She hadn’t been to bed with too many guys, and usually, during sex, it was hard to get out of her own head. Abby was curvy. Rubenesque if you liked your euphemisms, obese if you were a doctor, fat, which was what Abby called herself; a word she’d forced herself to use, over and over and over, until all the sting had been leached away and it no longer felt like a slap. She was soft and warm and yielding. She was strong and she was healthy, no matter what the bullshit BMI charts said. And, the world being what it was, she knew that there were more important things to change than her body. But even so.
In college, there’d been a guy named Chris, who had definitely not been her boyfriend, nor even a friend with benefits. He’d been no kind of friend at all—just a guy who’d been willing to sleep with her. Chris would call her after midnight and invite her over, or show up at her room at two in the morning and creep out of her dorm before the sun came up, so that no one would ever see them together. It had left a mark. In the post-Chris era, when Abby went to bed with someone new she would keep her clothes on for as long as she could. She’d keep blankets or, better, if there was one handy, a pillow over her midsection, and she preferred to make love in the dark. She worried about how she smelled, how she sounded, how her body felt, how it looked. It was almost impossible for her to stop thinking about all of that, to be, as her yoga teacher said, present in the moment.
But that night was different. Maybe it was the booze, and maybe it was being in a different city, with a stranger she’d never see again, but Abby felt half out of her mind with desire, her brain a humming white blank. She wasn’t thinking about the curve of her belly or the cellulite on her thighs or how her breasts looked different without the benefit of industrial-strength underwire. All she could think was how badly she needed Sebastian to touch her, and when he’d finally, finally, slipped his thumb under the leg band of her panties and brought it up, unerringly, exactly where she needed to feel it, she’d let out a yelp that was loud enough to be shocking.
“Shh,” he said against her neck, his thumb flicking, teasing, rubbing firmly, then lightly, circling her clitoris, then descending down again to trace her lips. “Pretty thing.”
Abby felt her eyes fill with tears, even as her hips arched off the bed. Pretty thing. She felt like she could count the times a man had made her feel pretty, or dainty, or cared for and small on one hand, and still have fingers left over.
Sebastian pulled off her panties and put one warm hand on each of her legs, easing them apart, and then he rested his head on the inside of her right thigh and breathed on her, warm and steady, one long exhalation. When she felt the first brush of his tongue, Abby forgot that she knew words, and when he slipped his fingers inside of her, she forgot to breathe. “How are you so good at this,” she gasped at one point, and felt, as much as heard, Sebastian’s amused hum in response. Abby forgot to worry about how she tasted or how long she was taking or anything, because he seemed delighted to be right where he was, doing just what he was doing. He made her come that way, and then he produced a condom from somewhere and rolled it on, kneeling in front of her, looking unreal in the candlelight, like he’d been carved instead of born.
Abby held her arms out, and he slid inside of her on a single stroke that took her breath away. Sebastian set a slow, almost decadent pace, and for long moments they rocked together, panting, and kissing. Abby tried to get him to go harder, or faster, but Sebastian refused to be hurried, no matter what she did, or how she begged. When she swiveled her hips against him, he’d pull out until he was barely inside of her at all, waiting until she went still, then started again.
Abby could feel sweat gathering at her temples. Her legs were locked around his waist, her arms wrapped around his back, and finally, finally, she could feel his control start to waver. His hips pumped, hard, and her own hips rose up to meet him. Their bodies slapped together, and he was groaning, and she was crying out, thinking she’d never known it could be like this, that she’d never even imagined. She had her second orgasm on her back, which hardly ever happened during intercourse, and then, he’d rolled them, so that he was on his back and Abby was on top of him, with his hands cupping her breasts, his eyes wide open, both of them breathing hard. She remembered how his face and lips and hands had all tasted of her when he pulled her down for a kiss. They finished in that position and fell back, sweat-slicked and breathless, against the pillows. Sebastian looped one of his arms around Abby’s shoulders, pulling her close. She let her head rest on his chest.