by Katia Rose
A flash of pain sears through me, the same one I feel every time I conjure up an image of Tiff, but I don’t turn away from it this time. I let the memories burn their way through me and hold Christina even closer until the flames start to die down.
Then, with her head resting on my shoulder and her hair brushing the skin of my neck, I tell her about Tiff. I start with the day we met and I don’t stop until I get to the day she died. I let everything pour out, even things I’m not sure Christina wants to hear. I tell her about our first awkward attempt at sex, how I felt whenever I was taking her photo, the way she’d draw her eyebrows together when she was lecturing me. I almost have to stop when I get to the last time I saw her, leaving for her rafting job, but I push through to the very end: the phone call that told me she was gone.
Somehow, I feel stronger afterwards, like I can breathe in the ocean air just a bit easier than before. Christina, on the other hand, is crying into my t-shirt.
“You must miss her so much,” she chokes out, her voice thick.
“I do,” I answer solemnly, “all the time, but I’m going to learn to handle it better. I finally talked to my mom about it. I’d never done that before. I didn’t even know, but she’s been seeing a grief counsellor about Tiff and I’m going to try it out.” I tilt her chin up so her eyes meet mine. “I want you to know that I would never have done any of that before I met you. I love you, Christina.”
She jerks away from me. “You do?”
I’m sure my eyes are as wide as hers right now. I hadn’t planned on saying that.
“Uh, yeah,” I venture. “Is that...okay?”
She blinks at me a few times and then her body relaxes. “I guess,” she sighs, like she’s granting me a huge favour. “I’d say I love you too, but I know that will just inflate your already overinflated ego.”
“No need. I already know you love me, Peaches. Who doesn’t?”
She pretends to push me off the cliff again.
“Hurry up!”
“You sure this is a good idea? The tide is coming in!”
I splash my way through the knee-deep water after Christina.
“Yeah, so hurry!” she calls over her shoulder.
We walked along the beach for a bit after leaving the viewpoint, and are apparently now on our way to some sort of secret alcove in the cliffs that’s out of sight of the whole village.
“Won’t we get stuck when the water comes in?” I ask, as Christina scrambles over a rock.
“Only for an hour or so!”
I can barely keep up with her. She manoeuvres around the tide pools and boulders as if she has them memorized, and I realize that she probably does. We finally make it to a tiny alcove that carves a semi-circle into the cliff, the ground padded with a stretch of soft sand just wide enough for two beach towels. The side that faces the ocean is lined with huge boulders we have to climb over to get inside, so it feels like we’re standing in some kind of fort.
“We used to play a game here,” Christina explains, settling onto the sand and digging into it with her toes. “All the preteens in town would come down to the beach, and the guys would each get paired up with a girl. Then you’d have to spend ten minutes in here with your partner. We’d keep going until the tide came in and whoever was in here last would get stuck with their partner for an hour.”
“Sounds kind of like seven minutes in heaven,” I observe, dropping next to her on the sand, “only with the added possibility of drowning.”
“What can I say?” she laughs. “We were hardcore.”
“Were you ever the one that got stuck?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “This was the first place that I ever kissed anyone, though.”
“Oh?” I wag my eyebrows at her. “And how was your first kiss with little Armando? Or was his name Paulo? Please don’t tell me it was Fernando.”
Christina swats my arm.
“It was Bernardo,” she finally admits with a huff.
I laugh so loud it bounces off the walls of the cliff, echoing around the alcove.
“Oh god,” I gasp, “how will I ever compete with the passion of first love? With the flame that burns in your heart for Bernardo?”
She tackles me, pushing me onto my back in the sand and straddling my body.
“You. Are. Such. A. Carahlo.” She accentuates each word with a punch.
“Hey!” I shout, grabbing hold of her wrists. “You’re not even going to give me a chance to try? I bet I could make your forget Bernardo even existed.”
“Oh yeah?” she asks, her eyes starting to spark with desire.
“Yeah.” I wet my lips with my tongue. “I’ll make it so you’ll never be able to think about this place without remembering me and what I did to you here.”
She wriggles out of my grip and puts her hands on her hips. “I don’t know, Penn. I’ve kissed a lot of boys in here. You sure you can deliver on that claim?”
As an answer, I hook my thumbs through the belt loops of the tiny pair of jean shorts she’s wearing and tug her forwards, shifting underneath her to let her feel how hard I am already. Her eyes close and she lets out a moan.
When she starts grinding against me I let my hands travel up under her t-shirt, caressing the taunt skin of her stomach and moving to trace the outline of her spine. Her head falls back and I grip her hips, pulling her into me even harder, forcing her to quicken the rhythm of her thrusting.
Her hands find the zipper of my shorts and I feel a slight ease in the pressure that was building up hard enough to hurt, but it only makes me want more.
“Get up,” I order.
She looks down at me with hooded eyes and tugs her lip between her teeth before obeying. When we’re both standing, I back her up against one of the boulders and crush my lips against hers, pressing our chests together. The tide is rising even faster now, lapping at the other side of the rocks, but they’re packed tightly enough together that none seeps into the alcove.
She goes right for my zipper again, tugging my shorts down and leaving me in my boxers. I kick the shorts away and she reaches for my shirt next. She pulls it over my head in a hurry, like the second it takes me to get it off is way too long.
Before I let her kiss me again, I strip her of her t-shirt and bra. Her skin glistens with drops of salt water and sweat. Her nipples are already hard and she shivers as I brush my thumbs over their tips. Up against the rock, with the midmorning sun beating down on her and the ocean spraying around us, she looks like some kind of sea goddess.
“I want you to take me,” she says, her voice low and demanding, “here, against this rock. I need to feel you inside me right now, Aaron.”
I don’t wait for her to ask again. Stepping back, I pull off my boxers as she shimmies out of her shorts and underwear. She reaches out to grip my shoulders and pulls me back to her, pressing my body into hers. The tide has risen so high now that droplets splash down on us as the waves crash against the other side of the rock. The coolness of the water mixed with the heat of the sun is sending all my nerve endings into overload.
There’s no time for teasing or taking it slow today; all I want right now is to be thrusting in and out of her, feeling how wet and tight she is as I take both of us higher and higher. I grab one of her thighs and hook her leg around my waist and then I let myself slide inside her.
I watch as her eyes roll back and her head sinks against the rock. A moan escapes me and I start picking up speed, building a rhythm. She’s already so wet.
“Fuck, Christina,” I hiss, as she tilts forwards to lick the salt water from my neck.
“You feel so fucking good.”
Her last word is lost in a gasp as I use the hand that’s not supporting her leg to pinch her nipple. She bites down on my neck in response, and any hope I had of self control is lost. I slam her against the rock and fuck her so hard she screams. Her hands claw at my back and for the next few minutes we’re dragged under our own tide, swept up by the current of desire.
&
nbsp; I try to wait for her to come, wanting to reach that height and tumble off it with her, but when she sucks at the skin behind my ear and tugs my earlobe between her teeth, I give in. All it takes is a few fevered thrusts, and then the climax is ripping through me, the world a blur of sand, salt, and skin.
When I can finally focus again, I find Christina’s hands tangled in my hair, her face pressed to my neck as she lets out a content sigh.
There’s no fucking way I’m leaving her at just ‘content.’
I slip out of her and we both gasp at the loss of contact. She looks up at me with glassy eyes and gives a dazed smile, thinking we’re done.
“Aaron, that was ama—”
“Turn around.”
I don’t even give her time to do it herself. I grab hold of her and flip her so her chest is up against the boulders.
“Ass up, Peaches.”
She complies with what almost sounds like a whimper, shifting to brace herself with her forearms. I run my hands over her hips and cup her ass, amazed at the way her body dips and curves in all the right places. She has a few scratches on her back from the rock, and the fact that I put them there, that I fucked her so hard she has marks to prove it, turns me on enough to feel like I’m about to get hard again.
Right now isn’t about me, though. Right now is about making her come so hard she forgets her own name.
I slide a hand around her waist and over her stomach, moving downwards until I can slide two fingers inside her. She gasps and bucks against me, but I pull out right away and move my now wet fingertips up to her clit, circling around it and teasing her with a bit of pressure every few seconds. When she’s shaking and gasping every time I push down, I use my other hand to enter her from behind, thrusting two fingers inside and stretching her out until I can fit in a third.
She’s letting out loud moans now as I time my thrusts with the rhythm I’m using to work her clit. I increase my speed a bit and I know she’s right on the edge of losing control.
“Come for me, Christina. I want to feel you come.”
Every muscle in her body tenses up. She goes silent for a moment and then she’s falling apart in front of me, screaming out my name and trembling against the rock. She’s absolutely soaked and dripping down her thighs. I feel her clench and spasm around my fingers as she rides the orgasm out. I keep working her clit and thrusting into her, only taking my fingers away when she begs me to stop.
“God, please,” she gasps. “I can’t...I can’t...Oh god.”
I let out a raspy laugh, feeling almost weak at the sight of her coming undone like that. I squeeze her ass hard and move back so she can turn around.
Our eyes lock together and she steps into my arms, drawing my head down to place her lips on mine. She tastes like the ocean.
“So,” I say, when the kiss ends, “what was his name again? Luciano? Marco? Cristiano?
The corner of her mouth pulls up. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
Epilogue
Christina
One Year Later
I finish shooting a text off to Robyn, my new boss at Epsilon Media, before stepping into the lobby of the apartment building where Aaron and I live.
I keep referring to everything about Epsilon as ‘new’ even though I’ve already been there for three months, but seeing as I learn about a dozen things there every single day, the novelty of the job has yet to wear off.
During the past year of advertising school—my final one— I decided to stop chasing after firms and to work so hard on my freelancing that by the time I graduated, I’d have firms chasing after me. I enlisted Aaron as a business partner, and his photography helped propel things to the next level. With loyal clients that would follow us wherever we went, and a reputation for innovation, Epsilon was practically begging both Aaron and I to join their team when we finished school.
We now work just a few offices away from each other in their headquarters. I thought we might get sick of seeing each other so much, especially after we made the leap of moving in together, but I still feel a little thrill every time I see him walk into the room with a smirk on.
It’s also often accompanied by the urge to wipe it off his face with a sucker punch after he makes some kind of stupid joke, but I guess that’s one part of our relationship that’s never going to change.
He’s already home when I walk through the door of our apartment. I can hear him crashing around the bedroom and my stomach rumbles when I smell what has to be pizza coming from the kitchen.
“I got delivery,” he calls. “I figured we wouldn’t really have time to cook.”
“You mean you wouldn’t really have time to cook,” I shout back. “You just started packing now, didn’t you?”
He just keeps tossing things around the bedroom and I know I’m right. We have to leave for the airport in an hour, and while my suitcase has been sitting ready for the past two days, Aaron probably hasn’t even found his own suitcase yet.
We decided to mark the one year point since Aaron’s spontaneous trip to Portugal by going back to visit the country again. We didn’t really get an opportunity to travel last year, and there are still so many places I haven’t been, so we’re heading off to Lisbon this evening and renting a car for two weeks before spending a few days with my family.
I grab a piece of pizza just as Aaron pokes his head into the kitchen and asks if I’ve seen his suitcase.
“Meu Deus.” I roll my eyes and put the pizza down, moving to open up the tiny closet in our entryway.
There’s no pictures of Tiffany tacked to the walls of this one, but we do have the shot of her wearing Aaron’s beanie framed and sitting on a shelf in the living room next to some house plants. A few of my friends think it’s weird for me to be okay with that, and sometimes I agree. I should probably feel jealous of her, of all the time I know Aaron still spends thinking about her.
I don’t, though. I love him and she’s part of who he is. I know Aaron wouldn’t be the person I know him as if it weren’t for her. He goes to grief counselling once a month and it’s done wonders in helping him sort out his feelings. It still makes me ache to think he went for so long dealing with everything on his own.
The anniversary of Tiffany’s death was only a couple of months ago, and Aaron took me to see her grave for the first time. I thought it would hurt him more, that he’d head into some kind of downward spiral, but he just seemed calm and thoughtful. I brought lilies to put on the grave and he told me she would have liked those way better than the stuffy bouquets her mom always brings. He held my hand and told me she would have liked me a lot.
I hope that’s true. I didn’t say it out loud, but as I placed the flowers on the grass, I sent a little message to her in my head:
Don’t worry. I’m taking good care of him.
“What do you think? Aviators or Ray-Bans?”
Aaron’s voice jolts me back to the present. I turn to find him alternating between modelling both pairs of sunglasses.
“Tough choice,” I say, laughing as he starts posing like a swimsuit model. “I think you’d better bring both. Now hurry up or we’ll miss our flight.”
“You know what’s funny?”
I pause mid-lipstick-application in the bathroom of our hotel room. Aaron is out in the main room, probably stretched out on the bed as he waits for me to get ready for dinner tonight. We’re three days into our trip and just got to Porto this morning.
“Enlighten me,” I call back to him.
“I’m supposed to be photographing the wonders of Portugal,” he answers, “but I’m going through my photos right now and almost all of them are of you.”
I scoff. “Um, excuse me, I am one of the wonders of Portugal.”
“Very true. My mistake.”
I finish up my lipstick and stop to take a look at myself in the full length mirror. I’m going to try to persuade Aaron not to mess up my hair and makeup, but I have a feeling I’ll need to redo everything before
we leave for dinner; I’m about to walk into the bedroom wearing nothing but a cherry red set of strappy lingerie.
“Ready to go?” I ask, popping my head out of the bathroom.
“Whenever you are.”
His eyes are glued to his camera and he doesn’t look up until I’m standing at the foot of the bed. I watch as his face goes from shocked to impressed to dangerously turned on in the space of a few seconds.
“Holy shit. You look...muito bom.”
I laugh. “Is that language learning app finally helping with your Portuguese?”
“English isn’t a nice enough language to describe how you look right now,” he answers. “Turn around so I can see all of you.”
I do a little twirl and hear him suck in a breath at the sight of the straps that criss-cross over the top half of my ass. He jumps up off the mattress and hangs his camera strap around his neck, hands already adjusting the lens.
“Get on the bed now.”
I put my hands on my hips. “But I just finished my hair and makeup. I don’t want to get them all wrecked.”
“You wouldn’t have come out here wearing that if you weren’t expecting to get more than just your makeup wrecked. Now get on the bed.”
I make a show of being annoyed, but I can already feel myself getting wet. I love when he’s demanding like this. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of him telling me what to do as he moulds my body into just the right shape to get the image he wants. In most parts of my life, I’m always the one in control, always the one making decisions. Giving in and obeying like this is one of the only times I really let go of everything and forget about anything but pleasure.
He adjusts the curtains and switches on the bedside lamp, painting the room in a soft glow. At his direction, I shift myself onto my stomach and prop my chin in my hands, flirting with the camera as he tells me to act as seductive as I look. He tries out a few different poses, the tension between us growing each time he reaches out to adjust my posture. When he finally lifts the camera from around his neck and sets it down on the bedside table, I feel like my skin is on fire.