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“What do you think everyone else is doing right now?”
Charlie traces his fingertip along my bicep as he speaks, his voice soft and sultry enough to break me away from where I’ve been staring at the ceiling. I have been singularly focussed on the spot just beside my fairy lights, where the negative space burnt into my retinas by the bright bulbs appears like a ghost on the plaster. I can’t look at anything else because it will distract me from every other sense, and I’m clinging to them all right now.
The feel of his warm, bare skin against mine.
The peppery scent of his shower gel.
The sound of moans when he arched underneath me and threw his head back against the pillow.
The overly-sweet taste of the slushie we shared earlier. Still on his tongue as I licked into him.
If I distract myself with anything other than those images then they might fade before I’m ready. I need to commit them to memory forever. I need to remember this forever.
Then my brain catches up with his tone of voice and realises that he’s actually asked a question and may well be expecting a response.
“Hmm?”
He rolls his eyes as soon as I look at him, instantly spotting that I have been drifting off again.
“I said ‘I wonder what everyone else is doing right now,’” he repeats, thwacking me very gently on the chest. It’s not my fault that I’m daydreamy; I have been changed. Completely and wholly transformed into a different person than who I was an hour ago.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but that’s how it feels.
Charlie has one leg slung over my waist – the tiny movement of his thigh as he shuffles closer making it very obvious to my brain that we are both naked – and his head is tucked into the space beside my shoulder on the pillow. The combination of the warmth of him and the weight of his limbs draped over me is almost lulling me to sleep. I could stay here forever.
There’s a trail of chaos next to the bed that we will need to deal with eventually. Our clothes discarded around the floor; a haphazard pile of wet wipes that I definitely need to throw away before we go to sleep; a condom wrapper presumably glinting in the low light.
Three, actually. Turns out it’s very different putting one on a dick than on a cucumber. Particularly when you’re giggling and kissing and pretty much failing to pay proper attention to anything other than the need of one another. There was a terrible moment earlier when I thought that I had made Charlie laugh so hard at my incompetence he would give up on the entire endeavour. Then, he encircled my wrist in his hand, kissed me softly and finished rolling the condom on for me. It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen.
Shit, what did he ask me again?
Oh, yeah.
What is everyone doing right now?
We left them all at the fair. Didn’t even say goodbye. One minute we were dancing – badly, in my case – and the next Charlie was nuzzling into my neck and suggesting we get the hell out of dodge. I bet Tao is seething that we disappeared without a word. But I’d just missed him so much – and he looked so good on stage – that there didn’t seem much point in hanging around. We’d only end up wasting time on long drawn out farewells as we made our way around the entire group. Better they figure out what we had planned when we weren’t there for them to mock us.
Then we came back home and had giggly, clumsy sex. There were too many elbows involved, and I’m pretty sure that at one point I nearly squashed him, but neither of us stopped grinning. Not even for a moment. I was expecting it to feel good, obviously, but I don’t think I anticipated that it could be so much fun.
He trails a fingertip down my chest; over the swell of my pec and then tripping across each rib until he’s tickling the sensitive skin at my hip. Each inch wipes every thought from my head until I’m struggling to formulate a single one. All I know is that the rest of the world could disappear and it would take me an age to realise. I could open my curtains right now and see nothing but black – a burnt out husk of a world – and still crawl back into bed with him.
“I—” He jolts slightly when I speak, as if he’s forgotten I could form words at all. I grip him tight. “I don’t really care about anything else right now.”
He shifts so that his chin is brushing my shoulder and I can look into his eyes if I really crane my neck. I can’t get over the smooth plain of his chest – the fact that I can just run my hands all over him and have him be completely okay with it. He’s here, he’s mine and he trusts me enough to be vulnerable.
“Me either,” he breathes. The way we have curled up in my bed reminds me of that first time we really cuddled – laid out on a big towel on the beach. Our first proper date. I had the same sense of excitement as I do now; the realising that this moment is the start of my life tipping over into something different, something extraordinary. It’ll take something as unstoppable as the tide lapping at our feet to make me break away.
“Char?” I whisper, when his breathing has evened out and it sounds like he might fall asleep. He shifts, lazily, on my chest and I grab the hand that comes up to swipe his face. The flesh at the heel of his palm gives when I nip it with my teeth. “Fancy round two?”