Only then he surprises me. He surprises me all in a giant rush, while I do something weird like clutch my chest.
“I’m jealous, OK,” he says, which is enough on its own. It really is. I could die happily if he stopped right there and never said anything to me again—but he keeps going. “I know I shouldn’t be. I know what’s gone down between us—I’m not a moron, Allie. You fucking hate me because I was a douchebag in college who didn’t appreciate how amazing you are, and now you want to punish me. Well that’s fine, OK, that’s fine—go ahead and make me do any crazy fucking thing you want. I’ll fuck some guy’s ass, I’ll be your little bitch—whatever, OK? Whatever.”
I think I kind of seize up. As though I’ve just eaten a tonne of ice cream, only it hasn’t just given me brain freeze. It’s given me all-over-body freeze. I can’t feel my toes. My good sense is melting.
Did he seriously just shove all of that out of him? It sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, not the smooth moves of an impenetrable stud.
Which Wade was. Until right now.
I don’t know what to do. It’s like he just compressed everything I always wanted to hear him say into one twenty-second babble—I should feel exultant, vindicated, relieved. So how come I just go limp, and lose the ability to speak?
And apparently this limp inability is bad enough that he has to comment on it.
“You’re not going to say anything to that?”
He turns around at the same time, so I can see the expression on his face. Unfortunately, it’s no more explainable or readable than the things he’s just said—which is probably how I end up going with: “It was definitely better than a shrug.”
Is it weird that I actually feel the relief I need to when he laughs at that? He looks like himself again too—like the guy I used to moon over, with the curly blond hair and the eyes like electric sparks, and everything about him so easy and charming.
“Why didn’t you ever ask me out?” I ask, because it’s easier, now. Of course it is. I’m looking backward through a telescope at the person I was, and suddenly she seems very small and very foolish.
So what if he turns around and says to me, now, that he just didn’t feel anything for me. So what if I wasn’t enough. I’m enough for me.
Only he has one more surprise up his sleeve. One that I don’t account for and can’t prepare for.
“I don’t know,” he says, and as he does he hooks a lock of my hair over my ear—the way he used to sometimes, when we were busy poring over stories and all of my curls got in the way. “I guess I just thought you’d always be there.”
Of course I know what he means. I was his spare—his just-in-case girl. He got to sleep with everyone under the sun, while I lingered in the back of his mind as some far-off and completely safe possibility. Like maybe we could have finally gotten together and had the marriage and the kids he’d always sort of imagined himself having.
Something like that.
“I almost was,” I say, because that’s the truth. It’s what I came here for—to finally be with him. It’s just that it all looks so different now, like something I need to escape from rather than something I want to run toward.
He assumed I’d wait, and that assumption feels stifling, sticky, not like me at all.
“But not anymore, huh?” he asks, and I don’t even have to nod. He does it for me—a slow up and down of his head.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though it sounds kind of stupid coming out. He seems to know it too, because he snorts out a laugh and waves his hand, then finally manages to get out a few more surprising words.
“You’re not the one who has to be sorry. I need to be sorry.”
I think that’s the sweetest thing he’s ever said to me. And it definitely lessens the impact of his next confession.
“I knew, you know. I knew Cameron loved you.”
I don’t know what’s more troubling about him saying something like that. The fact that he obviously kept the truth from me for his own nefarious one-day-we’ll-have-a-picket-fence purposes, or that he uses the word loved.
Though I do know that I can’t focus on anything but said word, for the next eight thousand years. He has to snap his fingers in front of my face to bring me back to reality, and away from the sudden image of me and Cameron, frolicking through fields of daisies, hand in hand.
“Did you just hear my nightmarish confession?” he says, and I try to break it down. Was it really so nightmarish? I mean, one guy wanted to keep me as his spare so didn’t tell me that another guy possibly loved me. That’s not so bad, is it?
“You’re an ass,” I tell him. Mainly because it probably is so bad. I just feel less bad about it due to this weird swelling sensation in my chest.
Cameron, I think, Cameron.
“I know. But you forgive my ass-i-ness, right?” he asks, and oh he grins that shark’s grin of his. It makes me want to punch him and hug him, all at the same time.
Instead, I go with a verbal mixture of both.
“Can you give me back the seven years I lost, mooning over you?”
The punch doesn’t hit too hard. Only about 20 percent of the light goes out of his eyes, and when he bounces back he does it with the same easy charm he hooked me with, all those years ago.
“Probably not. But I can do other things—write you a sonnet. Finish packing up this insane room while you lounge around in another man’s bed. Do some more ass-fucking.”
Is it wrong that I kind of love him all over again for ending on those words?
“I’ve got to confess—I thought you’d be more troubled by the ass-fucking.”
He lifts one shoulder, like Hey, what can I say? And then the look on his face…dear God, it’s so filthy. As though he’s just packed full of all the things I never knew he could possibly do, and now they’re spilling out of him.
“I got to see you, didn’t I?”
Oh Lord, why is that the thing I blush over? I mean, I was aware prior to this conversation that he’d seen most of my boobs and my pussy. It’s not as though you can watch another man eat out the girl you want to fuck without getting an eyeful.
But even so. I’m bright red.
“At this point, I’ll take whatever I can get,” he says and then oh, I blush even harder. I blush all over, even though I swear to God I don’t feel the same way about him as I did. It’s just—man alive—hearing Wade be this full of affection for me, hearing him be so open and apologetic…it’s like seeing the face of God.
“Plus, I’ve got a lot of things to make up to you.”
And that’s before we’ve even gotten into his sudden need to be generous.
“No, really,” I tell him, but I know that look in his eyes.
It’s as dirty as the expression he gave me a moment earlier, and it makes my mind go to all sorts of interesting places. Like Hamin-Ra, where everything is always sultry and dream-like, and pleasure is the greatest aim of any day.
“You sure there’s nothing I can do for you?” he asks, and this time I think of Cameron. Cameron saying This is my favorite part.
“Well, actually…” I start.
And now I’m the one with the shark-like grin.
***
I go to tie his wrists loosely, pathetically, but of course he has something to say about that. His hooded gaze hangs all over me, and he pulls at the scarves I’m using to secure him. As though to show me how easily he could get free.
Though isn’t that the point? Corin gets free easily, in my story. He tears away the bonds and takes the Queen for his own, roughly, and it’s all I can think about now—even as Cameron tells me: “Come on, Allie. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
I know it. This whole thing had seemed like a good idea when I spoke to Wade and Kitty about it, earlier on, but now I just feel knock-kneed and weak through the stomach. What
if Wade’s promise to make it up to me were just the ramblings of an insane person?
It certainly sounds like it, when I replay the whole conversation in my head. And when I watch him pull his T-shirt off to reveal that rock-hard body beneath, I can’t help remembering how smug and arrogant he sometimes seems.
Smug, arrogant people almost never agree to something like this, do they?
“Tighter,” Cameron says, and I obey. I get him right up against the bedpost, arms linked behind his back, around it, and I cinch the scarves so hard I can see the backs of his hands turning white.
And then, just for good measure, I run my tongue over somewhere sweet on him. The heavy curve of his bicep, maybe. The smooth shape of his shoulder. Of course he moans and wriggles and tries to get away, but that’s the beauty of this one last lovely tale.
He can’t.
“You’re getting good at this,” Kitty says to me, from the place she’s found, all curled up at the head of the bed. And it doesn’t sound anything like the words the Queen’s little sylph-like assistant says, as the Queen prepares to torment Corin. It doesn’t sound like anything the Queen needs to hear, because she is already flawless and fully formed and so aware of her own power that I’m envious of her, even though I created her.
But it’s something I need to hear. And especially so when Wade saunters over to me, and gets me by the back of the neck.
He doesn’t do it roughly, exactly. But I hear Cameron’s intake of breath, behind me, and when I glance over at Kitty she has this deadly, dangerous look in her eye. Like the one she got when Wade demanded her cunt, and she offered him something else entirely.
But it’s OK, it’s fine, it’s all totally fine—even when he kisses me with that same rough, almost proprietary sort of pressure. He forces my mouth open and his tongue fucks over mine, and this time Cameron makes a deeper sound. A lower sound, caught somewhere between a sigh of protest and a moan of deep pleasure—of the kind I can’t hope to understand.
Does he really get off on seeing me with another man? Or is it something else, something hot and twisted and all mixed up in this story I didn’t even mean to write? I didn’t know what I was doing when I first blasted out “Hamin-Ra,” and I still don’t, all this time later.
So I just hold onto Wade and let him kiss me, while Kitty voices all the things I can hardly bear to hear.
“She looks good, doesn’t she?” she asks, and I know without turning around that she’s talking to Cameron. It’s almost the exact thing that the little assistant says to Corin, as the guards maul and kiss and lick the Queen.
And though I’m not sure it applies to me, I sure do appreciate her saying it. I just feel so naked right now, so exposed, even though I’m wearing a cotton nightie and it hardly shows anything at all.
Though I’ve got to say—I’m pretty sure anyone would feel naked, with one man’s eyes all over their back and another man’s hands all over their body. Wade gets a handful of my ass, briefly, and I think I go up on tiptoe, but then I turn a little and I can see Cameron looking. I can see him wishing that those were his hands, that he had hold of me in that same way, that he was as bold as Wade suddenly seems when he pushes me back onto the bed.
“Hold her wrists,” Wade says to Kitty, so hoarse and breathless seeming—and with this look on his face too. A mean look, I think it is, while that stomach-twisting feeling comes back to me.
I didn’t know things were going to go this way. In the story, no one pins the Queen down. But then I think in a bleak flash—I’m the Queen of nothing—closely followed by something else. A sweeter thought, that stings as much as it turns me to liquid. It’s one I had not long ago, and it’s just as powerful as it was then: This isn’t a story. We can do whatever we want.
And Wade does. He has Kitty pin my wrists to the bed, and once she does so I can see her hovering above me. I can see how long her blonde hair looks, dangling around her face, and how pretty her mouth is, curled into that devilish smile.
But more than that, I can see how easy it is to trust her, and I know that no matter what Wade has planned she’ll always be there for me.
Even if being there for me means she gets to lick one wicked, pointed tongue over my right nipple.
Of course, I buck immediately. Not because it’s a woman touching me in such an intimate way, or because it feels good, but because the two things cross at some unholy intersection inside me and I can’t stand it, for a second. A great bloom of pleasure swells once, sharply, between my legs, and the moment it’s died down she licks the other nipple.
You know. Just for good measure.
And I’m not even embarrassed about the fact that after she’s done it, both of the little tips of my tits are standing out proud beneath the material of my nightie. You can even see where she’s marked me, you can see the wet circles over my stiff buds, and oh it’s a sight that doesn’t just impress me.
It impresses Wade too, who moans and cups his rigid cock. And it impresses Cameron, even though I’m sure he doesn’t want it to. He strains against the bonds he made me tie, and his great chest rises and falls, raggedly.
But oh, it’s his prick I can’t tear my eyes away from, his big, swollen prick, curving up so steeply that it’s almost kissing his belly. It makes me want to beg for it, to squirm on the bed and beg for them to let me go so I can climb him like a rock face and slide right down over that stiff pole, but that’s not what this is about.
It’s about tormenting him, about making him feel it, and so I turn back to Wade with some effort and beg for what he’s got instead.
“Fuck my cunt,” I tell him, and I don’t do it just because I crave it, because my sex feels shivery and achy and I need it to be filled. I do it because it’s the opposite of everything I ever imagined saying to Wade—no Make love to me. No I need you so badly. Just those raw words, and oh…I think he knows it.
Some of the greedy light goes out of his eyes—the way it did when I told him about mooning over him—and he hesitates for just a second. But then I spread my legs for him, as wide as they will go, and as I do so my nightie rides up until he can’t fail to see everything I’ve got down there.
And, oh God, I’m so wet already. I’m so messy—all over my thighs and down between the cheeks of my ass. His face goes slack and I know he can see it, but it’s Kitty who brings it all into sharp focus.
“Is she all slippery?” she asks, and as she does so she pushes her hands under the flimsy neckline of this stupid cotton thing, to cup my breasts.
More than cup, in fact. She rubs over my stiff nipples and squeezes the abundance of flesh in her two tiny hands, making me moan and writhe on the bed in a way I completely didn’t know I was capable of.
But I writhe harder when Wade replies with even dirtier things.
I mean, of course he does. Him and Kitty are practically playing a game of sex-upmanship, by this point.
“She’s so wet I can see it glistening, on her inner thighs. And her clit is real, real stiff.”
Oh God, oh God, I don’t think I can stand this. And him saying those words isn’t even the worst thing about this scenario, because after he’s said them he turns to Cameron with that shark-like grin on his face, and says: “What do you think, man? You think I should stroke her little bud?”
Cameron doesn’t reply, naturally. I think all the muscles in his lower jaw have locked up, and for a moment I feel almost frantic inside. Like I’m just bursting with the need to put a stop to this, and bring him into the fold.
But the thing is—he hasn’t said the safe word. He hasn’t said anything at all. I can’t do anything unless he tells me, because to do so would mean I was letting him down in some way. It would mean I don’t trust his judgment of what he wants for himself, that I don’t trust the limits of his own fantasy, and I can’t have that.
Not even when Wade continues, in that same teasing tone of
voice.
“Think I should lick her? It looks like she could really do with a tongue through that hot little slit of hers, tasting all of that honey she’s produced. But then again, could be she needs something more than that…”
He lets the words trail away to nothing, though I’m guessing there’s no one in the room who can’t guess what he means. He means his cock, of course he means his cock, or at least I think he does until he takes us all on a little trip down memory lane.
“I mean, you wouldn’t believe what I caught her doing the other day.”
Uh-oh.
“Apparently, her fingers just weren’t enough for her. She was using a big, thick plastic cock, and oh man she was riding it like she just couldn’t get enough.” He pauses—for extra impact, probably. “Weren’t you, baby?”
I glance at Cameron, then, to see how he’s reacting. But the problem is, I can’t get anything from his expression apart from Fuck, I really need to tear Wade in two, then take you roughly against something.
There’s no specific, I-don’t-want-to-hear-about-that-time- you-and-Wade-did-stuff-together type resentment on his face. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and the longer Wade talks the more panicky I feel, until I don’t know where arousal ends and a full-on mental breakdown begins.
I just squirm, and blush, and listen to him saying how tight I looked, spread around that plastic cock, and how hard it had made him, to see me so lusty, and abandoned.
He must be having a great time of it now, because I’ve never felt so lusty and abandoned in all my life. I think I scream when he touches the outer lips of my sex with just the tip of his finger, and I definitely babble something, once he’s made one long, slow circle around that soft mound.
“Please, I need it,” I say. “I need it.”
And then when he refuses to give it to me, I force myself to go ruder.
“Rub my clit, rub it, oh God, yeah—pinch my nipples.”
That last one’s for Kitty. Her fingertips feel all wet, and she’s somehow caught my stiff buds between thumb and forefinger, and every time I push into her touch she twists them, she plucks at them, she makes me groan.
Telling Tales Page 20
