Coercion

by Cara McKenna

But I push the romantic thoughts away. I’ve forgotten my role, lost in my head as I so often become.

  “You look lovely,” I tell this woman. “In this light. On my bed.” I smile as the final word leaves my lips.

  “Thank you.” She runs her hands over the blanket, as though confirming the mattress is still there, supporting her.

  I round the table and for a moment I cast her in my shadow. Our game clicks back onto its track, and the real Didier falls away like a shed garment. My gaze drops to the shadow between her legs, a reward that must be claimed at any cost.

  “Lie down with me.” I wave to the pillows and she reluctantly reclines, careful to keep her skirt in place. I join her. My face is shaded, hers golden in the warm light. Her wary gaze flits back and forth but her lips part when mine do, and she accepts my kiss eagerly enough.

  I slide my hand lower to cradle her ribs, thumb tracing the curve of her breast through her blouse. With my other hand I graze the skin at the base of her neck, as soft as the silk collar that seeks to hide it. She is just as soft elsewhere—her belly, her wrists, the tops of her feet and her inner thighs. I nudge her legs with mine, edging my knee between them. Her legs clamp tight, stopping my mischief just as the hem of her skirt begins to rise. Her resistance triggers a change in me.

  My arousal turns sharp and selfish, the sheer challenge turning me on as nothing has in months. We’re competing, and one of us must lose for the other to win.

  And I want to win.

  This man’s borrowed desires burn hotter and darker than my own, and though they disturb me, I can’t deny how intoxicating it is, to want a woman so badly all reason and civility abandons you. All empathy.

  I push with my knee, quick and sudden, and I gain another inch before her legs tense once more.

  Below the open tie, tiny fabric buttons trail down the front of her blouse. It is so tempting to savage them, but I know Caroly’s tendency to spend so much on a piece of clothing that she can eat nothing but soup until her next paycheck arrives. After all, I used to be one of her indulgences. I smile to think that at least I always fed her well—she never went hungry the nights she treated herself to my company.

  She grabs my wrist as I touch the topmost button. “Don’t.”

  Her hold is a warning, not a restraint, and I ignore it, freeing the closure. Her hand tightens but her legs have let down their guard, and my knee pushes ever deeper between her thighs. My cock throbs as I imagine forcing my other leg between hers, rolling her onto her back, freeing my cock and taking her with no more than a gruff tug to move her panties aside. Will she go reluctantly? Or will she fight? I know Caroly better than any man can claim, but I don’t know that—how coerced a victim she may want to play, and how cruel a villain she might wish to bait.

  “I want you,” I whisper. “You have no idea how badly.”

  “Not tonight. Maybe some other time, if we see each other again—”

  “You came to my bed. You must want this too.” I twist my hand free from hers, switching who holds who. Her body stiffens as I lead her fingers down my chest and side. “Touch me.” My grip on her wrist is tight, her struggle meek. I draw her hand along my hip and she tugs it back, though not hard enough to escape.

  “Just kissing, you said before.”

  “I won’t ask for anything else,” I lie. “But it hurts, I want this so much. Touch me. Just once. Let me show you what you’ve done.”

  Still she resists, limply. I pull her hand closer, closer, until her fingertips brush me through my pants, the contact like lightning. As I press her palm over my erection, every instinct begs to thrust against her, fast and greedy until the friction tears me apart. But I won’t. I won’t. There is too much fun yet to be discovered.

  Her mouth is open, eyelids heavy. I know this look—it’s Caroly. I’m charmed to find she’s not such a fine actress that she can shroud those little cues I’ve come to recognize so well.

  “See? You feel how much I want you?” She lets me squeeze her hand tighter, draw it up and down my ridge in short, maddening strokes. I can’t imagine I’ve ever been so hard before.

  “I can feel it.”

  “I could show you as well.”

  “No.”

  Rougher now, I guide her hand. “You don’t want to see what you’ve done?”

  “It’s too fast.”

  “How long since you’ve seen a man? Touched his bare flesh?”

  “A while.”

  “Let’s change that.” I let her hand go to slip free the button of my trousers, and suddenly it is she who holds my wrist.

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to see?” I rub myself through the fabric. “Don’t you want to feel how hard you’ve made me? Find out how big I am?”

  She shakes her head. “Not this soon.”

  “Very well. But here,” I say, sliding my hand up to cup her breast. “Give me this, at least.”

  She doesn’t speak, her throat flexing to gulp a breath. Her fingers rest on my side, uncertain.

  “We will kiss,” I tell her, kneading, “and any way you want to touch me, just know that you may.” As our mouths reunite I squeeze her, stroke her with my thumb until her nipple stiffens under the whispering glide of her blouse. I feel lace as well, and I imagine what color it might be. I hope it’s the navy one she sometimes wears, the shade of a stormy sea. She’s so pale the blue highlights her veins, making her seem ethereal, some delicate creature with its very heartbeat painted across its skin.

  She permits me to free the second button with little more than a sigh to mark her protest. Teasing her tongue with mine, I let her hear my ragged breaths. As I suckle her lip, I’m reminded of other things I’ve missed since our last date. I release her flesh. My mouth is poised to whisper how badly I wish to taste her elsewhere…

  But I am selfish in this game, and I doubt such a man would preoccupy himself with an act that focuses so purely on a woman’s pleasure. He would take, not give, and so my craving must wait.

  I’ve been a bad man before, for clients who wish it of me, though never with Caroly. It feels new and forbidden. Criminal. For the sake of our game, I muster a force I’m not entirely at ease wielding and pin her down, her shoulders pressed flat to the bed. I shove her legs apart with my knees, jerk her hem to her hips.

  “Don’t.”

  She grasps my shirt but I pretend to mistake the gesture. I peel the top away, and her hands are on my bare chest, pushing. As I cast the shirt aside, I grab and open a condom from the side table and set it on the covers, trying to ignore its presence. The man I play would not trouble himself with such a requisite courtesy, and I hope she, like me, is filtering it from the scene.

  “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you.” The lust makes me sound angry, and my arousal shifts to mimic that emotion—hot and urgent, in need of a target.

  She slaps at my hand when I push her skirt higher. “Don’t.”

  I abandon her clothes to attend to mine, opening my fly. My cock escapes from its prison, enveloped in cool air, the band of my shorts shoved down, out of the way. It binds my balls, the discomfort somehow perfect. Her sex is hampered as well, but only a strip of lace and cotton stands between me and my goal, and whether it’s shed or ripped or yanked aside, it won’t protect her. I stroke myself, wondering if I’ve ever felt this big.

  “See what you do to me?”

  “Stop.”

  In this instant I realize how vulnerable it must feel sometimes, to be a woman. In this position, your only weapons are the smallest of words, your strength only the volume with which you speak them. And the more dangerous a man, the more useless they become. An ugly, frightening thought, but like the anger, fear thunders in my heart, sends blood racing through my veins like a rushing tide. I search her eyes and see the fear there too, but veiled behind her arousal. I listen for the snap of fingers, knowing it won’t come.

  “Touch me.” I grasp her hand and force it to my cock. Her protest is silent, just a jerki
ng of her arm and a clenching of her fist, but I squeeze tighter and her fingers close around me. I clasp them there, drawing them up and down in brutal strokes. My lust mirrors the motions, a harsh and choking need that sets my entire body throbbing.

  “You feel how badly you’ve made me want you?” I ask, slowing her forced caresses.

  Her mouth is open, gaze on our hands. Her lips are flushed plump and dark. It dawns that this is Caroly’s chance to sample other men—even cruel ones—within the bounds of our odd, one-way fidelity. She must like that, just another aspect of the education she was seeking when she came to me.

  All at once I want to be a hundred different men for her, so many she’ll never need anyone but me.

  I free her hand, but only to push the violation further. In a breath I’ve clad myself in latex, and my knees push hers ever wider. Even in the candlelight, this act seems to cast us in shadows.

  “Let me in.” It’s no request, and I tell her so with my actions, jerking her panties aside with my thumb. I can smell her, that scent that makes me salivate as no other delicacy can.

  She grasps my wrist with both hands, pulling, pushing. “Stop.”

  “I can’t. I want you too much.”

  They feel shockingly true, this man’s words. Far more shocking is the absolute fact that I am stronger than her. She’s holding me off with everything she has, but it’s not enough, not even close. It’s an ugly power to feel, and a shameful power to take even the slightest glimmer of pleasure in exploiting. She yanks and thrusts at the hand baring her sex, and with the other I guide my cock to her lips. Her heat kisses my crown, searing and slippery. It eases both my entrance and my conscience, this proof that the intrusion is a welcome one.

  Her voice turns small, so small. “Don’t.” But her grip on my wrist goes slack. As though she, like me, is focused on this moment—on the hard, slow slide on my flesh claiming hers.

  The penetration isn’t enough. Normally I’m a blank page, an unmolded handful of clay, only as domineering or hesitant as my client wishes me to be. But now I want to feel strong, bossy. I want to be that thing I despise more deeply than anything I can think of—a bully.

  I lower my body to hers and press our foreheads together. Her cunt is hot and tight, and mine. My territory, my possession. I tell her as much with my thrusts, pushing deep again and again.

  “Now you know,” I say. “Now you feel how hard you make me.”

  “Stop.” The syllable sears my lips.

  “Don’t fight me.”

  Even as I say it, I feel an elbow jab my ribs, a palm pressing uselessly at my chest. I drive deeper.

  “You made promises, the way you looked at me at that bar.”

  Silence from her throat and lips, though her pushing hands are screaming for me to stop. One moves to fist my hair, the way it has during our more frenetic couplings.

  “Keep your promises,” I tell her, drawing my length away then plunging deep, seeking a rhythm. “Admit you want this too, and you’ll enjoy yourself. Or else make me take what I need and it will not go so easily.”

  It’s all harsher than I’d expected. I’ve been rough before, though with the clients who ask me to seduce them, typically the force is less physical, the surrender far more coy. I pry them open with wine and words, but tonight there is more muscle, more implicit threat. So strange, the way lovers play at hurting one another. Strange but so nearly universal.

  She lets my hair go. I hear my own sounds, disembodied. They’re the curt, rhythmic moans of a desperate man. I’ve redressed in my own skin, the brute abandoned with my self-control. I try to clad myself in his cruelty but she’s so warm, so soft…

  The protest is gone from her touch. Her fingers are curious, assessing some contour or other, cataloguing whatever muscles flex as my body plunders hers. Caroly’s hands, unmistakably. Her hips shift with mine, that private dance in which I alone have had the pleasure of being her partner.

  Our little play has lapsed, but when I rise on straight arms, she finds her script. Those admiring hands stiffen and push, telling me she would not have her gentle teacher back so soon. I detach from the pleasure, letting only enough register to keep me hard.

  Planting my knees wide, I grab her waist at each side and hold her in place. She claws my forearms and I answer with my thrusts, telling her I’ll take anything she refuses to give willingly. We grapple until I seize each of her wrists, locking them at her hips, though careful to leave her fingers free to snap. Her back arches and her head mashes the pillow, hair a wild corona of curls. She writhes, electric, and I’m in awe. Does she feel the scrape of the clasp or zipper of my pants, as I feel the rasp of lace each time I plunge deep?

  When I speak, my voice sounds like a stranger’s. “Turn over.”

  This will be a treat for her, her favorite position. I suspect she likes the way it turns her elegant lover into a panting, growling animal, or perhaps merely the ease with which I can wrap my arm around to tease her clitoris. Perhaps both, some mix of the messy and the masterful. She loves contrast, she told me once, speaking of her favorite paintings. Hard lines over soft brushstrokes, murky mingling tones cleaved by slices of pure white canvas.

  She resists still. I shift her bodily with gruff, borrowed hands, and desire pierces my composure. A mere prick to start, then cuts, a flurry of ragged slashes until my self-control lies in tatters. “Hold the headboard.”

  I’ve been treated to this view many times now, but never like this, with lace still framing her backside and her skirt twisted about her waist. Variety holds little novelty for me—it’s never been a commodity I’ve had to labor to enjoy. But it excites me to see her this way, like a different person. The same woman I’m coming to know, but cocked at a new angle so a facet yet unseen leaps gleaming into the light.

  Her back flexes as she braces herself against the scalloped wood of the headboard, and my hand shakes as I tug her panties aside and sink deep. The lace teases. I make her feel the slap of my skin against hers. The smell of sex hardens my muscles and draws moans from my throat.

  She cranes her neck to watch. There is only Caroly in that curious gaze, and she sees only me. Our game is done and I do not mourn it. We have nights enough ahead of us to play, and right now, this night, I want what she does—just the two of us in this bed.

  My arm or her hip is damp with sweat as I reach around and under her skirt, fingertips slipping beneath the lace to find her clitoris taut and swollen, as hard as my driving cock. Her lids lower as I stroke her, mouth falling open. I can bring her to climax twice, three times, until happy, lust-drunken drowsiness dulls her pretty pale eyes. Yet when the time comes for my pleasure, desire shines there, always. She likes whatever the need does to my face when I chase my release. I smile to myself, arousal deepening, heating, tightening, to know how she must relish this. I curl the fingers of my free hand over her shoulder, tugging her into my thrusts the way she loves.

  She murmurs my name and I say hers in return, rubbing her in tight circles. The world is no bigger than this bed, the only noise and scents those of our two bodies. There is no gravity, only the friction of my fingers against her pleasure to pin me to the earth, no night or day or dusk or dawn, just the sweet, hot slide of my cock between her lips. I slow my thrusts but let my fingers race, wanting to make her feel each push and drag of the penetration. She turns her head sharply and I know she envies my view.

  “Come now, and I’ll let you watch,” I promise.

  A grunt answers me, then another, one to mark each moment my hips meet her backside. I echo the sound, my deep voice and her feminine one groaning together in time with our sin. The pace turns so slow and smooth. I can feel the change in her, the way her body grasps at me, begging for my come.

  Just now, I want what my animal nature does. To do what our bodies were designed for and fill her with the spoils of our sex. To make a terrifying mistake, the kind that could bind me to this woman for the rest of our lives. I thank Christ for the condom, the flimsies
t armor protecting me from such destructive impulses.

  “Didier.”

  “Good.” Unbidden, my hips rush to match the frantic strokes of my fingertips. “Come for me. Give me what no other man gets to have.”

  She presses against me and I grant her body what it wants, every inch buried deep in her pulsing heat. With each tide of her orgasm she squeezes tight. In its wake she goes limp, her stillness disrupted only by the swell of her breaths.

  I lighten my caresses, recording the tempo of her blood in that most intimate pulse point. Her hip shines in the burnished light and I relish the coming summer, to see that sheen all over her body, feel her skin slippery against mine in the August heat.

  At my urging, she releases the headboard and turns onto her back. I undress her slowly then shed my own garments. I ease the silver baubles from her ears and now we are bare, utterly. Well, nearly. I check that the ring of latex is snug to the base of my cock and I spread her thighs wide, finding her tight from her arousal, lush and slick.

  Normally I find it difficult to override my programming, the voice that tells me to put off my own pleasure, to deny my release until the permission is implicit. But for the first time in years, I’m remembering how to simply be a man, my needs equal to my lover’s, to be a partner and not a doting, selfless service provider. I want to come, as badly as I would like to do the same for her a second time.

  She strokes my arms, watches my cock.

  “Touch yourself,” I tell her.

  She does, then offers an order of her own. “Lean back.”

  I sit on my heels, hugging her thighs to my hips and giving her the show she desires. The heat of her gaze fills me with a smug streak of pride.

  “What do you want to see?” I’ve asked her this before, and she knows what I mean. What kind of man does she want to find in me? The picture of seductive self-control or a frantic wreck? Some other man altogether?

  “Whatever you’re feeling.”

  A frantic wreck, then. I grin, letting her see the madness behind my smile. “You will have to race me.”

  Her laugh gets me as hot as any caress or plane of bare flesh could, and I hand my body over to lust. I set aside her needs to indulge in a rare act, the singular pursuit of my own pleasure.