Lights On

Chapter 4

Máximo

Her hand closes over me through my boxers and I forget the sentence I was building.

I’d had one. Something about her bikini line, the salt of her skin, the sound she made when I got my mouth there. It’s gone now. She does that, she takes the words out of my head and I don’t get them back.

“Off,” she says. Just that.

I get a hand into the waistband and she lifts her hips to help with hers, and then there are a few seconds of us fumbling with clothes in the lamplight, graceless, both of us in a hurry, and then it’s done. Boxers on the floor. Lace somewhere. Both of us with nothing left on.

The air in the room is cooler than I expected. I feel it on my back, on my chest, everywhere. She shifts on the bed and the cool air stops mattering. And then neither of us moves.

I’d thought—in the elevator, when she said I like watching, lights on, looking at you, the whole thing—I’d thought I understood what she was asking for. I didn’t. I understand it now. Because she’s looking at me. Not glancing. Looking, taking her time, the way you look at something you’ve decided you’re allowed to look at. Her eyes go down and back up. She’s not embarrassed about any of it and I have to hold still and let her, because that’s the entire point.

It’s the most exposed I’ve felt with my clothes off in a long time. Also I notice with some distance that I don’t want it to stop.

So I do the same. I let myself look.

I’d been running on momentum until now, mouth and hands and the next thing and the next thing. This is slower. This is her collarbone, the freckle I already claimed, the line low on her hip where her swimsuit was. Her thighs. The way she’s let her knees fall open like it costs her nothing, when I’d bet most of my month’s salary it costs her something, but she just decided. Alma decides things and then she does them. I’ve watched her do it all night. I’m watching her do it now.

“You’re staring,” she says. Not a complaint.

“You told me to.”

“I told you I like the lights on. I didn’t tell you to—” she stops. Reconsiders. “Okay. I did tell you to.”

“I run a thorough test pass.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I’m being conscientious.”

She laughs and reaches past me to the bedside table.

I watch her tear the packet. She does it with her teeth first, can’t get it, switches to her fingers, gets it. Small, unglamorous and somehow the hottest thing I’ve watched in years. She rolls it onto me and her hand stays there, loose around the base of me. I feel the contact like a small electrical event. I lean to kiss her because the sensation is so overwhelming that I need to do something to share it. The kiss is charged, filthy, messy. Her hands are on my face and mine are on her sternum, going down. When we break for air I look at her, and the air I just got back leaves again.

“I want you to see this,” I say. “Is that—”

“Yes.” She doesn’t let me finish. “God, yes.”

I reach for the pillow by her head, the one she’s not using. “Lift for me.”

She lifts, and I settle it under the small of her back, tilt her hips up toward me. She’s open like this, angled up, the lamp full on her, and I’m kneeling where she can see all of me and I can see all of her. Which is the whole point. Which is the thing she asked for in the elevator, hours ago, when I didn’t fully understand what she meant.

I understand now.

“Look down,” I say. “Watch.”

And I start to push in, slow, slower than I want to, because I want her to see it as much as I want to feel it.

“Max,” she says in the same breathy tone she used when I was touching her and I know in that moment that I’m fucked, because I’d give her anything, do anything, let her do anything to me, just to hear my name like that again.

She watches. I watch her watch. And I feel the exact moment her body has to make room for me; the catch in her breath, her hand coming flat against my chest, not pushing, just there, bracing. I stop. Let her have a second.

“Okay?” Barely a word. Barely any air behind it.

“Don’t stop. Just… slow.” Her eyes come up to mine and then go back down. “Slow.”

I hold her hips just to find some balance and give her slow. I give her every inch of slow I have and the way her body slowly lets me in makes my skin prickle. Her heat and slickness hits me on every inch I’m claiming and I have to hold onto her hips to stop my thighs from shaking. When I’m all the way in and she’s taken all of me, we both go still. The only sound in the room is the two of us trying to remember how to breathe.

She shuts her eyes and gasps. I need to hear that sound again, so I slide almost entirely out of her and then back in. Her hips begin to move slowly with mine. I feel the rhythm before I think it, her body finding the angle, my body answering.

“Watch, Alma. Don't close your eyes.”

My hands grip tighter on her hips, and I can see every detail. Every flutter of her eyelashes, her mouth agape, the flush of her cheeks. My gaze goes from her face to my cock disappearing into her as the pleasure builds. I know she can feel it too because she’s gasping, her hips answering to mine. Every time our hips connect she moans. She’s beautiful, real, blushed, present.

“I want to see all of you,” I say, and I bring one hand from her hip to between us, finding her clit with my thumb. “Show me. Help me.”

“I can't… God… I can't get enough of what you're doing, Max.”

“Don’t stop talking. Tell me what you’re thinking,” I say and watch her face struggle between pleasure and the register of me asking her what she asked me before.

“I’m thinking that you feel incredible. And—” I feel her hand joining mine, like I asked, covering my thumb with her fingers. “And that I want you to make me come.”

I groan hard as I feel her tightening around me. We’re both watching her now. Both watching my hand, her hand and the place where I move inside her. The lamp is full on all of it, this is the thing she asked for hours ago and I finally, fully understand it.

I want to remember this. The thought arrives whole and certain again, the way the important ones do. Not the way she looks. The way it is. Her hand teaching mine, the lights on, nothing hidden, both of us choosing to see.

I move one hand to the small of her back so the angle shifts and she moans, loud, unguarded. My hips snap faster. I lose the rhythm, lose the pattern, lose anything that isn’t her.

She’s frowning when our eyes meet. I know that frown now.

“Max—I’m—la puta madre—”

“I’ve got you. Look at me. Stay with me.”

And she does. She keeps her eyes on mine while it takes her and I watch all of it. The way her whole face tightens and then breaks, the way her back arches off the pillow, the sound that tears out of her with no shape to it, the clench of her around me, hard, in waves, pulling. Her eyes stay open. She came with the lights on, looking at me, and she let me see every second of it.

That’s what does it. Not the grip of her, not the friction, the seeing. The fact that she gave me this.

“Fuck.” It comes out hoarse. My thrusts go ragged, erratic, all chase and no control. I feel the build for one suspended second—too long, almost painful—and then it lets go, breaks open through me, and I bury myself deep and stay there while it goes through me in waves I can't hold back. Hips stuttering two, three more times. I keep moving, slow now, gentle, until the last of her aftershocks fade and her body goes loose under mine.

I’m still inside her when I lean down and slant my mouth over hers. The kiss is messy, open-mouthed. She sucks my lower lip into her mouth and my fingers bury in her dark hair. Her arms come around my neck, her legs wrapped around me as I keep pressing into her, slow, slow, slow.

A moment later, reluctantly, I let go of her and discard the condom. She takes the pillow off her back and we lie in silence. Her cheek on my shoulder, my nose grazing her temple, she smells warm and sweet, faintly of coconut. I cover us with the duvet. The air-conditioning is at full blast.

“Stay,” she whispers and I smile. My mind is coming back to its usual setting, running options. Not of what’s going to happen in the next few hours, if she’ll have me… that’s a given. What I want is a given in my head.

“Good luck trying to get rid of me,” she laughs and I kiss her temple. Her body twists in a light stretch, and her face is close to mine again.

“Tell me something you haven’t told me yet about yourself,” I say.

“I have a dog, a dachshund. My mom is taking care of him while I’m here. He’s a massive snuggler.”

“What’s his name?”

She smiles, there’s deep fondness in her eyes. “Don’t laugh. I named him when I was in college and thought it was cute. His name is Fernet. He’s black.”

I burst out laughing. Of course she named her dog the most Cordobés name possible.. “Sorry I laughed. It’s actually cute.”

I want to meet her dog. Her house. Her plants. All the things I can’t say yet because this is the first time and she lives seven-hundred kilometers away and etiquette says you can’t invite yourself to other people’s houses.

Instead, I settle for the opening she’s already given me. “So where is Fernet staying when you go to Cosquín Rock?”

“With my friend Lis. She has a big yard and dogs and Fernet loves them. I wish I could introduce him to you when you go, but he’s kind of old and I don’t travel much with him anymore.”

Relief floods my mind and I feel my shoulders dropping into the pillow. She’s leaving a door a little bit open, so I want to make myself very clear.

“Maybe I can take a few days off and go visit you. I’ll move some things around. My schedule is usually tight, but I can move some things.” I pause and really think about what I’m going to say next, because I don’t want her to misinterpret me or to scare her. “Alma, I’m not asking you to stay. I know you have responsibilities. I do too. But I want to see where this could go.”

She keeps looking at me, and I get nervous again, because everything I want is on full display for her. Time seems to move slow as she finds her words, but that’s probably just me.

“Max.” She exhales, and her hand finds my chest, flat over my heart. “I want that too. I’m just… I’m trying not to get ahead of myself.”

“Okay.” I cover her hand with mine. “Get ahead of yourself with me. I can keep up.”

She huffs a small laugh. “You’re not making it easier.”

“I’m not trying to.”

She’s quiet for a second. Then: “One step at a time?”

“One step at a time.”