“Mad-Dog,” Raina says. She slides up my body and takes my nipple in her mouth, then lets it out with a pop. “We started without you.”
“You always do,” he says. His laugh is the opposite of Raina’s, more smile and air than noise.
“Come to bed,” I say. I stretch out my hand and he steps forward to take it.
“Should I undress first?” he asks.
“Naw, we’ll take care of it,” Raina says.
“Shoes too?” he asks.
“No, no shoes,” Raina says, between lollipop licks of my nipple. “Dirty.”
“Thought that was the point,” Mad says in a pouty voice that belies his age, but he sits on the edge of the bed and unties his shoes. “You get to wear shoes.”
Raina raises her head from my breast. “Oh, yeah, Ana, remember that last pair of pumps I got? The red ones?”
Am I the only one who has a reaction to the word “remember”?
I am. Neither of them seems to notice. Raina has her mouth back around my nipple, teasing the skin with the edge of her teeth. Mad is slipping off his jacket and letting it fall to the floor.
“I remember,” I say. They were gorgeous shoes. Not candy-apple red, but something darker. They didn’t scream “sex”, they whispered “fuck”. Like candied apples that had been dragged through the dirt, scuffed and then lipsticked over in a dark bar. Watching Raina walk in them, strutting her stuff, that alone had turned me soaking wet, had forced me to sink a finger between my thighs while I watched.
“I remember,” I say again, and my voice is soft. “Come to fucking bed, Mad. Fuck me. I’m tired of waiting.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
Raina lets go of me, leaves me in the bed alone and strips off the rest of Mad’s clothes. In seconds, they’re back in bed, cold Mad on one side, warm Raina on the other. Mad takes his glasses off and puts them on the nightstand and then he kisses me, long and deep. He leans across me and kisses Raina too. I like to watch them. Knowing how they each kiss me, I wonder how they kiss each other.
Mad licks his lips like a cat. “You did start without me,” he says. “You taste like Ana.”
“So, what’s your pleasure, birthday girl?” he asks.
Raina and I look at each other and giggle.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say. It’s not that funny, just the same phrase twice, like deja vu, but I can’t stop giggling. Raina’s giggle rises up into her big belly laugh, and then we’re all cracking up. I love the sound of us, bundled in the big bed, laughing at nothing much.
When the laughter quiets, I say, “Less laughing, more fucking, please.”
“Who fucking?” Mad asks. His cock is already nudging my thigh.
“You fucking,” I say to him. I touch the curls between Raina’s thighs, and then touch my lips. “You, here, where I can lick you.” What the hell? It’s my birthday and I’m about to lose my mind, or at least one part of it. I can’t have what I really want, but I can ask for something that’s almost as good.
I lie on my back in the perfect centre of the bed, feeling like a pampered queen as Raina climbs over me, facing Mad, her thighs on either side of my face. I grab the curves of her ass, force her down until I can find her with my tongue. Taste, smell, taste. River water. Sugar water.
Mad slides his hand between my thighs. “You’re so wet,” he says. “I love that.”
I’d say something, but my tongue is busy licking Raina. She gets a little wetter with each stroke. A little louder too.
Mad pushes my legs apart on the sheets, and rubs the tip of his cock against me. I wish I could see it, watch it harden all the way and enter me. He shaves his balls still, and I love the way they look, soft and vulnerable. For now, the feel of him will have to be enough. He slides in slow, slow, slow, until I’m taking my want out on Raina’s pink folds, her tiny clit.
“Jesus, Mad, fuck her already,” Raina says. “She’s going to make me come.”
It’s a joke. They both know I like to go last, but Mad drives all the way in. He fucks me steady, long slow strokes that move my whole body on the bed. The kind that bring me to the border of orgasm without actually crossing it, a lazy pleasure that trickles through me, teasing, touching, until I’m gritting my teeth, begging in a hissed, grunted breath.
“Raina, you want?” he asks. I don’t hear her answer, but in a second, I feel her fingers playing at my clit. Each of Mad’s thrusts captures Raina’s fingers between him and me, locked to stillness before she can break free and start again. It’s the just right rhythm of stroke and push, and I want to stay tucked between the two of them forever, locked in this perfect moment.
Mad’s strokes become faster, until he’s nearly lifting me off the bed and into Raina’s waiting fingers. He’s finding his voice, the long, low growl that means he’s getting close.
Raina’s clit tightens and hardens, becomes a small, round pink pill on the tip of my tongue.
“Oh,” she says, like surprise. I always forget how quiet she is when she comes.
Her fingers go still, and I feel my clit clench like a heartbeat for a second before she starts up again. She floods my tongue with the taste of her, and I swallow, swallow, swallow, my cheeks wet with her salt. And then Mad goes off, growling and pulsing into me, the warmth of his pleasure filling me, contractions inside me that make my hips buck against him with a wild, unconscious frenzy.
I try to hold it back, the muscle memory, the drives against her fingers and his cock that will bring me to orgasm. I try to take a breath. Hold it, hold it, I think. I want to remember this moment, this sound. I want to hold on to this pre-coming, the way it works up inside me, gathering strength, buzzing its way through my brain and body.
But Raina’s fingers work me, work me, around Mad’s last final thrusts, and then it’s me, my own cries muffled against Raina’s skin. There it is, I think, even as I’m coming. That’s the sound I make. That low, belly-grunting keen. That’s me.
“Happy birthday, baby,” Mad says a few moments later, once we can all breathe again, our chests rising and falling in the almost matched rhythm of those who take in the same air. He’s on one side of me, Raina on the other. He strokes my belly with a touch so light it almost tickles.
“Yeah, happy birthday, Ana,” Raina says. Her voice is sleepy. She’ll nap now, like she always does after, and then deny it. Mad and I will stay awake, talking about whatever it is old, married people talk about after sex.
I slide my arms out beneath both their pillows and settle in between them. Tucked under one pillow, my hand touches a piece of paper. It takes me a moment to remember what it is: the envelope. The pill.
There’s another sound that comes then: a low choked sobbing sound. Is that me? I realize that it is. And I’m surprised at how much crying sounds like coming.
“You OK, baby?” Mad asks. He’s put his glasses back on and he’s leaning up, looking at me. “Want to talk about it?”
I crumble the envelope under the pillow. “No,” I say. “I’m OK. Really.” Maybe I am. Maybe I have everything I need here, right in the bed: two people who love me, who fuck me with joy and tenderness, and one small pill that gives me some kind of control.
Raina puts her head on my shoulder and brushes my hair behind my ears. “I brought a cake.” Her voice is drowsy. “You can make a wish later.”
I don’t say anything, just close my eyes and inhale all of the pheromones and atoms I can. Oranges and warm skin and salt and sex. Remember this, I tell my body, my brain. Remember as long as you can. It is the only wish I can possibly make.
Wives
Kate Dominic
My Irish Catholic mother had firm opinions about marriage. She’d thump her coffee cup on the table and shake her head at the latest scandalous gossip. “A man who will cheat on his wife is ‘a man who will cheat on his wife’! Any woman who thinks otherwise is a fool!” Given Mother’s red-haired beauty and fiery temper, and the fact that she’d always managed to keep my wild and carefree father firmly entrenched in her bed, I’d always pretty much taken her opinions on marriage as gospeclass="underline" men who cheated on their wives were not to be trusted.