Page 41 of Every Step She Takes

I close my eyes, tilt my head back against the mattress, and try to return to that place where shame and modesty don’t exist. I try to let my body experience whatever pleasure it wants as she moves in agonizingly soft, slow circles.

And just when I think I might lose my mind, she drives her hips down to increase the pressure against me.

I curse. I maybe lose consciousness. It’s hard to know for sure.

“How do you want me to touch you?”

“Huh urm lerf.” That’s as close as I can get to words as Mal draws those maddening circles against my body. She moves her hand beneath the fabric, so there’s finally nothing between her skin and my skin, and I feel like I’ll die before her hot fingers graze my bare clit.

Then they do, and I wince.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.” Mal pulls her hand away for a minute. “I don’t have any lube.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Mal scolds. She sticks her index and middle finger into her mouth, and sucks, and I definitely lose consciousness this time.

When she pulls her fingers out of her mouth, they’re slick with saliva.

She finds her way back between my legs, and this time, her fingers glide smoothly over my clit.

It’s five hundred times better than any time I’ve touched myself. Mal’s fingers are like a confident instrument tuned to my body, responding to my every gasp, my every curse, reading me so perfectly. She’s over me, on me, rocking against me as her strokes get harder, then softer, then faster.

I’m dizzy. I’m delighted. I think I’m laughing again. “God diggity damn,” I moan, and Mal shifts her hand lower, and— “Oh, ouch!” I screech.

Mal’s hand freezes in place. “What? Are you okay?”

“Sorry!” I blurt, and then I attempt to cover my face with the pillow.

“No sorrys during sex!” Mal pulls her hand away from my body and moves the pillow out of my face. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I lie.

She climbs off me, and I’m overwhelmed by a growing sense of dread that I’ve ruined everything. This perfect moment. All those perfect feelings.

“Sadie. Talk to me.” Her voice is a gentle plea, not a growl, and shit, I think I’m crying.

“Sadie.” She grabs my hand and raises it to her lips again. Her mouth is also a gentle plea against my wrist bone. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so humiliated.”

Mal laughs lightly. “Do you know how many times I’ve accidentally farted while being eaten out? This —whatever this is—is not humiliating.” Her teeth playfully bite my wrist bone. “Look at me.”

When I refuse, she grabs the pillow and yanks it away entirely, so I have no choice but to face her. Face this . “What happened, Freckles?”

“It, uh, hurt a little when you, uh…”

“When I fingered you?” she asks bluntly.

I fight to get the pillow back, but she’s holding my hands captive. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she says, giving my hands a gentle squeeze. “I should have asked before moving inside of you.”

Her directness makes me want to die. “Can I please just cover my face?”

She holds tighter to my hands. “You cannot. Why are you embarrassed right now?”

“Because I ruined the sex lesson!”

“We were practicing how you communicate your needs around sex, and I think you were doing a damn good job at that.”

I sit up so I’m facing Mal in all of her half-naked glory. “Yeah, but I couldn’t even go through with the actual sex part.”

Mal makes a giant fart noise.

“Okay. Rude.”

“Do you really think it’s only sex if I penetrate you?”

“I don’t love that word, but, uh, yes?”

“Sadie, Sadie, misguided lady,” Mal sings. “We were having sex. At least, it was sex to me. Before I went and messed it with the P-word.”

I almost laugh.

“Nothing is ruined, Freckles.”

Mal is still holding me by both wrists. She can clearly see the stress hives on my fingers. She must feel the way my hands shake nervously. And still, she doesn’t let go.

“What do you want?” she asks me.

What I want is to go back to five minutes ago, when I was writhing under the delicious pressure of her fingers. I want to return to that unselfconscious state where I was cursing and moaning and letting myself feel. But as much as I want to get back to that guilt-free pleasure, I can’t.

Mal must sense the shattered moment, because she lifts my wrist again and presses it to her lips. “I love your little blush splotches,” she says, caressing the ugly red marks on the inside of my arm.

“Those are hives.”

“Mmm.” She kisses a chain of hives one by one, all the way up to my elbow. “I love your hives, then.”

“That’s quite gross,” I say. What I really mean is, that’s quite sweet .

She kisses my arm, and then my collarbone, and then my throat, and then my cheek, chasing the places my anxiety has conquered. Then she kisses my mouth in this gentle, unhurried way that loosens something inside me.

“You know what I want?” Mal asks my collarbone. “I want to see if Drew and Jonathan put shiplap in the Ramos’s living room.”

The last of my shame seeps out of me. “Well, it’s not 2018, so they won’t.”

“Let’s find out.” She reaches for my phone on the nightstand and cues up Property Brothers .

Then, she gets my snacks from the forgotten grocery bag, and I discover I’m starving as soon as I take a bite of granola bar.

Mal doesn’t put her shirt back on, and I eat in bed while Jonathan swings his sledgehammer, taking down yet another load-bearing wall.

“Asbestos?” Mal gasps on the bed next to me. “Wow, I did not see that one coming.”