Her cheeks flame red. “Um.” She ducks her head. Gives a small, shy, almost miserably embarrassed shrug. “No?”
“You don’t sound sure, Jo.” I collide into her personal space, hands wrapped low around her hips. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. You can tell me the truth,” I whisper. “Everyone does it, Jo. It’s natural, it’s normal. Masturbation is good for you.”
She groans, covers her face with her hands. “Yes!” she hisses, barely audible. “I have. At least, I—I touched myself. Down there. It…it felt so…weird. So intense.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Don’t make me tell.”
“I’ll never make you do anything.” I pull her closer, harder against my body. Let her feel my arousal against her. She’s breathing deeply, sucking in rough, shuddering breaths. “I’ll also never ask you a question I’m not willing to answer.”
“It’s so embarrassing. It’s mortifying.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It is.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She hesitates. Hands over her face, she rests against my body. “You.” This, in a barely audible whisper, muffled further by her hands. “Before I met you. Before the TikTok. It was a good day, before the last set of scans and…all that. I told Mom and Dad to go out, have a date. I was home alone, and I watched a movie, some dumb rom-com, I don’t even remember the title of it.” A pause. “I was…thinking about you. Imagining myself as the heroine and you as the hero, and I got kinda carried away, and…”
A harsh exhale. She won’t look at me, but she doesn’t stop talking.
“I was picturing us together. Doing…well, what we were just doing. And I got kind of…excited? Like, my pulse was racing and…and down there, I—it felt…I don’t know. Hot? Tense? I don’t know. It wasn’t like, a moment where I decided. I just remember all of a sudden my fingers were under my panties and I was touching myself. And it felt good. Really good. The more I touched myself, the better it felt. But I started to get…it sounds dumb now. But I was scared. Of how it felt. Like I was going to explode, almost. So I…I stopped.”
“That’s how it feels for me, when I’m aroused like this. Hot, pulse racing, tension, excitement. Like I could just explode at any minute.”
“But when I got scared and stopped, it…it didn’t exactly hurt, but it was almost a worse feeling than being scared of how I felt. Like, I didn’t want to stop. Everything inside me except this weird guilt and fear was insisting I keep going until I did explode.” She finally tilts her face up, out of the covering of her palms, to look into my eyes. “That’s why I’m worried I’m getting you all worked up and then saying we have to stop because I’m scared or not ready—like…” A nibble of her lips, a sign she’s hunting for the right words, or the courage to say what she’s really thinking. “I’m girl, and we don’t have, um, something that—that grows. That gets…all big and hard. And I guess I’m worried it’s going to hurt you, or make you upset or uncomfortable. Like, does it go away on its own?”
I grasp her wrist and kiss her palms. “The truth is, yes, it is uncomfortable both physically and—not necessarily emotionally, exactly, but maybe…psychologically—to become hard with arousal and do nothing about it. The point of arousal is to seek release through climax—orgasm. That’s the entire function of arousal. And to get fully aroused and then stop? Yeah, it’s not fun.” I smile, reassuring. “That’s the truth. But it’s also part of life. Part of relationships and sexuality. I can deal with it. I am absolutely one hundred percent capable of and willing to go through this process with you. Help you find yourself, sexually, one step at a time. You can’t just jump into the deep end, Jo.” I hold her eyes. “I can be patient. We can take this at your pace. That’s what I meant when I said you shouldn’t think about the effect on me. I just mean I’ll be fine. I can handle the minor discomfort of getting turned on and having to stop and pull back and let it subside. Which it will, and I’ll be fine.”
She inhales to the full capacity of her lungs, holds it, lets it out slowly. Puts her hands on my shoulders, then uses her hip to wedge open my knees and fit herself between my legs. Closer. Closer, till she’s flush with me in the V of my thighs, gazing down at me.
“What would you do next, if I were to say I want to keep going?” she asks.
“I would ask if you’re sure. If you want to keep going for yourself.” I clutch her hips, thumbs rubbing over the dimpled hollow between hip bones and pubis.
She nods. “I would say—”
I cut in. “Let’s cut the hypotheticals, Jo. Tell me what you want.”
A roll of her shoulder. “More?”
“More of what?” I ask.
“Touching. Kissing.” Her small pink tongue slides nervously over her lips. “I want more of…of how I feel when you touch me. I want—I feel so…alive…when you touch me.”
I gaze up at her, searching her face. I’m aching with arousal, but in this moment the only thing I can think of, the only thing I want is to make her feel more. More alive. More connected to herself, to me. Everything.
She’s never had an orgasm—I wonder if it’d be pushing her too far.
Maybe just…one little step at a time.
I slide my hands up to her waist, under the hem of her shirt. “How about we start…”
My palms skate up her belly, then, to her ribcage; her breath catches, her whole being freezing, except her pulse, which races madly, visible in the hollow of her throat. She swallows hard, blinking rapidly.
I reach up, then, and cup her breasts. “Here.”
“Ohhh god, Wes. Yes.”
“Yeah?”
Her eyes close. “Yeah. Yes. I like that.”
They’re small and firm. Delicate. Her nipples are hard pebbles against the center of my palms. When she finally sucks in a breath, I brush a nipple with my thumb, and she whimpers at the sensation. I watch her thighs press together, and when I flick both erect nipples at once, she throws her head back and gasps a choked moan.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, head lolling back on her neck, eyes squeezed shut. And then, as I rub the pads of my thumbs over her nipples in small light quick circles, her eyes snap open, wild and eager and bold.
In a single rough gesture, she rips off her tank top—arms crossing at her midsection to grasp the hem, then tearing it up and off and tossing it aside recklessly. As if she’s worried the courage to do so would dissipate any moment.
Her skin is the pale color of cream, with liberal freckles like stars, and I find myself leaning close to kiss one freckle, and another, and another, as if to link them in a constellation. “So beautiful,” I murmur. Another kiss, another freckle, from ribcage up higher, between her breasts. “So, so beautiful.”
Her hands clutch into my hair, spastic and strong. “Oh god, Wes.”
I look up at her as my lip stutters across her flesh. Already peaked, her nipples tighten further to diamond points. Her breathing halts. Mouth open, jaw dropped. Brows drawn yet eyes wide. “Okay?” I whisper, seeking affirmation at every step.