Twenty-Four
W e don’t go far. We can’t really, because a minute into the drive I put my hand between his legs, and he almost careens off the road. Though he doesn’t try to stop what I’m doing. Instead he uses the hand he puts over mine to grind my palm against his hard cock, as he finds us a quiet road to nowhere.
Nothing but trees around us, only empty fields beyond.
Everything dark and quiet and perfect, for something I promise myself isn’t really about sad feelings starting to overwhelm me. This is just seizing the opportunity to have some sex, while it’s still there. And probably it’s not even going to be good sex, either. After all, that’s how it went the last time I did this in a car. It was on the way home from a party. Patrick Holloway pulled over, I said sure, why not . He wanted me to sit on him facing the steering wheel, and somehow I did.
I don’t remember it feeling good.
But almost right away I know it was silly to think it would even be remotely like that, with Beck. ‘Let’s get in the back seat,’ he says. And he does it against the curve of my throat, in between the hottest, sweetest kisses. One hand in my hair, the other unfastening my seat belt for me.
So, you know, it’s not like I can argue.
I just let him open the car door for me, and lead me round to the back, and lay me down on the seats. Because he does actually lay me down, too. He puts his arms around my waist and just sort of lifts me, and then I’m spread underneath him, in this quiet and closed-in space. This space that should be awkward.
But doesn’t feel it.
I don’t know what it feels like, until he speaks.
‘It’s like getting to be the teenager I wasn’t,’ he says – half laughing about it, in this nervous way. Only it isn’t funny at all. It takes hold of my heart instead, and squeezes it. Of course it does – he’s right, and not just about himself.
About me, too.
Fifteen-year-old me, who watched Titanic and thought that was how it was going to be. And instead got whatever mundane garbage reality usually is. Patrick Holloway, Cameron Davies, David Jackson, making it boring, making it bad, making it hurt. And now there’s Henry Samuel Beckett, saying: ‘I’m so glad it’s you I get to be that teenager with.’
So what else can I do but try to move things on to something filthier? If he keeps talking like that I’m going to lose my mind, and do something weird like cry. But I know how to get him to stop.
I start unbuckling his belt.
Quick and eager, in a way that clearly excites him. ‘Oh, you want to—’ he gasps out, eyes stuttering closed, hips already rocking into a touch he’s not yet felt. About a second before I cut him off by licking my palm, all long and lascivious.
Then rubbing it over the length of his bared cock.
Lewdly, like I would with one of those other men, those ones who treated me badly. And I can tell he’s loving it. He ruts into my hand, teeth deep in his lower lip, moaning almost continuously. Gaze caught between my hand as it works that thick, already slick cock, as greedily as possible, and the rest of me, spread out underneath him, looking just as hot.
Because I know I do. My cheeks are flushed, my own eyes heavy with lust, my tongue has curved up over my lip of its own accord. And this top is definitely showing off how turned on I am. Even I can see the tight little points my nipples have become through the material.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise when he bends his head, and licks.
But it is. My hand stutters on his cock, and I let out a little sound that seems so broken I think I expect him to stop. To imagine that it means I don’t like it. Only he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, because he’s learned enough to know better. He can tell the difference between my pain and my pleasure.
And cares enough to react accordingly.
To tell me, ‘Oh, you want more, sweetheart?’
Then he cups me there, so he can do it again. Only better, slower, more deliberate. He makes a trail with his tongue around that stiff point, until I gasp. Before he just kind of catches it in his mouth. He sucks me, gently, through the material, and even seems to know that this is both too much, and not enough.
I arch my back into it, I make a sound like a scared whimper, and he just starts unbuttoning my top. All the way down, and only pausing to make a thick sound of arousal when he sees I’m not wearing a bra underneath. When he knows I did this for him, all for him, and whatever he wants to do now he’s unearthed it.
Lick and kiss me there, I think.
But it’s more than that. He touches me like he can hardly stand not to. Like I’m the most gorgeous thing in the world. At some point, he practically rubs his face against my bare breasts, mouth all open and hot and wet, one big hand covering whatever he can find, the other between my legs.
And it’s so good I completely forget that I’m supposed to be getting him off, fast. I don’t think about anything except how good this feels, how hot it is, how much it makes me moan and arch my back like I’m begging him for more. Even though begging is a really bad idea, because it makes him speak into the heated air.
‘Do you want me to make love to you?’ he says.
And I know I should say no. I get that I should.
But my heart just gets to my lips before my mind can. It rushes there, pushed by all the things I’ve never had before and longed for in ways I hardly knew could be the case, and then I’m saying it. ‘Yes, yes, oh yes, Beck, please.’ And I can’t even regret it afterwards, because the look on his face, the softness in it, the way he gazes into my eyes, one hand coming up to stroke my cheek—
God, I could really believe he feels it.
That those aren’t just words, he wants this with me. Love, he wants love, not just some quick fuck in a car. Though even if he doesn’t, everything he then does makes it seem close enough. He puts the radio on, so something soft is playing in the background. Turns the internal lights on, so we’re bathed in a romantic glow. And he undresses me, almost completely.
Like all these small things matter.
Because of course they do to him. They’re all the things he’s never had, I think, then don’t know why I feel so intensely wistful about it. Until I remember I’ve never had them either. I don’t know what it is to be cradled, as someone gently eases my underwear over my thighs. Or what it is to feel tender fingers stroking my cunt, and have to grasp that they’re doing so to make sure I’m wet enough, eager enough, ready enough.
Then when he’s not sure I am, he strokes me.
Softly at first, but soon it’s almost too much. It’s just enough. I come like that, in his arms. And it’s only when I do – when I’m moaning against the side of his face and arching into his maddening touch – that he does anything for himself. I get some sense of him going into the mechanics of actually having sex: positioning himself right, positioning me right, condom.
But even that’s somehow sexier and sweeter than it’s ever been. Because I realize, through this fog of pleasure and affection, that he must have gotten them specially. He couldn’t have found them in a cabinet somewhere, or asked someone for some. He wouldn’t be able to manage with whatever that got him.
He did it himself, on purpose, most likely thinking, But if she ever wants to, I should have them . And it feels silly to love that, but I do. My good guy, my practical man, I think. Even if he’s not really mine at all. He never will be mine, not really.
But in that moment I don’t care.
All that matters is how it feels when he tilts my hips up to meet him with one big hand. Then does just what I imagined when I first saw that gorgeous cock. He rubs it all good and slow, through my slick folds. Over and over until I’m rocking against him, and making a noise I don’t think I ever have.
It sounds like keening.
Yet still he doesn’t ease into me.
Even though it must be agony for him, too. More than agony really, because he’s never felt anything like this before. He’s not used to the hot, wet clasp of a pussy, around the most sensitive part of him. It has to be driving him out of his mind – and I can see it is. I can feel him drawn all taut and trembly, breath stuck in his throat, face tight with tension.
But he holds on, all the same.
He waits, and waits, to the point where he barely has to even work his way into me. I just open for him, and he sinks in without even trying. Smooth as silk, and so good it forces a sound of shock out of him. Hell, it forces a sound of shock out of me . As if I’m as much of a virgin as he is.
And in a way I suppose I am.
I’ve never known anything like this. The way it feels to be so cared for, so tightly held, so wanted. It turns me inside out. It stops me even considering that I should be just mindlessly fucking him.
All that matters, in that moment, is making it good for him, too.
And I know how to. I get what he will like, even though I have to fumble toward it, as inexperienced as he was about the physical aspect of this thing. I put my arms around him – awkwardly at first. Then less so, when I feel his reaction to it. He practically purrs, he rubs his cheek against mine.
So I rub back. I nuzzle into him, like an animal seeking warmth. Body no longer just rutting back at his, but rolling up to meet him, delighting in the press of him, always trying to get closer.
And it gets him.
He’s almost constantly shuddering now, movements a little jerky and erratic, expression all wonderment, like he can’t believe this is how making love to someone feels. But the thing is: I don’t think I can believe it either. I thought being more loving would just be better for him.
Yet somehow it’s better for me, too.
It feels like I’m giving more of myself, my real self. Like I’m connecting with something inside me that I’ve pushed down. Something that gets stronger and stronger the more I touch him and hold him and kiss him, god, when I kiss him. It feels so good I think I lose it as badly as I tried so hard not to.
I actually sob with pleasure.
Real tears leak out of my eyes.
I have to turn my face away so he won’t see them and stop what he’s doing.
Because I know he’s loving every second of it, and I don’t want him not to. I want to hold on to him saying my name, over and over, as he comes. And pretend, as he does, that this is just the beginning.
Even though I know it’s the end. I know I can’t ever do this again.
If we do, I’ll tell him what I almost do now:
That I love him, with all of my heart and soul.
I love his beautiful face when he looks down at me through the darkness, all bright with happiness. I love the way he says, ‘Well, I reckon I did okay there.’ Like he has no idea how amazing he is. I love that he tells me thank you, I love that he sees I’m shivering and wraps me up in a blanket, I love that he just lies there like that with me while the music plays and it starts to rain.
No rush. No impatience.
Not even laughter when I put my hand on the steamy window, and leave a print there. Just to have that one last taste of like it is in the movies . Before I have to say, as we drive back to the lodge and the two days we have left:
‘Well, I guess that was a good way to bring this to an end.’
And then I wait, to see if he will disagree.
But of course – he doesn’t.
They never do, when I most want them to.