by Alison Tyler
Andrea’s and Kai’s body clocks are out of sync most of the time—a nurse’s night duty and a junior doctor’s erratic hours see to that—but mornings are when it comes together for them.
She wrinkles her nose. “I smell of antiseptic.” She hands him the mug of coffee. “Drink this while I shower.”
As she sheds her clothes, he’s already propped against the pillows, inhaling steam.
She pads back naked and smelling of citrus and toothpaste to find he’s opened the blinds. The sun cracks over the horizon, and as the daylight builds, so does Kai’s energy. She, on the other hand, is falling toward sleep.
He flings back the quilt and she crawls in next to him, aligning her body to his. He’s golden skinned, warm brown like fall foliage, in the growing light in the bedroom; she’s pale as milk. Neither of them get much sun—their skins are their own natural color. The contrast is only one of the things she loves about him, about them together. Andrea rests her head on his smooth chest. His skin is smoother than her own, and she often teases him that he waxes, tweezes, shaves, all the things that society says she ought to do but seldom does. Hospital scrubs hide many things, including body hair. But Kai doesn’t mind: indeed, he loves her fuzzy forearms, the stray dark hairs around her nipples, and the jungly luxuriant bush that makes bikini wearing impossible.
Andrea sighs a deep breath and considers sleep. But Kai is already running his hand along her arm, his fingers making exploratory forays onto the curve of her breast as it rests on his chest. He hums deep in his throat, a strange rumble of appreciation that she hears underneath her ear on his chest.
His hands lift away the tiredness, and she lets him build a response in her until she’s awake and aroused and the post-work lethargy dissipates into something that buzzes and flickers with an overlay of energy.
Sex for Andrea and Kai is seldom a long, drawn-out symphony of sighs and slow crescendos. Their work is immediate, a life lived on the edge of reaction, and they’ve learned to live with that urgency. Meals are often gulped standing up at the breakfast bar. There are no long debates about where to go for a beer. One will suggest, the other agree, and they’re out of the door within five minutes of the decision. Their working lives are patterned with interruptions and necessary changes of focus, and that has spilled over into their time together. Besides, there’s the ever-present pager, which can summon most often Kai, less often Andrea, back to the Great God Hospital which rules their lives. Long and slow doesn’t do it for them; fast and furious does.
So now, her interest assured, Kai rolls Andrea onto her back and kisses her. Kisses her as if he’s drowning and only her breath can save him; deep, hot, wet kisses. His tongue explores her mouth, advancing and retreating, much as his cock presses and relaxes against her leg. He tastes of coffee and impatience.
She rises to his kiss, her hands skimming his golden body, over the muscles that are firm from youth alone since he has no time for exercise, grasping his lean buttocks and grinding her thigh against his cock. She’s fully with him now, diving into the urgency, her body already shimmering toward crescendo. She grasps his head and arches her back, directing his attention down to her nipples. Kai complies, his cock leaving a damp smear on her thigh as he moves down her body.
He suckles with a ferocity that takes her to the edge of pain, his teeth lightly scraping over skin and nipple. She pushes her breast into his mouth as he works her nipple into such a point of pleasure that each suck sends an impulse to her clit as intense as if he’d touched his mouth to her breast. Andrea is full-breasted, and Kai laves the skin, his breath eager and hot as he kisses her nipple, bites gently on its surrounds, then hard enough to leave a mark. His fingers reach for her other breast, and he rolls her nipple with dexterous surgeon’s fingers.
For long moments she falls into the joy of pure sensation, reveling in her lover’s touch. But her mind is already moving on to the next level, and her body is following fast. Andrea pushes his shoulder, urging him away from her breast. She wants his cock, wants to feel the satin skin move under her fingers. Kai rolls onto his back. Andrea strums her fingers up his length and bends to touch him with her lips. Her tongue swirls around his tip, laps his salty taste, while he raises his hips to meet her mouth.
Andrea swings around, settles her knees either side of his head and lowers her body within reach of his tongue. For long moments, there are only lips and tongues and pleasure, and the dampness of skin, the moistness of cock and cunt. Andrea used to be self-conscious about this, too concerned about what her lovers would see, what they would smell to fully relax into the sensation, but over time, and an appreciation of her own body, that worry passed, and now she delights in the sensation. Kai loves doing this to her; he says often that he would stay between her thighs for the morning, if only responsibility would allow.
She’s attuned to his lips on her pussy. Each pass of his tongue over her clit, each hot damp exhalation, each slide of a finger inside her pussy spirals her closer to the edge. His mouth is already pushing her toward climax; the flicker on her clit builds sensation faster than any vibrator. She’s learned not to delay but to embrace the swell—the Great God Hospital has robbed her of orgasms in the past. And then, if there’s time, there’ll be another.
So she clenches her belly, closes her eyes, and her mouth goes slack on Kai’s shaft. His tongue pries her open, dips inside and then circles her clit until she comes hard in shudders of pleasure, her thighs tightening on his ears.
She relaxes, inhales deeply and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, his cock is still hard and proud in front of her. Andrea presses her lips to the tip, laps the salty fluid, then takes him deep. For a moment, she’s tempted to return the favor, to suck him until he floods her mouth with his fluid, but Kai twines his hand in her hair and urges her up. She sits up, shuffles down his body, then moves off him. She can see his face now, he’s smiling, and she can see his cock: erect, veined and pulsating. The sleep that she’d pushed aside for sex overwhelms her for a moment, and in her post-orgasmic haze she wants nothing more than to lie down and let it claim her. But Kai is waiting, his energy growing. It’s as if he’s taking her remaining energy to push her toward sleep and she lets him, helping him toward the day.
She rolls onto her back, raising one knee in invitation. Andrea knows the missionary position is unoriginal, but she loves it anyway. She loves the feel of him cradled in her thighs, loves how they can kiss as they fuck, loves the full body contact and how deep he can push inside her.
She loves it most at this time of morning, when she’s falling toward sleep. Then she lets Kai do most of the work and she can close her eyes and drift on a sexual sea of somnolence, let him advance and withdraw like the tide.
Kai moves on top and pushes inside with one blunt thrust. He sets a relentless rhythm, a fast fucking, a winter storm of a tide rather than a lazy summer one. Andrea closes her eyes, lets him pound away on top of her and lets him set the surge and retreat. Only her inner muscles clench and relax; the rest of her is boneless and soft.
“Andrea,” he says, and bites her neck, rousing her from lethargy.
She obliges, opens her eyes and drowns deep in his dark ones. She grasps his buttocks, starts moving with the rhythm. She won’t come again, she knows that already, but she loves it like this as she can watch Kai take his pleasure.
He rises above her so that the cool air touches their bodies in contrast to the heated point of their joining.
She urges him on with voice and fingers, for delay is a dangerous thing in the mornings when one of them is on duty. But he swells within her, and hesitates, easing the pounding beat to a softer, subtler, more gradual slide. He’s close, she knows, close enough that he must be poised on the edge of orgasm, close enough that he can finish in an instant.
He smiles down at her, kisses her mouth, pushes back her hair with tenderness. She turns her head and catches his fingers as they glide past. He’s barely moving within her, still hard, still swo
llen, but only the barest friction as he teeters on the brink.
And his beeper goes, shrilling into the stillness, a discordant blast of sound. The Great God Hospital calls and he must obey.
The noise rouses him, and instantly he’s pumping hard and fast, and his face is no longer soft and tender. His head is thrown back, his eyes closed as he focuses on his climax and how quickly he can get there. One thrust, two, three, and before the pager has stopped he’s started and he pulsates his heat deep inside her.
In the single beat of stillness of afterward, they lie still joined. Kai rests his forehead against Andrea’s and kisses her, the briefest of pecks. A moment of silence before the cacophony that is his day. Then he withdraws, his cock leaving a sticky trail across her leg, and he’s out of bed, fumbling for the pager, reading the message.
Andrea lies and watches him, handing him the phone so he can call the hospital.
“Yes, yes…” he says. “Crossmatch three units of blood. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
The shower splashes on, and he’s in and out in under three minutes. Jeans, a crumpled shirt, stethoscope already around his neck, clean white coat over arm.
He rests a knee on the bed and bends to kiss her. “I hope I’ll see you before you leave for work this evening,” he says. His lips are warm and taste of distraction. “Love you, Andi.”
He’s gone, fumbling for car keys, stepping into his shoes at the front door, which slams behind him.
Andrea remains in bed, her body already drifting toward sleep. She knows she should wipe Kai’s spend from her thighs before it stains the sheets. She should pee, and she should brush her teeth. She does none of these things. At this changeover of the day, the juncture between so many things—light and dark, night and day, awake and asleep, her ending and Kai’s beginning—she just wants to lie and let her mind unravel.
Andrea sleeps.
EIGHT A.M. MORNING WOOD
Georgia E. Jones
Adam was grumpy in the morning.
Adam was grumpy every morning. He was not a morning person. He got home from tending bar around three a.m., knocked around the house until four or four-thirty and woke up grumpy sometime before noon. On the good side of this, he was fine by the time I came home from work, and a light sleeper he was not. I could stage a reenactment of Antietam in the bedroom and he could sleep right through it. Me, on the other hand? I woke up wanting sex. The average guy with morning wood had nothing on me. Sometimes I woke with a jolt, falling back into my body from a dream of having someone inside me and all I wanted was to roll over, suck Adam until he was hard, then mount his cock and ride him until I came. Inadvisable. The one time I tried resulted in our first (and only, to be fair) bad fight. Adam didn’t want to be woken up in the morning—not even for hot, sweaty, happy sex.
I woke at my usual time and climbed out of bed, having no good reason to stay in it, with only one regretful, backwards glance. I padded around the room naked, picking up my clothes from the day before. I brushed my teeth. I looked for the missing turquoise earring and found it, much to my delight, under the blue chair. Backing out from beneath it, I saw Adam had one eye open and one closed. Creepy. Was he asleep with one eye open or awake with one eye closed? I knew better than to ask. I turned my back on him and sauntered over to the dresser. If he was awake, the open eye would have a nice view of my ass, which he liked. I put the earring back on the stand with its mate, then ran my hand down the slope of my breast and pinched my nipple until it was stiff and pebbly between my fingers. Then I gave the other one the same treatment. I propped one foot on the open bottom drawer of the dresser and turned my knee out so I could reach my clit. I stroked it, thinking of Adam’s body, his cock, his lips. “What’re you doing?” he asked. His voice was gravelly-low-rough-delicious.
I flicked him a quick glance over my shoulder, my fingers still moving. “Nothing,” I said calmly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” This state of affairs went on for a few minutes. I touched myself until I was wet. I brought my hand up and slicked moisture over my nipples and sucked it off my fingers. I readjusted the angle of my foot on the drawer, opening myself wider. There was no sound from behind me. Asleep, then. I sighed, minding less. I was prepared to come right there, though I had never done it like that before in front of Adam. Though, since he was asleep, I wasn’t sure what I was doing counted as “in front of.”
“C’mere,” he said.
I turned. He was awake, watching me with sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, sprawled out naked and loose-limbed, the sheet riding low on his hips. My eyes followed the line of his torso, the smattering of black hair trailing down his belly. He had a habit of making orders sound sweet. Any other man would have ended up with his shoe up his ass, but Adam said things to me—get down on your knees, put your mouth on my cock—and I complied without arguing. I saw him. Part of his fierceness was bravado. He didn’t want to be messed with, so he messed first. But as soon as he realized he was being dealt with in good faith, he gave the same in return.
He stretched, languorous, and I could see the bulge of his cock under the sheet. “Come here, little girl,” he said again. “I’m going to help you out.” He was twenty-nine...and I wasn’t. But he called me that, sometimes, and I liked it. I walked to the bed and looked down at him, the slanted cat eyes and bristly mustache. He pulled the sheet back. “This is how this is going to work: you climb on and do something that makes you happy and I’ll lie here with my eyes closed. I might be awake.”
I was gone on him, because I thought this was a sterling offer. He wasn’t kidding. His eyes were closed again. But his cock was engorged, pulsing with heat. I straddled him, his solid thighs taking my weight easily. I went slowly. I sank the tip of his cock inside me and leaned forward, hands braced on his broad chest, moving just enough to keep him there. His cock was long—long enough to rub my G-spot when we fucked—and it was wide, so wide I felt stretched and invaded when he was inside me. I took more of him, making breathy noises of pleasure. His eyes were still closed, but I thought I detected a slight tensing of the muscles below me. Tired of playing, I sat up, groaning a little as I took all of him inside me. I rocked against him, rubbing my clit on the smooth soft skin right above his cock, which he shaved for me. I was being noisier now, closer to coming, my inner muscles beginning to clench around him.
His hands clamped over my hips. “Make it last,” he said.
My eyes flew open, accusing. “You’re supposed to be asleep!”
He arched a brow. “Really? I’m not. Slow down.”
“No!” I actually argued with him, sitting on his cock, wriggling my clit against him. “You said I could please myself,” I reminded him desperately.
“You have,” he said, lifting me and bringing me back down, thrusting strongly into me at the same time. My head went back and I shut up. He moved me where he wanted me, that big cock relentless inside me, and he kept me higher up so my clit couldn’t rub against him. Soon every breath was a gasp. I leaned forward and bit him, not tenderly, at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “No biting,” he said, but I could tell from his voice that he liked it.
“Let me come,” I begged, shameless. “Let me come or I’ll bite.”
“No,” he said. I didn’t know if that was no, don’t bite me, or no, don’t come, and it hardly mattered, because in the next instant he rolled me under him, pushing my thighs as wide as they would go, hammering into me. He let my hips go and brought his finger to bear on my aching clit—sweet man, I would forgive him anything—and kept it there until I splintered with a keening sound. He came, too, almost as an afterthought, and held me until I quieted down.
I kissed his lax mouth. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep now.” But he already was.
NINE A.M. OFFICE BRIEFING
Justine Elyot
She stops at the watercooler to unparch her throat.
“Hey, good weekend, Ms. Forrester?”
“Really good, thanks. You?”
> Raymond Bland is clearly about to embark on a blow-by-blow account of his Sunday League football match, so she holds up a hand, gulping down the water before apologizing.
“Sorry, can’t stop. I’ve got a briefing with Stanshaw at nine.”
“Oh, sure, you wouldn’t want to be late for that.”
He makes a comedy cutthroat gesture.
Alisha laughs, an all-pals-together oh-god-I-know kind of laugh.
Then she feels disloyal.
Then she puts a hand to her thigh and rubs her skirt, checking that the suspender snaps haven’t come undone.
Because that would never do.
Raymond saunters off to high-five one of the IT technicians and Alisha takes a moment to breathe. This might be the last uninterrupted breath she gets until the briefing is over, after all.
Stanshaw’s office door is shut but presumably he is in there. He is always an hour early for work.
“Can you let him know I’m here, Jo?” she asks his secretary.
There is no sign of excessive curiosity or sneery knowingness in Jo’s brief phone message, but Alisha still can’t help thinking that she knows. Does she know? Could she?
Alisha opens the office door and breathes in the scent of polished wood and luxury carpeting, aromas that always now arouse her.
The minute hand on the clock opposite the desk clicks up to point directly at the twelve.
Success.
“Well done,” says Stanshaw, taking off his spectacles to polish them without dropping his gaze from Alisha’s face. “Perfect timing.”
He has not invited her to sit down, so she stands by the door, hands clasped over her skirt.
“Shall we start with a kit inspection?”
He rises to his feet and she pushes back her shoulders and raises her chin unthinkingly, dropping her arms to her sides.
