10. Cal
CAL
Night before the trip and the house is buzzing with her.
Both duffels are staged by the door like we’re deploying.
She’s been narrating the weather forecast at me all evening—a front coming through Sunday, which means we ride up Saturday in the good window, which she’s explained twice with her hands going the whole time, drawing the front across the kitchen like a weather girl.
There’s a printed list ON the duffels. Taped. She taped a list to luggage. I love her so much it’s a problem.
The guilt’s there too. It’s always there now, low in my gut like a pilot light, and her being this happy turns the flame up.
She packed my shirts. She cracked her new boots back and forth on the porch for an hour because some kid at the store told her to.
She built this whole trip to get me to the mountains for my birthday, and I’ve got a shut door in my head she doesn’t know about, and every time she laughs tonight my chest does this tight, sick clench and then lets go.
Both things living in me at once. I don’t know how to make them not.
Then she comes out of the bathroom in nothing but one of my shirts, hair damp, phone in her hand, laughing at something her sister sent.
“Oh my God, Cal, she says if you take me on a hike over eight miles she’s calling the?—”
I don’t think. I’m across the room before she finishes and her back’s against the bedroom door and I’m kissing her, hard, phone clattering somewhere, her little startled sound going straight down my spine and into my cock.
“—police,” she finishes against my mouth, breathless, laughing. “She’s calling the police.”
“Let her.” I get a hand in her damp hair and tip her head back and put my mouth on her throat, and she stops laughing. Her pulse is going under my lips. “Missed you.”
“I’ve been here all day, you lunatic?—”
“Missed you anyway.”
Tonight there’s no belt. No games, no counting, none of the held-breath shit I’ve been hiding in for weeks. Tonight I just want her—loud, messy, nothing managed. I get the shirt up over her head and she’s bare underneath and my brain whites out for a second, just gone, hands full of her.
“You walked around like this all night,” I say against her jaw. “Nothing under my shirt. All fucking night.”
“Took you long enough to check.” She grins like the menace she is and yanks my shirt off over my head so fast we nearly take out the lamp, and her hands go flat on my chest, nails dragging down, and I make a sound I’d deny in daylight.
I drop to my knees.
“Cal—”
“Quiet.” I get her leg over my shoulder, her back flat on the door, and I lick into her slow, one long pass that makes her whole body jerk against the wood.
She’s already wet. That does something to me every time, two years in—that her body gets there just from being grabbed and kissed against a door. I tell her so, mouth moving against her: “Already soaked. You know that? Before I even touched you.”
“Then do something about—oh. Oh, fuck?—”
I work her with my tongue, flat and slow, then tight on her clit, and her hands find my hair and pull, and the door starts knocking soft in its frame from her hips. She’s chanting inside a minute—right there, fuck, right there, don’t you dare stop—I stop.
One second. Just to look up the length of her, thigh shaking against my ear, her face furious and wrecked at the same time. She yanks my hair hard enough to sting.
“Cal. I swear to GOD. Not tonight?—”
“Not tonight,” I agree. “No games.” And I stand, and I get my jeans open, and I hitch her up with both hands under her ass until her legs lock around my waist and my cock’s lined up against her, sliding through how wet she is, both of us watching the small space between our bodies.
“Ask me,” I say.
“You’re the worst?—”
“Ask me anyway.”
“Fuck me,” she says, no hesitation, chin up, bratty even now, “against this door, right now, or I’m finishing myself off in the?—”
I push in.
First stroke and we both go stupid. Her head thumps back against the wood, my forehead drops to her shoulder, and for a second neither of us moves, just breathing, her pussy gripping me like a fist, two years of knowing exactly how we fit and it still knocks the wind out of me every time.
“Okay?” I manage.
“If you don’t move I’m calling the police myself.”
So I move. Slow first, long and deep, her spine thudding soft against the door with every stroke, and then not slow—her heels digging into my ass, her nails raking down my shoulders, the door knocking in its frame in a rhythm the whole street can probably chart.
I keep my mouth at her ear the whole time, low and rough, stuff I’d never say in daylight.
“Feel that? That’s what you get for the shirt. Walking around bare under my shirt like I wasn’t gonna notice?—”
“Maybe I—ah—wanted you to notice?—”
“I know you did. Filthy girl.” She clenches around me when I say it, hard, and I laugh into her neck. “Oh, you like that. Say it back.”
“Make me.”
I drive up into her hard enough that her breath punches out, and again, and she’s loud now, really loud, my name and curses and God and the neighbors are getting an education. “Listen to you,” I tell her. “So fucking loud. Let them hear.”
“Harder—come ON, I’m not made of glass?—”
“You’ll get it in the bed.”
“I want it HERE?—”
“You’ll get it,” I say, “everywhere,” and I lift her off the door with her legs still locked around me and my cock still buried in her, and I carry her across the room, both of us swearing at every step because every step does something, her arms around my neck, her teeth finding my shoulder, and I lay her down on the bed we’ve shared for two years without ever pulling out of her.
And then I slow it all the way down, because the second half of tonight isn’t about the door.
I hook her legs up over my shoulders, one and then the other, fold her nearly in half, and go deep—slow, heavy, grinding at the deepest point until her eyes roll back and her mouth drops open on nothing.
“There it is,” I say. “Right there. That’s the spot, isn’t it. Tell me.”
“That’s—God—that’s the spot, you smug?—”
“Good girl.” Another slow grind and whatever she was going to call me dies in her throat. “Look at you. Folded up under me taking every inch of it. You have any idea what you look like right now?”
“Tell me,” she breathes, and it’s not bratty anymore, it’s raw, and something in my chest cracks open.
“Best thing I’ve ever seen,” I say, and I mean it so hard my voice goes to gravel. “Best thing I’ve ever had. Right here. Mine.”
I watch her face. That’s the thing I do tonight that I don’t usually let myself do this bare: I watch her the whole time. Her jaw going slack. Her hands flying up to grab the headboard on their own, no belt needed, knuckles whitening. The flush crawling down her chest between her breasts.
Every stroke I take it in like I’m trying to burn it into the back of my skull, and I don’t ask myself why it feels like that, because the answer’s standing behind a shut door in my head and tonight the door stays shut.
“Cal—Cal, I’m close, I’m really?—”
“I know, baby. I can feel you.” She’s fluttering around me, thighs starting to shake where they’re pinned against my chest. “Not yet. Hold it for me. Hold it—” one more slow, mean grind, her whole body strung wire-tight and cursing me—“now. Come for me. Now.”
She goes off like a bottle rocket. Bigger than the door would’ve been—her back bowing off the mattress, thighs clamping around my ears where they’ve slid, her cry breaking apart in the middle of my name, her pussy squeezing me in waves, and it drags me straight over with her.
I come harder than I have in months, buried as deep as I can get, grinding through it, her name tearing out of me like something pulled up by the roots.
It goes on and on. My arms are shaking by the end of it. Both of us are a mess, my cum and her slick everywhere, the sheets a crime scene.
After, I don’t pull out. Stay there, still half-hard inside her, forehead against hers, both of us wrecked and laughing at nothing, breathing each other’s air. Her legs slide down off my shoulders one at a time, boneless. I kiss her cheekbone, her damp hairline, the corner of her mouth.
“Tessa,” I say. Just to say it. Like it’s the only word I’ve got left, and right then it is.
“Happy early birthday to me,” she mumbles, and cracks herself up, and I feel the laugh everywhere we’re still joined and groan, and that cracks her up worse.
I clean us up, get her water she drinks with her eyes already closing, and then I hold her while she drifts, her heartbeat slowing against my chest, packed duffels by the door, mountains tomorrow, the best thing I’ve ever had asleep in my arms.
That’s when it comes for me.
The guilt, worse than it’s ever been, and it doesn’t come as a thought—it comes up through my body like cold water in a boot.
My stomach drops first. Then my skin goes wrong all over, too tight, and my heart starts banging like I’m the one who should be running, and I lie there dead still so I don’t wake her while it works me over.
Because before tonight it was a pilot light. A low, general wrongness I could keep behind the shut door. Not anymore.
Now I know exactly what I’ve been risking—her face at the end, the weight of her sleeping on my chest right now, the laugh, the taped list, all of it—and I’ve been risking it for a woman who isn’t even in this room. Who was never in this room.
I stare at the ceiling in the dark with Tessa breathing on my chest, and my jaw aches from clenching, and I don’t sleep for a long, long time.