“Please.”

He shifts to the side, leaves his thigh slung over mine, his elbow by my arm, his breath at my ear as he caresses my breasts with the back of his hand. Brushes back and forth over my nipples. Traces circles, random patterns, until I’m ready to hurt him because the anticipation is killing me, and I say, “West, please, please,” and he relents. He flattens his hand and slides it slowly—agonizingly slowly—down my stomach. Over my navel. Right to the margin of my panties, which are ridiculous red-and-white-striped cotton with holly berries on them and this cartoon Santa, the least sexy panties I own.

I didn’t know I’d be here, that this would happen. I had no idea what this morning would bring. This cautious lifting up of the elastic. This wicked, knowing, dirty sneak underneath.

I never could have imagined the feeling of West’s hand cupping me. His fingers parting me, tracing the secret shapes of my body, the sound of his voice saying, “Fucking hell, Caro,” like a prayer and a compliment.

He presses his finger inside me. Then another. When he tries three, I whimper, and he finds my clit with his thumb. I arch off the bed, deliciously shocked.

There is a sense in which I’ve done this before, all of it, but it feels brand new and astonishingly different. It feels so good that it hurts, it aches, and I hate it, but not nearly as much as I love it.

“You like that,” he says.

I mewl. Like a cat. And his grin is so smug, I reach up to give him a playful smack, but he changes the angle of his fingers inside me and I end up yanking him closer by the hair, kissing him so hard that our teeth knock together and I bite my tongue. I don’t care. Not with West’s thumb circling my clit, over and over, just a little too hard, which turns out to be how I like it.

Not with his fingers moving in and out of my body, a steady rhythm that fractures me into a thousand desperate, craving pieces.

“That’s my girl,” he says, when I have to turn my face away because I can’t concentrate on kissing, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but buck against his hand, senseless as an animal. “Just like that.”

When I come, it’s terrible. This low gathering tension winds and winds until I think I’ll die, and then I do die, I do, and it feels so amazing that it hurts. West stays with me right through it, watches me, eases me down, and now I can feel the rush of it, the part that’s all pleasure in one big push, a wave, a wake, a wave, until it’s grabbed me everywhere, pulled me in and let me go.

I float.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, when I can speak again. My voice is faint. Sweat has gathered at my elbows, in my armpits, at my temples. The wetness between my legs has spread down my thighs, and I’m conscious of the smell of sex.

Nate called it “that fish smell” once. He joked about it.

Fuck you, Nate, I think faintly, but there’s no rancor in it. I honestly don’t care.

I feel so good.

It wasn’t like this with Nate. I came, but it was a goal that had to be reached. An obstacle to be laboriously climbed toward so that we could move on to the next thing, and then the next. It was never this … this bliss, this shared thing West and I make between us, a natural outcome of our being together rather than the product of our dogged efforts.

“Hey, where’d you go?”

West is propped on one elbow beside me, his hand flat on my stomach, resting. Poor hand, it must be exhausted. I give it a pat, then link our fingers together. He smiles and lets his elbow slide, settling onto the mattress. I’m too tired to do anything but look at him. His face, his chest, his stomach, his briefs, dark gray with their intriguing bulge and an even more intriguing wet spot.

I’ve never touched him there. I’ve been afraid to, always afraid that there are rules and I don’t know them. Like if I wait long enough, someone will give me a book called How To Touch West’s Penis, and I can study it until I’m confident. An expert.

Enough of that. In this bed, this cocoon, I’m allowed to reach out for him. To enjoy the sharpness of his inhale, his lowering eyelids, his lip caught between his teeth.

I’m allowed to trip my fingers down his happy trail, shimmy closer so we’re belly to belly, my breasts pressing into his chest, my hand flat, slipping inside his underwear and investigating what I find.

Hard. Hot. Big—oh my gosh.

“You are like a furnace,” I say, and he laughs.

I think it’s supposed to be a laugh. He sounds like he hurts. I want to make it better.

I tighten my hand and stroke experimentally, watching his face to see if it’s okay. If I’m okay, doing this. It’s not my first go-round on this rodeo, but I don’t want to be inept. I want to give him what he gave me.

When I stroke again, his mouth opens, his head falling back.

Okay, then. That seems to work, so I do it until he makes this noise that I guess, officially, is a grunt, but it’s so sexy I could die. I find the wet spot at the head of his penis, slide my palm over it, slick it downward. West’s hand is there suddenly, rudely shoving past mine, gripping himself tight.

“I’m—do you want me to—”

“You’re perfect,” he says. “Fucking perfect. Keep doing that.”

So I do the same thing a few more times, stroking and spreading, making him slippery. He starts to push up into my hand, hard and then harder, flags of color rising in his cheeks. I love that. I watch him, eager for more signs that he likes it, likes this. I kiss him, wanting to push him off a cliff like he did to me, but he can’t kiss. He’s turned crap at it, I guess because he can’t concentrate.

That makes me smile.

My hand speeds up. His face is hard and fierce and gorgeous.

“Caroline.” He covers his eyes with his forearm, and the hand that’s in his shorts grips mine, guiding me into a rhythm, a grip that’s tighter and more cruel than anything I’d have dared on my own. “Just like that, honey. Don’t stop. I’m gonna come, don’t stop.”

I can’t decide what to watch, so I watch everything. Our hands working together. The head of his penis peeking out between them, his hips lifting off the bed, the helplessness in his face when he comes, wetting our hands, my hip, his stomach. I listen to him groan, feel his body lift up underneath me, dirty and sexy and glorious.

When it’s over, his arm drops down and clamps me tight to his side. His grip on my hand releases, his fingers slack. Face slack. I pull the blanket up over us.

I listen to the wind outside, the snow hitting the window in a thousand tiny taps.

I think about how many pictures I’ve seen on the Internet. Shiny cocks, pinkish-purple heads, spurting semen.

I think of what we just did, West and me. How it would look in a picture.

A picture like that—it could never be more than a shadow of what we did. What we are together. It would only be parts, but the parts aren’t the thing that matters.

It’s all of it. All of West and me. The way it feels.

West is right. Pictures lie. I don’t understand why I didn’t get it before—that it’s not me on the Internet. It’s just some stupid pictures. Some lie Nate is fixated on telling the world.

They’re about him, those pictures. They’re not about me.

“You okay?” West asks.

I’ve never seen his face so relaxed. I kiss the corner of his mouth, and it tips up into a lopsided smile.

“I’m good.”

His smile grows. “You’re not. You’re bad. Bad as the rest of us, Caroline Piasecki.”

I kiss his chin. That smart-ass smile. “I know. It’s more fun than I thought it would be.”

His laugh is as soft as his face. “I better clean this mess up.”

He drops his legs over the side of the bed, walks toward the bathroom, scooping up a pair of jeans along the way. I hear water running. “You want something to eat?” he calls. “I think I have chicken noodle soup. And I brought a loaf home.”

I look at the clock, surprised to see how late it is. Our fifty minutes is up, but there are no alarms going off this time. No walls going up.

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

I burrow down, pull the covers up to my chin, and give myself three minutes to indulge my stupid sappy heart, storing up memories for the lonely weeks ahead.


“I have something for you,” I tell him.

He’s sitting at the edge of the mattress, pulling on his socks. Preparing to go make me chicken noodle soup, which, I have to say, is the hotness. Even though all that’s involved is a can and some water. Hot.

“I don’t need anything.”

There’s tension in the way he shapes the words, and when he glances toward me, his eyes are cautious.

I don’t let it bother me. Maybe West doesn’t get a lot of presents. I sit up and press my breasts against his arm, kissing his neck. “Don’t be a grinch. Hang on, I’ll go get it.”

I walk out into the living room in just my Christmas panties, rummaging through my bag with my ass in the air, putting on a little show because I know he can see me, and I feel so good. So happy.

When I come back, I hand him the book I bought him, wrapped in reindeer paper with a glittery gold bow. He puts it in his lap, reluctant, or maybe waiting for me to give him the card in my hand, so I do that.

He opens the card first, ripping it along the side in a way that causes it to flex inside the envelope and then release, slightly creased, into his palm. The money flutters out. Two hundred dollars in twenties, falling in an untidy pile on top of the book.

“What is this?”

Three words, but the way he says them—I shiver.