Ch.45 – Art Storage

I saw red hair at the end of the hall after sixth period.

Purple hairband. The glasses. She was at her locker with a textbook in one hand and the door half-open and she turned her head and saw me and the textbook almost went into the locker but didn't because her hand had frozen.

Three weeks. Three weeks since the locker room and the sound she'd made against my shoulder and the bite mark that had taken a week to fade. She'd been avoiding me since. Switching seats in French. Leaving the cafeteria when I entered. Taking the long way around the building so our paths didn't cross. She was bad at avoiding me. A redhead with glasses who went scarlet every time she turned a corner and I was there. She'd looked at me across hallways more times than I'd bothered counting and each time she'd turned away so fast her ponytail whipped.

She was doing it now. The textbook went into the locker, the door shut, and she turned and walked the other direction. Fast. Head down. Her shoes made quick flat sounds on the linoleum.

I followed. Not fast. Walking.

She went past the art room. Past the bathroom. Turned the corner near the supply closets. I came around the corner and saw her duck through a door at the end of the hall. The art storage room. She pulled it shut behind her.

I stood in the hall for a second. Nobody around. The hallway was quiet, that post-school hush where the building is emptying and the sounds get farther apart. I opened the door.

The art storage room was narrow and deep. Shelves on both sides, packed with paint tubes and turpentine bottles and stacked canvases and rolls of paper. A supply table at the back. An easel folded against the wall. Drop cloths bunched on a shelf. The light was a single fluorescent strip that buzzed and made everything slightly yellow. The room was cooler than the hallway. Stored supplies and no heating vent.

Judith was standing between the shelves. Her back was to the door and she was breathing hard and when I opened it she turned around and her face was red and her glasses were crooked and she was holding a canvas in front of her body like she'd grabbed the first thing her hands touched.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about-" I said.

"Then talk." Her voice was higher than usual. She was gripping the canvas with both hands and her knuckles were white.

"I'm going to close this door."

She didn't say don't. I closed it. The latch clicked. The room got quieter. The fluorescent buzz was louder in here.

"I can't stop thinking about what we did." She said it fast, looking at the canvas instead of me. "In the locker room. I keep- I can't- it's been weeks and I still-" She adjusted her glasses. They slid back down immediately. "We can't do that again."

"Okay."

I stepped closer. She stepped back. Her hip hit the shelf and a row of paint tubes rattled. Red, blue, yellow, rolling on the metal shelf and stopping against each other.

"I mean it," she said. "It was a mistake and it can't happen again."

"Okay."

I took another step. She pressed against the shelf and a paint tube rolled off and hit the floor. Neither of us picked it up. I was close enough to see the pulse in her throat and the sweat at her hairline and her chest moving with each breath, fast, shallow, the button-up pulling with it.

"If you want to stop," I said. "We stop."

She looked at me. Green eyes behind the crooked glasses. Her mouth was open and her lower lip was wet where she'd been chewing it and her hands were shaking on the canvas.

"Okay?" I said. "That's it?"

"That's it."

She stared at me. Her eyes were wide and her breathing was loud in the small room and the paint tube was on the floor between us and the fluorescent light was humming.

She dropped the canvas. It clattered against the shelf. Her hand grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled.

I came down and she kissed me.

Her mouth was warm and mint-gummy and her glasses mashed into my cheek and her hand was twisted in my shirt and pulling hard. She was standing on her toes to reach me and the kiss was aggressive in a way she hadn't been in the locker room. Three weeks of avoiding me and watching me across hallways and lying awake thinking about my fingers inside her had put teeth behind it. She bit my lip. A nip. Then she pulled back an inch.

"I hate you," she said.

"I know."

I kissed her again. My hands on her waist, pulling her against me, and she was soft everywhere, her stomach against mine, her breasts pressed to my chest through the blouse, and I was already getting hard from the kiss and the mint and the bite and the three weeks of watching her avoid me. I walked her backward two steps and lifted her onto the supply table. She went up easy and her skirt rode up on the wood surface and she sat on the edge with her legs on either side of me and her shoes were off the ground and she was breathing hard through her nose and kissing me and her hands were in my hair.

My hand went to her knee. Slid up the outside of her thigh. Her skin was warm under my cold fingers from the room and the temperature difference made her shiver. The skirt bunched under my palm as my hand moved higher. She pulled back from the kiss.

"Arthur-"

"Just let me."

My hand went under the skirt. Her thigh was soft and the skin prickled under my fingers as they moved up and in. She was wearing cotton underwear again. The fabric was soaked. Not damp. Soaked through. Warm and clinging to her and the heat came through the cotton onto my fingers and I pressed and the wet fabric gave against her and the shape of her was right there under my hand.

She turned her face away. The red climbed from her neck to her ears.

"I'm-" She swallowed. "I've been- since the hallway. When I saw you. I-"

"I know."

I pressed my fingers against her through the cotton and rubbed slow and she sucked in a breath through her teeth and her hands grabbed the edge of the table. The wood creaked under her grip. She was swollen under the fabric, hot, the cotton dark and wet where it pressed into her.

Then I dropped to my knees.

She looked down at me. Her eyes went wide behind the glasses and her mouth opened and she had not been expecting this. In the locker room I'd used my hands. She'd been bracing for hands.

"What are you-"

I pushed her skirt up to her hips. Hooked my fingers in the waistband of the cotton underwear and pulled them down her legs, off one ankle, leaving them hanging on the other. Her thighs were pale and soft and she was shaking. I put my hands on her knees and spread them and the cool air of the storage room hit her and she flinched and her hands went to her skirt trying to push it back down and I held her knees open.

"Oh god," she whispered.

I leaned in. Pressed my mouth against the inside of her thigh first. She jerked. Her skin was hot against my lips, the muscle underneath trembling, and I kissed up the inside of her thigh, slow, one inch at a time, my breath warm on her skin, and she was gripping the table edge so hard the whole thing shifted on the floor. Her breathing was going "ah- ah- ah-" in tiny punched-out sounds she was trying to stop and the trying was the part that made them louder.

I put my mouth on her.

Slick and hot and the taste was salt and skin and her and my tongue found her clit and she slammed her hand over her mouth. The sound she made went into her palm, muffled, desperate. Her hips jerked forward against my face. Her other hand left the table and grabbed the shelf behind her. A jar of brushes rattled. My tongue moved flat against her, slow, wide strokes, and I was learning what she liked from what her body did. Her hips bucked harder when I pressed up. Her thighs squeezed when I went left. The sounds got louder when I stayed in one spot and didn't move.

"Nn- ah- oh my god-"

Into her palm. She was trying to be quiet and every sound she caught behind her hand came out louder in the attempt to swallow it. I pressed my tongue harder. Found the spot that made her hips buck and stayed on it. Her thighs closed around my head, warm and shaking, and I pushed them back open with my hands and her knee knocked the shelf and two paint tubes rolled off and hit the floor and she didn't notice. My cock was aching in my jeans. I was on my knees between her legs with my face in her pussy and the taste of her on my tongue and I was so hard it hurt and nobody was touching me and I didn't care because the sounds she was making were worth it.

I sealed my lips around her clit and sucked gently and her hand left her mouth for one second and the sound that came out was a full moan, uncut, raw, bouncing off the metal shelves in the small room, and she clamped her hand back and her eyes were squeezed shut behind the glasses and her face was the color of her hair.

Her hips were grinding against my face. Small desperate movements she wasn't controlling. Her free hand was on the shelf behind her and the brushes in the jar were clinking together and her breathing was through her nose, fast, each exhale punched, and her thighs were shaking against my temples. The cotton underwear was hanging off her left ankle and swinging with her movements. The slick sound of my tongue on her was loud in the room, wet and obscene, and she could hear it because her face went redder.

I slid two fingers inside her while my tongue kept working. She was so wet the sound was immediate, slick and obscene in the quiet room, and her whole body jerked on the table and the shelf rattled and the jar of brushes tipped over and brushes scattered across the shelf and rolled onto the floor and she didn't care. Her hand was white-knuckled on the table edge and her back was arched and she was biting her lower lip so hard the skin went white. The wet sounds of my fingers inside her and my mouth on her clit were loud in the storage room and every sound made her face darker.

Her breathing changed. Shorter. Sharper. The rhythm I remembered from the locker room, the pattern that came right before the bite.

"Don't- ah- don't stop- please- nn-"

I didn't stop. My tongue flat on her clit, fast, and my fingers curling inside her, and she was clenching around my fingers in hard fast pulses and her thighs were shaking against my head and she bit down on her lip. Hard. The skin went white and then a small line of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth and she came.

Her hand dropped from her mouth and both hands grabbed the shelf and the shelf creaked and her hips locked against my face and the sound she made was strangled, bitten, half-swallowed, vibrating in her chest. Her pussy clenched around my fingers in waves, hard then soft then hard again, and her legs clamped around my head and released and clamped again and her whole body was shaking on the supply table and a tube of cadmium red rolled off the shelf and bounced on the concrete.

I eased off. Slow. Kissed the inside of her thigh. She twitched at the contact, oversensitive, and I kissed her other thigh and she twitched again and made a small broken sound that wasn't a word. I pulled my fingers out of her slowly and she whimpered at the withdrawal. A thin string of wet connected my fingers to her for a second before it broke. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stood up.

She was sitting on the supply table with her skirt bunched at her waist and her legs open and her underwear on one ankle and her glasses so crooked they were almost off her face. Her lip was bleeding. Her chest was heaving under the button-up and her eyes were glassy and unfocused and she was staring at the ceiling.

My cock was straining against my jeans. Hard enough to see through the denim. When she finally looked down from the ceiling she saw that too.

"You-" She tried. Swallowed. Her voice was wrecked. "You didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to."

She looked at me. Flushed dark, lip bloody, eyes glassy behind the tilted glasses. She reached up and straightened the glasses. They slid down immediately.

Her eyes went to my jeans. To the outline pressing against the denim. She stared at it for a second. Then she reached for my belt.

"Let me," she said. Quiet. Her fingers were shaking and she worked the buckle open and the button and the zipper and she pulled my cock out and her hand wrapped around it and the contact after the ache was a relief that went through my whole body. Her palm was warm from gripping the table and her fingers were slick from her own wetness that had gotten on the wood surface and the combination of warm and wet on my cock made my jaw tighten.

Her grip was different from the locker room. Firmer. More deliberate. Her thumb in a specific position near the head. She'd been watching videos. Studying technique between our encounters. Applying what she'd learned. And the fact that she'd spent time alone in her bedroom watching tutorials on how to jerk me off was hotter than the grip itself. She was watching my face while she stroked me, reading my reaction, adjusting pressure.

"Is this-" she started.

"Yeah. That's good."

She stroked me and her rhythm was steady and I was leaking onto her fingers and her grip got slicker and the sound of her hand on my cock was wet and audible in the quiet room. She was breathing through her mouth, fast, her eyes on her own hand like she was studying it. The blood on her lip was drying dark.

Then she slid off the table. Her shoes hit the concrete. She went to her knees on the floor. Cold concrete under her bare knees, the skirt pooling around her. She looked up at me from below and her glasses reflected the fluorescent strip and her lip was still bloody and she took me into her mouth.

Warm. Wet. Her tongue moved around the head, figuring out the shape. She took more in and gagged and pulled back and her eyes watered and she tried again and took more. Sloppy. Her lips stretched around me and her chin was getting slick with spit and she was making soft sounds around my cock that hummed through the shaft. Her hand was wrapped around the base, doing what her mouth couldn't reach, and the coordination between her mouth and her hand was better than it should have been for someone who'd only done this once.

I put my hand in her hair. Her ponytail was half-undone and the purple hairband had slipped and I gathered her hair and held it back from her face. She looked up at me. Green eyes, watering, her mouth full, her cheeks hollowed. She held my gaze for two seconds and the sight of her on her knees looking up at me with her glasses crooked and her bloody lip stretched around my cock was enough to make my hand tighten in her hair. She closed her eyes at the grip and took me deeper and the sound she made hummed from her throat through my cock into my spine.

"Slower," I said. "More tongue."

She slowed. Her tongue pressed flat against the underside and dragged along the length on each pull-back and the sensation went from clumsy-warm to deliberate and my breathing changed and she heard the change. She adjusted. Did more of what made my breathing rough. Reading me. Learning in real time.

The wet sounds were loud. Her mouth on my cock, the slick pop each time she pulled back to the head, the soft gag when she tried to take too much, the spit running down her chin and onto her hand. She didn't wipe it. Her eyes were closed and her head was bobbing and her free hand was on my thigh and her fingers were pressing hard enough to leave marks.

My hips started to move. Small thrusts I was mostly controlling. She took each one and her hand adjusted to the new rhythm and her mouth was wet and hot and she was getting better at it with every pass, finding the angle and the pressure and the speed that made my legs tense.

"I'm close," I said.

She didn't pull back. Her eyes opened. She looked up at me from her knees on the art storage room floor. Glasses crooked. Lip bloody. Chin slick. Face flushed red. Green eyes watering. She took me deeper.

I came in her mouth. My hand tightened in her hair and my hips pushed forward and her throat worked around me, swallowing, once, twice, her eyes watering harder but she didn't pull off. She kept her mouth on me, tongue working, swallowing, and when I was done she pulled back slowly and a string of spit connected her lower lip to the head of my cock and it broke and she wiped her chin with the back of her hand and looked at me from the floor with an expression that was half mortified and half proud.

I helped her up. She stood on shaky legs and pulled her underwear up from her ankle and smoothed her skirt down and fixed her glasses and wiped the blood off her lip with her thumb. She looked at the mess. Brushes all over the shelf and the floor. Paint tubes scattered. The canvas she'd dropped leaning against the wall. A damp spot on the supply table she was pretending not to see.

"This was the last time," she said.

"You said that last time."

She shoved my shoulder. Hard. Her mouth twitched. Held for half a second. Then she looked away.

"Go," she said. "I need to clean this up."

I went. I opened the door and checked the hallway. Empty. I stepped out. Behind me she was picking up brushes and putting them back in the jar.

The hallway was quiet. Late afternoon. The building mostly cleared out. I zipped up as I walked and my shirt was untucked and my hair was probably wrong and my mouth tasted like Judith and I was walking toward the exit with the kind of expression that I'd have to fix before I got home because Debbie would ask questions and Jenny would ask worse ones.

My phone buzzed. Judith: "it WAS the last time."

I smiled. Put the phone in my pocket.

It wasn't.