Chapter 12 Without a Cue #5
A cramp caught her calf when she stretched, tightening the muscle beneath my hand. I worked my thumb into it until her foot relaxed against the sheet.
"Waterpark or me?" I asked.
"Both. You're splitting the blame."
I laughed into her hair. She tucked herself closer, skin hot and damp against mine, and let the quiet stretch.
The room smelled like sweat, sex, and the chlorine neither shower had completely removed from our skin. The sheets were tangled around our legs. Cum continued to seep around my softening cock, warming the crease where her thigh rested over mine. Neither of us reached for a towel.
When I finally slipped free, Lucy inhaled sharply and clutched my arm. A thicker ribbon of white leaked from her pussy onto the sheet.
She looked down at it, then at me.
"You did exactly what I asked."
"I try to follow directions."
"Eventually."
Her voice was tired, satisfied, and still unmistakably captain-clear.
I reached for the water bottle on the nightstand and handed it to her. Lucy drank half without sitting up, water escaping the corner of her mouth and running down her neck. I caught the trail with my tongue.
"That was mine."
"You missed."
"I was dehydrated."
She handed me the bottle and pointed toward her duffel. "Front pocket. The one Vina didn't confiscate."
I found a zip pouch labeled LATE NIGHT in black marker and brought it to the bed.
"You labeled your after-sex snacks?"
"I labeled snacks that might be eaten late at night. What we did before them is irrelevant to the filing system."
The pouch held trail mix, protein bars, crackers, and two chocolate cookies wrapped in plastic. I passed her a cookie. She broke it in half and put the larger piece in my mouth before taking her own.
We ate naked on ruined sheets with her cum-wet thigh draped over mine and our shoulders pressed together. No one needed anything from us. The air conditioner hummed. A car passed somewhere below, tires whispering over the road, then the night went quiet again.
Lucy traced one of the red lines her nails had left on my shoulder.
"What was your favorite part?"
I swallowed the last of the cookie. "Today?"
"All of it." Her finger followed another mark. "And you don't get to say what you think I want to hear."
"The surf simulator."
Her eyes narrowed. "Watching me fail."
"Watching you come up laughing before you remembered anybody could see. Then watching you climb back on because failing didn't change what you wanted."
She went still beside me.
"I liked the scream in the wave pool. I liked you stealing my food twice and pretending it was a quality-control service. I liked the wrong lyric and the sticker you hid on my back."
"That sticker was funny."
"It was on my shirt for forty minutes."
"Exactly."
I took her hand and linked our fingers on the sheet between us.
"I liked every time you reached for me without thinking about who might notice. And when you got tired, you leaned harder instead of trying to stand straighter."
Lucy watched our joined hands.
"You really saw all of that."
"I had the best view."
She rested her forehead against my shoulder. For several breaths, she said nothing.
Then she asked, "And this?"
Her foot slid along my calf. The mess between her thighs cooled against my skin. She wasn't asking for a grade. She wanted to know what the private thing had meant beside everything else.
"Watching you control the edge was one of the hottest things anybody has ever done to me," I said. "You learned my breathing before I understood what you were looking for. You knew when to use your mouth, when to squeeze, when to stop. Then you trusted me enough to ask for something different."
Her thumb moved across my knuckle.
"I lost the count."
"You handed it to me."
Lucy looked up.
"There's a difference," I said. "You chose the moment, told me what you wanted, and kept choosing all the way through it. I didn't take anything you weren't giving me."
Her expression softened without becoming smaller. No polished smile appeared to close the conversation. She simply absorbed the answer and brought my hand to her mouth.
She kissed my knuckles.
"Good," she said.
She let the answer stand. No captain smile appeared, and she didn't invite me to grade her in return. She had what she needed.
Lucy reached for her phone. The screen lit her face for a moment. Notifications crowded the top, but she opened the clock instead and looked at the blank alarm field.
"What time do we need to leave?" she asked.
"We don't. Brewster Bay is covered."
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
"No alarm," she said.
"No alarm."
She locked the phone and placed it facedown on the nightstand.
Then she curled into me, head beneath my chin, one leg hooked over both of mine. I pulled the sheet over our hips without hiding the damp warmth or the soreness that made her settle carefully.
Her breathing slowed against my chest. Her hand remained open over my ribs, no longer counting anything.
The Riverlight's air conditioner hummed through the dark. Lucy slept with her body wrapped around mine, and her phone stayed silent beside the bed.