Make Me

by Charlotte Stein

  Or all over my mouth, if I’m honest. He misses most of the open part and coats my cheeks and my chin, too, so that I’m just one big nasty mess, again. I’m covered in lube and come – not to mention the slickness between my own legs, which now seems to be all over my thighs, too.

  I want to touch myself so badly I almost do it.

  And that’s how Tyler finds me – sprawled on the bed with my hand on my arousal-slicked mound. After a while Brandon collapses next to me, and then we’re just a couple of slutty bookends. Him dazed and probably lying in his own jizz, me still licking that same mess off my lips.

  ‘You two dirty fuckers,’ Tyler says, and, I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure how to defend myself against that accusation. I am a dirty fucker. I’m so dirty that I don’t stop rubbing at the slipperiness I’ve made, all over my plump, pouting pussy lips.

  And I watch him too.

  I watch him shamelessly, as he swaps the condom on his still unspent cock – though I can’t be blamed. He’s definitely putting on a show for me, again. He even bares his teeth as he stalks around the bed, like some predator just waiting for his prey to make the wrong move.

  If I try to run he’ll go for me. He’ll get me by the haunches and do that word I can’t stop thinking about – that one word I’d thought was funny, at the time, but now isn’t.

  Mount, I think. Mount me.

  But he keeps me waiting.

  ‘Kiss her clean,’ he says to Brandon, and my cunt fizzes and pops at the thought of what he might mean. He could be talking about my molten pussy, which now feels as though it hasn’t been touched since the dawn of time, despite the fact that it was touched about twenty minutes ago.

  Or he could be talking about my mouth – and he is. Because a moment later, Brandon leans over – still trembling and blank-eyed from that soul-shaking orgasm – and kisses me tenderly there. He takes my chin between his fingers and flicks his tongue out to gather the last of himself off my skin.

  Funny, but I want to keep it with me then. I kiss him harder, with all of my mouth and my hands, and I don’t think about what Tyler is doing until Bran pulls away and says, ‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’

  And then I have to think about it, because Tyler yanks me down the bed. He does more than that, in fact. He flips me over as though I’m made of nothing at all, while Brandon directs his protestations at someone else. ‘She doesn’t have to,’ he says to Tyler. ‘She doesn’t have to.’

  But he’s wrong, and made even more so as Tyler says, ‘I tell you what, if she doesn’t want to, she can just say the same thing you do: red rum.’

  I wonder why that word. Is it because of the movie? Or because it’s the colour of passion and the sense of something intoxicating? Or is it because it’s murder, backwards?

  I’m murdering my old life, in which I did not allow a man to rub his slick thumb back and forth over my asshole, while another man eyes me with faithful nervousness. And I’m moving into this new life, in which Brandon whispers to me that he loves me, as he pushes a hand through my now ruinous hair.

  I’m a tangled disaster, I think.

  And I’m happy this way.

  ‘Go on,’ I tell Tyler, because he doesn’t have to make me at all. He can just do it – pushing and stroking until my slick hole starts to give in under this strange new pressure – and he can say things, too, while he does it. I like his things, as much as I like that I love you. I more than like that I love you. I more than like this.

  ‘Open up,’ he says, and I like it even better then. I can feel the blunt head of his cock pressing and pressing against my entrance and, when I finally let him ease in – all too slick and too tense – it’s a relief.

  I sob, once, to the tune of Brandon saying, ‘Careful, careful.’

  ‘Is that what you want, Maisie?’ Tyler pants, in some kind of reply. ‘You want careful?’

  But I can tell he already knows I don’t. I’m bunching the sheets into fists, just as Brandon did. And the moment Brandon moves close to me, I claw at his mouth with mine – so greedy, suddenly. When did I get this greedy?

  I don’t know, but it feels incredible. The sensation of being stretched and used to capacity, of those hands on my hips pulling me back and back, in a telling, too-quick rhythm. He’s going to come soon – I can tell that before he says a word. It’s in his rough movements, almost too much for a while and then slicker, easier. And it’s in the way he’s moaning, just as Brandon did – with that same abandonment and eagerness.

  I’ve never heard Tyler be like that before.

  Unless he’s actually putting it into sentences.

  ‘Oh, she’s so tight – you wouldn’t believe,’ he groans, as he finds a kind of jerking back and forth that seems to suit him best. He isn’t going too deep into me, but I can feel what he is doing – he’s rubbing the sensitive ridge around the head of his cock against my stretched hole, each stroke catching the rim in a very particular sort of way.

  It hurts. Just a little. Just enough to make me moan back at him and beg him for more. Be harder, be ruder, use my ass, I think at him, but all he gives me are more filthy and maddening words.

  ‘She’s practically clinging to my cock. Yeah, Maisie. That good, huh? You like something in your ass?’

  I do, I do.

  ‘You want something else, huh? Maybe you want what we talked about. You want Bran to lick your sweet pussy while I fill this tight little hole?’

  He’s a goddamned mind-reader, I swear, because although this is amazing and arousing and I’m near beside myself, I know I can’t come like this. I need Bran to do what he then does without comment, so frantic for it it’s like he hasn’t orgasmed at all. He’s as fresh as a daisy and ready to lick my swollen cunt the second Tyler eases up and gives him space.

  And he does it so well. He spreads my slit the same way Tyler’s spreading my ass, firm and sure, then just laps a little at my stiff bead. He backs off when I nearly punch him then leans in again – and, oh, this time it’s just right. It’s just the right amount of pressure on the tip of my clit, back and forth, as Tyler says something insanely arousing like ‘Ahhh, I’m gonna shoot in your ass.’

  ‘You ready, Maisie?’ he asks, which is hilarious, really. It’s him who doesn’t sound ready. He’s panting and moaning, and the hands on my hips are slippery now. Whatever this is, it’s going to hit him hard.

  And, oh boy, does it ever. I’m caught momentarily between two sensations I can’t bear to experience – the slide of Bran’s tongue around my clit, and the feel of Tyler swelling and jerking in my ass. I’m not quite sure how to respond. I can’t back away or move forwards. I can’t escape.

  I just have to endure the pleasure as it ebbs outwards from my pulsing clit, and ends up somewhere close to the shove and thrust of Tyler’s cock.

  ‘Uhhhh I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he tells me, but he doesn’t need to. The ring of muscle around him is sensitive, and I can make out every little stutter and jerk as his cock spurts and fills the condom.

  And then it’s over. It’s over. It’s done.

  Only this time when we lie on the bed together, I have no urge to watch where my hands are going, no sense that I need to take eight showers immediately, to think things through.

  I only know this:

  I’m done eroding everything. From now on I’m rebuilding, instead.

  Chapter Nine

  Tyler’s different now, and I know it. I know it the second he slips his hand inside my dress and fondles my bare breast, right there in his own crowded bar. People are looking, I think, though I don’t know for sure.

  I’m too busy moaning into his mouth, as he gropes me and swamps me and makes me his.

  Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? A hallmark of ownership? I’m his little pet, now, his little toy, and that means I basically go limp the moment he does something beyond making out in a public place.

  Though I get some of my senses back when I notice Brandon’s not s
at next to us any more. And I noticed he wasn’t sitting next to us the night before, either, after a while of the kind of games Tyler likes to play. A threesome’s a tricky thing to negotiate, it seems.

  Who knew?

  ‘I should go see where Brandon is,’ I say, but Tyler just laughs. Which is the main problem really. We’ve kept our grips on this whole thing for a couple of weeks, but the grip is tenuous. One false move, one bit of laughing carelessness, and it could all go to hell – and I don’t want it to. I’m seriously this close to quitting my job and taking Tyler’s bullshit offer.

  Be our publicist, he’d said. But what he really meant was be our sex slave.

  And I’m surprisingly down with that. Last night, they made me come so many times I forgot my own name. Once they were through, I actually fell off the bed. I just slid right off, as though all of my bones had fled my body and left me with a sort of gelatinous mess.

  But that’s fine. It’s good. I want to be a gelatinous mess.

  What’s not as good is Brandon’s tendency to freak out a little bit. It’s as though he’s experiencing all the feelings I probably should, on top of his own.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Tyler tells me. Unfortunately, the hand he keeps on my boob makes me doubt the veracity of what he’s saying.

  ‘Are you just going to keep telling yourself that until he has a meltdown?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Tyler …’

  ‘He’s just jealous,’ he says, as though jealous is really a code word for awesome. Thankfully, I still know it isn’t. ‘That’s not a good thing.’

  ‘Why not? He likes being jealous.’

  ‘Nobody likes being jealous.’

  Tyler raises an eyebrow at me. It’s his very best ‘you can’t be this naive’ expression, and I brace myself for impact. ‘They probably do if they’re into cuckolding. But carry on. I think he enjoys your desperate efforts to make it up to him, too.’

  I have to take a drink. A long one. Shame it’s just lemonade. ‘I’m so out of my depth,’ I say, and though that’s hard for me to admit in front of the Sexual Svengali over here, Tyler just smiles, faintly, to hear it.

  ‘It would seem so. That’s part of the fun though, isn’t it?’

  I eye him warily. If I say no, I’m going to have to go back to being a librarian. If I say yes, he could just fuck my ass again – only this time he might do it right in the middle of this bar. How far out of my depth does he want me to go, exactly?

  ‘Yeah, but maybe it’s not always fun for Brandon. I don’t want him to feel … forced into something.’

  ‘Is that what you think is going on?’

  ‘Well, sometimes he seems really uncomfortable.’

  ‘And you think he doesn’t want to be uncomfortable? He wants to be secure and safe?’

  I’m not sure who we’re talking about any more. ‘No, not exactly. I just want to reassure him, sometimes. Tell him … you know … that I … that I love him.’

  It feels weird to admit it to Tyler before I admit it to Brandon, but somehow I can’t help it. The words just spill out when I’m faced with Tyler’s calm and steady version of persuasion.

  And then I’m left with a lifetime to regret it.

  ‘You love him?’ he asks, and I can hear it, right there at the back. That slight change in his otherwise sturdy voice.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I say, but his expression doesn’t change. It freezes in one default position – complete control, I’ll call it – and remains there. I have to change the subject, slightly, just to make everything less nerve-shredding. ‘Don’t you?’

  He shifts in his seat and, for the first time since this started, he looks away from me. Which probably means it’s not any less nerve-shredding, at all. It’s actually more nerve-shredding, because now he’s going to open up or expose himself in some way, and I won’t know what to do with this new, raw Tyler.

  Or at least, that’s what I think, until I hear his steely tone of voice. And his dismissive choice of words. ‘Look, Maisie, what you’ve got to understand is …’

  That I can’t love anyone. I’m an emotionally dead sex robot.

  ‘… Brandon likes certain things. And I’m only too happy to give them to him.’

  Now I’m on autopilot. A really, really bad sort of autopilot that makes me push for answers to things he doesn’t really understand or want to know. ‘But what if he wants more?’

  ‘Then I’ll give him that, too.’

  He sounds so sure, so very sure. But I find I can’t really believe him any more.

  ‘Even if what he wants is for you to stop forcing him?’

  He rolls his shoulders, irritated. Like I’ve got a finger under his skin, and I’m just burrowing and burrowing away until that facade finally cracks.

  ‘Nobody gets forced. Is that what it feels like, to you? Force?’

  I consider, briefly. I consider his voice like a silken rope, and his broad hands spread over my body. You want to turn over, don’t you, Maisie, he says, in my head – and I know the answer.

  ‘No. No. But I don’t know how Brandon feels.’

  He turns back to me – those eyes of his burning bright suddenly. The itch beneath his skin is gone, and this is what I’m left with: empty hands and no will to do anything, anything but what he says.

  ‘I’ll tell you how he feels: like he doesn’t have to be in control of his own desires. And because of that, it doesn’t matter what those desires are. He’s abandoned responsibility for them, and handed it over to me.’ He leans in close, and traces one finger over the curl that’s come loose, from the topknot I tried. ‘Now doesn’t that feel good? Doesn’t that feel like a relief?’

  ‘To what?’ I ask, and am embarrassed to find my voice has gone all breathless.

  ‘To let go. To let someone else carry the burden.’

  He’s right. It does. Most of my body has felt around twenty pounds lighter since last Sunday. ‘Go on,’ he’d said. ‘You can if you want to. Who’s going to stop you?’

  No one, I think. No one but me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And as you probably know by now, Brandon’s burden is pretty big. He worries that he’s gay; he worries that he’s straight. He worries that he’s warped inside, because it turns him on when I fuck you and tell him how much you enjoy my big fat cock.’

  Brandon’s not alone on that score.

  I enjoy it, too – though one thing lingers in my mind, as I do. The tangled memories of the things we’ve done flicker through my head, and end on this one point. This one thing I hadn’t considered, in the middle of all my concern about Brandon and how he’s feeling.

  ‘And what about you?’ I ask, and when I do I meet his heavy-lidded gaze. I meet it dead on, in a way that almost makes him pull back. ‘What do you worry about? What’s your burden?’

  His eyes drop before mine do, and I don’t mind admitting I thrill in a way I hadn’t fully considered, in amongst all of this submission.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I lean in close, as he did not a moment before. Just to, you know … try it out. ‘You do know. Tell me. Tell me what kinky thing you’d like me to do, when your conscience isn’t looking.’

  ‘There’s nothing,’ he says, but he’s lying. I can feel it buzzing through him, when I press a kiss to the curve of his throat and slide one hand inside the V of his shirt.

  ‘If you tell me,’ I whisper. ‘I might do it.’

  And then he gives it up, just like that. Just as I would if the positions were reversed. He’s right – it’s so easy when someone else takes the reins, takes control, lets you know that you don’t have to do anything but say the words he gives to me, without hesitation: ‘Make me.’

  * * *

  There’s just one problem I hadn’t fully considered when I squeezed those two words out of Tyler. It’s very easy to be the one under control – of course it is! That’s the whole point. You give up everything you are and just allow someone else to do all the thi
nking for you, for a brief time.

  But being the one in control … that’s much, much harder. I suddenly find myself fumbling in the dark, completely unsure of what he might want me to do, but certain I want to do it, whatever it may be.

  I want to give him it, if he craves it so. And he does, because the second we get up to the apartment he disappears into the kitchen, leaving me on the couch with Brandon – just like back in college, only with the pieces moved around. And Brandon, of course, gives me a look. He already knows before we’ve said a word or done a thing, I can tell. He can feel the shift in power, but that’s OK.

  I can feel it too.

  It’s what’s terrifying me.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Brandon asks, and I have to think, really think about what I should say, here. How does Tyler start things off, exactly? What did he say to Brandon, all those years ago, on a couch very like this one?

  And then I remember. He teased him.

  ‘You’ll never guess what he did to me downstairs.’

  Brandon gives me this wary look, but here’s the thing – somehow, it only spurs me on. I look at those suddenly parted lips of his and his faintly wide eyes, and I want to carry on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He fondled my breasts, while everyone watched.’

  And OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But who gives a shit when Brandon’s expression goes like that? It’s not even an expression, really. It’s as if his face falls down somewhere inside him.

  ‘Are you serious?’ he asks, but I can tell he knows I am.

  ‘Yeah. And then he slid a hand under my dress, and stroked my clit until I came all over his hand.’

  I think I’m getting the hang of this. It’s all about playing as hard and fast as you can, until the other person breaks – like a really aggressive game of poker. I’ve got nothing but a pair of twos and Brandon’s got a full house, but he doesn’t know that. I can’t let him know that.

  ‘You’re lying. Are you lying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, as I trace the curl of hair that’s made its way over his ear – just as Tyler did to me. ‘Which would you prefer?’