‘You might not mind never doing anything sexual again. But I bloody well do.’
Chapter Eleven
Something shifts after that. It has to, because now everything is abundantly clear. Yes, sex might make him look like someone shocked by the return of the recently deceased. Yes, it makes him flinch and balk and occasionally tell me terrible things that turn me upside down.
But he wants it all the same.
He wants it so badly that he’s willing to put a hand on my thigh, even though I can tell it burns him to do it. In the taxi to wherever we’re going he keeps splaying his fingers and making a fist, as though remembering the shock of the whole thing. Occasionally he looks at it as though it no longer belongs to him, but he copes. I know he copes, because once we get to our destination things go rapidly down that hill I thought was unconquerable. And when I say down that hill, I mean a slide coated in sex that ends in a glorious ocean of ecstasy.
Or at least that is what it feels like.
We go in some side door of what looks like a tiny rambling cottage, everything so dark and cold and strange I actually sound a little panicked when I say his name. ‘Cyrian,’ I call out, and expect some deadpan comment in return. Something like ‘Try not to worry, there are only seventeen ghosts living here.’
And instead he gives me this:
‘Get on your knees.’
So sudden that for a full thirty seconds I feel sure I must be misinterpreting. He could not possibly have meant that in the sexual sense. He just wanted to direct me to the light switch, which in this instance is located somewhere around the skirting boards. Old country homes belonging to wealthy families are usually built that way, and I’m just too poor and uncultured to know any better.
Or too dumbstruck to understand that he wants me to do it so he can put a hand in my hair. Which I guess seems fine, if a) the man you are with was totally okay with touch and never had any problems with it whatsoever, and b) he didn’t do it for sexy reasons.
But unfortunately for me neither is true. He does have a problem with touch – or at least he did, until very, very recently. Right now it seems to be snowballing into some other thing altogether, which includes him getting a fistful of my hair. He gets a fistful of my hair, and then, oh, then he just starts unbuttoning his trousers again.
Like the whole business on the train has got him so riled up that he forgets who he is, momentarily. Or is it more that he remembers, and simply doesn’t care? He’s somehow stumbled to the same point I get to, too far gone to be bothered about things like propriety and personal boundaries. Right now, I doubt he could pick out personal boundaries with ten telescopes and a tricorder.
If he could, I suspect he would never do anything like this. The hand in my hair is so tight it almost hurts, and despite the darkness I can see what he’s doing fairly clearly. I can make out how frantic his hand is on those buttons, followed by a glimpse of something so thick and solid it makes me go a little faint. I almost pitch forward the second he eases it free, but even if I had fallen flat on my face I could hardly have faulted myself.
How can I, with this one thought going round and round in my head?
He’s going to fuck my face. He is absolutely going to fuck my face, I think, and then it basically feels like a wonder that I stay upright at all. The insides of my thighs automatically go weak, as if I’ve drunk too much gin without knowing it. That drumbeat starts between my legs again, and it doesn’t get softer or slighter when I realise he isn’t quite going that far.
He so often leaves me feeling like this is the last sexual contact we will ever have that anything is basically OK with me. The train was enough. The order was enough. Him jerking his cock about an inch from my lips is just a joy and a pleasure. It thrills me in all kinds of ways, from the smell of his arousal to the slick sound of his hand shuttling back and forth to the idea that I could just do it if I wanted to.
He is mere centimetres from me. It would take almost no effort to stick out my tongue and get a taste. And it would feel good to him, too, God knows it would. He’s never had someone lick him there, which seems like a crying shame to me in this moment.
But I want to resist. Despite the heat and the hand in my hair near dragging me closer, despite the sense that he would like me to, I want to resist. I want to show him that he can trust me always to respect his boundaries, and be as patient as he needs, and am I glad I do.
If I had licked he might have pulled back, instead of doing what he does:
He groans my name like some sinful prayer as he fills my open mouth.
I wake wondering if yesterday was a dream, still too blindsided by it to fully understand and accept it. He touched me on a train. A train with people on it. He even seemed to like the fact that there were people on it, and told me so in graphic detail. And then, just in case that wasn’t terrifying enough, he made me kneel on a cold stone floor in the kitchen of his old family home, and came all over my face while saying filthy things.
‘He did it in your mouth,’ my mind informs me in wonderment.
And I can’t tell my mind she’s wrong. I can still taste him on my tongue, clean and sweet and sharp all at the same time. I can still feel his hand in my hair – a sensation that gets stronger when I try to turn my head. He pulled just a touch too hard, and my scalp twangs the moment I move.
Though scalp-twanging is not really what I find myself focusing on.
The fact that he is lying next to me is.
He’s in this strange bed with me. And true, yes, he’s fully clothed. He hasn’t even taken his shoes off, and has barely disturbed the roughly knitted blankets beneath him. But the fact that he did it at all is something. It makes my heart lurch just to see him here, eyes closed and lips ever so slightly parted. One arm a little flung out, as though he forgot decorum in his sleep. Curly hair almost spread out over the pillow, so black and glossy and gorgeous I can hardly resist it.
He touched mine, I think.
Is it OK for me to touch his? I could just stroke that tiny kiss curl at his temple with the very tip of my finger. Or maybe run along the length of his collarbone – I can see it there, peeking out from behind his open collar. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, would it? It seems like twelve steps down from face-coming, so I think it might not be.
But then I remember the promise I made the night before. The one about building up his trust, and having faith in him in return. He will get there in his own time. He’s never going to abandon me to a life of celibacy. I just have to be patient, really patient. I have to make do with occasional stretches between sex, as he recuperates.
Or at least, I assume I do.
‘I can only lie this still for so long, you know. Better do it before I stop pretending I am entirely asleep and absolutely not getting an erection at the idea of you fondling me while I am as helpless as a woman in a painting by Rossetti. Or any of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – they were all insufferable misogynists who wanted to fuck dead girls rather than interacting with real live women.’
I should have known better, considering yesterday’s events.
‘I have no idea where to start with that speech.’
‘I think most would begin with the “fucking dead girls” part.’
‘I want to, but you just said “erection” and then I lost the train of whatever we were talking about.’
‘It began with me suggesting you keep doing whatever exquisitely awful thing it was that you were doing, without wondering if I want you to stop,’ he says, and I think he means it. He means it so hard, in fact, that his eyes are still closed. He keeps the illusion going, even after it’s been smashed apart.
But the problem is: I can’t.
‘If it feels painful I want to stop.’
‘It feels agonising, but oh, the agony is sweet.’
‘Then you want me to just cross your boundaries without any consideration for how you feel?’ I ask, and there is a long pause. So long that I think he’s run out of patience
and just wants me to go ahead. Those eyes of his are still closed. His lips are still parted. And he’s so close, so very close, so much closer than I thought he was. I can see that curve between the spiky parts of his upper lip, so tender it tempts me to put my finger just there. I can see the strange furriness of his eyebrows, a hundred times less refined than the rest of his face. I could stroke them and see just how rough or soft they are. I could smooth them out with my little finger. I could kiss him there, as sweetly as he can stand it.
I could, but still I resist.
And then he speaks, and I wonder why I ever did.
‘I have no boundaries now. You burned them all. I have no walls around myself; you have reduced each one to rubble. You have undone me in every conceivable way and yet still you hesitate, and I adore you for it. Sometimes I wish I did not; God knows it would be easier for me. But if an easy life must be paid for with the absence of you then I find the price too steep to so much as contemplate. I am your creature now, wholly and completely – so do with me what you will. I shall not turn you away,’ he says, so low and calm you could almost imagine it meant nothing.
Except for all the ways in which it means everything. I think my heart tries to eat him, while he just lies there as impassive as stone. Eyes still closed, that arm still flung almost to me. Like a dying man that half made it, I think, and then it just has to happen. I have to touch him, even if I am slowly realising the other thing that is holding me back.
I thought it was mostly his disgust.
But I think it could also be my terror. My hand is shaking when I reach towards him. I search his face almost frantically for signs of discomfort, and when I see the line between his brows I want to back off all over again. I stop short just like I did before, half wondering if he will be content with that much. Just that stroking as though there’s an invisible barrier between us. No more than that, I tell myself, no more.
‘You could start by taking off my clothes.’
Or maybe I am supposed to do a ton more, after being told in so sudden a way. I come very close to gasping, because oh, God, I didn’t expect him to speak there. He practically stabbed the tension with a ten-inch butcher’s knife. Now it’s bleeding everywhere and I can’t breathe and he knows it, he knows it – even though his eyes are closed he knows it.
‘This game is probably not going to work if I have to keep telling you what could conceivably be OK with me, and my many boundaries.’
‘So this is a game then. This is a game that I am supposed to be in charge of instead of you. I have to take control of everything, while you just lie there.’
‘You sound panicked, Molly. Do you think panic is really the best way to put me at ease?’ he asks, but only because he is a total bastard. He knows what the answer is going to be to that, yet still it stays completely unfair. Of course I panic.
He makes me panic.
He’s still making me panic, even now.
‘I have no idea how to put you at ease. My speciality is fucking your shit up.’
‘So fuck it up, then. I can assure you I will say the safe word I gave you if you are in any danger of putting me into a fear-induced comatose state.’
‘Is there an actual chance of that, Cy?’
‘There is if you call me Cy again.’
‘All right. All right. I can do this. I can do it.’
‘Of course you can. Brilliant woman like you.’
‘I just have to pretend you’re sleeping.’
‘Exactly, not an issue at all,’ he says.
Only it is an issue, almost immediately. Partly because I am sweating and trembling and worried about doing the wrong thing, but mostly because once I get down to it I can see a number of practical problems. Taking someone’s clothes off is easy when they are actively involved in the operation. Taking them off when they are lying down with their eyes closed is complicated. It involves lifting limbs and turning parts you feel nervous about touching, and even if it didn’t there is also his size.
He might be relatively slim, but at six foot something he’s still way too heavy for me to lift in places where I might need to lift him. I find myself eyeing his butt area with something like trepidation, despite how compact and tight and awesome his butt actually is. And I cannot imagine hauling his torso up to take off his jacket.
So I suppose it’s good, really, that he’s there for me.
‘There are scissors on the nightstand.’
It just doesn’t feel good.
It feels more like abject terror.
‘You want me to cut your suit off?’
‘No, I want you to trim my toenails.’
‘Your suit probably cost more than the house I grew up in – no need to be a smart arse about my completely understandable reluctance.’
‘I have forty-seven just like it.’
‘That doesn’t change the fact that it’s worth a ton,’ I say, though now all I can really think is forty-seven. Forty-seven identical suits that probably cost at least a thousand pounds each. And I suspect that the thousand-pound estimate is hopelessly naïve. People probably pay that for a good one from Debenhams, never mind the tailors I know he gets his stuff from. One of them delivered something to the house, and they did so in what looked like a car James Bond would drive. The package was wrapped in cloth, not paper.
All of which poses the question: just how wealthy is he?
It seems like a question I should revisit at some point, but for now I have to focus on this. I really, really have to focus on this, because it is taking some interesting turns.
‘All the better that it is, quite frankly. I think I might be getting hard just at the idea of you carving away at the material, and I feel quite confident that it makes you wet. But if you would rather hesitate some more please go ahead – it might build the tension to the point where I come the second you undo a single button.’
Seriously, what am I supposed to make of that?
He said ‘wet’. He said ‘hard’. And then there is the other thing.
‘Oh, my God, is that a possibility?’
‘Probably not, no, but it got you all excited so was most likely worth saying.’
‘I was excited before, I can promise you that much.’
‘Yes, but there is a certain state you get into where you will throw all your reservations away, and that is more what I was aiming for. You know, the one where your nipples start poking through whatever you might be wearing and your cheeks become delightfully flushed and every breath you take sounds like a moan,’ he says, and I don’t know what’s worse. That he understands this about me, or that he talks about his knowledge in so casual a fashion. It’s like he sees how exciting it is to underplay the sexiest things. To act like his observations are nothing, when really they mean the world to me.
And by ‘me’ I mean my vagina.
They mean the world to my vagina.
Though I try to keep myself as calm as he seems. If this game he plays is exciting to me, I have to wonder if it is the same for him. He might even want me to do things this way – so I give it my best shot. I put on my breeziest voice.
‘That does sound familiar.’
‘Are you there now?’
‘Fairly close, I think.’
‘Perhaps I should keep talking until you are.’
‘You could do that, if you like.’
‘I could tell you what I almost did to you in the kitchen.’
‘So you wanted to do more than come all over my face?’ I ask, at which point I realise I’m losing the breeziness. He might be able to do it, but then he has had years and years of practice at pretending he feels nothing. I, on the other hand, have had years and years of practice in being a gushing, clumsy, over-sexed mess.
And my reaction to what he says pretty much proves that.
‘I wanted to yank your knickers down and fuck your arse. I imagine it would not have been so difficult. Your cunt was such a slippery mess – I feel sure it must have made a river between
those pretty little cheeks. Of course I would have prepared you a little first. I seem cruel, I know, but I have no desire to truly hurt you. And of course I know you’ve never had anyone there, by the way you reacted when I slid that cane just a little way in. So I think I would have licked you there first, had I been able. Licked you and fingered you and then fucked you over the kitchen table, while you most probably begged me for more,’ he tells me, and then I lose whatever sense I had left. How can I not? He just told me he wants to fuck my arse. That is one hell of a leap from barely touching.
And the worst part about it is that he totally knows it. I can see the smile lurking somewhere just behind his lips, like when he thought he’d played a winning hand in the parlour. Only this time, this time, oh, this time. This time he has. I am nailed, utterly and completely. He doesn’t have to persuade for a second more.
I just say in a strangely small, grave voice:
‘OK, lie still now and be quiet. I need to cut your clothes off.’
And then I grab the scissors from the nightstand and lay siege to his suit. His expensive, beautifully tailored suit, as soft as butter and so gratifying to cut into. I get the blades around one cuff and just slide all the way up to his shoulder, the sound like something out of a tailor’s wet dream. Hell, it could be something out of one of my wet dreams. I know I moan when the material peels away.
Though the best part is: so does he.
Very faintly, but then faintly is all you need with someone like him. Faintly is like a bomb going off, and ground zero is definitely my ladyparts. I stiffen the second I hear it, and not in the innocent way. In the lewd way, the very, very lewd way. I know my nipples are poking through this blouse just as he described. I can see them when I glance down, and feel the silky material against them whenever I move. It sends shivers of sensation all the way down to my swollen clit every time it happens.
But I try to keep myself under control. I’ve barely got one sleeve off him yet. If I don’t keep at least a little bit calm I’m probably going to go crazy once the rest of it is off. I might maul him, I think, then I want to laugh at such a ludicrous idea.
Sweet Agony Page 14
