Loud is How I Love You by Mercy Brown

the way in. He pauses, holds himself there and it’s every bit as good as I remember. No, it isn’t, it’s better. It’s deeper from this angle and when he starts to move, it’s harder. Less careful, more sure. It’s familiar this time, and I never knew that familiar could ever mean better, but with Travis it does. I know how he feels inside of me the way I know the songs I write. My body remembers, and now it feels like it remembers him, too. Already.
    Travis puts his hand on my lower back, and I know he’s looking at his name inked across my ass and it makes meeven wetter. As he fucks me steady and hits me in the sweet spot, the one all the way deep inside of me sort of up and in the front, over and over and over at this angle, I feel like a star collapsing, waiting to go out in a brilliant explosion. Then I feel his hand between my legs, his fingers on my clit and there’s my gamma-ray moment. I scream so loud I don’t know if I have ever been that loud doing anything. I come and I come and I am shuddering in his arms as he’s struggling to hold back because I’m coming so hard.
    “Jesus, oh, Jesus, Emmy Emmy Emmy,” he mutters into my back as he stops moving, gripping me tighter around the waist.
    “Don’t stop,” I cry.
    “I have to slow down or I’m going to lose it,” he says, panting. “I don’t want to come yet.”
    Give him a hand, folks, because he doesn’t. He barely holds it together, but he hangs on. And I am impressed.
    We fuck like this all afternoon. I let him violate me, desecrate me, penetrate me, complicate me for a good four hours. We don’t even do anything else but fuck. We don’t fondle, we don’t do oral, we don’t cuddle, and we don’t really talk. We don’t need to.
    By the time I’m done fucking him, his room is no longer tidy, I’ll say that much. The textbooks are strewn all over the floor, notes scattered everywhere after he fucks me on the desk. After we do it on the bed in every conceivable position we can think of, we throw the pillows and comforter on the floor and get down and fuck like animals there, too.
    When we’re finally out of condoms and I’m worried about his dick needing medical attention if I hop on it one more time, we curl up on the floor on top of the comforter (which definitely needs to go in the washing machine now) and he kisses me again.
    “Are you hungry?” he asks.
    “Yeah,” I say. “Starving.”
    “Let’s make grilled cheese,” he says.
    And I don’t worry about anything being weird between us now that I’ve got a Travis Sharpie tattoo on my ass, because what could be weirder than that?
    I pull on my pants and my tank top and throw his sweatshirt back on. He puts on his T-shirt and jeans and his hair is a mess, sticking up all funny in the front. I run my hands through it for him and calm it down and he kisses me on the nose and says thanks and checks himself in the mirror and it’s still not weird. And I feel good, really, really, amazingly good right now.
    When we head down to the kitchen, I am honest to God limping from all the fucking and Travis is looking pretty worn out himself. Happy, but tired like he’s run a marathon, and in terms of calories burned, he probably has.
    I hobble down the stairs behind Bean but halfway down we hear George whisper, “Scarlet Knights, feet!” Apparently, he and Molly and six other rugby team members got home from practice while we were otherwise occupied and too oblivious to notice. When they see us, they all stand at attention and George leads them in an awful rendition of something to the tune of “God Save the Queen”:
    God save the Queen of Rock
    Impaled on rocker cock
    Of thee I sing!
    Omaha’s own Don Juan
    Hung like a mastodon
    What gal wouldn’t hop right on
    Travis Bean the King?
    When they’re done, they slow-clap for us. Or maybe just for themselves.
    Jesus fucking Christ am I red. And so is poor, pale-ass Travis. In fact, he’s so red I stop feeling embarrassed for