Chapter 12
Ash
Luis Santos makes love like he’s been deprived of human touch for five hundred years because of a glitch in the space-time continuum that means he’s been far away in another galaxy without ageing and now he’s finally returned to earth he wants to rediscover all the things he thought he might never experience again, like, for example, the ticklish space behind your ear, the sensitive bit on your collarbone, each nipple with a lick and a suck, your stomach, your thighs, how deep he can bury himself inside you. It’s a vibe.
Ash is never the chosen one. Her relationship history speaks to that: she’s the one before the one, the one men date before they marry somebody else.
Her casual dating life has never stuck, never got off the ground, and nobody can figure out why – she’s cute, she’s fun, she’s smart and capable and loving, and men leave her.
But with Luis, something is different. It was obvious last night and it is evident now.
He’s attentive with her, gentle but primal, his full focus is Ash.
Today has been the greatest aphrodisiac she’s ever known, CJ furiously eyeing them from afar as Luis wrapped his arm around her, whispered silly nothings to her, shone his light on her and only her.
It’s all Ash has ever wanted: to be chosen.
Today felt special and good. It felt like what she deserves.
And now, post-coital and sweaty in her bed, Luis rubbing her feet as they catch their breath …
well. It’s heaven. It’s actually heaven.
‘This is nice,’ Ash says, dreamily, closing her eyes in the moonlight and relishing the focused touch of Luis’s hands on her. ‘Mmmmm.’
‘You have good feet,’ Luis tells her. ‘You could make a lot of money with these feet.’
‘Oh my god, don’t,’ Ash laughs. ‘You mean like, selling feet pics?’
‘I’d pay. Look at these toes! Slender, even toes, all in proper size order …’
‘Aren’t all toes in size order?’ Ash asks.
‘No, I mean this one,’ Luis says, wiggling her second toe. ‘Sometimes it can be longer than the big toe. Yours go down in order.’ He hits them, one by one. ‘Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop,’ he says, oddly proud of himself. ‘It’s very sexy, good feet. Clean, no hard skin, nice painted nails …’
‘I didn’t know you were a foot guy.’
‘I’m an everything guy,’ he laughs, and Ash makes a show of sighing and shaking her head, as if such a comment makes her feel less special. He catches on quickly, and so adds, ‘Not an everyone guy. But for what it’s worth: I’m definitely a you guy.’
‘I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘Only the ones with good feet.’
Ash pulls away from him so she can playfully issue a kick, pulling a face for good measure.
‘OK, OK,’ says Luis. ‘No more feet chat. But please, let me keep touching them. Please?’ He gives her puppy dog eyes. ‘I can’t be the only man to have told you your feet are a very big selling point.’
Ash kicks him again and pulls her feet under her, as punishment. ‘They have, as it happens,’ she says. ‘But only after my flexibility, athleticism and general charm.’
‘Of course!’ says Luis. ‘And how wet you get. I don’t think I have been with a woman who gets this wet before.’
Ash covers her face with her hands. ‘Luis!’
‘It’s a good thing!’ he says, moving up the bed to put his face up against hers. He brushes his nose against her cheek and practically purrs, ‘It’s a very good thing.’
He trails kisses down to her mouth until they’re locked in a long, sensual kiss, his hand at the back of her head, all the better to drink her in with.
Ash submits more than willingly – ravenously, in fact.
From that first kiss on the street outside CoLab, Ash has promised herself that a new rule to Spring Fling with Life is that in sex, she will not play follow the leader.
She will not read the mood of her partner and try to match it, perform like a porn star for the sake of his ego and to the detriment of her orgasm.
No. Because in Lisbon she tries new things, sex with Luis sees her try a new side of herself, and that self is horny, unselfconscious and self-possessed.
This version of herself is not passive, but proactive, and so as Luis kisses her and Ash gets even more turned on, she moves her weight to straddle him, to be the one in control.
‘Olá,’ Luis says, looking up at her from where she sits on top of him.
‘Olá,’ Ash grins.
‘You’re so fucking hot. Do you know how hot you are?’
Ash doesn’t reply, but if she was going to, she’d say she feels hot, sensing Luis hard underneath her, slowly grinding on him, controlling what happens next.
He moves a hand in front of her to softly brush between her legs, forcing her to buckle at the sensation.
Maybe she’s not as in control as she thought.
‘You know who else thinks you’re hot?’
‘Who?’ murmurs Ash, reaching for the pack of condoms on her bedside table and opening the packet with her teeth. She needs Luis inside of her now. She can’t be teased any longer, she’s still too sensitive after their first fuck.
‘CJ,’ Luis says, quietly, as Ash pinches the tip of the rubber and uses her other hand to slide the condom down his shaft. He twitches at her grip, throbs.
In another circumstance, Ash might laugh at this, the bringing up of CJ when she’s holding him in her hand, or splutter out a ‘What?!’ But she doesn’t.
Something about how he says it lures her into curiosity – she’s a truffle pig happy to roll in the dirt.
It’s peculiar, mentioning CJ, but for all her negative feelings about the woman, it does have to be said, Ash is still nosey about her.
Why? Who the hell knows. But the fact remains: she is.
‘Oh really?’ Ash asks, voice smooth as honey, the total opposite of what her heart is doing, which is beating erratically and strong.
‘Really,’ whispers Luis. ‘You saw her looking today, you know what I’m talking about …’
‘I think she was looking at you,’ Ash whispers back. She shifts her leg so that she’s wrapped around him again, and as he enters her she gasps. Cheek to cheek, she can feel Luis smile as he rocks his hips towards her, going deep.
‘No, no,’ he insists, Ash slowing the pace of their swaying to unhurried, drawn-out. She circles her pelvis so that Luis glides in and out, in and out, and now it’s his turn to groan. ‘Shit. Isso é bom, Ash.’
‘I like it when you say my name.’
‘Ash. Yes.’
‘Good,’ she utters, breath deepening. And then, because she feels like it, because she doesn’t want to stop talking about CJ, she says, ‘What do you think CJ would say if she could see us right now? Do you think she’d keep staring as we fuck?’
Luis makes a guttural noise, a low hum of something good. ‘I think she’d like to watch this very much,’ he says, breath catching in his throat. ‘I think she’d like to see you on top of me like this.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I think she’d touch herself.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She fancies you so fucking much. She wants to do this to you. She wants to make you writhe like this so she can watch you. She wants to taste you, lick you and lick you.’
Ash’s body responds to his every word. She can imagine it, CJ close to her, touching her bare skin, caressing her, possessing her.
‘Say more,’ Ash commands. This game is working for her.
‘Oh god,’ murmurs Luis. ‘You and CJ … god, it would be perfect. Electric.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She’d be in her underwear,’ Luis whispers.
‘Lace. Red. Red lace. A thong so you could see her bunda, her bunda is …’ He pauses, takes a big breath of pleasure.
‘Her bunda is so big and round and juicy. You’d grab it, hold her and pull her close.
Her breasts … her peitos … they’re so bouncy.
She’s thin and fit but those tits, meu deus.
In her little red underwear she’d kiss you, and her hand would go up and down your body and she’d be so fucking happy to be with you, Ash.
She wants it, badly. She wants to kiss you and put her hand between your legs.
You’d be wet for her, like you are for me, and you silly little girls would be so horny, touching each other.
She’d play with you and then put her finger in your mouth and you’d suck it, taste yourself, and she’d have to fuck you herself, push your legs apart, put her mouth on you, and you’d love it, you’d love her mouth on you.
You’d push and groan and moan and hold the back of her head, grind up against her like you grind against me … ’
Luis keeps talking, whispering rude, filthy things about what CJ would do to Ash, what Ash could do to CJ, and Ash’s movements get quicker, the friction between them sparking a thousand flames of passion deep in the pit of her stomach, a growing, rising wave that surges and swells as she rides him harder.
‘Yeah?’ Luis says, recognising that Ash is close.
Her eyes are closed, she’s imagining every single last thing Luis is saying to her, imagining CJ, wanting to please CJ, wanting CJ to please her.
‘Don’t stop,’ Ash tells him, thinking about red lace, soft female skin and hot, wet, special places.
Ash grabs the headboard to get purchase on him, and she’s not in her body any more.
Ash is not in her head or her soul or anywhere earthly: she’s outside of herself, vaguely aware that moans capable of waking the dead are emitting from her person, but then the wave washes over, crashes into every nook and cranny and crevice of herself so that light shoots from the top of her skull, there’s an almost painful explosion, the sensation of being pushed off a cliff towards the crashing waves of the sea, falling, falling, falling, rising again, rising and rising, a sweet, beautiful release.
Luis grunts and grunts as Ash starts to come back to herself, a final growl and push inside her, and after he comes too, their bodies relax, crumble into each other, and they sit there, Ash on top of Luis, Luis growing limp inside of her, flushed, sweaty, sated.
‘That was …’ Luis says, panting.