Don't you love the sounds of sex? The bed springs pumping up and down at just the right tempo, the slapping of naked bodies against each other, the deep breathing getting more intense with every pump. The sound your lover makes during an orgasm. God, these do turn me on.
The sounds of sex are even more erotic when you're supposed to be quiet. Someone is in the next room asleep, and you can't release a forceful howl when you come. Instead your voice is muted and your ears are piqued to the faintest sounds-the slightest change in your partner's breath, the softest whisper in your ear about what to do next.
I'm a red-blooded American female, and I love sex as much as anyone. And, no question, it wouldn't be the same without the sound. But what if you're the person in the next room asleep? Or, more accurately, supposed to be asleep?
A month before, I'd moved into my very first apartment. I must say that it was a moment of pride to finally take such a step toward independence. For the past 3 years I'd lived in a dorm, but this was getting old. Of course, it would have been great to get a place of my own, but I couldn't swing the rent by myself. Fortunately I'd found the perfect roommate: my high school best friend, Callie.
Finding a perfect roommate is almost as hard as finding a spouse. Maybe even harder, because you have to like each other without any sex to smooth over the rough patches. But Callie had been in exactly the same situation as me: tired of the dorm but too poor for her own place. Plus, we'd known each other forever and get along like sisters. I'd been dreading the thought of finding a roommate online, wondering if every person is an axe murderer. Or worse, if they keep the place too cold.
Callie and I had looked at a bunch of apartments before deciding on this one. We'd both known this was the one when we'd walked in. It's close to campus, all the better to maximize our sleep, and it's only five years old, with classy cabinets, cool pendant light fixtures over the kitchen counter, and at least twice as much closet space as some of the older places.
The only problem is that we'd decided on a one-bedroom place. See, this nice new complex so close to campus was also the most expensive we'd looked at, and even the one-bedroom place was a little over our budget. The two-bedroom was completely out of the question. But we'd had roommates in our dorm rooms and survived fine, and this one bedroom was actually much bigger than our dorms. It'd seemed worth it at the time.
I suppose we should have thought more about what would happen if Callie (or I) brought a guy home to our solitary bedroom. We'd actually joked about this before renting the place, but at the time it had seemed mostly humorous and theoretical, especially when we were used to such restrictions on male guests in the dorm. Anyway, we didn't think it through, and now the sounds of sex I was hearing for the second night in a row were coming from Callie in our room while I tried to get comfortable on the couch. It wasn't working.
--
Will, my little brother, just started at the same college as me and Callie. He's 18, three years younger than us. And I usually like having him around. I was actually glad he picked the same school because I knew I'd get to see him more often.
I asked Will to help us move into the new apartment, in the spirit of family togetherness, and the even stronger spirit of free labor. He was glad to help, and I'd truly been grateful. I guess Callie and I could have moved all of our stuff by ourselves, but it was so much easier with Will around to do the heavy lifting. Of course Will and Callie knew each other, because Callie had been over to our house all the time when she and I were in high school. But Will and Callie hadn't seen each other for a few years until moving day.
Some odd things had happened that day. One time I'd been in the bedroom unpacking my clothes and I'd heard the two of them giggling from the kitchen, a longer giggle than really needed, in my opinion. Then later when we'd sent Will to get a pizza, Callie offered to go along, even though there was a lot still to unpack. These little things hadn't really struck me as unusual at the time, but in retrospect I should have noticed that the two of them were hitting it off.
Well, they apparently hit it off quite well, because the two of them were now in the only bedroom in our apartment. Judging from the sounds, they were both quite enjoying themselves, now for their second night.
I do have one tiny confession to make: Listening to them have sex wasn't entirely annoying. If I'd been in a random hotel hearing sex from the next room, I might have had a different reaction. But I couldn't get it out of my mind that these sounds were coming from these two people I knew so well, but in ways so different from how they now knew each other.
Before moving day, I never thought about Will as someone's sex partner. He was always just my little brother, who played with his computer a lot and who could be counted on for a clever remark at just the right time. Admittedly, he was now an adult, perfectly capable of attracting a woman.
But it was still strange for me, listening to the flesh in the next room and realizing that the sound was the result of my little brother pumping his cock into my best friend. To be honest, visualizing this scene while I was lying on the couch kind of turned me on. Callie sounded like she was trying to keep from being too loud, because I could hear soft grunts and moans that sounded like they came from a closed mouth. Later the little noises came with increasing urgency, but no louder. Then, a minute later, a slightly audible sigh suggested that her peak had passed.
At this sound I was proud of Will for making Callie fulfilled, and then I was immediately revolted for thinking such a sexual thought about my brother. I couldn't push away the sexuality, though. When I heard Callie reach her peak, I instinctively put a hand inside my panties and found my lips damp and slightly parted, and my middle finger slid along the length of my slit only about three times before being engulfed within. My rising sexual energy couldn't overcome one more feeling, one that took me a few minutes to identify: envy.
Yes, I was envious of Callie, because she had just had a stunning orgasm and I was stuck on the couch with a finger in my cunt. But these conflicting emotions kept whirling. Was I envious of her for having sex per se, or for having sex with Will? My heart literally leaped as this thought passed through my head, but I didn't let it linger. It was just the orgasm, I told myself. I hadn't had a scream-out-loud orgasm for months, and as the pace of my finger quickened I'd realized how much I needed one.
--
At some point I must have drifted off to sleep. I woke up on the couch, lying halfway on my side with one arm tucked up between my chest and the cushion. A tiny throw pillow was on the floor, and my head was in the most awkward position.
I remembered my situation and held my breath for a few seconds, listening for anyone else. I heard nothing, but still tried to keep quiet as I unfolded my arm and lifted my head to look at the clock. When I did, the pain in my neck surprised me by its sharpness, and I sat up all the way to find a normal position. It felt like someone was shoving the edge of an iPhone against my neck, but from the inside.
The clock said 6:14 a.m. I hated to be up so early on a Sunday morning, but I couldn't bear the thought of lying back down on that infernal couch. I got up and tottered toward the kitchen, trying in vain to find a way to hold my head that would make the pain go away. I found an ibuprofen and forced it down with a glass of tepid tap water.
The memories of the previous night started to roll back to me-the panting and grinding from the bedroom, my feelings about what Callie and Will were doing, the finger in my panties, followed by the second, then the third.
The memories were unforgettable, but the ibuprofen hadn't kicked in yet, so my neck had my full attention. The thing is, my bed is reasonably comfortable. It's kind of small, just twin-sized, but I always get a good night's sleep there. I've never woken up with a pain in the neck. Now when I needed my bed the most, it was (I assumed) sitting vacant while Callie's twin bed was uncomfortably stuffed with the two of them.
It occurred to me that, surely, I'd be back in my bed by that night. On Sunday night Will would surely be back to his dorm room to get ready for the week of classes ahead. It's not like I didn't want to have Will around, but if the choice was between Will and my bed, there was no question.
