Reversal

by Cara McKenna

  Ones very unlike the coward I truly am. “First the perfect seducer. Warm and clever and shameless.” I can feel his skin slipping over my shoulders like a cloak.

  “Forceful?” she asks, meaning a different sort entirely.

  “No, nothing like that. A familiar type. A beloved scoundrel, not a selfish one. A persuasive gentleman. A slow-burning candle between the sheets.”

  “Who else?”

  “A rougher man, with a foul mouth and punishing hips,” I say with a smile. “The sort who’d never bed a woman beneath a stitch of covers.”

  She purses her lips then brings the glass to kiss them.

  “I could be either of these men for you,” I tell her, eager to do so. Eager to be anyone but myself until the sun rises again.

  “Do most women want you to be nice or mean?”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but the answer needs no pondering. “Nice.”

  She nods.

  “It’s not just any woman who pays a man to make love to her,” I say.

  “Are most of them weird, like me?”

  I smile, leaning forward to curl a dark-blonde lock behind her ear and trace her jaw. “None are so special as you.” I speak a Lothario’s words, but they’re my words as well. True down to each letter.

  “But a lot of your clients must be…I don’t know. ‘Damaged’ sounds mean.”

  “Many come to me needing a sense of safety or distance. A prostitute is a man one can’t get too attached to—”

  “Oops,” she says, teasing herself. Just a little joke, but her meaning floods my chest with heat and pride.

  “I’m not your prostitute any longer.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You’re welcome to get as attached to me as you wish. Though it baffles me why you might.”

  Her gaze falters. “Some of them must get attached though. Despite how impossible the circumstances are.”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I end those relationships.”

  “Just like that?”

  I nod. “It’s the kindest way.”

  She swallows. “How close did you come to doing that with us? Ending it?”

  The question startles me. But she told me perhaps four visits into our arrangement that she had to stay away for a while. I was proving too expensive and she… How had she worded it? She’d been in danger of falling in love with me.

  “You were the one who wanted distance,” I remind her. “You had the self-awareness to understand how worrisome your feelings ought to be. I didn’t need to scare you away. You did that job yourself.”

  “I suppose.”

  I clear my throat. “In truth, it would have been hard to draw that line. I’d grown attached to you as well.”

  That draws a pink stain to her cheeks, a sunrise to banish my gloom.

  “You must know that by now, having seen what it takes to coax me out of these walls.” That had been my first time in years, leaving this flat—going out to seek Caroly after she’d told me she needed to stay away, to protect her heart and her bank balance. It took me days to manage it, but the gesture had to be made.

  I picture the twinkling cases of that old jewelry store, of gestures needed and unmade. I failed once. Perhaps that doesn’t mean I’ll fail the next time. Though the thought of a next time twists my guts into a fresh nest of knots.

  Setting my cards on the table, I give her a dark, familiar look. I want to escape into a costume—any identity but the one I was born with. I want to be whatever man she has a taste for tonight.

  She lets me slip the cards from her hand and scoots closer when I tug softly at her waist.

  I graze my lips across hers and smile. As I toy with her hair I murmur, “I’ve missed you, since Sunday.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  Five days we’ve been apart…five days and two other women stacked between this visit and the last. It’s selfish, but I wish my infidelity hurt Caroly more. I wish she’d make demands of me, need more of me, refuse to share me.

  I love this woman. Yet a man in love would cross a desert for the object of his affection, swim an ocean, scale a mountain. I can’t even walk to Gobelins for mine. What exactly makes me feel I’m someone worth suffering jealousy over?

  Anxiety is tugging at my sleeves with its tiny, insistent hands. Such a waste. I waste too much—entire days worth of sunshine. I won’t waste this too-short time I get with Caroly.

  Her cheek is velvet against my palm, lips tart with wine. My fingers seek her hair, my tongue her tongue. I feel her stiffen with excitement then soften in a breath. Her mouth welcomes mine and cool, slender fingers slip inside my sleeve to cup my shoulder. Blood pulses through me, its quickness nothing to do with fear, finally. My cock wakes, eager. Hungry.

  I whisper against her lips. “Let me take you to bed.” Let me get lost in you, in a place I could navigate blindfolded.

  She doesn’t reply in words but stands and takes my hand. I let her lead me to the dark bedroom, but I won’t be led for long. Not tonight, when I need so badly to feel capable. As we cross the threshold I push her toward the bed, a firm hand against the small of her back. She shoots a mischievous glance over her shoulder then pauses to tie one of the curtains to the canopy post. I peel my shirt away as she sits and we push our shoes off. She reaches for an earring.

  “Don’t,” I say. Anything that’s to come off that fascinating body, I’ll be the one to remove it. I tell her as much with my eyes, and she laces her fingers obediently in her lap with a little smirk.

  Heat fills me from my toes, rising upward with licking flames. I’ve left Didier outside the door with his precious disorder. Here in this room I’m a different man, a better one. One deserving of that smirk, those hands, that mouth, the secret place between her legs where only I’ve ever been allowed. That final thought swells my cock so hard and hot it hurts. Just the brush of my hand as I open my buckle sucks the breath from my lungs.

  Socks and pants are kicked aside and I join her in my underwear, my readiness surely plain even in the faint light that leaks in from the hall. She’s eager as well, palms roaming my sides and hips as I roll her onto her back, drive up her skirt with my knees. I slide my arms beneath her, bury my face against her neck, breathe in that vanilla-amber scent and her skin underneath it, her hair, her sweat. The July heat’s made her warm and soft and ripe. I’ll tease her with my mouth, taste that juice no other man has ever sampled. I’ll drink her down for as long as she’ll let me, feeling her fingers clutching my hair and imagining she owns me.

  I brace myself on my elbows and bring my hips low, grazing my erection between her thighs through two thin taunting layers. Nails scrape softly over my shoulders and down my arms, and she leans up just a moment to nip at my lower lip. I reward her eagerness with an explicit stroke, drawing my length along the soft cleft of her sex. Approving hands seek my backside, kneading. Begging.

  Already I can feel her growing wet, the way the fabric catches between us.

  “Tell me what you want tonight,” I say.

  “I want to make you feel good.”

  “Then let me do whatever I like.” Before the words are even out I’m moving down her body, already anticipating her taste, the pulse of her swollen flesh between my lips. I sit back on my heels and trail my fingertips over her top, her skirt. Her inner thighs are soft as the cotton, as smooth as the satin. My thumbs find the border of her panties, a tease of lace. A hand cups my heart, squeezing, coaxing the blood through my veins in heady bursts. I crave the same treatment for my cock from her actual fist, but it’ll have to wait. I’ll get lost in Caroly’s pleasure for hours, block out the bad memories of the day.

  I hook a finger under the strip of fabric between her thighs, draw it up and down so my knuckle strokes her lips, making promises. Her own hand moves to join mine. I expect her to push her panties down, but instead her fingers close around my wrist.

  “No,” she says.

>   A word I’ve rarely heard her utter in this room, curious pupil that she is.

  I move my hand to her hip and meet her gaze. “No?”

  Sitting up, she shakes her head, smoothes her skirt over her legs, strokes my hair. “I know what you want.” Her voice is thick with arousal. “To please me.”

  “Always.”

  “But I know what it does for you. I don’t want to be one of your clocks, Didier.”

  I frown.

  “I don’t want to be some space you escape inside to get out of your head. I don’t…” She sighs and looks around. After a long moment, she rises to tie the other three drapes to the bedposts. Then she’s at the window. She flings the curtains aside, revealing all those buildings under the darkening sky, the sunset winking pink and gold from their west-facing windows. My pulse races as I remember how it felt to be lost in that maze mere hours ago. My role dissolves and I feel like myself again—an ugly sensation.

  She takes a seat on the edge of the bed. “When you shut the curtains or go inside a hunk of brass or between some woman’s legs…you’re not fixing anything that’s upsetting you.” The words are forceful, but her tone kind.

  “It soothes me.”

  “But it doesn’t heal you any. You have to feel that stuff. Distracting yourself and hiding just puts the pain on pause. It doesn’t actually go away.”

  My cock goes limp. In my rational brain I know she’s right, but the frightened child in me resents her for it. This room is the single place I can rely on to make me feel capable and in control. The safest corner of my tiny world, and she wants to take that away?

  No no no no no.

  Why does the woman I care for the deepest insist on causing me the most distress?

  I speak slowly, feigning calm. “I could wallow in how anxious I feel for hours but it won’t fix me either.”

  “It will. Over time.”

  “Letting the pain become familiar won’t lessen it. It’ll only numb me. Why not numb myself with pleasure instead?” I reach for her, but she moves farther down the bed, stretching her legs to build a moat between us.

  “I don’t want to be treated like an alcoholic’s drink,” she tells me.

  “That’s not fair—”

  “And the pain will lessen, if you make yourself feel it. It’s like…it’s like a storm. It can’t rain forever. You have to ride it out.”

  I crawl to her, uninterested in being swayed by any logic outside the carnal. “It can rain all it likes, but I don’t see why I should stand outside and be miserable. Not when I can be warm and safe. Inside.” I nudge her knees apart with my own, but she braces her palms against my shoulders.

  “Fine. Not a storm then. But it’s homework. It has to be done if you’re ever going to graduate to what’s next. And ignoring it won’t make the pile any smaller. Don’t give it the power to make you hide.”

  I sit back on my heels and sigh, relenting.

  “I won’t pretend we’re the same,” she says, “but you know how I used to be. So anxious about being with men I nearly turned thirty still a virgin.”

  “Not such a terrible crime.”

  “Maybe not, but pretty cowardly. It wasn’t easy coming here, to be with you. I stood on your doorstep for ages, too nervous to ring your bell. But I did, and I did the work, and the reward’s been worth it. So worth it,” she says again, and rubs my thighs in gentle concession. “I know it’s not the same. But find a reward. Something to make the work bearable. A place you want to visit. A friend or a relative you’ve had to shut out of your life, who you could see again.”

  A woman whose respect I want so desperately to earn. Whose body should stay here, wrapped in mine each night, under these covers. But the pain hurts so badly and there’s no guarantee she’d want the same, even if I could become functional again.

  I let a long breath rattle from my throat then meet her gaze. “Do you not want me tonight?”

  “No, of course I do.” In a near-mumble she adds, “I always want you.”

  Relief loosens my back.

  “I just don’t want you to medicate with me.”

  “That’s never my aim.”

  “I’m sure it’s not. But I don’t want you all…”

  Weak? Pathetic? Exactly as I am?

  “I don’t want you all worshipful.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not when I know it’s to help you get out of your head.” She looks thoughtful a moment, staring past my face toward the window. Slowly, a smile curls her lips and she meets my eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you let me seduce you for a change?”

  My brows rise. This is unlike Caroly indeed. If sex is a Sunday drive to her, she’s perfectly happy to come along and see the sights—but she’s never once asked to steer. And I don’t know how I’d feel, not having my hands wrapped firmly around the wheel. Even with clients who wish me to be passive, I always feel in charge of the experience. The performance.

  She’s not after a performance, though. Already my mind is racing. It feels as though I’ve drunk several espressos, anxiety buzzing at the edges of my head, drying my mouth. Tonight of all nights, I want to fall back on what makes me feel competent, in control. Tonight of all nights, I want to be the one doing.

  “I don’t know.” I stroke her calves. “I like to please you. It would make me feel better to be that way. To feel…capable.” It’s hard to say these things. It’s been my job for so long to give women no reason to doubt my manhood, my skills, my command and reverence for their sexual experiences, inside my home. It occurs to me that the woman here with me now knows me better than anyone has in ages. She knows the veneer and the mess it hides. I suppose she must like the mess, but it scares me—being known.

  “I know you’re capable. You don’t need to prove it to me.”

  “I want to feel it.”

  She sighs, seeming resigned for just a moment, before a fresh wave of determination straightens her spine and she sits up. “Let it be my turn to feel capable. In bed.”

  I hold her stare, waiting for more.

  “If the past few months have been my exposure therapy, with sex and men and all that, let’s test me then. Let’s see if you’ve trained me well enough to seduce a hot-blooded Frenchman.” She grins. If the idea intimidates her, she hides it well.

  I hide something well, too—a heated, painful pang in my gut to imagine her going to bed with another man, eager to share with him the sexuality I’ve helped to foster.

  You have her now, but you won’t keep her, not if you don’t get better. I think this woman loves me, but she’s not a saint. Her patience will wane sooner or later.

  I mirror her wicked smile, faking the enthusiasm I wish I felt. “Is that what all this has been? Your training?”

  “In a way.”

  “And you’re ready to earn your certificate then?”

  She smiles again, softer this time. “I’d like to find out.”

  I nod, surrendering. And surely not for the last time tonight. “All right then. Let’s see how well I’ve taught you.”

  Chapter Two

  “Let’s stand,” Caroly says. “And start this properly.”

  We do, and I shiver as she runs her hands and gaze up my belly and chest, over my shoulders, down my arms. I reach for her waist but she catches my wrists.

  “You don’t get to do anything except be spoiled,” she informs me.

  “Not even touch you? What a cruel deprivation.”

  “Just let me be in charge.”

  “Very well.” Worries nip at me. Will my cock respond, with all my precious control castrated? If it doesn’t, will I hurt her confidence as well as mine?

  The questions drop to the back of my head as she strokes my sides, then my back, her small breasts under her soft cotton top glancing my chest.

  Plenty of clients have requested this one-way breed of contact, women who crave a man’s body but fear his touch. It was different all those times. I simply embodi
ed that role, became that obedient man for an hour or two. But Caroly wants me, just Didier, and I’m fidgety when asked to be still. If my hands aren’t kept busy, all their wasted energy goes directly to my hyperactive brain. I could take on a pleasing part, put on a show, make myself into the perfect submissive man…but then it wouldn’t be the two of us anymore. Not the way she wants. Not the way I want either, in all honesty.

  “May I speak, or shall I be mute as well as limp?”

  She smiles up at me. “You can speak all you like. Just don’t bother making any demands.”

  She looks strange to me. New somehow. There’s a gleam in her eye, a wicked glint to match her smirk. She rises on her toes, holding my jaw as she kisses my mouth. It feels odd to accept a kiss, rather than give it. Like writing with my left hand.

  Dropping back on her heels, she lets me go and nods to the bed. “Have a seat.”

  I do. Caroly does what I might have next, moving the card table iced in half-melted pillar candles closer and lighting a dozen or more wicks. My fingers twitch, wanting to be the ones busy with the task.

  She turns, still wearing that funny little grin. Still wearing everything but her shoes, but she remedies that, removing her jewelry, peeling her shirt up her long, long waist and over her head. Her pale skin is opal in the moonlight, cream in the cool dawn, golden now in the candles’ glow. Her brassiere is a shade darker, caramel satin edged in the same lace that minutes ago tickled my fingertips between her thighs. She’s full of interesting angles—the dip of her collarbone, the points of her elbows and the bones of her wrists, the strong lines of her jaw and cheeks. You might find this body on a runway, if never the cover of a men’s magazine. She’s a heron, at once graceful and awkward, long and rare and startling.

  Her skirt drops in a whisper of silk. I’ve never watched her this way before. In fact I can’t recall a night when I wasn’t the one to undress her. My mouth waters. I’m a hungry man forced to watch a feast laid out, not yet allowed to taste. She steps out of the garment, standing between my knees at the edge of the bed. She strokes my hair with lazy distraction, traces the outline of my face. I stare up into her eyes, the angle reminding me of every succulent minute I’ve spent between her legs, kissing her sex. Her thumb follows the curve of my lips.