You Already Know Read online

  Though I’m pretty sure he can tell when I come within a minute, and sob too loudly for anything inside me to take, and then, oh, then he runs a gentling hand down over the curve of my back.

  It’s too much. Be rough, I think at him, but he isn’t like skinny Brad. He’s not like the swell guy with the flowers. He says, ‘Easy baby,’ and then he asks me. He asks me:

  ‘You OK with me taking you, now?’

  And I can’t say anything to that. If I open my mouth I might beg.

  But he gets to me before I have to endure a thing like that. He turns me back over and spreads me across the bed, most of his own clothes still on. Most of mine gone. And though I don’t want it to happen with my face wet and all of me mixed up like this his mouth finds mine.

  His big arm goes around me.

  I’m not even sure when he starts fucking me – though the word fucking is stretching it a bit. It’s stretching it a lot, in fact, because he rocks me slow and easy and there’s something unbearable about that. So much so that a hot rush of anger goes through me, unaccountably, and the urge to bite him or dig my nails into his back swells up.

  The urge to tell him, ‘Do it hard’ comes up with it, but it’s difficult to say words like those with a soft mouth on yours, and everything like a long, smooth roll into bliss, and his big arms around me – God, his arms right around me.

  It’s like he’s holding me as I go down.

  And, even better than that, I can feel him moaning. I can feel him doing it all the way through my body, because his mouth doesn’t veer from mine and his voice is like the distant rumble of thunder.

  Mine sounds faint, by comparison. Faint, but I hope he can hear and feel it anyway. I hope he knows I’m clinging to him, instead of digging my nails in. I hope he knows how good this is – how each stroke of his thick cock strikes me just right, pushes me a little bit further into bliss.

  But then he pulls away just long enough to gasp, ‘You gonna come, baby?’ So, in all honesty, I think he knows. He can probably feel it, bubbling up through me. He should definitely be able to feel my pussy clenching around his ever-working cock, and, even if he can’t, the words I get out do the rest of the job.

  ‘Oh God, oh God, I’m coming,’ I gasp.

  But I only say God because it occurs to me in that moment of bliss – I don’t even know his name.

  * * *

  It’s early morning, and that sweet bluish light is just starting to creep under the drapes. I watch it make its way over all the ordinary things in my apartment, and then finally it gets to him and paints the solid curves of his gorgeous arms. It slants shadows over the side of his face, the heavy slab of his cheekbone, the delicious curve of his perfect mouth.

  I don’t know when he started sleeping over. Probably some time after I dared open my mouth to ask him what his name was, right in the middle of a hot and sweaty fuck session. He had grinned, at that – not offended the way I expected – then said: ‘It’s Tyler, Bethany.’

  Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I’d told him things had to end, then. I should have let things go the moment I realised he already knew my name, but I think it was too late even then. It was too late when he stared at me with those wounded eyes. It was too late when he leant against his truck, cigarette in hand.

  It’s too late before it’s begun, with Tyler.

  He stirs and turns over and my heart stirs with him. I’m lost, God, I’m lost.

  ‘You OK, kid?’ he asks, before he’s even opened his eyes. Maybe he can tell I’ve got my back pressed too tight to the headboard. Maybe he can tell I’ve been gazing and gazing at him like some lovesick puppy.

  Lord, when did this happen? When?

  ‘Man, it’s early,’ he tells me – just for something to say, I guess. But then he follows it with this, right out of the blue: ‘Love you, kid.’

  And that isn’t just something to say. I don’t know where he gets these things from, I really don’t. I don’t know how he’s this person inside – it’s impossible, it’s awful, I can’t look at him.

  ‘You love me, right?’

  He sounds so sure, and I’m glad. Mainly because I can’t speak and even if I managed to I’m sure I’d do something dumb when I did. Blubber, probably. Laugh it off, this thing we’ve got – this thing born out of fists and brutality and bitter lives made up of nothing.

  It’s good that he keeps talking, really – right past everything I can’t say.

  ‘How come you never answer?’ he wants to know. ‘I ask you a question, you never answer. Afraid the answer’s yes, huh? Don’t wanna get caught out saying yes to the likes of me.’

  He’s smiling, though, when I look at him. The teasing smile that tells me I don’t have to really say – and then I realise. It floods through me, the understanding of how he is different to every other man I’ve been with.

  ‘I never have to answer with you,’ I say, and I think of those big arms of his holding me as I fall down, down, into this sea of strange love. ‘You already know.’

  Four For The Seesaw

  Charlotte Stein

  ‘Go on, Tia,’ he says, and I want to say no. But he’s rubbing and teasing my nipples – which are tight and swollen anyway – and it’s real muggy and close in here, and I don’t know. Why would I want to say no, again?

  He knows that I like what he’s doing. He sticks out his tongue and wets the material of my T-shirt, pushing that slickness down and down through the material until it’s all over my stiff nipple. And then he licks and sucks the tip until I’m squirming on the airbed, glancing across at the sleeping forms of Sean and Kay.

  They’re going to wake up. It’s obvious they’re going to. I’m not a quiet fucker and we’re only in this tiny little tent.

  I spread my legs open for him anyway. He gives me this cheeky grin when I do, before getting his hand right down there to rub and worry my clit. I’m already really wet, so his fingers just slide around in all my juice, easing down to my grasping hole before coming back up to rub me some more.

  Any second I’m going to come. I’m going to come in a tent with our friends right there next to us, and I’ll be really loud and probably say dirty stuff like fuck my cunt.

  When he slides down, down into the tight heat of our shared sleeping bag – that smirky smile still on his cheeky lips – I hiss at him no. No, God no. I fight against him in the strict confines of the sleeping bag, but he’s between my legs before I know it. He just tugs my knickers aside and runs his tongue along the length of my slit, all over the plump outer lips, and then worms inside to find my stiff bud.

  I know why he’s doing this. I do. It’s all because I confessed that I think Sean’s a real cutie, and he confessed that he thinks Kay’s a babe, and everything is now going downhill from there. At the top of the hill are normal people, who get jealous when their other halves talk about how hot someone else is. At the bottom there’s us, trying to get off with our objects of desire right next to us.

  I bite my lip hard and glance across at them. Both of them are still sleeping, but that doesn’t help me all that much. They’re so pretty to look at and this is such a filthy thing, that it only gets me closer to coming. Sean’s got this sexy mouth, real soft and sensual with lips that hardly seem to have any outline. And his eyelashes are like a girl’s, fanning out soft and charcoal black against his milky skin.

  Ryan thinks he’s too feminine, but that’s not true. He’s got a real masculine air about him, what with the strong jaw and his jutting chin. His blue eyes go right through you, and it almost makes me wish they were open, now.

  Almost.

  And, oh God, Kay’s lovely, too. I can see what Ryan likes about her. That great big thick swatch of red hair, that cupid’s bow mouth. I bet a mouth like that looks amazing sliding down Sean’s cock, while he arches up on the bed for her. I bet he arches. I bet they look so good together, what with her being so small and slight and him so big.

  And then Ryan catches the underside of my clit with just
a flick of his tongue, and I forget whatever it was I’d been thinking. The trembles my body is going through spiral suddenly out of control, and a tense, tight orgasm grabs holds of me – one that makes me jerk and groan and cream all over his face, picturing Sean’s mouth pressing against Kay’s sex. His tongue in her pussy, circling her clit.

  God, that’s good.

  It’s so good that I don’t stop Ryan when he climbs back over me, and notches the head of his cock against my slippery hole.

  ‘My turn now,’ he says as he shoves in, and I notice that he can’t stop his eyes straying over to Sean and Kay, either. Ah, the grass is always greener. Though I suspect the grass is meant to stay green and over there. Not right in our faces as we fuck an inch away from it.

  ‘I love you,’ I tell him, as he drives into me. ‘I love you.’

  But I’m staring at Sean’s sleeping face as I say it.

  We’re being far too loud, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when Sean opens his eyes. Though I am just the same, and even more so because I’m looking right at him when he does it. He seems startled to see me so close and intent on him, but then that’s how he is. A little nervous, a little uptight.

  I’m sure he’s going to get tighter still when he realises what we’re doing.

  I don’t shy away, and so I see him studying me close up. His eyes inch over the rutting shapes we make slowly, in sections: first flicking to the place where our joined hips will be, beneath the sleeping bag. Then to Ryan’s hand over mine, on the pillow. Then back to my face, still turned towards his.

  I’ve always loved the way Sean shows interest in things. By careful, studious increments, as though his eyes are better able to explore something than his hands. There’s an aloofness about him, too, as though even something as base as sex is a thing you can detach yourself from and examine.

  He isn’t like Ryan at all. Ryan is quick witted and open, he’s bold. Sean hangs back, assessing, first. His assessing makes me flutter the muscles of my pussy around Ryan’s cock, and he grunts when I do.

  I want to ask Sean, Do you ever grunt? But just the idea of asking him something like that makes me twist beneath my thrusting boyfriend, clit sparking, nipples tense, the tight coils of another orgasm winding up low down deep in my belly.

  I close my eyes tight against it, but when I open them again Sean is still watching with those strange curious eyes.

  ‘Kiss him,’ Ryan says, and I almost jump at the rude intrusion of his voice into something that had momentarily seemed so private. As though he’s just a machine, over me, servicing me, while I gaze at something pretty.

  But Sean just gives him an incredulous look. I think he believes Ryan is kind of a jerk. But then so am I, because I’m doing this too. Right? And if he wants to think that, well he can go ahead, and have something for his trouble, too –

  I lean forward as quick as anything, and plant one on him.

  His eyes stay open when I do it, but he doesn’t try to push me away. He just lets me press my lips to his, and, when he stays that passive while I slide my tongue into his mouth, I moan. Thick pleasure gushes through me and I come just like that, Ryan’s cock working in me and my wet mouth on Sean’s, Ryan groaning like a loon as he follows me.

  I make my sounds right into Sean. I come in his mouth, so to speak.

  He doesn’t seem to mind all that much. I think I make rather a nice specimen for him to examine and assess. I’m an interesting experiment, one that leaves a pleasing flush on his cheeks.

  And when he asks me: ‘Was that good, Tia?’ I almost come all over again.

  * * *

  I suspect Kay knows. She’s not exactly angry with me for coming in her boyfriend’s mouth, but she keeps looking at me sly. As we’re hiking through the woods, as we’re looking out over the lake and taking pictures, as we’re buying tourist crap from Ye Olde Gift Shop.

  When Sean stands next to me and gives his opinion on the snow globe I’m thinking of buying, she looks at me even slyer. He puts his hand on my shoulder. She puts her hand on Ryan’s arm.

  It’s all very car keys in the big bowl.

  I look up at Sean, but his face is as unreadable as always. He could be thinking about fly faeces, for all I know. That’s what Ryan whispers in my ear as we leave the shop – that all day and all night Sean’s head is filled with thoughts of bugs and the things that bugs do and giant bug orgies. I can’t argue with him, because Ryan sat in on Sean’s seminar on the secret lives of bees or whatever, and I didn’t.

  But what I can’t tell is this: is my wicked tongue-forever-in-his-cheek boyfriend trying to make me want Sean more, or less? He knows I love all that Professor Kinsey stuff, all that rigorous scientist researching bedroom habits nonsense. After he came back from the lecture I had said to him: Tell me. Tell me all about it. Tell me what Sean said and how he said it.

  And then he told me, on the bed and on the floor and in the shower.

  ‘Knock it off,’ I snap at him, and give him a shove.

  But he won’t knock it off. When we’re all in the lake together, mostly just in our underwear and sliding around each other beneath the veil of the water, he pulls me close and kisses me, and kisses me. Our legs tangle together and I can feel he’s stiff as anything, right up against my belly and begging for attention.

  And then he murmurs in my ear: I bet he’s hard too, just thinking about your face when you come.

  Mostly all I can hear and feel is the water lapping up against me, cold against the places the sun is trying to warm, and then the hot brand of Ry’s erection, and then the hot push of his breath against my ear and my throat. I glance across at Kay and Sean as they splash near the shore, and he keeps right on whispering.

  ‘I imagine fucking her,’ he tells me. ‘While thinking about you.’

  He’s always so honest, so honest that I can hardly stand it. I free his hard-on from his shorts even as they get closer, fondling the swollen shaft just a little, just enough to get him to hide his face in my shoulder. And then I wrap my legs around his waist and slide my own underwear aside, so that I can ease down on him while I watch them frolic.

  Kay, in her little red boy shorts and Sean all lean and strong. We hide it well, I think, but when he looks our way I know he knows. He knows well before Ryan grabs the side of my face and presses his mouth hard into the curve of my throat, his cock ploughing a possessive furrow through my ever-molten pussy.

  Though I’m not sure how possessive it really is, all of this crazy, frantic sex. It seems so much more like we’ve all crossed our arms over each other’s, and no one knows who’s hand they’re really holding any more.

  * * *

  It’s like a puzzle game. A sort of jigsaw. Tonight Kay is sleeping on the inside and Sean is at the tent wall, as though she’s trying to protect him from something. And yet another piece has shifted into a different position too, so maybe she’s not so protective after all. She just wants to lie next to Ryan, while I lie like a bookend to Sean – against my tent wall, too.

  I suppose I should feel shut out and bereft, but I don’t. I want to go to sleep as quickly as possible, so that he can secretly kiss her in the night. Then we’ll be even; then the puzzle will be complete. One of each, car keys in the bowl.

  Though I know that I don’t want to stop at one of each.

  I glance across at Ryan’s face, beside me on the pillow. He looks boyish when he’s asleep, and in the dim golden glow of the battery-powered lamp we’ve kept on, even more so. Innocent, I guess you could say – though he’s anything but. He’s my cheeky imp, my sweetest thing, my giver of many gifts. Some of them sexual, some of them not.

  I touch his face and he makes a little snuffling noise – a silly noise, that tells me he’s only half-asleep. Then he sneaks his hand up from inside the sleeping bag, and clasps his fingers around mine. Just right there against his cheek.

  I’m almost afraid to go to sleep, in case I wake up to him making love to another woman. But then again, wha
t if I stay awake and he doesn’t? What if later on down the line we hate each other for never letting us be the people we didn’t know we wanted to be? Tia with a scientist, Ryan with an actress.

  You’ve got to swap and change and explore and find out about your body with another completely different sort of body, while you still can. I remember saying to him: What sort of person would I be if I had never met you?

  Better, he had said. But I don’t think that’s true.

  I go to sleep, with my hand still in his.

  * * *

  I wake up to sighs, and moans. Soft and faint, as though knowing they have to hide. Automatically I think of Ryan and Kay going at it, and for a moment I’m afraid to open my eyes. Even though I maybe possibly wanted this, I’m afraid, I’m afraid. All those conventional feelings that he’d probably mock well up in me: what if he likes her better, what if I don’t want him to like her better, what if I don’t really want Sean at all so it’s not OK for him to like Kay?

  But when I open them, Ryan has his head in the pillow. Utterly asleep and oblivious.

  It’s Kay and Sean who have the reins of whatever sleigh ride we’re on. Or rather, Kay does. She’s the one calling the shots, and her shots are these:

  ‘They did,’ she’s whispering. ‘Why can’t we?’

  And then she gives out a faint little moan, because I guess whatever she’s doing to herself feels nice. It’s certainly not anything that Sean’s doing to her, because he looks tense and tight and is lying ever so slightly off to one side, and when he speaks it’s in a straining sort of voice.

  ‘Because we’re not like them,’ he says, and I wonder what he means. Not like the sort of person who screws in a lake, or while lying next to other people? Because I wasn’t either, before I met Ryan. And I suspect Kay isn’t much either, while she’s with Sean.

  Though I gather she’d kind of like to be.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Just shove it in me.’

  Yeah. I kind of think she might.