Nervous

by SM Johnson

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing. I mean, I can’t. I just – you’re so beautiful, and you do these mind-blowing things to me, and I just… I don’t know anything!”

  He didn’t laugh.

  He wrapped his arms around me and held on tight.

  “Don’t ever be sorry about that.”

  “But I want to make you feel good.”

  “You do.”

  I started to protest, and he shushed me, tucking my head under his chin. “You do, and you will. It’s okay to take things slowly. I’m the one nervous about that part, so you don’t have to be. You’re supposed to let me do all the worrying, remember? That’s the beauty of letting me take control. When I’m ready for you to see me and touch me, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, still sniffling.

  “Yes. Don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault. I’ll teach you how to make me feel good, I promise. I don’t want you to worry about this at all. I have an unusual body, but if you’re okay with it, I will be, too. I just need a little more time.”

  When I nodded, the top of my head bumped his chin and made his teeth click.

  I giggled.

  “Oh sure, now you laugh, when you’ve made me bite my tongue.”

  We clutched each other in silence for what felt like a long time. And during that time, I remembered the threat or promise about the plug. “Avery?”

  “Yes, my lovely jewel?”

  “What does that plug feel like?”

  chapter twenty-three

  nervous can be…fun?

  “You never did tell me how you feel about piercings,” Avery said, just as I was falling asleep. My eyes flew wide open in the dark.

  “Piercings like Tasha’s?” I asked.

  “Yes, like Tasha’s, but not in places just anyone can see.”

  “You want to pierce my nipples?” I asked, remembering that he was torturing my nipple when the topic first came up.

  “Mmm. I love pierced nipples,” he murmured, and I could tell he was drifting off. I let my hand creep up his chest, and brushed my palm across one of his nipples. He didn’t have his pierced.

  In the morning I asked him about that. “I’m hesitant to pierce them,” he said. “They don’t work exactly right anymore. They’ll never be as sensitive or reactive as they were before surgery. I was warned about it, though, and it was an acceptable risk. I have a little more feeling in the left one than the right, but they’re probably not nearly as sensitive as yours. And not at all as sensitive as they were before.” He shrugged. “I’m glad I had top surgery, but that loss of feeling is a big reason I won’t have bottom surgery. There won’t be a perfect surgical penis developed until there’s a disease that makes rich, white penises fall off.”

  That made me giggle a little, but I could tell he was serious.

  He had more to say. “I am hyper-sensitive in places down there where it counts, though, which more than makes up for having boring nipples. Trust me on that one.”

  I had to, didn’t I? It was his body, after all, and he knew it best.

  I’d already showered and dressed for work, but was still in my bathroom fussing with my hair when Avery came in and showed me the plug. For a second I just stared at it, and then at him, and then at the plug again. It had a narrow base, a rounded tip, and an intimidating wide flare in between.

  “It’s a small one,” he assured me.

  “Doesn’t look small. Um. Sir.”

  His pupils flared when I said the word, just as I expected. I didn’t have to wait for him to ask for a color, and he didn’t have to pause to bother asking. Inside my head, the ‘sir’ felt like a way to give him permission even if I was nervous. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if I’d be okay with the plug, but as he periodically reminded me, I could always call yellow or red.

  “It’s very small,” he replied. “Now, bend over the counter.”

  I grabbed the hand towel and swiped it across the counter, not wanting to get my shirt wet. I might have been a teeny tiny bit slow going about it, though, because Avery cleared his throat. “Jules.”

  Ooh, my name came out of his mouth in his stern voice. That gave me a pleasant shiver. I liked being nervous around Avery.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I bent myself over the counter, feeling almost silly. But that lasted only as long as it took for Avery to pull my pants and boxers down until they pooled around my ankles. He palmed my cock, giving me a little squeeze. Just that quick touch made me hard. Well, and maybe the position, and –

  “Boxers aren’t going to work today,” he said in a tone that didn’t invite arguing. “Step out of all of that.”

  He left the room and even though I wasn’t sure what he meant about boxers not working, I lifted my feet out of my pants and shorts and used my toes to nudge them aside. Avery was back in less than a minute with a pair of his own boxer briefs dangling from a fingertip.

  “Did you imagine for one second when we met that we’d be sharing underwear?”

  I wanted to laugh at that notion, but I was still bent over the bathroom counter, and it was an awkward and vulnerable position. I was much more prone to nervous silence than nervous laughter.

  Avery didn’t seem to mind my silence. He reached between my legs from behind and wrapped his fingers around my cock. At the same time, something cool touched the back of my neck. As it trailed down my spine, I decided it must be the tip of the plug.

  It followed the line of my back, pausing to poke hard just at the curve of my tailbone, and then dragged between my ass cheeks. Avery’s hand left my cock then, and came into my vision, gathering just one small bead of lotion from a dispenser bottle next to the sink. He used both hands to spread my ass apart, and the dab of lotion was a cool pin-point directly at my anus. I might have let loose a little whimper.

  “Just this little bit,” Avery said. “I don’t want to make it hard for you to hold onto. At least not this first time.”

  His words jolted through me, again a threat and a promise at the same time.

  “First time?” I questioned.

  “Yes, this first time. These games can be quite addicting, but I don’t want to make it too hard on you until I have you back in my office, where I can watch you struggle.”

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was suddenly too dry.

  I felt him press the tip of the plug against my hole, and then he let go of my buttocks and took my cock in his free hand again, stroking me much too gently to get me off. I could feel the tip of the plug at my opening, but it was like he was just holding it there, without adding any pressure. Surely he was dragging this out on purpose...

  He played with my cock and teased my hole until I was as hard as I’d ever been, until I was gasping, and wiggling, and pushing my hips toward him, wanting something, anything, so long as it was less gentle.

  I felt the tip of the plug poking into me harder, and then it was stretching me open, so slowly that it made me cry out his name.

  The pressure increased until my body gave way and the plug slid into me with an intensely satisfying stretch.

  My moan was all pleasure, no fear, no pain, and was so loud it seemed to echo in the small, tiled room. Avery gripped the base of my cock hard enough that I didn’t, or couldn’t, come, which brought out of me a series of loud noises.

  It filled me.

  No, it was more like Avery filled me, even when he took a step back.

  “Stand up straight,” he said.

  When I did, the plug sort of moved inside me, and I found myself open-mouthed with surprise, staring at him in the mirror. He was staring at me, too, the corners of his mouth turned up, like he was fighting a grin.

  “This is fun,” he said in a conversational tone.

  I couldn’t speak, not yet. I was still processing the feel of the plug, how it stretched and filled me just enough, how the mouth of my anus twitched around the
thinner base of it, as if trying to retract, to close. How something about this was comforting and highly uncomfortable, all at the same time.

  It was a strange dichotomy.

  Obscene.

  I took a moment to consider how ‘obscene’ was becoming my new favorite word.

  Avery helped me into his pair of boxer briefs and then into my jeans.

  It felt like the base of the plug protruded enough to be noticeable. I craned my neck and tried to use the mirror to look at my ass.

  Avery snorted. “No one can see it.”

  “Are you sure? Because it feels like everyone can see it.”

  “Nope. Only the two of us will ever know it’s there.”

  He turned me around and hugged me, then slid one hand down the back of my jeans, over the underwear, and pressed at the plug.

  I gasped at the sensation of it surging further into me.

  Sitting on the subway, caught between my hard-on and the plug, was a bizarre game of erotic torture. I was so turned on that I forced myself to sit perfectly still, hardly daring to even breathe for fear that I’d come in my pants right there. I’d wanted to stand, because by the time we stepped onto the train, I was somewhat used to the weirdness of standing and walking. Well, standing at least. I wasn’t sure I’d ever ‘get used to’ what it felt like to walk with this secret buried between my butt cheeks.

  Avery told me to sit down on the train, and he stood right in front of me, looking down at me. He kept his facial expression serious, but his eyes were full of the devil. Or perhaps just a demon. Either way, I could tell he was enjoying my discomfort.

  It took approximately an hour of pretending to work before my dick finally settled down.

  After that the plug became an irritating distraction. I worked really hard to ignore it for about fifteen minutes, but my body seemed very busy trying to reject this anal intruder.

  I gave up and wrote an email.

  Dear Mr. Avery Phoenix, Sir.

  Yellow.

  Sincerely, Jules.

  Susan’s phone rang, and I heard her answer it. She came out of her office and approached my desk. “Julian, Mr. Phoenix needs to see you in his office right away.”

  She winked at me, like she knew a secret.

  Of course, it seemed to be general knowledge already that Avery and I were dating.

  Avery and I were dating!

  That thought hit me with the same intensity as when this all started, and about a hundred times a day my brain repeated, ‘Avery Phoenix kissed me’, as if I might have forgotten.

  I hurried up to Avery’s office, still trying to ignore the physical discomfort of having a plug in my ass. Only I couldn’t, because it was starting to actually hurt.

  I knocked on the door, and Avery opened it immediately, as if he’d been standing there waiting. He pulled me in, and I heard the click of the lock.

  “Problem, Jules?” he asked, leading me toward his desk.

  “Yes, sir. It feels… wrong. Like it won’t stay there.”

  We reached his desk, and he shoved his executive-sized chair out of the way, then turned me to face him.

  “How long did you suffer before sending me that email?”

  “Um.”

  I felt like I was getting in trouble. “W-w-ell, I tried to ig-ig-ignore it.” When he scowled at me, I added in a rush, “But only for a few minutes. I swear.”

  “Do you think sending an email is the most appropriate way to tell me there’s a problem?” He was unfastening my jeans now, and pushing them down my legs. Boxer briefs, too.

  I cringed, and a host of excuses rushed into my head, jamming all together and getting in the way of my ability to actually think. “I don’t know,” I said, admitting more that I couldn’t think of an answer than that I really didn’t know.

  He spun me around so I was facing the desk. I got a quick flash of Avery’s normal view of the office.

  “Luckily I was here and had the sound turned on, so I heard the alert. But what if I hadn’t been? What if I hadn’t checked my email for another hour?”

  I sucked in a breath.

  Oh.

  “Next time you will use your phone to call me.”

  The answer to that was easy. “Yes, sir.”

  “Now I want you up on my desk, on your hands and knees.”

  I climbed up, face flaming, clumsy with embarrassment. He was looking at my ass, I knew he was. But he didn’t touch me or speak for the longest time. He was silent for so long that I wiggled my ass and glanced over my shoulder to see what he was doing.

  He was definitely looking at my ass. And rubbing himself between his legs. He met my eyes. No cringe, no shame, and absolutely no embarrassment.

  He reached out one finger and stroked my ass cheek, then used that finger to trace the line of my ass crack down to the plug. He pressed.

  I gasped out loud and turned my head away from him, staring at the surface of his desk.

  “I love the way you look, your pristine, damn-near virgin ass holding onto something I put there. So vulnerable and innocent, yet so inviting.”

  He pulled at the plug, but gently, like a tease.

  “Let go, Jules.”

  I tried, but discovered I didn’t know how to relax myself there.

  “Push, Jules.”

  Blood rushed so fast into my head that I felt my ears go hot.

  He wanted me to… but he was looking at me, staring at me, right there, and he wanted me to, to – I couldn’t. I bent my elbows and hid my face against my hands. Oh my God. He wanted –

  “Jules.”

  His voice was soft.

  I could feel his fingers at the base of the plug, patient. Waiting.

  A whimper built in my throat, but I obeyed.

  As I pushed, he pulled, and the plug slid out of me.

  The tip of his finger, or at least what I thought was his finger, replaced it. I felt suddenly and weirdly empty, and then felt a spasm as that ring of muscle clenched around his fingertip. The whimper in my throat escaped as a gasp.

  Avery wiggled his finger, and then removed it. “There. Better?”

  My dick was hard again. I wasn’t sure, exactly, if that was better, because I knew he was still looking at me, and I knew he could see everything. But of course it was better.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Avery helped me off the desk, and then helped me get my clothes back in place. He gesture to the visitor chair on the opposite side of his desk, then he picked up his phone and hit a button. When someone answered at the other end, he said, “Susan? I’m going to steal Julian away from you, probably for the rest of the day. Can someone run his laptop to my office?”

  Five minutes later he answered the door and took my laptop bag from Jennie. She murmured something in response to his “thank you” but her voice was so quiet I didn’t catch the words. Mostly I was just glad it was Jennie and not Tasha, because I was sure my face was still red, and I didn’t think I could handle any teasing just now, even if it was the friendly kind.

  I let out a sigh of relief, and relaxed in the chair.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, Jules. We’ve got an appointment at a piercing studio.”

  For some reason I’d dismissed the topic of body piercing. I thought he was kidding, maybe, or at least talking about something that might happen far, far in the future. Not now. Not today.

  He took me to Big Al’s Café for breakfast and ordered me extra bacon. I didn’t think I really needed extra bacon, but Avery insisted, and his insistence was cute and amusing. He kept asking me, “How’s that bacon?” and his eyes glinted in a way that should have warned me.

  After the weird breakfast, Avery hailed a cab. I didn’t pay any attention at all to where it brought us. I was stuck in my head, trying to make a decision.

  I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. Even if Avery pressured me in that firm voice, even if his voice got so firm it sounded like an order. I could always tell him yellow. I could al
ways tell him red. Those options roamed around in my brain, and I held onto them like a promise. Avery telling me what to do when I was nervous was, indeed, a lifesaver. When my thoughts got scrambled or stuttered to a complete halt, when I couldn’t think for myself, Avery always had the answer. He wasn’t shy about it either. I liked how he could do that, without fuss or stress. It eased me. Made my life infinitely easier in those moments when I was paralyzed with anxiety.

  So yeah, having an appointment at a piercing studio did not mean I was getting anything pierced.

  Avery was doing something on his phone, but eventually noticed my silence. “Are you nervous?”

  “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  He laughed and ruffled my hair. “I would not.”

  I was about to have a moment of bravery. I rehearsed my next sentence in my head two or three times. And then I said it. Very carefully. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

  I was pleased with myself. It came out exactly as I wanted, a solid statement, without a single questioning note.

  Avery looked surprised. “Jules. Of course you don’t. You do know this, right?”

  I nodded. And had the best idea of all. “I’ll get my nipples pierced, if that’s what you want. But only if you get yours done first.”

  I didn’t know how I expected him to react, but his reaction was perfect. He threw back his head and laughed, and somewhere in there he wrapped his arms around me and made me shake with his laughter.

  “Agreed,” he said when he released me and settled against his own seat again. In a musing tone, he added, “Although I wasn’t even thinking about nipples.”

  Well. That gave me all kinds of things to wonder about, but before I could even ask, we’d arrived and Avery was pulling me out of the car.

  “You brought your ID, right?” Avery asked, as he pulled the door to the shop open and ushered me inside. A merry jingling of bells attached to the door announced our arrival, but for the first minute, there was no one in sight.

  And then there was an ear-shattering screech, a fast shuffle and click of footsteps, and someone yelling, “Ave-er-y! Oh my God! Girrrrl, is it really you? You look fabulous, darling!” The fast shuffle and click turned out to be a pair of heels, and before I could even begin to process what this person was wearing, she grabbed Avery and he nearly disappeared into a white blizzard of fabric.