The Slam (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

ENDER

The afternoon sun beat down on my back but it failed to warm me. An icy rage swept through my body. What the fuck happened last night? Adelaide was a creature of routine. She was up at the crack of dawn, and on weekends she trained with me, joined me for practice. So when she was holed up in her room all morning and afternoon, I knew something was wrong.

For a while, Adelaide seemed perfectly content to sit on the porch in gloomy silence, staring intently at a hibiscus bush. All of a sudden, she dissolved into a spasm of giggles.

“What?” I frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“The snail on that bush over there.” Her voice trailed off on a laugh. “It reminds me of last night.”

I still didn’t get it. “Reminds you of what?”

“Of Cade performing oral sex on me.” She visibly shuddered. “It felt like I was being attacked by a giant snail.”

Relief made me smile. “So I take it you didn’t enjoy it?”

“Would
you
enjoy being attacked by a giant snail?” she deadpanned.

“I’m not sure,” I said, scratching my chin. “I’ve never been attacked by a giant snail.”

“Of course you haven’t. The giant snail is a species native of East Africa.
That
and you don’t have a vaginal orifice so you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“Adelaide.” I coughed lightly. “Are you always this comfortable over-sharing details of your sex life?”

“Over-sharing?” She blinked. “You think I’m redrawing the boundaries of publicly acceptable behavior?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Something like that.”

“But I thought sharing is caring.”

“Never mind.” I made a dismissive gesture. “Forget I said that.”

Her expression turned serious. “Am I making you feel uncomfortable with my over-sharing? I’m sorry if I am. I never know how much is too much.”

“Nope.” I suppressed a grin. “And I’d like you to tell me more. Tell me everything that happened last night. Don’t leave out a single detail and start from the very beginning.”

“How about I’ll start from when things started going downhill?”

“Sure.”

She took a deep breath. Exhaled. “After the movie, I told Cade he could spend the night. He was so spooked and deeply unsettled by
The Babadook
movie. So we were in my room, and he started kissing me. But it was different from the kiss you and I shared.”

“In what way?”

“Well, when you kiss me, you move your tongue against mine as though you’re tasting soft ice cream. And when our tongues join, it’s like a tango. A slow, sensual, erotic dance. But with Cade, it was more like wrestling. Like his tongue was digging for gold. He basically gave me an oral excavation and I’m pretty sure he counted all my teeth with his tongue. And it was wet, too… like a Labrador Retriever in search of a ball.” She shuddered. “And when he broke the kiss, he pulled on my bottom lip, but he didn’t nip on it erotically like you do. He chewed on my lip like it was a chew toy and held it hostage for so long that I had to pull my lip out from between his chompers.”

I choked on a laugh. “And then what happened?”

“Then Cade asked me if I liked role-playing games. I thought he meant Dungeons and Dragons, but he meant role-playing in the bedroom. I was open to the idea and he quickly decided that I should play the doctor and he the patient.” She let out a weary sigh. “It was long and tedious. We ended up role-playing for an entire hour.”

I scowled. “An hour?”

“Correct,” she said. “Typically, I wait forty-five minutes to see my physician. So I left Cade in the waiting room, which was essentially my bedroom, for forty-five minutes.”

“Where did you go?”

“I just sat in the bathroom until it was time for his appointment.”

I tried but failed to keep a straight face. “What exactly did you do when you role-played in bed?”

  “Luckily I had found a thermometer in the bathroom, so I took Cade’s temperature anally.”

“Anally?” I stared at her. “You inserted a thermometer in Cade’s asshole?”

“Correct.” She tilted her head and adopted a more serious tone. “A rectal temperature is considered the most accurate measurement of internal temperature in comparison to other methods like oral, axillary, temporal, and ear.”

“What’s the axillary method?”

“The armpit,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Thinking back, I should’ve used the axillary method because I got a little carried away and the thermometer got stuck in Cade’s butthole. But it wasn’t entirely my fault. Don’t ask me how, but his ass sucked in the thermometer stick! It just went WHOOSH! Up his butthole!”

A slow smile spread across my face. “This is getting better and better.”

“Better?” she said in a shocked tone. “Quite the contrary. It wasn’t easy getting it out considering the thermometer stick was lodged deeply in his rectal chasm! To better access that area, I had Cade squat with his feet flat on the floor and bear down. When that didn’t work, I had him prop one foot on a chair.”

“Did that work? Did you get it out?”

“Of course not! I wasn’t gonna go digging around in his butthole.” She pulled a face. “Gross!”

My mouth twitched. “So Cade got it out himself?”

“Correct. And I gave him some tips,” she added. “I told Cade to insert two fingers into his rectum, his longest ones of course—the index finger and the middle one. Then once he had rooted deep inside, I told him to crook his fingers and use gentle sweeping motions from the back walls of his rectum to the front.”

“Did that work?”

“No, it didn’t. So I turned to Google. Which led me to fetch a syringe… one without a needle, naturally, and—”

“Hold up,” I stopped her. “What did you need a syringe for?”

“To suck up 20 cc of virgin coconut oil. And since you’re not familiar with that unit of measurement in America, cc stands for cubic centimeters and 20 cc equals .67 ounces. And thank the sweet baby Jesus we had extra virgin coconut oil in the kitchen pantry!”

“Get on with the story.” I waved my hand in an impatient gesture. “What happened next?”

“So I injected 20 cc of virgin coconut oil into Cade’s rectum. Then I told him to pump his anal muscles a bit to let the oil find its way around. After that he squatted on the bathroom floor and gave a good push. Seconds later, a giant blob of coconut oil and the thermometer plopped out! Phew!” She exhaled loudly. “Let me tell you what a huge relief that was!”

At this point I was staring at her with amused eyes, struggling like the devil not to laugh.

“So that’s what happened,” she said. “Not terribly jolly, is it?” Sighing dramatically, she added, “And there’s more…”

“There’s more?”

“Yes, Ender,” she said gravely. “There’s more to the story.”

I waited and eventually she continued. “So after that whole fiasco, I was completely spent, not to mention it was close to 11:45.”

“Your bedtime,” I stated.

“Correct,” she said. “But Cade wasn’t tired. He was sort of turned on by the whole ordeal. When we got into bed, he disappeared beneath the covers, dove headfirst between my thighs and started spearing me with his tongue.” She swallowed hard. “I squirmed the entire time. All I could think of was
When is this going to end
?”

A smile tugged at my lips. I no longer knew what to say. So I said nothing.

“I was so confused,” she went on. “Oral sex is supposed to be the
ne plus ultra
of the female sexual experience, and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t enjoying it.” She took a tight breath. “Eons later, it ended. Thankfully! And I thought that would be the end of it but Cade expected me to reciprocate by performing fellatio on him.”

I wasn’t smiling anymore.

“But I didn’t know how.” Her fingers started fidgeting and she looked distressed. “I didn’t know what to do. And I was in a bit of a shock, really. I mean, the whole time the thermometer was stuck in his rectum, I was so focused on his backside that I never even noticed his front side.”

“What was so shocking about seeing him full frontal?”

“Well, for one, his penis doesn’t look
at all
like yours.”

I cleared my throat twice. “And what does my penis look like?”

“An army helmet.” She said it like it was a given. “Actually, I stand corrected,” she quickly amended. “The head of your penis is so broad it looks more like a stormtrooper’s helmet. But Cade’s penis… it resembled a wrinkled anteater ready to suck up its lunch.”

I gave a rough bark of laughter. “I guess you’re not down with the UCP.”

“UCP?” She stared at me blankly.

“Uncut penis.”

“Oh.”

“So what did you do?”

“Oh God, I just screamed. And I felt awful. I mean, Cade’s penis is whole and natural and eighty percent of the world’s male population is genitally intact. That’s the default at birth, and I’m certainly not in favor of chopping off perfectly healthy foreskin. Evolution suggests it’s there for a reason and the health benefits of circumcision have not been conclusive. But I digress. My point is I screamed because I was thoroughly unprepared for it. But for Cade’s sake, I kept the scream going and turned it into a scream of delight.”

“And he fell for that?”

“I believe so.” Her expression turned pensive. “His flaccid penis became erect, and then it was like… like a turtle emerging from its shell.” She stared off into the distance. “Like a blind mole emerging from its burrow.” She inhaled sharply. “I felt so lost. I didn’t know what to do with it. Should I pull back the foreskin before I lick it? And if so, how far? Do I pull it over the frenulum or all the way over the length of the shaft?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.” I paused. “The fuck’s a frenulum?”

“Frenulum? It’s an elastic band of tissue, a tiny knob of flesh underneath the crown of a penis where the foreskin connects to the vernal mucosa. It helps contract the foreskin over the glans—”

“Okay,” I interrupted. “I get the picture.”

“In the end,” she said, staring straight ahead. “I decided to forgo fellatio.”

At those words, I released a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.

“And I gave him a hand job.”

“A hand job?” I scowled. “And how did that go?”

“Horridly!” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “While I was tugging on his penis, all that foreskin stretched over the tip of his shaft, and for one heart-stopping moment it looked like a sea anemone. I was so enthralled by the sight of it that I tried to fit my finger inside it… and that’s when Cade screamed at me and smacked my hand away.”

“What the hell’s a sea anemone?”

“You don’t know?” She gasped before launching into an impassioned speech about the wonders of this sea creature. “Sea anemones are considered the flowers of the sea and while they may look like plants, they’re actually predatory marine animals closely related to coral and jellyfish. It basically looks like a gelatinous phallus. Well, at least some species do. It’s truly a wonder of nature, and the last time I’d even seen one was
years
ago when I went snorkeling in the Phi Phi Islands of Thailand. So you must understand how overjoyed I was to catch sight of this lively bodied sea organism dangling between Cade’s legs.”

“So overjoyed that you had to try and stick your finger inside it?” I said flatly.

“Ender!” she cried. “Have you ever gone snorkeling? Touching coral, sea anemone, and sea urchins can hurt and sometimes kill them! I’ve never ever breached snorkeling etiquette. Never. But in this case, it was Cade’s penis that looked like a floating sea anemone. It was utterly mesmerizing… hypnotizing. I was completely spellbound and I just… I just couldn’t help myself.”

Adelaide was near tears, so I said gently, “At least when you touched Cade’s anemone, you didn’t actually kill it.”

“But it did kill the mood, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I was so tired at that point and I kindly informed Cade that it was my bedtime.” She sighed. “I thought I could finally go to sleep but Cade had other things in mind.”

A muscle flexed in my jaw and I swallowed hard. “What kind of things?”

“He was determined to have sexual penetration. In the meantime, I was in a sort of dazed, mental fog and my eyelids had started to droop. The last thing I saw before I conked out was Cade pulling out a condom from his wallet. All I remember after that was dreaming about the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea. It was so beautiful with its biodiversity, it’s dazzling array of colorful coral, anemones, sponges, and tropical fish. Sadly, that dream didn’t last for very long. I was rudely jolted awake by a shouting Cade!”

“He yelled at you?” My anger spiked and I couldn’t temper the blunted steel in my voice. “What did fuckboy say?”

“Cade was incredulous with rage. He said he couldn’t believe I fell asleep while he was having sex with me. I reminded him it was
clearly
past my bedtime and that’s when he lost it and began hurling obscenities at me. And you know, all his cursing didn’t upset me so much as what he actually
said
did.” Now
her
anger spiked. “He said ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’” Her voice pitched higher. “Big mistake. BIG, BIG mistake. HUGE!” She took a deep, calming breath. “And that’s when I knew,” she said defiantly. “I knew. It was never going to work out between us and I told him to leave. I no longer cared if he was afraid of the boogeyman. I just wanted him gone. And that’s when Cade made a huge row. He kept berating me, calling me bat shit crazy, a total whack job, and saying that I talked him off the ledge.” She pressed her lips firmly together as if to stop them from trembling and her eyes refused to meet mine.