by Blake, Laila
It was only then that I realized my strange posture, leaning close, almost at an unnatural angle where his position hadn’t changed at all. My lips quivered until he touched them too.
“You have hardly closed your mouth at all. It is open, and you are breathing through it, shallow and warm. I would not push if it weren’t for the way you are reacting. Do you understand?”
I nodded and he pushed his finger between my open lips. Another tiny, strangled noise escaped as he opened my mouth further, pulled back my lips and touched my tongue. I did want it, all of it. Him, now, and just like in Secretary.
“Do you know what a safeword is?”
I nodded, unable to speak with the careful exploration of my mouth. Of course I knew what a safeword was.
He ran his finger along my gums and over my teeth, pushed under my tongue and curled it up as though he wanted to make sure he did his due diligence in finding every single spot, in marking my mouth with his salt and seawater taste.
“Good. But we don’t need one, today. You say stop, I’ll stop what I’m doing. You say no, I won’t do whatever I’m planning. You shake your head and I stop. Okay?”
Again I nodded, my eyes were wide as saucers and he smiled, gently touching my chin with his free hand. He tilted up my face, opened my mouth wider and then brushed over the tiny ridges along the roof of my mouth until he reached the soft palate and I snorted out tiny gagging sounds. He pulled back and let me rest for a second before going for the same spot again, while I tried to mash my heel against my clit, but with too many socks and fabric in the way, I could hardly feel anything.
“You can always ask me to stop and we’ll reassess, okay?” This time, he pulled his finger from my mouth. It was slick and shiny with my saliva.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Okay.”
Our eyes met for a long time as he smeared saliva onto my lips and a sweet smile blossomed on his face, crinkling the lines around his eyes. It occurred to me that he hadn’t even kissed me yet.
V
“There is one more thing,” he said, hand cupping my cheek. For the first time, his eyes erred just to the side of my face and he inhaled a deep breath. His smile was quick, a tiny flash across his features that left little lasting impression.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying not to sound like the cliché of a woman who’d just had her breath taken away almost literally.
“I put a lot of stock in honesty, in being upfront,” he said.
I nodded quickly. That much was obvious. When the pause began to stretch into seconds I raised my brows. “You can ask me anything, I’ll tell you the truth. I like honesty, too.”
That made him smile, tender again, he petted my hair and that warmth spread through my stomach.
“Oh, no. I don’t have any concerns about you—you’re a good person. A sweet person. And you are trustworthy. That’s why I have to be upfront. I’m not a bad person either, Iris, but I am feeling rather old these days and probably more jaded than absolutely necessary. I am in no position to promise you anything…”
His hand had slid down from my face and he looked at me, lips so crooked, he would almost not be handsome anymore if by now his appeal had not lain in his voice and his gestures and his almost shocking frankness.
“I am a film trope, a bit of a cliché. I want you. I want you so much, but you are whole and good and if that is not enough for you, then you have to tell me. You have to protect yourself.”
I was acutely aware of the ache in my knees, the unfamiliar pressure, the heat between my legs and I tried. I genuinely tried to step back emotionally and consider the situation. But his face was so handsome when he looked sad, beautiful in an entirely different way and before I knew what I was doing, I reached up and brushed my hand over his cheek, too. The first touch burned into my fingertips, that rough, weatherworn texture, the hint of a scruff that was a world of difference to my own face.
“That’s what you said,” I told him quietly, more calm, more daring than I felt. “You said you wanted to sleep with me. That’s all I assumed. All I agreed to.”
I cleared my throat and if I could have done anything to prevent myself from blushing, I would have. Paul nodded and plucked my hand from his face to kiss my palm and then each fingertip.
In hindsight, it is easy to point to moments like this one—and as honest as I am trying to be with myself, I don’t know if I believed that. I just know that I desperately wanted to be that person, that I wanted to explore the terra incognita he had opened in front of me and that I couldn’t have looked myself in the eyes anymore if I had closed myself off from all he had to offer in order to return to my flat, my cat, my job and my vibrator without even trying, without even a taste.
Paul didn’t smile. He watched me and when he came to my thumb, he sucked it into his mouth in turn. Within a moment, it was engulfed in warm, unexpectedly intense wetness. My eyes bulged and I uttered an involuntary sigh that rang through the silent room. His tongue curled around it, flicked at it and then he suckled hard. Just when the first moan broke through my chest, he let it slip out, though, causing a sudden and stark difference in temperature.
“You have a tape recorder with you, don’t you?” he asked, more hoarse than before. Numbly, I nodded.
“Fetch it for me.” When I was about to get to my feet, he continued, “There’s no reason for you to get up.”
I stared. For a moment, I couldn’t move but he simply looked at me as though he had said nothing extraordinary at all. Before my brain could catch up and make my face erupt in heat, I nodded, and leaned forward, letting my palms meet the floor. The pressure that rolled over my kneecaps made me grunt, but once I was settled, it wasn’t so bad. I looked back up at him one more time, checking if this was indeed what he meant and when he smiled approvingly, I started to crawl around him and towards the door. The moment I left the threadbare carpet, I could feel my tights snag on the wooden floorboards. I stopped, managed to disentangle them but after a few feet it happened again and this time, I could do nothing to prevent the ripping sound. Immediately, I was more aware of my ass swinging, of exposing myself, of the humiliating posture and every time my thighs moved against each other I thought I was even wetter than before.
By the time I reached my bag, I was out of breath from the unfamiliar style of movement. I sat back on my heels and looked through my things until I found the recorder. It was an old model, faux metal with quite a few scratches. It lay comfortably in my hand but when I tried to crawl with it, I realized it wouldn’t be that easy. More long than broad, I knew I could fit it into my mouth and the movie flashed through my mind. It was what he would expect, but when I opened my lips to push it between my teeth, the shape and width was so suggestive, I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks so hard it made me dizzy on the way back.
He didn’t immediately take it from me when I was kneeling back by his side. He looked at my torn tights, the hint of saliva in the corner of my mouth, the red pressure marks on my open palms. Finally, he stroked my cheek and gently extricated the tape recorder. He weighed it in his hands and opened it. A tiny little cassette sprang out and he laughed.
“Where do you even still get these?” He took it out to examine it as if it were one of his shark teeth or a dinosaur bone.
“Ebay.”
He chuckled again, putting the cassette back into place. “Good girl. Thank you.”
My mouth opened but nothing came out. I had not expected that and with each time he did this, made me pause and reassess the constant mind-movie of expectations, I wanted him more. His knees were so close, I wanted to climb up onto his lap and start undoing his shirt, I wanted to kiss his neck and find out if his hair smelled like salt and sea. Instead, I just trembled under his gaze.
“Do you know why I asked you to bring this?”
I shook my head.
“You sound beautiful when you’re aroused. I want you to hear that, your moans and cries, when you aren’t so distracted by what I’m going to do to yo
u.”
I stared at the recorder, remembered my mother giving it to me when I started university. I didn’t tell her how far technology had progressed in the field. I still haven’t.
“And maybe later,” he added with a knowing smile, “I’ll take a picture of the beautiful way you blush.”
Before I could think about that statement—the warning?—he had put the recorder on the table and scooted back a little with his ottoman. Patting his lap once, my face split into a smile but again he stopped me when I tried to get up.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he chided, shaking his head even as his voice never rose over a gentle and friendly murmur. “Over the knee, not on my lap for now. See—you know what I mean, that’s why you are feeling your muscles seize up around your chest, why you are growing dizzy. I bet you found some of those corners online, looked at pictures—didn’t you?”
I nodded. Of course I had—was there really anyone left who hadn’t? My hands were trembling like leaves in a storm when I tried my best to lean over his lap. It wasn’t enough and I knew it as I felt my breasts squish against his thigh and my back lay straight over his lap.
“Go ahead,” he said, gathering my hair to the far side of my neck to give him a better view and I tried to rise to my feet only to scoot my body further over his knees until my hands could reach the ground on the other side. At this point I could only expel fast gulps of air and was clenching my jaws against each other to keep them from shaking with nerves.
“A little more, baby girl.” His fingers ran down my spine, pushing through my shirt. “I want your forehead on the floor.”
I pushed until only the tips of my toes still rested on one side of him and I could feel the grain of the carpet pressing into my hairline at the other. My bottom was now the highest part of my body, prone and presented perfectly on his lap. I was holding my breath, waiting for—something, a touch, a smack, anything. But nothing came. Finally, I could feel him shifting under me; I heard a click and then saw his hand enter my field of vision, leaving the recorder next to my mouth.
“Don’t forget to breathe, Iris.”
VI
That one, massive inhale was the first thing I would hear when he’d later play the tape back to me. He was far enough from the microphone to only feature in small murmuring voices but what he said was burned into my mind like everything else.
I could feel the blood rushing to my head, that drowning sound in my ears that I vaguely recalled from practicing handstands as a child.
“Do you want me to touch you?” he asked and I nodded immediately. “Say it, Iris.”
“Yes,” I exhaled and his fingers connected with the back of my knee. My tights were still intact there but they did nothing to dull the sensation. I groaned in surprise, kicked the air at the unexpected tickle—already I was panting, breathing shallowly and blowing a little storm of static against the microphone with each exhale. He drew circles and runes into the sensitive skin just above the back of my knee and just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, he flattened his palm against it—warm and strong. Like a sponge that washed away the chaos on a blackboard. I whimpered and rubbed my forehead against the carpet. Already, the set-up seemed safe and familiar but it was only later that I marveled at how easily I slipped into the part—like finding a bra that truly fits after a lifetime of wearing them a little too small.
He did not disturb the hem of my skirt—not then. But his fingers trailed over the fabric slowly, staying low on that deep, dark curve towards utter oblivion. It felt like getting to know each other in this way, like polite flirting with his fingers even though I was already lying across his knees. I wanted to kiss him for that, for not letting me fall.
He encircled the curve of my hip, humming his satisfaction from time to time or reminding me to breathe whenever he got closer towards the center and I started holding my breath.
“Tell me what you’re waiting for.”
I stuttered out an undignified noise, muffled against the floor. His hand stopped moving and the silence hung heavy in the air.
“I... I don’t know.”
“Of course you do.” Like before, there was no impatience in his voice. He was gentle and polite but I knew without a doubt in my mind that his hand would not resume those careful and almost innocent caresses, until I answered. The incentive was simple and with each passing moment that I spent rehearsing the words in my mind, the part of me that craved his touch like a drowning person craves air, pushed me into bravery almost without realizing the world I had just traveled in my mind.
“For... for you to touch me,” I whispered first and already, that sounded weak to me and I corrected without waiting for him to prod. “I think, I’m waiting for... something to resolve the... the anticipation. Emotional pay-off.”
He laughed and I knew why—I sounded like I was reviewing him and he seemed to enjoy it, at least, his hand started to slowly venture under my skirt, tickling the back of my thighs just before they met my ass. I moaned again.
“Like this?”
“Yes. Yes!” I coughed out, so eagerly it made me blush when I listened to it later. “Please. More.”
His fingers found the panel of my tights and my legs opened. It was that easy to follow the demands of my body, to start becoming one with my desires and my needs, with my vagina and my ass, in a way I’d never been before. He rewarded the simple motion by cupping the entire region in his large hand and holding it tightly, while I mewled and whimpered into the microphone.
He was still holding my cunt like a newly gained possession when he spoke again. “I want you to try something for me. It’s not easy at first but I want you to try, do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Stop waiting. Stop anticipating. Stop trying to figure out the next scene while this one is still on the screen.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. His index finger pushed just a little harder than the rest. I was so wet, it sunk between my labia like a knife through butter even with the fabric of panties and tights still shielding his skin from truly touching mine. I could have cried it felt so good—and then he started rubbing. For a few precious seconds I could follow his demand easily, could sink into a place where the pleasure of the moment filled everything inside of me, and then I wanted more. This was when he stopped and I could as well be falling off a cliff.
One hand reaching for the recorder, the other pulled my skirt back down. I heard the whirring of tape reversing.
“God, I love this,” he said, “old school.” And I had to chuckle along with him even though most of me wanted to scream and beg and tantrum instead. But the laughter did something else, I was still me and he was still him and I looked back up at him over my shoulder and he smiled back. Simple.
He didn’t reverse far before he pressed play again. At first all I could hear was breathing, then moaning, whimpering, unintelligible sounds that seemed horrifyingly magnified in the tiny recorder. I had never heard anything like this before—it was nothing like porn, and oddly embarrassing as it was, I could also see what he’d meant. I could hear the abandon and the desire; I could hear that moment of letting go in my voice. And then something changed and a few seconds later, there was only empty tape and he stopped it again.
“Did you hear the difference?” he asked and I nodded even though I was still trying to figure out what the change had actually consisted of.
“You were there, right there with me in the moment—but then you slipped away, and you were whimpering for more.”
I had the sudden falling sensation that always accompanied moments of humiliation, when vertigo overtakes my head.
“You stopped being in the moment and thought of what I might do next. Didn’t you?”
I nodded again and licked my lips—my cunt was pulsing so hard I didn’t know how to concentrate on anything else as long as it was left so unattended.
“But...” I started to say but didn’t continue. When he stayed silent and waited for me to finish,
I pressed on, “But it’s impossible not to do that. We do that all the time, we are basically evolutionarily programmed to do that.”
“I wouldn’t call it impossible,” he disagreed. “It’s just not easy to fight against that conditioning. It has to do with fear and control. As long as you feel like you might have mapped out every possible scenario, you still feel in control.”
I breathed in the smell of the carpet and felt its texture against my fingers and twisted my neck to look back at him again, studying his face.
“And as long as you cling to that control, you can never truly enjoy, live, breathe, inhabit the moment you are in.” He smiled and reached down to brush his fingers through my hair. “That’s why we play with control, you know? To achieve that goal, that state of abandon.”
“But not for you...” I whispered, almost concerned, but he smiled and ran his fingers over the puckering skin between my brows.
“Not for me. The goals are a little different when you are the dominant party. But you are not. That’s why it feels so simple and so right to you, just to lie there like this and talk to me, to let me touch you and let me look at you however I want. Your goal is abandon.”
I smiled back at him sheepishly as I mulled over this idea—and the new sensation of a cunt pulsing, aching at an almost philosophical exchange. It was while I was still considering these possibilities, that he switched the recorder back on and placed it back on the floor. Instead of pulling his hand back, however, he let it hang down just in front of my face. It didn’t touch the ground but floated above it by a mere fraction of an inch. Instinctively, I twisted my neck and shoulders further until I could push my nose into his palm.
“Good girl,” he whispered, and his tone made my chest seize up with longing. And again I wanted to plead and whine for more even as his smell and his warm fingers rubbed over my cheeks and my nose, even as the moment was simple and perfect as it was.
