Page 41 of Oyster

Putain,this woman wielded joy like a scalpel. Catching my breath, I pulled her face up to mine, wiping it with my thumb before kissing her senselessly. “Could have been worse,” I panted. “In senior school, my friend Jerome got shot in the eye with a BB gun.”

“Soromantic, Nico.”

I cleaned us both, me quickly and her with much more tenderness because I couldn't keep from touching her. Then we settled down again. Éti’s cool fingers combed through my hair. “I’ve had years, Nico, when I thought I’d never get to experience this.”

“What? Being blinded by spunk?”

“Yeah.” Chuckling, she wrapped a lock around her fingers. I’d have trimmed my flicky-flacky hair by now, but I sensed she liked it longer. “Amongst other things. I buried it alongside all my other hopes and aspirations. In my cemetery of dreams.”

That roused me from my post-orgasm haze. “You have a cemetery of dreams?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t.”

Mon dieu, we were going to have to exhume them, one faded vision at a time. “I was beginning to wonder whether I’d get to experience this, too,” I admitted.

“What, shooting spunk over your girlfriend’s face?”

“Spunk on the face, yes, probably. Girlfriend, no. I’ve been to bed with plenty of women, but I haven’t ever experienced the 'going steady' thing.”I’ve never fallen in love.

“Why not?” Her eyes strayed to my hair as she wound it between two fingers. “I want to know. Tell me what makes Nico La Forge of La Forge Oyster Farms tick.”

I sighed. “Truth be told, I’m not sure. Nice girls came and went, and I never… nothing stuck, you know? Sex was great, but the idea of settling down… made me run a mile. I wasn’t ready. But also, I think I confused settling down with simply settling. Settling for ordinary.” I side-eyed her. “And then you came along and…”

“And what?”

“And now I can see a life less ordinary. With you. And I don’t mean because you’re trans or even because you’re famous. Although it won’t be necessarily easy, at least not while you’re still playing soccer. But when I’m with you, you make me feel like my life has purpose, not just farming oysters and going to the pub. Like meeting you was what I was waiting for.” When I kissed her lush mouth, I felt her smile against me. “It’s a life I want to grab with both hands.”

Both tired, but after two weeks apart, not ready for sleep. We had too much to say to each other. Éti especially. AsI’d commented to Florian, she loved to talk. Pretending to be someone else day after day after day could do that to a person. Most of her secret hoard of thoughts she spilled within five seconds of careering into my arms or blurted them down a phone line the second I answered her calls. Tonight, however, she put them on hold, but they ran amuck now, over all things: politics; soccer (obviously); food (again, obviously—her next meal was never far from her mind); her physio; her sewing patterns; other road users on the long drive from Paris; my oysters. Funny, childish, filthy, and observant things, but, most of all, brutally honest.

She was so busy offloading two weeks’ worth of pent-up opinions, she failed to notice my thumb circumscribing her left nipple through the silky fabric of her pyjama top... not until she paused for breath anyhow.

“Shh,” I said as she opened her mouth to object. I kissed her on it to make sure. “Tell me that doesn’t feel nice.”

“It feels amazing,” she breathed.

As her nipple sprang erect under my thumb, her hips shifted. I withdrew my hand, sliding my fingers between the buttons onto warm skin. “Shh,” I said again. “I think it feels nice, too. I want to do it. But if you prefer me to stop, just say the word.”

I cupped the muscular mound of her breast and gave it a gentle squeeze. It did feel nice, satiny, and firm. If my balls hadn’t been so comprehensibly drained, twice, my dick would be sitting up and taking notice too. I dragged my tongue along her jaw, down to the inviting shadow behind her ear.

“Don’t stop.” A needy moan accompanied her plea—more of a low velvety growl and, mon dieu, there was nothing like it. Her hands lay at her sides, twisting the sheet. A slight rhythmic lifting of her hips rustled the duvet. Leaving a trail of kisses behind, my lips abandoned the sweet shell of her ear and strayeddown the column of her neck, pausing at another inviting hollow, and then another. I tugged apart the top two buttons.

Putain, I’d have liked to keep going. Undone, unveiled, uncovered. Thrown aside every impediment to her, naked beneath me. Marked every inch of her silky body with a kiss, blanketed it with mine, whispered her name and her beauty.

I sucked a nipple into my mouth, caressing the other, and another whimper escaped her throat. More rustling, a frantic hand moving below and a pained noise from parted lips above, eyes squeezed shut under shivering dark lashes. Her head tossed on the pillow.

“Let go, Éti,” I whispered. “Relax. Let it happen.”

“I’m sorry, Nico. I need to touch myself. I need to come. It’s too good.”

“I know, sweet. Don’t be sorry. Do what you have to do.”

“Oh, God.”

I sucked harder, pulling the tight bud of her nipple into my mouth. Ragged, greedy breaths split the still quiet of the night as her elbow jerked under the duvet. Like a bow string, her body tensed, tight muscles corded under my palm. And then, with a high-pitched sigh, it was over, and I didn’t care whether I was allowed to hug her or not, not stopping to ask. I crushed her against my chest, every bit of her flesh not covered by fabric squashed up against me. The manoeuvre screamed she was improbably mine and wasn’t getting away.

She responded with a sound somewhere between a groan of relief and mortified displeasure. “Beurk. You’re smearing it. I’m all sticky.”

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