“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I was expecting…I don’t know…groping, I guess.”
“Did you want me to grope you?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said quietly. “I just…figured you would.”
“Tria.” I moaned dramatically. I reached up and took her chin in my fingers, tilting her head
a little to look at me. “You gotta tell me what you want and what you don’t want. If you want to get groped, tell me that because I’m probably happy to oblige. If you don’t want something, you have to tell me that, too.”
She brought her shoulders up in a tight shrug.
“What?” I pressed. “Why don’t you want to talk about this?”
“It’s just…embarrassing.”
“Tria, you just held onto the most intimate part of me while I came all over your pants. Frankly, that shit’s a little embarrassing, too, but it’s all part of the package deal.”
“Package deal?”
“Sex, baby,” I said. “It can get messy, but it’s all worth it. It can be embarrassing, too, but one thing it won’t be is any good if you don’t talk about what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to tell you, and you’re going to…”
She trailed off and didn’t continue until I practically had to beg.
“You’ll be disappointed,” she finally whispered. “Or you’ll really want something I don’t like.”
“Tria!” I said again. “Jesus, girl, this isn’t a one way street, you know. Part of what I like is finding out what you like. I want to see you come all over me and know I made you feel that way. If I’m doing something you don’t like, you won’t come. If you don’t come, it defeats the whole purpose of fucking.”
“But we haven’t yet,” she reminded me.
As if I had forgotten.
“Well, we made a decent amount of progress tonight,” I replied with a grin.
“Are you going to…to get tired of waiting?” she asked.
“Not if you keep doing that,” I assured her, but she didn’t smile. “Tria, you know I’m perfectly capable of getting myself off if I really need to.”
Her eyes got big.
“You really do that?”
I couldn’t help it. That one caused a big belly laugh.
“About every fucking time I get in the shower,” I told her.
“You shower twice a day.”
“Sometimes three times.”
Tria pondered for a while, and I stroked my hand up and down her arm. I traced a line over the top of her shoulder, up her neck, and down the edge of her jaw with my index finger.
“Do you ever do that?” I asked.