Telling Tales by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online

open. I can see a slither of blue through the crack, because Wade’s room is all navy curtains and swirling sky-colored rugs, though it’s not those things I’m paying attention to.
    No, God, no.
    I’m paying attention to the sounds of people fucking. Obviously, vigorously fucking. And for a long, long, frankly pain-stricken moment, I’m not sure what to do. I could keep going toward the door, clearly, and uncover exactly who’s doing the fucking in question. But that just seems like asking for heartache, because really there are only two options.
    Either that weird tension between him and Cam was actually intense sexual attraction and they’re both in there doing each other in the ass, or else it’s the far more likely option. Kitty snuck across the hallway well before I ever even considered it, and now she’s in the middle of a marathon sex session with the object of all my hopes and dreams.
    God, I hate that he’s the object of my hopes and dreams. I hate Kitty for one bright, burning, selfish second, because she’s brave and I’m not, and she’s lovely and I’m not, and she doesn’t have to be a eunuch for the rest of her life, and I somehow do.
    And then I get to the door with my mind this boiling cauldron of stupid ideas—like how I’m going to barge in and accuse Wade of cheating on a girlfriend he doesn’t actually have, or accuse Kitty of betraying a friend over something she doesn’t even know about, or have some kind of ridiculous meltdown where I say words that aren’t even really English, just the blind tumbling result of my stupid heartache—and I just can’t do any of it. I can see them through the crack in the door, and I have to simply stand there and watch my hero twisting into some pretty incredible shapes with a person who is not me.
    I have to watch him lift both of her legs over his shoulders until she’s almost bent double on the bed, and then pound into her as though sex is going to disappear tomorrow. Whoever invented fucking is going to revoke everybody’s license, and from then on we have to spend our days shaking hands or violently waving.
    I wish I’d done more than that in the short window of sex we all had. For one far too long and not-quite-agonizing second, I find myself gazing at them with my mouth actually open. Heartache falls by the wayside in the face of this, because by God I’ve never seen a man flip a woman like that. He just gets hold of her hips and somehow she’s on her front, even though I’m sure such a move should have dislocated her hip.
    Of course, I’ve seen things like this in porn. I’m aware that most people have more athletic sex than I’ve ever had. But even so, it’s different when it’s close up. It’s different when it’s only inches away from me, and I can see the look on Kitty’s face when she turns it to one side and bites at her own arm.
    She looks like someone who realizes there’s going to be no more sex tomorrow. She looks desperate and blissed out and she’s making this noise—this ah ah ah noise—that I can hardly stand to hear. It forces unwanted feelings through my body, and I know they’re there because I just have to squeeze my legs together against them.
    God, what must it be like to feel that way? To have someone pounding into you over and over again, so hard I can see her little cupcake breasts bouncing beneath the curve of her body, and when I dare to flick my attention to Wade I can make out every muscle in his tensing stomach, all ab-tacular and hard as anything and fuck, fuck.
    This is too much. Did he look this way, before? He had a good, strong swimmer’s body, I know that much. But I can’t recall him being so hairy or having those ropey, muscular arms or those actual high, firm pecs. He looks so rippling , so hard-bodied—though I suppose the overall effect is added to by the sheen of sweat all over him. It’s as though he slid out of the pages of Men’s Health only five seconds earlier, and I’m not