Game

by Justine Elyot

  ‘I have to confess that I do, and you aren’t surprised. You make me describe in detail all the things different men have done to my arse until I can barely get the words out any more because I’m so desperate for you to fuck me.

  ‘But you don’t have any pity and you make me tell you my favourite positions, my best sexual encounters, whether I like thick cocks or long ones, whether I like to be held down, whether I like it from behind, whether I’ve ever been double-penetrated, what’s my record for the number of men who’ve fucked me in one day.

  ‘Question after question rains down on me in your unholy aphrodisiac of a voice until I’m squirming on the desk.

  ‘Then you command me to touch myself, to make myself come, so you can see how I do it.

  ‘I’m massively relieved, but at the same time disappointed, because I want your fingers all over me, so much, so very much. But I lick my fingertips and reach down, getting to it as quickly as I can, rubbing my clit, pushing the fingers of my other hand up inside my slick cunt.

  ‘You keep up a running commentary all the time, telling me how wet I am, how fat my clit is, how much I need it, how you aren’t surprised I need all those men because I have the hungriest cunt you’ve ever seen.

  ‘When I come, you touch me, finally – putting your hands on my ankles to stop me kicking. I feel completely under your control and I say your name, over and over.

  ‘You tell me I’m a good girl.’

  Throughout this monologue I have deliberately avoided Chase’s eye, going into a kind of trance to overcome the inherent difficulty of narrating a fantasy to its object.

  I turn to him once I have finished speaking. He has one hand on his crotch and there is sweat on his upper lip.

  ‘Strange, I suppose, that you never touched me in that one,’ I say. ‘But it was an early version.’

  ‘I want to ask you those questions,’ he says, in a low, intent rasp. ‘I want you to answer them.’

  ‘But it’s your turn now. Your turn to tell me a story of what you would have liked to do to me, if you only you weren’t so bloody self-controlled.’

  He shuts his eyes and screws up his face for a moment, regaining some of that aforementioned self-control, which seems to be on sabbatical tonight.

  ‘I hired you because you brought men to the hotel. I knew what you were and, at first, I must admit, I feared for you. I thought you’d get into some dangerous predicament or other. Occasionally, I’d fantasise about rescuing you. Sometimes I’d fantasise about being the person who put you in the dangerous predicament. So you see, my feelings for you weren’t straightforward. Sometimes I liked you for your fearless sexual adventuring, and sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I thought that somebody ought to stop you, and that somebody ought to be me. But it couldn’t be me. I was in no position to offer you what you sought.’

  ‘But you thought about it?’

  ‘Often. You troubled me.’

  ‘Troubled you?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to be impervious to your brazen charms, but I found I couldn’t be. I considered it a personal failing. I try not to get emotionally involved with people.’

  ‘Especially when you know you’re going to rip them off and ruin their lives.’

  ‘Especially then.’

  ‘So, you had fantasies? What were they?’

  ‘I’ll give you an example. I catch you up to no good when you should be at work – though, to the best of my knowledge, you always kept your extracurricular activities out of working hours.’

  ‘Yeah, uh, mostly,’ I mumble, recalling a few incidents when that might not have been the case.

  ‘You don’t know I’ve seen you, so I call you into my office as soon as you’ve finished and tell you I want to do a spot check. You don’t know what I mean, but once I’ve ordered you to pull down your knickers and bend over, you start to get the picture.

  ‘Sure enough, the smell of recent sex is on you and your cunt is looking well used, as I mention to you.

  ‘You beg me not to sack you, I think you even burst into tears, although you’re not the tearful type, I know.

  ‘I say I’ll let you keep your job, but there’s a condition.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll bet there is.’ I try to sound scornful, but this scenario is making me giddy and my breath flutters in my lungs.

  ‘The condition is that you stop having anything to do with other men and surrender yourself to me.’

  ‘Surrender myself?’

  ‘Completely. Place yourself under my absolute control. Oh, the plans I had for you – in this fantasy, I mean, not in real life.’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘I think one particularly sleepless night I drew up a daily timetable. Blow jobs with the coffee, having you chained under the desk, that kind of thing. Tying you up, having you every which way, exhausting you, making you beg for mercy.’

  ‘Hmm. I’m not a beggar, I’m a chooser.’

  ‘I know you are. That’s what maddens me about you. You seem to genuinely enjoy your promiscuity.’

  ‘And women aren’t supposed to, are they? They’re supposed to sleep around because they’re so terribly lonely, or so awfully damaged or whatever. It upset your little apple cart, didn’t it? You wanted to either save me from it, or punish me for it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admits. ‘I did. But I knew I couldn’t. It was frustrating.’

  ‘I imagine so.’ But I’m beginning to see that I had a lucky escape, and this gives me so much strength that I feel surrounded with the glow of it. ‘So, tonight,’ I say, putting a hand on his thigh, ‘you can live out your fantasy.’

  ‘Some of them went a little further than you’d like, I should think,’ he warns me.

  ‘How far?’

  ‘I don’t want to say.’

  ‘Chase, I know the difference between fantasy and reality. Just because you get off to the thought of something doesn’t mean you’ll do it.’

  ‘The fantasies were sometimes violent. I suppose because my attraction to you was so unwanted and so problematic. I would, well, slap you around a bit. I was cruel.’

  ‘You are cruel,’ I point out. ‘We all figured that out ages ago.’

  ‘So, living out my fantasies then? Where do we stand on that now?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I think about the purpose of all this, the nature of the test. ‘I think the idea is that I live out my fantasies. So, no slapping. And I don’t trust you enough to give you control anyway. I don’t trust you at all, in fact.’

  ‘It’s understandable.’

  ‘And I still want to hurt you.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘You don’t get to choose. OK. Stay there. I’m going to get this out of my system, and I think it’ll only take a moment.’

  I straddle his knees, facing him. He looks furious and confused, on the verge of pushing me away, but whatever hold Lloyd has over him is pretty strong, it seems.

  ‘Take off your glasses.’

  ‘You’re going to hit me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not a violent person. No fists, nothing like that.’

  He removes the spectacles.

  My open palm catches him square on the cheek. The slap reverberates around the room, sounding much harder than it actually was. A patch of red rises satisfyingly on his skin and I bunch my fists and hug myself, instantly ashamed.

  ‘Well done,’ he says dryly. ‘I hope that did the trick.’

  ‘Not really. This is what we’re going to do.’

  I hop off the bed and take myself to lean against a large, highly polished desk, big enough to hold a conference around.

  ‘Here I am, Chase, naked and available. We’re in your office and this is your desk. Come and do what you would have done, if it had ever been possible. Not what you did in your fantasies – what you actually would have done, in real life. I need to know.’

  He spends some time just watching me from the bed, as if weighing up options. I lean back, flex my legs, perform a numbe
r of standard come-hither moves, but he responds to none of them.

  Perhaps I should leave now. I don’t even care about failure any more.

  But then he is on his feet in a flash, bending me backwards over the table, more by the force of his presence than anything corporeal and I am looking up into eyes that gleam with determination.

  ‘Have you any idea how long I’ve waited for this?’

  I shake my head, holding my breath until it hurts.

  He puts a hand on my cheek, cupping it, pressing his thumb into the soft skin beneath my chin. One finger strokes me beneath my ear lobe. It is almost too sensual to bear and the phrase ‘I am undone’ flits through my mind. If I had a bodice on, I think he would be about to rip it.

  His lips hover about mine, as if undecided whether to kiss me or bite me. Eventually, they find a third way, opening to emit speech.

  ‘Years,’ he whispers. ‘So many years of having you within my reach, and never being able to touch you. Knowing that you wanted me to, knowing that I couldn’t. Can you imagine what that does to a man?’

  ‘Roughly the same as it does to a woman, maybe. I should know.’

  The cloth of his jacket nudges my breasts, tormenting my nipples with little blasts of sensation. His crotch, hard and protuberant, fits snugly into the yielding delta between my thighs.

  This is how it could have been.

  His lips have done with talking. They fit themselves to mine, over mine, holding my mouth briefly shut before descending into frenzy. We devour each other, teeth, tongues, arms, hands, legs. He jolts me against the table until my back aches and then he lifts me on to it so I sit with my legs locked around his hips, pushing my hand down to his imprisoned cock, giving it a hard squeeze.

  He kisses exactly the way I thought he would, passionate and yet controlled, with not a hint of vulnerability or uncertainty. He knows what he wants and he gets it. Everything I saw in him, everything that turned me on about him, is distilled into this huge Eve’s apple of a kiss. Here he is, the tree of knowledge in human form, and I am no better than those poor saps in the Bible.

  Does that make Lloyd the serpent?

  The thought of Lloyd throws me off my stride. A wave of discomfort at the idea of him seeing this washes over me like cold water.

  I make a weak attempt to pull away from Chase, but he won’t have it, putting a hand on my ribs and laying me flat on the table while he suffocates me with the intensity of his kiss.

  You wanted this, Lloyd. I’m doing it. I hope it makes you happy.

  He starts to bite and I try to protest, but without knowing why or how, I find myself enjoying it, the way I used to enjoy play fights with my cousins as a child. Adrenalin pumps and I find new reserves of spirit and strength, using them to bite back, to growl, to push and kick.

  His force is superior, of course, and his hands are everywhere, all over me, all at once, and they are none too gentle either.

  When he breaks the kiss, I shout, ‘I hate you, you fucker!’ and he laughs loudly and sinks his teeth into my neck.

  I use my pelvis as a weapon, jerking it upwards, trying to grind him to pieces, but he enjoys this, and enjoys subduing me and pinning me down even more.

  By the time his hand reaches my pussy, ready to take it as his right, I am helpless.

  ‘Tell me you want it,’ he growls, his fingertips primed and poised. ‘Go on. Tell me or I’ll stop right here.’

  I can barely breathe, the blood rushing in my ears.

  ‘Do it.’

  He gives my clit the lightest of feathery strokes then he stands up, releasing me from my pinions. Even now, I can’t really move, the struggle having sapped all power from me.

  I gaze up at him, little blue spots dancing in my peripheral vision, taking in his well-cut suit and his elegant neck, his perfect hairstyle and the look of naked ferocity in his eyes. The devil went down to Savile Row.

  He takes off his jacket, with its lining of grey-green silk, and casts it away from him, on to the bed. I used to admire that fluidity of movement, that prowling grace of his.

  My mouth feels bruised and my bones ache.

  I am wetter than he deserves.

  I watch his fingers move lazily over the knot of his tie, freeing his neck from its tyranny. The length of silk slides under his collar and out; he winds it around his hand as if contemplating using it for bondage purposes and I catch a breath.

  No. He can’t tie me up. I don’t trust him.

  He looks from me to it, regret shadowing his face, then lets it fall to the ground.

  Next his top button is undone, then the one beneath.

  I wait for him to remove the whole shirt, but he doesn’t.

  Instead, he pulls me up and spins me around and bends me over the desk the other way. I yelp at the sensation of the cold wood on my nipples, and yelp again when he takes my wrists and twists them behind my back. I kick out at him, finding his shins, but if he feels it, he doesn’t let it show.

  ‘Like this,’ he says, pushing his still trousered thighs into mine. ‘This is how I’d have done it.’ With his free hand he smacks the inside of my legs until I have them open wide enough to please him. ‘With so many competitors for your attention, I’d need to make sure I made an impression on you.’

  ‘If you hurt me I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Sophie. I’m going to make you want me, even though I can’t have you. I’m going to make you see what you missed.’

  ‘I didn’t miss anything. You were never available.’

  ‘Don’t fight it. Give in to me. Let yourself go.’

  His free hand starts to massage my pussy lips. I twitch and squirm, but he’s too good. My muscles relax and my body yields to him. Just this once, he can have me. Just this once, these juices are for him.

  ‘Oh, you do want it, don’t you? Are you this wet for all your men?’

  I don’t reply. I don’t want him to know anything about me.

  ‘No wonder they always came back for more,’ he continues, brushing my clit, left to right, right to left. ‘You’re soaked, absolutely saturated in sex, aren’t you? I used to think of advertising your services, changing the name of the hotel bar to The Sure Thing. But we didn’t need advertising. Everyone knew where to go to get a good, hot fuck when they were in town. Your number’s in half the little black books of the business world.’

  His pace increases; his pressure grows.

  ‘I wondered what it would take to impress you, Sophie. I wondered what a man had to do to make you want more of him. You took all the sex you wanted, but you never needed anybody, and that bothered me. Then Lloyd seemed to capture your attention and I was so angry. So jealous. What did he have, that jumped-up cocktail waiter, that I didn’t? I had to get rid of you all anyway. I was glad to get rid of you all. But I felt I’d missed my chance with you. If only I’d done this. Perhaps I’d have you chained to my bed on my Pacific isle right now.’

  My breathing is fast and shallow. He lets go of my wrists, but I don’t want to move them. He uses his other hand to stroke my bum cheeks, pinching and squeezing.

  ‘You’re close, aren’t you?’

  I nod.

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘So close. So very, very close.’

  I’m there, I’m there, I’m … not.

  He takes his hand away and smacks my bottom, very lightly, but it’s like a vicious swipe in my maddeningly oversensitised state.

  ‘You want me.’ It’s a statement, not a question. He wants my confession.

  ‘Yes. Just do it. Get it over with.’

  ‘Romantic as ever, Sophie.’

  ‘Just sort yourself out and do it.’

  ‘Ah.’ I think he’d been hoping I wouldn’t mention the need for condoms, but I certainly don’t want this night to be unforgettable for the wrong reasons.

  The noises he makes in unwrapping and snapping on the rubber are violent and impatient.

  ‘You
need protection, Sophie?’ he says grumpily from behind me. ‘You aren’t so self-sufficient as you like to think.’

  ‘We’re all at the mercy of biology,’ I point out, equally bad-tempered.

  This is going to be one tetchy fuck.

  ‘Some more than others,’ says Chase from between gritted teeth, and then he is in me, quick as a blade, if a lot blunter.

  Oh. He feels good.

  I didn’t want him to feel this good.

  He reaches around for the fronts of my thighs, giving himself optimum leverage, and begins to thrust. There is no ceremony or finesse, and that makes it easier.

  Every time his cock lodges its full length, I imagine a little portion of my infatuation with him getting knocked out of me.

  One for the lonely nights.

  One for the dreamy days.

  One for the fruitless flirtation.

  One for the imagined tenderness.

  One for the betrayal, the anger, the confusion.

  ‘I’m going to make you come,’ he rasps, pounding away.

  ‘No, you aren’t.’

  Good as he feels, thrillingly rough as he fucks, he isn’t going to make me come. I just don’t want him to.

  He doesn’t like my answer, but he thinks it’s just playful goading and puts his fingers on my clit. I suppose he thinks that’s how I come.

  It can be.

  Sometimes the stimulation of fingers on my nerve endings, sometimes the pressure of a warm, wet tongue. Sometimes the friction of a cock, or a dildo, rubbing against my G-spot does the trick. But none of it ever happens unless I’ve given myself to the transaction, and that’s what Chase doesn’t understand. He can finger and lick and fuck and suck as much as he likes, but I won’t ever be properly there. Not for him.

  I figure he’s a man with a pretty overwhelming sense of pride, though, and he isn’t going to finish this unless he thinks he’s driven me to the starry-eyed orgasm of my life. So I fake it.

  There’s a first time for everything, after all. Well, maybe a second.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I hear him croon behind me. ‘Oh yes, Sophie, that’s it, you’re taking it well, you’ve taken it so well.’