Page 143 of Undefined Terms

I put my hand on the page. The stack, heavy.

Then I take my hand off the pages and put it on Celyn’s jaw.

The stubble, the grain of it under my thumb. The bone underneath, Celyn’s eyes close, a landing. The same landing as the first time. The face tipping into the hand like it was waiting.

I kiss the mouth. The stubble against my lips. Then the mouth, slow. The kind of slow that’s not technique. It’s the only speed I have right now because the book is in my body and the book was a whole night of a man standing on a threshold and I know what the threshold feels like.

Celyn’s hands on my chest. Resting. I can feel each finger, five points of pressure through the cotton.

‘Ron.’

‘I’m reading you,’ I say.

Don’t know where the sentence comes from. Don’t know what it means. My mouth said it, the body knows.

Celyn makes a sound, small. The sound that lives in the back of the throat. The one I know.

I pull the hoodie up. Over Celyn’s head. Careful, the earring catches, I untangle it, the silver warm from the skin. Underneath: the t-shirt, Celyn’s, the thin one, no bra today. The chest flat, the nipples visible through the fabric, and I put my mouth there, on the cotton, on the warmth underneath, and Celyn’s back arches off the bed.

‘Slow,’ Celyn says.

‘Yeah.’

Slow. Page by page. The way the woman opened doors in the house, one room at a time.

T-shirt off. Celyn’s skin. Collarbone. I put my mouth on the dip above it. Hollow. Pulse underneath.

The joggers, I pull them down, Celyn lifts the hips. The movement easy, practiced, the thing we’ve done enough times that the mechanics don’t need words. Underneath: cotton boxers, grey, mine. Celyn wears my boxers now. The elastic loose on the narrow hips.

I press my mouth to the hip. The left one. Celyn’s hand finds my hair. The fingers. The chipped violet nails against my scalp.

I take the boxers off.

Celyn, naked on my bed, the body I know. The hips, the soft skin on the inside of the thigh.

‘Tell me,’ I say. Because I’m reading. Because earlier that night a man on a page put his hand on a doorframe and the wood was warm and I want to know what’s warm.

‘Everywhere,’ Celyn says. ‘Everywhere today.’

Everywhere, no off-limits. No ‘not there.’ The word opens the book.

The cock half-hard against the stomach. My hand goes there. Wraps around. Celyn inhales.

I go slow. My mouth on the ribs. The freckle I found in month three that nobody else knows about. On the inside of the left arm, at the crease of the elbow. I put my tongue on it. Celyn laughs, short one. Surprised one.

‘You always go there.’

‘It’s mine,’ I say. Don’t know why I say it. True though.

My hand on the cock. Slow. The grip Celyn taught me, my own now, no thinking left in it. I know this now, didn’t used to. Didn’t know what another person’s cock felt like in my hand and now I know what this one feels like and it’s not ‘another person’s cock.’ It’s Celyn’s.

Celyn’s hand reaches for me. Finds me through the joggers. Hard. The man touched the doorframe on page two hundred and Celyn made the small sound and now this. Celyn’s fingers trace the shape. The pressure. The heat of the palm through the cotton.

‘Off,’ Celyn says.

I take the joggers off. Boxers. Celyn pulls me down, the weight, my weight on top, the full press of skin on skin. Cock against cock, slide, heat. Celyn’s legs wrap around my waist and the heels dig into my lower back and I grind, slow, slow, how the book was slow, and Celyn’s mouth is on my neck and the stubble is on my neck and the breath is on my neck and I’m,

‘Ron. Look at me.’