Alice woke Jake in the middle of a sentence.

“When I was sixteen,” she was saying, “I pretended I had a year to live. I imagined death getting closer every day. It changed me.”

Jake rubbed his eyes open. They lay naked, next to each other, though a cool, linen sheet covered his ankles. Their bodies contrasted: his dark, hers creamy, blotched with pink blooms, like clouds at sunset.

Alice lay on her back, looking out through her bedroom window. Her gaze was imprecise. Her legs were parted, bent at the knee and she was absently masturbating in gentle, circular movements with the pads of her fingers. She was not quite silent; as she rubbed, Jake heard the ebb and flow of her wetness.

They had been together for twelve hours, from the moment they’d met at a club the night before. It was noon now or maybe a little after, but Alice’s bedroom had the hue of dusk. Jake followed her indistinct gaze: outside slate clouds were so low that they pressed on neighbouring rooftops. Jake thrust his face into the nape of Alice’s neck until his nose was flattened like a boxer’s. Her scent was between sandalwood incense and cigarettes and sweat. Jake wondered if he was already in love, even if he didn’t understand what she was talking about.

--

Last night he had been dancing on his own. Normally he would have felt foolish doing this, but he was drunk and high when his friends had suggested leaving the club, and there was something about the music that night that spoke to him.

One woman stayed alongside him on the dancefloor for every track. He noticed her in a detached way: there was nothing immediately striking about her. She wore the sort of white strappy top and linen or canvas shorts he’d seen everywhere that summer. The look didn’t wholly flatter her: she had nice legs, but no hips or breasts to speak of, and her dark hair was bobbed short. There was no obvious femininity about her, other than the graceful way she danced, but when she lifted her eyes and looked steadily at him, Jake realised she had a studious prettiness, and was clearly attracted to him.

He said nothing, she said nothing, but they danced together, ever more exclusively until finally, she took his hand and pulled him from the dancefloor towards the door of the club. He couldn’t remember if he’d left anything in the cloakroom and did not get a chance to check – he was led out into an echoing street that glowed yellow. One taxi remained, idling by the curb. She said something to the driver that Jake didn’t hear and they climbed in. As soon as the taxi pulled away Alice covered his mouth with hers, and her fingers had a proprietorial grasp of the inside of his thigh. Jake’s erection was burning by the time they drew up outside a small apartment. She paid, and they climbed out.

“We haven’t met,” she said, finally. “I’m Alice.”

Just inside her front door, she began again. In this cramped space, on the doormat, with one knee resting on a page of junk mail, she unbuckled Jake and pressed him to the wall. His cock bounced free and she flicked her tongue underneath, testing it before she pasted it with her saliva, making it loll about until she anchored it with her hand. From there, she drew him into her mouth, teasing violently with her tongue tip, swirling and floating it across his length. It had been too long: he could not endure it. He pulled out of her mouth, but he was already coming, violently and apologetically. His body stiffened, and his cum shot out against her cheek and collarbone and darkened the strap of her top. It did not seem to bother Alice. After a second, she leaned in and kissed his crimson, softening cock, then worked its head back into her mouth and – unbelievably – it was no longer softening, but reacting anew, growing ever harder as he looked down at her. A halo of his spent cum formed a white tide mark in front of her lips as they moved up his cock. He was painfully erect again, and more acutely sensitive than ever, able to distinguish between the varieties of pressure that her tongue was imposing and the unyielding hardness of each individual tooth in her mouth. Yet at the same time, he was unable to guess where the next sensation would hit him. It was heavenly.

A noise to his left made him turn: someone else was in the apartment. In the gloom, he saw at the end of the hallway another woman, dark and as tall as Jake. She was leaning against a doorway with her arms folded, watching them in a disapproving way. Jake froze. Alice did not stop what she was doing and continued to move her mouth up and down his cock with vigour. The other woman finally turned back into the room and slammed the door behind her.

Alice popped her head off Jake’s cock. “That’s only Tiger. My flatmate.” Alice sighed. “She gets jealous.” She looked up at Jake before dragging him, shuffling, into her bedroom.

She left him sitting on her bed while she raced to the bathroom. In the few moments she was gone, he wondered about Alice and her flatmate and whether they’d slept together, maybe in this bed. He formed an erotic picture so realistic that he was almost surprised when Alice returned alone, her arms twisted behind her head, trying to do something with her hair. She was naked, her nipples simple dots. Between her lips, she gripped a condom in its silver wrapper.

Alice kneeled between his legs and pulled his jeans down the rest of the way. Jake leaned back, squeezed his hand around his dick, and aimed it towards her. 

“You and Tiger…” he said. “D’you…”

Alice sort of smirked. She tore open the wrapper with her teeth and delicately capped his cock with the tip of the condom. In a few, concentrated seconds, she had extended it down his shaft, sheathing the length of its midnight-blue vein.

Alice climbed onto the bed so her pale, kneeling legs flanked his. The sinews of her inner thighs were as rigid as cartilage and her pussy was exposed to him brazenly. It looked as though it had been drawn on with a sharp pen.

She shuffled up his body. Her lips brushed his face, softly and briefly at first, but the kisses became stronger as they approached his mouth. She had an exquisite way of kissing, first dragging her tongue across his lips, then between them and across his teeth, then further, into his mouth.

Those kisses disabled him. His palsied fingertips turned to fat stumps, unable to grasp properly, swooping helplessly down her spine and beyond her, not knowing where or how to touch. But somehow he did, clumsily, and was conscious of dampness between her cheeks. He rubbed awkwardly until her body seemed to give way. 

Alice placed his hand on her bottom and his grasp spanned a whole cheek. Now she lowered herself, the inverted ‘V’ of her legs shallowing as her knees moved apart. He thrust upwards and sighed when he entered her. Alice pushed down; her back hollowed. Jake thrust hard once, then again, and again until his movements became rapid, unconstrained, and animalistic.

She was pressed flat to him now, her nipples firm as studs against his chest. Jake fought his way beneath her and pressed two fingers to one nipple, working it between his fingers, while sucking the other nipple until it plopped out of his mouth.

All this time they continued fucking. All this time it felt to Jake that he was in connection with a central part of Alice, as if his dick was somehow, metaphorically, touching her heart. It was strange. His whole life seemed distilled to this apartment, this bed, this moment, but thinking these crazy thoughts brought home how dangerously close he was to another orgasm. He did not want that; he wanted this to last: so he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of her sweating, lithe body on top of him. It did not work. It only intensified other senses: that of touch, imagination, and sound. His mind raced to the sensuous way Alice had danced and the uninhibited way she’d kissed and sucked him – and somehow Tiger edged into his thoughts too. All this time he could hear Alice and the rhythm of the dampened smack of their bodies clashing, and the sucking sound his cock made inside her that only aroused him more. So close.

Alice lifted herself off him. “Not yet,” she said. “Please, not yet.” She had moved just in time, though even then the way the cool air of the room caressed his sheathed cock made him fear that this fresh sensation would make him cum.

They paused, panting, adjusting his condom. They swapped places. Jake shifted on the bed while she worked herself onto all fours, she arched back jewelled with sweat. She presented her pale backside to him. He kneeled behind and almost instantly entered her again. When he pressed forward she rose like scaffolding, hands climbing the wall above the bedstead. Their limbs crashed together, one moment disorganised, the next organised. In a few moments, they found a fresh rhythm, moving forward and back together, their breathing joined and when he sensed she was close, he allowed himself to savour everything; and at the moment she slumped forward with a mournful sigh, his orgasm left him somewhere deep in the heart of her. 

He pulled out carefully and flopped onto his back. Alice turned and kissed him, then worked her head down until it was below his belly button. The condom, half full of creamy cum, flopped uselessly off the end of his spent cock. She took it between her teeth and drew it off him. Kneeling now, she lifted it, the escaping cum dripping down onto her chest. She held it for a few seconds before she let go of it over the side of the bed.

She pulled a linen sheet over them and sat up in bed. She had a more distant look now, and was silent for a time, until she said, “I have a typically feminine fear of growing old, of not experiencing everything,” she said. “Make sense?”

Jake grunted. Alice continued to sit, eyes blinking, unable to sleep.

--

Only twelve hours since he had met Alice. That noon, as she rubbed herself – where did she get that drive? – he continued to press his face to her neck. He was aware of the change in her: the narrowing circles her fingers made, the change in breathing, now through her mouth, hoarsening. Her head fell back and the leg closest to him twitched, once, then again. Alice hissed, as the tension drifted out of her body. She lay still for some seconds.

Jake loved her smell, loved how much she needed sex, and he was erect again.

He licked her from her neck, down across her collarbone, bypassing flakes of his cum where they had dried overnight. His tongue slid over the curve of her shoulder to her upper arm. There, his jaws widened to take the sinewed muscle of her bicep into his mouth.

Alice was still looking out the window. She gently pulled her arm away.

“I tried to explain,” she said and turned to him. “My boyfriend. He’s coming for lunch.”

Jake tilted his face. It crumpled in ignorance. “But what about…?”

Alice sighed and turned away again, and was once more staring outside, at nothing permanent, just the rain as it began spattering on the rooftops and the windowpane.