course I can’t sleep. I try, but it’s impossible with Wade’s story on my brain, and then in the kitchen, later on, him hugging me from behind. Him whispering in my ear: Did you like the story?
I felt like saying Nooooo, I hated it. I wish it would die a horrible, untimely death, and then I could just stop thinking about it forever and ever, amen.
But instead I had just gone all hot and cold like an idiot, feeling his much-bigger-than-they-used-to-be arms around me, and smelling his rainy days smell as though no time had gone by at all. Only the thing is, back then he wouldn’t have whispered something like that in my ear. No – I don’t think he would have.
Because…and here’s the kicker…it was definitely suggestive. There was something suggestive about it – I can’t deny that fact. His breath had been all hot and moist against the side of my face and my throat, and his voice had held a little burr of something delicious right down low, right from the deepest darkest place inside him.
My clit had jerked to that sound before I’d even had chance to process it. His hand had spread over my chest – so achingly close to my right breast – and he’d pulled me so tight against him, so tight I could have rubbed my ass into the curve of his body and maybe felt something else that possibly maybe could have been there.
It was there on Cameron, I think. I don’t want to face it too head-on because there’s this weird barrier in my mind, this weird urge not to embarrass him any further even though he’s never going to know I saw something just as he passed me by. But he’s a big guy, and, well, it’s not as though sweatpants hide a lot. And neither does kind of bending over and moving fast.
Christ. Why the fuck am I thinking about Cameron’s possible erection in the first place? I’ve got sex on the brain. I’ve got sex on top of me and all over me and in the tiny grooves between my higher thought processes. Wade has poisoned me with his stupid, ridiculous story and now all I can think about are cocks and sweatpants and maybe getting up and going to Wade’s room.
A blush storms my entire body whenever I let myself entertain the notion, but the notion is there nonetheless. I mean – that’s what he was saying, right? He was being suggestive. He was suggesting I get up and go to his room in the middle of the night – or maybe slightly earlier than that, because I’m sure he didn’t imagine it would take me three hours to stew over all of this – and maybe talk for a little while. You know, about old times.
And then after all the talking: fuck his brains out. Just fuck and fuck and fuck his brains out. Hell, if he wants me to masturbate on a bed while he spies on me from the bathroom, we can do that too. I’m feeling loose-limbed and lax and up for anything, even as the neurotic side of me tries desperately to cling to my teetering mind.
He doesn’t want you that way, the teetering side says. He was just being friendly.
Only I know there’s something new here, now, and it isn’t exactly holding hands and sharing tales of happy pigs. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s almost as though I can feel it charging through the walls of this house – between his room and my room and probably Kitty and Cam’s rooms too – when I put my hand on the smooth, cool surface above my bed. Like we’re all connected down this great red hallway we’ve picked as our living space, every buzzing molecule in our bodies breathing life into the Professor’s weird old place.
It’s even something weird – like the thought of the lush crimson carpet out there, gathering between my bare toes – that urges me up, and out of bed, and down toward Wade’s room. His is the fourth door on the right – mine is first, then there’s a bathroom, then comes Cam’s room, and Kitty’s picked one of the rooms opposite – and I know before I even get to it that it’s open. I can see a slither of blue through the crack, because Wade’s room is all navy curtains and swirling sky-coloured rugs, though it’s not those things I’m paying attention to.
No, God, no.
I’m paying attention to the sounds of people fucking. Obviously, vigorously fucking. And for a long, long, frankly pain-stricken moment, I’m not sure what to do. I could keep going toward the door, clearly, and uncover exactly who’s doing the fucking in question. But that just seems like asking for heartache, because really there are only two options.
Either that weird tension between him and Cam was actually intense sexual attraction and they’re both in there doing each other in the ass, or else it’s the far more likely option. Kitty snuck across the hallway well before I ever even considered it, and now she’s in the middle of a marathon sex session with the object of all my hopes and dreams.
God, I hate that he’s the object of my hopes and dreams. I hate Kitty for one bright, burning, selfish second, because she’s brave and I’m not, and she’s lovely and I’m not, and she doesn’t have to be a eunuch for the rest of her life, and I somehow do.
And then I get to the door with my mind this boiling cauldron of stupid ideas – like how I’m going to barge in and accuse Wade of cheating on a girlfriend he doesn’t actually have, or accuse Kitty of betraying a friend over something she doesn’t even know about, or have some kind of ridiculous meltdown where I say words that aren’t even really English, just the blind tumbling result of my stupid heartache – and I just can’t do any of it. I can see them through the crack in the door, and I have to simply stand there and watch my hero twisting into some pretty incredible shapes with a person who is not me.
I have to watch him lift both of her legs over his shoulders until she’s almost bent double on the bed, and then pound into her as though sex is going to disappear tomorrow. Whoever invented fucking is going to revoke everybody’s licence, and from then on we have to spend our days shaking hands or violently waving.
I wish I’d done more than that in the short window of sex we all had. For one far too long and not-quite-agonising second, I find myself gazing at them with my mouth actually open. Heartache falls by the wayside in the face of this, because by God I’ve never seen a man flip a woman like that. He just gets hold of her hips and somehow she’s on her front, even though I’m sure such a move should have dislocated her hip.
Of course, I’ve seen things like this in porn. I’m aware that most people have more athletic sex than I’ve ever had. But even so, it’s different when it’s close up. It’s different when it’s only inches away from me, and I can see the look on Kitty’s face when she turns it to one side and bites at her own arm.
She looks like someone who realises there’s going to be no more sex tomorrow. She looks desperate and blissed out and she’s making this noise – this ah ah ah noise – that I can hardly stand to hear. It forces unwanted feelings through my body, and I know they’re there because I just have to squeeze my legs together against them.
God, what must it be like to feel that way? To have someone pounding into you over and over again, so hard I can see her little cupcake breasts bouncing beneath the curve of her body, and when I dare to flick my attention to Wade I can make out every muscle in his tensing stomach, all ab-tacular and hard as anything and fuck, fuck.
This is too much. Did he look this way, before? He had a good, strong swimmer’s body, I know that much. But I can’t recall him being so hairy or having those ropey, muscular arms or those actual high, firm pecs. He looks so rippling, so hard-bodied – though I suppose the overall effect is added to by the sheen of sweat all over him. It’s as though he slid out of the pages of Men’s Health only five seconds earlier, and I’m not ashamed to admit I can’t take my eyes off it.
Though maybe it’s partly because I don’t want to look at the two most obvious eye-magnets: his cock, and his face. If I look at his cock or his face, I swear I’ll die. He’s saying some pretty dirty things – Take it, take it, you little slut, among others – and that’s enough all on its own. It’s enough to make me press my legs together tighter, tighter, and I can feel I’m sweating through my pyjamas, I know I am, I know any second I’m going to touch myself like the guy in Wade’s story.
And then I look up at his face – just as