“Fuck no,” he says, and before I know it his thumb is on my clit, rubbing me slowly, firmly.
I lean my head back against the brass bars. My breathing gets shallow, my legs still splayed around his waist, my hand still on the top bar.
It doesn’t take long. Neither of us says a word as he watches me as I come apart for the second time in three minutes, exploding again, this time with my own fist jammed against my mouth. I’m gasping when I finish, eyes closed, one hand in Daniel’s hair because I can’t stop touching him.
He kisses my neck. I’m still breathing hard, fingers and toes clenched, and as he kisses me again, I unfurl, breathe deep, his hands on my legs, waist, his arms around me, his mouth on mine.
We untangle, kiss again, untangle some more. Finally, we’re sitting up in his bed, backs against the brass bars of the headboard, his arm around me and his other hand in mine, my head against his shoulder.
“Are we different now?” I murmur.
I feel him press his lips against my hair, keep them there for a long moment.
“Not in the ways that matter,” he finally says.Chapter NineteenDaniel“So it doesn’t matter that now I’ve seen you naked?” Charlie says, keeping her voice low, turning her head toward me, teasing.
“You didn’t just see me naked,” I say, still talking half into her hair. “You’ve experienced me naked.”
“The Naked Daniel Experience sounds like a band,” she says. “They’d play psychedelic rock and they wouldn’t be very good.”
“Unlike the actual experience,” I say, and she laughs, tilts her head back over my shoulder so she’s facing me.
“Right,” she says, and her eyes search my face.
And then, simply: “That was good.”
Good isn’t a big word or a fancy word, but right now, Charlie’s eyes looking into mine in the dark afterglow, it feels like it encompasses the universe. I know exactly what she means, and I know what she’s trying to say, and yes, yes, yes to all of it.
“It was really good,” I agree.
Charlie curls into me even more, her face against my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck. She rubs back and forth once, twice, adjusts, rubs her face on me again.
“What are you doing?” I finally ask, and she stops.
Then she looks at me.
“My forehead itched,” she says.
She’s trying not to laugh.
“You’ve got hands,” I point out, also trying not to laugh.
“They’re far away.”
“They’re literally attached to you.”
Now she’s laughing, biting her lips, still trying to quell it.
“I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“You thought I wouldn’t notice you rubbing on me like a cat?”
“Sometimes you don’t notice things,” she laughs.
“Is this how it’s gonna be now?” I tease. “We have sex and suddenly you get super weird?”
“You think that’s super weird?” Charlie says. “I’ll show you super weird.”
“You don’t have — are you biting me?”
She’s got her teeth on my shoulder, not hard enough to hurt.
“Grrr?”
“Oh, my God,” I mutter, laughing. “I’ve unleashed a psychopath with the power of my dick.”
That gets a snort-laugh out of her, her shoulder shaking under my arm.
“Sorry,” she finally murmurs, and kisses the spot she just bit, still laughing.
“If I go get rid of this condom can you be normal for three minutes?” I tease.
“One way to find out.”
I kiss the top of her head again and then pull myself away from her and throw on pajama pants.“Shit.”
I come awake all at once, already up on one elbow, always primed for middle-of-the-night problems.
“What?”
“I fell asleep,” Charlie says, pushing herself to sitting, facing away from me on the edge of the bed. She’s naked, her wild hair a halo around her head, both hands already in it. “Fuck. Shit.”
I roll over enough to see my alarm clock glowing green on my bedside table: 5:45 a.m.
“I gotta go,” Charlie’s already saying, whispering at me in the quarter-light of early morning. “Shit, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I just meant to stay a little while…”
She bends down, comes up with her bra, wraps it around herself. Somehow, she does the clasps behind her own back, without looking. I’m impressed.
I toss off the sheets, get up myself, get dressed as Charlie tosses the purple dress back over her head.
“Where’s my underwear?” she whispers.
“Floor?”
I pull on boxers, pants.
“I can’t find it.”
“It didn’t disappear into a wormhole.”
I open a drawer, grab the first t-shirt inside.
“Fuck it, I’ll grab it later,” she hisses. “I gotta go.”
I pull the shirt on, my body still half a step ahead of my brain.
“You good?” she whispers, hand on my doorknob.
“No,” I say. She frowns at me, but I cross the room, bend down, kiss her. We’re both still foggy with sleep, both rushed, slightly rattled but we kiss slowly, deeply, softly.
“We still haven’t talked,” she murmurs when it ends.
“We talked for like two hours last night,” I point out.