How Not To Fall by Emily Foster (13)

He leaves me standing next to the bed, to pull the curtains. Instantly the room is in almost total darkness, only cracks of late-afternoon sun sneaking through breaks in the curtains.

While my eyes are still adjusting to the dark, he stands before me and brushes my hair from my face. “I don’t suppose this is how you imagined it at all.”

I shake my head.

He begins to undress me and says, “How did you imagine it? Tell me.”

I raise my eyes to the ceiling, feeling awkward, my cheeks flushing. “A lot of ways,” I confess. “In the lab, on your desk, was one. I imagined you, like, couldn’t control yourself around me. Um. On the edge of the sink in the Soma bathroom was another one. Again, you simply could not contain your lust. It turns out in reality you can control yourself pretty well.”

“You’d like me to be out of control for you?” My shirt is gone, and he’s kneeling in front of me to pull my shorts and panties down slowly over my legs.

I bunch my lips over to one side and shrug. “They’re just fantasies.” I step out of the clothes tangled at my ankles.

“And this is real.” He stands and puts his hands on my face and kisses me, and it is real. Charles is kissing me and I’m naked and this is happening.

“You’re trembling,” he whispers into the kiss, but I can’t respond. I clench and unclench my hands helplessly, unable to do anything but receive his soft, slow kiss.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say at last.

“Anything you like,” he answers.

“How am I supposed to know what I like?” I say desperately.

He seems to understand. “Pretend we’re still on third base, and we’ll see how we go.”

That makes it easier, a little. I untuck his shirt and put my hands on his back. “I like your skin,” I say.

“I like yours,” he says.

I begin undressing him with the same industriousness with which he undressed me, and I say, “So, how have you imagined it?”

“A bit like this,” he says softly, slowly. “Here, in the dark, two naked bodies. You, bewitched and joyful. Me, wise and skillful.” He’s making fun of himself.

“I think I am bewitched,” I say, standing before him. We’re both naked now, with nothing but a foot of empty air separating us. He reaches out, puts a hand on my waist.

“Are you cold? Unsure? You can change your mind.”

“No, I’m just . . . I don’t know why I’m shaking.”

“Come to bed,” he says.

We lie down together under the covers. He puts his arms around me, kisses me, but the shaking is getting worse. “Sweetheart,” he says, and just takes over for me. He kisses me all over, touches me all over, and with his hands and his skin and his mouth and his hair, his eyelashes, he touches me softly. He takes his time, and every sensation feels amplified. When he touches my vulva, I’m still trembling, but I press my body up against his hand, press my own hand over his.

“Yes,” I say.

He kisses my neck and breasts as he moves his palm over my clit. I run my hands over his skin. The more aroused I get, the more my body shakes—my legs and my abdomen and my fingers. “I can’t stop it,” I tell him.

“Don’t try,” he says.

So I don’t. I just let it, I let my body be what it is and do what it’s doing. My arousal grows, and the tension grows, and I grip the edge of the mattress over my head as my muscles shudder and vibrate. Charles’s mouth on my breasts and rib cage is warm and soft, and his hand is warm and firm, with steady, circular pressure. I can feel the tip of his finger just entering me.

“Charles,” I say, and I’m surprised I sound worried.

“Annie,” he says. “It’s so beautiful, what your body’s doing.”

“Is it?”

“You are astonishing. You are breathtaking.”

His mouth is moving lower, down to my belly and my hips. I feel his lips on the trembling insides of my thighs, I feel his hands over my trembling stomach, I feel him licking me, licking my clit, and my body shudders and shakes. I widen my thighs, straighten my legs, point my toes, but my legs just keep shaking. I put my shaking hands in his hair. He’s still moving slowly, taking his time as he licks me, and he doesn’t make me come, only brings me near the edge, where the trembling escalates and escalates. It’s not the quiet vibration it was when I walked in the door, but an uncontrollable, muscle-twitching shudder that wracks through me in waves like a fever.

“Charles.” My voice is trembling as much as the rest of me now. He comes back up to me, lies beside me, and I wrap my shaking arms around his neck.

He kisses my mouth softly and murmurs, “Pretty girl. Beautiful girl.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.

“Would you like to come, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” I breathe through the shuddering.

With firmer pressure on my vulva and a wet slide of his finger deeper into me, Charles kisses me with his tongue in my mouth. My fingers, shaking, grip at his skin. His body is so quiet and strong beside mine, his touch so sure. He knows my body now; in three days he has learned me, and he gives me exactly what my body wants.

“Oh god,” I say in a high, weak voice.

“Oh god,” he answers, and his voice sounds like a prayer.

I can’t breathe. In a series of cresting pulses that seem to calibrate all my shaking into one shared wavelength, my body pulls me up to a peak of tension, my whole body vibrating, my arms gripped around Charles’s shoulders, my hands fisted, my eyes squeezed shut.

“Oh my god,” I breathe.

“Oh my god, Annie,” he says.

With a singing cry, I fall off the edge, my body rolling wildly against Charles’s solid, still form, his hand still pressed firmly against my vulva, his mouth now pressed against my ear. He’s saying things, I can’t hear what, but he’s whispering to me about beautiful and come and darling and yes and yes and yes, while I stretch and press and writhe against him.

And at the end of it, when I fall into release and land in the soft, warm bed with Charles warm next to me, at last all the tension is gone. My body relaxes, sunk into the bed, pliant, sure, still. I feel in love with my skin and my breath. I feel in love with the dark. I feel perfect. He’s perfect. Tonight is perfect. I run my hands up and down his back and turn my face to his, whisper his name, kiss him.

As we kiss, I say, “I don’t know how to say it. Do I tell you I want you? Should I say I’m ready? Should I try to make it sexy like, ‘Give it to me, big boy?’ What do I say?”

“That’ll do for now,” he says with a half grin I can hear, and he moves on top of me. He takes my hand and guides it down between our legs. “Show me where,” he whispers, still with that half grin lingering in his voice.

“How should I know?” I ask, fumbling a bit with his penis in my hand. I try a few places and shift around, and his face is doing remarkable things, but at last I have him lined up where he goes . . . I think. I put both my hands on his shoulders, searching the dark for his eyes, and say, “Okay. Ready.”

“Me too,” he whispers. He kisses me so, so gently.

And he pushes just a little.

There’s a little sting, but mostly, it’s pressure.

He watches my face as I’m watching his, and says, “Okay so far?” and I nod.

He pushes a little more. It stings a little more, but overall, it’s nice. I feel opened and slippery. He pulls out a bit then, and then pushes deeper. He does it again, his eyes on mine, and then again.

“What’s it feel like?” he whispers.

“Like you put your penis in my vagina,” I whisper back, and we both laugh, and I can feel it inside me, the way he moves as he laughs, and I’m sure he can feel me, too. He kisses me, his hand against my face, and pushes deeper still, then pulls out again, and deeper still ... and again. And again, deeper.

“Whoa,” I say.

He stops. “Hurt?”

“No, just ... deep. Big. Just ... lots,” I murmur incoherently. “Is that all the way?”

He kisses my eyebrow. “Not yet. Do you want all the way?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

He makes an odd hhunh sound through his nose and then pushes deeper into me. He says, “Sweet holy fucking Jesus, Annie. You’re so—” He doesn’t tell me what I’m so. He’s breathing hard, and his arms are trembling on either side of me.

“Icebergs and baseball,” he mutters against my throat.

“What?”

“What you’re supposed to think about to delay orgasm,” he pants, and then he laughs, “I don’t know anything about baseball.”

“You know about the bases,” I giggle—and I feel my pelvic floor muscle contract around Charles. He flinches and makes another hhunh noise, higher pitched this time, and then thrusts into me, three quick, deep, sharp movements, not painful, but not particularly pleasurable, either, then he strains and pushes inside me while he grunts and moans, his face squinched above me. Then all his muscles relax and he sinks, his face against my neck.

“Oh god. Well”—he pants—“you wanted me to be out of control with you. That, my dear girl, is what out of control is like. Fuck. God. I haven’t done that in a decade. Oh Christ. I can only apologize. I will make it up to you, sweetheart, I promise.”

“Wait, that was it? You came?”

“I came, but don’t believe for a second that that is it.” He lifts his head and looks at me. He’s laughing and pink in the darkness, and he says, “God, how embarrassing! I’m supposed to be the experienced one who shows you how it’s done.”

“Is it weird if I take it as a compliment?” I ask.

“Oh, it is a compliment,” he says vehemently. “Undeniably. You are without a doubt the sexiest woman I have ever met in my entire life. I had rather hoped, on that account, to make a better showing, you know, so you could look back on your first time with the kind of bone-melting fondness that makes all the other blokes perpetually jealous.”

All the other blokes.

“And instead you’ll just giggle and tell them, ‘He tried.’ I did try,” he says, laughing and kissing my neck.

Then he kisses a path down my neck to my chest and my breasts, saying, “Oh, Annie, god, you feel so good. You feel so good. God, you just feel so amazing. Ugh, listen to what you’ve done to me! You reduce me to the most facile, imbecilic . . . That’s all the adjectives I can remember. The rest of them are gone. Whoosh!” He laughs and gently, slowly pulls out of me. He leaves his hands to explore my breasts as he kisses down to my belly and my hips and then—I pull my knees in, feeling awkward as his lips approach my vulva.

“You can do that?” I say as he puts his lips on my clit. “Even though you already . . . I mean, it’s, like, really goopy now, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes,” he says, and he pushes my knees apart with one hand. “It’s really goopy.” And he buries his face between my legs. I feel the combined sensation of his soft, wet, warm tongue against my vulva and his slightly stubbly cheeks against the insides of my thighs. But before I fully register what’s happening, he’s coming up again and kissing me with a mouth covered in our combined fluids. And it is fucking hot. I put my hands on his neck and suck on his tongue, drawing the taste of him and me into my mouth. I’m full of want and pleasure and uncertainty.

His hand is on me now. I can feel the slickness of his palm against my vulva and just the tip of one finger at my entrance. He tugs circles against my pubic bone. He kisses behind my ear and wraps a hand around the back of my skull, pressing his lips to my ear, but even with his mouth so close, I have to listen hard to hear him. He’s saying, “I love making you come. I’ve been imagining your face at orgasm for ages. When you came that first time Friday night, when you said you were nearly there and then you ground against me, I nearly came with you. I wanted to lay you on your stomach right then, pull your jeans down to your knees, pin you down by your hair, and fuck you.”

“Yes,” I pant.

“I wanted to tear off your clothes and bury my face in your pussy, make you come a thousand times.”

“Yes. God.” It’s his voice as much as his words that’s building the heat inside me. His voice, and his hand still tugging wide-open circles on my clit.

“I wanted to drag you to the bed and fuck you until you couldn’t think, until you couldn’t see straight or construct sentences or move.”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“You’d like that? You’d like me to fuck you all night?” Charles is saying. “Until you can’t move or think or see, until all you know is my cock inside you and my body over you and my tongue in your mouth, my voice in your ear telling you to come?”

“Yes.” My hips are starting to move in a rhythm to match his movements.

“I’d like to be inside you again,” he says. “May I?”

“Yes, please,” I whisper.

He’s lying on his side and I’m on my back, and I’m expecting him to get on top of me again, but all he does is raise my knee and slip the head of his penis inside me with a dark groan, and now I have this leg in the air and I don’t know what to do with it.

“Uh,” I say.

“Feel all right?” he asks. “Pain?”

I shake my head, still uncertain.

“Put your hand on your clit, sweetheart,” he says. I do, and turn my eyes to his to ask if I’m doing it right. He wraps one hand around the back of my head, his forearm a pillow for me, and presses the other hand under my jaw. He puts his forehead against mine, eyes open, and begins to fuck me, moving just a little, not coming all the way into me.

“All right?” he asks again, his eyes watching mine.

“Oh,” I say, trying not to close my eyes, trying to focus on his blue ones when my whole brain wants to notice what it feels like to have him inside me. “Yes.”

He’s begun to go a little deeper now, sliding with longer strokes, and I feel his thigh move between mine, pinning down the one on the mattress. Still I have this leg in the air and no idea what to do with it, but I’m caring less and less.

“More?” he asks, his fingers tightening in my hair.

“Yeah,” I whisper.

He slides deeper and my hand moves on my clit while his hand strays over my breasts and abdomen. I make a noise, and he kisses me. “All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Annie,” he says. “Oh, you feel amazing.”

All I can say in response is, “Ah.” There’s so much sensation, from my hand on my clit and his hand moving over my torso and his eyes so close to mine, watching me, and, above all, the utterly unique sensation of him moving inside me. He’s inside me.

“I really like that,” I say finally.

“I like it too,” he says seriously. He kisses my ear, my throat, my mouth. My pelvis rocks in rhythm with his movements, pressing from the sensation of him inside me to the sensation of my hand and back again.

“More,” I say.

“More?”

“Yeah. Charles. Can you be all the way inside me?”

His answer is a snarl and a grunt. His hand moves to my shoulder, presses down on it to brace me, I realize, as he begins to fuck me fully. My breasts bounce with it, and I find my hand has begun pressing down on my clit without my ever deciding to. I can scarcely interpret all the sensations I’m experiencing, but the familiar rising tension in my lower abdomen finally forces my eyes closed. My attention collapses to a few hypersalient sensations. The subtle bounce of my breasts. The pressure on my clit. The wet, hot slide of Charles moving inside me.

“Oh my god.”

“All right?” he asks again.

“Please don’t stop.”

“I won’t stop,” he grinds out. “I want you to come, Annie. I want to watch you come while I fuck you.” He keeps talking even as he kisses me, kisses my face, the crests of my cheekbones, along my eyebrow, my temple. He’s murmuring about sweet and fucking and come and so, so, so . . . And still the pressure on my clit, and the bounce of my breasts, and his thigh heavy and warm between mine, the slippery friction of him inside me, all pulling me toward orgasm. The movement of my hand on my clit seems out of my voluntary control, and I’m pressing harder, moving faster, building up layers of pleasure.

When I realize I’m holding my breath, I exhale in a gust but then inhale with a wild gasp and hold my breath again. When I can finally exhale, I breathe, “Charles,” and then barely draw another breath before my diaphragm locks again and I’m caught between inhalation and exhalation, my mouth wide open.

“Not yet,” he commands.

“What?” I’m breaths away from orgasm, and he’s moving over me, without withdrawing from me, and shifting between my legs. He leans over and takes my hand, grips it in his, pressing it into the mattress by my shoulder. His other hand is on my face. His eyes are on me. He’s not moving inside me; he’s just holding me here, his pelvis pressed against my clit and his cock buried deeply, fully inside me.

He kisses me briefly. “All right?”

I can’t answer; I just blink at him and gasp for air. He grins.

He kisses me again and says softly into my ear, “You want to come, my Annie?”

“Yes,” I can barely say. “I want—”

He interrupts me, kissing me, putting his tongue in my mouth and fucking me in a sudden storm of fast, deep thrusts. With every movement, his pubic bone rubs against my clit.

I open my eyes and meet his. His eyes are dark, his jaw tight as he kisses me. He holds me, fucks me, holds my gaze, grips my shoulder, grips my hand, still fucking me even as my hips lift and push and writhe against him. I pull my hand from his and wrap my arms and legs around him and lift my hips off the mattress, desperate to press him as deep into me as he can go.

With a groan, he wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me bodily from the bed, my arms and legs still wrapped around him. The movement makes me dizzy in my desire. He’s fucking me, fucking me even deeper, on his knees, holding my entire weight upright in his lap, pressing my body against his while I grind my pelvis. Both of his arms braced tight around my rolling hips. His arms are shaking around me, and my legs are shaking around him, trembling at the precipice.

And then I break open. Without a sound beyond my disbelieving sigh, my body cracks and crumbles like an avalanche. I grip and flail and pant. I dig my fingernails into his shoulders, I bite him, I’m wild to keep him in me as I fall to pieces around him.

The writhing has not yet ended when I feel him cross a threshold. “You are . . .” he says through a tense jaw. “I can’t . . .” He doesn’t tell me what I am or what he can’t. When he comes, he shouts hoarsely and then bites my lip so hard, I taste blood and I love it. He lifts up under me, rises up on his knees, kneeling as he would at an altar, fucking into me, his arms trembling around my hips and his forehead against my throat. He throws me back down on the bed in silence and, with three final thrusts, he kisses me, one hand pressed into my jaw, the other fisted in my hair.

“Jesus,” he says into my ear, out of breath.

My limbs are melting around him. We’re both breathing hard. When I open my eyes, I see that for once he’s not watching me. His face is utterly peaceful, eyes closed, the faintest smile on his parted lips. I put my hand on his face, and he opens his eyes then, kisses me briefly, and rests his forehead against mine, eyes closed.

“Oh my god, Annie,” he says.

We lie together like that, warm, limp, and breathing, for a long time. Somehow the silence and the tangling of our breaths feel as though they’re tying me to him, linking us together in a way that our joined bodies alone never would. This is a big deal. In this moment I know tonight will link me to this man, to this breathing body over mine, forever. When at last he opens his eyes and, with one hand, brushes my hair away from my face and tucks it behind my ear, I ask him quietly, “Is it always like this?”

And then he smiles at me, a warm, affectionate smile that I will never, ever, in my whole life forget.

He says, “It’s never like this.”