Chapter 15 Last Call
Chapter 15
Last Call
T here was something about coming back to a hotel room on the second night there that felt a little like coming home. Chloe and I had hardly developed the routine of a couple who spent every night together, but we seemed to at least have found a rhythm carrying our things into the bathroom to complete our nightly rituals.
I still wore a bra under my nightshirt and sweatpants over my underwear to bed, though.
“That was actually nice,” Chloe said, walking in from the bathroom in her faded Boygenius T-shirt and pajama shorts. “I’ve gotten used to all the wedding shit from boring people I went to college and grad school with, I forget some of it isn’t terrible. Like when you actually think the couple involved should stay together forever.”
“No, totally,” I said, my guilt a bit abated thanks to the dinner, one of those events where I was too caught up in the night to dwell much on anything outside of the moment. “The toasts tonight were nothing like that. People are so specifically happy for Ari and Nina to have found each other, not just that people are getting married because marriage is the one true way to happiness or whatever. I mean, I don’t want to die alone or anything, but I want it to be about the person and not checking off some box. Anyway, I guess I’m also not that surprised by tonight. Your friends are pretty amazing, and nothing’s felt like one of those paint-by-the-numbers, cookie-cutter weddings.”
“Annoying but true,” Chloe said with a laugh. “OK, last call, I’m turning out the lights.”
“Last call?” I asked, and we both laughed as she flipped the switch and got into the other side of the bed. We did the thing of purposefully being extra quiet to let each other know it was time to get some sleep, or at least try. Except—
“What is that?” Chloe asked, sitting up.
I tried to parse the clanging sound. “A trolley? The whole clang clang clang thing? A train?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I think it’s a train crossing.”
I’d heard the clanging occasionally since we’d gotten here, briefly in the background here and there. “Trains don’t cross for long.”
“Listen to you talk like some kind of train expert,” Chloe said, lying down again. “Though, sure, that’s true.”
The clanging didn’t stop, though. After a few minutes, Chloe got up and peered out the window.
“There’s no train, but the crossing things are stuck down or something.”
I sat up in bed, aware that we had to be up in several hours for a not not important event. “Should we call someone?”
Chloe waved a hand and climbed back into bed. “Like the train police?”
“I don’t know, I guess not 911.” I closed my eyes and tried to forget about the constant noise, but even at the late hour I wasn’t someone who could just sleep through an ongoing clang clang clang .
“This sucks,” Chloe muttered. “Sorry, did you manage to fall asleep? Did I wake you?”
“No, of course you didn’t, can normal people sleep through something like this?”
“It’s cute you think you’re normal,” Chloe said. “But also, no. I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon.”
I sighed and stared at the ceiling. “I hope you’re right.”
“We’ll have to figure out something to do until it stops,” Chloe said, and I was certain a note of something different laced itself into her tone. That, though, couldn’t be. Whatever that something different was had never actually existed between us. It was a curiosity in my head only.
Still, I wanted to make sure. Not that I wanted it to be true, I was only curious if it was. I was merely solving a mystery! So it—curiosity—was the only reason that I turned my head and shifted my weight to my side. How could I accurately weigh Chloe’s intentions if I couldn’t see her? In the dark room in the middle of the night, though, her eyes still kept everything guarded anyway.
To be fair, no matter how well I could see her, Chloe was great at keeping everything guarded.
I felt her shift before I saw that she was turning toward me, too. Her knee bumped against mine and her elbow grazed my hip. It reminded me of a couple nights ago, dancing together on Johnny’s back patio, the creamy expanse of her neck and the feel of her hip brushing against my thigh. Her hand on my waist with purpose. That night’s air had throbbed with music, but this room was so silent that all I could hear was the clang and Chloe’s breath—or was it mine?
Even in the dark I could feel her studying me. “What do you think, Clementine?”
Normally, I knew, I would have worried it was a tease. Chloe seeing how far she could take it, a joke somehow meant for both of us yet firmly within her own control. But I could hear her breath louder now, could feel the heat from her body only inches away. It wasn’t, I was certain, a tease, but maybe it was a dare. And since she’d been the one to ask, I answered back with my hand on her waist. It wasn’t the hottest of moves, but I knew that it made my intentions clear. I knew that it was exactly enough.
Chloe leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. Oh . I’d forgotten about kissing, I realized, because kissing was something that could become so casual and lived-in. Kissing could be a greeting and a goodnight, and I’ll see you when you get back from the hardware store and before we clean the kitchen. But not when kissing started, when kissing was new, when kissing was standing near a fire as the flames licked in your direction, threatening to burn you and everything else down in the process.
I wanted very much for this to go on, to escalate, to throw open the door even though before I’d been too nervous to even think about this door existing. A hum buzzed within me, though, that I wanted it to come from Chloe. I’d stay right here at the doorway until she pulled me in. She had to feel the buzz too, had to recognize my specific want calling from within. She had to know me well enough for that.
Chloe inched closer still and kissed me again, more pressure from her soft warm lips this time. I opened up to her and ran my fingers through the short hairs at the nape of her neck as her lips parted and the kiss deepened. Her tongue was gentle but insistent, and a shiver rocked through me as I wondered where else she might taste me tonight.
The kiss ended only to pick up again, as if we’d gotten it so perfect we couldn’t believe it and wanted to do it again, exactly the same way. This time I’d barely waited for her, though; this time I tried to let her know that I was insistent too.
“Chloe,” I murmured when the kiss ended, leaving my thoughts there, just her name on my tongue, instead of can you believe how good this is and whatever you want to do next is exactly what I want too .
“We can stop if you want to,” she said quickly.
“Wait, do I seem like I want to stop?” I shook my head. “Sorry. Maybe you do and you’re trying to be polite about it.”
“Excuse me,” she said, sliding her hand down my side and grabbing my hip. Her force, even through the layers of my sweatpants and underpants, sent a bolt between my legs. “Have you ever seen me be polite?”
“No, that’s one of my favorite things about you,” I said, letting her pull me closer so that we were pressed up, overlapping in places, under the covers. “Maybe I should say something.”
Chloe kissed my neck, sucked hard for a brief moment that elicited a gasp of surprise from me. “Clementine, I’m well aware you’ve never been with a woman before. That’s one of the starting points of this whole thing. Are you freaked out now that it’s finally happening?”
Finally? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. For me, in general? Or did she mean with each other?
“No,” I said, and I realized she was watching me seriously. “Thanks for asking, actually.”
“I know I give you shit about your baby gay ways,” Chloe said with a low rumbly laugh I’d never heard from her before. I wanted to press my face into her throat to feel it. “But I actually do want to make sure you’re OK for whatever we’re doing tonight.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding instead of shouting I’m very OK with this! “It’s less that you’re a woman and more that—I mean, Will’s the only person I’ve been with. If I was in bed with a man who wasn’t Will, I’d be—well, I don’t like the term ‘freaked out,’ but, you know.”
“Not not that,” Chloe said.
“Right. Maybe I’m bad in bed. The only person who’d know is Will, and I’m also the only person he’d been with, so how would he know.”
“I guess we’ll have to find out,” Chloe said, smirking and drawing closer still. Our legs bumped against each other’s and it only made sense to rest my knee atop her leg to fit together better. The small shift in my position wasn’t so small to my body though; awareness and need radiated from my center as my thighs parted. I was awakened.
Chloe and I kissed again, messier now, as much about teeth and tongues as our lips. She shifted her weight so she was leaning over me, but hooked her arm around my leg to keep it where it was, wrapped around hers. In this new position, her thigh rocked against me as we kissed, and even though we were fully clothed and were only kissing , my hips sought her out, ready for action we hadn’t yet started.
“Hang on,” I said, catching my breath. “It’s just been a while and—”
“We can stop whenever you want,” Chloe said.
“No, I don’t want to, but it just feels embarrassing I was about to—I mean, we’re just kissing.”
“Clementine,” she said in that low throaty voice again. I wondered if I could come from a voice. “I was absolutely fucking you with my leg. Was that not apparent?”
I laughed. “I thought it was just lucky positioning for me.”
“I guess I’ll have to make it more obvious.” She held my gaze, sliding her thigh up and then down, up and down, up and down. This time I let my body go. My hips raised to find her, to grind against her, to make my search for pleasure and release abundantly obvious.
Chloe clutched one of my breasts, her thumb finding my nipple achingly hard even through my many layers. “Wait, Clementine, did you wear a bra to bed?”
“I’m not very good at this there’s-only-one-bed part of the shenanigan,” I said, panting, needing more to climb over the edge. Not that I planned to stop my ascent. “My boobs are—I don’t know. I worry about how they look without a bra on. Gravity and my mid-thirties and all.”
“Fuck, do you not know how—” Chloe laughed again, and this time I did it, leaned in and pressed my face to her neck to feel it, feel her. She was thunder on a sweltering summer night. “Remember when you asked me my type and I wouldn’t tell you?”
I nodded as her thumb circled me, her thigh rocked against me, the pressure swelled. The train tracks clanged in the background, and I didn’t care. Let it become the soundtrack to all of this. “I remember.”
“That’s because there was no way I could tell you how I lose my mind over girls like you,” she murmured right into my ear. “These goddamn hips, thighs I want to bury myself in. Your tits you’ve got hidden away under a million layers. You would have known—”
“Known what?” I asked, feeling braver now, flicking my tongue into the hollow at the base of her neck and her low groan, lapping into the crevice, tasting her skin.
“Known I’ve thought of doing this since I met you,” she said, and shoved up my T-shirt. The dress I’d worn earlier showed glimpses of my bra straps from certain angles, so I’d worn one meant to be seen, black lace with sheer panels. From the look on Chloe’s face, it had been the right one for tonight in more ways than one. And maybe, something deep inside me had worn it for right now, too.
She brought her face low to me and sucked my nipple through the thin material of my bra, while her leg moved faster. I clutched her ass while my hips bucked, and the heat and tension imploded as I came with a guttural moan. It sounded like a stranger’s voice, and in that moment that much felt accurate. I’d never imagined myself getting off with someone who wasn’t Will like this , this frantic fast desperate way. Right now I felt brand-new.
“Let’s get these off you,” Chloe said, tugging down my sweatpants just as I was about to worry that my orgasm meant we were done for the night. “Fuck, Clementine, these matching panties.”
“What about you?” I asked, feeling bold as I slipped off her T-shirt. Underneath, her breasts were small and round, tan nipples already hard, and I asked her permission with a look before dipping down to take one nipple into my mouth and then the other. Chloe made small sounds of satisfaction as I licked, sucked, explored, but I wanted more; I wanted an ugly uncontrollable guttural force to overtake her, too. I wanted for her what she’d given me.
“Tell me what to do,” I said, pushing myself forward so that I was leaning over her.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, grabbing my ass with both hands and shifting further so my thighs were on either side of hers. “Come here.”
“How much closer do you want me to come?” I asked innocently, but I spread my thighs wider across hers, arched my back so my breasts were close to her face.
Chloe grasped my waist with her hands, though one hand skimmed lower, her thumb dipping just under the edge of my underwear, then lower, between my legs, stroking lightly over my underwear. “You’re so wet.”
“You know it’s been a while for me,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow, gave me a little grin. “It was hardly a complaint, Clementine.”
“I’ll take these off,” I told her, hooking my thumbs into my underwear on each side.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, instead pulling them gently aside and finding me with her fingertips. I gasped at the skin-to-skin contact, but her movements were gentle at first, small strokes that made me moan with pleasure. Chloe seemed to know when I was ready for more pressure, more direct contact, and I was so relieved this experience was with her, someone who knew me so well by now. Someone who could watch me as she touched me to know exactly what I wanted.
Chloe took her hand away, and just as I was about to argue in protest, she rested two fingertips on my lips. We watched each other as I opened my mouth, sucked my own taste from her fingers, took in her full length. After a moment, she pulled her fingers out and found me again, sliding up into me in one swift motion.
“How’s that?” she asked, moving slowly.
I rolled my hips as we worked out a rhythm together. “You feel so good. I’m—it’s OK I’m on top?”
Chloe looked up at me, her lips apart, a look I couldn’t quite read on her face. Disbelief? “It’s, to say the very least, Clementine, more than OK that a woman with the body of a goddamn goddess is on top of me while I fuck her.”
She somehow managed to unclasp my bra with her other hand. I made hard eye contact with her as I slipped out of it, switching up my rhythm as I rode her hand. I was no longer worried about gravity’s effects, now that I was giving Chloe what I knew she wanted. I couldn’t believe I’d thought I might get into bed with a woman and not know what to do. Had anything ever come more naturally to me than this?
Chloe grabbed my shoulder to pull me closer, burying her face between my breasts as she thrust harder. I slipped my hand between my legs, impatient for another explosion, to feel maybe even newer again. Sometimes Will would stop me when I touched myself. Hey, give me a chance first , he’d say, even though the way I saw it was that I was getting off with him. When Chloe touched my arm, I worried for a split second that she’d say the same thing.
“My turn,” she said, and this time it was my fingertips on her lips, my taste on her tongue. The thought was almost too much, and while I was still in her mouth, I let my weight settle on Chloe and slipped my other hand between my legs. It was an overload, her tongue licking between my fingers, her fingers moving hard and fast, my hand at my own throbbing center, and only another few moments flashed by before another orgasm hit me like a bolt of lightning and I cried out in agonizingly blissful release.
“Clementine,” she said as I collapsed next to her. “Jesus, that was hot.”
I laughed, though a blush of nerves hit my face now that it was over and my want wasn’t guiding me. “For a first-timer?”
“Oh shut the fuck up,” she said. “You know that was good.”
“I honestly didn’t expect it would go like that,” I admitted. “I worried—well, it can feel … I don’t know, embarrassing? Will was used to me, and I didn’t know how it would be with someone else. I feel so needy about it, my body’s just like … in search of getting off.”
“I love how needy your body is,” she said. “There’s nothing embarrassing about that. I feel like women are taught to be selfless even when we’re getting fucked. And for what?”
“What about you?” I asked again.
“I’m fine,” she said with a flick of her hand.
“Do you not want me to—”
“No, of course that’s not it,” she said quickly. “But I’m feeling great. I had a really good time fucking you. I’m just—it takes me a while? And people don’t expect me to be—you know, people talk about how wild I am. It doesn’t go with that kind of reputation to be like, it’s fine, it’s gonna take me forty-five minutes to get there, and any of the methods you’re considering should actually be pretty vanilla.”
“I’ve got forty-five minutes,” I said. “And I’m pretty vanilla too.”
“I was being facetious,” she said.
“I want to get you there,” I said. “No matter the timing.”
“Fine,” she grumbled.
“Just what I wanted to hear the first time I try to make a woman come,” I said, kidding but also really not kidding at all. I’d thought we were both having a good time; did I misjudge her that badly? But then Chloe laughed her low throaty laugh, and then it was easy letting go of my nerves and my fears she didn’t want me in the same ways I wanted her, because, god, how that laugh undid me.
“What do you like?” I asked, turning to kiss her. We kissed for a while longer, but it felt different now, with the knowledge we had of each other. Dirtier, full of secret meanings and codes.
“I like this a lot,” she said, kissing me sweetly.
“Well, me too,” I said. “But I want to make you come.”
“Your mouth on me,” Chloe whispered in my ear. “I can’t stop thinking about it. If you’re good with that?”
I was—very much so—and even more so, if that was even possible, I was undone by the knowledge of her fantasizing about me. Even so I shivered as we rearranged ourselves on the bed and I slid Chloe’s boy shorts down and off. I’d—though not exactly like this—been fucked before, after all. It had been different with Chloe—but it would have been different with anyone who wasn’t Will.
No matter how many instructional Autostraddle articles I’d read, though, no matter how much porn I’d watched, going down on a woman felt entirely new for me.
Still, I ached to give Chloe what she’d given me. If the offhand way she’d initially shrugged away getting off tonight had more to do with her than me, I wanted to prove to her just how much I wanted this too. It was hardly that I was just making good on orgasm promises; right then the thing I wanted to do most in bed was make Chloe Lee come. And, anyway, it was tough finding anything not entirely positive about the experience of sliding down her body, gently pushing apart her legs, finding her with my mouth. I was tentative to start, I knew it, gentle as I found my bearings. Chloe made soft, encouraging sounds I knew were for my benefit. I hadn’t pushed her past the point of control yet, but I liked having a goal. She tasted musky, salty, and also somehow just like her.
“You taste so good,” I told her, and the room was so quiet I heard her breath hitch.
Wait, the room was quiet.
“The railroad crossing’s fixed,” I told her.
“Yeah, yeah. I was promised an orgasm,” Chloe said, and even though obviously I knew we didn’t actually have sex tonight to kill time while we couldn’t sleep, her words and that hitch in her breath were all I needed to move past tentative .
“Oh, god, Clementine,” Chloe said, running her fingers through my hair and tugging. It was like I could feel her everywhere and impossibly still wanted more of her.
“How’s it going?” I asked, immediately regretting my phrasing, like a waitress stopping by a table to check on refills and not the person with her face buried only moments ago between Chloe’s thighs. “I mean—”
“You’re so fucking cute,” Chloe said, and I couldn’t help it, couldn’t help pulling myself up to be level with her, kissing her for not only her words but the adoring tone she’d said them in. I wasn’t sure I was skilled enough at any of this to give her what she wanted, but then she kissed me back, rough, her hips rocking against mine.
I slipped my hand between her legs and watched her eyes clench as I stroked her wet heat. “I’m doing OK?”
“You’re doing more than OK,” she said, nodding, her eyes still closed, her hips working faster. “I told you I’d take a while. That’s not about you.”
“I just want to make sure I’m giving you what you want,” I said, and she opened her eyes and held my gaze as I kissed my way back to her center. Her sounds grew from encouraging to enthusiastic as I licked, sucked, traced lines with my tongue that felt like delirious fantasies, only emboldening me more. I didn’t feel particularly slick at any of it, but between the roll of Chloe’s hips against my face and the sound of her moans blurring out the rest of the world, she seemed transformed into a pulsing force of desire. I knew my inexperience didn’t matter.
“Do you want me to …” I watched her face as I nudged a finger at her entrance, and as she nodded I slid into her. I was overwhelmed again, shocked I could be enough for her, amazed to find myself here. But it washed over me that we were in this together; it might have been about pushing Chloe over the edge but I was the lucky one, after all, helping her push past that point of pleasure. When she let out a ragged groan and tightened around me, I felt like we’d both won some kind of prize.
“ Fuck ,” Chloe murmured. “That was good . Thanks, Clementine.”
“You’re very welcome,” I said, trying not to feel too good about myself as I settled back in next to her. People gave hot women orgasms all the time. It had just never been me before.
“You look very smug,” she said, and I laughed.
“I feel kind of smug. Not at you, just at—I don’t know. The world? We’re just two random people in this hotel room but it’s been fucking magic in here tonight.”
“Like magic fucking?” she asked with a laugh, and I was glad she was joking instead of calling me out on how potentially weird I was being. Was everyone this full of joyful power after having queer sex for the first time? “You’re allowed to be a little smug.”
“Good,” I said, glancing at her in this quiet moment we were in. “Thanks for making this—I don’t know”—I couldn’t conjure up the word that said how I felt, relieved and grateful and exquisitely wrung out but also not too much , Chloe Lee and I did not do too much —“Perfect.”
Yeah. That was definitely too much .
Chloe, though, smiled and took my face in her hands, pulled me close for a kiss. “Thank you , Clementine. You made it pretty perfect for me, too.”
I leaned in more, eager for more of her, but I saw Chloe’s gaze slip to something behind me.
“ Shit , we’ve got to be up in way fewer hours than I thought.”
I followed her gaze to see the clock radio, and grimaced at the late—well, early hour. Why would the universe give me all of this exciting queer power without any extra time to enjoy it?
Chloe, though, reached down to pull the blankets back up over us in a move that felt less like let’s do this some more and more like good night . “Let’s get as much sleep as we can.”
“Does this—” I cut myself off because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to end the question. Does this mean things have changed? Does this mean you just wanted to make sure I got this experience while I’m fake-dating you? Does this mean actually you meant that thing about your type and my body and maybe this entire time we’ve both thought about what this would be like? Does this mean it surpassed both of our expectations?
Does this mean maybe we could try doing this for real?
“Does this what?” she asked, somehow sounding half asleep already.
“Does this hotel have a breakfast bar?” I finally asked instead.
“Hell yeah it does, Clementine,” she said. “Sleep tight.”