‘I suppose so, if your tiny mind is so easily occupied.’
‘That was a good effort at stopping me before we can get to the good stuff.’
‘Thank you. It took quite a bit of effort to do it,’ he says, the words so throwaway I could almost miss the meaning behind them. Maybe if I were not his Sherlock Holmes I would have, but even I can see that I am. I have a talent for guessing the hidden parts of people – a talent I had no idea was so pronounced, until I applied it to him.
But now that I have, I can hardly deny it.
I see his suggestion as clear as if he had written it in the sky:
It pains me to insult you.
And that just about takes my breath away. I need a second to process, and then accept, and finally offer the only thing I can.
‘We can stop if you want.’
‘If I say yes you will only wonder.’
‘Quite possibly, but I would never ask again.’
‘Not really the point – I would know you were thinking about it.’
‘And that will drive you mad, then?’
‘It already is driving me mad,’ he says.
I almost turn back. I really don’t want to push him. If he wants his secrets he is entitled to them. I have no claim on him and even if I did I doubt I would act on it. I want him to be at peace. I want him to laugh again.
I hate the thought of him struggling with anything.
Yet at the same time I am suspicious of what he is really doing here. I have been for a while. After all, he is as sharp as anything. He has to see what result that last comment will produce. He wants me to ask almost as much as he doesn’t.
‘Do you hate all kinds of touching?’
‘Oh, Lord, this is a sex question.’
‘I was thinking more of shaking hands.’
‘Ah. Well. In that case I prefer not to. I prefer not to do anything that involves any bodily contact,’ he says, and then I have to come clean.
My face is red and I feel found out, but I need to be honest.
After all, I’m expecting him to be.
‘It was really a sex question.’
‘You are appalling. Honestly – why does everything have to be about that?’
‘Because everything is about that. Wars are fought over it. People sing songs and write books and make movies about it. Human beings need sex.’
‘Then I must be something else, for I find precious little use for the stuff,’ he says, and I don’t know what I like more: that he says ‘precious little’ or that he refers to sex as stuff. He even makes an odd little gesture in the air when he does, like his fingers are covered in something sticky.
And that just about drives me crazy.
It’s as much as I can do to keep my next enquiry PG-13.
‘So I guess you must be asexual or maybe –’
‘I am not about to lay claim to an identity I do not possess. The trappings of sexual congress have simply never appealed to me – I find them repugnant and irrational and against most of the principles I hold dear. The human mind was meant to be ruled by logic and reason, not a morass of sloppy hormones.’
‘It sounds like you have no idea what sex is, to be honest.’
‘I have a perfectly good idea of what sex is.’
‘If you did, you would never refer to it as a sloppy morass.’
‘I fail to see how my description is in any way inaccurate.’
‘How can you possibly know that if you’ve never?’ I ask, intending only an innocent question but understanding at the same time why I do it. I want to know. It could well be that I burn to know, in a way that seems strange even to me. I always thought I was the kind of girl to be fascinated by lotharios who fuck everything that walks, and yet somehow, as soon as I come across the idea of the opposite, I am greedy for details.
And even greedier after he supplies some.
‘There are these things called books. I believe we are currently surrounded by them.’
‘Yes, but I doubt Jane Eyre is explicit about irrational fucking.’
‘Ah, so you believe my only source of information is a Bildungsroman from the nineteenth century about an orphan girl who marries a gigantic arse.’
‘I believe all of your sources of information are Bildungsromans from the nineteenth century about orphan girls who marry gigantic arses,’ I say, then wait in an agony of anticipation for him to take the bait. He’s going to tell me more now, I feel sure of it. I feel so sure that I don’t even see the danger when he answers.
‘Then I would be delighted to give you an example of the kind of thorough research I have undertaken. Have a seat,’ he says, and all I feel is glee. I sit without thinking and say ‘yes’ like a fool, and only realise at the last second what a mistake I might have made. I see it in a flash. I can hardly believe I let this happen.
I asked a man I can never have to tell me all the things he knows about sex.
And now I have to sit here and listen.
Chapter Six
I know as soon as he sits down that I am in trouble. He crosses one leg over the other, in a way I would describe as louche if I could stand to. At the very least I have to admit it shows off how long his limbs are, and how much more muscular than they had initially seemed. At first glance, he always appears rail-thin.
But then you see something flex and tighten in his thigh, and all is lost.
There is no going back, after this. Whatever pretence I made of not fancying him dissolves, the moment he sits there and just looks at me. Then, just when I think it can’t get any more intense, he reaches inside his dressing gown.
And draws out a bloody book.
God, I should have known there would be a book involved. I should have stopped before I asked him a single thing about who he is sexually, because, however rough I thought this was going to be, it is almost definitely going to be rougher now. I love books more than people. His speaking voice sends me straight to sex hell. How am I supposed to cope with him reading stuff to me? I can barely stand to see him riffle through the pages.
Those long pianist’s fingers practically stroke each one. He pauses only to lick his forefinger, which just makes everything far worse. By the time he finds a passage he likes, I am on the edge of my seat. The only things that seem to be holding me there are the muscles in my shins, but even they are starting to tremble.
Another second of this and I will end up sprawled on the floor.
I’m almost there now. My knees feel very close to the ground. Every part of me seems to be sagging, and that’s before he says, ‘Here we are. This should do.’ Then reads aloud from the book, in an even more sonorous and sin-riddled voice than any he has used before. And if that was not bad enough, in case the sound didn’t do the trick, this is what he says to illustrate whatever fucking point he thinks he’s making:
‘Her cunt was as ripe and wet as a recently sliced peach.’
I swear, I think my heart stops. I almost pound on my chest to get it going again – but only because, dear God, I cannot die now. He just said ‘cunt’. He said ‘cunt’! Did he say ‘cunt’? There is no way he could have said ‘cunt’. I must have misheard him. After all, there was definitely the word ‘peach’ in there, which probably means he is reading to me from a cookbook. He knows how much I love food so he thought that telling me how to make a cobbler would set my senses on fire.
And he isn’t wrong.
My senses are on fire.
They are on fire because he definitely fucking did say ‘cunt’. He said it in the most glorious way anyone has ever said it. He made it beautiful, rather than something I’m used to hearing from a tattooed man as he throws a beercan at my head. His mouth almost worships it. The word seems to take his tongue by surprise. I can almost see how it would be if he were to lick that very thing in one long, glorious, heartbreaking stroke.
But that isn’t the best part.
No, the best part is what comes next.
The best part is that there
is more.
‘And when she spread it for him he found he could hardly stop himself. He simply had to lick at that glistening slit, and the second he did so she reacted just as he had hoped. She stopped all pretence that she was a lady, and told him all the things she would most like him to do. In a fever she whispered that he should fuck her wet hole, and rub her swollen bud, and when he followed each of these deliriously filthy instructions she made sure to reward him in full,’ he says, in one great long rolling wave that nearly smashes me to pieces. I have to fight for breath and, when I finally manage to take one, it feels far too big and far too loud. It practically fills this enormous room.
To his credit, though, he makes no comment.
He just keeps on reading to me from the book from hell.
‘She came with a guttural groan of pleasure, her wetness running like a river over his chin and throat and chest. For a moment all he could taste was her – the soft, flushed folds pressed so tightly to his mouth and that glorious wash of her first orgasm. There would be many more for her that night, but before he could see to it she spoke the words he was bursting to hear. The ones he never thought she would say – too rude and yet so much the better for it. “Fuck my mouth,” she said. “Fill me there.” And though he wanted to hesitate, he found he could not. All that mattered was the tight velvet clasp of her lips around his cock, her lust-heavy eyes on him as he thrust slowly in and out.’
Seriously, what story is this? The cover makes it look like something important and old from a course on super-intelligent texts from the nineteenth century. I think it is bound in leather with embossed lettering, and the paper is thick and expensive.
Yet the words are filth itself. They are so filthy my cheeks are blazing. I think I might be just as embarrassed as I am electrified by it, though it’s a close thing. One emotion seems to bleed into another and then the other attacks the first with a hammer until finally I just have to accept it. He was right about knowing his stuff.
He knows his stuff just fine.
In fact he knows it so well I’m starting to suspect there may be some other motive in here somewhere. He seems calm, on the outside. And, when I react in any way, he barely appears to notice. Or so I think. But it must be hard for him to keep doing so, when I know there are so many signs of my excitement. My nipples are pressing against my dress, so stiff and spiky that not even a layer of lining and support can conceal them. And, though the room is as cold as a tomb, I can tell my cheeks are flushed. I can almost feel them blazing, like a neon beacon saying, ‘Molly is really fucking turned on.’
But even if they weren’t, the fact that I just started rocking in my chair would be something of a giveaway. He starts talking about working a slick finger into tight arseholes and coming in great, pulsing spurts, and I have to do something. I have to rub myself a little, and then maybe a little gives way to a lot, and finally I think I might be just humping the chair – so really he has to know something.
He must, and yet he keeps going.
Now he’s talking about some guy who just came in, as the first one finishes filling her mouth. And though I think I can safely say that one man makes for a simple story to illustrate his point, I’m not sure what to make of it when a second joins in. The second one fucks her pussy while the first licks her clit, and then, just in case that wasn’t bad enough, just in case I wasn’t almost wild with lust, he tells me in that gorgeous voice that ‘he slid out of her still shivering cunt, to spill all over the still lapping tongue of this handsome stranger.’
After which, I feel it must be OK to go further. He just described a guy coming all over and inside another guy’s mouth. You just don’t do that unless you expect someone to get excited – though to be honest I’m way past that point. I’m so turned on that I could slip a hand into my knickers. I could tug at my stiff nipples and stroke my slippery pussy. And when he talks about them both kissing her come-soaked sex I get really close. One of my hands almost makes it to mid-thigh and the other is somewhere around the middle of my chest.
But, thank God, it stays there. Thank God, I hold on to some of my senses, because just as sexual certainty has me in its bright-red and burning hot grip, just as I think there’s no way this is anything but a come-on – that’s when he chooses to suddenly snap the book closed, so sharply that I know what’s coming, but all the same, by God, I will it not to.
Just give me some small sign that you meant it to feel so sweet, I think at him.
And then he glances up at me, as impassive and cool as a pane of glass, and tells me what I should have understood from the moment he started speaking. I should have done, but I didn’t, and oh, God, I will regret that until the day I die.
‘So you see it’s quite simple to be aware of sex,’ he says, swiftly followed by the crushing kicker: ‘Without ever feeling anything at all.’
Chapter Seven
I try to pretend none of it affected me in the least. The only trouble is, he makes pretending almost impossible. It would have been easy before, when he spent his days hiding behind doors and darting away into rooms whenever I was around. But, unfortunately for me, he doesn’t need to do any of that now. He no longer has anything to hide.
He can just fly around the house whenever he feels like it, suddenly barging into rooms when I least expect him to. There I am, minding my own business, fervently sweeping the ceiling in order to take my mind off things, and he has the effrontery to come in and be sexy and attractive and probably Byronic.
All of which sounds stupid, considering what he usually wears around the house. I swear to God, he spends most of his time in pyjamas and robes. On one occasion he sweeps in wearing a smoking jacket, with nothing on his feet. I see his bare toes, and that just makes this all the more hellish.
Somehow the skin on his feet is better than the skin on my face. It looks so smooth and pale and tender that someone should probably write a poem about it. An ode to his toes, I think, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It seems that even the smallest, strangest things about him turn me on.
I know they shouldn’t. After all, no one could really find a man perched in a chair like a great black bird the least bit enticing. There is nothing sexy about someone who forgets he dropped a stick of chalk into his tea and drinks it anyway, or a guy who craves cigarettes so much that one day I find him rubbing an empty packet of Benson and Hedges all over his face and body.
Those things are repellent.
I want them to be repellent.
I wish with all my might that they were repellent, but they almost never are. Take the last example. It probably would be unattractive if it were any other man, if he were just a friend of the family who had a ferocious need for cigarettes. But the problem is that this is Cyrian who has a ferocious need for cigarettes. This is sexless, passionless Cyrian letting me see that he has a ferocious need for cigarettes.
And oh, Christ, it’s hell.
I have to watch him smear the foil from inside the packet over his closed eyes and his open mouth, so desperate that he barely cares that I am standing in the doorway. I doubt he would care if the Queen was standing in the doorway. He just wants to lick every last trace of cigarettes from the wrapper, in a way I know is completely helpless. There is nothing sexual intended.
It just feels sexual to me, the hormonal morass.
As does the next thing he suggests to me, much to my horror and consternation. All he says is that my posture is a little poor. At best, it seems like concern, albeit with a skilful hint of insult. But then he suggests I let him correct it, and everything starts to slowly slide sideways.
I have no idea why I say yes. I am going to get myself into serious trouble again, and I see that even before he opens his study door for me. He moves with the same grace as when he sat down and took out that smutty story, that lesson-giving look all over his amazing face. And then he hands me a book and tells me to balance it on my head, and I immediately understand what is going to happen here.
I am going to walk up and down in front of the desk in his study.
And he is going to watch me in a way that makes me go out of my mind. Hell, I am already going out of my mind, and nothing has happened yet. I am just gingerly trying to balance the book and he is just sitting at his desk, hands neatly folded in his lap. No one could think this was a big deal.
But then no one would have had his eyes on them while they did it. They probably just played at this once when they were kids, or maybe the headmaster made them do it once, after they were caught slouching in class. A stern and forbidding figure, but even so – nothing like this.
His gaze feels like the sun on the side of my face. I want to stop right there before I get burned, but of course I can’t now. I’ve already agreed to it. If I back out he will know something is wrong, and I never want him to. Not if he has no idea what all this is doing to me. Not if he thinks it should never do anything to me at all. He is repelled by sex, I think, and will see me as disgusting if I try to force my feelings upon him.
So I walk when he tells me to. I take a tentative step in the glare of that unwavering stare, heart pounding somewhere around my forehead, every part of my body sweating. I’ve never sweated so much in my life. I think I feel it forming a slick on the insides of my thighs, but then I realise.
That is not perspiration.
Oh, my God, it’s not perspiration. Somehow the mere idea of this walking thing is making other stuff happen to me. I think of his eyes slowly following me as he sits there like a punter in some really strange strip club, and the space between my legs aches, and becomes full and fat and slick, despite my best efforts to suppress it.
I try thinking of wallpaper wrapped around my grandmother, or paint drying on the word ‘England’ that someone has hung on a tax-office door. Then, when that has no effect, I just go for broke. As clumsily as I can, I let the book slide off my head and fall to the floor. That should do the trick, I think.
Being a big awkward dork is never exciting.
But then he stands up and starts to move towards me, and oh, I know I’ve miscalculated.
Sweet Agony Page 6
