“It’s easier,” he says, then with more conviction: “It makes things easier.”
I have to ask. My better judgment is telling me no, but then again my better judgment just received a glorious, world-beating orgasm from him and all of his hang-ups.
We’re going to this place. I need to know.
“What was it that made fucking so hard for you, in the first place?”
“It’s not hard for me,” he says, but he’s lying.
“Come on, Cam. Who am I going to tell?”
He glances at me then, and there are whole vast worlds in his eyes. Great and terrible things he’s probably imagined, a thousand times.
“Wade and Kitty.”
I take his face in my hands then. I have to. It’s a necessity.
“Hey. Hey—you can trust me, OK,” I say, and then I realize how easily I can turn it on its head. How I can make an order into something sweeter—a soft pull on him, as though my fingertips are on that mythical-beast-ending thread inside him and all I have to do is tug a little to get him to unwind.
“You can tell me anything. Tell me anything.”
“It’s not that easy,” he says. “There’s not one thing that makes someone the way they are. I just am this way.”
“Ashamed,” I fill in, for him, but he won’t say yes or no. I suppose he doesn’t have to really.
“Sex isn’t something to be ashamed of.”
“Really? Do you wanna maybe stop by my mom and dad’s house, and share that with them?”
I find a little curl of hair close to his ear, and wrap it around my finger.
“They live in a huge red brick in Connecticut. You can’t miss it.”
He’s trying to make light of it, I can tell. On Cam, it’s almost terrifying, and it makes me want to change the subject. I have to change the subject—and in fact, I’m sure I’ve done it very neatly when I say: “What was it they wanted you to be again? Was it a politician?”
Only then I realize that I’m just talking around in circles, drawing back to the same thing over and over again.
“Is the president a politician?” he asks, and I have to giggle. I giggle even though I feel dreadful inside, suddenly.
“They wanted you to be president?” I say, still half-laughing.
But only half.
“My mom used to say—people vote with their eyes. I think it was her way of telling me I was handsome, in between all of the Don’t slouch, be polite, be perfect.”
“You are perfect,” I blurt out, and after I’ve done it I realize I’ve never actually told anyone anything like that before. It’s the first time I’ve ever said to someone—freely and quite easily—that I think they’re incredible.
I don’t even blush over it either.
“It won’t go away just because you say something like that to me, you know,” he says, but I can see him bending.
He bends even further when I kiss him softly.
“You are perfect. You’re perfect to me,” I tell him, and by God I mean it. I actually mean it. I look at his gorgeous eyes and his full mouth and his amazing half-curled hair and I want to say more than the word perfect—I want to make up a new word that encompasses everything he is.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say something like that? Scratch that—I never thought you would say anything like that to me. It’s like you’ve started speaking an alien language.”
“Aishalem,” I tell him, and secretly I know that’s the word. The word beyond perfect. The one that’s just for him.
“You know why I had that picture of you?” he asks, in the spaces between the smile I seem to have opened up on his face. “Because you were all the things I’d always wanted, and everything I couldn’t have.”
“I’ve gotta tell you, it’s a pretty big deal when someone as handsome and amazing as you says something like that to someone like me,” I say, but he just laughs—properly, this time. No faint smiles. No half-measures.
“You’ve got it the wrong way around, Allie,” he says.
“You’ve got it completely the wrong way around.”
***
It occurs to me much later, while I’m sitting under the window in the boat room, writing. In fact, I’m writing so much that my finger is starting to ache and I’ve made a mess of papers around me—all fragments of stories I was sure I’d never work on again—and then it comes to me.
This little kernel of realization. This little nudge into the brave new world I’ve found myself heading toward.
We need a safe word.
Oh God, we need a safe word. That’s what people do, isn’t it, when they plunge into things like this? He wants to be forced, and I’ve got to admit that I want to force him, but the fact remains—what if I take it too far?
I’m not even sure what too far is. He seemed to find masturbation a stretch, but since he’ll barely talk about his stuffy, fucked-up family and his obvious issues, I’m guessing he’s not going to go into detail about what he does or does not like in bed.
I’ve got to feel him out. Test his boundaries. Get him to give me a safe word.
Of course when I catch him later in the kitchen and just come right out and ask, he looks at me like I’m mad. Like he hadn’t even considered, and if I’d had a mind to it I could have made him strangle himself to death with a pair of my own tights.
But I swear to God—it’s not going to come to that.
“We have to have a safe word,” I say, and his expression freezes in place. Mouth slightly open, as though he just tasted something bad. Gaze sliding off to something that is not me.
For a long, painful second I’m sure he’s going to tell me how ridiculous I’m being—that he hadn’t even thought of having sex with me again and even if he had, he’s certainly not going to do anything that requires a safe word.
Only then he says: “Tehanu.”
Quite matter-of-factly. As though he’d considered and weighed all of this out long before, and now is the time to just be practical about it. Or at least, I think he’s being practical about it until he adds, without looking at me: “You can do anything you want to me. Anything at all—just don’t let it show.”
And then he walks right out of the kitchen, as though we had chatted about the weather for five minutes and now he’s just going to check if it’s still raining.
I think my heart is pounding in my cunt. My head spins with all the possible interpretations of the word anything, and then worse than that: the words don’t let it show. I mean, for God’s sake. Don’t let what show? Does he think I’m going to bruise him somewhere?
Does he want me to bruise him somewhere?
I’ll be honest—I hadn’t even thought about pain. I had thought of simple sex shame—that he was troubled about getting from some basic A to B. Not that he wants me to spank him or hit him or, God, maybe he wants me to do it with something?
You know, like a flogger or a whip or…Lord, we’re getting into some strange areas. It’s bad enough that he’s obviously got all these deep-seated shame issues about sex due to his perfect-crazy mother and his probably uptight starchy dad. But add in some actual punishment for whatever lewd things he’s feeling…
I don’t know. I don’t know.
I do know that I’m turned on. Hugely. Wade even notices it, when he comes into the kitchen and finds me leaned against the fridge, grateful for the cold and with my nipples sticking out like fingertips.
He leans in and I feel that old twinge, that sweet little ache at the thought of all things Wade. Before it sinks down below the surface of me again, and all I can see is the smug look on his face, like he’s got me.
I mean, of course it’s him who’s making my nipples hard. Of course it is. Who else would it be? He’s handsome and hard-bodied and when he leans in he smells of the piney smell at the
back of the wardrobe he’s been clearing out. It’s weird—I always thought he wasn’t the kind of guy to get stuck in, you know. He was always more the sort of person to drift on a sea of laidback-ness. But his hands are rough with little bits of plaster and I’ve seen him going about the house with his little measuring device, judging the square footage and the value of this thing that will now be ours.
He’s become business-y, hands-on Wade—which is good. But he’s also become predatory, I-want-to-fuck-you Wade.
Which is bad. I never thought it would be, but it is. It’s bad.
“How come you’re still not finding your way to my room at night?” he asks, and I do my best to maneuver my way out from between the arms he’s put either side of my body. It’s sort of like limbo-ing, only without the catchy music and the sense of fun.
“You say it like it’s an obligation,” I tell him, which sounds too mean even to my ears. And though it looks like he doesn’t falter, on the surface of things, I see him kind of jerk a little. I see that golden face of his snap to surprise, then right back out again.
Which is just him all over, when I really think about it. Don’t let anything go too deep, don’t let anything mean too much, just keep things calm and casual and no big deal.
“Oh, hey, no,” he says, then makes a little noise. A little funny brrrpppt sort of noise that I would have laughed at before right now. “You? Obliged to do stuff with me? No way. You’re obliged to look that good in a tight T-shirt—but then, that’s always been the case.”
I wonder if he knows he’s given me the perfect opening. Probably not. He probably doesn’t even know I need an opening.
“Really? Funny that you never found the time to tell me things like that back in college.”
It comes out in direct contrast to the way I’d always imagined saying words like those. In my head I had blurted it a thousand times, been embarrassed and sweaty palmed about it then borne the weight of his anger. I’ve no idea why he usually decides to be angry, in my head, but there it is all the same.
And here it isn’t.
I just say it, blandly, mildly, and he can only find the wherewithal to shrug. While my mind goes to the picture I discovered, Cam’s confessions, how much my heart had pounded and wrestled with me throughout all of it.
My heart isn’t pounding now. It hasn’t even fallen down inside me, the way it sometimes used to whenever I thought of Wade. Instead he says: “I want you now. Isn’t that the main thing?”
While I feel nothing, nothing at all.
“Keep wanting,” I tell him, and then I just walk away. I walk away.
***
We swap. It takes some doing, but that’s the good thing about Cameron. He always gives in, in the end. In truth he doesn’t even give in. I just tell him that this is the way things are going to be, and he obeys with his face all red and his mouth all tight and the green book practically super-glued to his hands.
Even after I order him to swap my stories for his, I have to wrench it from him. And then I sprawl on his bed, as comfortable as anything in my little sleep shorts and vest—something I’ve never been with any other guy—and I flick through the pages greedily.
“Is this all you’ve ever written?” I ask, as I take in snippets of the stories: “Pepper,” “The Girl Who Wouldn’t,” “Comfortable Distance.” To me they all have the ring of words long developed, of stories built on the confidence of other pieces of writing, but I can’t be sure unless he says.
And he does.
“No.”
I glance at him side-on, and find him still standing by the end of the bed. Half-leaning on one of the gloriously ornate posts, with my own mass of papers still in his two hands. None of it gone through, none of it touched.
Instead he just stares and stares at various parts of me—the too-rounded hump of my ass, when I spread out on my belly. The smooth line of my cleavage, when I prop myself up on my elbows.
“So where are the rest?” I ask, and he shrugs. Kind of like Wade did in the kitchen, only with more meaning behind it. I can read Cameron’s shrugs, and, by God, they say a lot. This one tells me that he has a gigantic cupboard/filing cabinet/wardrobe full of them at home.
“You ever thought about sending them somewhere?” This time, he does more than shrug.
“I can barely let you read them, never mind some guy behind a desk with a big important brain and loads of important things to say.”
It sounds so much like something I would say that I’m startled briefly. But then I recover and kick a leg out at him for being such a numbnuts—just playfully, you know. No real connection.
Though I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that he doesn’t dodge. He just lets my foot nudge against the solid meat of his upper thigh, and when I do it a second time—a little harder—his expression visibly changes.
“You don’t just like being forced, huh?” I say, so low and dark that the room seems to hum with it. He seems to hum. He’s looking at my body again, but it’s with more intensity this time—as though his eyes have grown hands and they’re pawing all over me.
“You want me to hurt you?” I ask, and he sort of…shivers a little. So I add: “I won’t do anything drastic.”
“So no cutting, then?” he says, and though it sounds as if he’s joking, my heart still flutters inside me.
“I don’t think I could bring myself to really hurt you.” He smiles faintly at that.
“But maybe just a little. Maybe…some punishment. For the things I’ve done.”
“Things?” I ask.
“Come on. You know.”
“No, I don’t,” I tell him, though I’m lying, I’m lying. “Tell me.”
“Spying on you,” he says, after a moment, and I note how careful he is about it. No allusions to anything sexual. No dirtying his mouth with the bad words.
“Say it again, but filthier,” I tell him, and when I do I push hard against his thigh. I dig my heel in, but he just presses right back at me.
“I spied on you while you…” he tries. I can see him searching for the right word, the word that he has to use instead of a euphemism. “Touched yourself.”
“Hmmm,” I say. “I guess that was pretty bad.”
But it’s not true, it’s not true. When I think of the word bad I don’t think of Cameron at all. I think of Wade, instead, reading out that story as though he’d written it, instead of just stealing it from his friend’s life.
“So…” he says, then he just leaves the end of his sentence hanging there. Waiting for me to fill it in, most probably—waiting for me to order or demand or all of the things I’m completely not used to doing.
And, oh God, it’s Cameron, it’s Cameron—I can’t hurt him. I don’t want to bite him or flog him or spank him. I just want him to feel pleasure and know that it’s OK.
“So read out this story to me,” I say, and then I pass him his green book.
My arm stays in that position—reaching out to him with his words in my hand—for so long that the muscles start to protest. Clearly he was expecting something a little more…visceral. Something he wouldn’t have to think about at all, while his body and his senses took a pounding.
But somehow, a spanking just doesn’t seem torturous enough.
“You know I can’t do that,” he says, and I think of all the times he fumbled through stories about nothing. Stories about robotic people with no feelings and no desires. I think about how uncomfortable he seemed just hearing someone else read out a story that could have been his.
And I won’t deny it. I go watery and weak inside. My cunt clenches around nothing, and when I squeeze my thighs together such sensations floods through me. I’m wet already, and getting wetter.
“Really?” I say, but I think it’s the eyebrow that does it. I raise my eyebrow and he kind of flinches, expression suddenly tense and smolder
ing. “Because I could make you read it out in front of Kitty and Wade, if you’d prefer.”
It’s almost comical, the way he shakes his head. It’s just a little movement, as though he realizes mid-gesture that he shouldn’t be saying no.
“OK,” he says. “OK.”
But I can tell he doesn’t want to. When he takes the book from me his hands are shaking, and that little tremor gets worse the moment he sees the story I picked.
I didn’t even need to read it to know it was the right one. Its title is “Further” and the first line is The moment she makes him come on my face, I know nothing will ever be enough.
Oh, he is a bad, bad boy inside, and I want more than anything to make him badder.
“Go on,” I say, and then I push my heel into his thigh again. Only this time, he gusts out a bunch of words for me to delight in, all tumbled one after the other in a great mess of everything he doesn’t want to admit.
“Yes, do that, do that while I do this.”
He needs something to ground him, I think. Hell—I need something to ground me. Cameron Lindhurst is going to read me a bedtime story about a guy coming on his face, and I have to somehow lie here, just listening.
Makes me wonder how long I’m going to be able to resist him. He’s already hard, of course, but it’s only when he pushes out the first words that I really start to notice how good his cock looks, outlined against those thin pajama bottoms.
“The moment she makes him come on my face, I know nothing will ever be enough. It tastes like him—arrogant and jeering as he kneels over me, his cock sliding slackly over my lips. And it tastes like my own debasement, so rich and thick I want to drown in it,” he says, jerking to a halt on some words. Spilling all over others.
And I don’t know whether it’s his hesitancy, or his clotted tone, or the words themselves, but either or all ways I moan freely. After all, what use is there for restraint in a moment like this? He cuts me loose with every tense second of his shame-filled resistance, and I can’t deny that I revel in it. I murmur his name, to hear him say: “Of course, she knows. She is smiling as she sits cross-legged at the end of the bed, and her eyes never leave mine. She wants what I want, I think—she wants further—and my cock swells to think of it. My cock is like a fist between my legs, and I don’t flinch or stir when the man she’s chosen for me wraps his hand around my length.
Telling Tales Page 15
