Chapter 22: The Long Night

Kent didn't move for the length of one breath.

Then I took my hand off his chest, wrapped it around his wrist, and walked him into the second room.

The mattress lay on the floor in its plastic.

I pulled the plastic off in one long, shrieking crackle.

Across the hall, a small voice said "dinosaur" in its sleep and rolled over, and the top bunk creaked.

We stood frozen, with the plastic balled in my fists.

Kent put his hand over his own mouth, and his shoulders shook.

I waited a moment before I shut the door, slowly, until the latch clicked.

The only light came through the crack under it, from the plastic moon that Eli insisted on in every hallway he'd ever slept near.

"Here's how this goes," I said.

"Okay."

"You don't touch me unless I say."

"Yes, ma'am."

I stood him at the foot of the mattress and unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time.

I kissed each inch I uncovered, the hollow of his throat, the bone under it, the old scar on his ribs.

His hands stayed fisted at his sides, and I could hear what it cost him.

I undid his belt and slid his jeans down and left them around his knees on purpose.

He was so hard that the cotton of his boxers had gone dark at the tip.

I put my palm flat against him through it, and he said my name.

"Sit," I said.

He sat on the edge of the mattress with his jeans still tangled at his shins.

I stepped back into the moon-colored light and took off my own clothes, slowly, while he watched.

Sweater and bra first, dropped on his knee.

Then the leggings, which I peeled down my thighs with my eyes on his face.

He looked at me, hungry and trying to be polite.

"Lie back," I said.

He lay back.

"Hands on the mattress."

He put them there.

I knelt over his face, facing the wall, and braced my palms against the plaster above the headboard.

"Now use your mouth," I said. "Slow, until I tell you."

He licked up the center of me, long and flat, and I bit my lip so hard that I tasted pennies.

He was so careful, and so greedy under the care.

His tongue circled my clit in a lazy ring, then pressed, then slid down and pushed inside me.