Room Tone

By half past ten I had washed my face, put the hotel kettle on for no good reason and got into bed with a paperback I had already read twice. I was in York for one night after a full day of meetings. Dinner downstairs had gone on longer than anyone needed it to, and I had left while two men from Leeds were still discussing whether there was time for another bottle.

The room was warm. I had opened the window as far as the safety catch allowed and could hear traffic on wet streets below. My nightshirt was an old cream cotton one, soft from years of washing, and I still had my knickers on because I had intended to read for twenty minutes and then sleep.

The laughter came from the room next door.

It was close enough that I looked towards the wall. A second voice answered, lower and blurred by plaster, then both of them laughed again. I went back to the book. Hotels were built from other people's noises: doors, lifts, showers, television, somebody dropping a shoe at one in the morning.

A few minutes later there was a dull knock behind the headboard and a woman's voice said, very clearly, "Oh, fuck."

I stopped reading. Nothing followed at once. I could hear the air-conditioning and the traffic and, after a little while, the mattress next door shift hard enough to rasp against its base. A breath rose through the wall, broke, then another came after it, louder and already ragged. The two voices overlapped for a moment and vanished again.

I read the same sentence three times. Eventually I closed the book over one finger and listened.

The voices were difficult to separate. I thought they were both women, but the lower one lost so much of itself through the wall that I couldn't have sworn to it. They were saying very little now. There was a murmur, a short laugh, then a wet sound that might have been kissing. The mattress shifted once. Someone said, "Wait," and everything went still.

My body had gone still with it. After a few seconds the lower voice asked something I couldn't hear. The answer came back as a breathy "yes", followed by a longer sound that ran straight down my back.

I put the book on the bedside table and turned onto my side.

There was a communicating door near the wardrobe, panelled over on my side except for the outline of the frame. I had noticed it earlier while looking for a socket. Now that I knew where it was, the sound seemed to come from there rather than through the headboard. A small scrape, a weight shifting, then a low sound drawn out until the voice frayed at the end.

I couldn't hear the words. The first woman appeared almost fully formed: somewhere around my age, dark hair with grey at the temples, broad thighs, a heavy arse. I had no evidence for any of it. The woman on the other side of the wall might have been blonde, slight, twenty-five, or not a woman at all. Still, the one in my head stayed where she was, kneeling on a white hotel bed while another adult woman lay below her.

A muffled laugh came through the wall. The imagined woman shifted her knees wider and lowered herself until her cunt was over the other woman's mouth.

I felt faintly ridiculous and tried to read again. I managed perhaps half a page before the woman next door made a low sound and I lost my place. My nipples had tightened under the cotton. I could feel the weight of my breasts when I turned onto my back and the faint dampness between my thighs when I moved one knee away from the other.

I didn't touch myself. For a while that seemed important, though I couldn't have said why.

Next door, the bed gave two short knocks. Someone laughed, not loudly, and said something ending in "there". The imagined woman was still astride the other one's face. She leaned forward with one hand on the headboard, her breasts hanging as she moved. In my head the woman underneath had to turn for air, then came back to her cunt willingly, mouth open, tongue working across the swollen clit while the woman above tried not to put her full weight down and then, gradually, did.

I pressed my thighs together.

The movement dragged my knickers against my clit. I was wet enough to feel the difference in the fabric.

There was a long stretch when I heard almost nothing. I stared at the dim strip of light under the communicating door while the woman in my head rolled her hips once over the mouth beneath her. I could see the crease where her thigh met her arse and the fine damp hair flattened at the nape of her neck. The grey at her temples had become a little more pronounced. I had no idea where I was getting any of it from.

My hand went down over the nightshirt and settled between my legs.

I pressed through cotton and knickers, enough to make the ache sharper but not enough to satisfy it. The lower voice next door gave a rough groan. It was deeper than I had expected. For a few seconds the body under my imagined woman changed. A man's hand appeared on her hip, then the dark hair on his forearm, his chest beneath her when she looked down. I couldn't settle on his face. I didn't try.

She was still above a mouth. For a few seconds the mouth belonged to the man, then the face blurred again when I stopped trying to settle it.

I rubbed myself once through the fabric, then again. Next door, the quiet gave way without warning. The bed began striking the wall in an uneven rush, stopped for half a beat and started again. One voice kept trying to say "yes"; after the second or third time the word broke apart into breath. The other was lower and rougher, close enough to the communicating door that I could hear the shape of it but not the words. There was a hard clatter, a burst of laughter, then the bed again.

I slid my hand beneath the hem of the nightshirt and under the waistband of my knickers.

My cunt was hot and very wet. I drew two fingers through the folds and felt slickness coat them. When I brushed my clit, my hips lifted before I had decided to move. I stayed there, touching around it rather than directly over it, listening to the wall and to the small changes in my own breathing.

One of the strangers cried out, loud enough that I turned my face towards the communicating door before I could help it. The cry fell into ragged breathing and another voice answered from somewhere farther back in the room. I pushed a finger inside myself.

The room next door seemed to vanish for a few seconds. My cunt tightened around my finger; I added another and curled them upwards. The heel of my hand pressed against my clit when I moved. I could hear the bed next door, but it was no longer the only rhythm in the room.

Then the sound stopped.

I lay with two fingers inside myself, waiting. The pause went on long enough for me to become aware that I needed the toilet.

That was irritatingly ordinary.

I pulled my hand free, wiped it on the inside of my thigh and got out of bed. My knickers were sodden at the gusset. I left them on for the short walk to the bathroom and peeled them off once I was inside.

The bathroom was cooler and much quieter. The wall there must have been thicker. I used the toilet, washed my hands and stood for a moment in front of the mirror with my nightshirt bunched at my hips. My hair had flattened on the side I had been lying on. My face looked exactly like my face, which was almost disappointing given what the rest of me was doing.

I drank water from the glass by the sink and stayed where I was a little longer. Through the bathroom wall I could hear almost nothing, just a faint vibration now and then. I could have run the tap or the shower and lost even that.

Instead I finished the water and went back to bed.

When I went back, they were still going. At first I heard only breath and the mattress shifting. Then a long moan rose, broke into a laugh and came back sharper; two dull impacts travelled through the communicating wall before the bed moved away from it again. I caught no full sentence.

The next time I pictured the woman with grey at her temples, I was behind her on the bed while she sat over the other woman's face. The woman beneath her had both hands on her thighs now. I put my palm on one heavy buttock and felt the muscle move underneath the softness as she rocked.

My own hand stayed on top of the duvet.

I could see the imagined cunt more clearly than I could see the woman's face: wet lips spread by the angle of her hips, the clit disappearing against the mouth beneath her and reappearing when she lifted slightly. I imagined the breath of the woman below warming the crease of her groin, the wet drag of a tongue, the way the woman above would have to decide how much of her weight to give.

A sound came through the wall, a high broken cry followed by a lower laugh. The woman in my head glanced back at me.

I put my hand between her thighs from behind and touched the wet skin where her cunt ended. She pushed back without leaving the mouth beneath her. My fingers slipped into the cleft of her arse. The skin there was damp. She opened her knees wider and the woman underneath kept licking her.

I lay on my back with my nightshirt pushed above my waist and no knickers, one hand between my legs. My fingers were slick almost immediately. I rubbed my clit in slow circles while the fantasy continued without waiting for the next noise from the wall.

I was behind the woman now, close enough that my breasts brushed her back when I leaned over her. I kissed the base of her spine. My mouth moved lower, into the cleft of her arse. She shifted, not away, and I followed until my tongue touched her anus.

She made the short breathless laugh I had heard from next door earlier, and I heard it again in my head when she shifted back against my mouth.

I licked her slowly while the other woman continued with her mouth on her cunt. The body between us moved to two different kinds of pressure, forward and back, unable to settle. One of my hands held her hip. The other slid round to the lower part of her stomach, feeling it tighten when the tongue underneath found her clit again.

The woman underneath reached up and her hand met my wrist as we both held the woman above us in place. It stayed there only a moment. The bed shifted beneath our combined weight while I kept my mouth against her arse and the other woman's tongue worked at her cunt.

Next door, someone struck the wall hard enough to make the glass on my bedside table tremble.

I opened my eyes.

The real hotel room came back all at once: bathroom light left on, book face down on the table, one sock sticking out of my open suitcase. My fingers had stopped on my clit. I was breathing through my mouth.

A voice next door said something quick and low. I heard the other person laugh and then, very clearly, "I'm fine."

I stayed still until I heard laughter again. Then my hand moved. The fantasy did not return immediately. I watched the rectangle of bathroom light on the carpet and rubbed myself with a steadier pressure. The ache in my cunt had become dense and physical, and I found myself concentrating on that instead of trying to work out what the strangers were doing.

A faint electronic buzz started next door.

It ran for perhaps three seconds and stopped. Toothbrush, phone, vibrator, some piece of hotel equipment deciding to die. When it came again, longer this time, I pictured a small vibrator against the woman's clit before I had finished deciding whether that was what I was hearing. She was on her stomach now, hips lifted by a pillow, with someone behind her holding the toy in place. I couldn't see the hand. I could feel the way the buzz would travel through wet flesh, the impatience of trying to keep the toy in one place while her hips moved away from it. In my head she reached back and took the wrist, not to stop it but to hold it where she wanted.

I rubbed harder. The real buzz stopped. I kept going.

For a while the buzz and the breathing were all I could hear. Then the lower voice rose into a deep groan that lasted through several movements of the bed, dropped, rose again and ended in a hoarse laugh. The face under my imagined woman changed again. I saw a man's body this time, older than the quick anonymous men my mind could have supplied: thick thighs, grey hair across the chest, a soft stomach above a hard cock. The woman had climbed off his face. She was beside him now, her hand around his shaft, watching him with the same concentration I had been giving the wall.

She stroked him slowly, thumb passing over the wet head each time she reached the top. He tried to move into her fist and she changed the pace, not teasing him for the sake of it, simply finding the point where his composure went. I could see his balls drawing tighter, the tendons in his thighs, the way his stomach held and released with each breath. She bent over him, not to use her mouth, only to watch his face when she brought him closer.

My own fingers were moving quickly now. I put one knee up and let the other leg sprawl open across the bed. I slid two fingers inside myself and used my thumb on my clit, but the position was awkward, so I changed hands and found a better angle without thinking about it.

In my head the man came with almost no warning. Semen struck the woman's lower stomach and the underside of one breast. She did not flinch. She kept her hand around him while another pulse ran over her fingers. I imagined the heat of it, the thickness beginning to cool on her skin. She looked down, rubbed two fingers through the mess on her stomach and touched them to her tongue.

The taste existed in my mouth for a second, salt and something warmer, completely invented.

I stopped moving.

My clit throbbed under my thumb. The fantasy held for another moment and then loosened at the edges. The man disappeared first. The woman remained, lying back with semen on her skin that no sound through the wall had ever suggested.

I rolled onto my side and drew my knees up. My cunt was slippery against my thigh. I could feel the wetness on my fingers cooling. Next door, somebody murmured something and the other person answered too softly for me to catch.

I stayed like that for a while, neither touching myself nor trying to reconstruct anything. The room seemed larger when I stopped concentrating on the wall. Traffic hissed along the wet road below. The air-conditioning cut out. Somewhere farther down the corridor a door closed.

Then the higher voice next door made a sound so sudden and open that I clenched my thighs together. It climbed, broke into breath, returned lower, and underneath it the other voice had gone rough too. The bed struck the wall once, then twice. There was a second of silence before the same voice cried out again.

I had no idea what had caused it. For once, no picture arrived.

My hand went back between my legs. I was more sensitive now and had to start gently. Two fingers over my clit, then one. I found a slow pressure that made my stomach pull tight and stayed with it while next door the sounds came in bursts: breath, mattress, a low laugh swallowed by another broken moan, then nothing for long enough to make me listen for the next one.

There were stretches when I heard nothing at all and still kept touching myself. Images came back in pieces rather than scenes: the weight of the woman's arse in my hand, wet skin against my mouth, a thigh trembling where I held it; then the man's stomach tightening, the imagined taste of semen, the scratch of hotel cotton against my nipple when I shifted.

I pulled the nightshirt over my head and dropped it beside the bed.

The cooler air on my breasts made my nipples hard again. I cupped one breast with my free hand and squeezed, not delicately. My thumb passed over the nipple and pain flickered into pleasure. My other hand kept a slow rhythm at my clit.

The lower voice next door said a word I couldn't make out. It was hoarse and very close to the wall.

The pressure under my fingers suddenly felt too much, then exactly right. I slowed. My hips moved against my hand once. I stopped trying to hold the sensation at any particular level.

The orgasm gathered without the clean climb I had expected. For several seconds I wasn't sure whether I was coming or merely close. Then pleasure spread low and heavy through my pelvis and I pressed my palm hard over my cunt, abandoning the smaller movement at my clit. My thighs shook once. I made a sound into the pillow and kept my hand there while the sensation moved through me in uneven waves.

Next door, somebody laughed softly.

I laughed too, breathless and embarrassed by nobody.

I lay still until the heat in my face eased. My breast was marked red where my fingers had been. My cunt felt swollen and tender, and when I moved my hand away a thin strand of wetness stretched briefly between my fingers and skin before breaking.

I got up because I wanted water. In the bathroom mirror my hair stood up at the crown and one cheek was creased from the pillow. I washed my hands, drank a full glass, then another half. The room next door had gone quiet enough that I could hear the plumbing from somewhere above us.

When I came back, I left the bathroom light off. I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and looked at the paperback. I had no idea what page I had been on.

The strangers started talking again, or perhaps they had never stopped. Their voices were low, ordinary and impossible to make out. Once, one of them laughed. The other answered. I found my knickers tangled near the foot of the duvet and left them there.

I climbed back into bed naked and pulled the sheet over me. My body was still awake in small places: the soreness of my nipple, the heavy warmth between my legs, the faint pulse that returned when I heard the bed next door move.

I didn't touch myself again.

The voices continued for a while. I stopped trying to separate them. At some point there was running water, then the click of a door or cupboard. I thought I heard another kiss, but I might already have been half asleep.

One of them laughed again, very softly, and somewhere after that I went to sleep.