Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

19

Summer

“—so then the robot shark rips a hole in the hull—”

“—and the space station explodes in a fiery inferno—”

“Completely unrealistic. It’s in a vacuum—”

“But the captain’s already in his space suit—”

“And he takes this harpoon and says—What does he say, Summer?” Gray asks, but I’m doubled over in giddy laughter on the floor beside him. He leans to check on me, but when I see his grin, we both break out in more laughter.

Wiping tears from my eyes, I sit up and choke out the line, “Not today, mother chompers!”

Gray and I fall over each other, snorting and snickering and losing our goddamn minds.

“And you guys like these movies?” Kennedy yawns from Spencer Armstrong’s lap.

While I’d lost track of the time hours ago, I know it’s late. Main Desire’s party is over, its guests vanished and music turned down. Leaving only the house’s inhabitants and their girlfriends gathered in the living room.

Blasted out of our skulls.

Well, all except Kennedy and Spencer, lounging on the same arm chair. But they’d certainly had enough to drink to make up for not eating any of Hunt’s special brownies. His head laying back on the chair, Spencer murmurs something about his girlfriend’s movie preferences being hardly any better than shitty ones about killer sharks. The look she gives him sends Gray and I into another peal of giggles.

“It’s not that these movies are incredibly cheesy,” Gray raises a finger. “It’s that their capacity for scientific error is so glaringly—”

“Noooo,” Levi whines from his spot on the other side of the coffee table. On the floor. Face down. “Make him stop. I can’t listen to any more. He uses so many words.”

I muffle a snort when Grayson scowls. Turns out, my boyfriend can get quite chatty under the influence. Nuzzling my head on his shoulder, I smooth away the wrinkle in the middle of his forehead.

Levi moans woefully into the carpet again. “Spence.”

“Hart.”

“If I die—”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“Take care of Rylie. Watch over our babies.”

Spencer—well, all of us, really—perk up enough to glance with concern to the figure splayed on the couch. Rylie, who we’d all written off as passed out an hour ago, mumbles contently with her eyes closed, “Fur babies.”

“We agreed on twenty,” Levi adds. “Hope you like cats.”

“Fuck. No.”

“I knew I could count on you, Spence.”

I hide my smile in Gray’s tie, absently rubbing its satiny texture along my nose. Gray’s chest rumbles with laughter. His hand runs over my hair, and I close my eyes against that hypnotic sensation. I need to get home soon. But every time I move, my body feels equally fluid and leaden, so it stays right where it is.

Until a car door slams shut in the driveway, and Levi rises like he hadn’t been laying down long enough for the carpet to leave an imprint on his face.

“Okay, guys,” he says. “Act cool. Just act fucking cool, okay?”

Voices grow louder as steps rain on the front porch. A key enters the lock. The doorknob turns.

And in walk Natalie and Morris. The former with one hand bandaged and the latter, taking in the quiet group before them.

Rylie cracks first.

An instant later, we all lose it.

Fury takes over Theo Morris’s golden features. His glare pinpoints Levi immediately, “Are you stoned?”

“No, she’s Stone,” Levi points to his girlfriend between guffaws of laughter. “I’m high. Shit, you’re not supposed to know—”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Levi—”

It’s a flurry of activity.

“Run,” Gray pushes me to my feet.

Taking my hand, he pulls me to his room, and over my shoulder, I see Spencer tell Kennedy, “Time for bed, princess.”

Even Rylie jumps from the couch at Morris’s booming shout. “I love you,” she says to Levi. “But it’s every leopard for itself.”

Natalie calls after our retreating forms, “You assholes got high without me?”

Grayson slams his door with us safely on the other side.

“Fuck,” I hiss, running a hand over my outfit. “My phone’s out there. Dumb costume doesn’t have pockets…”

Pressing his ear to the door, Gray shakes his head at the muted thunder of Mount Morris. “Farewell, Summer’s phone. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

I fall against his back, giggling, and he wraps an arm around my shoulders to steady me. His expression sobers as I calm down. Drifting a thumb over my jaw, he whispers, “You should stay.”

“That’s probably best,” I whisper back. Who knows how long Morris will be out there. And really, I’m in no state to drive.

Also, I like when Gray holds me like this.

Too soon, he lets me go. Rifles through his dresser, and tells me to choose a shirt from the closet. After careful deliberation, I find one fitting for tonight, with a laughing skeleton on the front (I find you humerus!).

I take that, and the pair of sweatpants Grayson hands me, then close the bathroom door behind me. Peeking into his shower, I pick up a bottle of two-in-one shampoo and body wash and whine, “Oh, Gray, no.”

“What?” comes his muffled response.

Reminding myself to buy him some conditioner, stat, I tell him it’s nothing and peel off my costume. Wash off the rest of my makeup and tug his shirt over my head. I attempt to pull on the sweatpants, only to somehow fuck it up and stick both legs through one opening. I start over again, but make the same mistake.

“Dumb fucking pants,” I mumble, kicking them into the heap of clothes on the floor.

Grayson waits in his desk chair, head in one of his textbooks, when I emerge. I roll my eyes, but don’t comment on how he can focus on reading, choosing instead to crawl onto the bed and sink my weary head into a pillow. Mmm. Despite his lack of proper hair product, it sure does smell nice.

“Do you need—” When he stops, I glance over my shoulder to find him staring somewhere in the vicinity of my bare thighs. I shift, and he snaps out of his trance. Shakes his head and turns for the bathroom.

Only to walk straight into the door frame.

I smother a laugh in his pillow and reach for a blanket. And realize, too late, with my shirt bunched around my hips the way it is, why he’d been so dazed. Talk about a full moon.

When he leaves the bathroom minutes later, changed into his own plain tee and sweatpants, I’m rolled onto my back, blanket neatly tucked up to my waist. After a moment’s hesitation, he turns off the light and gets into bed, also laying flat, with about five inches between us.

“There are stars on your ceiling,” I whisper, staring at glow-in-the-dark constellations.

“Natalie,” he explains, because who else would it be? He stares at them, too. “She got all of us to help. There’s Morris’s.”

He shows me Ursa Minor, the North Star at the tip of its handle. And he tells me that it appears, night after night, always in the same place. A fixed point.

I can picture it, all five of them, in this room. Sticking stars to the ceiling. Natalie and Levi badgering Spencer to add one, until he finally caves in from sheer annoyance. A lone star, planted in the corner by itself. Morris passing stickers to Natalie, warning her from leaning too far back before she falls off the bed. Levi’s contribution is tricky, at first. But when I squint, I see a decidedly phallic configuration, and I imagine Grayson seeing it, later that same day, and throwing open his door in a tantrum to cuss his roommate out.

Silence falls over us, as we stare up at those fake stars. I juxtapose that vision to the one of him all alone in a homeless shelter, looking at a bare ceiling, unable to sleep because others are snoring. An ache grows in my chest. Rises to my throat, until I whisper, “I’m glad you found them. Your friends. That you have them in your life.”

He’s quiet. Then, “Me, too.”

Because that ache’s suddenly at the back of my eyes, I demand, “Tell me more, Grayson James. About stars.”

I feel, rather than see, him nod. Then his low voice fills the space around us with facts. That there are a trillion stars in our galaxy. That they only appear to twinkle because of Earth’s atmosphere. That there are over nine thousand in our sky, but only two thousand visible to the naked eye.

“You need a telescope to see the rest,” he informs me.

I twist my neck to look at him. “Do you have a telescope?”

“No.” A small smile plays on his lips. “One day I will.”

Eyes adjusting to the darkness, I keep my attention on him. For once, his hands stay settled on his stomach. Content to let the facts speak for themselves, rather than help draw them along with motions. Through the dark of the room, I watch his eyes behind his glasses, since he hasn’t yet removed them for the night. He’s so focused. So narrowed in on what’s above. On a world beyond these four walls and a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark stickers.

“Sometimes, when I get this high, I like to close my eyes and imagine stars forming,” he confesses to the ceiling. “It’s so fucking beautiful. All this interstellar material, gathering in a cloud. A nebula. One giant cluster of dust and gas and heat and gravity.”

I close my eyes, trying to see what he sees. Imagining the vast darkness of his bedroom is that of space and glittering dust gathers to form clouds. But I don’t have facts about nebulae stuck in my head. I can’t quite picture them clearly. So I make my own. Giant clouds, like he said. Blossoming with velvet petals and feathery leaves and fragrant sweetness.

Movement beside me yanks me back to earth. And I know, without having to open my eyes, what Gray’s doing. Drawing pictures with his hands. Swirling them together in formation as he speaks, because he can’t help but bring his imaginations to life.

“Once there’s enough, gravity does its work. Pulls it all in. Spins it into knots. And the more a knot spins, the larger it grows.”

He brings me back to earth, and without the distraction of blooming clouds and glowing stars, my mind wanders in the dark. Tactile awareness takes over. In this heightened state, I feel everything. Soft sheets under my toes with every sliding shift of my feet. Cotton rasping my nipples on every exhale. Faint reverberations from Gray’s rumbling whispers. Wrinkled creases in the blanket from my twisting fingers, before they let go completely…

“And the larger it grows, the hotter it gets. So fucking hot.”

Then I do feel it. An incredibly intense, astronomical heat. And fuck is he right. It’s so hot. How is it so fucking hot? Has it always been this hot, and I’d never realized, until he pointed it out?

“But then it gets so big, so hot, and gravity is exerting all this pressure on it—”

Yes. Pressure, yes. So much pressure and so much heat and fuck, it just keeps increasing.

“Until it gets to be too much. And the cloud collapses. Falls in on itself. Leaving behind this dense, hot core—”

Fuck, yes, yes, I feel it. So dense. So hot. Heavy and throbbing with tension. Feverish with need. Spinning me into delirium. And I gasp because I feel it all and I feel it all so fucking strongly—

“Summer.”

My eyes fly open.

Gray sits up. Leans over me.

Reality crashes down. Because I made a sound. A sound that he’d noticed. Just as he notices now, the rushed pant of my breath. The arch of my back and my beady nipples under his shirt.

And my hand, once curled into the blanket, now completely obscured beneath it.

Between my legs.

Overwhelmed by the intense gravitational pull of his passion, I let myself get carried away. To the point it had roused mine, and I—I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t just let myself ache this badly. Not while he laid there, murmuring in that husky voice about heat and pressure and spinning.

“Are—” He swallows. Audibly. “Are you—”

“Yeah.” Because what’s the point in denying it? The proof is right in front of him. Making it fact.

A long, brittle silence falls over the room. So quiet, I think he’ll be able to hear the erratic beating of my heart. Each pulse of blood through my veins. In my chest. My wrists. That aching bud between my thighs.

Oh, god, if I don’t get release soon, I think I’ll collapse.

So I stare at those stars on the ceiling. Will myself to borrow some of their stark clarity. And I break the quiet to tell him in a desperate whimper, “I really need to come, Gray.”

“Right,” he blinks, snapping out of it. He sits up even more. “Um, I can wait in the—”

“No!”

He freezes, one foot off the bed. Eyes wide behind his glasses at my frenzied command. How quickly I’d sat up to grab his sleeve. To keep him from leaving.

I let go when he looks down at it. Then at my lap. Because it had been the same hand…

“I—I don’t mind,” I wet my lips. “If you stay.”

There’s a moment of hesitation. A brief glance at the bathroom door, before his foot lifts off the floor. He lays down, flat on his back again. His eyes still on the stars, as he folds his hands over his stomach.

And I fall back onto the bed, too. This time, making no secret of my hand slipping beneath the blanket. Rubbing my fingers over the silky material of my thong. Over swollen, heated lips. Carelessly, I let one sigh escape. Because fuck, even that precious little relief feels so damn incredible…

I sneak a look at Grayson. His eyes squeeze shut at that soft sound. His lips purse together, and by only the dim glow of the stars on the ceiling do I think I see him mouth a curse. When he opens his eyes again, he finds me watching him.

“Keep going, Gray,” I whisper. “What happens to that dense, hot core?”

His eyes stay steady on mine. Narrow in on my face while my features soften with each soft pet of my hand. I see his throat work uneasily, and in a rasping voice, he tells me, “All that mass—”

“Built up by gravity,” I slip my fingers under my thong. Run two through slick skin until I find my clit. And I circle it, once, twice, again, over and over. Build my arousal up, up, up.

Gray’s chest heaves with each pant I make. He nods. “It packs so tightly together—”

“How tight?” One finger drifts lower. Sinks inside tight, wet heat.

“Until there’s no more space left. Until the star’s full. Bursting with elements. Hydrogen and helium rubbing together—” He stutters when I moan. “And they compress against each other. Strain under more pressure and more heat.”

“Yes. Yes,” I nod, adding more pressure with my fingers. Dipping two fingers now, in and out in short succession. Drawing wetness over my clit, and then back inside me. Wanting to feel full. To feel weight crush down on me and fill me to bursting.

My free hand clutches the sheets, but I let go to relieve more pressure. To touch the burning skin under my shirt. Rub first one breast, then the other. Squeeze and lift and plump each in my palm. Tweak my nipples into even harder points, straining against the shirt.

Gray runs both hands over his face, under his glasses. One restless leg rises, and I glance down. To that faint outline of his hard cock under his sweatpants. And I let my head fall back with another lusty moan, plunging my fingers deeper, harder.

“Nuclear fusion,” Gray shudders out a breath. “A reaction in which atomic nuclei come together—They combine. Fuck, I can hear how wet you are, Summer—Atoms, they slam into one another—”

“Like that?” I kick up the pace. Clap my palm against my pussy with each slamming thrust of my hand.

He sits up on his elbows. Leans over and finally, fucking finally, reaches for me. Lifts my shirt. Just over my breasts. Pushes the blanket down. So he can see. Every wet push of my fingers and my hand playing with my tits.

“Touch me, Gray,” I gasp. “Please fucking touch me.”

Carefully, he sets a hand on my stomach. Lets it rest there, warm and heavy, as he takes in everything. My face and my breasts and my hand in my panties. Deciding what to focus on first.

Tits, he chooses. Because that hand moves up. Leaving a warm trail of goosebumps in its wake, as he cups one breast. Weighs it in his palm. Kneads it with his firm fingers. And then his head comes down. Mouth meeting the tip.

And fuck, oh, fuck. My hand stops moving. Because I’m so close, and I can come, just like this. With his tongue drawing slow shapes over my nipple. But fuck, I’m not ready. I want to watch him. See that tongue, circling and drawing back and forth, back and forth. Until his mouth settles back over it, sucking gently on the tightened peak.

His hand moves to the other breast. Repeats the same test, before he lets go of the first and leans over to taste the other nipple. That hand moves down. Skims the side of my body, down and up and down again. Rounding my hip, where it gives a hard squeeze before moving down again. It flirts with the inside of my thigh, and my legs fall open of their own volition.

Only that damn teasing hand skips over where I most want it to be, coming back to rest on my breast.

“Tell me how hot it gets again,” I interrupt the soft kiss he presses between my breasts.

“So fucking hot,” Gray reminds me, his voice a hush against my skin. He shifts so that the arm holding him up settles on my pillow. Shielding my head, fingers sinking into my curls. “Hotter than you can even fucking imagine.”

And as his mouth laves my nipple again, I take that wandering hand from my breasts. Gray lifts his head, eyes heavy with pleasure as he watches me bring it to my mouth. Wrap my lips around two fingers. Guide them, in and out, gently sucking and lavishing them with my tongue until, when I pull them away for good, they glisten with my saliva.

His eyes stay on me, then. As I lead that hand down. Shove it beneath my thong. And hold him in place against me.

“Hotter than here?” I raise an eyebrow.

Tentatively, carefully, his fingers move. Dragging over my heated flesh. Parting my folds. Massaging my clit. And my helping hand falls back to the mattress. Gripping the sheets as I moan, louder, how good it feels.

“No, fuck,” Gray resolves, sliding a finger inside my pussy. His gaze never leaves my face, as he pushes enough to make me gasp. “Nothing’s hotter than this.”

He captures my next moan with his lips. Kisses me vehemently. Presses into my side. I press back. Into his mouth with my tongue. Against his thick, hard cock with my hip. Over his hand, working his finger so deep inside me. I hold his head to mine, slanting our mouths together. Sucking his bottom lip. Squirming as he adds a second finger, meeting his carefully measured thrusts with frantic ones of my own.

I arch my breasts into his solid chest. Clasp his strong shoulder, and realize it’s still fully covered. And why the fuck is he still wearing clothes, when I’m practically naked underneath him?

“What—” Confusion takes hold of his features when I push him off me. Only to blink away in an instant when I wrestle with his shirt. He yanks it over his head, then helps me do the same. My thong comes off easily, but I stall, arrested by the sight of him. All those hard parts that I’ve only seen once before.

And now—as he tugs down his sweatpants. His shorts—I get to see more.

Oh, fuck, my lips part as he reveals his cock to me. So stiff and thick, falling against his lower stomach with a heady thump. Gray takes the veined shaft in hand. Pumps it once, up and down, stretching the skin over the red, swollen crown. And fuck, how I want to—I would take him in my mouth. Catch that beaded drop of moisture at its tip on my tongue. Slide my lips over him, bring him to the back of my throat. Demand he use that fist to pump his cum all over my face, until it drips from my chin.

I would do it. I will do that. Holy fuck, there’s nothing I want more than to drive him wild with my tongue and lips and spit.

Except maybe his hard cock inside me.

Yes, I think, ridding myself of my panties and swinging one leg over his hips. Yes, that’s what I want. Him to unload all that cum in my pussy. To fill me up. To bring me to climax with his cock still pulsing inside me.

Then it’s his turn to groan, when I grip that shaft, rub its head through my folds. Make it glossy with my wetness. In awe, I whisper, “Fuck, you’re so hard. So fucking hard. How are you this hard, Gray? How have you not burst yet?”

I caress him with my fingers. Tilt him back, far enough, until that round head presses up, inside…

Gray grabs my hips, ripping me away from his cock. I stumble forward, catching myself on his chest with both hands. Whining at the loss of him, at being denied when he’s denied me for so long already.

“Summer—We can’t—” I try to sink back down on him, but he holds me steady, eyes squeezed shut. In an agonized breath, he tells me, “I don’t have any condoms.”

“Oh,” I still. Through my stoned haze, I think of my purse. Of the foil packet I have stashed somewhere in its depths—but shit, it’s in my car. And I’m sure as hell not about to interrupt this moment to run outside and get it, or grab one from any of his roommates.

Not when I finally have him, naked and stretched out under me.

So, I lean forward. Slide myself over his length. Luxuriate in the feel of him, hard and slick against my core. Pressing a lewd, wet kiss to his mouth, I tell him, “Grayson James, there’s more than one way to make each other feel good.”

I spread my thighs further. Lower myself fully on top of him. Roll my hips, slowly, over his cock. It twitches under me, pressing against my clit, and we both moan. I repeat the motion. Back this time. Dragging slowly up again. Working him with my pussy, without penetration, until his breathing grows ragged and his moans take over mine.

He squeezes my hips. Presses me into him. When I pick up speed, he meets my rocking with hard thrusts of his own. Bringing our most sensitive parts together in hot, wet collision. Because I’m dripping with desire now. Coating him in my arousal. And he sighs and pants and groans and fuck, are those wondrous sounds, coming straight from his mouth.

“Shit,” he gasps when I lean back on my hands. His hands find my knees and spread me to his gaze, so he can see exactly how my pussy slides along his length. “Fuck. Holy—Fuck, Summer—I’m—Shit, fuck.”

Uh huh. Yeah? Yeah yeah, I moan back in this new language we’ve created. A dialect of grunts and moans and loud, impassioned utterances with no significant meaning.

Until Gray infuses it with some semblance of logic. “A dying star becomes a supernova. It—oh yeah, fuck—It explodes. With light and energy. It’s—god, like that—It’s so fucking bright, Summer. So fucking intense—and fuck, fuck, fuck—Emits more energy than the sun. Sends out all these particles and elements and—Fuck, I’m—I’m—”

I feel him against me, cock throbbing. Arching back, his face tight. Fingers digging into my knees. His mouth opens in a silent shout, before groaning in total ecstasy as thick, white ribbons burst over his stomach.

When it’s over, he relaxes back into the mattress. Breathing hard, his forehead sweaty and his glasses askew. But this lull lasts only a moment, before he glances back down at his stomach, at me, still balanced over him, watching with a dazed look.

He came.

He came fast.

And so fucking hard.

“Shit. Shit shit shit,” he rushes to sit up, almost knocking me off him, before he steadies me. “Fuck, Summer. Shit.”

I’ve spent days. Weeks. Eons, it feels like. Wearing my cutest outfits. Utilizing my best makeup tricks. Setting the tone with my flirtiest wit. Wanting him to notice me. Not in theory. In truth. To give me any kind of sign that he desires me—the way I desire him.

So here’s tonight. All those smiles. How happy he was to see me. Here. In his home. Those dark, sultry looks over my costume. And his hands, all over me. Holding mine. On my waist. In my hair. Keeping me against him all night. Like I belonged there. Like he couldn’t bear it if I left. Like all he ever wanted was me, at his side, listening to him, as he rambles about sharks and superheroes and stars.

And he came that hard and that fast.

For me.

“I can—if you’re, if you haven’t, I can still—”

He wanted me. All night long, he wanted me. Maybe even longer. And that want, that desire, it grew and grew and grew, so much so that he couldn’t hold it back anymore. Couldn’t contain himself. Not when I made him feel so good. Not with my body over his and the sensations I roused in him. And seeing that, his unexpected pleasure—it changes something inside me. Makes this feel like more than just a fake relationship and a couple of special brownies and shushed whispers under a glowing ceiling of constellations and I—

I want more.

I want him.

Gray sits up, and before he can speak, I wrap my arms around his neck. Kiss him tenderly as I readjust on his lap. Straddling his thigh, I pull back, long enough to whisper against his mouth, “What next? After the supernova?”

He blinks, but as I drag myself over his solid thigh, he understands. Gently, he holds me by the waist. Sends delicious shivers over my body as he runs his hands up my sides. Around my back. All over my skin, as he whispers, “Everything. It happens all over again.”

“The supernova sends out dust.” He kneads my breasts as I slide over and over again.

“The dust forms a cloud.” Kisses me as I gasp for more, please, more.

“Gravity makes the cloud spin.” I buck against him, forgetting myself.

“It gains momentum. Density. Pressure.” Fingers graze down my spine. Mold to my ass.

“And heat. So much heat, Summer. Do you feel it? How hot it can get?” I do. I really, really do. How hot his thigh feels under me. How hot my pussy feels. Rising temperatures at the core. Burning everything around them in the heat of all that fucking passion.

Gray’s grip on my ass tightens, desperately squeezing and grinding me down onto him, along him, over him, as he takes command of my pleasure. And I cling to his shoulders, unable to do anything but cry out in need. Run my fingers through his hair and pant in his ear and shiver at the feel of the warm slipperiness between our bellies. Between my thighs. Driving that heat up, up, up—

Until it bursts. In an explosion of stars and flowers and sobbing declarations of yes, fuck, I’m coming, yes, yes, it feels so good, you feel so good,yes, finally, finally, yes!

And when it’s over, I collapse. Back onto the bed in a trembling heap.

I must doze off, because the next thing I know, something cool and wet wipes my skin. I flinch. Grayson mumbles soft reassurances, pressing his mouth to my forehead as he cleans off the sticky mess on my stomach, between my legs. When he’s done, I pull him down and he pulls the covers over us. And I drift asleep, curled against his side.

I thought when he kissed me, it shook the world and broke the ground below. But when he channeled all that passion into mine, I think it rattled the entire planet out of orbit and gave way to a billion new stars in the sky.