Sex (2 page)

“Okay,” Ed agreed, staring into her eyes again. He shifted onto his stomach and moved closer until their noses were nearly touching. But he really shouldn't have done that. Not if the goal was to have a conversation. It had already been established in the last twenty-four hours that when the two of them got this close,
talking was not the first inclination. “Okay…,” he began again. “All right…” Ed seemed unable to produce a full sentence since his eyes had refocused on Gaia's mouth. “Okay…”

His mouth was so dose to hers, she could feel the consonants rolling off his lips. And the shivers had started again. First lightly in her toes. Then sudden heavy trembles in her stomach. His lips… what was it about his lips? Before she could answer her own question, she found that her hand had drifted up to his mouth to investigate. Without any specific orders from her brain, her fingers began to gently trace a line from his lips to the corner of his mouth.

“Um,” he uttered, inching his face closer. “Do you…?”

“What…?” she whispered, doing her best to cover the shivers.

Ed seemed utterly dazed by her fingers. “Do you want—”

“Yes.” Gaia pressed her lips against his, channeling all the pent-up energy of her trembling into her kiss. Ed responded with equal force, wrapping his hands tightly around her waist. But Gaia's T-shirt had ridden up slightly when he grabbed her, leaving Ed's wide palms suddenly pressed against her waist. This sent another bolt of electricity up her spine that in no way helped to calm her shivers.

Ed's shirt had also apparently hiked up slightly, and when Gaia's hands drifted down to his waist to
hold him, her fingers ended up grazing the bottom of his exposed abs, sliding up along his muscular back, and clinging to his bare shoulders under his shirt. It might have been an accident, but it only led to higher-voltage trembling.

And with her lips on his lips and their hands clinging to each other's backs, Gaia slowly began to realize that the moment when her brain or her body would bring things to a halt did not seem to be coming. She didn't want to stop. There was no reason to stop. Not when she loved him this much. Not after building months of totally untainted trust. All she wanted now was to be closer to him. As close as was humanly possible.

Her hands on his bare back didn't have to be an accident. Not if she didn't want it to be. So she simply let her hands follow through. Without rushing or tugging, Gaia let her arms continue to slide upward, lifting Ed's T-shirt higher and higher off his chest, until he'd raised his arms and let her pull the T-shirt off.

She slid her hands across his bare shoulders and kissed him again as he returned his palms to the exposed small of her back. Now she could feel just how quickly his heart was beating.

But Ed pulled back momentarily, bringing his hands up to Gaia's face and giving her a kind but penetrating stare. “Gaia,” he said between increasingly rapid breaths, “are we about to do what I think we're about to do?”

“I think so,” she whispered breathlessly.

He kissed her again and then searched her eyes. “Are you sure you're ready?”

THE QUESTION WAS LIKE A LOUD, piercing bell shaking Gaia awake from the floating dreamland of Ed's bed. All her warm tingles and electric vibrations took a sharp and very sudden turn. Her body continued to buzz, but it was as if all the sweetness and heat had been drained away, leaving a cold and constricting drone in its place.

Fade to Black

And there it was again. A feeling she'd honestly thought—well, at least
hoped
—she'd shaken for good. That dreadful, horrid, and unmercifully
yucky
sensation that Gaia had been forced to term fear for lack of any better word or preexisting knowledge.

God
dammit.
This feeling was supposed to be an illusion she'd already conquered. This was supposed to be a hoax perpetrated by one of her pathologically unreliable elders—father, uncle, whoever. But here it was, coursing through her body again so suddenly, as though someone had mixed together every conceivable
unpleasant sensation known to man and injected the sadistic concoction directly into Gaia's chest. Three parts excessive caffeine, two parts fingernails scraping against a chalkboard, two parts sushi-induced food poisoning, and a healthy dose of a good hard kick to the gut that had knocked the wind out of her completely.

Two things that clearly did not go together: passion and direct questions. Not only was Ed's question deeply disconcerting, but it also seemed to yield him the very opposite of what he was looking for. He wanted clarity. He wanted Gaia to speak straight from her heart. He wanted her to tell him what she wanted. It was an excellent question. But what Ed got instead of an answer was her hopelessly childish, enigmatic silence.

Ready? How could she possibly answer such a question, given all the ludicrous and unbearable circumstances of her life just beyond Ed's closed window? Wanting it and being ready for it were two completely different things. How the hell could she know if she was ready for something she'd never even experienced?

In most categories, Gaia's knowledge exceeded that of the average department head at an Ivy League university. But in the category of actual sex… Well, her
knowledge
was sufficient—late night cable and the World Wide Web had made that nearly impossible to avoid. But her experience? That is to say, her
actual sexual
experience…
That would fall under the mathematical heading of Absolute Zero. As in, she had none.

This moment was where all her book knowledge left her behind. This was where reality diverged from fiction. Couldn't things just fade to black now? Like they did in the movies. Wouldn't that have been perfect? Right in the middle of their most passionate moment. Maybe right after she'd pulled his shirt off his chest and breathed the words, “I think so.” Boom. Right there. Fade out. Cut right to the next morning.

But no. That was a tad unrealistic, wasn't it? In reality it seemed that sex wasn't just about love and passion and “the perfect moment.” No, in keeping with Gaia's usual misfortune, she'd been introduced to fearlike feelings just in time to discover that sex was also apparently… rather scary.

“Gaia,” Ed said softly, sliding his fingers down her cheeks and gripping her shoulders with the purest kindness. “You don't have to say anything, okay? We could just lie here like this for the next fifty, sixty years without talking, without doing
anything,
and I'd be happy.”

Speak, Gaia,
she implored herself.
Make sounds.

“I don't even want you to say anything,” Ed insisted. “I only asked you because it just felt like we were headed toward…” He stopped himself midsentence, seeming to reconsider what he wanted to say or at least how he wanted to say it. “I'm not in any kind of hurry,” he said. “I mean, we're just sort of… starting
here, and I wasn't even thinking about… Well, I mean,
yes,
I was
thinking
about it, but… we can wait for… I mean, we can wait as long as you want.”

Tell him what you want, Gaia.

“Gaia…?” Ed searched her eyes for signs of life. “I'm going to take your zombielike state to mean no. That you're not ready.” He smiled at her, leaned his head forward, and touched his warm lips to the spot where her neck met her shoulder. “Though I would like to mention that you are immensely beautiful when you're pondering.”

Ed reached over Gaia to take his shirt, which was balled up next to her. His smooth chest grazed over her, which only added to her state. Without even thinking, Gaia grabbed the shirt before Ed could get to it, leaving his body hovering over hers, even closer than he had been before.

“Wait,” she insisted, feeling the heat of his face on her skin. “I just have… a few questions.”

Ed looked slightly hesitant. He stopped reaching for his shirt and looked back into Gaia's eyes. “What kind of questions?” She was finding it difficult to focus with his body pressed against hers like this.

“Why?” she asked. “I thought I was the one who didn't like answering questions.”

“No, it's not that,” Ed said, “I just…”

“What?”

“I just don't think so well when we're this close.
What if I give the wrong answers?” The beautifully nervous look on Ed's face made Gaia feel far less settled. It also made him that much more irresistible. She had to force her hands not to latch onto his naked shoulder blades.

“They're easy questions,” she said.

Ed paused for a moment to consider. “Okay, go.”

“Okay. Question one: Are you aware that I am a
deeply
flawed human being?”

“Well aware,” Ed said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. His eyes moved across her face, seeming to savor each individual aspect separately.

“And do you understand that my life outside of this bed is… completely screwed up? I mean,
beyond
any kind of—”

“These are really easy questions,” Ed interrupted. His smile nearly left her speechless, but she managed to gasp out the next question.

“And do you have a—a—” she stammered. “You know—do you have—protection?”

Ed looked almost offended by the question. “Of course I do,” he said. “What kind of guy…” His face went blank in the middle of his own sentence. “Wait,” he said, looking like he'd just gotten lost in the middle of some kind of maze. “Are you saying you want…?”

“And do you trust me?” she interrupted him.

“Gaia.” He shook his head with a disapproving smile.
“I'm
supposed to ask
you
that. Do
you
trust
me?
That's how it works. You have to be sure that
you
trust
me.”

She didn't even see the point in that question. To describe how much she trusted Ed would have been redundant. To try and list all the reasons she trusted him would have taken too long. Of course she trusted him. More than she would be able or want to describe. Much like the way she'd realized she loved him and wanted him. Indescribable.

Gaia had known Ed longer than anyone other than her own parents. What she had with Ed had taken months to build. Months of slowly increasing trust and adoration. Months of conversations and confessions. Months of finding ridiculous and entertaining ways to pass the time together. Inept misunderstandings always followed by desperately needed reconciliation. The thought of separation always leading to a deeper connection. She didn't know a thing about relationships, but wasn't that exactly what all those things added up to? A real relationship. The realest kind. Not the thing that hit you like lightning and could slip away just as quickly, but something built much more slowly… with an unbreakable foundation. That's what Gaia had discovered here with Ed.

Maybe someone who didn't understand their relationship would have thought it was too soon, but something about this moment and this night… it just felt like the culmination of all their days together. Gaia
felt like they'd broken through to the other side of something, and she didn't want to go back. She just wanted to keep going forward.

“Then yes,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Yes, you trust me?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I trust you… but I meant yes to the other thing. The first question.”

“What was the first question?” Ed asked.

“The one about being ready,” she said.

Ed scrunched his brow, trying to keep up with Gaia's stream of consciousness. “The one about being ready…” She could have sworn she suddenly heard Ed let out an audible gulp as he gave her a look that bordered somewhere between awe and shock.

Ed looked deeper into Gaia's eyes. “Wait, I'm confused.”

“Well, I'm not,” she explained. “I'm not confused at all.”

With that, she finally gave in to her own hands. She allowed them to caress Ed's chest, running her fingers around the contours of his back and pulling him to her with a deep, unbridled kiss.

Ed pulled his head back for a moment. But not to say any more. Only to smile at her. The use of words no longer seemed necessary.

He leaned back down, and he kissed her with a very different kind of kiss—a kiss that seemed to announce that something new had just begun. His
hands became less careful and more confident as he pressed her body closer to his, rocketing her back into a state of full-blown shivers.

Those shivers. It wasn't until this moment that Gaia truly understood those glorious shivers. Ed had been under the impression that she was cold. Wrong. Gaia had been sure that her shivers were just the physical manifestation of all the joy and happiness coursing through her veins. That was true, but it was still only half the story. Once again she'd avoided the obvious:

She was shivering because she was
afraid.
And for the first time since her uncle's injection, Gaia finally remembered why she had yearned so much for fear in the first place. Yes, she had been happy before. Yes, she had even been ecstatic and overjoyed. But before fear had been introduced into her life, Gaia had never known what it felt like to be
thrilled.
Thrilled, the way normal, everyday people could be thrilled.

So much of her life had felt like a chess game up until this point. Even her fights. Always knowing her next move before she made it. Always knowing what
their
next move would be—always knowing what they planned to do to her next.

But this was nothing like chess. This was so
far
from chess. As Ed's hands slid so slowly down her shivering back and her hands floated along the center of his chest, Gaia finally understood that there was no way of being thrilled
without
being afraid. The thrill
was born of the fear itself. It was the
not knowing.
Not knowing where her instincts would lead her or even which ones she might give in to. Everything she was about to feel was totally unknowable. That's what was making her shiver. And that was something she could only describe as… gloriously scary.