“Will,” I say with a little more force. His head snaps up, eyes locking with mine, cheeks pink as he looks at me, concerned.
I look to the side, breaking eye contact with him and he immediately scoots back on his haunches, cutting off all physical contact with me. I feel so stupid but I also know that I can’t keep going like this. “I’m sorry, but can you please take your watch off?”
“Um, yeah, okay. No problem,” he shrugs. He undoes the watch band and slips it off his wrist, tossing it on the pillow next to my head.
“Better?” he says with a smile so gentle I want to grab the pillow from under my head and cover my face from him. I nod my head yes, wanting to feel better. “Do you want–Can I,” he swallows.
“You can keep going.” I’m hoping that if I just allow myself to breathe through the panic, then I’ll eventually enjoy it. Will places himself in the cradle of my thighs again, leaning forward to kiss me more. He sucks my bottom lip between his teeth but instead of those tingles and the heat from before, all I feel is anxiety. I close my eyes, wrap my arms around him, trying to focus on anything other than the watch on the pillow next to me.
His hand slips under my shirt, the pads of his calloused hand settling over the swell of my breast, finger and thumb tweaking my nipple barbell. I let out a moan, trying to convince myself that Iamenjoying this moment. Will rocks into me, moving himself over the fabric of my sleep shorts. I open my eyes to look at his face, hoping that’ll help me get back into the moment, but all I see is the shiny black mirror of his smartwatch face out of the corner of my eye. Taunting me. It’s too close to me. Too integrated with his phone. There are too many capabilities of this watch and ways that he could record me with it. My skin feels tight and Will’s body weight is trapping me, I’m starting to feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t do this.
“Stop,” I say, pushing at his shoulders, “Will, I’m sorry. Please stop. Get off me.”
He jumps back like he touched a hot stove and I try not to let it feel like rejection. A hot sting of tears threatens to spill over that I’m trying to blink back.
I cover my face with both hands and take a few deep breaths, trying to keep it together, very conscious of Will next to me on the bed, watching me, waiting. He pushes back some hair from my face, making me feel weird and better but also worse. “Are you worried about Miranda?” he says, again too gentle and understanding. This would be so much easier if he were a dick.
I shake my head no. “No, yes, a little bit, but not really.” I drop my hands and turn my face toward him, “It’s stupid.”
“What is it?”
I close my eyes again before answering. He’s looking at me in a way that feels way too much, too vulnerable. “Yourwatchwasmakingmeworriedaboutbeingrecorded,” I whisper into the air. I can’t look at him, I don’t want to see his face.
“Okay, easy fix. What else?”
He grabs his watch off the pillow next to me and walks to my bathroom. He makes a big, but welcome, show of pulling his phone out of his pocket and placing it next to the watch before closing the bathroom door. I sit up fully and take him in. His hair is disheveled and his lips are wet from kissing me. There’s still a pretty significant bulge happening in the front of his pants, and I expect irritation on his face, but instead of being annoyed, or even the slightest bit miffed, he looks worried. He sits on the edge of the bed. “What else?”
I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them. I turn my head and look away, unable to handle seeing his too understanding face. “I found out,” I take a deep breath fortifying myself before speaking again, “Carter,” I breathe. “He used to record us having sex. Pictures and videos and even voice recordings. Some of them I knew about, but most of them I didn’t and I wouldn’t know it was happening. I only found out about it when I went through his phone after I found out he was cheating on me. And now I can’t relax. I can’t do anythingwithout being paranoid that I'm being recorded. Sometimes even when I’m here by myself I’m worried that he’s watching me somehow.” I take another breath and continue, “I’m afraid of it happening again. I don’t think I could survive it twice, I’m not exaggerating.”
“I would never–”
“–I know. Will,I knowyou wouldn’t. But I didn’t think he would either. He was my boyfriend of a year, I trusted him, too.”
It feels like forever passes in a heavy silence where neither of us speaks before Will breaks the silence by clearing his throat. “Maybe we should talk about some things?”
“Okay.”
“Besides the being recorded part, is there anything else I need to know?”
My eyes focus on the corner of the room while I ponder his question, “Yes. Nothing degrading. Like no names or mean comments about my body. And nothing from behind. I don’t think I’ll be able to relax if I can’t see you.”
Will reaches out, knitting his fingers together with mine between our bodies, “Okay, none of those will be a problem for me.”
We look at each other for a few seconds and then, I don’t know why, but I start to giggle. This whole scenario is absolutely ridiculous. Will coming over to my apartment in the middle of the night after his team just lost a hockey game that I haven’t even asked about to have sex with me? I can’t explain it, but all of it makes me laugh.
Will grips my sides and bodily maneuvers me until I'm sprawled over him, knees resting on either side of his hips. He’s still extremely hard, dick flexing against me as I rest my weight over him. “What’s so funny, huh?” He pinches my sides, tickling me, forcing me to let out a rather embarrassingly high pitchedsound. I swat at him, attempting to bat his hands away, but he keeps finding other places to tickle me.
I finally get hold of one of his wrists and manage to pin his arm above his head. Granted, he’s not really fighting me too hard about it, which I can appreciate. I grip his other wrist and pin it above his head too. In this position, I’m straddling his abs more than his dick, leaning forward, dangling my tits in his face.
I let my chin drop, mingling my breath with his–we’re mere centimeters apart. He lifts his neck up, straining to get closer to me; I pull my head back, just slightly, teasing him in a way that feels very characteristic of Old Kenny.
The way he’s looking at me is making my skin prickle, making me feel bold and reckless. A small kernel of doubt creeps into the back of my head, but I remind myself that I physically watched him put his watch and phone away. Behind a closed door, I tell myself, soothing that anxious piece of me and choosing to instead focus on the man I’ve got pinned beneath me.
All the times I imagined Will and I hooking up, I never imagined him like this: a deep flush across his usually-perfect-unblemished skin, giving me pleading fuck-me eyes. “You want me to kiss you?” I taunt with a low whisper, running my lips in a featherlight touch over the side of his scruffed jaw.
He nods his head, “Yes.” He sounds tortured and desperate. Under my palms, I can feel the tension in his arms coiling, like he’s fighting against himself to remain underneath me as I press my lips to his. I uncurl my fingers from his wrists and pull my hands back, shuffling down his body, resting my hands on either side of his head in a reverse deja vu from minutes ago before taking his lips again. He grunts, banding both of his muscular arms across my back, fixing my body to his. Rolling my hips over him, he lets out a strangled sound.
His tongue swipes against mine, fingertips pressing into my skin, thumb just barely grazing the edge of my tanktop near my hip. Waiting for my go ahead.
