London dumped the Vons bags onto the small table in their hotel room. “So we should make a plan.” They started unloading their wares. Dahlia laughed.
“Is this the type of thing you plan? Shouldn’t it be sort of . . . spontaneous and messy?”
London tried not to feel annoyed. Dahlia was the one who had implanted this whole idea into their heads, but she’d spent half their trip to Vons giggling and blushing. Which had been cute, on one hand, but London was also tired and ready to get down to business.
And obviously the sex would be better if it was planned.
“Fine,” they huffed, crossing their arms. “So where do we start?”
Dahlia took out the can of whipped cream, popped off the top, and squirted a stream straight into her mouth.
“Getting naked,” she said, muffled through her full mouth of sugar and chemicals.
She was truly insufferable. And dammit, London was going to take off her shirt this time.
Funnily enough, their irritation faded with each item of clothing they shed. There were less nerves, less fuss this time, but if anything, the tension in London’s body was even greater. They knew what she felt like now. Their body was already learning how to best crave it.
Having to stand next to her all day had been torture. The most exquisite kind of torture.
Within a few minutes, they were tangled around each other on the bed, knees and thighs pushing between the others’， chest to chest, Dahlia’s tongue so sweet in London’s mouth. It was satisfying as hell to feel how slick she already was as she rubbed against them. They thought again about that look on her face when she’d asked them to taste that coulis, and they wondered, with a thrill of sensation prickling up their spine, if she had been this wet for them all day.
“Okay.” They pulled away suddenly, before either of them got too far out of control, to grab the can she’d left on the bedside table. “Let’s do this.”
“Oh,” Dahlia said, biting her lip. “We don’t have to actually—I mean, is this—”
London interrupted by pressing down on the nozzle once, twice. Two perfect bursts of whipped cream for two perfect boobs.
She exploded in laughter and punched London in the arm. “Jesus.”
“You’re the one who didn’t have a plan. This is my plan.” They leaned down and licked one nipple clean. Even as they felt her stiffen, her breathing uptick slightly, she was still giggling. London leaned up, can still in hand, and plopped a large poof of cream on her nose before returning to her other breast. “Stop laughing.”
But she didn’t. Dahlia was practically out of her mind by the time she was screaming about the melon, which London had picked out of the bag next, being too cold. And while it was indeed entertaining, London was sliding fast back toward annoyance. They leaned back on their heels.
“This was your idea, you know.”
“I know.” Dahlia caught her breath. “I know.” She swallowed, trying to stifle a grin. “I’m sorry. I’ll be better. Try something else.”
London leaned over the bed and sifted through the shopping bag, extracting a nectarine.
They had felt, at the grocery store, how soft and ripe these nectarines were. Which was rare, for the produce section of a chain supermarket, where the fruit normally arrived hard as a rock, preserved for a longer shelf life. As London held the stone fruit in their hand, its skin as supple as Dahlia’s underneath them, they felt, truly, blessed.
They took a big, messy bite. They let juice trail down their chin, feeling a bit feral. They squeezed the fruit the tiniest bit in their fist, felt another trail of translucent juice slide down their arm. Dahlia’s mouth twitched as her grin softened, fading away. After a second, her lips parted slightly.
“Oh,” she said.
London rested the open wound of the nectarine onto Dahlia’s skin. They started at her side, the soft curve that stretched out from her belly to her hip, before trailing it over her stomach. They had been straddling her hips, but now moved themself farther down, their knees resting on the sheets between her legs, which fell open even wider for them. They trailed the nectarine down the inside of her right thigh and then her left, getting teasingly close, before tracing the fruit down to her calves, watching each twitch of her body, listening to each of her deep, raspy breaths.
They crawled back up over her torso, concentrating on steadying themself with one hand and grazing the juicy orange flesh back up her stomach with the other, until they were face-to-face again.
Dahlia was not laughing anymore.