by Megan Hart
They’d graduated to instant messaging, a privilege she’d granted to so few of her readers she could count them on one hand. His conversations in real time were as easy and sexy as his e-mailed replies had been.
Now, though the hour had once again grown late, her fingers flew over the keys as her eyes stayed locked on the computer screen, watching for his next words.
You like fantasies.
Who doesn’t?
But not everyone can express them as well as you can. Or else they stick with clichés.
You don’t think a doctor fantasy is a cliché? She’d had a record-high number of comments after that one. They were still trickling in. Some people want me to write about a cop next. Or a fireman.
Are you going to?
Eve paused. I don’t think so.
Because it isn’t what you want?
Because I don’t take requests.
She imagined a bright smile and the low rumble of laughter, a pair of dark blue eyes.
I don’t think you should write about a cop or a fireman.
What do you think I should write about?
Surprise me.
* * *
This is what I want.
At the base of my throat, where my pulse throbs in unsteady rhythm, blood pools. The wound is fresh, but numb. The monster’s kind in that way. It doesn’t hurt when he comes to suck my life from me.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in this hole. Time has ceased all meaning. I stopped counting the minutes against the steady, slow drip-drip of water from an unseen pipe long ago. My eyes stare, wide, into darkness, but I see nothing. The cold has raised gooseflesh on my arms and legs, but I don’t feel that, either.
When your light shines on me, I don’t even throw up a hand to block it though it stings my eyes worse than anything else has, lately. I look at you, a dark silhouette behind the golden circle from your flashlight, and my mouth forms the shape of your name. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken. I’m not sure if I remember how.
I thought I’d forgotten the strength of your arms but when you gather me into your embrace, your breath warm on my cold flesh, I remember all of it. You. Me. The promises you made, and broke, and the one you’ve finally kept.
You take me home, to the house in which you refuse to live but visit often. You bathe me. You dress me. You put me into bed and stand guard at my door until I sleep.
I think you’re afraid I won’t wake, but I do. I open my eyes and wince at the sudden stabbing sensation in my wounds...but I welcome the pain. It means I’m still alive.
You open your eyes at once when I touch your face. The chair jerks as you do, and your hand comes up to catch my wrist hard, not quite flinging it away. You see it’s me within a second and the embrace softens. I frown when you let me go.
“Go back to sleep,” you say, as if I could. As if all that happened can be put behind me the way you so often have done.
But I’m not you.
Days pass this way. I wait for you to leave, and one day you do. You come back stinking of blood and garbage, your hands in fists, and I know you’ve killed it. Hunted it down and taken its life the way it tried to steal mine.
I would be happy but for the fact that this means, at last, you’ll go for good.
“Stay.” It’s the first time I’ve ever asked. I know the score, the rules, what to expect from you. Your life circles mine and only sometimes intersects.
You shake your head, your back to me, the duffel bag I’ve grown to hate thrown over your shoulder. Outside your car awaits. I don’t want to see the taillights. I hate them, too.
“I can’t.”
“You can. If you want to.”
Your shoulders hunch. I want to touch you. To offer comfort. But you don’t want my comfort, do you? You don’t want me.... And too late, I realize I’ve spoken aloud.
I’d be frightened at the way you turn and the fire in your gaze except that now I’ve faced much, much worse. You grip my arms and I love your touch, even as it bruises. I can see you want to shake me, but you stop yourself. You let me go. You step back.
I step forward. “Stay. Please. I want you.”
I open the buttons of my shirt and offer myself. Shameless, ready to be embarrassed when you refuse me, but not caring. I want you so badly I shake. I need you.
“I can’t.” But I see in your eyes that you can.
I touch myself as if my hands were yours. Your gaze follows my fingers as they caress my body. Your hands are shaking.
“I promised to keep you safe.” Your voice is thick with loathing.
“You promised to find me,” I remind you and let my shirt fall to the ground. “And you did. You came for me. You saved me. Please don’t go. I need you.”
You shake your head. “It’s my fault you were in danger.”
I know you think this, and maybe you’re right, but I would not trade the safety of being insignificant to those who stalk the night for one single moment in your arms. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed the monster under the bed was real; now I know better. And I know that you’re the man who keeps us safe.
You keep me safe.
“Stay,” I say, and hold out my hand.
You are a man, after all, and you take it. When I kiss you, your sigh shudders out of you like the wind through trees. I undress you carefully but without hesitation, and trace the pattern of your scars with my hands and mouth until your breath comes fast and harsh in your throat and you wind your fingers in my hair to pull my mouth from your cock.
“No,” you say, and haul me from my knees. “Not like this.”
We’ve fucked on my kitchen floor before. We’ve done it in my bed, too, and in the shower, on the counter, in the backseat of your car. This time, you take me out into the grass of my backyard, under the stars, and you spread out the faded quilt I keep on the porch for picnics. You lay me down and follow my lines and curves with your hands and your tongue, your lips reading the entire story of my body as easily as if I were made of words.
I’m already coming by the time you slide inside me, and it’s as if the stars themselves have descended to hover around us, dancing. They fill me with fire. I lift my hips to take you in deeper, eager to hold on to you as long as I can. You thrust into me. Your mouth finds the scar at the base of my throat and you whisper against it.
“I’m sorry...”
Your voice breaks. Your head dips to press against me. I hold you tight as your body shakes and mine shudders beneath you. I don’t have to forgive you. I know you won’t forgive yourself.
You give me the night, but when the morning comes you’re gone.
But I know you’ll be back.
* * *
“Eve?”
She turned with a smile on her mouth, lost in thoughts of what story she would tell when she got home tonight and what Tell_me would say. When she saw who’d said her name, she smiled. “Well, hello.”
Lane held up his cup. “Mocha Mint?”
She nodded and held up her own. The new place next door to Digiquest had become something of a tradition for her over the past few weeks. “Yes. Thanks for turning me on to it.”
“My pleasure.” Lane gave her his slow, easy grin. “I’m glad you were turned on.”
Sweet, holy mother of pearl, his voice really did dip low and growly. Eve took a sip of hot, sweet coffee and watched him over her cup. She’d spent the night revealing her most intimate sexual fantasies in intricate detail, but far from being sated, her body only wanted a real-life taste of what she’d put on the screen. He was flirting with her, which wasn’t new. She was flirting with him, which was.
There was no reason not to walk with him to the building next door, nor to hold back when the elevator opened as if by magic as they arrived. The door slid shut, enclosing them together once again in that tiny space.
It would take only two steps for him to cross to her, she mused. To push her against the mirrored wall. Her skirt today was long but loose, and he could easily g
et both hands beneath it. Those big, strong hands...
“I’m sorry?” He’d said something she’d missed, lost in her erotic musings.
“I asked if you watched the monster marathon last night.”
Eve paused with her coffee halfway to her mouth. “No. I don’t watch much television.”
“Really?” Lane cocked his head to give her one of those damned slow smiles. “Too bad.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop. The door opened with a creak. Lane held it open for her and she stepped through. All normal, nothing different from any other of a hundred days.
Except it was.
Lane DeMarco no longer seemed so unattainable.
* * *
You haven’t demanded anything from me.
I wasn’t sure you were ready for it.
I’m ready.
Eve paused, watching the cursor blink as fast as her heart was beating. She shifted in her chair, her thighs rubbing. She’d played the part of mistress, and of slave, but those had been stories. She’d never taken Puppetboy up on any of his offers of subservience. This was something new, uncharted. Delicious, but frightening.
She could log out now and blame computer problems, or make no excuses but simply refuse to answer his private messages any longer. She could, but she wasn’t going to. She was going to do as he’d said, to tell him what she wanted, only this time it would be for him alone and nobody else. She typed quickly, not in her blog but in a private e-mail to him.
* * *
This is what I want.
You, in the shower. Steam wreathes your body. The sound of rushing water is almost loud enough to cover the sound of your groan. Almost.
You lean forward, one hand on the tiles. The other’s on your cock. You close your eyes, lean into the spray. Head down, water streams over your back. Your muscles work as you fuck into your hand.
You’re thinking of me.
I want you to be thinking of me.
Your knees bend slightly as you rock forward. Your fingers curl on the tile. Your hand strokes, strokes, twisting around the head of your prick and down. Over and over you stroke yourself.
What are you thinking of? Am I on my knees in front of you? Do I take you inside my mouth, use my tongue, my teeth, my lips? Do I swallow your cock? Are you wishing your hand was mine, jerking you? Are you imagining me on my hands and knees as you fuck me from behind?
You know best how to touch yourself. How to hold off the pleasure building from the base of your gut. Your balls tighten. You push forward, harder. Faster. Your head ducks lower until the water pounds the place between your shoulders I like to kiss.
Your hand slows. Your breathing is harsh. You’re sweating from the heat of the water and your arousal. I know too well the taste of you, that salty, musky flavor. You tip your head back to let the water wash over your face and down your chest. Over your cock still gripped in your fist.
When you come, is mine the name on your lips? Mine the face in your mind?
* * *
It took him a long time to reply, all the way into the next morning, but when he did, it was worth the wait. Three words that made her grin all day long.
Yes. It was.
* * *
“It’s not fair.” Debbie leaned against the opening to Eve’s pod. “That’s the third time this week you’ve had computer problems.”
“I’m not thrilled, Debbie.” Eve gestured at the monitor, where no fewer than three chat windows hung frozen. “It’s really screwing with my performance stats.”
“Yeah,” Debbie said, lowering her voice. “But it means you get to have Lane come and work on you.”
As if summoned by the sound of his name, Lane appeared just behind Debbie’s shoulder. “Problems, Eve?”
“Same old thing.” She lifted her chin toward the computer, then pointed under the desk. “And the tower’s making a lot of noise, too.”
“I’ll take a look at it.” Ignoring Debbie, who sniffed and disappeared into her own cubicle, Lane moved toward Eve’s desk.
He was on his knees in front of her before she knew what to do. His shoulder brushed her leg as he angled his head to look beneath her desk. Eve completely lost her breath at the sight of him that way.
He looked up at her with the panty-dampening smile and it was all she could do not to put her hand on his head to press him down between her thighs. “I think it’s your fan.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other until she looked away.
“Eve,” Lane said in a low voice that drew her gaze back to him as surely as honey drew flies.
She pushed her chair back the tiniest bit, just enough to move her knee away from his shoulder. This was crazy. Crazy! His gaze went to the place on her thigh where her skirt pulled up, and his hands dug into the carpet briefly but fiercely. Heat flared in Eve’s face and along her throat. Hell, through her entire body. And Lane leaned forward...
“Lane?” Debbie appeared in the doorway. “Now mine’s doing it, too. My chats are all frozen.”
“I’ll be right there.” His tone was pleasant and gave away nothing.
Eve didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was as frozen as her computer.
Lane didn’t move either, not until Debbie made a quizzical sound, and then he got up off his knees. Up, up and up, the entire length of him, and then Eve was alone at her desk.
Her computer at that moment chose to go back online. Her queue blinked for attention. From Debbie’s pod she heard the low murmur of Lane explaining something, but not what he was saying. Her hands shook a little as she started typing. She thought he’d come back to check on her, but he didn’t.
* * *
This is what I want.
My dress spreads out around me in layers of satin and lace. The skirts are heavy, but when I’m seated their weight causes me no trouble. My silken stockings whisper when I rub my legs together, though it’s more a feeling than a sound.
I have listened for hours to supplicants begging me for favors. To ministers admonishing me. To suitors attempting to woo. But what do I want, more than anything? I want to rid myself of the weight of this dress and the crown on my head. I want not to be a queen, but a woman.
Your hands hold clear glass globes, three in each palm, and the subtle motion of your fingers is enough to send them dancing. Back and forth they move, astonishing all who watch, though many in this court are too jaded to admit it. No magician, they sniff. It’s all parlor tricks. I’m thrilled to study the ease of your movements, to lose myself in the grace of your performance.
I dismiss the others, but bid you to stay. You do, of course, for though I phrase my command as a request we both know your only option is to obey. Somehow, I don’t think you mind.
You’re on your knees in front of me without me having to order it. Your hands, those graceful hands, push up the heavy dreadful skirts. Your fingers make whispers of their own up my legs, which I part for you with a gasp at your audacity. Nobody touches me.
You touch me. The backs of my knees, the insides of my thighs, the small curve of my belly. And finally, you touch the soft, wet slit of my sex. Without asking and without my command, you kiss me there. You lick. You move my body forward on the chair until you can suck and stroke me with your tongue until I writhe.
The sound of footsteps should make you leave me unfulfilled, but instead of springing away you pull the folds of my dress down over you. It’s full enough to cloak you entirely. Your face presses between my thighs until I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out.
They’re back again, the ministers and beggars, the suitors. I could turn them away but I owe them my time in exchange for their allegiance. Today I fail to listen properly. Today you lick me in secret until my body clenches and convulses, and I have to fight back the cries wanting to tear from my throat.
You use the thrust of your fingers as you would your cock. As you will use it later, when I take you to my chambers, bu
t for now your tongue and hands move in tandem until I can’t keep from squirming and pushing against you.
“Are you well?” ask my ministers. “You look flushed.”
I climax again and again through the long hours under the attention of your talented tongue and fingers.
No magician, they say, but I know differently.
You’ve certainly worked your magic on me.
* * *
Eve still replied to all her comments, but she’d given up the pretense she was writing for any other reason than the replies from Tell_me. Her fingers flew over the keys as she wrote her latest entry. She sat back when it was finished and waited. Her reward came a few minutes later when her instant message icon bounced.
How was work today?
It wasn’t the response she’d been expecting, and so her answer took a moment.
Fine. You?
Frustrating.
Why frustrating?
He didn’t answer for so long she thought he’d gone, though he hadn’t signed off. Then, You liked me on my knees for you?
I always like a man on his knees for me.
Another long, long pause. Eve’s heart thumped and her tongue tasted like metal. What, exactly, was going on? The casual, sexy banter had disappeared. The words looked the same, black on white, but something had changed.
Her inbox filled with a few pleas from the abandoned Puppetboy. The shuffle function on her music program played her some interesting songs. Her fingers clenched into her fists as she leaned forward to stare at the screen and willed him to answer.
Any man? Or me?
Eve didn’t know how to answer. She blinked at the rush of sudden, unexpected emotion. How had they gotten to this conversation?
I don’t really know you.
Five minutes passed, then another five, before Tell_me went offline without saying anything else.
