I felt my hands go immediately down into her hair and hold her there, my own head immediately tilting down upon impact, my hair falling all around my face as I involuntarily shivered from her warm breath on my skin. She pulled my underwear aside and drew her fingertips across my center. Then she leaned back to pull my panties off altogether. Fabric was replaced with her warm swelling tongue, before I could even get my bearings, she was inside me and tasting.
“Uh—” I gasped and fell forward, my fingers tensing while wrapped in her hair. “Avery,” I panted out.
I wasn’t prepared for that, not at all. She didn’t answer, only stabilized me, spread my legs a tiny bit more and ran her tongue over my length, stopping only to press harder into me.
I gasped out loud, and barely caught myself from the pressure, as my head spun and I felt the heat of the steam floating up from the bath.
Avery was good at this. Too good.
I found myself thinking back on her random guilt about not fucking me right before dinner.
I’d just wanted a bath with her, that’s all. Instead she was licking me lovingly, showing me how much I’d been missing without her around. Her soft tongue teased and tasted, swelling against me at times and then lightly tapping just to get me to wait.
“Do you want to get in?” She took her mouth away from me long enough to ask but went right back, finding my clit and sucking it between her lips.
“Oh fuck—” I gasped out, pained. Of course not. Of course I didn’t want to get in. Not now.
“Back,” she said, pressing on my legs, urging me to back up to the wall. She trapped me there, finding her way back between my legs with her tongue and then I gasped as I felt a couple of her fingers inside of me and curling once in real deep.
My whole body tensed. This was five times better than before and I was already dripping. In all honesty, she wouldn’t have to do much. I’d been thinking about her all day. Just her fingers on my skin set me off.
That tongue of hers though. How’d she learn to use it like that? It swelled on me but felt gentle and smooth.
I tugged at her hair, needing her. She rose, suddenly flexing her fingers inside me as she did, her lips coming to mine, attacking my mouth before she wrenched away and turned. I could feel her lips brush my ear. “You are mine,” she said, arresting me. There was no menace, no weakness, only her declaration. She was claiming me. Hers.
If I'm being completely honest I felt like going limp. Allowing my body to give in.
When her body came into me again I wrapped around her like I’d done before. I didn’t need the ground or my feet. Not when I was hugging her, not when I was hers.
Her strength turned me on even more than everything else. I wanted her to claim me again and again and again.
“I know,” I said weakly and I knew I was almost there. It was hard not to gasp. She’d gotten me so desperate and emotional.
I didn’t have to ask her for anything. I didn’t have to beg for more or lead her to know.
Avery was fucking me and she was doing it too well.
“I’m gonna cum,” I said, feeling it.
“Yes, I want you to,” she breathed out in my ear, curling her fingers as she thrust into me ever harder.
I felt my body bounce on hers as she held me up, my legs and arms wrapped tight around her. My hand in her hair forced her to remain close. She was toying with me like she’d been wanting to. I panted for what felt like the last time before she locked her lips on my neck and sent her tongue out to tease.
The instant touch of her there lit me up everywhere like one giant flame and when she fucked me again I completely froze in her arms. She fucked me hard and fast, knowing I’d need it, but I couldn’t feel it because I was in the middle of the climb before coming down.
Her tongue teased my pulse but she may as well have been licking my sex with how amazing it felt. Her fingers slowed until she was sure she could feel me contracting around her fingers. She pulled back moaning at the feeling. And she stayed in me while I breathed through the release.
“You are perfect. Don’t argue with me. Just accept it.” She smiled and leaned her forehead on my shoulder, withdrawing from me and bringing her fingers up to her lips. She raised her head and ran her tongue along her own fingers, closing her mouth around my taste.
“That was even better than I thought it was going to be.” She grinned. “I was kind of worried before but now not so much.”
She leaned off me just enough to give me room to fall down the wall and just sit on the floor. I was panting like mad, trying to catch up to her, trying to calm down. I was no match for her insatiable appetite.
“Maybe now we should get in the bath.”
I wanted to laugh. My whole world was Avery’s now. I wasn’t even allowed to bathe by myself.
“Help,” I cried, holding my hand up and hoping she would pull me to get in.
She reached down and took my hands, pulling me up easily and guiding me to the tub. She held me as I lifted one leg and then the other to get in. And then when I was settled, she got in, sitting between my legs.
“Fuck,” was all I could say. Apparently I needed this much more than I was aware.
When Avery laid down on my body it felt like we were always meant to be this way. Her arms and legs touching mine, her back on my front.
“Again?” She was teasing me, not commenting on how perfect it all felt. “I just got through fucking you.”
“Stop,” I laughed, bringing my arms around her sides beneath the water, hugging her into me, feeling her body lift up as if weightless and rub back into mine below the hot sea. “I can’t handle you,” I whispered. Her ear was close to my lips and I wasn’t about to let her go.
“You handled me really well earlier this afternoon and I think you can do fine. You’re probably the only one who can handle me.” She sounded like she believed what she was saying. The words were not stained with doubt like ones she had said to me before.
“I just want to marry you,” I said without thinking. It was what I wanted. When she had said girlfriend before that’s why I got so fucking mad. Technically I called Nat my girlfriend. But I never loved Nat. I appreciated her, but never loved her like this.
Avery froze for a moment, like a frightened animal and then I felt her body relax. “We should probably graduate first,” she said, chuckling.
I hadn’t meant to scare her, only hint at my truth. All that talk from before got me scared.
“Fine, but that’d be your choice,” I said. I’d rather marry her and have her know that I loved her than go through this horrible stage of her doubting me every time I wanted a bath.
“Can you even get married without your parents permission at seventeen?”
“I’m sure you can in some country,” I said, still feeling breathless and drained. “Just like I’m sure I can get us there. Wherever there so happens to be.”
She swept her hair aside and leaned her head back on my chest. The scent of her surrounded me. “We can worry about that later. Right now, let’s worry about enjoying ourselves. Then someday I’ll introduce you to your future in-laws aka my alcoholic Mother and kind of, but not really, deadbeat Dad.”
“I don’t care about them Avery, I care about you.”
She heaved a deep sigh, sinking into the water a little more. “The problem is that I’m the one that takes care of my mom and I can’t just blow her off. She’s trying. She was right to go away but it still sucks.”
“I just don't want them not seeing you anymore. They've done a lot of irreparable damage with you. I can’t exactly bring myself to care for them right now.” Not with her like this. I sighed regretfully. I only wanted her to know how upset I was at them for not loving her right. “What was Adam like?” I asked softly, tightening my arms around her again and tugging at her body just a bit.
Holding her felt so perfect. It was hard not to keep sighing. She’d done things to me I’d need to come down from. The sexual kind of touching sort
of lingered on me for hours upon hours after it took place. I’d probably wake up tomorrow and still be sighing from contentment. I could spend all week just thinking about all that we’d talked about and done in this one busy day.
I wondered if my little noises bothered her.
But I couldn’t really stop making them. They were out of my mouth before I even had a chance to try and control them. It was like whining only not. She felt too good and I’d be feeling her a long while even if we got out of the bath and decided not to touch the rest of the night. I’d still be making these sounds.
"He was Adam, the best,” she said, remembering. “A really good big brother. We hardly ever fought but when we did it was about stupid things. Like when I beat him at games. He would get so mad.” She stopped talking, letting a memory sink in. “He was really popular. You couldn't not like him. And he used to hang out with me even if he didn't have to. He played soccer. That was his thing. He was going to play college but he died the night he graduated."
“I’m sorry,” I breathed, holding her and keeping still.
I’d never had anyone like that. Given everything, I wondered if maybe I was the lucky one.
To have not…
But I also knew, if it was Avery I was talking about it would definitely be better to have…
I wouldn’t trade this for the world. I’d told her as much.
No matter what happened I’d know at one point I had someone who really tried to see me, really cared.
It’s like scars on skin and ghosts in shadows. Sense memory… When something hits you and never fades.
I hadn’t been with her for long but I knew even now she’d left her marks, even if she couldn’t really see that.
"It's been three years and I've pretty much been just trying to figure out how to live."
Again, I had no idea what to say.
“I love you,” I said, bringing my hand up to her face and holding the side of it, holding her close and breathing her in.
Moments like this I really did feel like I was stealing her away.
From what or who? I couldn’t rightly know or say.
I just knew I wanted to keep her, hold her close, and protect her from everything horrible in her past, her present, and her future.
Holding her perfectly, I thought of something I’d read earlier on in the day:
“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
~1Q84 ~Haruki Murakami
I couldn’t even tell if the quote was for her or for me…
Chapter Thirty-Six
Avery
When I woke up, Olivia was practically on top of me. I had no idea how we had managed to be nearly sideways on the bed or at what point she flipped over onto me but I was comfortable and at peace, a satiated absolute peace that came from being loved.
She was still asleep, clinging to my chest, one hand tucked over my shoulder and the other at her side. That heady combination of scents that made her up took away panic and alarm. Like smoke on a beehive, she had the ability to make me calm and lethargic. Then she would light on fire and make me go mad with reaction.
I moved my leg and she woke, her head jolting up. “Hey, go back to sleep,” I soothed. But she didn’t, she just looked at me through bleary eyes and flexed her hand on my shoulder. I blinked and tried to tell if she really was awake or not. She was in between the two states. I could almost feel it like it sank from her skin into mine.
“Mmmm,” she hummed, finally coming into consciousness. “Morning,” she mumbled, hugging me tighter, closing her eyes again and pressing her face more into my skin to breathe of me.
When she hugged me I moved again, scooting a little bit more under her and wincing. I was sore from yesterday. Just what I’d wanted. The sensations flooded back to me. She was not just inside of me then she had grown roots within me and sometimes the feeling surprised me, sending me back into the before when I was fallow ground.
“I’ve never liked cuddling before you.” I pressed my lips into her hair, kissing her on top of the head. “You’re changing me all over the place.” I loved it and also had growing pains from the sudden nature of our joining.
“You feel good,” she said simply, running her hand down my arm until finding my hand and taking it up to her mouth to kiss it like she wanted.
“You feel better,” I countered. I switched my hand around to cup her cheek, my thumb grazing her lips. “You realize what you do to me, right?”
"What?" She asked, needing answers always.
“You unbind me. You know, like a book someone’s torn out so they can read the secret things that someone stuffed in the binding.” I had been thinking of the metaphor ever since she asked me what my favorite book was. I’d remembered how tattered my copy of Suddenly, Last Summer was when I’d found it. It matched the interior. Incomplete, ripped up people just looking for a home in one another.
"I'd never want to tear you apart," she said. "If you were a book I'd read you endlessly."
“You can’t read me unless you tear me apart. I’m written in a dead language but the translation is inside.” I hoped it made sense. This was the kind of stuff that I wrote in journal. Things that no one could ever imagine me thinking, let alone saying out loud.
"Oh, well in that case I'd be extra careful. Not being able to read you pains me."
“You do read me but sometimes I feel like there are passages that don’t translate and I feel like it’s my fault.” Our rough spots sent me to a strange old place that didn’t like to let go.
“I feel the exact same way but I’d still delve into you with zest,” she replied.
I pulled her in, hoping that we could get past the parts that were lost in translation. I needed this, needed her now. I was past wanting. If she left, I’d be worse than before. I would have nothing.
"Okay, my turn,” she said, thinking of it as a game. “I feel like with you I'm a song... And you're so good at hearing the melody but all my secrets lie in the other parts and sometimes you faintly hear those parts and it distracts you so much you lose the melody. It's like you're trying to find me, and I want you to know everything, but it's hard to hear something once and truly know how it makes you feel... I dunno..."
“I know what you mean. It’s scary. I don’t like how I hear you sometimes. I get confused and angry that I can’t see but I’m only mad because I want to get you.” I ran my fingers through her hair and rested them against the base of her neck. “You’re my song.”
"I fear I sound terrible. All sharps and flats. Obnoxious key changes, rarely ever a moment of harmony or rest. You're a much sweeter song…” She mused. “Sweeping melodic crescendos and peaceful moments of true clarity that plateau after such a marvelous build that it astounds."
I poked her side and laughed when she jumped. “We’re very serious this morning but if you want to argue who would make a better song I can totally beat you. You’ve got harmony. There are moments of dissonance that make me sit up and listen closer. They’re beautiful. Better than a boring song where nothing happens.”
I took her hand, lacing our fingers. “I’m just a messed up Broken Social Scene song that people like because they think it makes them cool.”
“You think you’re like all of these things but you’re not. You’re so much better.” When she thought on it though she sighed. “Do you really think people only like you because it makes them seem cool?”
I shrugged one shoulder and looked away. “That’s the problem. I don’t know why people like me. I only know why they shouldn’t.” I thought back. Holland was the only person who got to me and made me fee
l like she saw me. “Maybe I just don’t think the same way that a lot of people our age do. I don’t know. I feel like they’re not worried about the right things. It makes me distance myself.”
“That’s what I like about you though,” she confessed. “I could feel that coming off of you the first time we met. How different you were. How the way others see you and the way you see yourself are in some place of contrast. You’ve got shadows and light… Shades not everyone can see. Shades people ignore because they don’t want to see them. Because it makes their lives hard... I wanted to see all of you right then. To know you. Know what everyone else couldn’t see even though it was right there the whole time.”
Everything she had said to me up to now, declarations of love and reasons for them, were clearer now. “You’re the only one who could find me in here.” I smiled, sad and happy at once. “I think I need to take you to meet Holland.” The thought was like sunshine. The only two people who got me and made me feel safe in one place. “She would like you.”
“I’d love to meet her.” She turned her face into my shoulder and kissed my skin tenderly.
“Mmmm,” I moaned. “You can keep doing that, if you want.” It felt good to be this close and lazily affectionate. “She’d grill you at first.” My hand went to the back of her head, where I sunk my fingers into her hair and drew my nails along her scalp.
“Your hands are like magic,” she said, crawling over me and touching the side of my face with her hand as she kissed down the side of my neck and tenderly teased me with her body so close. I felt her move back up on me and lay her body down on mine only different. “How am I supposed to get out of bed when you feel so good?” She whispered it right into my ear.
“My proposal is that we never leave bed. We can just live here eating room service and drinking wine forever. We won’t even get fat because sex burns a lot of calories. It’s a perfect plan really, one you should get on board with.” I nodded against her, inhaling as much as my lungs would allow.
Paper Dolls, Book One Page 29
