Chapter Eleven #3
“Yes. You, Ernestine Martin. You could never disappoint me. I have been pretty crazy about everything that you’ve ever done around me. Whether that’s showing me the stars or kissing me. Asking me to give you self-defense lessons, and sex lessons. I find you delightful in all ways.”
He didn’t know why he was saying that. But he wanted her to feel it.
She was wonderful. She hadn’t experienced tragedy; she hadn’t gone through the kinds of things that he had.
And still, the people around her had made her feel like she wasn’t good enough.
Her, this exceptional, brilliant woman, who should be held up as being as brilliant and wonderful as she was, but instead was made to feel like she was difficult.
Too much work. Too much everything. He just fucking hated it.
And he didn’t want her to feel that way. It wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair.
She should be celebrated. Not tolerated.
And that was a fact. So if he could do that right now, then he was going to.
If he could give her that. Because that seemed to be the thing she was missing.
Sex was whatever. Well, it wasn’t whatever; she was blowing his mind, but it was something that held hands with her self-worth.
Something that she needed to have built up.
With shaking hands, she freed him from his underwear, pushed them and his jeans down his legs, and he kicked his boots off. Then she knelt down in front of them, but was just a little bit short.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and she climbed up alongside him, leaning down and taking an experimental lick from base to tip.
He thought his head was going to blow off.
She kissed him gently, kissed a line down the front of his shaft, before dragging her tongue back up.
And then she took him into her mouth. She couldn’t take all of him, but damn.
Everything she was doing was like a revelation.
The enthusiasm with which she took it on.
All of it, all of him. His hips arched up off the bed, and he could barely form a coherent thought.
He had never felt anything this good. It was because it was her.
It really was. Not because all blow jobs were good, but because she was specifically good.
This wonderful, brave, strange woman who just seemed to accept things and people right as they were. Including him.
He hadn’t realized how much he needed that until her.
And now he knew, he wasn’t sure how he was going to go back. But he had to. He shoved that thought aside, and he just felt.
Relished the feel of her mouth on him, her hand stroking up and down his shaft in conjunction with the swipe of her tongue. And then, when he was just about to blow, he pulled her away from him. “Not like that,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked, sounding dazed.
“Because I’m not ready to let us finish that way. Not when I can be inside you again. The way that I want to be.”
Plus, he owed her a favor. He wasn’t going to say that, though, or she was going to start counting up and saying that in fact he was ahead of her. And he didn’t want any of her sass. Actually, he would enjoy some of her sass, but not now.
He pushed her back onto the bed, and buried his face between her thighs.
He lost himself there. In her, in them. The sounds that she made, the way that she laced her fingers through his hair. This was something else. Something he had never experienced before. Not ever. This was just her.
And nothing else would ever be her.
She arched her hips up off the bed, and tugged at his hair, coming hard against his mouth.
With shaking hands, he reached down and grabbed his wallet, grabbed a condom and rolled it down his length.
He draped her leg over his hip, and thrust in hard.
She was ready for him this time, a lot more used to taking him.
Her head fell back, her eyes closed, her breasts arched up toward him.
And he took them both up to the stars. Up to Saturn.
And he was sure that he didn’t want to come down.
When she came around him, his name on her lips, he thought that maybe he’d died.
But no. He was still here.
He was still here. And that was okay.
Then he collapsed next to her on the bed, and noticed a pair of scary eyes looking at him from the nightstand.
“What the fuck?”
“It’s my Labubu. My knockoff Labubu. Remember, I bought it in the grocery store.”
“I remember, but it wasn’t on the nightstand the last time I was here.”
“No. But I was looking at it the other night. I accidentally left it there. I didn’t know that you were going to spend the night.”
“Well, it’s scary.”
“They’re not scary.”
“They have sharp teeth.”
“But they’re not biting you.”
She grabbed it off the nightstand and flung it onto him. He jumped, and tried to catch it, and it rebounded off of his chest before falling onto the floor. “Oh well. It has met its untimely end.”
She made an exasperated sound and rolled over him and off his side of the bed naked, grabbing hold of her cursed doll before pulling it back up against her chest. “Don’t. I love him.”
“That might be the deal-breaker.”
“You’re very intolerant.”
“I think we both know that’s not true. And you’re going to have to explain to me why Jurassic Park is bad and that’s good.”
“This,” she said, holding it out at him, “has nothing to do with my chosen profession.”
“Well. Still.”
“I just think you’re mean.”
So he tackled her. Flat on her back, and bit her on the shoulder. “It might not bite. But I do.”
She made a comical wailing sound. “You’re mean!”
But she was smiling. He had never had this before.
Never…felt playful with much of anyone. He was suddenly out of body, out of mind.
He didn’t know what this was. It was the strangest, most intense experience of his life, and it was happening in a glass cabin with a scientist. A scientist who had a whole separate life from him.
Who lived a whole different reality. He rolled away from her, and looked up through the ceiling at the stars, before turning the lights off so he could see them better.
“You looking forward to the Oregon Trail thing?”
“Yes,” she said, though her voice was muted as if she’d had the same thought.
That this was an awful lot for two people who were going to have to say goodbye, and maybe that wasn’t the best thing for either of them.
But right now, he wasn’t sure either of them were making the smart choice.
They were making the choice that felt good.
Maybe they both deserved that. At least for a little while.
But it would end at the end of the month.
At least she was clear on that. He’d been honest. That was all he could do.
All he could do except enjoy his time with her.