Flesh. Slapping flesh.

I woke to the sound of a wet handclap.

It took a while to place it. There's a moment on waking where the world hasn't assembled itself yet; the noise was just noise — regular, flat, unhurried, once every half-second or so, the way a metronome might sound if a metronome could sweat. Then I remembered the couch, the throw blanket, the two of them upstairs. The noise resolved into what it was.

Flesh. Slapping flesh.

The living room was black. The TV had gone to sleep. The only light was the little green eye of the router on the shelf. The clock on the mantel said ten past four.

I lay still, listening. The slapping was steady, hard, with a voice under it — Anna's voice, continuous, a long unbroken string of moans with no words in them at all, just tone, rising, falling, rising again, now and then a gasp when the rhythm changed. Three hours. They'd gone up at half past one. It was ten past four. It had never once stopped.

I sat up. The blanket slid off me; I didn't bother with it. I went up the stairs in the dark, wide awake now, my heart going. The third stair from the top still creaked. I didn't care.

The door was open wider than before. Two hand widths at least. The light in there was still on, low, amber.

I put my eye to the gap. I saw her first; the sight of her stopped me dead.

...

Anna was on all fours on the bed, but not held up — collapsed into it. Her face was flat down on the mattress with her cheek turned out toward the door, so I could see her mouth open, working, her eyes shut, her bob crushed damp against her forehead, a wet patch of her own breath darkening the sheet under her lips. Her arms were folded under her chest, her shoulders down, her back a long low dip. Her tits were squashed flat beneath her, pushed out at the sides of her ribs. The mole on her chest sat just clear of the sheet.

Her ass was up. It was the only part of her still holding itself: pink now, both cheeks, an honest hand-shaped pink.

Behind her Mike knelt up with his knees wide.

His back was toward me. It was shining. Actually shining, wet all over, a sheen from his shoulders to the small of it, sweat running in slow lines down the channel of his spine, gathering, dripping off him onto the sheets. The muscle of it moved under the shine with every thrust. His shoulders were hunched, his head down, his whole body working.

His cock was ramming her.

I could see the whole length of it come out of her — thick, pale, wet to the root, dark at the head — then bury itself again in one long hard drive. Her whole body jolted forward; her cheek skidded an inch up the sheet; she grunted. Every stroke. Out, in, jolt, grunt. Out, in, jolt, grunt. The mattress bounced in time. The headboard knocked the wall. Sweat flew off his back in little specks when he changed his angle.

His knees were planted wide, his hands fixed on her hips, thumbs dug into the soft hollows above her ass, pulling her back onto himself as much as he was pushing in. She was being used like a thing, letting herself be used like a thing; there was nothing at all between the two of them but the wet sound of it.

"Uh — uh — uh — uh —"

Her voice was raw. Three hours of it had sanded her down; there was gravel in it now. The moans were coming out of her whether she wanted them to or not, a continuous low tangle of them, one long, one short, one that cracked in the middle, under all of it the flat wet clap of his hips against her.

He got a hand in her bob, pulled her head up off the mattress. She cried out — a real cry, startled, high — then he let go, her face dropped back down, she moaned into the sheet.

"Harder," she said, muffled, barely words. "Don't — don't stop — don't ever stop —"

He didn't stop. He shifted his knees, shortened the strokes, hammered them into her, quick, brutal. The sound went from a clap to a drumroll; Anna's moans broke up into a wail.

...

Her knees had begun to slip apart on the wet sheet. He brought a hand down on her hip, hauled her back into line, then changed his angle — up, slightly, so the stroke dragged over the front wall of her instead of straight through — Anna's whole body answered it. Her back dipped deeper. Her toes curled up off the mattress, stayed curled. A fresh run of sound came out of her, higher than before, tighter.

"There," she said. "Oh — there, there, there —"

"That it?"

"That's it — God, that's it, that's — don't you lose it, don't you dare lose it —"

He didn't lose it. He kept the angle, kept the pace, drove it home over and over with a flat mechanical accuracy. Her hips began to push back to meet him in a rhythm of their own, short, quick, desperate, her ass slapping into his thighs before he could finish the stroke.

The bed was groaning now. Not just the headboard — the frame itself, a low wooden complaint underneath everything. The sheets were rucked into a knot between her knees. One of the pillows had been shoved off the edge, lay on the floor.

The smell of her came off the bed in a wave. Warm, salt, thick; under it the smell of the two of them together, under that the faint sourness of three hours of sweat in a closed room.

I could hear how wet she was. It wasn't just the slap — it was the wet, dragging, sucking sound underneath it, the sound of a cunt so full, so used it couldn't keep hold of anything. Every time he pulled out, a fresh string of it stretched, broke.

She shook.

It started in her thighs, went up. Her whole body went into it, a hard shudder that ran from her knees to her jaw. Her hands scrabbled flat out in front of her, found nothing. Her cunt clamped down on him. She came with her mouth wide open, no sound at all coming out of it, just the shape of a scream held there, then a thin high keening note that climbed, broke.

Mike didn't stop.

He didn't even slow. He rode her straight through it, hard, even. She came down off it gasping; he was still going. She made a sound that was almost a laugh, a wrecked huff, then her voice found its rhythm again, the continuous moaning picked back up where it had left off.

"God," she said. "God, God, God —"

She turned her face. I saw her eyes, slit open, wet, unfocused, looking at nothing at all.

Three hours. I stood there in the dark with my eye to the gap, did the sum: three hours, four times downstairs, three times up here. He was still hard, still driving, his back still shining, his rhythm hadn't once faltered. My legs ached from standing. Anna's voice was going. Mike was just — going. Patient, tireless, relentless as weather.

I admired him. There's no other word. I stood at my own bedroom door in the small hours, admired my best friend the way you admire a machine that won't quit.

...

Anna pushed herself up onto her forearms. It cost her something to do it; her arms shook, her bob hung down, swung with every thrust. She turned her head, looked back over her shoulder at him.

"Mike," she said.

"Mm."

"Mike —" She swallowed. Her throat moved. "Mike, do it. Do it properly. Put it right up in me."

"It's up in you."

"Right up." She dropped her forehead to the sheet. "All the way up. Right up against the top. Right where it —" her breath hitched, "— right where it makes babies."

He pushed in, held, ground. She groaned long, low.

"Yes. Yes. Like that. Keep it there."

He kept it there. He drove deep, short, bottoming out on every stroke, hips jammed up against her ass, his balls squashed flat under her. The mattress dipped with the weight of him. Anna's voice climbed, climbed, until it was one thin unbroken note.

"Harder — oh God — harder, harder, harder —"

He gave her harder. He got both hands on her hips, hauled her back onto himself with each thrust. Her feet came up off the bed, hung in the air behind her; she had nothing to brace with at all. She was just a shape being driven into the mattress, and she loved it. She was saying yes over and over, yes, yes, yes, into the sheet. The yes was going up in pitch, coming apart.

"Come on," she panted. "Come on, come on — oh God, Mike, oh God —"

She lifted her head off the sheet. Her jaw was set, her eyes open, streaming, staring at the headboard. She said it.

"Make me a mommy."

Mike groaned behind her. A torn sound, hitched. His hips stuttered.

"Make me a mommy," she said again, louder, wild. "Fill me up, Mike, fill me right up, put a baby in me — oh — oh — oh —"

She came.

She came hard, harder than the first. It took her whole body over: her back bowed, her head went back, her hands flew out, her fingers splayed, she screamed — a real scream, cracked wide open, half a sob in the middle of it — her cunt locked down on him in wave after wave after wave, her thighs slammed together against his hips, her toes curled right up.

Mike broke.

He drove in once more, twice, then he was done, jammed up as deep as his body would take him, held there. I watched his balls.

They pulled up tight, hard, tucked in against the base of his cock, then contracted — a hard, slow, deep squeeze, so hard it looked like it hurt — again, again, one after another in a heavy rolling rhythm. With every single one his cock jumped, his hips made a small involuntary push, a fresh low groan came out of him.

Anna cried out with each one. She was still coming, still clamped around him, the warmth of it hitting her deep brought her up and over again. She cried from the pleasure of it — not words, just cries, high, broken, grateful — her hips ground back against him in little circles, greedy, wanting every drop.

"Oh — oh — oh God — Mike —"

Five. Six. His whole back was rigid, his head down between his shoulders, shaking with it, the muscles of his ass clenching. She kept crying out, grinding back, coming around him, saying his name over and over into the sheet.

Seven. Eight. The last ones came slower, weaker. His shoulders dropped. His forehead came down onto her back between her shoulder blades. He lay there over her, heaving.

Anna went limp. Completely limp, flat down onto the mattress, her cheek turned out, her eyes shut, her mouth open. A fine tremor went through her legs, would not stop.

The lamp buzzed. The house ticked.

"God," Anna said, after a while, into the sheet. Her voice was a ruin. "Oh, God."

...

Mike pulled out of her slowly. She winced. He sat back on his heels, then fell over sideways onto the mattress, arm over his face, chest going up and down.

Anna didn't move. She lay there with her ass still up for a good half-minute before it occurred to her. Then she let it down, rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up, pressed her thighs together with her hand.

She reached back blindly with her other hand, found Mike's arm, held onto it.

"Don't go home tomorrow," she said.

"Wasn't going to."

"Good."

She lifted her head off the pillow, looked toward the door. The lamp lit her whole face — flushed to the ears, her eyes puffy, her mouth swollen, her bob stuck flat. She looked straight into the gap where I was standing, smiled.

"You may as well come in," she said. "You've been out there an hour; I can hear you breathing."

I pushed the door open.

To be continued.