They're driving home. They're in Melantha's Jeep, the car she drove down from Evergreen to meet Erich on Santa Fe for their date. And what a weird-ass sort of date it was, but they have literally never had anything else. They've gone on a date at a fancy restaurant in D.C. where he pretended to be her brother to the man she was fucking. They've watched Netflix in his car, only they argued a lot -- including about what constitutes a couch -- and at one point it was revealed that she was wearing nothing but lingerie and then she was wearing nothing and then she was putting on his clothes and he was staring at her and, and, and. They went camping for a couple of days and that date started with Melantha losing her mind and Erich feeling alternately closer to her and completely alienated from her and they had so much sex, you guys while eating nothing but jerky and apples and water and not ever putting on clothes.
And there's this date, tonight, where she had to drive herself and she paid because he was digging for his wallet but she happened to have a bunch of tips in her pocket. They talked about nightmarish dreamscapes and they talked about one of Melantha's many deep wounds that she's mostly just been covering up, they talked about some not-at-all-nightmarish dreams that may not have really been dreams but visits from spirits, and they ran into someone who, to Melantha, just becomes less worthy of respect every time she sees her, and it's a totally weird date, which means it's not really dating anymore. All of that 'dating' stuff is usually false, opaque, performative, and a real barrier to knowing someone. When you really know someone, who drives and who pays and where you go and what you eat and what happens aren't as important as the fact that you're facing it all together.
So now they're facing this together, which is just the road back to Evergreen, and they've been talking a little about moving the tinyhouse back to the wilderness as the weather stabilizes for the warm season. Melantha brought that up. Melantha likes being away from society. She doesn't mind long walks. She has a car for late nights if she really needs it. She likes being out in nature with only nature itself, and often her two best-best friends. That's enough. That's fine for her.
She keeps looking at Erich as she drives. She decided against griping about Lola, that's pointless. Or talking more about the dreams, cuz that's upsetting. Or talking more about her tribe and Erich's dream, because she needs to bury that in the deepdark soil of her soul for a while, water it, nurture it, and see what it sprouts. Spring is coming. She'll figure out what may grow there.
But somewhere along the way, between highway and town, she pulls off the main road. Which is not the way home.
ErichErich likes these nighttime car rides. He always has -- since as long as he can remember. He liked it as a kid, sitting in the back seat with his sister. He liked it as a boy, riding out to the Sept where he'd be trained. He liked it all the those nights he drove around in that Mustang of his, one coast to the other, and he especially liked it when he and Charlotte drove all over the country, and often deep into the evenings.
He likes it now. He is relaxed and quiet and happy in the passenger's seat, watching the shadows of trees and lightposts and buildings and the sort go by outside. Denver isn't one of those cities that smothers the land, that sits atop it and covers it utterly and chokes the green life out of it. Even in the center of the city there's life. Flora and fauna both -- trees and grasses and flowers and birds and raccoons and sometimes, if you're lucky, an urban fox or two.
As they drive out the presence of nature -- of Gaia, if you're so inclined -- becomes so much stronger. The buildings thin out. The city lights dim. A mile up in the air, the sky is so very clear. So many stars. Erich wishes they had a sunroof, and then he wonders just how difficult it would be to make one themselves.
Then he notices: they are not on the main road anymore. They are on a small, dark road, and it is not the way home. Erich's curiosity piques. He looks over at Melantha. "Where are we going?"
MelanthaShe lowers her voice to a sepulchural groan. "To your doom."
ErichErich promptly makes an overblown face of dismay.
MelanthaMelantha, who can only see him out of the corner of her eye, breaks into a broad grin. She glances at him, but not for long, since she has to drive and this road is not peppered with lights and the lightscape of Evergreen is so much less than Denver.
"I just want to keep... you know. Being on a date. For a while."
ErichShe calls it a date. And he knows it is a silly, outdated, ridiculous term, that it and/or its connotations probably degrade women in some way, that it likely degrades men as well, that given a chance Melantha would tell him exactly why dates are silly, outdated, ridiculous and unnecessary, but --
-- he's happy when she calls it a date. He grins when she says she wants to keep being on a date for a while.
"Okay," he says. No complaints there. "We'll keep being on a date. Aw, I should've brought a laptop. Camping outside Starbucks was one of my favorite dates ever."
MelanthaShe smiles while he says okay, when he talks about laptops and Starbucks and camping outside. "Yeah, maybe because that was the first time you saw me naked."
Melantha's teasing him. She's still driving, but she takes another turn, onto an even more lonely road. This one doesn't even have proper pavement.
Erich"It was -- " here they turn off the pavement, and Erich reaches up thoughtlessly to grip the grab-bar, " -- quite a memorable sight, just fyi."
MelanthaIt's bumpy, but as it turns out, Melantha's a pretty good driver. Cautious. Attentive. Assertive, when they're in traffic. She smirks sidelong at him. "Go on," she says, with invitation.
ErichJust like that Erich flushes. He's quiet for a little bit, and then -- "Um. I... don't really know how to go on. I'm not very good at, like... words. Wording."
MelanthaJust like that, she turns it on him. A throwaway comment, something she already knows, has always known: heterosexual men like looking at naked women, like looking at this woman when she's naked in particular. It doesn't mean much to her; it doesn't stick. But instead of arguing with him or deflecting or going quiet or anything, she twists the light back on him.
Tell her more. Tell her more about looking at her naked in the rearview mirror, then turning around and looking at her. Tell her more about why he did that, why he didn't look away, why he didn't sneak in the mirror, what he thought, what he was feeling, because they were just going to watch a movie, right? They weren't a couple, they weren't going to be a couple, she didn't show up in lingerie to have sex with him by any means, she was wearing it because she'd just been with that other guy. She didn't ask him about it then. She just noticed him, and smiled a little, and truth be told she was a different person then, she probably wouldn't react the same now at all.
Melantha reaches over and touches his hand, the car slowing. She squeezes his hand, then retracts her own, and she's pulling off the road, off to the side, where there's a tree-lined shoulder and a still-heavy moon overhead but no other lights. The car slows, and slows, and rolls to a stop. Melantha puts it in park and pulls up the parking brake but doesn't turn off the engine yet. She does kill the lights. She looks over at him.
"Okay," she says, simply enough, and then unbuckles her seat belt. "You stay here," she adds, as she's climbing between the seats and into the back.
ErichWhich, to be frank, leaves Erich sort of confused. He watches her unbuckle the seatbelt. He twists to watch her start climbing into the back, and when she's most of the way there and he's still just left with okay and you stay here, he speaks up.
"Hey." Quiet-like. "Did that -- I mean, did I offend you just now? 'Cause I couldn't really tell if you were telling me to go on to flirt, or make a point, or ... what."
MelanthaMelantha has climbed into the back. She's rustling around back there, and when he looks back she's unrolling her bedroll on top of the back seat, which pretty much stays folded down most of the time anyway. She looks up at him with this gentle smile, soft smile, hair falling around her cheeks in the dark.
"No. You didn't offend me." The bag and the padding are rolled up together, so after she's untied them she just has to roll them out and unfold and lay it out. "It was sort of a 'line' thing. I'm starting to learn that stuff that sounds like a line isn't, really, with you. And I don't mean 'line' like something manipulative and all that, just 'a line' like it's something that isn't really totally genuine and in the moment." She is thoughtful now, looking down, working on a knot that is keeping one corner rolled up. "Sometimes it sort of is, because maybe you don't know what else to say? But I'm learning to be less sensitive about that, too."
Melantha spreads the sleeping bag, rustling and noisy. She twists, reaching for one of the 3.99 Ikea pillows kept back here, fluffing it between her hands. She is looking at Erich again.
"So it was sort of flirting. But not flirting-flirting. I want to know what you were thinking and feeling and what you remember and why you acted the way you did. It was a long time ago now. We never talked about it." She smiles, lopsided, a small smirk. "The flirting part was asking you talk about me. Naked. Because I think talking about it would turn you on. And listening to it would turn me on."
The bed made, Melantha gets up on her knees, though her head is ducked to account for the ceiling of the car. She reaches for the tab of her hoodie's zipper, drawing it slowly downward.
ErichIt's not that she makes him self-conscious, just like it's never that he makes her cry. It's just ... related. Sort of. He's a little self-conscious now.
"I don't really know how to talk about it," he admits. "I mean. I feel like I'd just end up saying and your boobs were really purty, hurrhurr. So that's kinda what I meant. I'm not very good at the words.
"I can try to tell you what I was thinking and feeling and stuff, though. Well, actually. I wasn't really thinking? You were climbing into the back to change and like, LINGERIE. And I just wanted to look. I don't know. I can't really ... explain that beyond you're really hot and you were getting naked and I wanted to look. It wasn't really like I'd thought of you as girlfriend material at the time? Actually I don't remember what I thought. But it wasn't like that was the moment I started being attracted to you, or that wasn't the moment, or ... it wasn't an on/off switch. I'm pretty sure we still fought after that, and there were definitely times I was too pissed at you to be attracted to you.
"I wanted to look, though." He circles back to this. And meanwhile she's undoing her hoodie and he has a notion where this might be going so he's talking a little quicker now, nervous, not sure why he's nervous, but nervous. "I kinda caught myself sneaking a peek in the mirror. And then I felt bad. So I decided to just turn around and look rather than pretending I didn't. So then at least you'd know I was looking? I don't know why that seemed better to me."
Beat.
"Are you taking your clothes off?" Sudden suspicion: "What are you wearing under that!"
MelanthaErich is very self conscious. And he doesn't want to be hurr hurr about her boobs. She smiles at that. "It's okay," she interjects, and she means it.
And the rest must be okay, too. Because as he's telling her that he just wanted to look, because she's hot and he wanted to look. Even if sometimes, early on, she made him too pissed off to even be attracted to her. It has to be okay, because Melantha just nods to that.
"Me, too." About him, of course. There were times she was way too angry with him to be attracted. She almost sort of hated him sometimes. But here they are.
It has to be okay, too, because she's unzipping her hoodie, and he probably never gets to the last question completely because lo, she is wearing a tank top under it. So she went back to the tinyhouse and changed a bit, and washed up a bit and that's why she didn't smell like a grease trap and stale beer or staler sweat. The tank top is dark blue. She shrugs out of the hoodie, but her eyes and her attention are on him, softening.
"I'm glad you didn't just sneak," she tells him. "Like if I was going to tell you to stop looking at me, you weren't going to pitch a fit that you weren't, that I was paranoid. You were honest about it. And yeah, I'm taking my clothes off."
Melantha is unfastening her belt. Here's the truth: she actually gained a decent amount of weight when she first came to Denver. Never shaved, ate bacon burgers and fries, gave absolutely no fucks. It's coming off, simply because she's not doing any of that anymore. She shaves because she likes it. She eats healthier because they all do, really, and because she feels better. She gives a fuck, though of a different kind than the bikini-wax-brunette-Barbie version of her did. So now her jeans have to be belted, and now they are being unbelted, while she is looking at him. The idling car rumbles.
"You want to know why?"
ErichHe grins a little, half-sheepish, half-grins. She tells him it's okay. She shows him it's okay, because she isn't getting angry, she isn't stopping with the taking-clothes-off business. She's
playing with him a little, he thinks. Erich breathes a laugh out. "I have some guesses."
MelanthaShe shakes her head. "I bet you're wrong," she tells him, not unkindly, as she unfastens the button of her jeans. "You can turn the car off."
Erich"I bet I'm not," he volleys back, grinning now, reaching over the center divide to kill the engine. "I'm a pretty good guesser. Can I come back there yet?"
Melantha"What's your guess?" Melantha parries, without answering his question. "You get three."
Erich"Um." Erich gets this look on his face: this hah, I am not gonna need three guesses look. "We're going to have sex."
MelanthaHer eyebrows flick. "Are we?"
The zipper of her jeans goes down. Slowly.
ErichErich
is distracted. He bites his lip. He watches her take down the zipper on her jeans.
"I... think so?"
MelanthaMelantha hooks her thumbs in the waist of her jeans in the dark. She starts to slide them down, off her hips, and her panties are black. "But why?"
Erich"'Cause." By this point, Erich is undoing his seatbelt. He's twisting around in the seat and clambering up on the seats and now he's straddling the center divide with one knee in each bucket-seat, his forearms braced on the seatbacks. "It's really fun and it feels amazing."
MelanthaHer grin back at him is lopsided again. "Yeah," she concedes, "but --"
Leaning back, she moves to her hips, her ass, toeing her shoes off and sliding her jeans down, pushing them to her knees and then working them off with pronounced slides of her legs together, back and forth. You know, unless he decides to grab the denim and pull.
"-- why tonight, why now."
ErichHe doesn't grab the denim and pull. He's not sure how fast she wants to go, how fast she wants her clothes off, all that. So he keeps his hands to himself: which is to say, he whisks his shirt off his head and balls it up and tosses it away somewhere.
"'Cause," this is his answer for everything. "You like me and I like you and also we love each other."
MelanthaNo one ever told Erich, from an actually disturbing young age, how pretty he is, or how appealing. No one started telling him that when he was an adult and it made sense for people to outright tell him what they like about him. Even the girls he has dallied with were probably more wary of him than anything else, at least enough to distract them from telling him oh baby you're so hot. As he's told Melantha time and time again, he's never had much of a social life. He says this about all Ahrouns ever, but he is really talking about his own experience. It's possible that no one's ever really laid him out and licked him from thigh to throat, whispering in his ear how he makes them feel or how he looks or how he is, what he is, and all of it delicious, decadent. It's just as possible that no one's ever done that with him as it is certain that the only people who have done that with Melantha in a not-gross, not-kinda-rapey way were other women, other Furies.
This is why it's so okay with her that he's self-conscious, and he's 'not good at words' or 'wording' and he's afraid of how it'll sound if he starts talking to her about looking at her naked, how it made him feel, what he thought of her. It's okay, because she can't promise that it wouldn't make her uncomfortable if they were the wrong words, if he accidentally stepped on a land mine that neither of them knew was there. And it's okay if he just doesn't really know how to, bluntly put, talk dirty about sex. Or be subtle about it. Just: we are gonna have sex because it's fun and feels amazing and because they like each other and love each other and YAY.
This stuff, these things that come so naturally to him, blunt and happy and eager, are endearing to her. But she's said now, at least: talking about sex, about looking at each other naked in the dark, could turn her on. Might turn him on, too. Just so it's out there. Just so he knows, even though if he's simply not Good At Words,
it's okay.
"I do," she answers to that, looking at his body. Which he doesn't reveal slowly, tantalizingly, as she does. He whips that shirt off and tosses it aside like he doesn't think of his body as something that might turn her on. She tries to remember him in her hotel room at the Hay-Adams, how and where she kissed him, how the slightest trace of her tongue made him suddenly hard as a rock beneath her, how he didn't seem aware that his body could even feel that sort of thing, that being licked or kissed in that spot could be a turn-on. She wonders to herself, because she nearly never stops thinking, if maybe on Moving Day he thought that she kept hugging him and pressing up against him when he took his shirt off, flexing and lifting and sweating, just to keep up the pretense.
"But you're kinda wrong," Melantha adds, because of course he is.
She is in socks, tank top, panties, leaning back on her elbows, shoulders up, watching him. "It's because you're smart," she says, quiet but earnest, her eyes locked to his. Well, not locked so much: they track down, look him over. "Smarter than you think. I think you have an intellect you've never developed. I don't know why -- maybe it started out because you couldn't keep going to school when your rage started setting in, and then after your Rite, maybe you became afraid of turning shrewd and calculating and dishonest if you ever honed your mind to be as sharp as it could be." Her eyes lift slowly back to his. "You thought of the same thing that Tamsin did. And she's a Galliard, and the way some people talk, it's the Galliards and Theurges and everyone else who's supposed to come up with good ideas outside of battle strategy and you're just supposed to throw yourself at bad guys and only use your brain to kill them faster. But you thought of it independently."
Melantha decides to wiggle out of her socks. "And because you're kind to me. You may get frustrated sometimes but you're patient once you start to understand. And even when you don't understand, you try to be kind."
And then she reaches down, crossing her arms, pulling her tank top upward and off. Slowly. And she arches her back so the fabric rucks up over her shoulderblades, doesn't get caught in her hair, is peeled away and dropped behind her, somewhere atop the sleeping bag towards the back door of the Jeep. But then she's sitting up, slowly, hair falling around her shoulders again, naked but for those little black panties, coming towards him on her knees, til the tops of her thighs touch the tops of his thighs through his jeans, and til their abdomens and their chests are centimeters -- less -- apart.
Melantha is looking up at him.
"I want to date you, and pull over with you, and take off my clothes," she whispers, "and have sex," close, warm, that, the word curling against his jawline, "because I like you, and I love you. And I like you, and I love you, because you are shrewd."
With that, she lays a soft kiss on his jaw. "And kind," with another at the corner of his mouth.
"And because looking at you when you have your shirt off turns me on," Melantha goes on, still in that murmur fuzzed at the edges, lowering her head slightly to flick her tongue across his neck. Her hand has lifted slightly, slowly, moving to touch him through the denim, feeling him through the rough fabric. "This turns me on," she whispers, with a firm caress.
ErichOh, now she's done it. Now she's done it and she can tell: she has moved him, she has touched him on a deep and emotional level, and she can tell because he's looking at her the way he does sometimes, adoring and sort of lost, almost. She is serious, and she is so suddenly serious that he hardly knows how to react, especially when she starts telling him that what she likes about him
is his intelligence and his kindness, which are probably things no one has ever really praised him for before. Well; maybe the kindness. Not the intelligence, though. Which isn't exactly the world's fault: after all, Erich does things like throw cinder blocks and hammers and never ever attempts anything even remotely -- well. Shrewd. On his periodic table, the element of surprise does not exist.
She calls him smart, though. Smarter than he thinks. She points it out to him: look, you had the same idea as a Galliard. Smart. And he gets this little smile, this little half-smile like he doesn't even know what to do with himself or his gratitude, and meanwhile
she is laying herself out, she is wiggling out of her socks, he is wiggling into the back seat to be closer to her and she
is
pulling her shirt off. By that point he's about ready to crawl over her, but she sits up, and he waits for her, and she comes close to him. His hands find her waist. There's something familiar about his touch now, the way his hands slide over her skin. She wants, she likes, she loves. He closes his eyes and shivers when she starts to kiss him, though little kisses at his jaw, at the corner of his mouth.
His physical traits are the last things she praises. That's different, too. Not many people -- well, no one other than Melantha, really -- has really called him good-looking or handsome or cute, though he is all of those things: symmetrical and well-made in that cornfields-and-american-beef way. A few people have, however, praised his strength and his savagery, so in a way to be lauded for something his body is or can do is ...
well. It's nice. But it's also nice that this comes last, for once.
He laughs a little at it, too. He laughs and it's sort of this pleased, embarrassed laugh, and then she licks him. And then she touches him. And then all the thoughts sort of fly right out of his head and he wraps his arms around her, gives her a squeezing little lift that brings her right up against him, right up on his lap. "I'm gonna flop down now, okay," he mutters, and this is about all the warning she gets before
he does exactly as he says and flops them down onto that sleeping bag of hers. And those $3.99 Ikea pillows.
MelanthaErich says nothing to all of that but that he is gonna flop down. Melantha is stroking him through his jeans, pressing herself closer and nearer to him until her breasts are touching his chest while her hand is between his legs and her mouth is on his neck, kissing him firm and warm and wet. He is touching her waist, feeling her slender strength and her smooth skin and he's touched, he's almost overcome, he's so endeared, but he's just gonna flop down now okay
half a second, if that, before he's doing it. They're tumbling back, and it's not exactly the softest landing but it's a softer landing than it would be outside.
Melantha doesn't stop kissing him. She lifts her hips against him as he falls to her, replacing the stroking of her hand with the gentle rubbing of her hips. She's kissing his mouth now, wrapping one of her long legs around him, giving a soft encouraging moan into his mouth.
ErichHe likes her legs around him. Of course he likes that, who wouldn't. He likes it but one must admit it also poses a unique challenge: get your pants off with your girlfriend wrapped all over you. He rises to the occasion, pun entirely unintended: managing to get a hand down there to undo his button, his fly, wiggling his jeans down mostly by some semi-clever action down by his feet.
And all the while she's kissing him, and he's kissing her, and he's sort of rolling over atop her and that breaks the kiss simply due to mechanical complications. Her hair spreads over the $3.99 pillow. He looks at her for a moment, enchanted, and then kisses her again,
moaning into it,
finding her soft slender hand and guiding it right back to where it was. His hand curls around a fistful of sleeping bag when she touches him. He shivers; it has nothing to do with the temperature.
MelanthaWell, he's not about to tell her to unwrap, to give him a second. Melantha's sexuality is a moving target on the best of days; he is not going to mess that up by telling her to wait, wait, hold on, okay, my zipper's stuck, um.
Thankfully, she is in fact his girlfriend. She wants his pants off almost as badly as he does. We say almost because he doesn't need to take his pants off to pleasure her. He reaches down and she loosens a bit, lets him go a little, opening her eyes to look at his chest under her hands, his body against her body. He doesn't have to guide her back to him. She's there again, stroking him now through thin, thin cotton, tracing the shape of him through his boxers. Boxer-briefs. Whatever he's wearing.
Melantha puts her mouth to his ear, suckling on his lobe. "Do you want me to take these off of you?" she whispers to him, while he's clutching at their... bedding.
ErichBoxers. Boxers boxers boxers, that is all Erich wears. Well, no. He has a couple pairs of embarrassing tightie-whities that he really tries not to wear but sometimes they're just the only pair left, okay. Not tonight, though. Tonight it is boxers. Old ones, quite possibly with tattered hems and fraying waistbands that don't hold up very well anymore, so thin that the touch of her hand,
the heat of her palm,
seems to sear right down to his skin. He makes this noise. She asks him a question that he's sure she's asking just so she can laugh at how scrambled his brain is right now. "Yes," he manages, and even he couldn't say if it was an answer or just the word that comes to mind because she is touching his cock, she is pressed against his body,
she is sucking his earlobe and he never even knew that was supposed to feel like this.
MelanthaIt's a valid question. Does he want to take them off. Does he want her to take them off of his body. Such an important distinction.
Melantha doesn't laugh. Melantha slides her hand to the waistband of those boxers, sliding her palm under the elastic to cover his hip, rub his ass. She purrs a little, and begins slowly, achingly, working his underwear off.
"You're so hot," she whispers, without entirely meaning to, and not at all talking about just his body's temperature. "You're so fucking hot, Erich."
Which she means. The truth is, he's the only man she's ever had sex with whose body did not -- to some degree, whether because of its shape or flaws or just the soul it housed -- disgust her. His is the only male body that has ever inflamed her, has made her stare and made her want even when she was afraid to want anything. No, Erich, that day she moved she was not hugging you and snuggling up against you just to play the game against the movers and against Senator Wyrmbreath.
Her hands slide up over his back; she's barely pushed down his boxers. She moans softly, runs them down again, starting to work those boxers off, off, down, away. While she's doing that, though, she asks him another 'obvious' question with an important distinction:
"Do you want to take my underwear off?" she whispers, as his boxers are moving to his upper thighs, as she's reaching down to gently, gently cup her palm around his balls, cradling them while his cock touches her thigh, her stomach, strokes against her flesh.
ErichWhat she does to him makes him lightheaded. It's her hands, it's her touch, it's the way she wants him so obviously and doesn't try to hide it. Rubs her hands on his skin, touches the slopes and planes of his body; makes those little sounds. Works his underwear down and off, tells him things that he probably wouldn't even believe if it didn't come from Melantha, because Melantha is Melantha, she wouldn't lie to him, she'd punch him if he suggested he might.
Strange, but in a way it was a little easier almost, back in D.C. The urgency, the sense of impending endings: it made them take chances they might not have otherwise. And the mask she wore, the one he sort of tried to wear the best he can -- that helped, too. Celia de Luca, the spoiled brat-princess. Derek ... whateverhislastnamewas, her cocky lustful step-brother. Even Senator Wyrmsbreath helped in his own inadvertent way: by being there, by being a threat, by being something to unite again, by being a target of their scorn and co-conspiracy.
Now they're here. Now she has to come to terms with her past and herself. Now her sexuality is a moving target, and half the time she doesn't even know what she wants. Now he has to come to terms with the fact that she didn't just want him because anything would be better than Senator Wyrmsbreath, or because if she didn't have him right then and there she might never have him, or because she was just putting on a show and using him against her mark. Now he has to hear, and believe, that she wants him for him.
Not because it's fun. Or because it feels good. Or because he's interchangeable with any other beefy young man who might gladly do this for her, but because:
she wants him for him.
--
He doesn't know if she wants a verbal answer to that. He hopes not, because he doesn't have one. He shudders again as she cradles him; as she lets him stroke against her. Because he does. He rubs against her, and it's almost instinctive, almost thoughtless. He unanchors his hands from the sleeping bag, and then he reaches down, and then her underwear pretty much just magically disappears, he pushes it down so fast.
On the way back up, his hand finds hers, joins hers for a moment, moves on. He touches her instead: slides his fingers against her wetness and her warmth, kisses her neck and her mouth as he -- somewhat clumsily, though perhaps she can forgive him for his eagerness and his relative inexperience and the fact that his brain has melted -- strokes her, rubs her, fondles her.
MelanthaIt was much easier in D.C.
They didn't stop to think. It was as though they couldn't. The masks helped, too; the secrecy was arousing. It was all composed as elegantly as a symphony, as the perfect chaos of a Picasso. Everything came together, and so they came together, and...
take away the urgency, the masks, the common foe, and it wasn't so perfect anymore. It wasn't so easy. Hasn't been. Isn't.
--
But now they're here. Rolling around in the back of her Jeep, mostly naked but not all the way yet. She's moving around under him, shifting and rubbing, stroking, eager and gentle and soft and heated. She's kissing him, sighing in his ear while he's getting those panties off as fast as he can because he can't fucking think about going slowly right now.
Tonight that's okay. She didn't think it would be. The way he was climbing back here with her, pulling off his shirt, flopping down with her -- the truth is, it made her a little hesitant, a little wary. She has to try not to think. She doesn't want to feel so paralyzed anymore. She loves him. She likes him. She thinks he's great. She wants this, she knows she wants this, even though sometimes she's afraid and sometimes she's not sure they quite fit together.
A part of her thinks: if only you liked yourself more. And another part asks her, without getting an answer, if she's talking to Erich or to herself.
--
There's almost a bit of roughness to the way he sheds her panties down. And she surprises herself in this: liking it. Liking that rush, that wanting, that forcefulness. She wiggles and kicks them away and wraps her legs around him, more or less, while their hands are playing with his body and their mouths are meeting again. She feels him touching her, a bit awkward and clumsy and right now, let's be honest, she doesn't have the patience to teach him to pleasure her like this because she knows he doesn't have the patience to learn right now.
Melantha takes his hand away after a matter of seconds and puts it on her breast, and wraps her hand around his cock. She's panting, and she's wordless about this, nipping his lower lip when she guides him to her opening. She doesn't take him inside. She just guides him there. Strokes him, softly, against her pussy. Stops him, at least for a second or two, from pushing into her.
"Tell me what you want," she mutters in his ear, licking her lips, that wetness touching his ear because they're that close, they're so close. She knows what he wants -- how could she not know, right now, what he wants?
Tell me.
She wants to hear him say it.
ErichShe moves his hand. Well, he tried. He doesn't mind: the new location is just lovely, and it's a little easier to manage. He touches her, he cups her, he holds her, and really that's all he can manage because she is taking him in hand and he thinks she's going to guide him in now, finally, yes, but
no. She takes him there; he groans. He starts to push. Her hands on his lower abdomen, then, fingers and palms to his skin -- and to those hard, tensed muscles, quivering and hot just beneath the surface.
Tell me, she says. He about loses his mind. He kisses the side of her neck. He thrust, he slides, he rubs against her: her thigh or her belly or her pussy, something, anything.
"You," he says; sounds almost baffled, how can she not know? "I want you. Please, god, I want you."
MelanthaMelantha licks his throat. Long, slow, so very, very heated.
"Tell me what you want to do with me, Erich." She works her hips a little, guides him in just an inch or so, just the head, moaning her next words: "It's okay. Tell me you want to fuck."
Erich"I want to fuck."
All in a rush, that, like he'd been holding the words back. A little wary of saying them, maybe, and perhaps he can be forgiven for it: moving targets, fraught past. He doesn't want her to feel objectified, used, wanted simply for what was between her legs. But god the way she feels. And god the way she permits him, gives him her blessing to say it, say the words, tell her:
"I want to fuck you. I want to be inside you. God," just an inch, just the head, just enough for him to feel how good she is, how hot, how wet, how tight, how divine, "I want to hear you moan. I love watching you come. I want to fuck you."
MelanthaHe's shaking a little. The muscles in his back, in his flank, his thighs. She can feel them all trembling, vibrating between her legs, all because of his restraint. It's as though the movement is natural, is unthought, takes nothing at all. So much exertion takes effort. In this, it's the stillness that is work, stillness that is impossible.
Truth be told, holding just the head of his cock inside of her is driving Melantha a little insane. She is panting so much that her mouth feels dry. She can't stop thinking about fucking him now. Hard. Eager. Fast. A little rough, a little wild. Athletic.
He's sweating. So is she.
Melantha exhales, heavy and overcome, drawing him inside of her steadily but not too slowly, folding her legs around him, moaning as he slides home. "Oh god," she moans, and then again and again "oh, god, oh, god, oh --"
ErichThat's all the incentive he needs. She takes him in. She wraps her legs around him. He has to bite her shoulder. Has to: has to bury a shout somewhere because otherwise it might just explode his head off. She calls out to a god neither of them really believe in, but that's okay because by then,
by then he's fucking her, just like he said, even though outside these moments he never thinks of it that way, outside these moments and even inside these moments she is sacred to him. He thinks of it as making love. He thinks of it as fucking, yes, as in: the two of them are fucking. But fucking her: it is almost taboo.
It is almost too much. It is almost literally mindblowing, and yes, it is hard and eager and fast, it is a little rough, it is a little wild, but one can't blame either of them: it's been so long -- whether it truly has or not, it's felt like so long -- and they waited so long. From the way she undressed to the way she teased him to the way she made him say it,
say it,
say you want to fuck,
to the way she took him in and slid him home. The sounds she makes, the words she says. He's beyond words. He's fucking her, his arms wrapped around her upper body, his face buried against her shoulder and neck; the span of that muscle-dense body of his covering her, the momentum of his thrusts hammering her to the sleeping bag, and the pad beneath it, and the floor of the SUV beneath that, and its springs, and its shocks, and the ground.
The car is rocking. The windows are steamed. They don't notice either of it. He's muttering incoherencies as he fucks her. Her name is in there. God is in there. Feel so good and love you and all manner of wordless noises are in there.
MelanthaRight away, then, they're fucking. Hot and quick and a little bit forceful. They are fucking, and Melantha is moaning, and Erich is biting her shoulder and oh, it hasn't been like this for months, god, a year, she doesn't even know. It's like they've been having sex tonight for hours, not seconds. She grabs hold of him, fingernails digging in, hands grasping, biting her lower lip as she groans.
Because he's fucking her. Because it is sacred. Because it's too much, it's mindblowing, it's hard and eager and fast and rough and wild and it's been long enough. Because she teased him. Because she made him say it, gave him permission to say it: that he wants to fuck. That he wants her moaning. That he loves watching her come.
Because it's fun, and it's good, and it feels amazing.
--
Melantha yelps on a particularly forceful thrust. And maybe he thinks that was too rough, too much, and maybe he's easing back and maybe she's gasping, wrapping him up in her arms and legs telling him no, no, it's fine, don't stop, it's good,
and he's groaning as he buries himself in her again, kissing her neck and her mouth and her breasts.
Maybe she's moaning, which he loves, and maybe she's coming, which he loves to watch, and maybe, yes, the car is rocking and the windows are steamed and neither of them care at all, because god, because erich, because you feel so good and because I fucking love you.
Maybe.
Certainly.
ErichErich does think maybe that was too rough. Too much. He does ease back -- quite instantly, actually -- pushing up on his hands, putting space between to look at her and inspect her and nuzzle her and make sure she's okay, is she okay?
And she is. She's okay. She's beyond okay; she's impatient, she's wrapping him up and pulling him back down and urging him on and he is relieved, and then so fiercely aroused, and then he's wrapping his arms around her again and
there they go again. Fucking each other, she's moaning with her lower lip caught between her teeth, which he finds so fucking hot and he tells her so: you're so fucking hot right now, which isn't really what he means because she's always so fucking hot to him but come on, he can't think right now. He can't think right now. He can barely function right now; he's reduced to nerve impulses and muscular motion and a hard cock, frankly: he is what he does and what he's doing is
(just for the record)
fucking her.
--
It's the way she moans that sets him off, really. It's the way she moans while she's coming, specifically, her hands grabbing at his back, her legs squeezing his waist and her heels pressing against his flank. It's the way she shudders all over and tightens down on him, and it's how she arches and presses him close close close and then lets it go, lets herself go, falls into that orgasm like she's skydiving straight into zero gravity. He doesn't care that that metaphor made no sense; he fucking loves her. He loves watching her come,
loves feeling it,
loves how it sets his own orgasm off like a chain reaction, like dominos in a row. He hammers into her one more time. He grabs a handful of sleeping bag. He comes while she's still coming off of hers, grinds into her while she's still pulsing her way back down, shudders against her and groans against her and fucks into her while she's whimpering and gasping and moaning her way through the last of her climax.
--
Erich seems to remember her breasts when he's done. Belated, really. He has a hand on one, pawing it lazily and inexactly while he's still panting in little groans. By the time he has his breathing more or less under control he's shifting a little, bending to get his mouth on her, taking a nipple in his mouth with an appreciative murmur. He sucks at her like that, gentle and slow and lazy, while his cock gradually stops pulsing inside her. While his heart gradually slows back to baseline.
He kisses her over her heart. He nuzzles her and then he wraps his arms around her again, settles half atop her with his face against her neck. "That was really good," he whispers; the understatement of the year, if not the century.
MelanthaMelantha cannot remember the last time they fucked like this. She can't remember the last time she could fathom it being okay, when roughness or quickness or eagerness didn't make her flinch, when the words coming out of his mouth didn't make her crumple inside unexpectedly, unwantedly, horrifyingly. She's just enjoying him, gleeful, yelping and moaning and sweating with him, holding onto him until they're coming, collapsing, panting.
She can barely breathe after, but she keeps holding onto him, clinging while his hand uncurls from the sleeping bags and their bodies are grinding together, slowly, slowing, until neither of them can move at all.
--
Melantha's smiling. He's touching her breasts, sliding down a bit to suck on them, and she's drowsy and replete and watching him as he licks her.
That was really good, says Captain Obvious.
She smiles a little more.
"Wanna go again?" she whispers to him.
ErichErich grins. Nevermind that ten seconds ago he was sprawled over her like he could probably just go right to sleep: he pops up on his elbows over her, grinning.
"Yeah." As if he would say anything else.
MelanthaShe breaks into a grin, looking up at him. "Okay," she says quietly. "You still have to be on top, though. I'm all lazy now." Saying this, she snuggles to him a bit, wrapping her arms around his waist. "You do all the work."
Grins again.
ErichIt's been so long since they've had each other like that. Rough and fast and athletic. It's been longer still, it seems, since they could have each other like that and then come right back to this, settle right back into this closeness, this dearness, this happy and playful lovingness. They grin at each other. She snuggles up to him, and he stays close to her, and there's something achingly sweet about it. He scrunches up his nose as he rubs noses with her, nuzzles her face, hides a little kiss on her mouth.
"Okay," he agrees, smiling. "I don't mind." And kisses her. "I don't mind one bit."
--
Slower this time. Gentler and nearer and dearer, his arms wrapped under her and her arms around his waist. Her legs aligned to his thighs, her ankles behind his knees. Their faces close together, sharing smiles and kisses, sharing shivering and caught breaths. He's quiet this time, or at least quieter, muffling little sounds against her mouth or her neck, the draw and release of his breath filling his chest against hers.
MelanthaThis is the first time they've had that rough, eager, athletic sex and Melantha's not had to go anywhere after. No one is calling her. She's just snuggling him, holding him, asking for more, telling him he has to do all the work. And then he's nauseatingly cute and she puts her hand on his face and 'pushes him away' only she's just drawing him to her shoulder, cradling him a bit, making him kiss her wherever, wherever. She hugs him. With her arms. And her legs.
It is slower this time. Lazier. They kiss a lot, and smile, and she rubs her feet gently on his legs as he moves in her. A few strokes in they actually stop and crack a window because it's getting a little ridiculously warm in the back of her car. They come back together, cool air filtering in to wick sweat from their bodies, kissing again, falling into each other again. When her breathing start to hitch and jump, Erich knows she's getting close, she's whimpering to tell him so.
--
And so it goes. The second round. It's different tonight. They're not talking about it, and maybe this time that's for the best. But it's good, and it is comforting, and Melantha's cheeks aren't gray from nightmares she's been having. She is pink-cheeked and sighing, rolling to the side a bit because Erich is hot, he's so hot, he's so fucking hot but maybe he's too hot right now and she needs a break from all that heat.
She's snuggling to him in the aftermath again, holding him, even though they're both overheated and sweaty and sticky. She knows they should head up, and shower, and get home. She doesn't think about going to sleep except that she thinks she'll curl up in Erich's bed tonight. Yes. That will be nice.
Her hand moves on his chest.
"That was good," she echoes, stroking him softly, slowly.
ErichErich, for no reason he can easily identify, finds himself so endeared by that hand on his chest. The movement of her fingers, the gentle pressure of her palm.
They are flopped over by then, a little bit of room between so they can breathe. She snuggles against his side and his legs are sprawled, bent at the knees because otherwise his feet would have nowhere to go. He covers her hand with his, eyes closed, smiling as she states
the obvious. They both know it: it was good tonight. They're good together in every sense of the word.
He thinks about sleeping out here tonight while she's thinking about sleeping in his bed. He wouldn't mind. He's used to cramped spaces, sleeping half-curled in the backs of cars. He likes that it smells like them now, that the windows are wet inside with condensation, that the night breeze is a welcome relief. He thinks about 'camping' here with her, maybe wandering out into the woods in the morning. Taking a walk with her -- just a walk, not a hike, hand in hand, saying nothing.
Then he lifts himself onto his elbows. He yawns, and he nuzzles her, and he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses her fingertips.
"Let's go home," he whispers.
--
On the way back Erich drives. He hooks his fingers through the bottom of the wheel. Melantha leans across the center divide. Rests her head on his shoulder. They hold hands, quiet now, saying nothing and needing to say nothing. The miles pass, lanes diminishing, road winding.
It's quite late when they return to the tinyhouse. That tiny, humble, startlingly functional little abode of -- for a little longer at least -- the three of them. A light is still burning on the porch. They let themselves in and take turns brushing their teeth and showering in that miniscule bathroom, and then they lock the doors and close the drapes and leave a couple windows cracked open for ventilation.
Most days the ladder leans against Melantha's alcove since Erich usually just hauls himself up or drops himself down from his, but tonight he moves it over to his own. She climbs up and he follows her. He pushes some rumpled clothes off his bed, shakes out the covers, strips off what few items of clothing he put on between shower and bed, and lets the little drape fall across the opening to his loft.
They leave the skylight uncovered. A little moonlight now and a little sunshine later never killed anyone. They snuggle up together, clean and warm, and
before they know it they're asleep. Before they know it, it's morning.
