked me that way, with your hands over mine.”

“Oh god, Annie.” He turns his face to mine again and kisses me fiercely as he comes, whimpering a little, pinching my fingers almost painfully between his.

When his muscles begin to relax and he's breathing hard but steadily, I say, “That was amazing.”

“At midnight,” he answers in a whisper between breaths, “I'm going to bury my face in your pussy and lick you until you come so many times, you can't move.”

“Okay,” I whisper back.

He laughs silently. “Oh, I like you,” he says.

“I like you too.”

“The tissues are on your side of the bed,” he says, more pragmatically.

I roll over and grab the box and put the whole thing on his chest, telling him, “I don't know how many you need.”

He laughs again. “A lot, I think.”

As he puts the box on his bedside table and pulls a few to wipe himself off, I say through a yawn, “I'm gonna wake up early and take a shower so you can be tempted by my dampness.”

“No arguments from me,” he says, and I drift into unconsciousness, his lips on my forehead.

 

Of course he wakes up before I do. I emerge from sleep only when he puts a mug of coffee on the table by my side of the bed.

“What time is it?” I mumble, reaching for the cup.

“Just past ten.”

“Oh my god,” I say. “I usually wake up at, like, eight.”

“You're on holiday.” He kisses my cheek and joins me in bed. “What do you fancy?”

“What do I huh?” I drink my coffee.

“What would you like for breakfast?”

“Oh. Usually I just have coffee.”

He shakes his head sadly. “That will never do, not for the day I have in mind for you.”

“Does it involve a lot of exercise while naked?” I ask hopefully.

He takes the mug from my hand, and I almost protest, but then he kisses me. He tastes like coffee and toothpaste, but I taste like coffee and morning breath, so I pull away. “I'm yucky,” I say.

“You're yummy,” he says, and grips my jaw in one hand and kisses me harder. Who am I to argue? I move my hands to his back, noticing, now that I'm awake, that he's mostly naked, dressed only in his boxers. But he pulls away and says, “We need a plan that involves leaving the flat so I don't fuck you silly today.”

“Or: you could fuck me silly today,” I suggest.

“No. Behave,” he says. “No fucking until Monday at the very soonest.”

“But touching now,” I say, and I guide his hand to my breast.

I have successfully distracted him. His eyes move to my chest, watching his own hand move over my skin in full daylight, and then his lips are on my nipples, first one, then the other. I lie back, relaxed and reveling in his touch.

“Can you come this way?” he murmurs against my skin. “Just from this?”

“I dunno. I never tried,” I say.

“Let's try now,” he says.

It's easy for his tongue and mouth on my breasts to turn me on—turn me on a lot. Turn me on wildly. With his hands and mouth on my breasts and my ribs and my waist and my belly and my throat and in my hair, within ten minutes I'm panting and writhing. My clit is throbbing for more direct contact, begging to be touched. I knot my fingers in his hair and try spreading my legs wide and rotating my pelvis. I try crossing my ankles to lock my legs together. Still I'm hovering on that desperate, agonizing edge. If only he would touch even the inside of my thighs, I'd come instantly. But he won't. He won't even put his knee between mine and let me hump him like I did last night. He wants me to come just from this, but I can't. I'm in agony.

“This is gonna kill me, Charles,” I whimper. “Please.”

Without changing the soft caresses at my breasts, he takes my hand in his and pulls it down to my panties. He presses my fingers against my clit, through my underwear, in slow, soft circles. All the while his mouth is on me, sucking and licking my breasts. In a matter of seconds, I break apart joyously into a million splintery shards. I make a grotesque sound with it, a desperate, gruff noise that echoes off the walls.

He kisses me with urgent little bites and grunts. “We have
got
to get out of this flat.” Giving me no time to recover—which would give me time to persuade him to stay in bed—Charles shoos me like a stray chicken into the shower. Once I'm clean and dressed, I find him in the kitchen, where he has made French toast and turkey bacon. He looks me up and down—I'm dressed in leggings and a tunic and Chacos—and says, “Can you go for a walk in the woods in that?”

“Sure,” I shrug, piling food onto my plate. Have I ever been this hungry in my life? No. No, I have never been this hungry in my entire life. “Not, like, ten miles, but sure.” I start shoveling food into my mouth.

“You're allowed to chew,” he says with a grin.

In the end, he drives us out to Brown County State Park, and we hike maybe five miles. We take our time, pausing to look at views and eat the fruit he brought with him. (“You brought food? It's only a few miles.” “After watching you eat breakfast, I didn't want to take any chances you might die of starvation on the trail.”) And we talk. Or rather, I talk. Most of his talking happens right at the trailhead. He says, “So. Story of your life. Go.”