Chapter 13 Alice
Alice
The drive to please Emily, to do for her what she does for me, is almost insatiable.
I’m lucky she’s so strong, and is ironically a very good swimmer, because she’s essentially holding us both up with barely any support from the buoy.
Her arms are wide and her long legs kick in smooth, controlled strokes to keep us both afloat.
I have a hard time pulling my eyes away from her legs, the contracting muscles of them mesmerizing.
I’ve never met someone so beautiful and capable at the same time.
The emotional turmoil I’m experiencing has become so violent, it’s almost like I’ve become numb to it.
My attraction to her, my guilt, my fear, my bloodthirst, my need—it all feels so distant and faint, like the memory of the rolling ocean after you step onto land.
I can’t seem to come to terms with my feelings, so I’m ignoring them and embracing this.
The way she makes me feel, the world of pleasure and fun she’s introduced me to.
I hate myself for damning her, but not enough to stop.
It’s the complexity of these emotions, how they overwhelm me, that makes me feel so attached.
That has to be the reason. I wouldn’t feel so completely consumed by her if I wasn’t putting her life at risk.
This sensation, like she’s the only person in the world I can trust, is because I know she can’t trust me.
The desire to spend every moment with her, for as long as she’ll let me, is because I know both of ours are likely numbered.
It’s all too much.
But this? Touching her, being touched by her? Learning, feeling, living? That isn’t too much at all.
In complete contrast to everything I’ve ever imagined for my life if I could be free of Ilya and my father, I suddenly want to be controlled.
My body and mind both crave being led, being told exactly how to give her pleasure and seeing the way she reacts when I do as I’m told.
I want her to dominate me, despite the fact that my most fervent dream is complete freedom from any control.
She’s the exception to every rule. Because I trust her, even though she can’t trust me.
“Please,” I repeat, dragging the pad of my middle finger over her clit, my head swimming pleasantly when she chokes out a groan. “Please tell me what to do.”
“Do that again, but a little more pressure,” Emily hisses out, her kicking becoming less even as I follow her directions. As much as I love when she overwhelms me with pleasure, this is euphoria of a different brand, equally potent. “Keep going like that, Pecas. Until I tell you to stop.”
She drops her head back and seems to soak up the pleasure, and the strange sensation of being both desired and useful fills my chest with pride. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it’s a relief to know I can make her feel this way, that it’s not one-sided.
Her chest rises and falls, quicker and quicker with every second that passes as my fingers rub quick circles. Slowly, so I don’t disturb the delicate balance she’s created as we float in the ocean, I lean forward and take one of her nipples into my mouth through her swimsuit.
“Fuck, Alice,” she gasps, and I feel my core ache with the need in her voice. “Inside me, now.”
I hate that I love how demanding she is.
I slip my finger inside her and feel her pussy tighten around me, wishing she would demand more of me.
Maybe it’s because at any moment, I know I could say jellyfish and she’d stop without a second thought.
I shouldn’t have so much faith in her—we’ve only known each other for a few weeks—but I can feel the truth of it like I can feel my heartbeat.
“Tell me what you need,” I say, my mouth still so close to her chest. My tongue instinctively runs along my back molar to check the cap. It’s still in place. Which is good, because my body is screaming to do more, give her more.
“You’re doing so good,” she praises. A combination of pleasure and irritation floods my chest, because I love hearing the words, but she didn’t tell me what she wants. I latch my mouth around her nipple again, harder this time, barely pulling with my teeth.
“Jesu—” she starts, only to be cut off when I roll her nipple between my teeth again. “More, Alice. Fuck me like you mean it.”
I slip a second finger inside her, pumping in and out, desperate to push her over the edge as she’s done for me dozens of times now.
The water around us isn’t nearly as calm as it was before, but that’s not the fault of the currents or the weather.
Instead, it’s Emily’s efforts to keep up floating, less and less controlled with every kick of her legs.
Still, she keeps me buoyed well above the surface.
“Give me more, pretty girl. Make me come.”
Her eyes are locked on mine as I pull away from her chest and fuck her with three fingers.
Testing her strength, I leverage my grip on her shoulder to fuck into her as hard as I can.
Her mouth drops open a little, bottom lip so red from biting into it that I almost lose all self control and kiss her.
Her eyes flick to my lips too, and it only takes a few more pumps into her pussy to feel her clench around me.
Her muscles flex around my hand, her whole body shuddering as she comes for me, because of me.
A broken string of cries and curses in Spanish and a few other languages, if my memory serves me, come streaming from her as she keeps coming.
Every cell of my body is on fire as I watch her come apart and stitch herself back together, seemingly forcing herself back down to earth so she can watch as I draw her pleasure out.
She takes in everything, her eyes with their blown out pupils surveying every inch of me. I can feel them on my skin from my lips to my shoulders, to where I’m still pumping my fingers inside her. Like she’s trying to capture every detail, creating an image she can keep in her mind forever.
I know I’m projecting. But that’s what I want to do.
Take a photo in my mind of this moment that I can relive over and over.
In my loneliest moments, when I wonder if all I’ve ever brought to this world is pain and death, I can remember Emily and how she let me be something good for her, even if only for a moment.
“Damn it Alice, what are you doing to me?” she asks, and I can’t pretend not to hear the meaning in her words. The desperation I feel too. It’s too much, too fast, too impossible, and for all the wrong reasons. But there’s no denying the screaming desire to wrap myself in her and never let go.
It’s not real. It’s my heart’s desperate attempt to feel something akin to love before I die. It’s not fair, to me but especially to her.
And still, I slip my fingers from her and wrap around her, so my head rests against her chest and the sound of her heartbeat drowns out all my thoughts.
-
“You can’t plan all the adventures, you know,” Emily says, her hand clutching mine as we walk down the only real road in Nesika Beach. We brought the boat back and showered in Emily’s motel room—which resulted in a multitude of reciprocal orgasms—before I relayed part two of my plan for the day.
“This is hardly an adventure,” I scoff, wrapping my free hand around her bicep and leaning into her shoulder as we walk. “We’re just window shopping in the world’s most desolate mall.”
She leans down and kisses the top of my head, and I realize how much I was really missing as a teenager, even when I learned of my negotiated engagement with Ilya.
Every second with Emily feels like I’m floating, like my body is lighter than air.
My heartbeat is constantly uneven, and my skin feels prickly with awareness.
I crave her attention, her affection, her gentle touch, equally as much as I do her more carnal desires.
I never realized that by denying myself something as simple as a crush when I was young, I was missing out on something that felt so good.
All the reasons I have to feel guilty—whether reasonable or not, born from my father’s control or my actions—are so much quieter. It’s selfish. It’s wrong.
I smell her cologne, and wonder how long I’ll hate myself if I live and she dies.
“Tell me about this place, I’ve only been to the discount store,” she suggests as we walk down the sidewalk, overgrown with weeds and dandelions. The paint of the designated parking spots on the empty street is faded.
“Well, there’s a church, two bars, the discount store, a pawn shop, and three vacant buildings on this road,” I say, pointing. “The other motel is at the opposite end of the road, but yours is the nicer one.”
“A low bar,” she mutters, and I poke a blunt fingernail into her ribs.
“Be nice,” I scorn. “There’s the boat tours and the bait shop by the docks, of course. And there used to be a cheap little gift shop, but the owner didn’t come back this summer, so it never reopened.”
We walk by one of the empty storefronts, the glass spiderwebbed in one of the windows.
All of the stores are on the east side of the road; the other side doesn’t even have a sidewalk, asphalt transitioning seamlessly into a dirt turnoff, and then grass, and then shrubbery, and then the trees that fill every inch of space until you hit the cliffs.
“I feel like the checkout lady hates me,” Emily whispers as we walk by the discount store, Luanne sits on her high stool at the only checkout row, blatantly staring at us through the window.
A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth, and I raise my hand to wiggle my fingers at her.
She waves back, her brows still knitted in confusion.
“People here aren’t great with change,” I say, shrugging my shoulders as we meander. “It took me staying through at least a winter before they got used to me.”