I sent a 2 AM pic and ten minutes later he knocked. Door, couch, bed

Thursday · October 15

i should say up front that i did not plan it. i planned the picture. i did not plan the knock.

it was 2 AM on a thursday and i was in my bedroom with the overhead light off and just the little lamp on, the one with the pink shade i bought for exactly this kind of lighting, and i’d been sitting on my bed for twenty minutes in the thigh highs and the white lace panties and the oversized gray sweatshirt i’d pulled off the back of the door. nothing else. the sweatshirt hung off one shoulder. i’d done my lashes earlier for no reason, bored, and then not taken them off, and i kept catching myself in the closet mirror like who is that, oh, it’s me, okay.

marcus lives on four. i live on six. we have been doing the elevator thing for like five months, where he holds the door and i say thanks and he says anytime and we both look at the floor numbers like they’re going to change their minds. he’s big, not gym big, just solid, a guy who carries his own couch up the stairs when the elevator’s busted. he has a beard he keeps short and forearms i have thought about at work, in meetings, in line at the pharmacy. two weeks ago in the laundry room he watched me fold a skirt and said “that’s a good color on you” and i nearly dropped the whole basket.

and since then, texting. nothing crazy. memes, his dog, me saying i couldn’t sleep. him saying he couldn’t either.

so. 2 AM. lamp. the sweatshirt slipping. i took the picture lying back on the pillows, knees up, one thigh high rolled a little, the lace pulled tight over me because i was already half hard just from deciding to do it. you couldn’t see my face, just my mouth, and the bottom of the lashes, and the line of my neck. i looked at it for a full minute. i deleted it. i took another one. i sent the second one, because the second one had my hand in it, resting low, fingers just under the edge of the lace like i’d been caught.

i put the phone face down on the comforter like it was hot. my whole body was ringing. i said “oh my god” to nobody. i thought about changing, thought about putting on pants, thought about hiding in the bathroom and pretending my phone had been stolen. i did none of it. i just lay there with my heart going and my dick getting embarrassingly hard against the lace.

ten minutes. i know it was ten because i watched the clock on the stove through the open bedroom door, 2:11, 2:12, and then i heard the elevator ding down the hall and then his steps, heavy, not hurrying, and then the knock. three of them. low and patient. like he knew i’d hear.

i walked to the door in the thigh highs. i didn’t put anything on. i opened it with the chain still on, just a crack, and there he was in gray sweatpants and a t-shirt he’d clearly pulled on wrong, tag sticking up at the collar, hair flat on one side from his pillow. he’d run. i could tell. he was breathing like he’d taken the stairs two at a time, up two floors, because he couldn’t wait for the elevator twice.

“hi,” i said.

“hi.” his eyes went down me and came back up slowly. “you’re really dressed like that.”

“i’m really dressed like that.”

“can i come in or are you going to keep doing that thing with the chain.”

i closed the door, slid the chain, opened it all the way. he came in and shut it behind him and then he just stood there, in my little entry hall, with his back against the door, and looked at me. i didn’t know what to do with my hands so i pulled the sweatshirt hem down over the lace, and he said, quiet, “don’t,” and i let go of it.

“come here,” he said.

i went. i don’t even remember crossing the three feet. he took my face in one hand, his thumb right on the corner of my mouth, and he kissed me against the door, hard, tasting like toothpaste and sleep, and his other hand dropped straight to my ass and gripped, lifting, and i made a sound i’ve never made in front of another person. a small stupid whine. he laughed into my mouth.

“that’s what you sound like,” he said.

“shut up.”

“no. i’ve been wondering for five months.”

he pushed me back against the wall by the coat hooks and kissed down my neck and i had my fingers in his hair and one leg already coming up around his hip, the thigh high rubbing against the sweatpants, and i could feel him through them. thick, no question, hot through the cotton, pressing right against the front of my panties where i was soaked through the lace already. he ground against me, once, slow, and i said “oh fuck” loud enough that the neighbors could’ve heard.

“quiet,” he said, grinning, and put his hand over my mouth and did it again.

i got his sweatpants down. i don’t know how, my hands were shaking. he wasn’t wearing anything under them, and he sprang out and slapped against my wrist, flushed dark, a vein down the side, heavy in my fist. i said, stupidly, “you ran up here with no underwear?” and he said “you sent me a picture, baby, i was not looking for underwear.”

baby. i nearly came right there.

i dropped to my knees on the entry rug, right in front of the door, and took him in my mouth. i wasn’t good at it, not smooth, a little too eager, a lot of spit, the kind where it runs down your chin and you don’t care. he groaned and thunked his head back against the door and put one hand in my hair, not pulling, just there, steering a little, and i took more of him, and gagged, and pulled off with a string of spit from my lip to him, and looked up through my crooked lashes and said “sorry,” and he said “do not say sorry, look at you,” and i went back down and let him fuck my mouth a little, shallow, his hips rolling.

“stop,” he said, after a minute, shaky. “stop, i’ll go, i’m not going to go like this. up.”

he hauled me up by the armpits and carried me, actually carried me, my legs around his waist and his sweatpants around his thighs, shuffling comically down the hall toward the living room because it was closer than the bedroom and neither of us could wait. he dropped me on the couch on my back. the lamp’s all the way in the bedroom, so it was dark except for the streetlight through the blinds, stripes across his chest as he pulled the t-shirt off over his head.

he knelt between my knees on the cushions. hooked two fingers in the waistband of the panties and said, “can i,” and i said “obviously,” and he said “i want to hear you say it,” and i said, face on fire, “take them off, marcus, please,” and he did, slowly, down over the thigh highs, and then he stopped and just looked.

“huh,” he said, soft, almost to himself.

“is that okay?”

“you’re dripping.” he ran one thumb through the wet on the head of my dick and held it up in the stripe of light, and then he put his thumb in his mouth. i about died. “that okay?”

“oh my god.”

“yeah.”

he went down. i’d had this fantasy a hundred times and the real thing was messier and better, his beard scratching the inside of my thigh, his mouth hot and loud and no technique, just wanting. he swallowed me almost to the root, and i grabbed the couch arm with one hand and his shoulder with the other and said his name over and over, some of it in fragments, “marcus, marcus, wait, fuck, i’m gonna,” and he pulled off with a wet pop and said “not yet.”

“you’re mean.”

“i’m patient,” he said, and bit the inside of my knee.

then he reached over my head to the end table, where i keep a little bottle, because i am an optimist, and i said “how did you,” and he said “your hand was literally pointing at it” and we both laughed, panting, foreheads together. then he was slicking his fingers and pushing one into me, careful, then two, and i was arching off the couch and swearing. he kept saying small things. “that’s it.” “good.” “look how you take that.” my legs were over his shoulders and the thigh highs scratched his ears and he kissed the elastic bands of them, one and then the other.

“bed,” i managed. “i want a bed. i want to be able to, to hold on to something.”

“you’re holding on to me.”

“i want a headboard.”

he picked me up again. i’m not small, i’m not that light, but he did it like nothing, and i bit his shoulder on the way down the hall and he said “ow” happily.

the lamp was still on. pink light everywhere, the sheets rucked up from where i’d been lying, my phone face down on the pillow still glowing with a notification. he dropped me on the mattress and i scooted back against the pillows and he crawled up after me, huge and dark and absolutely naked, and the lamplight showed me the whole of him, the scatter of hair on his chest, the thick curve of him standing up against his belly.

“on your back or,” he said.

“on my back. i want to see your face.”

so that’s how. he got my knees up around his ribs and lined himself up and pushed in slow, and it hurt for a second, that stretch, that oh god, and he stopped, stroking my hip with his thumb, breathing hard, waiting, sweat dripping off his jaw onto my sweatshirt, which i had never taken off, which was now pushed up to my armpits. i told him to move. he moved.

slow, then not slow. the bed knocked against the wall. i heard myself saying things i can’t repeat because i don’t remember them, nonsense, please and there and yes. he had one hand under my knee and one on my cock and he was jerking me in time with his hips, a little uneven, a little sloppy, and he kept whispering my name into my neck. my actual name, the one i give people when i’m nervous. “you’re so good. you sent me that picture and i almost cried in my kitchen.” “you’re so fucking pretty.” “i can’t believe you’re real.”

“i’m real,” i said, “i’m real, don’t stop.”

“i’m not going to stop.”

“harder.”

“yeah?”

“marcus, please.”

he gave it to me. the headboard hit the wall hard enough that something fell off the shelf over it, a candle, rolling and thudding, neither of us looked. i had both hands wrapped around his biceps, nails in, my toes curling in the thigh highs. i felt it start way down in my stomach, the hot tight pull, and i said “i’m close, i’m close,” and he said “come on, come for me,” and his hand sped up on me and he drove in deep and held it there, deep, grinding, and that was it, i went over.

i came across my own stomach and the gray sweatshirt in thick hot ropes, shaking, making a noise i’m not proud of, and my whole body clenched around him, and he swore, a long low shaking “fuck, fuck, fuck, oh fuck,” and his rhythm broke apart and then he was coming inside me, pulsing, his forehead crushed against my collarbone, his whole weight on me, heavy and trembling and perfect.

we lay there. long enough that my heartbeat slowed down. his was still going wild against my sternum. somewhere in the building a pipe ticked. he started laughing, silently, shaking, and i started too, and we were stuck together and sticky and i said “i think i ruined my sweatshirt” and he said “i’ll buy you ten.”

he got up eventually and brought back a wet washcloth and was ridiculously gentle with it, cleaning me off, easing the sweatshirt over my head, folding it like he’d been told to. he peeled off the thigh highs one at a time and put them on the nightstand like something he was keeping. he turned the lamp off. the room went dark and warm and he got in behind me and wrapped himself all around me, his chin on my head.

“hey,” he said into my hair, near sleep. “next time just text me. i’ll come up either way.”

“the picture was fun.”

“the picture was a lot of fun.”

i woke up to sun coming through the blinds in a stripe and a heavy arm across my waist and his phone buzzing on my nightstand. he’d gotten a text from his sister about walking the dog and had apparently decided it was a problem for future marcus. it was 9:40. i had one lash hanging off, i could feel it on my cheek. my mouth tasted like a three-day-old regret and also pure happiness.

he was awake, watching me, with a pillow crease down one cheek.

“hi,” i said into the pillow.

“hi.”

“you’re still here.”

“i’m very still here.” he pushed his nose against my shoulder. “i don’t have to go to work till one. i could get coffee. i could get you a coffee. i know what you drink, you tell the elevator.”

“the elevator is a gossip.”

“it’s a very good listener.” he kissed my shoulder blade, then the back of my neck, then he put his hand flat on my stomach under the blanket and just left it there, warm, heavy. “i’m going to get coffee,” he said. “and then i’m coming back. is that okay?”

“yeah.” i pulled his arm tighter around me. “bring the dog.”

he laughed. and he stayed another ten minutes anyway, not moving, not saying anything, his breath on my neck, and i lay there with my lashes wrecked and my whole body sore in good ways and thought, very clearly, about the elevator, and about how i was never going to be able to look at the floor numbers again.