Ryan’s breath caught when Paige undid his belt, sliding it slowly out from the belt loops, looking up at him, into his eyes, as she did it. She bit her lip and brought her hands back up, undoing the button and slowly sliding down the zipper fly. He finally let out his breath when Paige reached around and lifted the slacks away from his body, sliding them down. Before she took them off, she hooked both of her fingers around his socks, and placed two fingers on his chest, pushing him back just enough that he sat on the edge of the bed. His pants and socks vanished behind Paige.
She lifted his dark gray undershirt over his head, and moving back down, ran her nose along his sternum. He felt her hot breath move over his chest and stomach, down to his boxer briefs, bulging with enthusiasm. She exhaled over him, tucking her fingers along the waistband of his underwear, he felt her breath on his cock, which twinged in delight. She looked up at him, tugging lightly at the waistband and held her position. She gave a small nod, he nodded back.
She took down his underwear.
Ryan sat nude before her, curved erection pointing out and up. He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly. He felt Jennifer move in behind him, her breasts pressed against his back, her fingers trailing through his comparatively meager chest hair.
“I love you,” she whispered in his ear, breathy, deep. He turned and kissed her, saying it back in confirmation.
“You good?” he asked, almost inaudible.
“I’m perfect,” she said.
“Yes, you are,” he grinned.
She kissed him once again, then drifted away, fingers trailing as she did, turning her body toward Bruce.
Ryan watched after her for a moment, then was called back to Paige as she very gently ran her nails along the underside of his penis. He smiled down at her and she wrinkled her nose.
“Good?” she mouthed.
He nodded.
She opened her mouth and swallowed him. He tipped his head back and allowed himself to feel every tiny sensation, the warmth and wetness of her tongue, her suction, so different than Jennifer’s. Couldn’t even remotely be quantified as better or worse, just different. His eyes rolled in his head and he caught a glimpse of the back of Jennifer’s head in front of a nude Bruce. He had the most fleeting thought, as he saw Bruce’s penis, the first erect penis he’d ever seen in person aside from his own, about how surprised he was that Bruce’s was smaller than his.
His mind began to spiral on that subject, that he was objectifying and—
Paige’s hand slid around his testicles and squeezed, not tight enough to hurt, but certainly an attention getter. When his eyes met hers again, she nodded as best she could without changing up her technique.
When the four of them moved closer to each other on the bed, Ryan and Jennifer lay side by side. They reached out to each other and held hands. Jennifer watched, fascinated, as Paige slid the condom onto him and then climbed on top. She saw something she’d never quite seen before, Ryan’s cock disappearing inside someone. Her vulva twinged.
She looked back to Bruce kneeling between her legs. He slid toward her, leaning down to kiss her neck, whispering to her, “What do you want?”
“I want you to fuck me,” said Jennifer, surprising herself with the directness of the request.
“Your wish,” said Bruce, unrolling his own condom and reaching between them. She felt him slide inside and shuddered with the tendrils of an orgasm that had stretched back to Paige’s tongue, drawn forward and revived by the current situation. A situation that she almost felt she could observe from outside, from a chair by the door to the room.
Looking in at this mass of bodies, four different yet similar, writhing and touching, moaning and breathing. She felt the rhythm of the scene. She watched Bruce and Paige share a deep and soulful kiss next to each other. Hands crossed over. Bruce squeezed Ryan’s arm. Paige leaned over and kissed Jennifer. The rise and fall, the ebb and flow, positions changing and evolving until it seemed that there was just one body, one entity on the bed.
She felt every orgasm as it happened, regardless of to whom it belonged. Because tonight, they belonged to the four of them. A living, breathing collective.
Tonight they all held hands and jumped.
24
The window next to Jennifer’s side of the bed rattled. She rolled on her side, turning away from Paige, to look. Outside, in the orange glow of a street lamp, she saw swirls of snow spiraling down. In the street it flew. She felt Paige drop a kiss on her shoulder and put her head next to Jennifer’s.
“Well, look, maybe we’ll be snowed in,” said Paige.
“That’d be lovely. The king size bed finally comes in handy!” As much as Jennifer wanted that to be the outcome, she knew the evening would be coming to an end before long. Downstairs, Ryan and Bruce were working on starting a fire in the fireplace, and had promised hot chocolate when they left the bedroom. She and Paige had opted to stay snuggled under the covers.
She kissed Paige, then turned back toward the window, pulling Paige’s arms around her. They cuddled together, spooning, breathing together. “So,” Jennifer asked, “is this, like, every weekend for you?”
“Oh, we’ve got another date tonight,” said Paige.
Jennifer’s heart sank, a puzzling feeling, like the drop of a roller coaster.
Perhaps feeling Jennifer’s body tense, Paige quickly recanted. “I’m kidding! No, this isn’t every weekend. When we were new, it happened a lot. Back then we had dates scheduled once or twice every weekend and a couple times per week. Youthful exuberance and excitement.”
“But now?”
Paige kissed Jennifer’s ear lobe. “Well, now we sort of take things as they come. Sometimes we meet new friends. Mostly we see old friends.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It is,” said Paige. “One should never underestimate the comfort that can accompany routine. It’s only when you no longer occasionally break out of the routine that you… I dunno… die a little inside?”
“I know what you mean.” Jennifer tried not to betray any melancholy in her voice, but it was there regardless.
“But now doesn’t feel that way, does it?” Paige squeezed Jennifer and nestled her head on her shoulder.
“No,” said Jennifer, “no, it doesn’t.”
“What does it feel like?”
“I. I mean.” So many things to say, yet none of them felt remotely adequate to Jennifer. “How does one describe a… change?”
“A tectonic shift?”
“Bigger,” said Jennifer. “I feel like. Man, I can’t form a sentence to save my life here, can I?”
“Sometimes that happens after getting fucked into oblivion.”
“Oblivion, indeed.” Jennifer pulled Paige’s hand to her face and kissed her fingers. “When everything you think you knew changes over a weekend… even long held beliefs about yourself, your relationship, your sexuality…”
“You fucked a girl and you liked it,” Paige giggled into Jennifer’s shoulder.
She was surprised at how apt such a glib sentence could be, yet how it couldn’t even begin to capture the true extent of everything. “Things are different. I don’t just feel different. I think I am different.”
“Well,” said Paige, “I think what you’re experiencing here is a paradigm shift.”
“Don’t know that one…”
“A paradigm shift,” said Bruce, as Ryan threw another log onto the low beginnings of the fire. “It’s what Paige called the moment we first started these shenanigans. It’s what scientists called it when we went from the geocentric model of the solar system to heliocentric.”
Ryan blinked at him over his shoulder. “Do you get smarter as the hour gets later and you have more to drink? ’Cuz I experience the opposite, unfortunately.”