Second First Impressions(79)
As I am pushed gently onto my bed, he says into my mouth, “Please tell me what your bear is called.”
“Teddy.”
So it turns out that getting naked with someone can be fun.
I follow the patterns and lines along his body, all those flowers and jewels. Wishbones, goldfish, a queen of hearts card. I kiss a rabbit, a diamond ring, a crown. There’s a scary skull on his side, but I kiss it on the cheek. An entire section is just feathers and leaves. He’s a masterpiece, every inch, and I tell him this. (He laughs and says thank you.) My hands unbuckle his belt for something to do.
My unexciting white shirt and denim skirt are the most exciting thing that has ever happened to Teddy. The way he looks at me is with such frank appreciation that surely I’m misunderstanding this? It knocks me out of the moment and I have to get his eyes back on mine.
“How am I sexy? I mean, I have a label maker, for heaven’s sake.” He collapses into my arms like his joints have lost all strength. He’s got a hard shape in the front of his expensive jeans. I am very, very sexy.
I thought he’d be suave and dark-eyed-smooth, unhooking my bra with a fingertip, but he’s not the Casanova I always assumed he’d be. Teddy’s a hot mess in bed, but I mean it in the best possible way. For starters, he’s easily distracted. He sees a freckle on my collarbone and loses composure. His mouth muffled against me, I think he says something like, I saw this and I wanted to do this. Disorganized to the bone, he’s taken off one of my socks, undone the zip of my skirt, the bottom two buttons of my shirt (and a random middle one) and then forgot everything to pull the blankets over us.
“I’m dreaming,” he says, twisting kisses on my neck. “I’m in my bed, having one of my Ruthie dreams.” I feel him stretch; he’s reaching out to touch the wall.
I am probably dreaming myself; held in the patterned cradle of this bicep, I am kissed tenderly by someone who thinks the sun shines out of me. It’s not until I feel the warmth of his torso on mine and my sheets on my legs that I realize he’s peeled off my clothes. I guess he does have significant skills.
He feels me go still. We float together breathlessly, like in the swimming pool.
“Want to keep going?” he asks, and his eyes roll closed when I nod and put my hand in his hair. We sink. We gasp for air. He shows me things from my feverish midnight fantasies: what it looks like to see his tattooed hand on my breast, the weightless black silk of his hair on my pillow. Everything is fracturing around me now, the tiny flowers on my wallpaper and the daisies on his forearm as he slides his hand down, even lower down, and he tells me I’m like a dream.
He gloats at how turned on he’s gotten me. He demands ten different compliments and praises before he’ll move his fingertips. I get to four or five when he laughs and relents. I give him probably twenty more compliments after that. I never came close to finding satisfaction with my first boyfriend, Adam; I was too concerned about his comfort and the experience he was having. I never thought about my body as anything other than an instrument for him to find pleasure. All Teddy wants to do is make me smile and shiver, and his own body doesn’t seem to concern him. It’s his typical unhurried style that brings about my first orgasm. It takes me by surprise, because he didn’t seem to have a specific agenda, just a gently nudging thumb.
“Oh, nice,” he says as I shudder and spasm with his give hand between my thighs. If I ever thought touching him in return would be awkward, I was wrong: we are friends above all else, and we can talk about these things: I can tell him how I want to try this, and this … He lets me. “Perfect,” I tell him, when his penis is revealed. “But I thought there’d be a tattoo. Or a big metal piercing.”
“Some things are sacred,” Teddy explains with a half laugh. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.” He groans when I show him I’m not, and then links his fingers over mine. I give and take until he’s dewy with sweat.
When I decide I would like to take, he obliges with good humor and a courtly kiss on my cheek. “In the drawer,” I say, nodding sideways. “Melanie insisted I buy condoms. She said every pilgrim needed supplies for their journey, something like that.”
Teddy bites off the cellophane from the pack and spits it on the floor. “Glad you did, but they’re all mine now. Did you know,” he says in my ear, “I’m ruining all your dating plans from this point onward?”
I’m distracted, because we haven’t settled who’s staying and who’s going, but Teddy arranges my limbs, asks me twice if I’m okay, puts his mouth under my ear, and pulls my knee up onto his hip. We forget everything now.
“More,” I say, and we shiver and stretch against each other, until I have him. The tenderness in his fingers as he pulls some hair away from my eyes has me wanting to hide my face in his shoulder, but he won’t allow it; my face is tipped back and he watches my eyes as he moves. He’s open for feedback, and when a perfect alignment is achieved, he laughs at the look on my face. “Oh, there we go. Come this way, if you can,” he invites me. “But if you can’t, no pressure. I’ve got a lot of tricks up my sleeve.”
“It feels like I’m going to come, if you stay just like that— and I do this— ”
I try to banish my thoughts. The bed squeaks and I’m so alive. I’m twenty-five and my blood is banging through my veins and his hazel eyes look at me with such amused affection, the way he always looks at me, and I tip over the edge and I’m coming, and he’s praising me, holding my shaking torso in a hug.