Brazen

by Cara McKenna

  I like Sean’s answer more than I will ever admit to him.

  “Let me give you what they can’t,” he says, gaze dropping back down.

  “They’ll give me whatever I ask for,” I remind him. “You’re the one who can’t follow orders.”

  “I won’t take the money,” he says, and it’s difficult to tell if he’s teasing or apologizing.

  “Good,” I say. “You haven’t earned it.”

  “Caroline,” he says in a low rumble, mouth millimeters from my lips.

  “How did you know that?” It’s not a difficult fact to sleuth out, but I still want answers.

  “You’re a photographer,” he says. “I saw your equipment downstairs. The framed prints on the walls are signed. Caroline Thom—”

  “That’s not my name anymore.”

  After a pause, Sean asks, “What was he like?” His tongue flicks me lightly, making my breath hitch.

  “He’s old enough to be your father,” I say, hiding the arousal in my voice. “And he was exactly the right age to be my university professor.”

  “How did you find it, being the student?” Sean asks in his lower-class accent, and I realize now that he is everything my ex-husband was not. Rude and pushy, sensual and beautiful. Warm and available.

  “Lucrative,” I finally say.

  “Do you wish he could see you now?” he asks, and the conservative in me feels as though I should slap him out of protocol.

  I don’t answer because at that moment Sean’s tongue strokes my clit and my legs clamp around his ears involuntarily. The sensation pulses up my belly like a current—a violent electrical current, not a gentle, poetical stream. He pushes my thighs back open and holds them with his strong hands. He licks again, slower, so exquisite it hurts, the pleasure mounting.

  I watch his reflection and I watch my fingers grasping his hair. In the mirror, I wear a wedding band. It’s not actually a wedding band, just a fancy woven ring I wear on my right hand, but I pretend it’s a screen, not a mirror, and I pretend that I’m still married. I pretend I’m my husband, walking in and finding me spread at the edge of our bed, a raw, tight young man on his knees pleasuring me. The guilt feels as hot and real as Sean’s mouth.

  “You taste amazing,” he mumbles a short time later.

  “And you never shut up.”

  He swirls his tongue around my clit until I groan against my will. One hand slides up my thigh. His left hand with its violinist’s calluses. He runs two rough fingertips up and down my swollen lips, bathes my clit in the wetness. He covers that spot with his mouth, suckling, and his fingers tease my entrance.

  “Say please,” he whispers. “Say please and I’ll do it.”

  “Fuck you,” I reiterate.

  “Five years, Caroline. Let me be the first.”

  “You say please, then.”

  “Please,” he murmurs, and laps at me again. “Please.”

  I’m dying to grant him permission. At this moment I can’t imagine my cunt was created for any other purpose than to take pleasure from this man. Those two threatening fingertips trace a shallow line up and down, up and down. I want to be his instrument. I want to be mastered.

  “Please…”

  “Fuck me,” I say.

  One finger at first, slow thrusts. His mouth is still on my clit, tongue flickering. He groans as though he’s the one being served.

  “More,” I demand.

  He makes his hand into a gun and gives me the barrel, slow and deep. I clench his hair tighter. In the mirror, his hips thrust at the same tempo as his fingers.

  “Touch yourself,” I say, and I watch the hand still holding my thigh slide obediently down between his legs. His groans turn hoarse as he shares my pleasure, joins the rhythm. I wish I could see his cock, see him stroking it in a tight fist, milking himself until he glistens. I picture him alone, in his overpriced, shit-hole Allston apartment or wherever he lives, on his back in his rumpled bed with its mismatched sheets. That lean, strong, young body, spread naked, the come lashing his clenched belly as he shoots. As he thinks of me.

  His fingers make me feel empty as I remember how thick and stiff he was when I spanked him. If and when he takes me, it will hurt. At least at first. I want to know if he’ll ram it in hard, or ease it in gently. If I were on top, I’d slide him in slow and steady, as if I were sinking into a Jacuzzi, dizzy from the steam. I watch his pumping hips, needing him so badly it feels like a mania. How easy it would be for him to stand up, to push his hips between my legs and make the longing go away.

  “Take me, Sean.”

  He doesn’t. His lips keep sucking me, his hands keep fucking both of us. I rake his scalp, demanding more. I feel his thrusting hand rotate, feel his fingers curling, his calluses tugging against that sinful spot deep inside me, beckoning, inviting me to come home. The pleasure is a flint, lighting me up with a spark each time his touch strikes. Molten heat seeps into my feet until my toes buzz, hot. My palms are sweaty and his hair is damp and our voices are one, the moans like a mantra, sanctifying the space we’re sharing.

  I jerk upright as the climax churns through me and my back arches and my eyes are fixed on Sean’s body in the mirror. The heat rushes up from the flame he’s ignited, burns through my cunt and my womb and my belly, through my breasts, up my spine until I feel it licking at each fingertip and pounding in my ears and tingling in my lips. He knows how to make it last. His fingers and lips and tongue slow, the touch deliberate and skillful, and he draws my orgasm out. It doesn’t flash and fade. It builds, lingers, pummels my synapses in fresh waves until I can feel the bedspread under my bare butt once more, smell us in the air, hear the rain on the glass. I feel him lapping up the spoils of our intimate battle. He makes tiny, hungry, whimpering noises. When he finally looks up from between my legs, he’s smiling like a wicked boy.

  I shove his shoulders back with my knees. “Get out of my house.”

  His eyes widen but he stands.

  I grab his underwear from the bed behind me and toss them unceremoniously at his chest. He watches me watching him as he pulls them up his thighs and over his raging hard-on. He runs his tongue over his swollen lower lip, and his expression is dark. I move away and slip my plain silk robe from the hook by the door and thread my arms into the sleeves. It feels like a straitjacket, just as his presence feels like an invitation to madness.

  “I don’t want to see you ever again,” I say evenly, and it’s true. If I have to look at him for one minute longer I’ll want him in my sheets, his body curled around me. I’ll want him seated across the table from me in the morning, drinking coffee and reading the paper, and that’s not acceptable.

  His mouth twitches, but he holds his tongue. His blue, blue eyes stare into mine for a long moment, and only the desperate motions of his ribs as he struggles for his breath give him away. He turns and he leaves me, leaves the bedroom door open behind him.

  I sink down onto the mattress. Out in the hall, I hear the metallic squeak of a hinge. With a suddenness that makes me gasp, he snaps all the breakers back on, and my room and the hall glare bright and artificial. I feel naked and blind, and as I hear his footsteps fade down the steps and the click of the front door closing, I feel more alone than I have in five years.

  Chapter Three

  The trouble-man stayed away for an eternity. Well, four days. But trust me when I say it felt like years. I’d almost begun to believe he decided to respect my demands. I can’t imagine what made me think he’s the sort of man who would.

  Will wanted an explanation when I announced first thing on Monday that Sean was to be struck from the roster, even as I could still practically feel his tongue sliding in and out of my pussy.

  “I never want that man allowed here again,” I said, buttering my toast. “The one with the short brown hair and the annoyingly blue eyes.”

  “That one?” Will sounded as if he were taking the news personally. “Are you serious? I was so excited to get him! He’s perfect! He look
s like Paul Newman, circa Exodus.” Will shares my love of old movies, as well as eager young men.

  “I should be so lucky,” I said flippantly and sipped my coffee. Paul Newman should be so lucky.

  “What did he do? Or not do?”

  “He isn’t housetrained,” I said, and Will dropped the matter with a bitchy shrug and a sigh.

  This evening, when Sean finally returns, he doesn’t darken my door. He scales my fire escape, instead, and when he appears in my bedroom window I’m so startled I scream like a film star confronted by a mummy.

  I recover quickly and glare at my would-be burglar. I stand before the tall window with my arms crossed sternly over my chest, and I can’t decide right away if I should let him in. I’m dressed in my robe again, fresh from the shower. The scheduled boys aren’t due to arrive for another hour.

  I’ve come to equate Sean with the rain. In the past week I haven’t had one without the other, and now that I think about it, they’re both designed to make things thoroughly damp. He’s framed in the window, face shining with drizzle, white dress shirt wet and clinging. It’s dark out but he’s lit by my bedroom lights. Very, very slowly, he smiles his lopsided smile.

  I flip the latch and push the bottom pane up.

  “Don’t you dare get mud on my carpet,” I say, and I turn my back on him and go to my vanity to finish brushing my hair out.

  I hear the clang of his shoes as they drop onto the fire escape, and I feel his energy as he enters and approaches. He snatches the brush from my hand and takes over. I watch his eyes in the mirror, studying my shoulder-length hair as he runs the bristles through it, and I wonder if he’s making an inventory of the grays. He looks melancholy tonight. Or guilty. And with good cause.

  I push my stool back roughly and catch him in the knees. He takes it in stride and sets down the brush.

  “I have to get dressed,” I tell him, and then his arms are holding me. They snake around my waist from behind, enveloping me, pulling me against his wet shirt, his firm chest.

  “I missed you,” he says. His hands slide up over my ribs and cup me. I feel his cock right through his jeans, pressing at the small of my back. He pulls the lapels of the robe open and palms my bare breasts, the pads of the fingers on the left scratchy, the right side less so. His hands are big and my breasts are small, but I feel more full and feminine and worthy of my sex than I have in twenty years. He pinches my nipples gently between his fingers and broad thumbs, arousing them with tiny pulls. He teases until I’m aching, until my face and chest are flushed and my attempts to appear cold are laughable.

  “I told you not to come here again,” I say, and I sound husky.

  “You opened the window,” he parries, and his voice is right at my ear. It’s deep, a baritone, forever tarnished with that working man’s accent. It’s like a shot of lousy house whiskey, cheap and strong, and it goes down stinging, upsets my stomach and swims in my blood.

  “The others will be here soon,” I tell him. I twist my arm around so I can cup the front of his pants behind me and feel his excitement.

  “Good,” he says. “They can watch.”

  I imagine such a thing for a moment—four or five young men standing in a circle around us, pleasuring themselves as they watch me get fucked by Sean. Watching me suck him off, on my knees as he barks orders, his hand on the back of my head. Watching what they’re denied.

  “No,” I say. A fine fantasy, but no one can know about this. If Sean gets his way, it’ll be our secret. And he shouldn’t get his way. He’s brought me nothing but trouble. I step out of his embrace and rewrap myself.

  I turn to study the length of his torso plastered in translucent white cotton. “You have a hell of a nerve showing up here.”

  “So punish me.”

  I squint an eye at him and nod. I grab the brush off the vanity and motion for him to go to the bed. “All fours,” I say. “Hold the headboard.”

  He kneels and lowers down to his elbows, grabbing the slats. I settle in behind him and reach around, unbuckling his belt, tugging open his damp jeans, sliding them and his briefs down to expose that perfect, firm ass. I hold each cheek for moment, my fingers curled into claws. He cranes his neck to meet my eyes and anger flashes in my chest.

  I pick up the hairbrush. It’s a paddle brush, pine with a wide, flat back. As it strikes him it makes a sound so fierce I almost feel guilty. I go in slow, uneven intervals and his body bucks with fresh surprise at each spank and his breathing grows labored and raw. I toss the brush aside and scrape my nails over his reddened skin. He flinches, muscles tensing.

  “Up,” I say, getting off the bed.

  He hikes his jeans up with a wince and stands dutifully before me.

  “Go upstairs and wait. Leave your shirt.”

  He slips each button free with a torturous slowness. He lets it drop to the floor before he exits, making me watch the muscles of his back writhe with each graceful step.

  I dress in a cashmere turtleneck and a layered crepe skirt and flats, and I wander upstairs at my leisure. I pour two glasses of wine and find him in the den, the television droning softly, reading lamps glowing. He’s watching an old movie on TV, probably just the last channel I left it tuned to. I hand him the glass.

  “Join me,” he says, as if this were his home.

  I glare at him again but I sit and we drink, and we watch the movie for a few minutes. I know what’s going to happen between us and it frightens me, so I drink more. He takes the glasses after a little while and sets them on the coffee table, ignoring the coasters. I fix this transgression and then he pulls me back into the cushions and kisses me.

  It’s been forever since I’ve kissed anyone. Since well before the divorce, and even before the sex dried up in my marriage. My husband and I still fucked long after we quit bothering to be affectionate toward one another. The last time I did this, it turned my stomach. This time, it’s wondrous. Behind the wine, I can taste him. The faintest trace of salt and some elemental human flavor. His hands cradle my jaw, and he’s in charge. He starts with nips, little bites on my lower lip. Then suckling. His tongue traces the seam of my mouth then penetrates—just as it did to my pussy four nights ago, except this moment is a hundred times more intimate and personal and raw.

  I study his handsome face with my hands, feeling his cheekbones and his temples, pressing my thumb against the shallow cleft in his chin, brushing my fingertips over his closed eyelids.

  I pull my mouth away and ask, “How old are you?”

  “How old do you want me to be?”

  “Between twenty and twenty-eight.” I’m nervous now, hoping he’ll lie if need be. I study him harder. He has little signs of wear, a hundred tiny things that combine to create something the other boys don’t possess. Dignity. Experience. Substance and wisdom.

  “I’m going to disappoint you again,” he says.

  “My assistant is going to get a stern talking-to. Didn’t he check your ID?”

  “He did,” Sean says. He kisses me. “Then he said something about an exodus and said you’d forgive him.”

  “So how old are you?”

  “Thirty-two,” he says, and I feel something cold drop into my stomach—danger. He’s young, but not young enough. It has nothing to do with the fetish, the taboo, the harem, the rules. It has everything to do with reality. In reality, I could never be with a man who’s twelve or fifteen or twenty years younger than me. It’s an impossibility and a relief. That Sean is only seven years my junior is scary. That I could be seen with him out to dinner at a restaurant and not be judged is terrifying.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I say. I pull away from him and I feel chilly.

  “I wasn’t suggesting it would.”

  “What do you want from me?” I ask again. “From this?” I wave my hand to mean the room, the house, the scenario. Us.

  “What do you want from this?”

  “I think it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Let me stay for the e
vening,” he says, “and I’ll show you what it is you really want. Just let me stay, and watch you with the others and you’ll see.”

  “You watch and I’ll see?”

  He nods.

  “You’re a cocky little shit,” I say, and I smile at him, amused. “Let me pour you another glass.”

  * * * * *

  By nine thirty, the boys are all here. Lots of them change into pajamas when they arrive, and soon the fourth floor is full of young men in low-slung flannel bottoms, like a fraternity sleepover with funeral parlor etiquette.

  Troublemaking Sean is acting suspiciously well-behaved. He slid out of his jeans as the festivities began, and he’s sprawled in his boxer briefs in my favorite reading chair again, looking as if he’s in on some secret. And he must be. How else could he be here, looking so smug, drinking my wine, watching me with such disobedient fervor?

  His eyes follow everything. Each time I sink into a new seat beside a new boy, he watches. There’s a first-timer here tonight—Sean’s replacement. He’s young and tan and hung like Christmas has come early, and I make sure his legs are spread wide in Sean’s direction as my hands unwrap the presents. When I order him to stand so I can kneel and take him in my mouth, I make sure Sean gets our profiles. I call another boy over and I take turns sampling them. It’s hot, as hot as it’s ever been, but they have nothing to do with it. Sean’s eyes on me are ten times more erotic than either of their hard dicks in my mouth. When I finish them they’re dismissed, and I aim myself toward the sunroom for the next course.

  Sean catches my sleeve as I pass by his seat, and he whispers, “Save room for dessert.” I yank my wrist away coldly.

  Five boys came tonight and soon enough, five boys have come. I work my way through the men on offer until only the uninvited one remains. Sean followed me into the sunroom, and as the last hired man exits in delirium, he draws my eye from his perch in the bay window. I wonder what the people in the park make of his near-naked silhouette from four stories down.

  “Follow me,” I say, and he’s gotten very good at taking this one order. I lead him downstairs three flights to the center room with no windows, its corners piled with my photography equipment. I drag a chair in from the parlor and push it against the bare wall and toss a black drop cloth over it.