For a moment, they stayed like that, lips playing and tongues searching, his fingertips brushing against the top of her panties and hers trapped gently under the waistband of his briefs. Her skin was smooth and warm, but her breath was ragged and hot, and she broke the kiss and pulled her head back on the pillow, meeting his eyes as she slid her hand past his waistband and wrapped it around his cock. He hissed with relief and need, and he saw triumph flicker in her warm brown eyes as she began to stroke him slowly. Two can play that game, he wanted to say, but all that came out was a moan, and besides, actions were better than words. He slid his hand into her dampened panties and ran a careful finger up between her drenched folds, and she answered with another intoxicating whimper and a wobbling, distracted stroke of his cock.
He repeated the motion, pulling even more wetness into his fingers and towards her clit, so that when he drew a slow, light circle around the tender bud, it was slick and slippery, the most arousing thing he’d ever touched. She gasped and pressed her forehead against his, tightening her grip on his cock and stroking him firmly from base to tip, sending electric pleasure rocketing up his spine. He answered by pressing the heel of his hand on her clit, freeing his fingers to gently stroke her folds as he gave her circles of pressure and she ground a slow, insistent rhythm against him.
Nick closed his eyes against the sensation, overwhelmed by the feeling of her hand on his cock, her breath on his cheek, her drenched pussy in his hand, her forehead on his. He heard nothing but her moans and sighs mingling with his own as she stroked him, smelled nothing but her arousal and the smoky rose scent of her skin. Nothing but Carly, the impatient, exhausting, unpredictable human hurricane who made him want to scream and laugh and come all in the same breath.
“Shit, Nick, don’t stop,” she gasped, rolling her hips against his hand and stroking him faster. He wasn’t going to stop. He didn’t ever want to stop, he thought, as his breath quickened and he felt his release gathering at the base of his spine. He never wanted to stop taking photos of her, never wanted to stop waking up with her, or kissing her, or making her gasp and moan like this. He leant forward and kissed her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, knowing that it was too soon to say all that, not when they were starting fresh here in New York. But one day, he’d tell her. He’d show her every day until she believed it in her bones. Carly whimpered against his lips, and at last he felt her whole body tense and then tremble as her orgasm broke over her. Her hips bucked against his hand, but he followed their motion, making sure his hand never left her as she rode her climax, gasping and shaking against him. A second later, he came so hard that he saw white spots, emptying himself into her hand as he kissed her clumsily, desperately.
Her hand stilled against him, and they lay facing each other, their panting the only sound in the dimly lit room. Legs loose and exhausted, they slowly came back to their own bodies. Nick looked across the pillow at Carly, whose eyes were closed and whose chest was still rising and falling deeply as her breath steadied. He studied her face, tracing the constellations of freckles on her cheeks and nose, and the firm, expressive lines of her brows, and the full, flushed pink pillows of her lips. He leaned forward and pressed a careful kiss against them, and she sighed contentedly. Nick extricated his feet from hers so he could stand up, and returned a few seconds later with a handful of tissues. She watched as he wiped her hand down and tossed the damp wad into a bin in the corner of the room. When he climbed back into bed, she whispered her thanks and scooted towards him until her face was nuzzled into his neck.
Nick held her for a long time, feeling her breath on his collarbone, her ribs expanding against the side of his body. He listened to the sounds of the city beyond her window, the honking cars, the distant rumble of the subway, the occasional shrieks of Saturday night revellers. It sounded nothing like Springwood or Sydney, nothing like Munich or Paris. It sounded nothing like any home he’d known. But then Carly breathed another happy, sated sigh against his skin, and hummed quietly as he pulled her closer, held her tighter. And he knew he was home.
Epilogue
One year later
The fragile white paper crinkled under Carly’s legs as she sat down on the table, watching Angela pull on her rubber gloves. Next would come the Q-tip test, then the lube. She lay back and shifted under the sheet until her lower back was happy with her position, then waited for Angela to sit on the rolling stool at the foot of the table and get to work.
“I’m going to touch you now, okay?” Angela said.
“Okay,” Carly nodded, and she didn’t even flinch as Angela ran the Q-tip over her vulva.
“Any pain?” Angela asked.
“Nope,” Carly grinned, just like she had at every appointment for the last few months, and Angela responded with a satisfiedhmm.
Next came Angela’s first finger, then a second, and Carly lay there, breathing deeply and keeping her pelvic floor relaxed, as Angela pressed on various points around her opening and on her vaginal walls. She felt no pain and no resistance. She’d practiced this so many times in the last year with her dilators, and her body had become accustomed to this kind of penetration. Last month, she’d leveled up to the biggest dilator the clinic offered, a thick white cylinder that had felt like a stretch, but that, to her relief, hadn’t caused her any pain.
After a few minutes of internal massage, Angela slowly withdrew her hand and peeled off her gloves.
“Things look pretty good to me,” she said, tossing the gloves in the bin. She sat down on the stool and wheeled it along the table so Carly didn’t have to crane her neck to see her. “How is it feeling when you do your exercises?”
“It feels fine,” Carly said. “Good even. I didn’t realize how much of a difference it would make to stop dancing all day. The rest of me feels weaker, but I think my pelvic floor is the strongest it’s ever been.”
Angela nodded as Carly spoke, then gave her a tinyI told you soshrug. “Well, you’ve been extremely diligent about your exercises, which obviously helps a lot.”
Carly felt a swell of pride. Some people would call her stubborn, but Nick preferred “persistent.” She’d persisted at this, and look at the results.
“Ithink,” Angela said slowly, “that if you wanted to attempt intercourse now, it would probably be okay.”
Carly stared at her. It had been well over a year since Angela had told her to stop having penetrative sex, since that disastrous final date with Carter. She and Nick had had a lot of sex since then—like, a lot—because it turned out that there was plenty of sex to be had without putting a penis in a vagina. It was something she probably should have realized a long time ago, something Nick had helped her to understand: Sex wasn’t a hierarchy with penetration at the top. Sex was just sex, and as long as everyone was enjoying it, it didn’t really matter which body parts were going where.
All the same, Angela had just said something she’d been waiting a long time to hear.
“Are you saying I no longer have a broken vagina?” Carly blurted.
Angela laughed and shook her head indulgently, but when she replied, her voice was firm. “I wouldn’t say you ever had a broken vagina, so I can’t say you no longer have one. I think you’ve worked hard to retrain your muscles and to strengthen them, and that penetration with my finger or your dilator no longer hurts. So it stands to reason that with proper preparation, and enough lube, other kinds of penetration won’t hurt either.”
Carly pulled at the sheet so that it covered her legs, and turned Angela’s words over in her mind. She’d hoped this day would come eventually, but now that it had arrived, she didn’t know what to do with it. She liked her sex life with Nick, and if the look on his face as they’d dried each other off after their shower this morning was anything to go by, he liked it, too. What would he say when she told him the news, though? As Angela jotted down some notes on her clipboard, Carly sat up and felt a flicker of foreboding. She assumed he’d be happy, but what if he was jubilant? What if he’d been waiting and hoping this whole time, putting up with her limitations but secretly hoping they’d be able to fuck soon?
She bit her lip, then remembered what he’d told her when he’d come to her apartment in Sydney, iced coffee in hand.I want whatever you can give me.He’d taken it, too. He’d taken all all her chaos, all her mess, all herpersistence, and any kind of sex she was willing to share with him. He’d treated them all as gifts. She gave her head a tiny shake and reminded herself of what she knew to be true, now. She was enough for him, as she was. She was enough, period.
Out in the reception area, Carly booked her next two appointments with Angela, then grabbed a bite-size Reese’s cup from the bowl on the counter and headed out into the warm spring day. On her way to the bus stop, she texted Heather.
Carly, 9:13AM: Huge news: I’m cleared for ~~intercourse~~!
By the time her bus had arrived, Heather had texted back.
Heather, 9:21AM: OMG, so exciting! But be careful, or you’ll end up like me
