The Gift

by Portia Da Costa

  ‘Whatever.’ His voice was amiable as he threaded his fingers through her hair and stroked her scalp. When he exerted light pressure she felt her heart lurch in panic. She didn’t fear him, but she did fear herself. ‘Want to try something else from the menu?’

  Not stopping to think, she dipped and shot out from under his arm and to the side, darting clear of him. ‘I’d prefer a cup of tea, actually.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  It seemed he was going out of his way, for the moment, to be non-combative. Which was infuriating because she wanted to get into it with him over his secretiveness, his weird combination of sexual high-handedness and old-fashioned courtship. Either that or she did want to make love, fuck, or do sex things. Whatever he wanted to call it. In fact, she wanted that far more than she wanted to argue, she had to admit.

  Trying to settle herself, she took a seat, sinking into one of the chintz-clad armchairs. It was deep and softly upholstered, a nice piece of furniture, not just a cheap hotel chair to take up space. There was something strangely decadent about it, despite the homely fabric. She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to see herself in the form of arty erotic photo images, a bit like the ones in the Lawns Bar. Lingerie, black and shiny, encased her body; and towering high heels, her feet. With her legs akimbo, she sat in this very chair with her crotch naked, pubic hair stringently trimmed.

  Shaking her head slightly, she opened her eyes again and glared first at Jay, then the tea tray. Let him serve her. She deserved it. He was a bastard, and in her mind, at least for the moment, she was a sex goddess.

  ‘Milk and sugar?’ he enquired, eyeing her as if he’d read her thoughts. When he touched his tongue to the centre of his lower lip, she wondered if he’d seen the art photo thoughts too. Very much his bag, if all his talk was to be believed.

  ‘Just milk, thanks.’ She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  Something in his voice made her head come up. He’d not sounded bossy or harsh, but there was a cool metallic timbre to the way he spoke.

  She opened her mouth to ask why not, then shut it again. Jay was staring at her, his eyes cool and metallic too, assessing. Challenging. Controlling?

  What was this? By rights she should be resisting him, taking a step back and getting some distance, not allowing him to drive her to distraction again with a kind of erotic gamesmanship that she’d never experienced before.

  He was certainly playing a game now, she realised, and had begun to without her becoming aware of it. It was the same magic web he’d woven around her in the car last night, leaving her with no control, making her his plaything, his puppet, his sexual doll.

  She fell still, her arms resting motionless on the arms of the chair. Remaining immobile was like a conscious act, like effort in stillness, a strain on the muscles. And arousing, deeply arousing. Between her legs she felt the river begin to flow.

  Could she speak? She had to try.

  ‘Why were you watching me yesterday? In the Teapot, or at the cocktail party. Why me?’

  Pouring tea, adding milk, he didn’t answer for a moment. But when he brought her cup and set it on the dressing table at her side, he said, ‘Because when I saw you, you were all I could think about. I wanted you.’ Dropping to a crouch beside her, he plucked at the dark fabric of her skirt and eased it up her legs, slowly and methodically. The whisper of the soft cloth was like a caress, sending coils of sensation straight to her pussy. He inched it up and up until she was exposed, then folded it neatly in a roll at her waist, baring the dark auburn triangle of her pubic hair.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, slipping a finger between her labia, as if to test her. ‘Beautiful,’ he repeated, finding exactly what he wanted then bringing his glistening finger to his lips and sucking her juices.

  She should have dashed his hand away. She should have covered herself up. But she couldn’t. She was hypnotised. Well, not exactly, but somehow enthralled by him.

  He’s dangerous! He’s dangerous! He’ll keep playing with you until you’re addicted to him, and then he’ll disappear. Jump up, run from this place, end it now while you still can. While you can still forget about him and go on with a normal life.

  But she couldn’t. Maybe she was addicted already? In her mind she bargained with herself, and agreed on one last afternoon – and maybe evening and night – of pleasure with him. Then she’d tell him that it was over, and it’d been fun. But nothing more.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  Suddenly she didn’t want to spoil the moment. She couldn’t. It was all too strange. Her body was too excited, sex, breasts, everything, nerves, blood, fingers, toes. ‘I don’t know. Nothing. Everything.’ She tossed her head, as if that were the only part of her he would permit her to move.

  Still crouched beside her, he laughed. ‘I feel the same. It’s like I can’t think about anything but sex, and your body, when I’m around you. It’s like a spell.’ He laid a hand on her thigh, stroking the edge of her pubic mat with his thumb.

  ‘Just my body?’ She laughed back at him, both liberated and enslaved somehow. She couldn’t work it out. ‘No interest at this time in my mind?’

  ‘Touché!’

  ‘Then you admit it?’ The compulsion to squirm in response to his caress was out of all proportion to the scope of the action. His thumb was barely moving, and yet nerve impulses were surging as if he was masturbating her, hard and fast.

  ‘It’s an integrated package. Body and mind. One with the other.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. What on earth are you talking about?’ she demanded.

  It was nonsense. His mind was whirling. Breathing in the perfume of her sex was like being in an opium den, yet knowing you weren’t killing yourself or driving yourself mad, just going crazy in the best of all possible ways.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about,’ he admitted, still moving his thumb lightly. He loved the heat of her skin just there, the indentation where hip met thigh. The feel of her pubic hair, which was softer than that of any woman he’d known, tender and not wiry. Just touching her, and seeing her overwrought response to it, made him dizzy. Opium time again.

  ‘But at the same time I know what I mean and I know what I want,’ he continued, ‘and what I feel.’

  Her green eyes widened, bright yet dark, full of arousal and fear and recognition. But of what? A shared sexual obsession, or something deeper and older? The romantic dream?

  Did she still harbour thoughts of their shared moments long ago, he wondered. Did she fantasise, as he’d done, about a perfect fairytale lover? Some kind of mad impossible melding of the ultimate in eroticism and the pure chivalrous ideal?

  I’m going mad. She doesn’t recognise me. I wouldn’t recognise myself. Even without smashing my face up, I’d have probably changed. She wouldn’t know me.

  Perplexed, he twined a russet curl around his little fingertip and tugged gently, provoking a gasp. He was glad she didn’t shave completely down there. He loved the natural look, and the way her neat little bush held her fragrance.

  Another gentle pull and she tossed her head. She closed her eyes, in some vain attempt to keep her responses to herself. Well, he would give her that. She couldn’t mask her desire in any other way, not with the way she was moving, and the rich odour of her arousal and the way it was glistening on the insides of her thighs.

  Her pale hand tensed on the chair arm, even though she’d understood his unspoken command that she stay still. She had neat hands too, with slender fingers. No stupid painted talons, just plain clean nails, pink and natural. He took hold of her hand in his and guided it to her crotch. Parting her labia, he positioned two of her fingers together over her clit.

  ‘Play with yourself for me. Do it now. Show me what you do.’ Her eyes shot open, wide with alarm, pupils a sea of desire.

  Heat sluiced through Sandy’s body, reaching every pore and follicle. Sweat gathered in her armpits and beneath her b
reasts. Other liquid grew more copious beneath her fingertips.

  ‘I … can’t.’

  ‘Oh, you can, you can.’

  She wanted to look away from him, but she couldn’t, he still entranced her. Even as she essayed a tentative rub of her tingling clit, she couldn’t stop watching Jay. Folding his limbs gracefully, he sat down cross-legged in front of her to watch the show, but, for all the fluidity of his movement, she caught the clench of his teeth as he settled down.

  It still hurts, doesn’t it?

  He seemed to answer with his eyes, despite the sexy wolfishness of his smile, and it was this acknowledgement of a vulnerability that gave her courage. Daring bloomed, and so did desire. She shifted again in the deep armchair, seeking the perfect position from which to put on a show.

  Defying his injunction to stay otherwise still, she quickly unfastened the front of her top and then snapped open her bra. The air in the centrally heated room seemed warm and heavy on her breasts as she returned one hand to her crotch, and with the other plucked at a nipple, rolling and turning it. Between her legs she was sodden, puffed with arousal.

  ‘Yes, that’s good,’ Jay encouraged, leaning forward a little as she rolled her clit too, synchronising the two tiny actions. She imagined she could feel his breath, hot and eager on the back of her hand, even though he was nowhere near close enough. She remembered feeling it on her thighs and her pussy when he’d dived in to lick her last night.

  Was it only last night? It seemed as if they’d lived an erotic lifetime in the space of less than a day. Astounded, she rubbed and tweaked harder, her breath coming in gasps as streaks of pleasure careened about her body, bouncing from one node of stimulation to another. Tension in her pussy made her part her legs further, pushing against the arms of the chair.

  ‘Here!’ he said, plunging forward suddenly, laying hands on her thighs and parting them so he could drape them over the arms of the chair. ‘That’s better.’

  Was it? Oh God, yes! Better … but also worse.

  She was totally exposed and displayed, her bottom perched right on the end of the chair, her entire pussy stretched and open, masked a little by her hand, but barely so. A groan of some confused emotion – not shame, but a cousin of it – escaped her lips when Jay reached up to switch on a lamp on the dressing table to give extra light.

  ‘Your cunt is sublime. So pink and juicy. It’s exquisite.’ Sandy laughed, despite everything. How preposterous was it to hear such words on a man’s lips. Yet somehow they seemed right, and honest, and not unnatural.

  ‘Stick a finger inside yourself. That’s it. Work it in and out. Just do that. Don’t touch your clit. Just the finger.’

  She obeyed him, even though her clitoris seemed to wail silently, missing its attention.

  ‘Now keep it still. Just sit there with your finger in your pussy. And pinch your nipple. Hard. Keep on pinching it until you feel sore, but no touching your clit.’

  It was hard to breathe, balancing the tiny pain in her nipple as she pinched and twisted. Her clit quivered involuntarily, and her vagina shuddered and tightened around her finger, almost at the point of orgasm, but not quite. Unable to stop herself, she started hitching her bottom around right on the edge of her seat.

  ‘I love the way you move. I love it that you’re so turned on you can’t keep still.’ He was closer now, she could swear it, even though she could no longer look at either him or her own body. ‘No, clench your bottom. That’s it, tighten everything up. I want to see that sweet little pucker close then open.’

  ‘No, no,’ she moaned, yet still doing it, following his directions as if she were Jean Harlow to his Cecil B. de Mille. Her sex felt as if it were on fire, poised on the brink of pleasure yet denied it.

  ‘Now stay still. No clenching. Relax.’

  How? How the hell could she do that? She was totally on show to him. Clit, labia, perineum, anus, her finger was pushed inside her up to the knuckle. Defiantly she plucked at her nipple and everything surged again, of its own accord, just skirting a climax.

  ‘Stay still,’ he whispered, his breath against the inside of her knee.

  Please kiss me … please suck me … give me your tongue.

  But when she opened her eyes, his were glinting like polished stone and a dark little smile played around his lips. Not yet, he seemed to say, without speaking. And a second later, he was up on his feet again, reaching for her teacup.

  ‘You must be thirsty. You need a drink. Have some of your tea.’

  With infinite care, he brought the china vessel to her lips. Her body shuddered and fresh sweat popped out in her armpits and her groin. It seemed infinitely more obscene to drink tea, have it fed to her like this while she was half naked and touching herself, than the act of masturbation itself could ever be.

  Astonishingly, the tea was still hot. How could that be? It seemed as if she’d been playing with herself for hours, but in reality it was probably only a couple of minutes or so. She sipped obediently, relishing the aromatic liquid and suddenly realising how dry-mouthed she’d become. Probably because every drop of moisture in her body was between her legs.

  ‘Enough?’ Jay withdrew the cup a little way. Sandy nodded. ‘You’re so beautiful. You take my breath away.’

  She’d been drifting, but her eyes snapped open. Jay was crouching again, but staring into her face, not between her legs.

  ‘Like this?’ she questioned faintly.

  ‘Yes.’ His dark eyes flicked from her face to her breasts to her crotch, and back again. ‘But in all ways.’ He swallowed, seemed to ‘go away’ somehow for a moment, lost in some imaginary place she couldn’t determine. ‘And not just visibly.’

  ‘You don’t know me.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Time ticked, but not forward, in suspension. Impossible thoughts flitted through Sandy’s mind but so fast she couldn’t get a hold of them. Then Jay shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and smiled again, that slow devil-smile.

  ‘Hook your finger,’ he said softly, dropping to his knees again. If it hurt him he gave no sign this time.

  Pressing on the sensitive pad of her G-spot was agonisingly pleasurable, a blend of near orgasm and a sudden sharp urge to urinate. When she withdrew the pressure, without permission, the sensations faded, leaving only a dangerous echo.

  ‘Too much?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ she admitted, her voice like feathers.

  ‘OK then,’ he answered, reaching up across her body to gently stroke her face. ‘Let your body rest a moment. Relax, relax,’ he urged again, brushing strands of her wayward hair clear of her heated brow.

  Sandy let her hands drop against her bare thighs. They felt heavy against her skin, warm and almost not a part of herself. Between her thighs, though, she was acutely aware of air against the hot membranes of her sex. Her pose, draped over the chair arms the way she was, remained utterly open, with everything exposed.

  With one last pat of her hair, Jay crossed to the tea tray, took his own cup and retreated to the second chintz armchair across from her. Grandstand view of her pussy while he sipped his English Afternoon Blend with obvious enjoyment. After a while, he put aside his cup and lounged back in his chair, gazing at her sex like a connoisseur appreciating the finer points of a new work. Maybe he was a connoisseur? For all his scars, he was the most attractive man she’d ever encountered, and she suspected he’d been a devastating looker prior to his close tangle with a twisted Aston and the threat of death.

  Not for the first time she tried to imagine him with a different face. Something like his current one, but maybe less angular, less hard. It was difficult because, in the space of little more than twenty-four hours, his features, as they were now, were printed on her brain. The only other face she seemed able to conjure, but far more faintly, was her rescuer from long ago, her sweet Prince Charming.

  The dizziness she’d experienced drifted back. It was disorientating, a struggle to comprehend the merging of fea
tures her brain seemed to present to her.

  No, it wasn’t possible. They were as unalike as the proverbial chalk was from cheese. And yet still, the stupid notion was pervasive.

  Jay drew in a deepish breath, and the spell was broken. Resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, he steepled his fingers and rested his bearded chin upon them.

  ‘Do you play with sex toys?’ he enquired, apropos of nothing, and everything.

  Chapter 12

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Jay laughed. ‘Now come on, Princess, surely a sexy woman like you has a vibrator?’

  Sandy studied him, eyes narrowed. He stared back. Their eyes locked, and she saw a twinkle in his. It was a silent communication, a tipping point. Their game of cat and mouse, dominance and submission, had just shifted its balance of power. He was in thrall to her, to the sight of her body, lush and sexual, to the supreme feminine power of her pussy.

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said, adjusting her position. ‘And I wish I had it here now. I need to come.’

  ‘Then make yourself come. You don’t need a toy.’

  There was admiration in his voice, awe even. His face was alight, he bit his lip, astonished but joyous.

  ‘Why don’t you do it? You’re the one who’s so fond of touching me up. Here it all is. Come and play with me.’

  ‘You come to me, if that’s what you want.’ He seemed relaxed, but she could sense a tension in him, he was poised.

  Suddenly she wanted a change, a different dynamic. Without pausing to think, she slid her thighs off the chair arms and then reached down to pull off her boots. Standing up, and letting her heavy skirt fall around her, she walked towards him. The fire in his eyes gave her power and, when she reached his chair, she stood in front of him and began to strip. Not for him, but for herself.

  Shimmying out of her top, she let it slide down her arms then flung it away. Then she flipped the straps of her open bra off her arms and let that fall away too. A second later she unfastened the button at the side of her full flowing skirt, then whizzed down the zip. The black fabric settled like a dark pool around her feet, and she stepped away from it, closing right in on Jay. Imperiously, she nudged his knees together with her thigh and, while he still stared at her as if she was a goddess rising, she settled on his lap, perfectly naked, and swooped forward to take a kiss from his lips.