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It’s almost arousing. I’m aware of her elbow against my ribs, her chin against my shoulder, our bodies meeting in not-quite-comfortable angles.
The walls are thin and the bed squeaks every time we arrange ourselves. Hence the almost qualifying my arousal; I’m all too aware of the noise anything else would generate. They can hear us.
And by they, I mean my dad.
Prude is…maybe not the right word for my dad. But he is the most intensely private person I know. Which nobody would believe, seeing as how we seemingly serve up our family life to the entire world. But affection is not something he manages well in public.
He would never say anything. But I can’t imagine how he’d react to being kept awake by a distinct, rhythmic squeaking.
“I did mention this, didn’t I? About my dad?” I can smell her hair. “Insults are how he expresses affection.”
“My mom is…” She pauses, considering. “Actually, come to think of it, my mom is not so different. She’s not like your dad, but…”
“She teases you. Relentlessly.” I slide a hand around her hip. “I know. Why do you think you and I get along so well? I knew we would the day you first insulted me.”
Tina considers this. “I never thought of it that way. After our first little dust up, I figured you’d think I was a complete bitch.”
“Instead,” I say with a smile she can’t see, “I was wired to think you were flirting. It makes me physically uncomfortable if people are straight-up nice to me. I assume they’re hiding something.”
She shifts her weight. The bed squeaks again, and I wince. She straddles me and the springs protest politely. “So I definitely shouldn’t be nice to you right now.”
My heart thumps. My body reacts, my muscles tensing, my cock going from potentially interested to actually interested despite the thin walls and the noisy boxspring.
My breath stutters in. “I do feel physically uncomfortable, yes. And you should definitely not stop.”
We’re talking in whispers. She leans down and kisses me. Her body presses against mine, hip to hip, chest to breast. I slide a hand under the soft shirt she’s wearing.
I love making her breath catch. Love it when she exhales long and slow, love it when her hands bracket my face. I love it when she kisses me harder. When her hips push against mine, pressing against my dick.
I don’t love it when the boxspring lets out one telltale scritch, then another.
The third time it happens, I put my hand over her mouth.
“Tina, I’m sorry. Every time the bed squeaks, I think of my dad. Out there. You know he can hear everything, right?”
She laughs softly. “Do one risky thing, right?”
“Not this one.” I grimace. “It’s…kind of a fucking buzzkill.”
She pushes up onto her forearms and looks at me. In the dim light, I see only the curtain of her hair. I feel the ends brush my chest. Yeah, I’m fucking interested.
“What if I promised you no squeaks?” she asks.
I look back at her. “I’m in.”
“But you’d have to be quiet.” She sets a finger on my bare chest, drawing a line down it. “Really quiet. I’m not sure you could do that.”
Her finger continues its journey down my abs. My navel. My body reacts.
“Hey,” I whisper. “I’ve been giving interviews since I was six. You would not believe how quiet I can be when it’s important.”
She hooks her index finger in the band of my boxers. “You’re on.”
There’s one last squeak as she rearranges herself. She shimmies down my body. Slides my boxers down my hips.
I feel her breath against the head of my penis, then her mouth against my sensitive skin. She sucks me in, and it’s damned good.
We’ve been together eleven months, and that’s enough time for her to have learned me. She knows that I have that sensitive area right there, right on the underside of my dick, right where the loose foreskin pulls. She knows I like it when she lets her nails scratch me just a little. She knows exactly what tempo I prefer, knows where to put her hands.
I let my thoughts dissolve into the pleasure of the moment. I give myself up to the warm pressure of her mouth, give myself over to the slide of her tongue, the feel of her fingers on my balls.
I can tell she’s trying to get me to make noise. To break, just a little bit.
I don’t.
Silence is something I learned early, and to call it second nature is probably an understatement. It’s almost my first nature. I can retreat into it until words have no meaning. Until noise is unnecessary. Until there’s nothing at the core of me but fire and want and love and a hint of bitter nostalgia.
I squeeze her shoulder to let her know when I’m about to come. She glances up at my face, but she doesn’t stop. I give everything over into one final gasp.
When I’m finished, I’m breathing hard.
I didn’t make a noise.
She looks up at me. “That was incredible,” she breathes. “You were silent.”
I sit up, set my finger on her lips, and shake my head.
“It was—”
I cover her mouth with one hand and nudge her down with my shoulder.
Your turn.
I don’t say those words, but she understands them. Enough that she rearranges herself with a single drawn-out complaint from the bed. Enough that I kneel on the floor in front of her and spread her legs.
She’s wet.
She’s also not as quiet as I am. She can’t help but gasp. She lets out a little noise when I slide a finger inside her. She inhales when I set my mouth to her. She tastes good—a little salty, a little sweet—and it doesn’t take long.
She lets out a choked noise when I finally get her off.
After, we snuggle together. We seem to have fewer hard edges; we fit together better. Her head rests against my shoulder.
“I love you,” she whispers.
I pull her closer. “Love you, too.”
“Your dad gave me a hundred dollars.”
This is a bit of a non sequitur, and sleep is rapidly pulling me down.
“Mmm?”
“In the red envelope. I was afraid, you know. That he might make me feel uncomfortable. But that was appropriate. Thanks for talking to him about it.”
It had not occurred to me that this was even a thing I should think about. “I didn’t.”
“What, you mean he was appropriate on his own? Will wonders never cease.”
There are a dozen things I could say to that.
Navigating our parents…
Well, Dad managed that better than I could have imagined. Forced politeness would have lasted through one, maybe two, encounters.
Navigating what Tina and I have—a relationship where she doesn’t want her life swallowed in the larger course of mine—is an area where my dad has vastly more experience than I do.
But my dad is the most intensely private person I have ever met. It’s not like we talk about this shit. We don’t even think about it.
“Tina,” I finally say, “he’s an asshole. That doesn’t make him inconsiderate.”
“No.” This word comes out as a stretched-out syllable. “I guess it doesn’t. He’s actually not terrible.”
“He grows on you.”
“Go to sleep.” She snuggles against me. “I guess maybe it’s the year of the crocodile after all.”
“Nah.” I hold her close. “No superstitions. It’s just us. It’s the year of us.”
And on that note, we drift off to sleep.
Note
If you’re wondering what this means for Adam Reynolds: Yes, he’s getting a story. I don’t call it a book. It’s a five-part behemoth that, collectively, is longer than some of the actual multi-book series that I have written.
The Year of the Crocodile falls right smack dab in the middle of his story—about halfway through, right in the middle of part three.
If you know who Adam is writing to…well, now
you know why it’s taking me time to fix things. You also—maybe—might want just a hint of what is coming.
For those of you who want to know, I’ve created a page with a few very minor notes that some people might consider spoilers. You can find them here:
