CHAPTER 2 NORA #3
He stops. Not just kissing me or redressing me. He takes his hands off me, too. He pulls away. The only sign he is as affected as me are his heavy breaths when he says, “Yeah?”
And now what am I supposed to do? Demand he put the strap back where it was, or order him to pull it into the crook of my elbow? Reveal to him in all but those exact words that I want my tit out?
“I…I want…”
Finn’s cheeks are flushed, his hair falling out of his bun and around his face, his eyes wide and expectant.
“Your shirt,” I say instead. My hands flutter over the silk sleeves, the spots on the fabric that have pilled from the rough surface of my dress.
Finn follows my gaze. He puts his hand over mine, covering a particularly roughened spot over his left peck.
“Nora,” he says, then again when I can’t stop myself from worrying at a pull on his sleeve.
He catches my chin with his finger, asking me to look at him with a gentle tug.
“I do not care,” he says, slowly, distinctly, “about my shirt.”
“Oh.”
He presses his thumb to the skin below my mouth, pulling until I release my lower lip from my teeth. Something I hadn’t even realized I was doing.
“Nora?” He plays with the ends of my hair, my earring. Touches my collarbone, my shoulder, follows the dip of the fabric of my dress down my back. “Can I make you come, Nora?”
“Oh,” I say again. Here I was thinking that letting Finn touch my tit would be the pinnacle of a New Year’s Eve kiss. Finn watches me so seriously, a crease between his brow. As if he is worried about my answer. And I guess it makes sense he’d be worried.
We are frenemies, after all. Although, can I really assign such a designation to him anymore?
When a few moments ago, I wanted him to feel me up?
When now, I want him to leave his fingerprints on the insides of my thighs?
When I look over his shoulder to ensure no one is here so he can make me come?
I let my leg slide to the ground, put my hands on his waist. He’s always been wiry but muscular, and I press my thumbs into him, wishing I could feel his skin without even this thinnest of fabric between us. “Oh, yes,” I say. “You can.”
His hand slides up my thigh, the sequins clinking as he lifts the skirt.
And I’ll never be able to wear this dress again, retired after one use like I’m some kind of red-carpet celebrity.
Because I’ll never be able to hear this sound again without thinking of Finn.
Of how he cups the inside of my thigh, spreading my legs farther apart.
How he presses his forehead to mine, hair falling around us.
How he breathes Okay like he is preparing himself for something.
I will never be able to hear this musical little sound my dress makes without also hearing his soft inhale when he kisses me, and his whispered, “Okay, Nora. Thank you.” Like this moment between us is a gift I am bestowing upon him.
He groans when he slides his fingers beneath my panties, the thin slip of fabric already wet. He drops his head to my shoulder, so I can feel his next groan and his words telling me to tell him to stop if I need to through my skin.
He is curled over me. One hand propped against the wall by my head, the other under my skirt.
I bend my leg for him, press my heel to the wall, cant my hips toward him.
I fist his shirt in my hands as he slides one finger inside me, try to stand taller in my already high heels, just to get closer to him.
It is so quiet in this dark corner of the hotel. Quiet except for my breathing and the noises I can’t seem to control as he adds another finger, as he sucks on the skin beneath my ear. Quiet except for the click-clack of my dress, the scrabble of my heel against the wall.
Quiet except for the way Finn talks to me throughout.
“You’re so wet,” he says. Something I would usually feel embarrassed about, but he commends me for.
“Do you like that?” he asks. “There? Right there?” This unserious boy studying me like I am a test he suddenly wants to ace.
“Can you take another?” There is something like apology in his tone.
Like he knows it’s a lot, the relentless pump of his fingers inside me, the slick slide of his thumb over my clit.
I move my hips with him, pull his shirt from his pants, press my hands to the sweat-slick skin of his back. I tell him yes when he asks if I like it, say please when he wants to give me more. I pull him in closer, press my nose into his shoulder, open my mouth over the muscle.
But every time I think I’m there, that I can give him what he wants, the pleasure plateaus, disappears, blows away like fine mist against our skin.
It’s the fact that it’s so quiet but—to me—we’re so loud, the rough rub of my dress under my arm and down my back, the strap of my shoe digging into my baby toe.
It’s the worry. That I’ll somehow be bad at this, like coming is a skill I can list on my CV.
That this moment will do something to irrevocably rupture our friend group, having made my pleasure a priority after a decade-plus of never hooking up with any of them.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe…” Except I can’t finish that sentence. Maybe we should what? Stop? Pause long enough to get to a bed? Maybe you should get out of your own head, Nora? But if I were able to do that, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, would it?
My frustration leaks from me in the tears at the corners of my eyes, my teeth against his flesh, my growl that quickly turns to a whine as Finn pulls his hand away.
“Nora.”
This is mortifying. He asks if he can make me come and I squander it because of thoughts?
“Nora.”
“I’m enjoying it, I really am.” I say it through closed eyes. I can’t look at Finn right now. He’s probably grinning that stupid, teasing smile.
“Eleanor,” he says.
I open my eyes. Finn is not grinning. He’s frowning. I flatten the wrinkle at his brow.
“Turn around, Nora baby.”
“What?” I ask, to clarify both the directive and the pet name.
“Turn around,” he says, ignoring the latter—for the best, really—and addressing the former with his hand gently guiding my hips so that I face the wall. “Okay?” he asks.
“I…I guess?” Because he’s not really doing anything except pressing the hard length of himself against my ass, cocooning me with the span of his shoulders.
One hand slides up the back of my thigh.
I open for him, spread. Present myself to him because this?
Yes, this is okay. He smiles against the back of my neck.
I can feel it, the curve of his lips, that wide mouth.
His other hand snakes around my front, and he can just reach—thank whomsoever made the universe for tall men with long wingspans—far enough to draw my skirt up with his fingers and slip his hand down the front of my panties.
“You feel that?” he asks as he puts three fingers inside me, the stretch made easier when I can push against the wall, spread my legs wider. “That?” He presses his cock into my ass.
I nod, turn my face into his arm around my shoulder. His deodorant, his cologne, his skin, my new oxygen.
“Good.” He breathes the word against my ear. Good, like all he’s ever wanted was for me to know I’ve made him hard, that making me come makes him so; that he is satisfied.
“Good,” he says again, a croon, a compliment, when he spreads his fingers inside me and I moan into his shirt.
“Good,” he praises when I reach for my own breast, pushing myself up for him to see and squeezing my nipple.
“Good,” he says, satisfied, when I say his name as the tension builds inside me. A firework, a midnight kiss. A countdown to something new.
“I’m going to come,” I say. “I’m coming.”
And I bite him, the tender skin of the inside of his upper arm. I bite him as my legs shake and I bear down on his three fingers like I want them to be permanent, as my clit pulses against his finger. And he grunts this time, he grunts as I bite him.
And then he says, “Good.”
Eventually, he takes one hand away, then the other. He rights my dress. I don’t know for sure but I think he licks his fingers clean.
“Okay?” he asks when I turn to face him, one hand still on the wall to steady myself.
I nod. “But…” I reach for him. Because his cock is still pressing against the fly of his slacks. He intercepts my hand, winding our fingers together.
“Probably not the best place,” he says quietly, and I nod again but I can’t tell the difference between this being the best place for what he just did to me and this not being the best place for what I could do to him.
He walks us back down the hall, though he doesn’t seem to remember which way we came from, and I take over until we get to a hallway that’s brighter, with benches lining the walls at intervals.
“Can you wait for me?” he asks, pointing to the men’s restroom. I sit on the bench, making sure to perch on the edge and that my dress is covering as much of my—ahem—undercarriage as it can.
Finn isn’t in there very long but when he comes out, his cheeks are flushed, his hair is wet like he’s run his hands through the tap, and the bulge in his pants seems significantly…less.
We walk again, hand in hand, a little slowly because my legs don’t quite feel like mine still, and I try to think of how to ask him if he jerked off in the bathroom or why he couldn’t trust me to do it or if he still wants me to do it later at my apartment or at his.
I don’t think I’ve ever even been to Finn’s home.
We turn back onto the mezzanine and he pulls his hand from mine under the guise of returning my hair tie to me. “Thanks,” he says.