Rough rug against my back. Hot friction between fiber and skin, oil to flame, fierce and hungry. Rachel’s tongue is wet velvet on my nipple, sliding down in a legacy of goose bumps to map the underside of my breast, and my moans are so light and sweet that they roll around the back of my throat like the ghost of a lollipop. With a shift of my knee, my leg is tucked between her smaller ones; another shift and her soft, sticky * lands on the top of my thigh. Though she holds still, I move my thigh up and down, push, push to the left a little, back down...and Rachel begins to sigh. To ride. Jagged knots of pleasure swell inside me, knitting into the sore echoes of my last orgasm until it’s all too much, too big to bear without relief, and I wriggle until I can ride her thigh too.
Our kisses thicken, though they’re frayed at the edges. We still taste like each other and the coconut marshmallows, earthy sugar mixed with salted musk, and the longer my tongue lingers inside her mouth, the drunker the pair of us grow. Her pelvis smacks into mine over and over, the tempo simultaneously awkward and delicious; I guide her with curses, their rough intent smoothed by pleasure.
Rachel comes first. She’s suddenly loud with it, her yelps floating up to the bare, unicorn-less ceiling, weighed down by the slowness that descends before I come all over her scars. Each contraction seems an unbearable wait away, but then they all happen at once and flood together between my thighs, pulsing, squeezing. Wet. So wet. Feels like an age before we float back down again.
“Show me,” she pants. “I want to see.”
“Jeez. Give me a minute.”
“It’ll be like afterplay. I mean, technically, I suspect we’re meant to watch the porn before we screw, but…huh.” She draws her teeth across my jaw in a tired attempt at a bite. “Before I fall asleep, Lee. Please?”
“Since you asked so nicely,” I pretend to huff.
While I pull the file up on the laptop, Rachel gingerly peels the SilentWitn3ss from behind her ear and climbs on to the sofa to put it back in its ratty box. Once it’s safely tucked away, she joins me on the rug to watch the video.
“Ready?”
She nods, her hair brushing my bare shoulder.
“Behold,” I murmur, “the Rach and Lee Show.”
“Exclusive premiere.” She giggles to herself.
Darkness fills the screen at first, and then in the usual SilentWitn3ss style, light creeps in until the image is full and clear. The first image is me—the upper half of my face, to be precise, my wide, make-up free eye with its dilated black pupil, nearly obscured by a strip of messy blond hair. Then the frame dips, my eye falls shut and we’re kissing. The mic picks up everything—our blotted mash of lips, the rushes of air between tastings.
We watch in silence, our fingers laced together. Rachel curls lazily into my chest. I press my thighs together, luxuriating in the slow throb of arousal conjured by watching myself fuck another girl. Such a strange perspective. Mortifying and fascinating at the same time. I don’t recognize the sounds I make, or the way my skin bleeds into the dim light, up close. By the time I’m on the floor and we’re riding each other, the camera sways between my bruised, bitten lips and the rolling thrust of my nipples; they bob in and out of the frame, each movement accompanied by a moan. I look lost. Sordid. Obscene. Before long, the speakers are full of damp, sucking flesh-smacks, and then onscreen me tenses, squeals and visibly twists into climax.
God.
“Do you like it?” I whisper.
Silence.
On the video, Rach and I pant into each other.
“It’s beautiful.” Her voice is barely there. “There isn’t much left that’s beautiful, is there?”
“Never was.”
“But especially after…things.”
“You’re beautiful, baby.” I run a single fingertip along her spine and gaze down to watch her shiver. “Nobody can take that away.”
“I wish I could wind time back so there was only you. I should never have—”
“Shh.” I press my palm to the base of her spine and hold her close, stiff in anticipation of her tearless sobs. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does, Lee. It matters too much. And nothing we do will ever erase him, or the things he did. The things he probably still does.” She gulps, spewing hot breath across my breast before a sob bubbles up. “Sometimes, I think I’m as bad as him because I didn’t tell. I didn’t warn the other girls.”
“That’s survivor guilt crap, and you know it. You’re tired.” I bend to plant a kiss on her cool forehead. “Let’s get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay.” Such relief in her tone, as if I’m the Sandman, come to push sweet dreams between her ears. I suppose someone ought to.