by Harper Bliss
I stop when I can’t take it anymore. It’s 6:31. Jess stops when I stop and claps my back. She doesn’t say “See you tomorrow” and doesn’t have to.
I show up Wednesday morning. My body accepts its fate. This is my life. Jess says, “Hey,” as she walks up.
“Hey,” my voice sounds different than it usually does around her. More settled, less nervous. Like something that has already been bent and straightened itself.
Jess takes off and I follow her. I didn’t bother to bring my phone. When we’re a few blocks in, she turns around and jogs backward. I jump, trying to rearrange my face from its miserable expression to something more neutral.
“Let’s do some sprints!”
I stare back at her.
Jess turns around and yells, “Go!” She picks up her pace, driving her legs forward in huge strides. I try to accelerate and my body clunks and clamors. I’m stiff, my knees ache, my lungs are raw. I feel like I’m going to cry. Jess sprints to the end of the block and I run-trip stupidly behind her.
At the end of the block, we fall back to our normal pace. Two blocks later she yells, “Go!” and it takes me a moment to realize we’re sprinting again. I run the block as fast as I can, feeling like a loose stack of bricks about to fall every time my foot strikes the ground.
Anger floods in, filling the cracks opened by exhaustion and confusion. Hey, I’m doing my best. Anger almost prompts me to yell it at her. We sprint again, then again. We’re barely half an hour in but I’m at my limit. I can’t feel my feet, my gasps are turning into wet coughs. I stop.
I hear Jess walk back to me and anger wants me to shove her. I see her hand come to rest, palm up, in the edge of my vision. I give her the weakest high five anyone has ever given another person. She says, “Nice job.”
At lunch, I tell Joe I think I’m dying in stages.
“You’re really plunging into this headfirst, huh?”
“I have no choice.”
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing though. Just tell her you need to slow down.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“So you can run without dying?” Joe looks incredulous.
“I’m not—” I’m too tired to explain. “I’m not doing it for my sake.”
“Are you like,” Joe narrows his eyes, “flirting or anything?
I shake my head.
“You’re just suffering.”
I nod.
On Thursday it’s sleeting. Jess shows up in a knit cap and I want to slide my fingers up inside it, stroke her hair, and kiss her. Instead, I run behind her. We do sprints again. Jess doesn’t even announce them. She slows just enough for me to run up alongside her, then sways into me as she takes off. Each time, her arm brushes mine, or her shoulder knocks into me. I can smell her hair when she passes. It feels like she’s taunting me. I run with frustration like a lump in my throat, feeling like I’m being used.
When we finish, or rather, when I stop running, Jess stops next to me and bends over. I pant at the ground and she says, “Hey, do you know any good sushi places around here?”
I swallow and steady myself just long enough to say, “No.”
“Oh, okay. My sister is coming to town next weekend and she loves sushi. I’m trying to figure out where to take her.”
I say nothing. I don’t know if I’m angry at her or at myself, but it runs through me so thick and hot that I can’t house any other emotion.
Friday, I feel numb. When Jess shows up, I just turn and start running. We do sprints and I barely register the pain. I realize that before now, I didn’t know I could push my body this hard. That knowledge is quiet and grim, not empowering.
When we’re a few sprints in, Jess slows to a jog and says, “You sprint this one and wait for me at the end of the block.”
I look at her, replay her words in my mind, and still don’t understand. She shoos me with the flick of her hand so I turn and sprint. Unthinking and obedient. I sprint to the end of the block and wait for her. I stand, panting unevenly, and watch her jog up to me. She jogs by without a word, so I start running again.
We run a block and she slows again. “You go,” she points to the block ahead, “Sprint and wait.”
What? I stare at her and she stares back. Now I’m working harder than she is? What are we doing here? For the first time all week, my stomach twists, unsure, but I’m too weary to form a question.
I start to run. My feet pound too heavily, pulling my deadweight body forward. I sprint and somewhere along that block, I crack. When I slow down and look back to see her jogging behind me, frustration overflows. A rush of adrenaline sets my blood on fire and I start walking back toward her, my shoulders hunched and ready for a fight. I see her look up and begin to slow.
I meet her mid-block; the words come effortlessly. I spit, “What the fuck is this?”
Her eyes flick over my face and she says nothing.
“I mean, what the fuck is this? What are we doing?” I step into her, too close. My chest is shaking and my hands are throwing themselves wide in angry arcs. “Who do you think you are?” I’m right in her face, snarling now. Past my breaking point with no self-restraint. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.” Her eyes flutter like she’s startled. She shakes her head and speaks quietly, “But there’s a couple things I’d love to give you.”
My brain doesn’t register her words. I laugh in her face. “Oh yeah?” I cock my head, a challenge. “Like what?” I feel like I’m going to throw up and I know everything I feel is spilling out of my eyes, contorting my face. Distantly, I know it doesn’t make sense to get mad at her; I brought myself here.
“You know.” Her eyes hold mine. “I’ve got something in mind with my tongue.” She says it so plainly, like she’s asking about sushi restaurants. There’s sweat dripping down her temples. “My fingers, too.”
And just like that, it’s sex. It’s like she’s already inside me. Like I already gutted myself and invited her in to fill me up. She says it like it’s been sex the whole time. My eyebrows lift. I stare at her and feel my stomach bloom with lust.
I have no quip to answer her and my anger is spent. I say nothing and kiss her instead. It feels like breaking. I’m breathing hard through my nose and when I open my mouth, her tongue finds mine. I whimper and she huffs. In a rush, my hands are in her hair and her arms are around my waist.
Her nose is cold and her mouth is hot. I feel like I’ve slipped out of my skin and into a warm bath. I press my hips flush to hers and she rolls against me in reply. Lust steers me, like it’s holding me by the horns, and I kiss her how I want to fuck her. Dirty promises rise on my lips. I want to get her off on how badly I want her.
Instead I say, wetly, “You do this with a lot of girls you meet at the gym?”
She laughs. Her eyes are so dark and warm. “No.”
“Why me?” It’s more of a challenge than a question. I’ve splintered and now I’m all sharp edges.
She speaks simply, not to arouse me or defend herself. “Because you want it.”
Good enough. “You live around here?”
She nods, her mouth loose in an open grin. “Wanna come over?”
“Yeah.”
Jess pulls away from me abruptly and sprints down the block. I watch her, feeling like a perfectly blank slate of confusion, for a few paces. Then she turns and yells, “Come on!” My swollen feet carry me after her. Running is a little easier when my body feels like a bundle of balloons on strings. Everything seems blunted and unreal. Even my own anxieties are dim lights under the vibrant strangeness of running back to her apartment.
I suck her neck in the elevator and murmur against her skin. Boundary-less and unashamed, I treat her like I know her, like I own her. She leads me to her door and locks it behind us. In another mind, I could have spent hours examining her apartment, picking through it for clues as to who she is. In this mind, I can’t take my eyes off her.
Jess puts her keys on a h
ook by the door. “Kneel down,” she says.
I hit the floor, knees first, with my arms limp at my sides. I’m still breathing hard. My racing heart accelerates arousal through my body, making everything tingly and light. I’m so wet it’s making me wobbly.
“Take your clothes off,” she says.
I stare up at her and unzip my jacket. I pull my shirt over my head and elbow my sports bra off the same way. I pull down my pants and underwear, all at once, with my thumbs. I collapse back onto my ass to tug them down past my knees, toe off my shoes, and shove the last of my clothes off my ankles.
Exhaustion makes me bold. I brace my arms on the floor behind me, lean back, and let my legs splay. Jess’s mouth falls open and her hands twitch. She stands over me and takes me in with black eyes.
I’ve never felt more clearly that I was offering my body to someone. The thought of it makes my stomach flip. I put a hand between my legs and stroke two fingers up either side of my lips.
Jess lifts a hand to one side and says, “Get in the shower.”
I do as I’m told. That’s the point, isn’t it? My legs are heavy and uncooperative as I walk to the bathroom. I run a hand along the wall and hear her right behind me. I have to hitch my knee up twice two get it over the tub edge. I turn on the water with shaking hands and lose my footing. Her arms fly out to catch me but she stops short. I let my tired body tumble slowly down, bumping my knee and stopping my fall with the soap dish, until I’m resting against the back of the tub, with my legs in the shower’s spray. She hasn’t touched me since we came back to her apartment.
“Is the water cold?” she asks in a voice I can barely hear over the static shower noise.
I shake my head.
“Make it cold,” she says.
Here, frustration and anger and confusion invert themselves. I understand now. She has me where she wants me, where I want to be: naked in her tub, with broken resolve, ready to be taken. I want her to tell me what to do; she wants to see me do it.
My body responds to that realization with another shiver of arousal. I slouch and slip my way over to the faucet, not caring how I look, and turn the knob all the way to the right. The shower goes frigid. Icy water rains down and forces a reflexive inhale from my lungs. Inhaling against a cold shock is one of our deepest instincts. It’s nearly unstoppable.
Jess knows this, I’m sure. She knows all about the body as it approaches failure. She’s kneeling, bent forward with her chin resting on the lip of the tub. Her face is just inches from mine, watching so closely. “Is it cold now?” she whispers.
I nod.
Both of her hands are gripping the tub edge. She sucks her lower lip. “Does it feel good?”
It feels like giving in to something stronger than I am, I want to say. It feels dangerous.
Maybe she broke me so I wouldn’t feel like I owed her anything, so I wouldn’t mask myself. I let her have me as I am. I smile at her and open my mouth. I let the cold trickle in and fill me up.
Jess holds out a bottle of soap. “Wash yourself.”
“Touch me,” I say.
“Not yet,” she says.
I take the soap from her and she says, “Make the water hot. To thaw you out.”
I do as I’m told. Jess has me wash my hair with her shampoo, then she tells me to shut the water off. She hands me a towel and says, “You have a beautiful body.”
I wrap the towel around myself and squeeze the water from my hair. My body is ecstatic now, on the long slide after burnout where it’s happy just to be alive. Jess walks backward out of the bathroom and I follow her.
She takes me to her bedroom and gestures to the floor in front of her bed. “Sit down,” she says.
So I do. Of course I do. I let the towel fall away and lay my body out for her at the foot of her bed. She kneels in front of me. The electric wait is too much. I moan and let my body writhe, getting off on her gaze. When I open my eyes, Jess is on her hands and knees, panting in front of me, searching my face.
Her eyebrows knit together. “You want to be touched?”
I nod.
“Then touch yourself.” Jess says it like she’s at the end of her rope.
I laugh. Then I settle, because she’s told me what she wants me to do. I stroke both hands firmly up my inner thighs and my mouth drops open. Her face mirrors mine, showing disbelief, hunger, impatience.
I stroke my clit with two fingers and tell her what it feels like with wordless sounds. Jess leans forward and braces herself around me. Her hands are on the bed behind my head and her body arcs around mine.
She still has her tights and sweatshirt on. Her hair is messy and her face is flushed. She breathes over me, her face pure desire and her body pure restraint. I know, in the way that things are obvious and indisputable during sex, that she wants me, so I make it hard for her. I let my eyes roll back in my head and get loud for her.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head like she can’t take any more.
“When are you going to touch me?” I ask.
“When you tell me I can.”
Our eyes lock. My sex-blurred brain rights itself and I wait for the murk to settle, so I can think clearly. Oh. Of course. I blink at her and put the pieces together. She may be the one driving us forward, but I have always been holding the reins. I say when the torture stops, when enough is enough. She stops when I stop. I nod to myself and she nods back.
I push her chest. “Sit back.”
She rocks back on her heels and lets her hands rest loose in her lap. Then I finger myself until she’s moaning with me and rubbing herself through her pants. For the first time, I make the choice to own the power she’s given me.
“Tell me what you want to do to me,” I say.
Her stomach contracts and her head knocks back. She makes a string of sounds I can’t understand, then says, “I want to fuck you. Every way you want to be fucked. Till you beg me to stop. Till you come on my hand, in my mouth.”
She’s leaning in, getting closer and closer. “I want you to fuck me slowly,” I say. She rushes to close the gap. Her head presses into mine, warm friction as she nods against me.
“Yeah, yes,” she says, breathless and wrecked, “I want it. I want it, please.” I see her hit the top. With her eyes closed and her mouth open, she’s nothing but willpower.
“Take it,” I say.
Jess falls against me, curls around me. She kisses me hard, with both hands on my face, then flutters them lower, flying to touch everything her eyes have crawled all over.
She rolls me on top of her and guides her thigh between my legs. My wet pussy marks the fabric of her tights. She pushes my body down and pulls her knee up, grinding into me. I feel two shaky hands caress my wet breasts, then drift back and grab my ass. She moans into my mouth and thrusts with her hips, moving both of our bodies in the instinctive rhythm of fucking. I feel taken, so I surrender what’s left of me. I’m just loose strings and liquid sounds. I let her do what she wants.
Jess kisses my skin in long stripes from my collarbone down to my hips. She lays me out on her floor and goes down on me. She keeps coming up to blink at me with those wide eyes and asks how I like it, if I like what she’s doing. I say it’s good, really good, then I smile and push her head back down.
She fingers me so slowly that I’m mumbling, gasping, trying to tell her how amazing it feels when I squirt all over her carpet. It comes in waves, gushing out of me each time she pulls out her fingers.
Jess slurs, “Oh my god, again,” with her lips against my clit. I take a deep breath and let her fingers take me right back to the edge. I squirt again as I orgasm. It wrings me out and radiates beyond my skin in rings of pleasure. I see her watching me, looking up through tangled hair, and I don’t cover my face. She knows what it feels like to hit the top, so I have nothing to hide.
Not Yet
Harper Bliss
“Close your eyes,” Ava says. “Trust me, you’ll want to keep them open later. Give them a rest
for now.”
As if I can ever keep my eyes off her. But I do as I’m told, because this is Ava, and her command over me has incrementally increased in the time we’ve been together—and is now absolute. I can’t say no to her pleading brown eyes and to that lopsided smile she puts on when she has things like this in mind.
I close my eyes and wait.
Nothing happens. But I’ve learned not to lose my patience. I don’t peek through my eyelashes and try to figure out what she’s up to. Like she asked me to earlier, I trust her.
She has me naked on the bed and a faint rush of air flows over my skin as she brushes past me. I’ve heard the sound of her rummaging through a drawer enough times with my eyes closed to successfully identify it. I also know what she keeps in that drawer.
“Give me your hands,” she whispers in my ear.
I know better than to offer them to her in front of me. As part of our unspoken code, I bring them behind my back. She ties me up with something that feels like silk. It must be a ribbon of the red dress she made me tear up a few weeks ago. She’d come home looking ravishing in it, in full-on red carpet mode, still glowing from the attention she’d received. When I told her how good that dress looked on her, so good, in fact, that I wanted to tear it right off her, she instructed me to do so. And I did. The rip of the fabric in my ears, the touch of the silk in my hands while I exposed her glorious body to my gaze, was so intoxicating, she had me whimpering in minutes.
“That dress is a keeper then,” she’d said jokingly afterwards, but she’d meant it.
I relish the memory of that night as she tightens the fabric around my wrists.
“Keep your eyes closed while you shuffle onto the bed. Make yourself comfortable.” She follows up with a little chuckle because it’s not exactly easy to make myself comfortable with my hands tied behind my back. Just standing up already makes me lose my balance a little, but, again, I’ve been in this position many times before. I take tiny steps backwards, turn around and, while bracing my core, bring one knee onto the bed. My other follows quickly and I only sway a little before finding my balance again.