That did actually make me laugh. “You didn't...”
She crumpled up her face. “I did,” she said. “Are you horrified yet?”
“A bit,” I said, still chuckling. “Were you disappointed when I posted that photo of me as a woman?”
She pressed her lips together. “Um,” she said, grimacing. “I kind of just changed my search parameters...?”
I laughed. “Bree...!” I said, squinting and making my bruised eye ache. “Jesus Christ!”
She stopped laughing, looking down between our bodies. “And, yeah,” she said. “This is pretty much what I imagined.” She looked up at me. “Only with a lot more touching... A lot more.”
That sounded great. I was up for a lot more touching, and I was so close, so close to just doing it. Fuck, I was in trouble.
She shifted on me. “So,” she began, “like, we can still do the same things we did before, right...?”
I made a non-committal noise.
She leant up to me and kissed my chin, and as she did that, her naked breasts brushed the front of my binder. She sat back. “That was okay, right?”
I could barely nod.
She took a deep breath. “I like it when you whisper in my ear,” she said. “And kiss my neck... we did that before...?”
I lifted her hair, bending down beside her ear so my breath tickled it. Her own breath was fast on my shoulder, and down between us, I could feel those breasts heaving against my front every time she inhaled. When my fingers trailed gently up her arm, they found goose bumps. God. She was practically quivering. She wanted this, she wanted me. It was all I could do not to just take her.
I managed not to. Somehow I managed not to. “I'm so into you,” I breathed into her ear. “Bree... I want to do things to you...”
She stopped breathing for a moment. “Then do them,” she murmured. “Do them...”
I didn't. I just kissed down her neck, listening to each and every breath she struggled to draw. I found a spot under her ear that made her groan, and I kissed it over and over, pressing my chin into it and dragging my lips across it. She moved in my lap, leaning into it, leaning into me, her hands restless on my thighs.
Eventually she sat up from me, flushed from exertion, and so, so turned on and said, “You're not allowed to touch me,” she said. “But I can touch myself, can't I?”
The mental image of that was almost too much. She was killing me. “No,” I said. “Please don't, I—Fuck. This is hard enough as it is...”
We were staring at each other. God, I was losing my resolve, she was driving me crazy. I was salivating.
“I want you so much, Min,” she said, breathless. “I'm, like, dying. And, like, I know about Henry... I know... but I still want you to do everything to me. And I feel terrible that I want that, but... I can see how much you want it, and I don't see how not having sex with me changes that you've already been cheating on him.” She made a face. “Does that make me a bad person?”
No, I thought. God, Bree, you're fucking anything but a bad person. “I just feel like there should be one line that isn't crossed...”
“I'm topless,” she pointed out. “And I'm on your lap. And we're both so up for it... I don't really see what the difference is. If you were doing this with someone else I'd be upset whether or not you went through with it. And I want you, Min, I want you so much...” She double-took and made a face. “Oh my god, listen to me, that's an awful thing to say, that's awful. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have—”
I shushed her, feeling terrible that she felt guilty about it. I'd let it get this far, every bit of this was my fault, Bree was in no way responsible for what was going on, but she was still sitting across my lap, and I'd got her to a point where she was begging me. If I said no here, she was right. I was hurting two people, both Henry and Bree. I'd already done the wrong thing by Henry, I was already a fucked up person for it. No small technicality was going to rescue me from that, no matter how much I wanted it to. Whether or not I went through with it now, I'd already cheated on him. And Bree was right here, ready for me, waiting for me... At least I could make one of them happy.
That just happened to be the answer every part of me wanted to come to, as well. I didn't second-guess it in case I came to a different conclusion.
Exhaling forcefully, I pulled her right up against me. “This is my fault, not yours,” I breathed, and then I kissed her. Hard. She made this tiny little sound and then pressed all up against me, wrapping her arms around behind my head and writhing into me.
My hands were around her for a second, feeling her naked back and the hair falling onto it, and then they were around the front of her grabbing and kneading those breasts and her tummy and her thighs and everything I could hold onto. I couldn't kiss her deeply enough. I couldn't hug her tightly enough. I couldn't be pressed firmly enough against her, I wanted more of her, more of her, and my head throbbed and my eye ached and my cheek hurt but I just didn't fucking care.
I let her pull me down on top of her, and she fell back onto the blankets on the couch, her breasts spread across her ribs and her legs splayed and wrapped around my thighs. Leaning over her I kissed her: first her mouth and those lips and that neck and those collarbones... then I moved down her body. I kissed her skin, I licked across it, I buried my nose in her belly and kissed along the hem of her underwear. I could go further, I thought. I could keep going. I could take a mouthful of what was underneath and have her writhing and squirming and crying out as I did it.
She didn't want me to right now, though, she hooked her hands under my shoulders and pulled me up again. “Not yet,” she said. “It's just... I don't know, isn't it, like, really full on for your first time with a girl? Do you really want to do that to me?”
What a question. “Yes,” I said without hesitation.
She laughed. “Okay,” she said. “It's just that I'm really wet and I didn't want you to be grossed out or something...”
I kissed her briefly. “I would love to go down on you,” I told her.
She blushed a deep, deep crimson. It even spread down her neck. “Oh my god,” she said, and took a moment to recover before stretching up to kiss me, pulling me back down on top of her.
When I got there, though, she made a face. “The jeans are a bit...”
“Scratchy?” I finished, and she nodded, and helped me take them off. As soon as I'd settled back down against her, she gasped and then smiled, and then laughed helplessly. I didn't know what she meant until she pushed her hips up into mine; the packer was pressing against a key point on her. A point that made her jaw slack and her eyes heavy-lidded. She rolled her hips into me, and when she pushed upwards, she drove the packer against a key point on me. I couldn't put something this soft inside her, but, fuck, if this wasn't the next best thing we could do with it...
So, yeah, yeah, this was going to work. This was going to work, and I let her pull me down into another kiss, her naked calves wrapping up around my now-naked thighs. The feeling of skin-on-skin was sexy.
I bore down on her, pushing into her, rocking against her, moving our hips together and, fuck, appreciating how good it felt. It wasn't just all physical, either. These movements, these ones, this was right. It felt right. I felt like I was making love to her the way I wanted to, and watching her face every time I reached the end of a thrust... this was what I wanted.
Her breathing was erratic on my lips, and she broke away from me to whisper, “Faster...”
I did what she said. Her eyes fell shut and her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out of it. She just froze there, poised against me as I moved on her and it was hot, it was so hot, watching her teetering on the brink of letting go and watching her parted lips as she gasped and struggled to breathe and grabbing at the blankets, the couch, at me...
“Don't stop,” she told me urgently, “Please don't stop...”
And then she was gasping, holding her breath, begging me to keep going and finally she cried out, her thighs sha
king and her hips driving into mine and I was watching her face, watching what I'd done to her and all the joy and pleasure and release I'd given her as she laughed and groaned and arched into me...
When she finally relaxed back into the couch, panting like she'd run a marathon, she pulled me on top of her and kissed me gently.
“Min...” she murmured into my lips. “Oh my god, that was like....” She never finished her sentence.
This is what it was always supposed to be like, making love to someone. With Henry I'd be checking the clock, but this? I never wanted it to stop. I could spend forever bringing her to the edge and then basking in the afterglow. I just lay against her and listened to her breathing slow.
Her hands stroked my hair, and between kisses she nuzzled my cheek, careful to avoid the gauze and my stitches. I smiled against her lips.
The position was a bit uncomfortable, so I shifted to lie on my side next to her, propped up on an elbow. She traced one of my arms, watching me. I smiled down at her.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?” I repeated.
She gave me a look. “I want to make you come.”
I made a face. I wasn't sure how that was going to work. “I'll take a raincheck on that,” I told her.
Her eyes darted up to the eye Andrej had punched and the gauze pad on my cheek. “Oh... because of your head?”
I'd actually completely forgotten about it, and I was tempted for about a quarter of a second to lie to her the way I had done to Henry. Then I realised how fucking stupid that would be.
“No,” I said, and then struggled with how to explain why. “I don't know...” ...how I want you to touch me.
I had been looking down my body, and I think she guessed what I meant. “Oh,” she said, and reached down me to cup the packer, massaging it into me. “Maybe like this?”
I winced. The actual physical sensation of her pushing that packer against me wasn't too bad, but... unless I was using it on her, it didn't feel... right? And looking down my completely smooth and flat body to the big bulge in the Y-fronts was just... no. It was no. And that seemed like a really weird thing to try and explain. All of it was so weird: I had these really strong feelings about what was and wasn't right and what should and shouldn't be part of me, and the feelings didn't seem consistent and they didn't seem to make sense. How could I expect to have a dick, and feel right about the movements and the actions and yet when it came right down to it, not really want one? Or maybe I did want one, and was just in some serious fucking denial about it?
It was weird. It was all so weird. How did people ever navigate these feelings?
“That's not working?” Bree asked, noting my distraction. She stopped.
It wasn't. I reached into my Y-fronts and pulled out the packer, putting it on the coffee table. Bree looked at it, and then at me, and then snorted and started giggling.
I probed the empty cup of the Y-fronts to test how they felt without it, because I wasn't sure this was right either. It wasn't, but I thought maybe it might be better than the alternative. The fabric had a couple of thick layers at the front, and when I put my fingers there, the thickness hid the details underneath. It just felt smooth and featureless, and I preferred it like that.
We could try this, I thought, but I felt really uncomfortable about asking her for it. In the end I didn't need to, because she reached downward again and said, “Show me?”
I led her hand to my underwear and placed it on top, using my fingers on hers to gently show her the movement I needed. She nodded, a little smile on her face. “Okay.”
I rested my head beside hers on the blankets, and sucked in a sharp breath when she started to do what I'd shown her. It felt good.
She could have looked down at what she was doing, but she didn't, and that made me feel even more comfortable. Her head was next to mine on the blankets, and she was watching my face. And when I gasped, she smiled, and went my breathing got ragged, she looked so happy to be the cause of it. She hung on every nuance of my expression, and it was so, so intimate.
And it felt good, it felt good, it felt so good, someone was touching me and I didn't hate it, I didn't hate it at all... I loved it. I loved how it felt and that it was her hand down there and that when she moved it rocked her breasts on her ribs, and how when I started to heave each breath, she started to heave her every breath...
“I love watching you,” she murmured. “I love imagining how you feel...”
“I feel good,” I whispered. “It feels really good...”
And it did. The circles she was drawing on me, such tiny, innocuous movements, but at that second, my whole world centred around them. The way the fabric dragged on me, the warmth of her fingers and the friction against my skin... I was wet, too, and I didn't really want to focus too much on that because it seemed wrong, and it did seem wrong, but it felt good. All of those things together, and... god, I....
I took a handful of the couch, bracing myself against it. If she just kept going, I was going to.... Fuck.
“Fuck, Bree...” I whispered. “Bree...”
I pushed into her hand, the breath catching intermittently in my throat. My arm underneath me was shaking from strain, but fuck I didn't care. I didn't care about any of that. All I cared about were those circles she was moving me in and those beautiful blue eyes I was staring into and her ragged breaths and my ragged breaths and, fuck, fuck, I...
I was right on the edge, unable to breath, feeling it all building in me and swelling in my chest and in my hips and...oh, fuck...
And then I was there, shouting and pressing into her and shaking, shaking as my muscles clenched and my thighs closed around her hand and I curled up and into her, laying my own hand over hers on my underwear and mashing it against the fabric and the skin underneath. It didn't stop, it didn't stop, I kept having wave after wave of it and she pushed back against me and kept moving and fuck.... fuck, it was so... it felt so good.
I didn't have to pretend. I didn't have to act. I didn't have to do any of those things and none of it was duty or obligation or because I thought I was supposed to. It was because I wanted it, and she wanted it, and, god, I wanted her.
I relaxed back against her, my arm still shaking as I tried to catch my breath. My blood hummed and my body sang, and... God...
Fuck. Just... fuck.
Wow.
I laughed into her neck. She withdrew her hand, and in my peripheral vision I could see her shaking out her wrist as she made a pained noise. I laughed at that, too.
“Did I do good?” she asked brightly, knowing the answer.
I groaned because I didn't have any words yet, and when I searched for them, I only found one. “Wow,” was what I managed.
Bree wrapped her arms around me, and I could feel her smiling against my forehead. She didn't say anything. She just laughed with me. I snuggled into her, listening to that sound. She was warm, and we were both a bit sweaty, but I didn't care. I loved her half-naked with her arms around me, us lazily reclined over each other. This was how it was supposed to be.
I couldn't breathe properly with my nose under her neck, so when my arm had stopped tingling, I propped myself back up again, drawing shapes on her torso with my fingertips.
She watched me with a big smile on her face.
“What's this for?” I asked, leaning down and kissing her smile.
“You,” she said simply. “Us.” She gazed thoughtfully up at me. “You know, sometimes I feel like you kind of shut me out,” she told me. “Like you have this particular place you get to and then you're like, 'nope! Shop's closed!'. And when you do that I kind of wonder if I did something wrong or if you don't really like me after all or whatever... but today, it's like you've just... I don't know. You just let go of it all. You're, like, here with me.”
I knew the reason for that. I could remember every detail of cutting off my hair and watching it fall away from my scalp as I cried and cried over what I was letting go of, and
that I was still alive to be able to.
“Last night...” I reminded her. I think she'd already guessed.
She nodded, and tenderly touched my cheek. “I know,” she said, tracing my chin and my shoulders. “How are you now, though? Like, right now?”
There was only one answer for that. “Happy,” I said, and kissed her. “Today...” I shook my head. “Today was the kind of day that you dream about. It's the kind of day you lie on your death bed and remember every wonderful detail of. I didn't have any respect left for myself, but after today...” I smiled. “Well, I fuck up, I know that. We all do. But I did stuff today that I would never in a million years have thought I was able to do.” I smiled. “But I did it, I did it. And last night... well, last night I never thought that I could.”
She nodded, a bit teary. “And just think,” she said quietly. “If you'd killed yourself, you'd never have done it and you'd never have had today.”
She kissed me, and I kissed her back, and we pulled the blankets over us and lay together in each other's arms.
We'd been cuddling there together for god knows how long when I heard my phone chime from the kitchen counter. I nearly didn't get it, but my curiosity won out.
“Hang on a second,” I told Bree, slipping out from under the blankets, hauling myself off the couch and padding across the floor to it.
I noticed my headache was gone as I pulled the slider to unlock my phone; I wanted to attribute it to sex, but it also could have been the Panadol I took earlier. I thought about that as I wondered who'd texted me. Sarah might have guessed what I was up to, I thought. I wouldn't have put it past her to send me a cheeky text message about it.
When I opened it, though, it was from Henry.
“Be around in 10 if you need to get ready xoxo,” it said. I put my face in my free hand and groaned.
Of course, it was Thursday. In all the day's commotion I had completely and utterly forgotten that I'd made plans with Henry for tonight.
I looked back at Bree spread on my couch, and then down at my own body. Ten minutes, hey? Shit.
Under My Skin Page 73