Paper Dolls

by Emma Chamberlain

  “How did I make you mad? Tell me.”

  “I’m not mad,” she said, annoyed. “You’re just confusing.”

  I laughed, making her bounce a little on my chest.

  “Oh yeah, I am so fucking confusing. I’m sorry about that. I have the weirdest mental process. It’s like I have to be confronted with something and act like a dumbass before I can figure it out. That’s just me. Also, I’m an asshole sometimes but I don’t know that I’m doing it.”

  “You just… Said a lot of things tonight, baby…” She calmed and kissed my skin. She was in her sad but still comforting me mode.

  “Ah, yep. I kind of dropped a few things on you in the middle of sex, which was rude. Sorry.”

  I lay there, breathing her in. The night must have been interesting. They were out so much later than we were. Something had to have happened to make her come home all charged like that.

  “Why were you feeling bad when you came home?”

  “Bad thoughts,” she said simply, brushing my skin with her hand and breathing audibly like humans do when they’re really tired or really old or really anything that involves being too preoccupied to really think about how they sound when they breathe.

  “Bad thoughts about what?”

  I wanted to see if she would tell me. I wouldn’t push too hard. I didn’t want her frustrated all over again.

  “Scared to say,” she said truthfully.

  “It’s okay. You can say. If you’re afraid of how I’ll react, that is. I won’t flip.”

  I licked the wound on my lip for the hundredth time and wrapped her up safe against my body.

  “Natalie was lovely,” she said, feeling relaxed with me hugging her. “We went so many places and a lot of them were familiar, places we’d gone together but the last place was new.”

  “Like a little goodbye to your past hangouts together or something?” It sounded like Natalie. She was really too smart. “Nat is always lovely but tell me about the new place.”

  I could feel Olivia swallow and then pause to breathe. She was hesitating. “We didn’t have to do anything but I wanted to,” she said. “So we left.”

  “What could you have done?” I rubbed her back and swallowed.

  “I already told you,” she said. “Anything you can imagine.”

  “Baby, that’s very broad and includes everything in the world if you’re in my brain. Going to space, making cinnamon rolls, skydiving…”

  “It was a sex place,” she said.

  “Ah, the plot thickens.” I kissed her temple, raising up just enough. “What did you want to do? All of it?”

  “Kinda… It was like… Experimental,” she said uncomfortably. “I didn’t want to do everything but there were things I wanted to do…” She swallowed again and strained her neck. “There was this couple having sex in the middle of the lobby while people stood close and watched. I wanted to kiss her, the woman… He’d been slowly fucking her for so long but she couldn’t cum. I wanted to help.”

  I imagined her watching that. Aching to help the woman. Olivia would. She wanted to help even when things were strange like that. Strange to others who didn’t understand. I’d fallen in love with someone who didn’t see the lines where other people did.

  “And there was this room,” she said, breathing a lot differently than she usually did. “This man blindfolded in a clear coffin. You could reach in and touch. You could play with him. I touched his chest but I wanted to know what it felt like to be in there, to be in that box…”

  “Not knowing who was touching you but just that they were feeling you?”

  I wanted her to tell it all.

  “That wasn’t about the people. It was about the feeling…” She gulped. “A woman was tickling his foot with a feather. Another was rubbing his leg. I put my hand over his heart and felt it beat. A man in the center slowly stroked his cock and I watched his face and I wanted to know how that felt. I could try to feel it but I couldn’t feel it. There was a woman in the corner just waiting like a guard… I thought of you,” she stopped.

  “Like I guard you or would if you were in his place?”

  “No baby… I thought of faceless… The things you’ve said about wanting more hands… I thought of the possibility of there being another room for a person like Ben… I knew that room probably existed. That’s why I had to get out.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  That made a lot more sense now. Why she’d been sad and why she didn’t enjoy everything.

  “Do you?” She asked. “I don’t think you do.”

  “Then tell me,” I said, softly.

  “I’ve already said too much,” she confessed.

  “No, you didn’t, baby. I want to know it all. I want to hear you.”

  “If I found that room,” she said, nearly hissing at her own stupidity. “I would’ve wanted to try it. Maybe for a second. Maybe for a while. Just to know.”

  It was what I thought. I needed her to say it.

  “Yes.” She still wanted to know what I’d experienced but it would have been different. People were there because they wanted to be and it was all consensual.

  “I know you would,” I said. “You would have felt ice and fire at the same time. I wish there was a way to describe it beyond that.”

  “We were only in that place a few minutes,” Olivia said.

  “Did you feel too much?”

  “I think so,” she said sadly. I felt her curl up into me tighter like she did when she was scared and she wanted me more than anything else in all the world.

  “You got overwhelmed? Are you sad you went to that place?”

  “It just feels strange… The timing… All the things in there reminded me of you and me. Being in there without you was just wrong. When I told Natalie you should’ve seen the guilt. She got me out so quick. It was my fault...”

  “Oh no. I bet she did feel bad but it’s not your fault,” I said. “She couldn’t know how it would make you feel and neither could you until you were there. Neither of you should feel bad about that. Shit happens.”

  I played with her hair, bending my arm up at the elbow and considering if I should say anything. I was curious.

  “Would you want to go back with me?”

  I’d do that for her.

  “No,” she said. “It was confusing because of the things you’ve said baby… I couldn’t take you into that space.”

  “Yeah, like I was dumb but why couldn’t you take me there? You’d be afraid I’d freak?”

  “I dunno,” she said, unsettled. It must’ve been more than just that.

  “You afraid I’d like it?”

  “I think I’m afraid of a lot of things,” she confessed.

  “Me too but I’d brave anything as long as you’re with me.”

  I wasn’t just talking about the freaky sex place. I was talking about the world. I wouldn’t let fear stop me anymore.

  “There are a lot of things I want to do and some of them aren’t compatible with what’s happened to me but I’m not afraid to be afraid anymore.”

  “What kind of things?” Olivia asked, easily distracted by me.

  “Sex things, going places, letting people touch me, and going to see Adam’s grave. There are loads of things.”

  She was quiet after that. I didn’t bring up Adam very often.

  “I’d like to try stuff from the box again with you.”

  I redirected us to the easier thing to talk about. I couldn’t leave Adam out there as the past part.

  “Just because I like something doesn’t mean you have to Avery.”

  “I know but I like it too. That’s why I got weirded out. I liked seeing your face when I spanked you. You were getting such release but in a different way.”

  “Why were you saying all that stuff about Natalie,” she asked. She must’ve been holding onto that since I said it at the very beginning of our sex adventure.

  “Because I know she wanted to kiss you and be with you and I know you�
��d probably feel some of that too. Feelings like that don’t just go away when you meet someone else. I know that if you did do anything with her that it didn’t have anything to do with me and that I’m the one you want to marry. I love you. All of you.”

  “Yeah, but you said you’d want to be there if she and I had sex.”

  “Babe, it would be insane and hot. I’d want to be there to…”

  I was a little embarrassed now.

  “I’d want to be involved I guess but if it happened and I wasn’t there then I’d be okay too.”

  “That makes me feel like you were just sitting in that strip club and thinking about how I was probably cheating on you,” Olivia said.

  “I wasn’t actually. Most of what I was thinking was: OH GOD STOP LOOKING AT ME… and: oh, this cheeseburger is actually good. But I knew you and Nat wouldn’t do anything. I know you wouldn’t cheat. Must sound crazy coming from me. I know. I get it. I’m sorry I’m confusing but I swear it’s true.”

  “I don’t think you would’ve gone ahead with that lap dance if you didn’t think I was up to no good,” Olivia said.

  I had to laugh at that. “No, I went ahead with the lap dance cause I felt trapped and guilty. I didn’t want to insult her. Um, she kissed me at the end.”

  “Wow,” she said, surprised. “And here I’d been holding out for you all night.”

  “I didn’t realize that they did that,” I said. “I mean I’m assuming that’s not normal but I seriously would have been doing the same as you if she hadn’t took me by surprise and just went for me. I didn’t want her to. I’d just gotten to the point where I was okay with her grinding on me and then that was a little cross of the line. Are you mad?”

  I narrowed my eyes and shrank back a little. That was the part I’d been a little afraid to tell her.

  “Just surprised,” Olivia answered calmly.

  “Okay,” I said, breathing a sigh. “You’re a way better kisser anyway and I didn’t feel anything but shock and weird and wishing for you.” My face scrunched.

  “You have free will, sweetie. Why do things if you’re not going to like them?”

  “Well, I didn’t do it really. It happened and that’s how I felt. I never know how I’m gonna feel about things anyway.”

  Olivia didn’t speak.

  “I’ll say no next time a stripper tries to kiss me,” I chuckled.

  “Right,” she lightly scoffed out a laugh.

  It was such a strange night and so not what we would have done if left to our own whim.

  This was what we would be doing. Talking after sex. We usually did, just a regular part of our routine.

  Olivia scooted down a little bit on my body and gently sucked my nipple into her mouth.

  “Ahh,” I groaned. She had taken me by surprise. “Not done yet, huh?”

  She sucked and tugged again before letting it go. “I’ll never be done,” she said, still a little bit sad.

  “You're right,” I said.

  “I think you’ve changed me a lot, Avery… I’m not the same person I was when we first met.”

  “Neither am I? How have I changed you though?”

  I wished that I'd known her before. To know someone was to be changed in little ways though.

  “I’m just different,” she said. “Tonight taught me that.”

  “What would old you have done?”

  “That’s an odd question,” she laughed lightly. “Old me would’ve wanted Natalie to try things. I wasn’t just talking about stuff like that though. I just meant I’m different,” she kept slowly licking my nipple and sucking it into her mouth to painfully tease. “I think differently now. You’re inside me.” I felt her hand move again to my folds and softly dip in and rub. “I’ve been invaded,” she said while pleasuring me.

  “I took the country of Olivia and you've done the same to me.”

  Her parts were moving so slow now, taking time to feel and really tease me.

  “You're gonna kill me.”

  I was smiling and wishing for more. She was gonna give it to me. I knew it. I wondered what her face had looked like when she’d been looking at all those people in the place Natalie took her. I thought about texting Nat to see what her impression of the experience was.

  Olivia teased me, soft and slow, barely touching me, yet it was just enough.

  I stayed still, letting her do whatever she wanted. Seeing what she wanted to do was as much fun as asking her for things. She made slow progress and it lengthened my pleasure but introduced an element of pain. The pain of anticipation.

  Her slow strokes were nothing short of well-desired torture. I felt her move her body up and pull her wet fingers up my body to touch at my chin and move me into face her as she kissed painfully, her tongue swelling in my mouth with the slow strokes she was taking in tasting me.

  It was remarkable and I let her wash over me, touching here and there as she pleased. I was not tied or restrained in the strictest sense. I felt it though. Her influence invaded me and made me still. She controlled me without intention.

  “Why do you taste like this?” She asked, mouth still full with me.

  “Like what? Like me?”

  It was an odd question.

  “Yup,” she said, licking my tongue and dropping her lips down into mine again as she pushed her hand down on my chest and stabilized me.

  “I think it just comes naturally. I don’t know how to taste differently,” I answered, smiling at her.

  “Right,” she said, pushing her body down onto mine and watching my face with an open mouth as she did. “‘Cause you can’t control anything,” she said, letting her hair fall down over my face as her hand held my jaw again and pushed my mouth up to meet hers.

  “Mmm,” I moaned. Her kiss was slow and lingering but forceful in a way I’d not felt from her. She was no longer scared.

  “I can control things,” I told her.

  She was making a point that I wasn’t getting. Normal. It was an ordinary occurrence for me to be two steps behind her when she was bringing up things that had been on her mind.

  “Me maybe,” she pushed on my body, her thigh between my legs again. Slow as she was, her breathing was in no way settled. I couldn’t tell where she was in that head. Her hands came into mine and she held them, pushing them back down into the mattress like she always did.

  “Only physically,” I breathed out.

  “No,” she huffed, using her hands to push herself up on me as she straddled me again and sat all the way up. “You’re inside me,” she repeated, leaning back on her hands and letting her legs slide down my sides, her toes tucking under my armpits and shoulders as she stretched and sighed in the night.

  “That happens with love like this,” I said, sure now.

  “Is it love though,” she challenged. Her right eyebrow cocked and I could see the smile on her face. “Or is it obsession?” She posed.

  “Both. It’s both and a few other things as well.”

  She was all over me now. I could feel her everywhere she had touched me in multiple ways.

  “Could be infatuation,” she mused. She was playing with me.

  “Or a combination of those. I think we are made up of a lot of different emotions and intentions but the dominant ones are love, self-sacrifice, and obsession.”

  “Yeah, see… I wasn’t talking about we.” She moved off of me and put her body on the very side of the bed. I saw her laying on her stomach with her hands beneath her face. “Do you really think love is a dominant emotion for most people? Or were you just talking about us.”

  “I was talking about us as a couple. Were you talking about us as individuals?”

  “I was specifically talking about you,” Olivia said. She was always surprise testing me.

  “So, what do you think I’m made up of?”

  This conversation was going somewhere interesting. Perhaps, not a place that I would like but I wanted to know what she thought.

  “I think I can’t pos
sibly know if you don’t know. My thoughts on that don’t matter anyway.”

  “Why don’t they matter?” I asked.

  I thought they did. Her opinion about everything mattered to me. There were too many emotions to process them all individually so it happened in bundles, reminding me of a mass harvest where every crop was mixed.