Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(50)

Though everybody else’s eyes can adjust to the newly dim room, whereas I will stumble and trip until I find my way to bed.

Evan wants me to put my indoor lights on timers, so that I don’t have to remember, so that my environment accommodates me automatically and it’s safer.

Evan really likes those words. Accommodate. Safe.

Even his hugs are safe and accommodating.

Apertr’s messenger dings.

Did you see that it’s snowing?

Sometimes, there are these little reminders that C’s in the same city.

I look at the orange haze where the view used to be.

When I came home there were a few snowflakes. Has it picked up?

I’ve told him stories about hiking around Italy with my mom, about my attempts to learn to cook. I’ve told him my favorite color is blue and that I’ve read Jude Deveraux’s A Knight in Shining Armor dozens of times. I’ve told him funny stories about people I’ve watched on the bus.

His answers have almost always been that he wants to know more.

But I’ve never told him my name. He calls me Lincoln, and what he tells me are the same mixed bag of stories and confessions that lead to almost nothing except weird intimacy and daydreams.

I’ve never had an imaginary friend, even though I’m an only child.

It’s snowing pretty hard, now. You must already be in bed.

Yes, let’s say that. Let’s also say—

First snowy night of the year.

Just so that he might say—

If only I was there with you.

I stare into the orange haze. Brush my fingertips over the keys, just brushing, unconsciously practicing how Evan tried to show me once how braille is read before I shoved the practice plates back at him and left early.

If only you were.

I ignore the blur of the room and focus on the neat square of our message window.

Under the covers, completely naked, when the rest of the room is cold and it’s started to get quiet outside is the best kind of naked.

Tonight, he’s right.

We’d have to keep our bodies really tight together, I write. Our legs and arms all around each other. So the covers stay on.

I’d want to touch you.

Like I’m touching myself, now?

I’m not, yet, but just clicking the SEND button makes me want to.

I don’t know. How are you touching yourself?

It’s not fair if I don’t really do it.

Softly. With autocorrect on.

It’s more the idea of it.

The idea that this man, somewhere in the city, imagines touching me—like I’m touching myself, my fingers slow and just now slippery.

More this idea than it is anything he might write to me.

After all, this is awkward.

But when I touch myself in the dark room, I don’t feel awkward.

It makes me all achy, until I skid over my hard and swollen clit with my thumb and then it’s more than aching.

The biggest surprise is how much you make me laugh.

I can’t touch myself how I want to, thinking about you. I’ll take care of myself later, under the covers. Can I take care of you, now?

I reach to tap the keyboard, I only need one letter.

Y

Sometimes, like I told you, I think about kissing. But that’s not what I’m thinking about tonight. Tonight I’m thinking about your legs against my shoulders and my hands pushing against your inner thighs and my tongue tasting you, until you reach down and grab one of my hands so that I touch you and taste you and let you ride my fingers nice and slow while my mouth works you.

Oh. He’s never quite gone this far, and it’s far enough that I have to grip an edge of the laptop to keep from bucking it off while I buck into the heel of my hand, my middle finger deep.

I don’t get off like this often, getting my fingers inside of myself is sort of special-occasion-style masturbation, but his words—his daring to go there—make me so wet and horny I need something to f*ck against.

I come sooner than I want to, I try to hold off, forcing my hips to slow and resist how everything is tightening up, but I peek at his sentences again, see a mix-up of letters that spell grab and pushing and tongue and the heel of my hand presses so good against my clit and it’s over. The best come I’ve had in forever. My back and hip muscles are shaking.

When I drag my hand from my panties it makes me sort of jump and I almost go for it again.

?

I take a breath and kind of cough. I have to pull a tissue out of my pocket to clean up so I can type and that’s kind of embarrassing and also kind of fantastic.

I’m not sure what to say. Except, I came all over myself. I didn’t even know what to imagine, exactly, except your words.

Lincoln, baby. God.

Lincoln. Baby. God. This is such a strange hobby I’ve got here. I’m kind of—flailing. I want this, but I’m not asking for anything, it’s just something that’s happening to me.

C asks, as much as I will let him.

I don’t know how to answer him. I close my eyes and think about how worked up he might be. Hard. Maybe, waiting for me to respond, his hands free, he’s already squeezing and gripping and rubbing.

Are you?

His answer is instant.

I will.

I feel tired and, as my orgasm fades, kind of jangly and sad. Thinking of him turned on, how he’ll help himself to sleep, makes me impatient with these encounters between us but not brave enough to change the terms.