Girl on the Net

You know those nights you have, in bed with someone new and exciting… those nights when you feel like you’re… hmm. Sorry, I’ll start again. So you know those nights at the start of a relationship, just after you realise how much you want this to be a relationship… those nights when you’re f… fuck. Hang on. Let me try a different tack.

We’re lying in bed, and it’s late – so late. Unlike every other night we’ve spent together, we’re not up late because we’ve been fucking, but because our train got cancelled and we had to take two night buses home. Neither of us has the energy to kick off a makeout and therefore, let’s be honest, volunteer to go on top during the inevitable shag (that’s how it works, right? Whoever kicks off the makeout is offering to do the energetic bit if you end up having sex? Glad we agree), but we can’t help ourselves, so we touch.

We usually have an agreement not to encroach on each other’s side of the bed when it’s sleep time. A very welcome one, instigated by me because I find it hard to sleep if I’ve got a man draped off me, welcomed by him because he also sometimes struggles to sleep while snuggling. But despite this agreement, neither of us feels the need to nod off just yet. So, as I say, we touch.

He strokes me incredibly gently. Delicately. As I put it to a friend the day after, while bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived and babbling: “he touches me so REVERENTLY, mate. With soft hands and such fucking REVERENCE.” The way his fingertips brush against my skin makes me feel… precious.

Hmm, weird word. Valued? Adored? You know what I mean.

We’re barebacking now, did I tell you that? Me and this hot punk guy. Towards the end of our fifth date, at about two in the morning, after a lot of really intense and beautiful fucking, he asked if there were any sex things I’d like to do.

I wasn’t entirely sure if I should say what I wanted to say. It was only our fifth date, after all: way too soon for this request. Perhaps I should have picked something lesser instead: something I vaguely wanted but didn’t crave. Maybe I should have left the most intense desire (the one that borders on a need) – for later.

But I am into this man, and he asked me what I wanted with openness and sincerity, in the manner of someone very keen to find a desire that he could fulfil. And these days I’m trying really hard to be my true, authentic self so when he asked what I wanted I spoke straight from the heart:

“Bareback,” I told him. “I want you to fuck me bare. So I can feel every atom of your cock as you slide inside me.”

[My actual line probably wasn’t as sexy as that. I suspect that in reality I blurted out: “Bareback omg! I just really wanna feel all of your dick, do you reckon that’s possible? I mean not NOW or even SOON if you don’t want to, but if you’re not barebacking anyone else and you’re up for doing it to me maybe we could get SHL tests and do that at some point? It’d feel so fucking good! OMG please! No worries if not though!!”]

So we bareback now. Me and this guy that I…

We’re barebacking. And what that means (as well as, of course, being able to feel every single atom of his cock as he thrusts slowly and firmly inside me), is that sex is no longer something for which we have to prepare. We don’t have to break off the makeouts to whisper to the other ‘grab a condom!’, or pause the touching to reach into the bedside drawer. Sex is something we can slip into as easily as he could slip a hand down my top and into my bra. That also means that there’s less urgency to each individual fuck. You’re never more than three seconds from penetration, so penetration no longer feels like a goal you have to reach, it’s just a step on a journey that meanders wherever you feel like going together at the time.

You know those nights you have, in bed with someone new and exciting, when you realise you can’t sleep because the feeling of their arm round your shoulder or their palm resting on your stomach is so thrilling that you’re compelled to reach out and touch them back?

Those nights when you can hear them breathing, and the cadence of it makes you suspect that they’re still up as well?

The best part of those nights, of course, is when they confirm they’re awake by whispering something to you from the neighbouring pillow (something like ‘I had such an incredible time with you today’ or ‘I am so fucking into you’ or ‘have you ever wanted to go into space?’), and the realisation that not only are they awake but they want to connect makes you weak with desire. You know those nights?

Those nights when you feel like you’re… you know.

This is our tenth date. I don’t know about you, but to me that feels too early to be having one of those nights. One of the horny nights by date ten, sure: those are par for the course. The nights they wake you up in the middle of, rock hard and breathing intensely, before flipping you onto your stomach so they can kiss the back of your neck as they slip inside.

I’ve had nights like that on date ten, but not these ones. Not reverent touching. Not whispered challenges that ‘you have no idea how much I am into you.’

The long, soft nights, you know? Trembling hands fluttering over flushed skin, backed by a soundtrack of rustling bedsheets, whispered jokes and compliments… the thud of your heartbeats in the darkness.

This is date ten, and I’m annoyed I know that. I only know it because he started counting, so then I started counting, and although I think we’re both now trying to forget the actual number in case it compels us to remember an anniversary or some other bullshit, it’s quite hard to forget when we keep saying it aloud as if we’re in shock.

“Can you believe this is only date ten?!”

“Weird isn’t it! This blind date went so much better than I could have imagined.”

And it is weird. It feels too intense for date ten. Then again, it felt too intense to ask for bareback on date five, but I did.

I like the way this is going, and I think he does too. At least, I have to conclude that he likes it when he’s still awake at 4 am, instigating enthusiastic conversations about whether I might like to go into space.

(I would, for the record, and so would he. If anyone’s slinging free space tickets around for influencers, hit me up. We currently take it in turns to plan dates, and I’d definitely win this relationship if I managed to take him on a trip into low Earth orbit)

You know those nights when you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open, but the tickle of their breath on your face as they whisper to you in the dark is making you grin with pleasure? Those nights when you can barely stammer out words through the fog of exhaustion, but you answer their space question anyway so you can ask, in return, whether they reckon there might be bacterial life on Europa.

Those nights when you realise you’re…

We fuck at about 5 am. The soft kisses he gives me, combined with those reverent hands, tease me into levels of desperation that have even my shattered, spent body pulsing with the need to have him in me.

Bare, don’t forget. Inside me, bare.

I straddle him in the pitch darkness and position the head of his rock-solid cock neatly inside the entrance to my cunt. Then I sweep my hair out of the way and put my face up right next to his, cheek-to-cheek: all the better to hear the rich resonance of his moan as I sit on him ohhhhhsofuckingslowly… all the way down to the base.

As we fuck, we tell each other things. Meaningful, intense things that speak to something neither of us wants to acknowledge aloud, because it feels like light-years too soon. We can’t make eye contact in the darkness, so in lieu of that we ramp up this verbal intensity. We murmur about how great the other one is. I tell him how satisfying it is to have him inside me. He tells me I feel amazing in return.

“You’re fucking incredible.”

“I cannot get enough of you.”

But there’s one thing I hold back, even though it’s itching to be said.

I love fucking him, that’s as close as I get. I tell him how much I love the shape of his cock. Love how hard he is; his intensity; how beautifully he touches me. I love the feeling of him sliding inside my aching, desperate cunt.

I am stupid about this man. Weak for this man. Smitten with this man. There is no doubt that I feel a certain way, but I’m not gonna say it on date ten.

It’s not that I’m too cool. I pride myself on never knowingly being cool, especially when I’m fucking. I don’t keep quiet because I care about losing some stupid ‘game’ about who says it first: I am already foolish enough for this guy, one more dose of cringe won’t make any difference. No, I stay quiet because I’m terrified that this might not be as real as I think. Perhaps I’m deluding myself in the face of someone who just happens to have a really intimate, close sexual style. Perhaps I’ve met him with earnestness and vulnerability when in fact this is simply a new kind of role play.

This is possible. It’s not likely – he has told me he doesn’t do this with everyone – but still. I am human, and I am scared.

And it’s been such a long night.

So I ride his dick and don’t say it. He gently grips my hips with soft hands and trembling fingertips, and he doesn’t say it either. I clench my cunt around the warm, thick rigidity of his cock and we say every other thing under the sun except for that. And when I come around him – hard – I press my lips against his neck and I wonder how it would feel to just allow the words to fall out of my mouth and into his ear.

The next day, after breakfast (I offer so many cups of tea to try and keep him in my orbit), I kiss him goodbye at the door and I still don’t say it. Instead I sit at my desk and write this. And at roughly this point in the drafting, the absurdity of not saying it hits me with full force.

He tells me he’s really into me. He assures me that this is real. And he turns to me, at 4 am, to ask if I’ve ever wanted to go into space.

So fuck it, yeah, let’s do this.

You know those nights when you’re falling in love?