Chapter 8 #2
I push it. Celyn’s on the bed, sat cross-legged, shoes off, the Converse by the door like they belong there. The laptop on the knees. Typing.
‘Spare key was under the mat,’ Celyn says. Doesn’t look up. ‘Terrible hiding place, by the way. A child could find it.’
‘How did you know where to look.’
‘Because you’re practical. The spare key under the mat type, in case of emergency.’
I stand in the doorway.
Flannel shirt, open, dark blue and green check. Through the gap: a black cotton bra, flat against the sternum. Loose jeans. And the nails: yellow, bright proper yellow, like a hazard sign.
‘You going to stand there?’ Celyn says.
I take my boots off. Put them by the Converse. Two pairs of shoes at the door. Four shoes. I look at them for longer than I should.
I sit on the bed, the edge. Celyn’s still typing.
‘The chapter’s being difficult,’ Celyn says. ‘The character won’t go through the door.’
‘Which door?’
‘The one in the new room. The one the house made overnight. She’s stood in front of it and she can hear what’s on the other side but she won’t open it.’
‘What’s on the other side?’
Over the screen the eyes are bigger.
‘She doesn’t know yet. That’s why she won’t open it.’
The flat holds us. Manchester’s doing its thing outside, the rain that’s not rain, the mist sitting on everything. Inside it’s warm. The tea and the laptop and Celyn on my bed like Celyn belongs on my bed.
‘Come here,’ Celyn says. The laptop closes. Goes on the carpet. Pats the bed.
I move, up the bed. My back against the headboard. The cheap one, the creaking wood. Celyn shifts, turns. The legs uncross and then Celyn’s facing me, close, the knee touching my thigh through the jeans.
‘Hi,’ Celyn says.
‘Hi.’
‘You smell like the site.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise for that. Ever.’
My hair’s still damp from the shower. Celyn reaches up. Pushes a curl off my forehead.
A hand finds my face. Celyn’s thumb settles at the corner of my mouth.
I kiss Celyn. The lip tint tastes like nothing, waxy, faint.
The mouth underneath tastes like tea and Celyn.
The stubble scrapes my chin. Light, not the rough drag of three days.
Barely there. My hand goes to the waist, the flannel shirt, the gap where it’s open.
The skin. Warm. The ribs through the bra.
Celyn’s hands pull at my shirt. I lift my arms, the shirt goes. Then the palms are flat against my chest, fingers spread against my skin, the look intent.
‘You don’t have to know what you’re doing,’ Celyn says. The voice low. ‘Just feel.’
I want. The wanting is a noise in my body, in my hands, in the base of my spine. I’ve wanted before. Women, pubs, the back of a cab. This isn’t that, hands shaking. Mouth dry. Can’t remember how clothes work.
The flannel shirt. I push it off. It drops. The bra, black, the elastic tight. Celyn’s collarbones, the dip between them. The chain, silver, thin. In the dip.
‘You can take it off,’ Celyn says.
I find the clasp, at the back. My fingers are too big for this, thick, calloused, built for rebar clips not bra clasps. I fumble. Celyn laughs at my fingers.
‘Other way.’
I unhook it, the elastic releases, the bra falls. The chest flat, pale skin, smooth. The nipples small and dark. The stubble on the chin above and the skin below.
I put my mouth on the sternum. Feel the bone under the lips.
The heartbeat, fast. Getting faster. The skin smells like sweat and something under it I can’t name.
I kiss along the rib. The left one, down.
The stomach, flat, the muscles tight, the line of dark hair.
My mouth follows the line. Celyn’s fingers tense at my nape.
‘Ron.’
I look up. Face above me. Mouth open. Lip tint gone. Kissed off, on my mouth now probably.
‘I want you,’ Celyn says. Simple. Like ordering tea.
‘Yeah.’
‘I want you.’ Celyn’s fingers tip my chin up. The eyes holding mine. ‘I want you to fuck me. If you want that.’
The voice doesn’t waver. But the hand on my face does, one tremor, quick, gone. Celyn’s thumb presses harder against my cheekbone. Holding on.
My stomach drops.
‘I want that.’
‘Have you done this.’
‘Not like this.’
‘Okay.’ Celyn sits up. The hands on my belt. ‘I’ll show you.’
Jeans, both. Under Celyn’s, the knickers, black, lace, the pattern against the hip, the elastic cutting the skin, the dark hair visible through the fabric. And the stubble, and the flat chest, and the lace, one person.
Stop breathing, start again.
Celyn kicks the jeans off. The knickers stay. Celyn lies back, the bed creaks, the cheap headboard, and looks at me. The body long on the white sheet. The bra on the floor. The flannel shirt on the floor.
‘Stop thinking,’ Celyn says.
‘I’m trying.’
‘Here.’ The finger on my jaw. Pressing the muscle. ‘Let go.’
I let go, the teeth unclench, the gut. Everything that went tight at the bra through the shirt.
The knickers come off. Celyn lifts the hips and slides them down and kicks them and they land on the floor.
The body, all of it now. Skin. The legs long, the thighs lean, the knees, the feet with the toenails painted yellow to match the fingers.
And between the legs, Celyn. Hard. The wanting visible and real and I look and my mouth goes dry.
My boxers, I pull them off, Celyn’s eyes on me. Frank. The look that doesn’t move.
‘Condom,’ Celyn says.
I look at them.
‘My bag. Front pocket. Lube too.’
The bag’s by the chair, where Celyn dropped it. I reach for it, clumsy, too naked for the room suddenly. The zip catches. Of course it catches. Everything with teeth has decided to make a point.
‘You brought this.’
‘I brought options,’ Celyn says. ‘Not assumptions.’
That does something to me. Worse than if they’d said anything soft.
I find the condom. The lube. The foil packet fights back like the belt buckle fought back, and I’m starting to think inanimate objects have a personal problem with me tonight.
Celyn takes the packet, opens it. Rolls it on me and the ring cold makes my hips jerk. Then the lube, a cold line of it down the latex, Celyn’s fist working it over me, twice, slick and even, and I have to look at the ceiling and count rebar spacings so it doesn’t end here.
‘Breathe,’ Celyn says.
Breathe.
Celyn takes the lube. Slicks two fingers, the ring on the hand that types ten thousand words a day.
Reaches down, between the legs, knees falling open, no hiding it, letting me see.
The fingers push in, Celyn’s own fingers, the wrist turning, the face changing.
The mouth opens, the eyes half-close, a breath, held, released.
Celyn’s fingers working, slow, the knuckles disappearing and dragging back out shining, the muscle stretching round them.
The hips lifting to meet the hand. The cock hard against the stomach, leaking a thread onto the pale skin, ignored.
I’m knelt between Celyn’s thighs with the condom on and my hands fisted in the sheets and I’m watching this, Celyn opening Celyn up for me, in the lamp light, on purpose, and my cock aches and this is bigger than any of the rest.
‘Okay.’ Celyn pulls the fingers out. Wipes them on the sheet. Lies back. The knees up. The hand on my hip, guiding. ‘Go slow. I’ll tell you.’
I go slow. Celyn’s hand on me, steering, the hand guiding me down.
‘There,’ Celyn says. ‘Yeah. There.’
I push, slow, the head of my cock first, the resistance Celyn’s fingers worked at a minute ago.
The body gives, not all at once. Bit by bit.
The lube cold on my cock turning hot as it goes in.
The rim of Celyn’s arse tighter than anything I’ve felt, gripping the head, then easier past it, the heat closing round me inch by inch.
Celyn’s hand comes to the back of my thigh and pulls.
Celyn’s cock jumps against the stomach, the head dark, a thread of wet leaking onto the skin. I want my mouth on it. I want all of it at once. I hold still and breathe and the wanting sits in my teeth.
‘Keep going. Slow.’
I push again, deeper. The grip around me, nothing like a hand, nothing like a mouth.
Nothing like a woman either, the cunts I’d been in gave wet and gave easy and this doesn’t give, this grips.
Tighter at the rim, looser past it, the body letting me in by degrees.
The muscles gripping and releasing in waves that I can feel all the way down my cock and into my stomach and my hips want to move but I don’t let them because Celyn said slow and slow is.