How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,58
in cinnamon against my lips. “Lie back for this, okay?”
Okay. I sink into the cool white pillow. I can do this. Obey commands. I glance at hey_mamacita’s words on the laptop, blurred and unreadable from here. He tugs at the tie on my bathrobe and slides the terrycloth off my skin: chest first, then the rest of me. He unpeels my boxers, still damp from the shower, in one fluid move. Like I needed a reminder he’s done this before. Many times. And there’s no way I won’t disappoint him.
“How’s that?” His fingers trail down my chest and up again, lingering on—God I hate the word “nipple” so much, I can’t even. “Good?”
I swallow the rock in my throat. “Good.”
“I can’t see your eyes. Are you freaking?”
Status: Naked. On bed. With boy. Systems overheating. Sudden doubts multiplying. Meltdown imminent.
“No,” I lie.
“Now, that scene you like has you taking the reins pretty early on, remember? I mean, if you’re too nervous we could change that, but I have total faith in you.” He’s shrugging off his own robe, tossing it on the floor. It’s too dim to see much but I shut my eyes anyway. “What do you think?”
My throat creates some affirmative syllable.
He drops down on the pillow beside me and sweeps me on top of him. I go taut with the warm shock of skin to skin, the huge undeniable fact of his hardness insisting itself next to mine. I think I have to pee. I wish I could brush my teeth again. What if I do everything all wrong? What if I die of happiness and then go right to hell? A vague panicked stop stop stop wheels through my head and I’m gripped with the worst fear of all: what if I run away?
“Your scene.” Abel brushes damp hair off my forehead. “You take over.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Yes you do.” He pecks two kisses inside my hand and presses it to his heart. I feel its warm steady knock against my palm. “You do, sweetheart. Relax.”
The word sends a thunder of calm rolling through me. My fingers twitch to life. hey_mamacita whispers in the sultry, cocksure voice I imagine for her: With bold nimble hands he bolted Abel’s wrists to the smooth white sheets and braved the distance between their lips. It was shorter than he’d imagined. Because now he was free.
I let her words fill my head, guiding my first moves.
And then, in the pale glow of the laptop, I start to write my own.
Chapter Nineteen
We lay together in the wrecked white bed, sprawled side by side like action figures someone just got done playing with. Except I’d never mistake myself for plastic, not now. It’s like Sim said in Episode 2-15, after he first got the chip: I was never fully aware of my body before. Now every part of me is alive. Electrified. Am I wrong to feel joyful, Captain? Is it foolish not to fear pain yet?
I feel Abel still awake, fiddling with the sheets beside me. We’re on the same page, I guess, trying to sidestep morning-after awkwardness by not sleeping at all. I wish he’d talk first. I don’t know how to break the seal. I have some sincerely stupid questions—like, I’m not sure what we did tonight actually counted as losing my virginity—but that’s kind of a question for Dan Savage and not really sexy afterglow talk, which I still have no clue about even after a hundred Cadsim and Abandon fics and really all I want to do is pull a guitar out of thin air and serenade him with “Here, There, and Everywhere,” like I do in Chapter 18 of “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”
Abel taps my cheek. “Hey…?”
I turn my head, smile. “Hey.”
His eyes flick down to the space between us. I look down and see what he’s done.
Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus: tucked snugly under the sheet together. Spooning.
I crack up laughing.
“So?” Abel says.
“So.”
He cringes cutely. “How…was it?”
I would write horrible fanfic. The mechanics blur; the last thing we did blasted my mind inside-out and left me clear and calm and goofy-dreamy.
“Great,” I tell him.
“Well…mostly great. Right?”
I hide my face in the pillow. “Sorry I couldn’t do everything. I just—”
“No no! Oh God, that’s not what I meant.” He knocks on the back of my head. “I meant that one part where I freaked you out. I just didn’t know you hated feet so much.”
“Neither did I.”
“That’s what’s so fun, though. Figuring all that stuff