22. The Thinking Box Has Thoughts
THE THINKING BOX HAS THOUGHTS
GRACE
The captain's quarters of the crime boat are smaller than I remember.
Probably because the last time I was in here, there were four of us and nobody was closing the door with that look on his face. Apparently sexual tension takes up more room than two additional men.
"So," I say, because silence is my enemy and I fill it compulsively.
He's looking at me the way he looked at me in the dessert armory. "Grace."
"Yeah?"
"Stop talking."
"I can't stop talking. Talking is what I do when I'm nervous. Talking is my primary coping mechanism. Talking is…"
He kisses me. My hands find his chest, which is still covered by the fish vest.
"The vest," I say against his mouth. "I changed my mind. The vest goes."
"You said it stays."
"I was wrong. The vest is in the way of things I want to touch."
"What things?"
"Your... you. The parts of you under the vest. Those things."
He laughs. "The parts of me."
"You know what I mean. Take it off or I'm going to rip it off and then neither of us will have a tactical fish vest and that's a loss for the whole group."
He takes off the vest. It hits the floor with a soft thump, sacrificed on the altar of whatever this is becoming. His shirt follows, and then he's bare-chested in the dim light of the captain's quarters.
Beck is all angles and hard lines. There's a tattoo on his ribs, something in black ink that I can't make out in this light but looks like words. Words I'm going to trace with my fingers and maybe my mouth.
"Your turn," he says.
Right. My turn. I'm still fully clothed, hoodie and pants and the Wondie sports bra I put on this morning because it was clean and I wasn't planning on anyone seeing my underwear today. Sports bras are basically fabric traps. They require a level of physical coordination I don't possess.
I grab the hem of my hoodie. pull it over my head, and get stuck.
"Grace."
"I'm fine. The hoodie is just... it's caught on my... there's a thing."
"What thing?"
"I don't know. A head thing. It's caught on my head thing. My hair is doing a..."
Beck helps. The hoodie comes off without further incident and my hair is definitely doing something insane now. I can feel it.
"You're gorgeous," Beck says.
"My hair looks like a crime scene."
"I wasn't talking about your hair."
Oh.
"The bra is complicated," I warn him. "It's basically an escape room."
"I'll figure it out."
He steps closer. His hands find the bottom edge of the bra. He pulls it up, over my head, off my arms, and it happens so smoothly that I'm standing there topless before I fully register that the escape room has been escaped.
"How did you do that?"
"It's just fabric, Grace."
"It's never just fabric. That bra has a grudge against me personally."
"Maybe it likes me better."
"That's rude. That's my bra. It should be loyal."
He kisses me again. My objections about bra loyalty dissolve into the feeling of his chest against mine, skin on skin. His hands slide down my sides, over my ribs, finding the waistband of my pants.
The pants go. My underwear goes with them. His eyes move over me slowly.
"Beck. I'm going to need you to do something other than look. The looking is very flattering but I'm standing here naked and you still have pants and that seems like an imbalance that should be corrected."
"You want me to take off my pants."
"I want you to take off your pants."
"You could take them off."
"I could. But I'll probably fumble the belt buckle like I did with Joel's and then we'll be here all night and I have plans for tonight that don't involve struggling with men's accessories."
The words are out before I realize what I've said. Joel's name. While I'm naked and we're about to do something that I've also done with Joel. I don't know what the etiquette is. I don't know if mentioning one man while naked with another man is a violation of some code I haven't learned yet.
"It's okay," Beck says. His voice is soft in a way I haven't heard before. "Grace. It's okay."
"I didn't mean to..."
"I know." He closes the distance between us. His hands find my waist. "I know what this is. I know what you have with Joel. I'm not trying to replace it. I'm trying to be something additional. A different chair at the table."
"Beck."
"I spent years with one chair. I'm good at being the only thing in the room. But I don't want to be the only thing anymore. I want to be part of something. Even if the something includes other people." His forehead touches mine. "Even if those people are Joel and Grant and Kevin the chaos goat."
"Kevin's part of this?"
"Kevin's part of everything. Kevin transcends category."
I laugh. It comes out wet, closer to a sob than it should be, and Beck kisses the corner of my mouth where the laugh-sob lives.
"I want to be a chair," he says. "At your table."
"That's the weirdest romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
"You named a viewing tunnel a fish tube. You're not allowed to judge weird."
He's right. I've never felt more understood in my entire life.
"Take off your pants," I say. "Chair."
He takes off his pants. Beck naked is a lot. He's thick and hard and beautiful.
I close the distance between us and his arms wrap around me and our bodies press together, and my brain finally shuts up long enough for my body to take over.
He reaches into a box on the shelf by the desk and pulls out a condom.
I look at it. Then him.
"Band-aid house," he says. "Turns out the rude little building had useful party favors."
"That's a terrible name for condoms."
"I'm workshopping under pressure."
"Workshop faster."
He grins, tears the wrapper open, and rolls it on. Then he walks us backward to the bench. Beck sits. I stand between his knees, looking down at him. The perspective is different, and I like it.
"Come here," he says again, and his hands find my hips, guiding me forward.
I climb onto his lap. My knees bracket his thighs. The position puts us face to face. I can see everything in his expression: the want and the fear and the hope that he's not used to feeling and doesn't know how to hide.
I kiss him. He kisses back. His hands are on my hips, gripping hard, and I feel him between my thighs, hot and insistent. My body is doing things without consulting my brain, rocking forward, seeking friction, finding it.
"Grace." My name is a groan. His palms are warm and rough against the bare skin of my hips.
"I want to feel you inside me."
He kisses me again, deep and slow, and his hand slides between us, testing, teasing, and I'm already embarrassingly slick.
"You're wet," he says against my mouth.
"You're observant."
"I like it."
"Good. I like you liking anything about me. I like you existing."
He laughs, and then his hand is gone and the head of his cock is nudging at my pussy, warm and blunt. "Ready?" he asks.
"I've been ready since you took off your vest. I've been ready since the moment I met you, probably."
Whatever I was going to say next disappears because he’s pushing inside me. Opening me up, stretching me. I gasp. My nails dig into his shoulders. My forehead drops to his and I breathe him in.
The sound I make is embarrassingly high. A little ah-ah-ah that I can't control, that matches the rhythm of him sinking deeper.
"Grace." His voice is wrecked. "You feel…"
"Don't say tight. Everyone says tight. I'm not a jar of pickles."
The movement of his laugh pushes him deeper inside me.
"You feel like home," he says. "You feel like somewhere I've been looking for my whole life and didn't know existed until now."
"Okay, that's… that's better than tight. That's significantly better than tight."
I kiss him, hard and desperate, and I start to move. I rise up on my knees, letting him slide almost all the way out, and then I sink back down.
The sensation. God. The way he fills me completely.
I do it again. Slower this time, drawing it out, feeling every millimeter of friction, every ridge and vein, every place where his body meets mine and becomes something new.
"Oh," I say. "Oh, that's... you're..."
He thrusts up as I sink down, and the angle shifts, and there's that perfect spot deep inside me. "There," he says, because he felt the way my body clenched around him. "Right there. I'm going to stay there."
"You better."
He keeps hitting that spot, over and over, a rhythm that builds and builds until I can't think, can't speak, can only feel. My inner walls are fluttering around him. His breath catches and his grip tightens.
"Not yet," I manage. "I want… I want to feel this longer."
"Take what you need."
I slow down. Let the tension ebb instead of cresting. I rock against him, small movements, circular, savoring the drag of him inside me, the way my body is stretched around him, the heat building low in my belly like a slow-burning fire instead of an explosion.
"You're in control," he says, and his voice is shot through with need. "I'm yours."
Those two words hit me harder than any amount of dirty talk could. I start moving faster.
The slow burn ignites. The fire catches. I'm riding him now, full strokes, my thighs burning, my breath coming in gasps, and he's matching me, thrust for thrust, his hands on my hips holding me steady while I chase the wave that's building.
He rolls his hips upward, experimental, and my whole body lights up.
His hands guide my hips, setting a rhythm, and I follow it, rise and fall, my thighs burning because I don't do cardio and this is definitely cardio.
"Beck, I'm close. I'm so close. Don't stop. Please don't stop."
"I won't. Use me, Grace. I'm yours."
The orgasm hits me and there's nothing but sensation, my back arching, my head falling back as a cry tears out of my throat that I don't recognize, that I've never made before, that sounds like surrender and victory all at once.
I'm shaking, trembling in his arms, and he's still moving, still thrusting, drawing it out, making it last. Every movement sends fresh sparks through my oversensitive nerves.
"Fuck," I hear myself say. "Fuck, Beck, fuck."
He groans. His rhythm breaks. I feel him twitch inside me, feel the way his whole body tenses and then goes slack beneath me.
We stay like that. Tangled. His face buried in my neck, my fingers in his hair, both of us trembling with aftershocks.
When our breathing settles, Beck holds the condom at the base and helps me lift off him. He ties it off and drops it into the wastebasket beside the desk. Then he pulls me back onto his lap.
"I think I forgot my own name." His voice is muffled against my skin.
"Beck."
"What?"
"Your name is Beck. I remembered it for you. You're welcome."
He laughs, and I feel it everywhere, in his chest pressed against mine, in the way he's still half-hard against my thigh, in the rumble of it against my throat.
"I love your voice," he says. "I love that you talk through everything. I love that you made jokes while I was inside you. I love that you're you and you're here and you're mine."
"Mine," I repeat. "I like being yours."
"I like you being mine."
His arms tighten around me. I rest my forehead against his.
"Beck," I say eventually, because the silence is getting long. "My left thigh is doing a spasm thing. It's very distracting from the otherwise perfect moment we just had."
"Can you move?"
"I can try. I'm going to try."
I try to climb off his lap. My left thigh disagrees. It seizes up and I pitch sideways. Beck catches me. We end up in a pile on the bench with my legs tangled in his and my cramp announcing itself with renewed enthusiasm.
"Ow. Ow ow ow. Okay. So. That's happening."
"Here." Beck's hands find my thigh. He massages, working the cramping muscle until it releases. "Better?"
"Better. Thank you. Sorry I ruined the afterglow with a charley horse."
"You didn't ruin anything."
"I literally cramped and fell on you."
"Yeah." He's smiling. The one that transforms his whole face into something softer. "That's the most Grace thing that's ever happened. I'd be worried if you didn't fall."
"That's weirdly romantic."
"I'm weirdly romantic. You named my armor and my home. You're stuck with me now."
I curl into him, my head finding the hollow of his shoulder. "That was…"
"Yeah."
"No, I mean, that was really."
"I know what you mean." He kisses my hair. "It was really."
"We should do it again."
"Right now?"
"No. My thigh needs a minute. But soon. Like, within the hour."
I close my eyes. His hand is still on my thigh, tracing lazy circles.
"Hey Beck?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for being a chair."
His arms wrap around me, pulling me against his chest. "Hey Grace?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for having a table."
His heartbeat thuds against my cheek. The crime boat creaks gently.
Outside, somewhere in the adventure part, Gregory is probably shuffling around with his fanny pack and his Hawaiian shirt and his gift for showing up at the worst possible moments.
But he can't reach us here. The thinking box is ours.
I fall asleep listening to Beck breathe.