Never Loved

by Charlotte Stein

  Whereas this…

  This is fucking terrifying and enormous. My whole body is drowning in this thick morass of pulsing sensation. It feels as though I might be about to throb my own skin off. His thumb is barely touching the underside of my clit, and yet the ache it produces is beyond anything I can stand. If I actually make it to orgasm I think I might be in a bit of trouble—which is probably why I stop moving.

  Not that stopping really helps.

  “Think you might need a little more of this to do it?” he asks, and by this he means his thumb right on my clit. He means no more anticipation and no more building. Just lots of rubbing and sliding and mmmmmmm, Jesus, those hot little circles, so much tighter than the ones he was doing before.

  However, that still doesn’t seem like enough for him. My reaction must be too small—though I swear it is only because I’m trying to hold everything in. I have my teeth gritted to prevent excessive moaning, and every muscle tightened in case any further pleasure tries to slip past my defenses, but clearly he doesn’t see it that way. How else to explain what he then says?

  “Want my mouth again?” he says—an offer that almost sends me all on its own. It makes my clit kind of move or jerk or something, and oh, no, oh, Lord, I can feel my slickness starting to slide down between the cheeks of my bottom. I’m wetting myself, for God’s sake, but he says, “Want me to lick this sweet little clit? Taste that juicy cunt?”

  I wish he hadn’t said sweet.

  I wish he hadn’t said cunt.

  But most of all, I really wish he didn’t just do it without waiting for an answer. Or at the very least he moved his hand away before doing it, because honestly there are no words for the way it feels to have someone lick that swollen bud while just sort of holding it between two fingers. No words at all. No way to deal with it. The sensation is so raw and fierce it makes me grunt—and really, that’s the least of the bad things I then do.

  I also put a hand on the back of his head.

  I hold him there, as though I want to feel it more or keep him licking. And in one way I do, I honestly do. There is nothing like the pleasure I get from his tongue sliding over the very tip of my clit. It sends me sideways. Heavenly trumpets might possibly be sounding.

  But it also makes me feel as if I’m coming apart. Everything is getting all fuzzy and weird, and of course once he feels my hand, it only gets weirder. He takes that as Yes, please, more, do it more, and so he does and fuck, fuck, fuck, it all just seems like way too much. He licks at me all fast and firm, with his fingers just about everywhere, and then holy shit, he sucks at me and that is it.

  That is my limit.

  I have to push him away. He needs to be away from me now. My stomach seems to be going into spasms, and my toes have curled up so tight inside my stupid fucking purple Converse that I think they might turn inside out. A scream is building in the back of my throat—but tough luck, I guess, because those hands are back on my hips. They are right there, and they hold me tightly the second I try to get away. Hell, I think he pulls me tighter against his working mouth, all the time licking and sucking and kissing until something terrible gets hold of my body.

  Feels like a ring of fire. Feels as if I have a buzzer inside me and someone is pressing it. Great sizzling tingles rush up through me, and when they get to my mouth, bad things happen. Words happen. All the words I thought I just didn’t know but was really keeping in.

  “Ohhhhh, yes, I’m coming, I’m coming, keep licking me like that, keep doing that to my clit, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, don’t stop,” I say, and only refrain from more because pleasure jams my teeth and my lips together.

  As if I’m being electrocuted, I think.

  And that’s true enough. I certainly twist as if twenty thousand volts are going through my body. I even start to panic after a while, as though at any second my hair will start to smoke, and my skin will start to blister and I will die. Oh, God, I might die. Oh, Jesus, how on earth does anyone ever take this bliss?

  I certainly don’t know how. I get one more intense pulse and start to panic, pushing at his hands in a way I really don’t want to and making sounds that honestly don’t seem right. They come out more like sobs than cries of pleasure. In fact, I think that might be exactly what they are. I’m sobbing through the end of my orgasm, like some fool who thinks up is down and left is right and happiness is horror.

  And then when sobbing isn’t enough, I go one worse.

  I have to, though. I need my knees to be up near my chest. I need to make as tight a ball as possible, just to get through whatever this is. He stopped touching me about a century ago, but the electricity is still pouring through me. Most of it seems to have gone down to these little jerks and pops, but jerks and pops are bad enough.

  They make my teeth clack together.

  They make me flinch when he reaches out one hand and strokes it over my upper arm, even though he’s as gentle about it as anything. When I think about it, he was gentle about everything. I don’t even know why I was scared or what made me brace myself like that or think he might really just fuck me.

  Of course he’s never going to just fuck me.

  He can hardly touch me, now that he sees me like this. He pulls back the second he feels me jerk like his hand burns, and then he says things like this: “You okay, my sweet girl?”

  Which is quite possibly the most lovely set of words I’ve ever had uttered in my presence. Swiftly followed by the second contenders. “I only wanted to give you something better. That was all. Something better than just a fuck,” he says, as though he really has to explain. He never has to explain. He bought the rights to zero explanations when he decided to lick me to orgasm rather than ramming me to death like I ridiculously asked for.

  But the problem is, I am really struggling to express that to him. I try to talk, and all that comes out is a snotty gargle. Whenever he touches me, I jerk away. No part of me is under my control, and of course he takes that as something else altogether.

  “Did I hurt you? You hurt, baby? Please tell me,” he says.

  After which I would basically write on the walls in blood to let him know that everything is okay. He just sounds so heartbroken and sort of beside himself. I absolutely cannot keep him waiting another second—not even if it means forcing out a no that somehow seems to have seventeen syllables. Not even if I have to explain all of this embarrassing stuff, with my face all smeary and red, and my voice going up and down an invisible mountain range. Seriously, it sounds as if I’m gargling my own emotions.

  But I get some words out.

  One of them is I and the other is just and the other is never, and all of them are kind of mortifying. Part of me wants to bury my face in a pillow as I say them—and by pillow I of course mean a gigantic burning bonfire, and by face I mean my immortal soul. Though at least he seems to take it okay. More than okay, really. The line of concern between his brows starts to relax, which is almost certainly a good thing.

  And after a moment he kind of lets out a relieved sound, rather than a laugh.

  “That good, huh?” he says, and my whole body relaxes.

  Shame it does it about a second too soon. Just one little second before his expression starts to turn, as realization dawns. I actually see it happen—like it did when I told him I was a virgin. Like his whole idea of everything is slowly sliding down a sheer drop.

  Maybe to the land of extreme chastity.

  “Wait, what are you saying here?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.”

  Then to prove that nothing, I wipe my face. I try to sit up—though of course I fail miserably at that. I think my elbows might have turned inside out. At the very least, every muscle in my body has turned to syrup, which hardly helps when I need to be dignified.

  And nor does the skirt I still have rucked up around my hips. It not only leaves me completely bare down there, but has also formed a kind of tire that I seem to be rolling around on. God only knows how ridiculous I look. Too ridicul
ous to seem like a reliable witness, most likely. He watches me flail around for about thirty seconds before finally confirming to himself what anyone alive would know.

  “Oh Jesus, you mean never full-stop. You mean you’ve never come at all.”

  I hate how he says those last two words—like the concept is beyond the beyond. But what can I say? I think it might be the truth. That little buzz of nothing I got back in the dorm room while thinking of Ryan Gosling wrestling with Chris Evans—something I was so proud of, so very proud—was absolutely nothing compared to this.

  I mistook a firework for a doomsday device.

  And now he knows. He really, really knows a lot.

  “You got to be kidding. Are you kidding? You’re just fucking with me now ’cause you know it makes me lose my shit. Please tell me that is what is happening here.”

  If only I could tell him that this is what is happening here. Then I would be a French girl with big sunglasses called Saffron, who probably never thinks about Chris Evans wrestling with Ryan Gosling while clutching a pillow between her legs.

  “Yes, that is absolutely what is happening here.”

  “Even though that’s a lie.”

  “Well, I have to. I have to lie.”

  “Why do you have to? You can tell—”

  “Because if I don’t, you might never want to do it again. You had a hard enough time with me being a virgin. You had a hard enough time with me being a nice college girl who likes you, never mind despoiling my pristine body with sudden orgasms.”

  “The problem is not with you having orgasms. I want you to have orgasms. I want you to do every single thing that feels good and not have a second fucking thought about it.”

  “Then what is it? Why is it such a big deal that I have no experience?”

  “I already told you. Maybe I just don’t want that experience to come from me.”

  “I think we have fully established that you are a good person.”

  “There are still problems with how I feel about you.”

  “Then tell me what they are.”

  He spreads his hands.

  “The fact that I like it.”

  “What?”

  “I like how you react to things. A lot. Too much.”

  “That seems okay.”

  “It isn’t. I shouldn’t get hard like this because you have no idea what you’re doing. It feels off. It feels wrong. It makes me doubt all my motives, no matter how well intentioned they start out. I mean, did I just do that because you seemed to need it? To take the edge off, to keep things going slow? I think so, only when I look back, all I feel is how much it fucking got me to tell you to get on the bed and spread your legs and watch that expression on your face,” he says, and I can tell he’s not lying.

  He sounds turned on now, just talking about it.

  “What was the expression like?”

  “Fucking amazing. Even more so now that I know you’ve never got off in your whole life. And that sound you made when you came…” he says, and I don’t know what is more exciting. The fact that my reaction made him that way, or that it did it to such an extent that he has to trail off at the end there.

  Either way, though, I’m eager for more.

  “It was a good one, huh?”

  “It was. Yeah, it was.”

  “Kind of turned you on.”

  “I think you can tell it did.”

  “So maybe…maybe it could be my turn now?” I say, now so greedy for this that I let it get in the way of good sense. I even imagine that he really might—which only makes his response more disappointing.

  “Honestly? I kind of have to be up early in the morning,” he tells me, and I make the mistake of letting it go there. Even after I see him look away as I strip off and climb into one of his massive T-shirts he gave me to sleep in, I let it go. Even as I see him look too much when the enormous collar slips down over one of my shoulders, or shows too much of my still-spiky nipples. They make little dark points against the cotton, and he hardly seems able to take his eyes off them.

  But I keep on believing anyway, like the fool I am.

  —

  I wake in a cozy bubble of warmth and his smell, so strong in the cotton of the T-shirt that before I even open my eyes I pull it up to my face. I breathe deeply and get nothing but fresh laundry and that sharp, airy scent, then feel kind of silly. Sniffing clothes is the kind of thing besotted people do, and I would hardly call myself that. If I was, I would probably not be able to resist touching him now, but I manage fine. I lie very still in the darkness with my eyes closed, thinking about all kinds of other things.

  Like how utterly enormous this T-shirt is. I can cover my whole body in it, if I bring my knees up to my chest and duck my head. The sleeves are meant to be short, but they easily pass my elbows. And if I wanted to undress, I could probably do it backward. Climb right out of the neck hole and then stand there in this house stark naked.

  No doubt to his consternation. Most likely he would hate himself for giving me a T-shirt that barely fits my body. After all, he seems to hate himself for everything else. Somehow he thinks enjoying my fumbling approach to sex is a terrible thing, when really, it just fills me with relief. Now I know I don’t have to hide. I never have to pretend or be something I’m not.

  I can be me, in all my awkward glory.

  I can be the girl who had a terrible, controlling father. The one who only just knows anything about sex because sex was off-limits for seventeen years of her life. The one who wants in great gasping fits after being denied for so long.

  And he can be him.

  I just wish he knew who he was.

  He no longer has to worry about walking some terrible line between being a gentleman and giving in to his desires. They can be the same thing, as far as I can see. They already are in someone like him—so worried that he will become whatever horror show his father was, that he goes way too far in the other direction. In fact, I think I have to tell him that he goes too far in the other direction, before he does something bad.

  Like disappearing in the middle of the night.

  Why has he disappeared in the middle of the night? More important, why has he disappeared for so long? The bed next to me is freezing cold, even though I know for a fact that he slept there for a while. I drifted off with one massive arm for a pillow, and that was after I spent a humiliating amount of time peeping at him as he dozed. If he had shifted to make his bed elsewhere, I think I would have known it.

  So what, then? Where has he gone?

  For a troubled walk, I think, then feel a little queasy. The last thing I want is him wandering around feeling terrible. Or starting to second-guess everything again. Or falling down an abandoned mine in the dark. Oh, God, what if he falls down an abandoned mine in the dark? Those first ideas are bad, but the last one is worse. It pains me in a way that hardly seems healthy. It means I have to immediately get up from the bed and check, even though getting up from the bed and checking means going out into the hall.

  The hall that is completely pitch-black and freezing cold and full of probably nightmare creatures from his terrible past. Somewhere, an actual screen door is banging. I hear an animal making a lonesome noise and the wind is howling—just like that horror movie I should never have watched the other day. The one with the guy who wears skin on his face.

  I’m probably about to be eaten alive.

  Though at least that idea makes me realize how much he means to me. So much that I get out of bed and go out into the cold darkness of his creaking hallway, despite possible cannibals lurking in corners. I brave the sound of a probably haunted screen door banging somewhere and the sense of old and terrible things just about dripping from the walls—not to mention that sudden and very new fear of being taken by drug-dealing friends of Tommy’s.

  I mean, who is to say they went away for good?

  They might be back. Oh, yeah, they might—and not just for me. They could grab Serge when he least expects it. Pay him ba
ck for what he did. He might be getting bashed with broken bottles as I stand here in the hall panicking about it, and not even the sight of the bathroom light coming from underneath the door calms that thought down. Maybe they got him while he was on the toilet. They could be cutting his throat right now, so really, going in to check is practically a necessity.

  However, I suspect I have other reasons somewhere in there.

  I mean, how likely is it that any of this is going on? Not very, considering the complete lack of murderous shouts and deadly struggles. Plus, before I even push the door open, I hear the shower going. Some part of me definitely knows what is happening. So why do I go in? More pressingly:

  Why do I stay once inside?

  I can see that no one is brutally killing him. He is not having an agonized walk and in imminent danger of falling down an abandoned mine. He is just soaping his big, very naked body all over, behind a curtain so thin I could probably squint and see right through it. I don’t even have to squint, in all honesty. I take a step forward and tilt my head, and can see the dark shape of all sorts of things behind the wavering plastic. There is the swell of his biceps, and that solid shape is the slant of his thigh, and when he turns a little I get the plump curve that could well be his ass.

  I am now ogling his ass, apparently.

  Because what would anyone else other than me call this? I can practically feel the drool running down over my chin. My feet are rooted to the floor out of sheer, impossible excitement—though I do my best to fight them. They seem like assholes, to be honest, refusing to move just when I need them to most. I don’t want to be spying on him, in his private moments.

  And especially when I start to realize what he might be doing.

  Of course it comes to me slow. The curtain hides a lot, and I have no idea what a man washing himself really looks like. The closest I’ve come is probably a scene from some sports movie, so I want to say that my continuing presence here is somewhat understandable. Other people would probably leave immediately, because they would get it right away and feel doubly intrusive. But I don’t. I watch the shadow of his left hand sweeping all over his chest and his shoulders and the other sweeping over something else, and take far too long to get it. I even hear him making noises and think nothing of it.