“Move to the right,” she says. “And lean forward a little.”
I do what she says, shifting to the right, and once I do, I know exactly why she’s asked. It’s a couple of degrees warmer here, a beam from the setting sun shining in from the transom above the bed, heating my back and whitening out the denim on my thighs. When I lean forward, curving my spine, her eyes narrow, and she shakes her head, stepping forward, and I have to curl my fingers into fists to keep from reaching out for her, from running my hands up the sides of her thighs, all that gorgeous, soft skin I felt the other night.
She sets her hands on my forearms, tugging slightly, and nothing in my body resists her. I’ll let her do whatever she wants. “Elbows on your knees,” she says, the same instruction I gave her out in the park. “Clasp your hands together, loose. Like that.” She steps back again, and my whole body heats—not from the beam of light, but from her eyes on me. Making sense of me. “That’s good. Stay there.”
She turns away, reaches into her bag, her brow furrowed deep, her lips pursed. When her hand emerges, she’s holding an old baseball cap, faded from navy, the bill curled so aggressively that it’d have to entirely hide the eyes of anyone wearing it. There’s a small lowercasegon the lower right side, which I spot when she turns it over in her hands, once,and then again.
“You don’t believe in luck, still?”
I shake my head no. I’m caught in time on this bed, waiting for herto come to me.
She steps forward, sets the hat on the bed next to me, and I don’t think I imagine the way her hand shakes a little. “Bad luck, putting a hat on the bed. So they say.”
I press my lips together. I don’t know who these “they” are, but no matter what a crock of shit I think luck is, probably this is the luckiest I’ll ever feel in my life, being in this room with her. I stay still, try to keep my breathing regular. It’ll make it easier for her to get the shot she wants,whatever it is.
“Line, shadow, shape,” she says. “That’s what the black-and-whiteassignment is.”
I tip my head forward, the barest nod. Now that she’s said it—line, shadow, shape—I can see exactly what she’s framed up in her mind. The curve of my back, the curve of that hat brim. The shadows on the bed, from all the shapes made by the disordered pillows and sheets, shapes I’m guessing now she made just for this. The V between my legs, the way my arms cross through it.
For the next ten minutes, most of the sound in the room is the shutter release on Greer’s camera, occasional murmured instructions she gives me after she’s looked down at her viewfinder, her brow lowered, her lips pursed and tucked slightly to one side. At one point, she asks me to take off my shoes and socks, and I know she’s close to getting it—that detail will matter. In black and white, my feet will look ghostly pale on this dark gray carpet; they’ll connect me to the white of the bed. It’ll look private, secret. It’ll looklike intimacy.
By the time she stills her hands and body, her camera quiet, I’m warm from the inside out—my clothes a weight on my body, my arms tense with the strain of not moving, not reaching for her. I’m half-afraid of what’ll happen if she touches me—I still don’t know yet what I’m really doing here, but I can’t help thinking that this has been the longest, tensest foreplay of my life.
“Alex,” she finally says, setting her camera beside her own bare feet. She takes a few steps, and those bare feet are nearly between mine. I let my eyes trace up and up, past where her fingers tangle again in the skirt of her dress, past where her chest rises and falls, past the bare column of her neck, slightly flushed. The smile on her lips isshy, tentative.
“I was wondering,” she says, her breath catching when I unclasp my hands, reach up to plait my fingers with hers. She spreads her arms, our hands still joined, almost as though we’re both gesturing to this quiet space around us. “I was wondering if we can have whatwe want here?”
* * * *
In the alley with Greer, I learned that she likes a little indelicacy, a little roughness. I learned that she likes when I whisper dirty things in her ear, when I grip her tight at her waist. I learned that she’ll reward me for it with a little roughness of her own, that she’ll set the edge of her teeth against my skin, that she’ll tangle her fingers in my hair like she doeswith her skirt.
But, oh,fuck. Do I have a lot more to learn. The best homework I’veever, ever had.
As soon as she asks me the question, I let go of her hands and pull her toward me, my hands on her hips. I’m partway to turning so I can roll her beneath me when she stills my shoulders with her hands and climbs into my lap, straddling me, knocking the hat from the bed. I’ve got to adjust, lifting slightly so we’re more centered on the bed and also, frankly, so that the warm space between her legs is pressed right against where I’m rock hard, desperate and hungry for her. When I do, I’m rewarded with a hum of pleasure that comes from Greer’s chest, a glorious, in stereo version of what I’d heard in the alley, since now there’s not even one part of me listening for distractions orinterruptions.
She takes control, her mouth hot and open on mine, her tongue sweeping into my mouth, and I’m worried I’ll bruise her, the way my fingertips dig into the flesh at her sides, worried I’ll tear this dress right off her body. But whenever I ease up, loosen my hold to make my shaking hands caress her more gently, she rolls her hips, somehow warning and torture and reward all at the same time. We kiss for so long in this position that my own hips seem to disconnect from my brain; they rise and fall in small, pulsing thrusts that I don’t want, not really—I want all those thrusts to be saved for when we’re out of these clothes, when I’m against her skin or inside her, when I’m not halfway to coming in my jeans like a frantic teenager.
I whisper her name between kisses, and when she pulls back I see that her lips are swollen and dark pink from this, the skin around that gorgeous mouth reddened from my stubble. There’s a strange pleasure-pain in that, seeing how I’ve marked her. I run my fingers over her chin, the small space above her top lip, concentrating on stilling my hips beneath her, and I love the way her own twist and wriggle in frustration. “Your skin here, sweetheart,” I say. “I should’ve shaved.”
She shakes her head no, leans forward again to press her mouth to mine, hard and a little frantic, and this time I do turn her; I stand from the bed with my hands supporting the backs of her thighs before I lower her down again. She likes that—her legs stay wrapped tight around me, her hands growing impatient in my hair. Her dress is bunched around her waist, and that’s it, I’m fucking done with the dress. I practically hate it now, how wrong it looks on these sheets. I pull back far enough to take the hemline of it in my hands, tugging it up, and she’s doing the same, tugging at my T-shirt, and for a minute it’s a tangle of clothes—I can’t see her skin, can’t see the view I’ve been longing for.
Greer in the twilight.
Taking off the sweet, diaphanous yellow dress reveals that Greer—sensible, shy, quiet—does not have a bra on, and I feel like someone’s short-circuited my brain as I take her in, smooth skin dotted with freckles that are abundant along her collarbone, her shoulders, but that fade into a lovely, spare smattering on her small, perfect breasts. Overall Greer’s body is short, compact, but her torso is long, the curve of her waist a delicate flare—a whole expanse of beauty for me to set my hands to, my mouth to. I bend my head, lick along the lower curve of her rib cage, and she shudders in pleasure, her pale brown nipples tightening.
“You—” she breathes out. “Um, you have chest hair.”
I lift, pressing up on my hands, staring down at her and then, briefly, in a flare of self-consciousness, atmyself. “Yes?”
“Like the perfect amount of it.” She lifts her hands, sets her palms against me, and now I’m the one shuddering in pleasure as she moves those hands up, across my shoulders, up my neck, her palms tracing the rough, thick stubble along my jaw. “All these textures. They’re so…good.”
I kiss her again, lower myself so my skin presses against hers. “Good together,” I murmur, and after that there’s a newness to this, to the way we touch each other. She unbuckles my belt; I tug her underwear down. She tucks her hand down my pants; I bend my head and lick her nipple. She moves that hand beneath my underwear, grips the hot, hard length of me; I take that nipple in my mouth and suck, feeling her hand tighten as she strokes me. When she whispers to me that she brought condoms, I nearly trip over my own feet getting out of the bed, shoving my jeans the rest of the way down as I go. I basically dump the contents of her purse on the desk, and she laughs from the bed, her head tipped back, one hand resting on her chest, the tips of her fingers gentleon her sternum.
I don’t so much come back to the bed as dive into it, heedless and half-silly, spurred on by Greer’s laugh and my own sense of lightness. I think I bump her slightly with an elbow; she makes a tinymmphat the collision, but before I have the chance to apologize she’s pulled me back on top of her, her hands and arms surprisingly strong, one of her legs wrapping around mine to get me back between hers. Her kisses are even hungrier now, her body tight with anticipation, but when I have the condom on I try to slow down. I’m suddenly as self-conscious about my size over her as I was in that moment she pointed out my chest hair—I worry I might seem looming, overpowering, too much. I pull my hips back from her slightly, slow my kisses, use the hand that’s not bracing me away from her to stroke her skin gently.We’ll go slow,I tell myself, ignoring the part of me that’s screaming to press forward,I’ll make this so slow and good for her.
“Don’t—” she says, and I stop where I am, pull my hips back further from hers, that word like ice set right against my cock until she quickly grabs ahold of my sides and pulls me back to her, my hardness sliding right against the place where she’s wettest. “Don’t takecareof me,” she finishes, her voice breathy and frustrated, and oh, hell. Fuckinghot.
“Don’t take care of you?”
