Up the Duff
The chlorine smell always lingered in my hair for hours after swimming, that sharp chemical bite that no amount of lavender and coconut conditioner could fully mask.
I lay back on the faded turquoise lounger my parents had owned since before I was born, the plastic straps warm against my shoulder blades from the afternoon sun.
My phone sat face-down on the glass patio table, deliberately ignored. The banking app showed $1847 saved toward the trip—Thailand with Felix next spring, our first real adventure together.
He was working double shifts at the warehouse to match me dollar for dollar.
I adjusted the strap of my bikini bottoms, the navy fabric with the small white anchors that Felix said made me look "sailor-hot" in a way that made me laugh and swat his arm. The top lay discarded beside my phone.
My parents were at my aunt's place in Riverside for the weekend, and our neighbour Mrs Patterson only ever looked out her kitchen window toward her rose garden, not our fence line. The privacy was absolute, the kind of solitude that made my skin feel too warm even before I touched it.
My hand moved without conscious decision, the way it sometimes did in the morning when I woke before my alarm, body already humming from some heated dream.
I traced the curve of my breast, the skin there paler than my shoulders, soft in a delicate way even to my own touch.
My nipple tightened immediately, a small betrayal of my arousal that I watched with detached curiosity. The sun pressed down like a physical weight, and I could feel sweat beginning to gather in the hollow of my throat.
Felix and I had been together eleven months. Eleven months of careful, responsible sex—condoms from the moment he first fumbled with my bra clasp in his parents' basement, through the awkward learning of each other's rhythms, to the comfortable routine we'd developed.
He was gentle, attentive, the kind of boyfriend who texted to ask if I got home safe and remembered that I hated cilantro. The sex was good. Satisfying. Predictable in the way that made it easy to relax into.
But this—this heat on my skin, this absolute aloneness—felt different. My fingers circled my nipple again, harder this time, and I felt the response deep in my belly, that familiar coiling that I'd learned to recognise usually in the bathroom with the shower running.
I let my hand drift lower, over the slight swell of my stomach, the elastic of my bikini bottoms. The fabric was already damp, and I couldn't tell if it was from the pool water or from me.
I slipped my hand beneath the waistband, and yes—there was the slickness, the evidence of my body's eagerness. I parted myself with two fingers, finding my cute nub already swollen, sensitive in a way that made me gasp aloud into the empty backyard.
"Fuck," I whispered, the word feeling strange in my mouth without Felix there to hear it.
I said it again, louder, testing the boundary of my solitude. "Fuck."
I worked myself in small, tight circles, the way I knew worked fastest.
A finger entering my slick. So good. It demanded a second digit.
My hips lifted slightly off the lounger, seeking more pressure. The plastic creaked beneath me, a rhythmic accompaniment to the wet sounds my fingers made.
I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sky, seeing the red glow through my eyelids, and let myself sink into the building pleasure.
"Mmm, mmm."
My pace was up.
My fingers jagging in and out.
A private frenzy of friction.
It wasn't enough.
The orgasm hovered, reachable but distant, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
I needed more—fullness, penetration, the stretch and pressure that my fingers alone couldn't provide. I withdrew my hand, glistening in the sunlight, and reached for my phone. The screen lit up with a notification from Felix—"miss u, luv ya"—and I felt a brief flicker of guilt that I extinguished immediately.
This wasn't about him. This was mine.
I set the phone back down and let my hand return to my body, but this time I didn't stop at my clit. I pushed lower, finding my entrance already soft and yielding, and pressed three fingers inside. The sensation was immediate and intense, that particular fullness that always surprised me with how good it felt.
"Ah—"
The sound escaped me unbidden, higher than my normal speaking voice.
I began to move my hand in earnest, fucking myself with my own fingers while my thumb returned to my clit, rubbing in the desperate, uneven rhythm that my body demanded.
The lounger creaked more insistently. A bird called from the oak tree.
My breath came in short, sharp bursts, and I could feel my climax building now, no longer distant but rushing toward me with terrifying speed.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck—" I was chanting it, my hips jerking up to meet my own hand, my free hand clutching at my breast, pinching my nipple hard enough to hurt.
The pain sharpened the pleasure, sent it spiralling higher. I was close, so close, my thighs trembling with the effort of holding myself on the edge—
"Reese?"
The voice shattered me.
My fingers still buried inside myself, my body screaming in protest at the sudden cessation.
My eyes flew open, and Felix was standing at the gate to the side yard, his key to our house dangling from his fingers—my parents' spare, for emergencies, for watering the plants when we travelled.
He was supposed to be in San Diego for his cousin's wedding. He was supposed to be gone until Tuesday.
"Shit," he said, which was almost funny because I'd never heard Felix swear in the six years I'd known him.
He was my older brother's best friend, twenty-two, perpetually gentle, the kind of guy who helped old ladies carry groceries and fixed flat tyres without being asked.
He was staring at my hand, still trapped in my bikini bottoms, and I watched his throat work as he swallowed.
"I—" I started, but I had no words.
My face burned, and I knew I was flushed crimson from my chest to my hairline. I withdrew my hand with a wet sound that seemed impossibly loud, and his eyes followed the movement, dark and fixed.
"You don't have to stop," he said, and his voice was different—lower than I'd ever heard it. "I shouldn't have—I should go—"
But he didn't move.
He stood there in his faded jeans and the blue t-shirt that clung to his shoulders, and I could see the shape of him now, the erection straining against his zipper, and something in my body responded with a slutty desire that shocked me.
Eleven months of Felix, of careful condoms and whispered "I love you"s and predictable rhythms, and suddenly I was nineteen and a half years old and naked from the waist up and so wet I could feel it on my thighs.
"Come here," I heard myself say, and I didn't recognise my own voice.
He moved like he was in a dream, or like I was.
The gate clicked shut behind him. He stood over me, and I could smell him—sweat and something else, something male and urgent.
His hands were shaking as he reached for his belt, and I sat up, my breasts inches from his chest, and helped him. The buckle clinked. The zipper rasped. His cock sprang free, and it was beautiful—thick and flushed dark, already wet at the tip, and I wanted it inside me with a desperation that made my hands shake too.
"Reese," he said, my name a warning and a question, and I answered by lying back and pulling my bikini bottoms down, kicking them off so they landed somewhere on the concrete.
I was completely naked now, spread open to the sun and his gaze, and I watched his face as he looked at me—really looked, his eyes travelling from my face to my breasts to where I was still slick and swollen from my own fingers.
"We shouldn't," he said, but he was already kneeling on the lounger between my legs, already guiding himself to my entrance with one hand while the other braced against the armrest.
"Your brother—your parents—"
"Fuck me," I said, and I reached up to pull him down, to feel his weight on top of me.
"Felix, please, just fuck me—"
He pushed inside in one divine stroke, and the sound I made was animal, guttural.
My big, thick boy. He groaned, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, and I felt his whole-body shudder as he fought for control.
"You're so tight," he gasped, and he began to move, short thrusts at first, testing, and then longer as my body adjusted, as I tilted my hips to take him deeper. "Reese, you're so fucking tight, I can feel you—"
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my heels digging into the backs of his thighs.
He didn't stop. He fucked me with a desperation that matched my own, his hips snapping against mine, the lounger scraping against the concrete with each thrust. The sun beat down on us, and I could feel sweat slicking between our bodies, could smell the sharp tang of sex mixing with chlorine. His cock filled me perfectly, hit some spot inside that made my vision blur at the edges, and I was climbing again, faster than before, the interrupted orgasm roaring back to life.
"Condom, I still could," he managed, the word broken by his ragged breathing. "Reese—should we—"
I knew I should care. I knew this was the responsible thing, the safe thing, the thing that eleven months with Felix had trained me to insist upon. But his cock was inside me, hot and bare and perfect, and I could feel every vein, every pulse, and the thought of stopping, of letting him pull out and fumble for something that didn't exist, was unbearable.
"Don't," I said, and I arched up to bite his earlobe, to feel him shudder. "Don't stop, I'm safe—"
It was a lie, or half a lie—I was on the pill, technically, though I'd missed two days last week when I'd slept at my friend Marissa's place without my pack.
But the words were already out, and he was already groaning, his thrusts losing their rhythm, becoming wild and uncontrolled.
"Fuck, Reese, I'm gonna—"
He tried to pull back, to withdraw, and I locked my legs tighter and felt him spill inside me, hot and thick and endless, his cock jerking with each pulse.
The sensation triggered something in me, some deep biological response, and I came with him still buried to the hilt, my orgasm crashing through me in waves that made my back arch off the lounger, my mouth open in a beautiful yelp.
"Hnnghh!"
We lay there afterwards, breathing hard, his weight heavy and welcome on top of me. I could feel him softening inside me, feel the wetness beginning to seep out around him, and I should have felt panic, should have felt the weight of what we'd done, but instead I felt only a languid satisfaction, a bone-deep contentment that made my limbs heavy.
The future branched from this moment—one path that never led to Thailand, while the other, well, this was the day I got it up the duff.