Part 36
"Oh. My. God."
Lisa was looking up at the ceiling trying to catch her breath as House collapsed onto his back beside her. She felt like the world was spinning, or that it'd stopped. She wasn't sure which, but she'd just about come apart, literally this time.
"What was that?" she asked and heard him laughing through his labored breath.
"The rare and elusive shared orgasm," he told her.
"Jesus," she sighed, her heart pounding.
"I thought you were Jewish," came House's voice, still amused.
"My mother's converted," she said as if that was an excuse.
"But you were raised Jewish."
"Yeah," she sighed then turned her head to look at him. "You?"
"Lapsed-Presbyterian. Really lapsed," he said, meeting her gaze. "As in atheist."
Lisa looked back up at the ceiling. Somehow she wasn't surprised. He certainly hadn't given off a religious vibe.
"I'm lapsed, too," she said. "As in I don't practice. It's more a cultural thing."
Out of the corner of her eye, Lisa saw he'd gone back to studying the ceiling, too. Then after a few moments, he sat up. She reached and touched his back as took off the condom. She recognized his motions from earlier.
"It feels different without one," she told him after he tossed it into the small trashcan beneath the end table.
"Bareback is better," he said, looking back over his shoulder at her. "You'd never had that before."
It wasn't a question.
"No," she told him, then confessed honestly, "I haven't had a lot of the things we've done so far. You were right when you said my experience was limited."
"Teen-age boys aren't very imaginative," he observed.
Lisa snorted. "Teen-age girls aren't either. I was happy with … the basics."
"The basics are pretty much the same," he said as he lay back down beside her. "But it takes time to get good at it."
"How am I doing?" she asked, purely out of selfish interest.
He laughed and she found herself flushing with embarrassment. Then he explained his amusement.
"You get any better at it and I'll be writing tell-all memoirs at 27. Or my epitaph. Either is a possibility at this point."
"I should take that as a compliment then," she said, waiting to make sure.
He looked over at her again, his smile gentle, his eyes equally so.
"You're not the only one having the best sex of their lives."