Quirks & Kinks

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  Her gasps and moans echoed in the stairwell, vibrating through my body like a sixth and extra sense when we got in the way of their percussive travels.

  But I couldn’t explore the way I wanted, and Easie deserved better than a cold, concrete wall behind her back.

  Eager hands ran down the line of her back to her ass, cupping the cheeks and lifting without her permission or preparation.

  Her answering gasp invited my tongue into her mouth, and I made use of it, plundering its bounty and exploring each nuance and taste individually. There was something special about her tongue and mine together, like they held the power to conduct a wave of electricity back and forth in a way I’d never experienced.

  Each stair felt like a mile as I climbed with her in my arms, the weight of her petite body nothing compared to the heavy load of my anticipation.

  I hadn’t had sex in years, but my dick remembered the ride as though it was a bicycle, turning to granite and making the rub of friction carrying her created that much more torturous.

  Her ankles crossed behind me, and the heels of each of her feet dug deliciously into my ass. I welcomed her enthusiasm, watching my step as I walked but opening my neck up to her ministrations as I did. Each lick of her tongue and bite of her teeth had me moving faster, forcing our way through the stairwell door of my floor with the extension of one, single hand.

  She never paused or faltered, sucking at the lobe of my ear and whispering direction into it. “I can’t wait to feel you inside me.”

  I nearly crumbled to my knees right then, but pushed on, knowing that the real relief would come from the inside of my apartment and getting there took a heady mixture of a key, concentration, and luck.

  All three came together better than expected, and the freedom of being inside my home was liberating. No longer on the hook for her safety and virtue, I dove in with equal fervor, forcing her head to the side and working my lips down the line of her neck, around the curve of her collarbone, and into the neck of her scooped tank top. Each swell deserved its own attention, and I gave it, working from the base of one, up the peak, down the valley, and up again all before she could even get her hand in my hair and a moan out of her throat.

  Walls yielded and braced as we bumped our way down the hall to my room, her legs wrapped around me tighter and tighter like a slowly cinching belt. I would have thought they’d get tired, but instead they worked harder, trying to force our bodies into one despite the barrier of our clothing.

  “God, baby,” I groaned as my lips left her chest and my knees hit the bed, taking her down and landing on top of her in one, smooth motion.

  Her legs fell free and opened immediately, and her scraping hands went to the base of my shirt, pulling it up and over my head with impatience and passion.

  “Get this off,” she pleaded when it stuck, absorbing the warmth of my skin with a searing press of her palms and following it slowly with a gentle scrape of her nails. I couldn’t see even one tiny inkling of a reason to deny her, and reached between my shoulder blades to make her wish a reality.

  At the sight of my bare chest, her hands migrated from back to front, working the line of my chest and scraping through the small smattering of hair between my pecs. It was mostly smooth, but the Honduran in me had to represent just a little.

  “Easie.”

  Her hands moved from my chest to my abs, down the line of my torso, and into the edge of my shorts. A surprised gasp choked the flow of air from my lungs and ended in a wheeze.

  “Goddamn, baby,” I cooed, sitting up enough to get my hands under the edge of her shirt but keeping myself well within touching distance. In no way did I want to discourage her hands from their position in my pants.

  It was a good position. Maybe the best of them.

  And my big head might be stupid, but the little one knew exactly what it wanted.

  “Touch me,” I pleaded, unable to resist the proximity and tease. Easie complied immediately, moaning along with me when her dainty fingers wrapped their way around my circumference.

  One pump, two, and then three, she tested the efficacy of her grip, nonsensical words pouring their way out of my shaking mouth as she did.

  Good God, that felt good. Like her hand was designed to give me pleasure just as sure as my mouth was born to give her hers. I couldn’t wait to feel the pleasure of our bodies joined and in motion as one.

  With the way this was—with the way everything was—there wasn’t even a chance it wouldn’t move mountains.

  Impatient and unwilling to wait any longer, I dove in, pulling her shirt all the way over her head and freeing her breasts from the triangles of her bikini. Automatically they swayed, forfeiting to the pull of gravity readily and sinking to the sides. Her flesh was heavy, disproportional to her small body in the best possible way. I filled my palms with their weight, pulling them up to the center and sinking my lips into the space between them. She arched into me, pushing them further into my mouth and moving a restless leg up the line of mine.

  I pulled back suddenly and shucked my shorts from my body before ridding her of the same.

  Her blue eyes looked up at me with a glow, and the peach of her skin turned rosy with arousal.

  Starting at her ankles, my hands skated up her skin, digging into the tense muscle of her thighs and eliciting a satisfying sigh. Her muscles felt tight and overused from the hard day, and I worked my fingers slowly in and out, around the line of each thigh, relaxing the taut flesh until her hips flexed upward with well-loosened excitement.

  I dug into my shorts and grabbed a condom from my pocket.

  She smiled her most mischievous of smiles, and I soaked it in, eager to feel the lash of her witty tongue with my cock deep inside her. It might not seem like the mood of the moment, but it felt real and right and distinctly Easie.

  Now I would just have to find the best way to provoke her.

  I laughed to myself at the idea, biting my lip to stop it from escaping. My eyes running the line of her sensuous naked body, this wasn’t the time to allow an ill-advised laugh to escape the confines of my shaking chest.

  I wanted to feel the lash of her attitude, not the maiming of my most eager appendage. I’d have to walk a fine line to make it turn out in my favor.

  Apparently unhappy with my speed, or lack there of it, Easie grabbed the condom from my hand, ripped it open, and knocked my hands out of the way, rolling the latex down the line of my cock with speed and efficiency and a gleam in her perfect blue eye.

  “Uh,” I laughed, before sinking deep to my knees and settling between her legs. “You did that scarily well.”

  She winked, unwilling to acknowledge me with a verbal response. As much as it irked the compulsive, controlling side of me in the moment, I knew it would be for the best. Nobody needed to get into a discussion about other lovers when we were this close to coming completely together for the first time.

  Perfectly positioned, I sunk inside, inch by precious inch. Easie’s eyes held mine, unblinking and intent and soul-shatteringly open. She was living this—waiting for the scary bottom to fall out from under us—but in it until the end, breathing me, connecting with me, and hoping I was doing the same.

  I’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  “Easie,” I whispered, my voice appropriately tortured by the feel of her welcoming flesh. She fit me perfectly right, squeezing but accepting as her hips suctioned their way north to meet mine.

  The reality was even better than the dream, hours and hours of faked intimacy on the show giving way to a much realer, righter emotion.

  I’d thought I’d done a good job of mimicking what this would be like, of the way I would feel seated fully inside her, but I’d actually failed. Miserably.

  Because if this was the real deal, everything we’d done on set had been nothing but a very poor man’s imitation.

  Squeezing the flesh of her hip, I sank deeper, pushed harder, and grunted with the exertion. She gasped with each pulse of my hips,
gripping onto the ends of my hair and pulling with an exhalation of sex soaked air.

  Sinking deeper into the heaven between her legs, I lifted one, stretching her hip enough to hitch her calf over the bend in my arm. Pressing my upper body down into hers, I brought us even closer together and opened her up at the same time.

  Her eyes widened in surprise at the stretch in her limbs, but a rush of excitement slid out of her to coat the inside of her thighs and the skin of my balls at the same time.

  Excitement already tingled at the base of my spine, threatening to waste all of our carefully crafted effort, so I pushed her image to the back of my brain and shut my eyes, working the line of her neck, down and across her chest, until I had one perfect nipple in my mouth.

  Her hips shot off of the bed as a direct result, and I had to tighten the muscles of my ass to stop the race of my release.

  “Come on, baby,” I coaxed, working my hand between our bodies and circling the nub above our joining. Her fingers came down to link with mine, mixing in the juices we created and slipping perfectly into a melded mess with mine.

  Joined in sex, hand, and heart, we came together, staring into each others’ eyes and committing to a level of intimacy that couldn’t be taken back.

  We weren’t just coming at the same time, but instead, coming together in every possible sense of the words. Tuning to one another and forming a bond that, no matter what, would never be broken.

  “Easie,” I called, intending to hunt for some sass, but changing my mind when her tired eyes met mine once again.

  “Anderson,” she whispered, the most serious I’d ever seen her.

  I touched my lips to hers, not moving from the warmth of her body even though I knew I should. Her limbs fell limp to our sides, but her body pressed close to mine, rising up to meet the surface area of my skin instead of sinking into the bed.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to let you go, Litterbug,” I whispered against her mouth, admitting the truth to both of us at the same time. I knew I was walking a fine line, that there’d be a time when I couldn’t have everything as easily as I had it now. But I was willing to wade in the darkness, bask in the ignorance, until that time came.

  Things had changed.

  If I couldn’t have her, I wasn’t sure I wanted anything.

  “Hmm,” she hummed, the slowing beat of her heart steadying with sleep.

  With that, she was done, asleep with me inside of her. And with the trust of the gesture, I may have been awake, but I was gone even more.

  I pulled out slowly, careful not to wake her as I did, and extracted my aching legs from hers. She rolled into the bed in my absence, pulling my pillow to her chest and taking a deep inhale of Anderson scented air.

  I watched as she snuggled in before tiptoeing into my bathroom to get rid of the condom.

  With it in the trash, my hands sank into the hard counter of the vanity and my head descended into the space between them.

  Two people lived inside me, begging for different things and making me feel like I was coming apart at the seams.

  With one deep breath and a shake of my arms, I ventured back into my room, crawled slowly into the squishy softness of my bed, and placed one tender kiss to the exposed temple of Easie’s head.

  Her hair spread and dusted the case of my pillow, and her long lashes curled so far they almost doubled back into themselves.

  But she was peaceful and resting in a way that I couldn’t bring myself to be. Not without doing what I always did.

  Scooting carefully back out of the bed, I crept on quiet feet to the door, down the hall, and into the living room, scooting my way through the darkness to the standing cabinet in the corner.

  Well oiled hinges opened silently, and the sliver of light from the moon offered just enough guidance for me to find the waiting envelope.

  I grabbed it, shutting the door behind me and settling onto the couch in the middle of the room. The light of the night came through the windows just enough that I didn’t need to turn on a lamp, and I poured out the contents of the envelope onto the coffee table in front of me.

  I scooped up the pile carefully, resting it in my lap and unfolding the well worn pages with ease and precision.

  Evan’s words bled and blurred, running into one another and making less sense than normal. I struggled to understand the way I normally did, to find the blinding obligation that normally assaulted me.

  Live Free and Breathe Easy, he told me over and over again, begging me to do what he couldn’t with each healthy breath I took.

  I fingered the edge of the letter, picturing his face and trying to feel him talk to me.

  Trying to understand what he wanted me to do.

  “Did you tell her yet?” Tammy called into the darkness, startling me with her presence. I hadn’t even thought to check if she was home when we’d busted our way into the apartment earlier.

  I closed my eyes, dropped the letter, and brought my hands to the back of my neck.

  “No.”

  Tammy’s head shook softly as she stepped into the only sliver of light. “You’d better do it soon.”

  “I will. I’m just . . .” Honestly, I didn’t know what I was. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to admit it all out loud yet. If I did . . . well, I was scared of what would happen. I wanted to do what was right, but I was scared that didn’t line up with what I actually wanted anymore. I felt pulled in two different directions, and no matter how obvious the answer seemed, I couldn’t seem to merge the solutions.

  “You’re pretty irresistible, Anderson. She’ll be in deep with you soon—if she isn’t already. It’ll be a shame when she finds out half of the things she knows about you, aren’t about you at all.”

  I started to argue that we hadn’t been together but a couple of days, that talking about stuff like this takes time, but I knew it was bullshit. She’d given me her body, connected to me both physically and emotionally in a way that I couldn’t deny. It might be true that some things take time, but the viable excuses for continuing to keep such a large part of myself from her were starting to run dry. Certainly none of them considered what was fair to her. They only considered what was easier for me.

  I struggled to breathe, feeling the movement of air from outside my body to the inside start to stutter as she walked away. I rubbed mindlessly at the unfinished edges of Evan’s paper, touching it the way I thought he would have. On the fourth stroke, my fingers hit gloss, and I realized that I’d brought out more than just his letters from my secret little envelope this time.

  Reluctantly, I pulled it forward and settled it in front Evan’s words. The regret burned like acid in my mouth, coating my throat with bitterness for the clueless kid I’d been. So ignorant to the ways of the world, I thought not only myself but my loved ones immortal, wasting some of the most important days of my life and his, fucking around and disrespecting the blessings I’d been given.

  And now I was hypocritically aligning Easie’s life with my mistakes. It was hardly fair for someone riddled with so many flaws to expect perfection from someone else.

  Tucking the contents back into the envelope, I got up, crossed the room, replaced it into the cabinet, and closed it.

  Just one room away a phenomenal woman waited for me, and for once, I decided to set it all aside and give the thinking a rest for the remainder of the night. I wanted Easie in my arms so much I found it hard to care about much else.

  And really . . . that was the whole problem.

  “ARE YOU TELLING ME the two of you are dating?” Larry asked a week of tiring days and equally tiring nights later, looking at our joined hands like they were a couple of Nazis in World War II Germany.

  Easie and I glanced at one another, and it was clear from the downright threat in her eyes that it was up to me to be our spokesperson. We’d settled into one another fairly well, spending most of our time together, but doing it on my schedule.

  I was still a truth-withholding, selfish asshole. But
I couldn’t help it. I’d grown to like our bubble. I’d even go as far as saying that I’d started to need it.

  Easie was the only thing that was all mine. But Evan’s drive was the only thing giving me purpose. I was afraid to rock the boat.

  I know. It was fucked up.

  “Yes,” I confirmed, turning to Larry and squeezing Easie’s hand in support. “We’re together.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Larry groaned, rolling his head back and slamming his hands on the table at the same time. “Great. Just what we fucking need.”

  “Um,” Easie cut in, leaning forward with a gleam in her eye. “Just what the hell is the big deal about us being together? It’s not like we’re inviting you in for a threesome.”

  “Yeah, we’re definitely not,” I interjected, just in case there was any doubt. I wasn’t exactly keen to share, and Larry’s connection to Ashley gave the whole avoidance thing an added incestuous incentive.

  “The problem isn’t in the fact that you’re together. It’s that with getting together comes the unavoidable breaking apart.” He rubbed desperately at his wrinkling forehead. “That’s the fucking explosion I’d like to avoid.”

  “We’re not splitting up,” Easie argued, starting to really get agitated. “We’re not you and Ashley.”

  I raised my eyebrows and held my breath. I didn’t think it was a good idea to poke the bear’s most sensitive spot without a loaded gun in our hands.

  “No, but the two of you share fucking genes.” His eyes came directly to me. “Look out, dude. Shrapnel fucking everywhere.”

  I sucked into myself, making like I was invisible and trying not to get myself in trouble by taking anyone’s side. Agreeing with Larry in this instance could only end badly, but Larry was kind of in charge of paying me. Switzerland looked good this time of year.

  “Maybe it’s you who’s the problem!” Easie yelled, jumping up in a fit of sibling indignation.

  “Easie,” I coaxed softly, trying to calm her down without putting myself into the line of fire.

  Larry just choked on a laugh. “Trust me,” he addressed both of us. “The two of you look even more dysfunctional than normal. Ka-BOOM!”