Chapter 34 #2
“She used to read a goodnight story to me every night in that room once the sun had disappeared behind the Aspen Highlands. She always said: ‘Tomorrow morning, once the sun has returned to greet the new day, I’ll be there to kiss you awake and to remind you how much you are loved.’”
“She’s never stopped,” I whisper. “She still does, every time the sun rises. Just remember that with a smile on your face. She’s there, Knox, and she doesn’t want to see you fall.”
Knox nods. The little golden lights on their strings dapple his face, the corner of his mouth, above his eye, next to his ear.
He looks sad but not hopeless anymore. It’s a melancholic sadness, and that’s better, I think.
I don’t think he’ll ever completely lose that expression, but he doesn’t have to.
Because then Knox wouldn’t be Knox. It’s a piece of him—that love for his mother who is no longer here—and denying that would be insincere.
Knox isn’t insincere. He’s real, and he is sad.
Just like me. He and I, we’re broken, but we’re slowly putting ourselves back together again.
We will function again, but the cracks will remain visible.
That’s a good thing. It reminds us that we’re strong every time we forget it.
We go upstairs to his room. Everything in this resort is upscale, from the lamps to the designer furniture to the silverware—but Knox’s bedspread is dark blue, with spaceships and planets on it. It’s got to go back to when he was a kid.
He sits down and seems completely overwhelmed. “To be honest, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.” He crosses his feet and begins to rub his toes, right, left, right, left. “There has never been a woman who I was serious with in my room.”
At the word serious, everything in me starts to tingle. I sit down next to him cross-legged and bob my knees.
“You don’t always need to know what to do. Sometimes it’s nice just to experience new things. Don’t you think?”
Knox pulls a leg up onto the bed. I admire the spaceship beneath his knee because I, too, want to touch him, and then I just do.
I start with his knuckles, raw from the cold, move up his arm, the fine little hairs under my fingertips.
At my touch, they stand up, and for two, three, four seconds Knox stops breathing.
“Paisley.” His voice is soft, gravelly, mixed with an undertone of something I have never heard from him before.
My fingers stop at the cuff of his rolled-up shirt, wander to his elbows because I am certain that no woman has ever touched them in the same way before.
He gives me the feeling of being the first and, God, how I need that.
If I start thinking now about how normal it is for him to have women in his room, to be touched by them, to be wanted by them, I’ll get sick.
So I don’t. I touch his elbow and think it’s the most beautiful elbow I’ve ever seen.
“Paisley, look at me.”
I look at him. His room is dark, but even here there’s a string of lights at the window dappling his face in gold. He kisses me between my eyebrows, right there where I feel the little wrinkle every time my thoughts begin to control me. My stomach contracts.
“This here is new,” he says. His expression is so real. It goes so deep. “This didn’t exist before. Okay?”
I nod. My hand is trembling. My mouth still tastes like beer from the party, and I’m worried Knox wants to kiss me but will be disgusted. But maybe he tastes like beer, too, and beer plus beer will be okay.
“Don’t think so much,” he whispers. “Just feel.”
His lips press themselves to mine, and I think anyway. I think: And how I can feel everything, Knox, and how.
“I love this,” he says hoarsely, a breath between two kisses. “The way it feels kissing you.”
I don’t know how much time goes by, but we kiss for a long time and in every way possible.
Quick kisses hounded by hot desire. Warm, slow kisses, and with every touch a small meaning, heated, wild, urgent.
He can feel that I want more, need more, and I can feel that it’s the same for him.
If I had a camera that was made to capture the special moments of my life then, right now, I would hear it snapping click, click, click.
Our lips move in a familiar rhythm as if they had known each other a whole lifetime already, in perfect symbiosis, as if they had only waited for the right moment to find each other.
With every breath I smell vetiver, smell Knox, and it’s crazy how much his smell and his kisses drive me nuts, along with the feeling of being wanted by him.
My hands wander up his taut arms, across his wide shoulders, up his neck, across the shaved hair at the back of his head and up through the somewhat longer hair on top.
I dig my fingers in, pull, somewhat too strongly, but Knox seems to like it, because he starts to moan again with that strange sound that just makes me lose my mind.
His fingers encircle the hem of my woolen sweater, stroking the individual stitches, and I know he’s doing it to stop himself from sliding his hand down and exploring my skin.
But I want to, so I remove my fingers from his hair, pull the sweater over my head, feel my hair grow staticky, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters because here we are, Knox and I, and that’s all that does.
Knox explores my stomach, moves over the muscles beneath the skin.
He caresses my midriff, up across my ribs, traces invisible lines as if I was a map he wanted to study until he knew it by heart.
When he begins to move over the curve of my breasts, I take a sharp breath.
He stops. Pulls back in shock. I shake my head, violently, intoxicated, grab the fabric of his shirt and bend over him, kiss him again. “Don’t stop,” I whisper, “Don’t stop.”
That seems to be confirmation enough. He nudges my head to the side, nibbles at my throat, his warm breath brushes my ear and I swear, I swear, I can’t go any further.
I have never felt anything like this. This insistent throbbing beneath my center, this devouring passion for his touches, this desire for more, so much more, quicker and quicker, nothing is quick enough, and everything is too quick.
Every touch should last forever, should echo in my nerves forever because I don’t want it to ever stop.
Knox’s hands wander on. They move across my arms, my back, stop at the clasp of my bra. He waits, looks at me, questioningly. May I?
I nod. Do it, do it, then I’m sitting in front of him, my upper body naked, but in my jeans. I feel exposed, but in a good way, in a way that says: Here I am, just for you, everything just for you, and maybe you can see the trust I am giving you.
Knox’s lids are fluttering. He moans softly as he eyes my breasts. As if he had never seen anything nicer. As if he had never seen anything more precious.
He strokes my nipples with the ball of his hand, and I can’t, can’t, can’t think straight, bend my back and fall backward onto the bed.
Knox’s lips mark my body, leaving behind damp impressions, painting the rivers of our map.
I tear at his shirt. I’m tired of it, that blue-checked fabric, I want to see more, want to feel more.
He pulls it over his head, and I can feel tight, warm skin.
I’ve seen him shirtless before, but never so close.
Never so palpably. Looking at him now, a slight gasp escapes me, he is just so cut.
Every. Inch. Of. His. Body.
I put my finger to his chest, follow the line down to his bulging stomach muscles. Stroke the defined rib area, count each individual muscle, four, six, twelve, eighteen. Knox, my Lord, how is such a body even possible?
My fingertip reaches this one particular line that blurs every thought in my head into a swirl of colorful streams. All of a sudden, I feel like I’ve fallen into a whirlpool.
The line that leads to areas the waistband of his jeans is denying me.
Thanks to the whirling in my head I pull on them before I even realize what I’m doing.
Knox laughs, a deep, soft laugh. It is so beautiful, I want to catch it.
He pulls off his pants. Just a few movements, nothing more, then they’re on the floor.
The mattress sinks when Knox lies down next to me, propped up on his elbows.
Not even in this position is there any fat showing, and that’s simply impossible.
For years I’ve been training every day, morning, noon, and night, and even I have a bit of fat.
Everyone does. But not Knox, and that does something to me, gives me a snippet of info I want to take hold of and interpret, but somehow I don’t manage, somehow it eludes me.
I think it’s important. I think it’s something I’d like to know, have to know.
But the whirlpool, the whirlpool just won’t let me.
Knox bends forward. Nibbles on my ear and I notice how wet I am, wetter than I’ve ever been in my life.
He turns my head, spreads my lips with his tongue and things get wild, fiery, hot.
His fingers are fiddling with the button of my jeans until all of a sudden I’m lying next to him with naked legs and wet underwear.
I pull away from his lips, look down, down to his gray boxers.
There’s a bulge. A bulge and a wet spot.
I stretch out my hand and touch him there, right at that spot.
Knox whistles through his teeth. He digs his fingernails into my waist, closes his eyes, and moans, and that sound downright forces me to spread my legs, for if I didn’t, I’d explode. One hundred percent.
The look on his face, this agonizing pleasure I feel allows me to go farther. My fingers wander below his waistband, farther, farther, farther until my hand is touching Knox’s penis—warm, hard, throbbing against my skin.
I don’t have much experience—and the experience I do have was for the most part forced—but this here, I want to do this right. I stroke him; I don’t let his face out of my sight so I can read if I’m doing it right, if he likes it.
Knox’s lips open, he emits that moan again, two, three, four times, then buries his nose in my hair, bites my ear, my neck.
I keep going, I want him to keep going, and he does, God, and how.
His hand disappears into my underwear, he puts a finger to my clit, and I think I’m going to die.
The tension is making my entire body vibrate.
Knox knows exactly what he’s doing. He makes circles with his thumb, with a little bit of pressure, not too much and not too little, and I get wetter and wetter and wetter.
I am so hot it feels like I’m on fire, and something takes control of me.
I stop thinking about what’s right, what I could do wrong, whether what I’m doing is okay.
I simply act. I pull Knox’s boxers down, take in what I see, wide-eyed, the skin of my throat aflame.
I am so, so hot. I grab his penis with one hand, move it up and back down, hear his throaty sounds.
He tries to touch me again, but I notice I am making it hard for him to concentrate, notice that he can hardly do anything as his entire body is trembling.
I run my palm across the damp spot, Knox lets his head drop right onto the little image of Pluto on his bedspread before shooting back up and biting my shoulder.
Nothing bad, just a love bite, probably thinking it’s all he can do to keep from exploding.
“Is this…”
“It’s everything,” he says. “Everything, Paisley.”
I keep going. Touching him I notice the palm of my hand growing damper and damper, I watch him, see the red flecks creeping up his throat, kiss him.
Quick, jerky kisses as he’s shuddering with desire, with lust. He pulls my hair, just at the edge of bearable, and my groin trembles.
He leans back his head, the veins in his neck are throbbing powerfully, so I kiss him there to calm them down, but that just makes things worse.
Knox moans again, which causes me to break out in goose bumps, and I want him to do it again and again and again, the whole time, while I continue to stroke his cock.
His face is completely open, given over to me completely, his lips, those lips of his, I love them—and then Knox rears and cums—cums right into my hand and all across his stomach.
It’s a mess, a real mess, but I have never loved chaos as much as ours.
His entire body relaxes. For a few seconds, there is nothing but our wheezing breaths, our stomachs touching each other at every inhale and exhale, our hearts beating for each other.
And then Knox is above me. He pushes my hands over my head, covers the curve of my jaw with kisses, continues down to my belly button.
Two seconds, then my underwear is off. But that’s fine, away with you!
I’m lying beneath him, every nerve electrified, my legs spread, just here, just for him.
He runs his warm tongue across my pussy and. I. Explode.
My fingers dig into his bedspread, sending waves through the solar system and making a complete mess of it while he presses his lips to my clit, kissing it, sucking it, licking it. Help, help, help, what on earth is he doing? What is he doing?
Now I know why everyone is so interested in this, why everyone wants to do it. I dig my fingers into his hair. I need to hold onto something. I can hardly bear it when his full bottom lip sweeps across the most sensitive part of my body.
The whirling in my head intensifies. I can hardly stand it any longer.
I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I can only stretch out even farther toward him and moan and gasp, squeal and everything at the same time with every kiss, until everything inside me builds up, quakes, and I cum.
It is so intense, so agonizingly wonderful, so Knox, that I feel like I’m dissolving.
I am swept away, carried off by vibrating waves.
But I decide to simply drift, to enjoy being completely lost and the movements of the waves as they slowly, slowly, slowly diminish.
We push the bedspread away, and Knox lies down next to me. He puts his arm around me and pulls me toward him, my cheek against his chest.
“That,” he says, “wasn’t normal.”
I look up at him. “A good not-normal?”
“Better than good. Give me two minutes, and we’ll do it again.”
I laugh. “I’m too tired.”
“That’s good, too. I’m looking forward to that at least as much.”
“To what?” My voice is sleepy. I’m almost gone.
Knox’s voice reaches me as a warm, distant rushing, but I hear what he says, and carry it with me into sleep, packed up tight within my heart.
“Falling asleep next to you, then waking back up next to you.”