Ask Me Sober

Okay. Okay okay okay.

I don’t do this. For the record, if anyone’s keeping a record, I am not a person who does this. I’m a person who runs ten kilometres before breakfast so she doesn’t have to talk to anyone at the gym. I’m a person who leaves parties at half eleven and goes home to dance alone in her kitchen with headphones on, because the music’s better when nobody’s watching. I’m a person who spends an entire Friday night reading about Bronze Age burial practices and calls it a good night.

And now there’s a man in my motel room whose name I don’t know, standing between me and the door, looking at me as if I’m the only thing in Croatia worth looking at.

What am I doing?

He’s so tall. I noticed it in the bar, but in here, with the low ceiling and the cheap lamp and the one wonky chair, he takes up the whole room. Blond hair, sun-bleached almost white at the ends, falling over his forehead, a bit too long, like he’s too busy to get it cut. Pale stubble along a jaw that could cut glass. A mouth that looks like it’s always about to say something clever and has decided I’m not worth the effort yet.

And his eyes. Grey, clear, sharp. He can’t be much older than me, but he looks at me like he’s already read me cover to cover and is deciding which page to go back to.

My heart is going like a drum and bass track. He hasn’t even touched me.

He pulls the T-shirt over his head. One movement, reaching back between his shoulder blades, and it’s gone, dropped on the floor without him even glancing at where it lands.

Oh.

Oh.

I was right. I knew I’d be right. Oversized T-shirts are camouflage, and he’s been hiding all of this under one. Skin brown from the sun, smooth and bare, a chest that’s all clean, hard lines, a stomach you could do your laundry on, narrowing down into the waistband of his shorts, which sit low on his hips, the way they do in adverts, low enough to show the sharp V of muscle on either side, like an arrow pointing somewhere I’m trying very hard not to look.

Is that even allowed?

Are people allowed to just look like that?

And for one horrible second, standing there in my shorts and my old vest top, the thought arrives: what does he see?

A girl with a farmer’s tan from running. Hips that never quite fit into jeans properly. A bra I chose for comfort because I was driving all day, not for… for this. I’ve got a plaster on my heel, for God’s sake.

But whatever he sees, he steps in, hooks one finger into the waistband of my shorts, and tugs. Once.

I stumble into him.

My face lands against his bare chest, and that’s when I smell him. Something warm and spicy, like cedar and salt and sun-warmed skin, and I want to put my mouth on him, want to taste that hollow at the base of his throat, want to bite down on the hard line of his collarbone and see what sound he makes.

Oh my God.

His hand lands on my thigh before I can even finish the thought. His fingers spread wide and grip, his thumb pressing into the soft inside of my leg, high up, so close to where I’m already aching that I gasp out loud. Every nerve I own lights up at once. My knees actually buckle. He catches me without seeming to try, one arm round my waist, and walks me backwards until the bed hits the backs of my legs.

“You’ve been thinking about this since you looked at me,” he says against the top of my head.

His voice is low and rough, and I feel it more than hear it, a vibration that goes right through me and settles, hot and heavy, between my hips.

I don’t answer. I can’t.

And he doesn’t wait for one. He turns me round, one hand flat between my shoulder blades, and bends me forward onto the bed, my palms sinking into the sheet.

Wait. Wait. We’re starting here?

I barely have time to gasp before his mouth is on me. His teeth sink into the curve of it through my shorts, a sharp, deliberate bite that makes me yelp, and at the same time his thumbs hook into my waistband and drag my shorts and my underwear down together, in one go, over my hips, down my thighs, and I’m bare. Completely bare, bent over a motel bed, in the lamplight, in front of a stranger, and the one thing I can think is please don’t look too closely at the farmer’s tan…

And he doesn’t care. He clearly, obviously doesn’t care. His mouth is on my skin before I can finish the thought. Biting. Hard enough to sting, then his tongue, hot and wet, soothing the bite, then another one, lower, and another, his hands spreading wide on the backs of my thighs, pulling my shorts the rest of the way off and tossing them away.

Okay. Okay, he likes it.

I’m shaking already. It’s been about forty seconds.

He pushes me further up the bed, eases my thighs apart with his hands, and his mouth follows. The backs of my legs first, then the soft, secret skin on the insides, where nobody ever goes. His stubble is rough, his teeth grazing, biting, sucking hard enough to leave marks, and every single bite shoots straight through me to exactly where I’m aching for him. I can feel how wet I am. I can feel the air on me. I want his mouth there so badly I could cry.

“So soft here,” he says against my skin, his breath hot on the inside of my thigh, and then he stops teasing.

His mouth moves higher, and he puts it right between my legs, his tongue flat and sure against me, and I stop being able to think anything at all.

I thought a man who sat in a bar that still and that quiet would take his time. Instead he’s fast and sure and absolutely, ruthlessly precise, as if he’s been studying me for years and knows exactly where I’ll break. His tongue circles my clit, then presses hard, then flicks light and fast, and I don’t know which one I want more. His hands hold my hips still when I try to move. His mouth doesn’t let up for one second.

I’m gripping the sheet with both fists and making noises I’ve never made in my life, and I can’t stop, I don’t want to stop, I’m climbing so fast it frightens me, heat pooling low and tight, every muscle in my body drawing in, his tongue working me in steady, relentless strokes, I’m right there,

I’m right there,

yes,

yes,

yes…

What?

He pulls back. His hands flat and still on my hips, his breath hot on my wet skin, while I lie there trembling, gasping, my whole body screaming at him.

“Patience,” he says.

Patience? PATIENCE?

I could kill him!

He turns me over onto my back. Kisses his way up my stomach, slow and deliberate, his mouth hot, his stubble scratching. He pushes my vest up and off over my head. My bra goes next, unhooked with one hand, which is frankly showing off, and for one second I want to cover myself, because I’m small, I’ve always been small, and he’s looking…

And then his mouth is on my breast, hot and hungry, his tongue circling my nipple before he sucks it into his mouth, and I arch off the bed so hard I nearly headbutt him, and I don’t care about small any more. I don’t care about anything. His teeth graze the sensitive peak and I cry out, my hands in his hair, pulling him closer, and he moves to the other breast, giving it the same attention, sucking and biting until I’m writhing beneath him.

I reach for the waistband of his shorts. I want to touch him. I want to feel the weight of him in my hand, want to know if he’s as hard as I think he is, want to taste him the way he’s tasted me.

He catches my wrist. Pins it gently to the bed beside my head.

“Not yet,” he says against my breast, and moves down again.

He moves down again, fast, his shoulders pushing my thighs apart, and his mouth is back where it was, and his fingers are there too now, one sliding inside me, then two, curling up to find the spot that makes my hips jerk off the bed, and it’s worse, so much worse, because now my body knows exactly what he can do. His tongue works my clit while his fingers move inside me, slow and deep, then faster, and I’m climbing again, harder this time, my thighs shaking. He looks up at me the whole time, those grey eyes watching. Every hitch of my breath, every roll of my hips, every time my fingers twist in his hair, I see him register it.

He’s reading me. He’s actually reading me, like a map.

Right at the edge, right as I start to tip, his fingers pressing deep, his mouth relentless, yes, oh God, yes, don’t stop, don’t…

No. No, no, no, what are you doing?

He stops again. His fingers still inside me, his mouth hovering just above where I need it, and I want to scream.

He comes up over me, braced on his arms, his mouth at my ear, his fingers still buried in me but not moving.

“Breathe,” he murmurs. “You keep forgetting.”

I tell him exactly where he can put his breathing advice. He laughs, low and surprised, as if it’s escaped without permission, and I feel it right through his chest into mine.

Oh, that’s not fair. That laugh is not fair. It’s the most dangerous sound I’ve ever heard.

The third time I’m begging. Shamelessly. I don’t recognise my own voice. His mouth on me again, his tongue circling and pressing, his fingers inside me, three now, stretching me, moving faster, my heels digging into the mattress, my whole body pulled tight as a guitar string, sweat running down my ribs, and he doesn’t miss a single beat. His free hand slides up to my breast, pinching my nipple, and that’s it, that’s what tips me over, I’m there, I’m finally, finally, yes, please,

please, yes…

What? WHAT?

And he stops.

He pulls his fingers out. Sits back on his heels.

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. He’s kneeling between my legs, chest rising and falling, skin shining with sweat in the lamplight, his mouth wet with me, his hair a mess where I’ve been pulling it. And he’s looking at me like I’m a problem he hadn’t planned for.

For one long, stupid second I think it’s still the game, and I reach for him. For the hard line pressing against his shorts, because I can see it, I can see how much he wants this.

He catches my hand. Kisses my knuckles, light, almost polite.

“You’re very good at that,” he says. My words from the bar, handed back to me.

Then he gets up.

What.

No, seriously. What?

I watch him pick up his T-shirt and pull it back on, and all of that disappears under white cotton like a magic trick in reverse. He finds his shoes. Sits on the edge of the bed to tie them. Double knots. Double knots! Doesn’t look at me once.

“You’re leaving,” I say. My voice comes out wrecked and an octave too high. Brilliant. Very dignified.

He stops in the doorway. His hand is tight on the frame.

“I don’t do this,” he says.

And he goes.