Available Light
Copyright© 2026 by Star Again
Chapter 6: Available Light
The key card failed twice.
That should have been frustrating. Instead it saved me for approximately nine seconds.
Sofia stood beside me in the hotel corridor, one shoulder against the wall, laughing silently while I tried to make plastic and technology agree that room 217 existed. The party was still in us. My shirt smelled faintly of smoke and beer. Her hair had come down completely by then, dark over one shoulder, and she held her shoes in one hand because she had decided three streets earlier that beauty was not worth cobblestones.
“Very seductive,” she said as the little red light blinked again.
“I’m building suspense.”
“You are losing to a door.”
“The door has home advantage.”
On the third try, the light turned green.
We both looked at it.
The laughter did not vanish. It changed clothes.
Inside, the room was exactly as I had left it and nothing like the room I had left. Laptop closed on the desk. Badge facedown beside it. Camera battery charger plugged into the wall. White shirt from the morning hanging over the chair, the crease still visible. The bed made too tightly by hotel hands. The curtains half open to Prague rooftops and sodium light.
Our camera bags went down near the wall.
The door clicked shut.
The sound was small and final enough to make my body remember all the things the party had helped it forget.
Sofia set her shoes beside the desk. Then she turned.
For a second we only looked at each other.
Usually, this was where I began leaving without moving.
Not tonight.
The thought came, because thoughts always came. What is this? What does she want from this? What if the party made it larger than it is? What if morning corrects us?
Then Sofia smiled, small and knowing, and the thought failed to become language.
She crossed to me first.
That mattered.
She came without hurry, but not carefully. Bare feet on the beige carpet. Dress moving around her knees. Hair loose over one shoulder. The party light was gone from the room, but it had not left her body. It was still in her skin, in the red at her throat, in the quickness of her breathing, in the way she looked at me as if the whole night had finally run out of public places to pretend in.
Her hand went to the back of my neck before her mouth reached mine.
That was the end of the corridor, the party, the conference, the version of myself still trying to make the night legible.
I kissed her.
She made a sound against my mouth, surprised and pleased, and the sound opened something lower in me than analysis could reach. My hands went to her waist. Her body came into mine with the same rhythm from the dance floor, the same answered pressure, except now there was no music to blame.
Her mouth was warmer than I expected. Harder too. She did not kiss like someone asking whether she was wanted. She kissed like someone who had already read the answer and was annoyed by the delay.
She dropped her shoes.
One hit the carpet. The other fell sideways under the desk.
I heard both and did not care.
Her fingers were already at my shirt, pulling it free before finding the buttons. One opened. Then another. Then she lost patience and pushed the fabric wide enough to put her mouth to the skin below my throat.
I shut my eyes.
“No,” she said against me.
My eyes opened.
She looked up.
“Stay.”
One word. No decoration. No softness added to make it easier.
I stayed.
Her mouth moved over the bruise under my collarbone, the yellow mark from training. She kissed it once, then bit lightly beside it. The pain was small and bright. My hand tightened at her hip.
“That hurt?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good?”
“Yes.”
The smile she gave me was not sweet.
She moved my hand back to her waist.
“Here.”
Then her mouth was on mine again and carefulness lost its first argument.
I turned with her. Or she turned me. It happened with no clear ownership. My back found the door hard enough to make the latch complain. Her hand went under my shirt, nails scraping lightly up my ribs, not delicate, not soothing. She touched as if she wanted proof of the body under the performance. Her palm flattened over my chest. My heart struck against it once, then again, too fast to pretend dignity.
“There,” she murmured.
I did not know if she meant my heartbeat or me.
She pushed the shirt from my shoulders. It caught at one wrist. She yanked it free with a small impatient sound and threw it somewhere behind me. Her hands moved over my chest, not flattering, not reassuring, simply wanting. She looked at my body with interest, with the right to enjoy what she had chosen.
I let her look.
Being looked at cost more than being touched.
Her expression changed. Not softer. Hotter.
“You are trying not to disappear,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Try harder.”
Then she kissed down my throat and bit me again, lower this time, just beside the bruise.
The room tilted.
I caught her hips with both hands and pulled her against me. The sound she made was not surprise now. It was approval. Her dress was cool under my palms, but her body underneath it was warm from dancing, from the cellar, from the walk through wet streets, from whatever had been building between us since the third row and the clicker mark in my palm.
She felt me then.
Not by accident.
Her hips pressed forward, and the hard line of my wanting met the thin fabric of her dress. For a second both of us went still. It was the shock of evidence.
Sofia looked down between us, then back at me.
Her mouth changed.
Not coy. Not surprised. Satisfied.
“So,” she said quietly.
I had no answer.
Her hand slid down my stomach, over the place where my muscles tightened under her palm, lower to the front of my trousers. She touched me through the fabric, slowly enough that my breath caught.
There was no hiding from that.
She felt exactly what her mouth, her dress, her body, her voice had done to me. The last polite distance between us died under her hand.
Her eyes stayed on mine.
“You wanted to make this smaller,” she said.
Her fingers tightened.
“Do not.”
I kissed her because if I tried to speak I would have lied from pride or broken open from wanting.
This kiss was worse. Less shaped. Her mouth opened under mine and I took it with a hunger that startled both of us. She answered at once, hand still on me, thumb moving once through the fabric with deliberate cruelty. My hand slid from her waist to the back of her thigh, pulling her leg against mine. Her dress rode higher. Her skin was hot under my palm. When my fingers dug in, she made a sound into my mouth and pushed herself harder against me.
The zipper of her dress was suddenly intolerable.
I found it at her back.
It caught halfway.
Sofia cursed in Portuguese, sharp and fast.
I laughed once, badly.
“Do not laugh at the dress,” she said.
“I’m laughing at you threatening fabric.”
“It deserves worse.”
I turned her, found the caught place, and eased it down. The back of the dress opened under my hands. Her skin appeared slowly, warmer than the room, the line of her spine moving as she breathed. I kissed the top of it before thinking.
She went still, listening rather than afraid.
I kissed lower, just between her shoulder blades. Her breath caught. My hands moved from the open zipper to her waist, then over the bare skin of her back. She had a small freckle near her left shoulder blade. I noticed it with the useless precision of a photographer and hated myself for noticing until she reached back, caught my wrist, and dragged my hand forward over her ribs.
“Do not admire me from a distance,” she said.
Her voice had roughened.
I slid my palm up and found her breast through the thin fabric still covering her. She exhaled, almost angry, and pushed back into my hand. I touched her more firmly. Her nipple tightened under my palm before my mouth had reached her, and that small change struck through me harder than it should have. Her body was answering before she instructed it. Before either of us improved it with language.
I turned her back to me.
The dress had fallen to her hips. She pushed it down herself, impatient with my reverence. It pooled around her feet in dark green folds. She stepped out of it, one foot, then the other, and stood in front of me in black underwear and hotel light, hair loose, mouth swollen from kissing, one strap of her bra low on her shoulder.
She did not cover herself.
She did not perform being uncovered either.
“Do not photograph this,” she said.
“I wasn’t reaching for the camera.”
“You thought about it.”
“I think about many things.”
“Yes. That is one of your problems.”
She stepped close and took my hands, placing them on her bare waist.
“Think with these.”
I kissed her shoulder, the place where the dress strap had left a faint line in the skin. Goose bumps rose there before my mouth reached the next inch of her. I felt them under my lips, tiny and sudden, her body making its own confession. My hands moved over her back, down to the curve of her hips, then up again with less patience. Her skin had cooled at the surface from the walk outside, but heat rose wherever I touched her.
When my mouth reached her throat, she made a small sound and gripped the back of my neck.
“There,” she whispered. “Stay there.”
So I did.
Long enough.
Then not long enough.
Her pulse worked beneath my mouth. Her fingers tightened in my hair. Her thigh pressed between mine because she was tired of the distance clothing allowed. My hand slid under the edge of her bra again, and this time she did not wait. She reached behind herself to unfasten it, then changed her mind and guided my hand there instead.
“You,” she said.
My fingers were less smooth than I would have liked.
She smiled against my mouth. “Again.”
She helped, because adult desire has very little use for tests that become logistics. The clasp gave. The bra loosened. I pulled it from her slowly enough to feel her patience fail, and that failure pleased me more than it should have. It fell near the shoes.
My hand paused.
She took my wrist and pressed my palm more firmly against her breast.
“I am not glass,” she said.
“I know.”
“You know many things in theory.”
Fair enough to sting.
I touched her properly then. Weight in my palm. Warmth. The nipple hard against my thumb. She inhaled through her teeth, eyes fixed on mine as if daring me to look away. I lowered my mouth and tasted her there, first over the tight peak, then around it, the darker circle of skin drawing a sound from her before I understood I had found the place. Her hand closed in my hair.
“Again.”
The word was smaller this time.
I used my tongue slowly, then less slowly when her hips moved against me. Her breast lifted into my mouth. Her fingers pulled once, not gentle, telling me without language to stop treating desire like something breakable. I drew harder and felt the sound leave her body before it reached the room.
That sound did something to me.
I stopped thinking in sentences. I wanted her under me. I wanted her mouth open. I wanted her wet on my hand, on my tongue, on me. I wanted to stop arranging the want into something civilized enough to survive morning.
Her hands went to my belt.
The concentration on her face was almost severe. She opened it without looking away. The leather slid through the buckle with a small sound that seemed louder than the air conditioner. Button. Zip. Her fingers pushed beneath the waist of my trousers. When she touched me through the last layer of fabric, the breath left me badly.
She noticed.
“There,” she murmured. “Better.”
I wanted to argue, but her hand closed around me again and there was no argument left in the room.
After that, clothing became obstacle, evidence, comedy, and inconvenience. Shoes kicked away. Belt somewhere near the desk. Trousers down badly, one foot caught, both of us laughing once because bodies do not become elegant just because desire becomes serious. Her bracelet caught in my shirt cuff. She cursed. I kissed the inside of her wrist where the silver had rested, and the laugh broke in her throat.
Then she pushed me.
Not hard.
Enough.
The backs of my legs hit the bed.
I sat because the body had no better argument.
She stood between my knees, naked except for the black underwear, hair falling forward, breathing harder now. The room’s cheap hotel light laid itself over her shoulders, her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, the darker shadow below the fabric still between us. I put my hands on the backs of her thighs. Her skin was warm there, soft over muscle tired from dancing.
She looked down at me.
For once I was the one below the gaze.
“Still here?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then stop looking like you are asking permission to want me.”
I pulled her to me.
The sound she made when my mouth found her stomach was the first unguarded thing she gave me in that room. Not the sharp sound of instruction, not the amused sound of correction. This was lower. Younger, maybe. Not less adult. Less protected.
I kissed along the line where fabric met skin. Her hands went into my hair. Her hips moved once, almost involuntarily, and then again because she chose not to hide the first. I looked up at her from there and watched her understand that I had seen both.
“Evan,” she said.
It was warning and permission and impatience in one word.
I hooked my fingers into the black fabric and drew it down.
Not gracefully. Nothing about the room wanted grace. It slid over her hips, paused at one thigh, and she kicked it away with a frustrated movement that made me laugh into her skin. Then her hand tightened in my hair and the laugh ended.
She was wet before I touched her.
The fact struck through me with a force I had not expected. Third row, lunch, streetlamp, dancing, kiss, door, dress. It was all there, gathered in the heat of her body. I could smell her now, warm and intimate and unmistakably herself, and the first breath of it made thought feel useless.
I put my mouth to the inside of her thigh.
The tremor moved through her leg.
“Do not be polite,” she said.
“I am not feeling polite.”
“Then stop sounding like it.”
I stood and kissed her hard enough to move her back.
Her legs hit the mattress. She sat. Then lay back because I moved with her and she did not want the distance. Her hair spread over the white pillow. One knee bent. The other slid open. She looked at me from the bed with her mouth parted, not posing, not waiting to be admired, but choosing the next moment before I reached it.
“Come here,” she said.
I did.
The first time I touched her between her legs, she closed her eyes and turned her face slightly away. Her body had answered quickly and she needed one second to meet it. I kissed her hip until she looked back.
“You are allowed,” I said.
“To want?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth curved. “That is my line.”
“Borrowed.”
“Return it properly.”
I touched her with my fingers, slowly at first, feeling the heat of her, the wet proof of choice, the way her breath caught and then deepened. Her hand closed around my forearm, not stopping me. Anchoring. Her heel pressed into the sheet. Her hips lifted into my hand before she could decide whether to instruct me or be embarrassed by needing to.
I watched her face because she had asked me not to disappear.
She was not quiet for long.
That surprised me, though it should not have. Sofia lived in sound more easily than I did. A breath. A word in Portuguese. My name once, lower, when I changed the pressure and found the place where she needed less patience. She turned her face into the pillow, then seemed annoyed with herself for doing so and turned back.
“Do not look so careful,” she said.
“I am trying to listen.”
“Then hear me.”
She took my hand and showed me.
There was nothing coy in it. No performance of instruction. She wanted what she wanted, and the clarity of that entered me like heat. Her hand over mine. Her hips moving against my fingers. The roughening of her voice when she said, “Yes, there.” The way her eyes stayed on my face as if she wanted the seeing to be mutual, as if pleasure did not count fully unless I was there to receive what it made of her.
I put my mouth on her because I wanted to taste the yes.
She inhaled sharply and tightened her hand in my hair.
The first taste of her went through me like a command.
Salt. Heat. Want. The afterparty leaving her body. Her arousal on my tongue, intimate enough to make the rest of the room indecent. I wanted the taste again before I had finished understanding the first. My hands closed around her thighs. This time I did not make the touch lighter than I wanted it to be.
Her body changed under my mouth.
The first sound she made was sharp and low. The second was my name, broken once in the middle. Her thighs shifted around my shoulders. One hand stayed in my hair. The other found the sheet and twisted it until the white fabric gathered hard in her fist. Her hips rose, not shy now, not careful, searching for more of my mouth with a frankness that burned through whatever restraint I had left.
I gave her more.
Her scent, her taste, the heat of her against my lips. The world narrowed until wanting her felt like the only honest thing I had done all day. I forgot the camera. Forgot the talk. Forgot the applause. Forgot the man who had stood on a stage explaining visibility as if he understood what it meant.
Her open to me. Her hand in my hair. Her voice losing its edges. My own hunger no longer dressed as care.
“Evan,” she said, and the word carried need instead of warning.
I looked up once.
Her eyes were open. Dark, direct, almost angry with the pleasure because pleasure had made observation less available. Then she reached for me with both hands, and I moved back over her.
We paused with our bodies aligned, not because either of us was uncertain, but because the next choice deserved a moment.
The practical thought arrived.
Protection. Risk. Adults behaving like adults. A small packet probably somewhere in the side pocket of my camera bag, absurdly placed beside memory cards and lens cloths.
Sofia saw the thought cross my face.
“Evan.”
I looked at her.
“I’m protected,” she said. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop leaving the room.”
She said it clearly. Not breathless, not careless. Adult impatience, not stolen permission.
I kissed her.
I stopped arguing.
When I entered her, bare and slow, the last useful thought left me.
The first push drew a sound from both of us. Hers sharp, mine too low to be words. She was hot and wet around me, alive in a way that made analysis obscene. Her legs closed around my hips, pulling me deeper before I could retreat into caution. I stopped because the feeling was too much.
She touched my face.
“Stay.”
I moved again.
The rhythm broke twice because neither of us had agreed what rhythm was yet. My forearm braced beside her head. Her hands found my back. My mouth found her throat. Her nails shocked me when pleasure rose faster than she expected. The bed hit the wall once, badly. I tried to stop it. She laughed, breathless, and pulled me back.
“Do not make the furniture your responsibility.”
“I’m thinking of the neighbours.”
“I am not.”
Then she moved under me in a way that ended the conversation.
Her legs tightened around me. I drove into her with the force she kept asking for every time her heel dug into the back of my thigh. My hand slid under her hip and lifted her to meet me. Her mouth opened against my shoulder. I felt the shape of her breath before I heard it, the way her body took me, pulled me, answered before either of us could make speech behave.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.