Page 43 of Undefined Terms

Stop breathing, start again.

Celyn kicks the jeans off. The knickers stay. Celyn lies back, the bed creaks, the cheap headboard, and looks at me. The body long on the white sheet. The bra on the floor. The flannel shirt on the floor.

‘Stop thinking,’ Celyn says.

‘I’m trying.’

‘Here.’ The finger on my jaw. Pressing the muscle. ‘Let go.’

I let go, the teeth unclench, the gut. Everything that went tight at the bra through the shirt.

The knickers come off. Celyn lifts the hips and slides them down and kicks them and they land on the floor. The body, all of it now. Skin. The legs long, the thighs lean, the knees, the feet with the toenails painted yellow to match the fingers. And between the legs, Celyn. Hard. The wanting visible and real and I look and my mouth goes dry.

My boxers, I pull them off, Celyn’s eyes on me. Frank. The look that doesn’t move.

‘Condom,’ Celyn says.

I look at them.

‘My bag. Front pocket. Lube too.’

The bag’s by the chair, where Celyn dropped it. I reach for it, clumsy, too naked for the room suddenly. The zip catches. Of course it catches. Everything with teeth has decided to make a point.

‘You brought this.’

‘I brought options,’ Celyn says. ‘Not assumptions.’

That does something to me. Worse than if they’d said anything soft.

I find the condom. The lube. The foil packet fights back like the belt buckle fought back, and I’m starting to think inanimate objects have a personal problem with me tonight.

Celyn takes the packet, opens it. Rolls it on me and the ring cold makes my hips jerk. Then the lube, a cold line of it down the latex, Celyn’s fist working it over me, twice, slick and even, and I have to look at the ceiling and count rebar spacings so it doesn’t end here.

‘Breathe,’ Celyn says.

Breathe.

Celyn takes the lube. Slicks two fingers, the ring on the hand that types ten thousand words a day. Reaches down, between the legs, knees falling open, no hiding it, letting me see. The fingers push in, Celyn’s own fingers, the wrist turning, the face changing. The mouth opens, the eyes half-close, a breath, held, released. Celyn’s fingers working, slow, the knuckles disappearing and dragging back out shining, the muscle stretching round them. The hips lifting to meet the hand. The cock hard against the stomach, leaking a thread onto the pale skin, ignored. I’m knelt between Celyn’s thighs with the condom on and my hands fisted in the sheets and I’m watching this, Celyn opening Celyn up for me, in the lamp light, on purpose, and my cock aches and this is bigger than any of the rest.

‘Okay.’ Celyn pulls the fingers out. Wipes them on the sheet. Lies back. The knees up. The hand on my hip, guiding. ‘Go slow. I’ll tell you.’

I go slow. Celyn’s hand on me, steering, the hand guiding me down.

‘There,’ Celyn says. ‘Yeah. There.’

I push, slow, the head of my cock first, the resistance Celyn’s fingers worked at a minute ago. The body gives, not all at once. Bit by bit. The lube cold on my cock turning hot as it goes in. The rim of Celyn’s arse tighter than anything I’ve felt, gripping the head, then easier past it, the heat closing round me inch by inch. Celyn’s hand comes to the back of my thigh and pulls.

Celyn’s cock jumps against the stomach, the head dark, a thread of wet leaking onto the skin. I want my mouth on it. I want all of it at once. I hold still and breathe and the wanting sits in my teeth.

‘Keep going. Slow.’

I push again, deeper. The grip around me, nothing like a hand, nothing like a mouth. Nothing like a woman either, the cunts I’d been in gave wet and gave easy and this doesn’t give, this grips. Tighter at the rim, looser past it, the body letting me in by degrees. The muscles gripping and releasing in waves that I can feel all the way down my cock and into my stomach and my hips want to move but I don’t let them because Celyn said slow and slow is.

‘Stop,’ Celyn says. ‘Just. Stay there. A second.’

I stop. Halfway. The body screaming to move and I don’t move. Celyn’s breathing, fast, shallow, the stomach rising and falling. The face, the eyes closed, the teeth clenched, the stubble, the eyeliner. Something crosses the face. The body adjusting around me and I can feel it. The muscles relaxing, opening, pulling me deeper without me moving.

‘Okay,’ Celyn says. Opens the eyes. The grey close, wet. ‘All the way.’