The Submission Gift

by Solace Ames

  “I don’t think so.” Paul’s heart beat steady against Jay’s back. Unshakable confidence, like a wall supporting him. “I’d like to make some very long-term plans with you.”

  “That doesn’t sound very romantic,” Jay said, now that he could breathe again. “But it really, really is. Don’t you think so, Adriana?”

  “Stop ganging up on me,” she said, half joking, half sad.

  Jay smoothed a curl from the back of her shoulder and rested his palm against her skin. He couldn’t tell if she was shivering or not. His extravagant eyelashes weighed his vision down, making him want to rip them off so that he could see more clearly. As crazy close as he was to Adriana—one soul in two bodies, and yes, he’d said it out loud before and he’d say it again—in this moment, he couldn’t understand her fear.

  Maybe she couldn’t understand it.

  All he could do was have faith in her.

  She shifted, and peeked out at them, showing only a sliver of her fiercely beautiful, worried face. The warm light of sunset played over her wavy curtain of hair, reminding him they were all in transition—day into night, old year into new, time rushing on, carrying them along, leaving him feeling light and weightless, from his eyelashes down to his jittery, twisting toes.

  “What kind of long-term plans?” she asked.

  Paul’s deep breath of relief was audible, tactile—his expanding chest actually pushed Jay closer to Adriana. Jay linked his foot with hers, and rubbed his instep against her ankle, fitting curve to curve and waiting peacefully for Paul to answer.

  “The trip to France,” Paul answered. “Renting something larger together. Two bedrooms, three bedrooms. When it comes to family explanations, well, I could be your roommate. We’d all be saving money.”

  “That’s good,” Adriana said, and let a little more of her face show. “I mean, saving money.”

  “We’ve been talking about...” Jay caught himself, and bit his lip. Kids? Considering that Paul had a hand right over the family jewels right now, maybe this wasn’t the time. Too fast. Way too fast.

  And too late—Paul filled in the rest. “That’s your decision. If it happens, it happens. Preferably with Jay, so the baby comes out the right color, and we’ll work things from there.”

  “Oh my God, you’ve really thought about this,” Adriana said. Which is exactly what Jay would have said, if he hadn’t been struck speechless.

  “When I said long-term, I meant it.” There was an edge to Paul’s voice, steel and smooth, not biting—he was always so smooth, even when he was desperate.

  Paul had to be desperate. Desperate to make them believe him. Jay ached to give him all the reassurance and comfort in the world. I believe—

  “I believe you,” Adriana said in a miracle rush of words that might as well have been his own. “So you’d go to all outcalls?” That question, on the other hand, was pure Adriana, pure practicality, and Jay was incredibly grateful to her for asking.

  “I’ll still do some outcalls, but I’m planning on pulling most of my ads. And going into porn. I’ll be able to see fewer clients, take less legal risk, and hopefully make a lot more money.”

  Jay’s eyes sprang wide open fast enough to bash his lids with his lashes, a weird and spiky sensation. “Wow.”

  “My main reason for staying away was to make sure I didn’t leave any history. That, and the industry people get on my nerves with their drama. Things are a little different now. When I get older, I’ll do something I don’t need a clean slate for—I’m like Adriana, I’m not cut out for a nine to five. And when I do porn, I’ll keep it quiet. Not like Evan. You wouldn’t see much of a change, and I’d go on using condoms, of course.”

  Adriana turned on her side to face them fully, her eyes wide, too. “You’d be a porn star. Wow. Um. Well, if it works and you can pay off your restitution faster and you can do college—”

  “—at the same time,” Paul finished. “Yes. And by the way, I know you two watch gay porn. Help me out with a stage name, maybe? I was thinking Don Ronson, but—”

  “What the fuck!” Jay almost wriggled out of Paul’s arms as Adriana laughed helplessly. “That’s awful, terrible, totally objectively the worst.”

  “I can think of worse,” Adriana said. “But Don Ronson is sort of stiff. And not in a good way.”

  “Stiff Stiffington,” Jay agreed.

  “Well, I’m still in the early planning stages.” Paul sounded mildly apologetic. When Jay looked at him, his face was calm, relaxed, radiating an easy regal glamour that made Jay feel hopelessly delicate in comparison. Jay didn’t mind that, maybe because he liked imagining how girls felt, next to a man like Paul. The world was harsher to girls—what they did with each other on this bed made up for that, somehow, helped balance the scale. Damn, his thoughts about sex and pretty much everything were all jumbled up right now, but the confusion would pass...

  And what we have will last. He believed it with all his heart and soul and Adriana’s borrowed heart and soul, as well.

  “I guess the only downside is still using condoms with you,” Adriana said. “But that’s okay. I mean we can still—I like it when—”

  “You’re blushing.” Paul grinned like an amiable shark. “But yes, I’m looking forward to coming in both your mouths later. That’s always a fucking religious experience for me, you know?”

  Jay, knowing exactly what Paul meant, licked his lips with a light flick of the tongue, tasting vanilla lipstick traces and remembering other tastes—

  “Yes,” Adriana moaned.

  Paul’s dark green eyes made Jay dizzy, like staring into a wishing well. The need in Adriana’s voice echoed in his bones. Sink down with me.

  “She needs to come,” Paul said. “Would you take care of her for me, baby?” He ran his thumb along Jay’s jawline—an appreciative, almost friendly caress. Jay rocketed from dizziness to white-hot desire, and the almost pain between his legs flared into near agony. If it wasn’t for Paul eye-fucking him so hard, he would have ripped himself free and jacked off for shameless relief.

  He grabbed a fold of the quilt to still his twitching hand, took a deep breath, and nodded. “How? With my mouth?” He’d like that, and judging by the sharp hiss behind him, Adriana would too.

  “Your hand. All of it.”

  “You want me to...”

  “Mine are too big,” Paul said, spreading his fingers out for Jay to consider the truth. “Yours, on the other hand—” He smiled even wider, hungrier.

  “We’ve never done that,” Adriana said. “But I want to try.”

  Jay turned to face Adriana and nearly said “I don’t want to hurt you” before he thought about what she truly wanted and needed. He’d seen a woman fisting in a porn video once, easing a slender, narrowed hand into her lover, and it hadn’t looked painful—intense, but not painful, or even violent.

  “Okay. As long as it’s something we do together, not that I...do to you. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes,” Paul and Adriana answered at almost exactly the same time, his deep voice winding together with hers, songbird-high.

  They moved together smoothly then, united in a common carnal purpose. Teamwork. Teamsex? Jesus, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Paul eased Adriana into a reclining pose, setting pillows under her shoulders. Reliable magic struck, easing jitters and diverting bashed elbows—Paul’s sense of timing was absolutely fucking unearthly. I’ll dance with you anytime, Jay promised silently.

  The straps of the garter belt framed the soft parenthetical curves of her vulva, the line right down the middle a little wavy and showing inviting edges of a darker, flushed pink. Simple geometry on the outside. Oh, but on the inside—he ached along his own tight seam with the urge to touch and taste. Instead, he toyed with the garter straps, ran his fingers under them, massaged inward to where inner lips like
an indecently cut tropical fruit parted for him as Adriana spread her thighs.

  “I love your body,” he told her, out of a sudden commitment to speak his thoughts, no matter how silly they sounded. Her hips shivered with a silent laughter that matched his own. When Jay breathed in, there was slight vanilla and her, intimate and addictive.

  He pillowed his head on her thigh, made a gun hand and slipped the two manicured fingertips into her slit—he was good with his hands and fucking proud of it, too. He could almost always make her come this way, thumb riding against her clit and easing her into release.

  She moaned and bucked upward, squeezing around him, warm and tight and already nicely wet.

  Paul’s hand stroked the side of Jay’s head, ruffling his hair and making his scalp tingle. “How does she feel?” Paul asked.

  “Good...complicated.” Textures like corduroy slanted into slickness as he pushed inward. He pressed the pad of his thumb hard against her clit, knowing hard was what she liked. His short thumbnail gleamed glossy burgundy there, the color of blood and sin and love. She’d given him the key to her body in that hotel in Anaheim, kept giving it to him over and over again, and what he couldn’t unlock, Paul could. “I want you to be so happy, baby,” he said into her fragrant skin.

  She moaned, contracted, responding with the fluid grace of a fine machine.

  Paul whispered something in her ear, then mouthed her earlobe, and she ground up against Jay’s controlling thumb. “That’s it,” Paul said, growling loud enough to hear. “Fuck his hand. Make yourself. Make yourself.”

  Jay could feel the rush of wetness when she orgasmed, loved how it slid against his knuckles as he flicked and she sobbed and stuttered. He traced her labia with his tongue, treating himself to a new sensation, the primal taste of her pleasure.

  “Ahh. Can you get some more fingers in there now?” Paul asked. Laser focused on the goal, but judging by his satisfied sigh, enjoying himself every step of the way—

  “You’re going to make a great porn star,” Jay said, and licked his lips.

  “If my first one’s a pretty boy, I’ll pretend I’m fucking you.”

  “Thank you. I think. Mmm.” Jay withdrew, added his ring finger—not the hand with his wedding ring, though wouldn’t that be symbolic—and went back in, crooking three fingers upward to stroke the inside of Adriana’s channel. “Is it good there, baby?”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes, yes—”

  “I don’t know if I can get any more in,” he said, warning her and Paul and himself, too, because her eager gasps woke an urge to bury himself in her—she wants it she wants it she can take it.

  He couldn’t trust that urge.

  “Everything is possible with enough lubrication,” Paul countered, and there it was, cool liquid dripping over his knuckles, applied generously. “Put your fingers together.”

  Jay put his trust in both of them and did what he was told, becoming Paul’s instrument. The rhythm of Adriana’s breath guided him. Push, relax. Push, relax. Her flesh like rose petals. Raw. Alive, rippling with life.

  Four knuckles inside her, his thumb tucked below.

  God.

  She wailed. Her thighs went rigid and he pulled back to what seemed manageable, because four slim fingers couldn’t be any wider around than one thick cock, according to his best perverted guess. “Am I all right here?” he asked. “You’re tight, you’re squeezing me, it’s good but I want to know—”

  “Wait,” she gasped. “Wait. Okay. Oh...Jay—I want you to do it. Please. Now.”

  Her thighs softened. The pressure against his hand relaxed too, and he took the cue, slid in again, quickly, and when she tightened he was in her pussy up to his fucking wrist and the heat was fucking burning and—

  “Can you feel her heartbeat?” Paul asked.

  Jay glanced up, drawn by Paul’s coolly curious voice, and saw that Paul was holding her hand. The equation of five fingers twined with four, two becoming one—the sight and symbolism wrecked Jay, clawing at his heart.

  He’d never felt more alive, or more in love.

  “Yes. I can.” He could feel everything.

  The button of her cervix, the weight of her womb. Everything. Given to him. And also taking him in, grasping him, with her unyielding strength.

  She cried out constantly, wordlessly, through her next climax, although there might have been half a yes hidden in the high notes.

  Paul brought her hand to his mouth and kissed every finger.

  When they finished, he kissed every finger of Jay’s hand, as well.

  “I’ll stay with you,” Paul promised. “As long as you’ll have me, I’ll stay with you.”

  Let it be always.

  We’ll travel together.

  Yes.

  Epilogue

  Paul was exasperated by the lack of professionalism on display on the set, grown men and a few grown women flailing around and looking to find someone, anyone, to blame.

  “I’m going to the pool,” Paul said to the director. “Come get me when you have this fixed.”

  They’d been shooting a scene for Ass Banging Prison Sluts when the prison bars, represented by a hastily zip-tied conglomeration of six-foot lengths of aluminum fence, just couldn’t handle the banging. The fence lengths lay flat on the floor. The cameraman was bruised and cursing. Glass shards from a broken key light rimmed a smoking hole in the carpet of the rented house. Chaos, basically. And not Paul’s fault.

  He stepped out the patio door, collected his laptop from the pile of messenger bags, found an empty deck chair and settled into it. The summer sunlight warmed him nicely and made wavy-sided diamonds shimmer in the pool. Relaxing. He decided to stay naked.

  “Are you tweeting about this?”

  “No,” Paul answered. “Just checking my email.” He turned to see Grant Marnier, his bottom, sitting down in the next chair. Grant had a bathrobe on and was almost audibly grinding his teeth.

  “I’m never going to work for these dumbass motherfuckers again,” Grant said. “What the shit, fuck, damn.”

  “You’d better stay off Twitter,” Paul advised. “I’m doing one more scene with this crew tomorrow, but that’s it for me, as well.”

  “If we’d gone to that prison set in the Valley, we’d be done by now.”

  Paul shrugged. “Que será, será.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Grant asked suspiciously.

  “What will be, will be. It’s philosophical. I’m going to check my email, maybe type up some notes. When things calm down in there, I’ll make a suggestion to finish the scene without any prison props, call it Ass Banging Prison Sluts on Parole or something.”

  Grant smiled, his bottom lip and chin still a bit wet from their interrupted scene. He was a sleek, fit young blond, very ambitious if not particularly bright, and he’d probably go to the next level up soon. Paul wasn’t as interested in the hottest spotlight and the networking it took to get there. He was happy where he was, never had to go looking for clients anymore, and only fucked for money a few times a week. The worst part of the business was days like these, caught in awkward downtime.

  Another year. Then graduation, and maybe France.

  There was an email from Marielena in his inbox, which was always strange, but he was getting used to it. She emailed him every week to practice her English. This message informed him in idiomatic but stilted sentences that she was thinking of applying to an architecture school in Lima, and did he have any advice for her?

  His fingers twitched with wanting to type a caps-locked DON’T DO IT, but he decided to formulate a more thoughtful response later and switched windows to his note file on Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change. The concepts engaged him. Once he’d wrapped up his BA, an urban planning graduate degree seemed appealing. Or maybe he could s
tay in academia, if teaching happened to agree with him and the school wasn’t too particular about morals clauses.

  “I’m bored,” Grant said. “And I want a cheeseburger.”

  “Go ask your boyfriend to get you one.”

  “I broke up with him last night.”

  Paul didn’t respond to that, just made a vaguely sympathetic face while repressing any trace of disbelief, because Evan had told him quite a different version of yesterday’s events. “I’m a vegetarian,” he said by way of excuse.

  “No meat, no tattoos, no booze, no...” Their banter was rapidly losing friendliness. Grant seemed to realize that and pulled back in time. “I guess all the clean living helps keep it up. I like working with you, man.”

  “Same,” Paul said. “I do have a tattoo, actually.” He folded down his right ear to show two spidery cursive letters just below his hairline, an entwined A and J.

  “That’s like super tiny,” Grant said, squinting. “Well, I’ll update my image of you.” He got up, waved and wandered off in search of a cheeseburger.

  Paul did schoolwork for an hour, until the sun started to go down and the diamonds stopped dancing so brightly in the turquoise water. Entropy had triumphed. There was no way the scene was going to happen tonight. He put on his clothes, said his goodbyes and drove home to Inglewood.

  All the parking spaces in front of his building were taken.

  It struck him as a cosmic unfairness. He gripped the steering wheel so hard that his nails dug into his palms. This small frustration took all the other small frustrations of the day and concentrated them, like a magnifying glass, into a beam of purified humiliation. He shouldn’t have to wait a second longer to—

  He loosened his hands with a sharp mental command. Breathed deeply. Turned the wheel, circled the familiar sand-yellow complex, and found a space a block and a half away. The short walk did the trick of calming him. The south face of the complex was lined with scarlet-flowering bougainvillea, and although the buildings themselves were plain and shoddy, the vivid colors and the quality of the sunlight were always what first jumped into his mind when he thought of coming home.