Page 63 of Center of Gravity

“What? God. Fuck yes, don’t stop.” I spread my legs wider and thrust hard back against him, driving him deeper, my stomach fluttering at the mad burn as I stretched around his girth. He filled me with hard, wet heat and I was engulfed even as I enveloped him. All thoughts beyond awareness of sensation evaporated, burned away by the perfect friction of him inside me.

“Fuck that’s good,” I moaned.“Fuck, fuck,” my words trailed off into nonsense, became a seductive whisper that urged him harder, deeper. His hands slid up my back, along the length of my arms, wrapping over mine where they wrapped around the rails. He licked up the side of my neck, sucked the tendons that strained there as I whimpered while he pummeled my ass the way I’d been wanting him to for what felt like eons.

“I’m going to fucking come,” I grated out.

“Not yet, baby,” he cajoled, his voice pouring like dark magic into my ear.

I groaned petulantly as he licked my earlobe and pried my fingers from the rails, pulling out of me to settle me gently on my knees with my back to him. It was more a full-body collapse on my part than a repositioning. My fingers spread and latched to the bottom of a stair and Rob knelt behind me, thighs enveloping mine as he pushed back inside me, then pulled back out. In and out, slow and measured, he strung us both along. If I was going to go crazy, I was bringing him with me, goddammit.

I jolted again as he brushed my prostate, one hand releasing the bottom of the stair to clench the arm he had locked around my chest. He kissed my jaw, then the side of my mouth when I tipped my head back into his shoulder and arched my back. The tempo changed. This was slow and seductive. This was his tongue tangling openly with mine in a caress; an exchange of breath and moans and heat. My hand locked around his wrist as he rocked inside me. It was dangerously primal and dangerously intimate. It was like being cradled and rocked to orgasm. A full-body feeling. Complete sensation.

A surge of heat spread through my pelvis in toe-curling warning.

“Fuck, Rob, I can’t do it, you’re hitting my—fuck.” My lips peeled back from my teeth, my eyes squeezing shut, and I could feel the exact second he exhausted his restraint.

With one hand, he seized the railing. The other wrapped around my cock as he speared into me hard and fast and merciless. With a cry, I exploded fever-hot into his grip, my orgasm contracting my muscles around Rob’s cock. White and blue streaked my vision as I fell apart, and he unloaded into me like he’d been packed with jet fuel and sparked off.

I hadn’t come like that in…maybe ever. I trembled with small aftershocks of pleasure and my thighs were still quivering a minute later when I finally released my hold on the stair and Rob released his grasp on my hip and curled over me, gasping for breath.

I fell sideways to the floor and sprawled. Rob tumbled after me and we lay in a boneless heap, the floor around us a patchwork of clothing, buttons, the condom wrapper and the condom he tied up and dropped on top of it. The bottle of lube lay on its side, drizzling into a slowly-forming pool. One of my shoes was wedged into the bottom railing of the stair. I didn’t know how. My keys and a couple of loose coins had spilled from my pocket. The box of Cracker Jack was by the door. Another condom packet lay next to my thigh. Rob picked it up, holding it between two fingers for me to see as I turned my head in his direction and arched a brow.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Some optimism that fell out of my pocket, I guess.” I grinned, rolling onto my side, and kissed him again.

* * *

I was hopingfor a repeat Saturday night after we’d fucked twice Friday night. Sex with Rob was an immediate addiction. I wanted it dirty and hard, the perfect distraction it had been since I’d gone down on him in the club. There were no lines between us when I was on my back or bent over, or when he was on his knees in front of me. It was pure feeling, pure exchange of give and take that resulted in out-of-this-world orgasms.

I woke up the next morning dizzy—not the bad kind of dizzy but the well-fucked, sated kind of dizzy that buzzed happily under my skin when I looked at him lying next to me.

Coffee happened late because we ended up fooling around again as soon as he woke up. I showered at his place and we made tentative plans for that night, before I left for a couple of moving jobs.

But our plans didn’t end up happening because he got called back for a meeting with a new client that was supposed to take place early Monday morning and he needed Sunday to prepare.

It didn’t matter anyway, because when I got home that afternoon after work, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving that night.

Mom had dropped Lainey off at a friend’s house before taking on a night shift at the diner. I came home with a bag of burgers for me and dad and as soon as I opened the door, I froze. The house smelled sour. I knew what that meant. Dropping off the burgers in the kitchen, I stopped at the sink to wash my hands just in case they smelled like food before I went back to Dad’s room. When he was nauseated, any scent of food could set him off again.

The only light in the room was the kaleidoscope flicker of the TV, the volume a low drone. Dad lay curled on his side in bed. The doctor had warned us that this round of chemo would be intense. It was yet another effort to try to shake up his system and slow the progression of his tumors.

To be honest, I was surprised he’d gone through with it. He’d made it clear after his diagnosis that he would be the one making decisions, and I think he did that to keep me and Mom from feeling any guilt or worry that we might have swayed him in the wrong direction or that there was something more we could have done. Mom had initially freaked out, worrying that meant he was just giving up, but Dad had accepted all of the doctor’s recommendations, including this one. All of those probabilities and statistics meant nothing, though, when I stood outside my father’s door watching his body wracked with vomiting.

I toed off my shoes and walked in, leaning over his bed to put my hand on his cheek. He was sweating and clammy. After a moment, his hand came up and patted mine, though his eyes didn’t open.

“Think I’ll be skipping dinner tonight. I hope you didn’t cook.” His lips curled in a thin smile for the joke. I picked up a washcloth draped on the nightstand and wiped down his face and his arms, then dabbed it against his neck.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got something special planned: the highest quality ice chips you’ve ever tasted in your life. It’s primo shit, Dad, seriously. I almost had to sell my soul to get them.”

That he didn’t make some joke back about how that would have been a bad bargain for the other guy meant he felt really fucking bad. Talk about a buzzkill after an amazing night. Then I felt like a total asshole for thinking that.

I straightened his covers, cleaned out his trash can, and went to the kitchen to crush some ice. I’d perfected my method with a hammer, plastic bag, and towel, so my chips were almost as good as that slushy, ball ice that half crunched and half melted in your mouth. That giddy dizziness I’d felt earlier had transmuted somehow into queasiness. My arms were heavy and I leaned against the counter for a second, resting my forehead on its cool surface while a fist clenched cold and tight in my chest.

I stayed there, counting my breaths, thinking about painting, the ocean—anything, really, that was outside this house—until my hands stopped trembling and I could breathe again.

I returned with the cup and a spoon, taking up my spot on the chair next to his bed. I’d lost track of how many times I’d sat here feeding him ice chips until Mom came to relieve me or Dad finally kicked me out. I managed to get a couple of spoonfuls in that stayed down, then he fell asleep and I must have dozed off, too, because the next time I woke up, my cheek was against his bed sheet. He stroked my hair gently.

“Do you want some more ice? What time is it?” I asked.