Singe Read online

  They park on the street a block up from Addie’s apartment, take the walk in silence. For once, the gay club downstairs is quiet as the grave. Eli wonders about that, how every other night he’s been here there’s been music. Addie doesn’t say a word as she climbs the stairs ahead of him.

  “I have to feed Chicken Cat,” she mutters when Eli reaches for her on the landing. Her face is an empty wall.

  The apartment is muggier than the outside, all of its smells lying one on top of another in the still air, perfume and food and the big candle Addie always lights. Eli walks over to the window unit and flips it on. The roar of noise is a relief.

  “You okay?” he asks Addie, sinking down on the creaky leather wingback. It’s her grandpa’s, Eli knows now. He died when Addie was twelve.

  Addie sets the bag of cat food back on the shelf and comes over, gets one knee up on either side of him on the chair. “I’m great,” she tells him flatly. When she leans forward to kiss him her wild hair makes a curtain around his face. Eli rubs her warm thighs through the slippery fabric of her dress and breathes in the sweat and gardenia smell of her, careful. The muscles in her legs are tight tight tight.

  “Turn around, yeah?” he mutters against her mouth, biting at her lip to distract her. “Let me rub your back for a minute?”

  Addie laughs. “You wanna have a bubble bath and some champagne too, maybe?” she asks, wiggling forward and rocking herself against his cock. “I could go slip into something more comfortable, et cetera?”

  “Jerk,” Eli mumbles, rolling his eyes. He slides his hands around behind her, cups her ass. Her whole body feels taut and tense as if she thinks she’s going to have to get up and run somewhere in the immediate future, fires to fight and wars to wage. He wonders again what’s going on with her family. He kisses her long and slow to calm her down. Addie’s impatient though, hiking the dress up and putting his hands where she wants them. She arches her back so her chest is right at his eye-line. Eli obliges, nipping at her gently through her top. Her nipple is pebbled up hard underneath the fabric.

  “Love this dress,” Eli mutters, inching the thick straps down her arms. “Love your body.” Addie huffs against the side of his head, a warm puff of exasperated air. Eli loves her bad attitude too. He wonders what that says about him.

  He shimmies the dress to her waist, exposing a pretty purple bra. He doesn’t want to take the whole thing off though, not yet. The skirt is too perfect for bunching. He kisses up Addie’s neck instead, dragging his teeth across the barrier of her cross and tasting the gritty metallic links, sucking at the skin around the crucifix. Addie huffs again, sharper, and pushes his head back down into her cleavage. Then she reaches back and pops the clasp of her bra. Eli loves that part too, her breasts spilling forward in a rush.

  “Hurry up,” Addie mumbles, scrabbling for his belt. She’s frowning. When Eli cups her neck he can feel corded muscle and bone, the individual bumps of her spine. He lets his free hand slide from her thigh to the cotton front of her thong, rubbing gently.

  “Easy,” he says. “We’re hurrying.” But when his fingers slide under the fabric to open her up, they find her dry and tacky. “Addie-girl,” he mumbles, putting them in her mouth instead to wet them before trying again. That helps get her started, sometimes, but tonight she shifts her weight almost uncomfortably, like maybe she doesn’t actually want to be touched at all. “You wanna go lie down?”

  Addie shakes her head stubbornly. “No,” she says, getting a hand inside his boxers and pulling his cock free, jacking roughly. Eli groans in spite of himself. “Here.”

  This girl. She’s a princess, that’s for sure. “Okay,” he says quietly, ducking his head to suck one tight pink nipple. She tastes like body wash and sweat. Eli lifts her breast with his free hand to get a better angle, kneads a bit. The fingers around his cock tighten, and Addie gasps.

  “That’s it,” Eli murmurs into her skin, thinking maybe they’re getting somewhere. He wants to give her whatever it is she needs. He pets along her rib cage, rubs his knuckles over the curve of her stomach. “Just relax for me.”

  “You relax,” Addie replies immediately, which he guesses he should have expected. “Stay here.” She wriggles off him and pads toward the bathroom, where Elli happens to know there’s a box of condoms wedged way in the back of the cabinet underneath the sink. He guesses she’s worried about her family coming to visit.

  “Put that on,” Addie commands when she comes back, chucking a foil packet. She lost her dress somewhere on the trip and now she steps out of the purple thong too, breasts swaying as she bends. Eli loves the bounce on her. She straddles him as he’s rolling down the latex, her bare knees squeaking against the leather chair. “Come on.”

  Eli cups her face. Her mouth is tight, and paler than her nipples, like somebody dipped the pink in flour. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks again.

  Addie licks her ashy lips. “Fuck me,” she says, very clearly.

  Eli’s dick jumps about three feet. “Shit, Addie.” It’s not language he’s ever, ever heard out of her before. “Shit, baby. Shit.” Chelsea used to say it all the time, fuck me harder, fuck me this or that. But it never made him react like this. It feels like all the blood in his body—all the blood in all the blood banks in all of Massachusetts—has rushed to the head of his cock.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Addie says. She’s smiling a wry little smile, like she knows what she did and she’s pleased. “So get on with it.”

  “You get on.” Eli wants to now though, so badly. He wants to bounce her up and down on him until she keens. She’s still not as wet as he’d like so he rubs the lubed tip back and forth in a tease, pausing every time her breath catches. When he finally pushes inside, she’s relaxed enough to take it.

  Eli goes as slow as he can anyway, resting his forehead on her warm, smooth shoulder as he bottoms out, holding still and holding his breath. He can feel her pulse thrumming hummingbird-fast in her neck. She’s so tight, Jesus, even without moving at all it feels insane like this, the press of her warm soft body and her smooth knees pretzeled up on either side of him in the armchair. Eli closes his eyes.

  “Eli,” Addie says, and when he opens them again she’s looking at him urgently, a heat flaring behind her expression he doesn’t exactly understand. He can see the clench of her jaw though, how she’s concentrating. He’s still got his shirt on, unbuttoned halfway down, and her short nails dig into his shoulders through the fabric. “Come on.”

  “You move,” he reminds her, nosing along her collarbone. Even with the AC her skin’s gone damp in all the curving places. “You’re the boss.”

  Addie shakes her head. “No,” she says obstinately. “You.”

  Eli frowns. For a minute he tries it, shifting his hips a couple of inches, not nearly as rough as he wants. Addie’s grip tightens. “Addie, baby.” When he reaches down between them to thumb at her clit she hisses, and not in a good way. “What do you need?”

  Addie shrugs. For a second she just stares at him, her straight-thick eyebrows drawn together in a line. Then she starts rocking.

  Eli sighs, dropping his head to her shoulder. It’s goal-oriented, all right, just not the sort of goal-oriented he wants. And okay, Eli’s an adult, he’s had bad sex before—that’s a thing that happens when you sleep your way through half of the women in Western Mass, as it turns out—but as hard as she is to read sometimes, he’s never had it with Addie. At least, he doesn’t think. It feels important.

  “Baby,” he tells her, sliding his hands back through her tangled hair. He’s sweaty now too, her sitting on him plus the shirt. “Come on, you gotta help me out here.”

  Addie narrows her eyes. Eli had two beers at the fair and two more at the diner, and her expression is completely escaping him. It’s not friendly though, he knows that much. Like a sphinx who glares at you because you don’t understand the riddle. “You help me,” Addie insists.

  Eli groans. She’s so incredibly tight, like fucking up int
o a closed fist. She might get her way if he isn’t careful. “Okay,” Eli says, running his hands around to grab her ass. “Touch yourself, okay? Can you do that for me?” That works for her if nothing else does, he’s noticed. And Eli likes to watch.

  But Addie keeps shaking her head. “No,” she says stubbornly, and when he slips a thumb between them to try again himself, she winces.

  “Addie-girl.” Eli nips at her chin. “Baby, you wanna stop?” A head shake. “Come lie down with me?” Another head shake. Her face is so pretty and so angry, as if she suspects he’s being difficult on purpose. All of a sudden, Eli feels tired. “Well, I don’t know how to help you then, sweetheart.”

  “Well, I don’t know either,” Addie explodes. “For God’s sake. You’re the one who’s supposed to—” She breaks off abruptly, shaking her head a third time. “Just—” She rocks again, hard and vicious. Eli grits his teeth. “Go.”

  What the fuck. “Addie.” Eli grips her hips to stop her, dangerously close to the edge. It’s not the first time she’s said stuff like that though, her voice rising an octave or two. Eli has no idea what she’s trying to tell him, and the not knowing makes him feel like a jackass. “I’m supposed to what?”

  “Forget it,” Addie says. Her cheeks have gone pink with exertion, the furrow between her eyebrows so deep it’s almost a trench. “It’s fine, it’s good, I just want—” She stops again, frustrated, the muscles in her lower back flexing uneasily. “Can you please just—?”

  “What, baby?” Eli pulls back to try and look at her, but she won’t make eye contact. “I’ll do anything you want, but I don’t—”

  “You’re the one who knows how to do it, all right?” she snaps. “Jesus, I don’t—nobody else has ever been able to make me—I don’t know what to tell you, Eli, I just need you to do whatever you usually do.”

  Oh.

  Eli blinks at her a moment. He gets very, very still.

  When it becomes clear he isn’t going to think of anything intelligent to say, he licks his lips and opens his mouth. “Oh,” he supplies.

  “Oh my God.” Just like that Addie is wrenching herself up and off him, his dick flapping in the chilly air. “Okay, thanks, this has been great. You can go now.”

  He can what? “Addie, baby.” Eli can barely get the words out, shock or something else. Christ, he wants to eat her out until he dies. “Come on, princess, don’t be embarrassed.”

  As it turns out, that is the exact wrong thing to say. Addie stares with withering incomprehension, like she cannot understand how he’s survived this long while simultaneously being so stupid, then turns on her heel and locks herself in the bathroom.

  Eli exhales.

  He stands up and strips off the condom, pulling on his boxers and trying unsuccessfully to keep his erection from poking out the front. He heads into the kitchen and drinks a glass of tap water. Looks down at his lap. Drinks another.

  “You’re still there, aren’t you?” Addie calls through the door.

  “Yup.” Eli sits down on the floor beside the bathroom with a whoomp, head level with the doorknob. He feels about fifteen years old. Like he just started making out with girls, no reference point to speak of.

  Or, almost none—Chelsea used to buy Cosmo whenever her research hit a rough patch or she had to do something especially awful and academic, like translate a thirteenth century document from Italian or chart the genealogy of a Franciscan friar. She said it was the only thing she could stand to read. Now Eli’s remembering a few choice article titles, “Improve Your Orgasm” and “Maximize Your Pleasure Without Compromising His”.

  My ex-wife used to read Cosmo ironically feels like the wrong kind of opener here.

  “See, now you have to let me try again,” is what he settles on.

  To his surprise, Addie cackles through the door. “What, is this a point of pride now?” she asks. “Never leave a woman behind, et cetera?”

  Eli thinks about lab tech Karen and how he let her fake it on her wide Pottery Barn couch. “Not women,” he says. “Just you.” The stretch of hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen is devoted to pictures from Addie’s childhood. The one Eli really likes is up by the light switch, toddler Addie in David Manzella’s huge black fire boots. He can just see the bottom of the frame from this angle. “Come on, baby, come out. I gotta take a leak.”

  Addie sighs. After a moment the door squeaks and she’s sitting beside him. “It’s not that weird. Sometimes I just can’t.”

  Eli nods in a way he hopes is normal. She wrapped herself in a towel, which he guesses isn’t surprising. “Okay. And when you’re alone, can you…” He’s not quite sure how to phrase that question. His dick is still stupidly hard.

  Addie makes a face like he’s insulted her womanhood. “Of course, oh my God.”

  Eli smirks. “So. How do you do it then?”

  “Like everyone else!” Her ears are seashell-pink and annoyed. “Jeez.”

  Eli thinks about that for a second. “Do you have a vibrator?” he asks.

  “Oh God,” Addie says again, rolling her eyes and flopping backwards onto the carpet with a flourish, careful not to lose the towel. Eli can see everything shift anyway, her body rearranging itself appealingly, spreading out a little. He wants her like all hell. “Yes, okay? I’m modern.” She frowns at him. “I thought you had to pee.”

  Eli ignores her. “Where is it?” he asks.

  Addie licks her bottom lip, looking uncertain. “In a flatiron box under the futon,” she says suspiciously. “I threw away the flatiron, it didn’t work on my hair.” Then, “Why?”

  In a flatiron—Jesus Christ, this girl. Eli absolutely one hundred percent doesn’t laugh. “Wait here,” he tells her instead and goes into the living room to get it.

  Addie sighs noisily. “Eli,” she says, but she doesn’t sit up or stop him. “This is stupid.”

  Eli doesn’t think it’s stupid at all.

  It’s right where she said it would be, the box tucked behind some board games and a forest of cat hair and dust bunnies. It’s blue. “Are you serious?” Addie asks, when he comes back into the hallway. She’s still lying there, knees just slightly bent and the dark polish on her toes standing out against the carpet. Her hair is a crazy halo around her face.

  “Yeah,” Eli says. “I am.” It’s one of those smooth silicone things, space-age and unassuming, like if the second robot from Wall-e was a vibrator. “Come on. You gonna let me?”

  Addie sighs. Her knees swing back and forth.

  Chapter Eleven

  This is embarrassing, Addie thinks, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Eli.” He’s opened up her big bath towel so it’s spread out underneath them like a picnic blanket, the terry cloth soft against her back. Still, Addie can’t shake the feeling that she’s in the stirrups at her yearly physical. “Eli, come on. This is stupid.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He’s flipped the thing on and cycled through the settings about six times. They’re far enough away from the AC unit that the whirring noise is really, really obvious. “Open up a bit,” he says, drawing a buzzy line across her thigh.

  Addie huffs, letting her knees fall apart a few inches. “I feel dumb,” she tells the speckled ceiling. Eli moves the toy higher, and she jumps. “Jesus.” Just like that, nothing about this feels remotely clinical.

  Eli smiles. “That’s hot,” he says matter-of-factly, trying it again. Addie gasps, hips arching to chase the feeling, heels digging into the carpet. Eli hums. “Yeah?” he asks, running it over her clit and then lower, this insane tease she can feel all the way up her spine and down into her tailbone. Addie squeezes her eyes shut. God, she really, really can’t believe she’s letting him do this.

  Really can’t believe it’s working.

  “There,” she manages, grabbing for his shoulder. He’s parked between her thighs to watch the whole proceeding, can probably feel every single twitch. “Yeah, okay, right there, please don’t stop, I—” Addie breaks off, s
inking her teeth into her bottom lip and concentrating. It is hot, shit, he’s not wrong, knowing he can see everything. Letting him do it to her anyway.

  “Not stopping.” Eli reaches up to pluck at her nipple, gentle. “Not gonna stop.” He keeps the vibe on her clit where she needs it, slides two careful fingers inside. “How’s that?”

  “Good,” Addie says, arching against the sudden fullness. Already she’s too far gone for embarrassment. God, she’s never done anything like this with anyone else in her entire life. “Eli, please.”

  “Fuck, princess.” Eli turns his head to suck at her thigh, the gratifying sting as his teeth sink into the soft, thin skin there. He clicks the thing up a notch, and Addie keens. “Talk to me, okay? Will you try and talk to me?”

  Addie is having a hard time breathing, let alone expressing herself. “It’s good,” she whines. “It’s really, really—shit.” Eli’s licking at her now, sliding his fingers out and pressing his tongue in instead. Addie scrabbles for his head, screwing her eyes shut. “So good, oh my God.”

  Eli hums against her, doing something complex with his mouth that involves sucking and pressure and teeth. Addie’s whole lower body feels like one big vibration.

  “Eli,” she pants. “I think I might—God.”

  “Might what?” he asks, head popping up to get a look at her face. “Might come? That it?” He wiggles the vibe against her gently, biting her lower belly right before the hair starts. “What do you need? What can I do?”

  Addie hisses. Her face is solid red, probably, sweaty in unfortunate places. He said to talk. “No, no, it’s good. I just, I don’t.” She huffs. She’s been wound up for so long, and still the words are not out-loud words. Instead she reaches down for Eli’s hand on the toy, fitting her fingers over his. His thumb is resting on the controls. Very deliberately, Addie presses down on his thumbnail until there’s a click.

  That’s it. That’s the right speed.

  “Eli.” She’s got maybe twenty seconds before she goes nonverbal. “Gonna,” she whines, one hand coming up to yank at her messy hair. “Right now. Please, inside, I want to feel—”