The Things That Make Me Give In

by Charlotte Stein

  He’s blushing now, as her toes climb higher.

  He’s quite a bit younger than her dad, so there’s not really anything wrong with it. It’s not like some old man leching over someone’s sweet young daughter. And yet his reaction makes her feel that it’s almost like that. Like she’s doing something very wicked indeed.

  Like he’s doing something wicked, even though he’s not doing anything at all.

  He just sits there, while she rubs her toes over the growing bulge in his trousers. Her dad wants to talk about accounting stuff with him, but he seems less and less able to concentrate on things like words. His eyelids shutter delightfully when she licks melted butter from her knife, using all the slow, deliberate intent of someone with a soft, warm body beneath their tongue.

  Soon, she thinks. Soon I’ll take him.

  As though he’s something to be taken, to be possessed, a possession that belongs to her, bright and dark at the same time, in the middle of these boring wilderness holidays.

  She doesn’t honestly think it will go beyond teasing. He won’t do anything, she knows, and she can’t see herself taking it any further. But then she goes out to the pub with her parents, and they leave Norm behind. He wants to stay at the cottage and read a book and likely be free of her tormenting him.

  But she stops her dad halfway down the half-made road to civilisation, and feigns sickness, and gets to walk back to the cottage while they drive off to get stewed.

  When she gets back, Norm is standing in the middle of the kitchen in just his T-shirt and boxers, with his face trapped inside his jumper. She knows he is trapped, because he is blindly searching for something in one of the kitchen drawers. Only his nose and mouth are visible, below the makeshift jumper mask.

  ‘Are you going out to fight crime?’ she says, and he jerks as though stung.

  ‘Lita,’ he says, and then very quickly after it: ‘Where’s your dad?’

  She lets the kitchen door close, and he jerks to hear that, too.

  ‘They’ve gone on to the pub. I wasn’t feeling well.’

  He pauses. She can see he’s now got a pair of scissors in his hands.

  ‘Are you still not feeling well?’ he asks.

  ‘No. I feel much better now,’ she replies.

  He visibly swallows, but tries to stay light-hearted.

  ‘I’ve gotten stuck inside my jumper,’ he says, half-laughing. ‘The little hooks are caught in my hair.’

  She remembers what the little hooks look like. A row of detail on a fisherman’s jumper. The kind of thing only a non-fisherman would wear.

  She giggles, and he purses his lips. The goofy little half-laugh cannot be maintained.

  ‘Do you want me to cut you free?’ she asks, and he nods, and then holds out the scissors.

  She doesn’t make a move, however. She waits, and waits, and watches his yummy mouth. After he clearly feels he’s been waiting a long time, he takes a step forward. Hands out in front of him, like a zombie or a mummy.

  ‘Well?’ he says. ‘Are you planning on cutting me free or not?’

  When she doesn’t answer, he takes another step forward. Feels the air in front of him for signs of her. His lips part, then purse together again.

  ‘Lita?’

  ‘Marco,’ she says, and he tuts at her.

  ‘Now come on. Don’t play silly buggers.’

  ‘Marco,’ she says, and dips out of the way to avoid his reaching hands.

  ‘Lita, I can’t see a bloody thing. At least cut me out of this if you want us to play silly games.’

  ‘You’re supposed to say Polo.’

  ‘I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Don’t be a sulk, Norm. If you catch me, I’ll set you free.’

  His mouth quirks in what might be the beginnings of a smile, but he gives no more than that. Well, no more than continuing to sort of play, fingertips sifting through the air to find her. While he sifts, she pulls her T-shirt over her head. When he almost bumps into a chair, she giggles and unhooks her bra.

  She dodges again, and this time he turns deceptively quickly, almost catching her arm.

  ‘Nearly had you then,’ he says, and now he is smiling. She supposes even accountants occasionally like to play a bit of a game.

  ‘I better not say anything else then, had I?’ she says, and he turns quickly, this time half-laughing again when he snags her wrist.

  ‘Gotcha!’

  He seems genuinely jubilant, she thinks, or at least he enthusiastically searches her empty left hand for the scissors and then goes for the right, only to brush her bare body with the back of his arm. Immediately he stops dead as though struck, and tries to jerk away from her while still holding on to her right wrist. The smile sags out of his face.

  ‘Where are your –’ he starts to say, sounding cross and bothered, but then he puts out a hand tentatively. She watches him judge the distance and the places where things might be, and her body tightens with anticipation.

  Of course she knows he’s not going to outright fondle her, but to see his hand reach out like that and stir the air in front of her breasts as though about to cup them – it thrills through her. Before his hand judges the spaces and places correctly, and finds her shoulder.

  She knows what he’s searching for: her T-shirt. He rubs the bare skin as though willing it to be there, and then his mouth tightens.

  ‘Are you completely naked, Lita?’

  He sounds stern, she thinks. He’s about to tell her off while blindfolded by a jumper.

  ‘Are you imagining that I am?’ she asks, but he just tuts again at that.

  ‘Give over,’ he says. ‘Cut me out of this.’

  ‘I will if you give me a kiss.’

  ‘Look, I told you. Don’t play silly buggers. This has all gone far enough. If your dad sees you like this and me like this he’ll chop my knackers off. He thinks you’re still a virgin.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You little liar.’ He pauses. ‘If you are you’re some strange sort of virgin.’

  ‘Oooh, you’re cruel, Norm.’

  He blunders a little, then.

  ‘Oh – well – I didn’t mean anything by it, Lita. It’s all right for you to not be a virgin. I mean, you’re old enough and pretty and sexy and what not, I –’

  She cuts him short with a kiss. It’s too unbearable to resist with all that adorable talking he’s doing. She sinks into kissing him like falling into syrup, feeling it all warm and like a relief to her aching body. His mouth is soft and warm, and gives beneath hers with as much acquiescence as she could wish for. His hand tightens around her wrist, but the kiss itself is lazy and without urgency.

  Outside, it has begun to rain. She only notices because it is suddenly so quiet in the room, so still. They’re barely moving, really.

  She pulls away slowly, and just looks at his kiss-stung lips for a moment before reaching for the jumper. He stops her, and puts his hands over hers.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, leave it.’

  She lets her fingers stroke over his cheekbones, presses her thumbs against the barely there corners of his mouth. The scissors lie flat against his left temple.

  ‘Do you want to pretend I’m someone else?’ she says, and realises that she can still hear the rain because they’re whispering.

  ‘I – no. No, Christ, no. Help me out of it, then.’

  He moves her hand with his, through the ruffly hair at the nape of his neck and to where the hooks are caught. It had seemed like a silly game before, a bit of fun, but now she’s not sure. She’s sure enough, however, that finding somewhere to cut with scissors should not make little shivers of excitement run up her spine and down again, right down between her legs where everything is blooming and growing warm.

  She tries to imagine what those naked eyes of his are going to say when she finally gets him free, and her sex pulses in that low-down good way to think of it. It’s not just because he’s her dad’s friend. It’s him. It’s him who makes everythi
ng wicked.

  She snips where he shows her, and then she helps him push the jumper off. He smoothes his hair, and brushes the trimmed strands from his shoulder. His eyes say: Please God, let her go on then. Go on, then. They are unable to resist flicking down to her bare breasts.

  ‘Feel for my T-shirt again,’ she says, and he smiles. It’s still not quite all the way, but it counts.

  ‘What?’ he says, and she puts his hands on her bare shoulders.

  His smile softens into something lovely.

  ‘Doesn’t look like you’re wearing one.’

  ‘What else am I not wearing?’

  ‘Things that you bloody well should be.’

  ‘You’re so disapproving. Are you going to disapprove while you’re shagging me?’

  His eyebrows shoot right up into his feathery slanting fringe. The side parting has long since fallen down.

  ‘I’ll not be shagging you,’ he says, but that cheeky grin he seems to have descended into says otherwise. ‘No bloody way, mate. Your dad’ll have my guts for garters.’

  ‘Your words say no but your lips say yes.’

  ‘That’s the defence given by date rapists, I think you’ll find.’

  ‘All right. Your words say no but your penis says yes.’

  He laughs with her, then.

  ‘I don’t know any date rapists that have tried that one.’

  She kisses him on the word one, so that it comes out um.

  They’re still snogging when the car of disappointment pulls up outside.

  She’s sure that he tries to be good. He’s definitely trying. It’s just that he isn’t succeeding.

  It’s obvious that he only goes outside for a smoke at 2 a.m. because he’s waiting for her to come out with him. She lies in bed, wide awake, and waits for the front door to open. Her parents never hear it, because their bedroom is in the back. Of course, they’d hear Norm doing naked things to her in her room, so he has to go outside.

  And wait for her to come.

  The first time she did, of course he had feigned innocence. No, I didn’t want you to come out here. We were almost caught last time, this is insane. Et cetera.

  But he had let her snog him up against the shed. He had groped her tits with admirable enthusiasm and, anyway, as she’d said to him, no point being coy now.

  When she creeps outside again, he throws up his hands.

  ‘Oh, look, Lita,’ he says, in the low, occasionally hissing voice of the guilty. ‘What do you think we’re going to do out here? It’s freezing cold –’

  ‘That’s why I brought the keys to the Jeep,’ she replies, and he seems to sag at hearing that. ‘I’ve always wanted to do bad things in the back seat of a car. Haven’t you?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Admit it. Tonight you’ve draped that blanket around yourself because you don’t want me to see your erection.’

  ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘Last night you just had your jacket on.’

  ‘My jacket’s . . . in the wash.’

  ‘You lying just entices me more.’

  ‘I’m sure date rapists also say that.’

  ‘OK. I’m just going to go over here and unlock the Jeep. And then I’m going to sit inside it. You can get in too, if you like – no pressure. I wouldn’t want to force a pretty little thing like you into doing something you’ll regret.’

  He rolls his eyes at her. Before following her to the back seat.

  After he’s closed them both in, he turns to her and says, ‘Right. But we’re just going to talk. OK? Just talk.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Because I could go down on you if you like.’

  ‘I’m su–’ he starts, and then changes his mind mid-sentence. ‘Don’t say things like that.’

  ‘I’ve got other ways of saying it.’

  He pauses.

  ‘Like what?’

  The genuine curiosity on his face shimmers hotly through her.

  ‘I don’t know. How would you ask me to go down on you?’

  ‘I’d ask you when we’re far, far away from here and on your fortieth birthday.’

  ‘Only fifteen years to go until you get that hummer then, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a bit of a shame.’

  ‘Or would you ask for a blow job? Perhaps some epic head? Maybe you’d just be straightforward and explicit: suck my cock, Lita.’

  The way his lips are parting and his eyelids are dropping with all that desire weighing them down . . . it makes it easier for her to talk like this. Even though it’s naughty, it’s also easier.

  ‘If you say it, I might,’ she says, and leans into him.

  His eyes search hers in between dips downward to the rise of her cleavage, or the flick of her tongue as it wets her lips. She knows he is looking at those things. That those things are luring him in. It makes her pussy slick and her limbs liquid.

  ‘Suck my cock,’ he says, and she feels her sex ache and swell. She rocks her hips just to keep the ache satisfied and knows that he is aware of what she’s doing.

  ‘OK,’ she says, as nonchalant as you like, but then he adds, ‘But let me see to you while you’re doing it.’

  And everything glazes over inside her. She can feel herself almost trembling with the urgent need to be naked with him, and fuck and suck and lick and bite him into little pieces. It’s hard to breathe and her cheeks feel as if a fire’s been lit under them.

  ‘Here, let me do it,’ he says, and then he opens the pyjama bottoms he’s wearing and takes out his cock.

  It’s so stiff that it tries to kiss his belly, and he doesn’t touch himself for long. He doesn’t need to tell her how quickly he’s going to go off, but he says it anyway, and then he tells her to get on her knees across the seat. Before she’s even managed to take his cock in her mouth, he has worked his hand underneath her body and into the little shorts she’s wearing.

  The fact that there’s only the one thin layer between him and her pussy excites her unbearably, as does his sudden rough urgency. His hand covers her without hesitation, easily finding where he wants to go with her bottom in the air like this and her legs spread.

  There comes a point when things are so worked up that everything is easy. He doesn’t seem to think twice about sliding his fingers through her slit, and when he does his head goes back against the seat, and he groans, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  She knows why. She can feel how wet she is. His fingers slide as easy as breathing into her pussy and then over her clit and back again. And it feels so hot and good that she almost forgets what she’s supposed to be doing.

  Until he reminds her. He reminds her with a hand in her hair that is gentle but definitely insistent. It’s the insistence that gets her harder. Arousal has made him desperate and to hell with anything else.

  A sentiment which she agrees with. She sucks on him greedily, as greedily as he is working over her clit with firm, stiff fingers. When she swallows him down to the base and on the way back up flicks that sensitive spot just below the head with the very tip of her tongue, he pushes out a jumble of words that sound like ‘Oh, God, you give good head.’

  Whether he says it or not, it shoves her hard into a bucking, trembling orgasm.

  She loses what she’s meant to be doing and he tells her, ‘Please, please don’t stop,’ but it’s not as though she has a lot more to do. He comes when she moans around his cock on the last shimmer of her own pleasure, hand tightening in her hair, hips lifting, his long guttural groan twisting inside her until it’s too much. It’s far too much.

  As she lies in his lap with her cheek pressed to his slowly, slowly softening cock, and he laughs and can’t seem to catch his breath at the same time, she tries not to imagine just how much actually fucking will be.

  It definitely isn’t going to get to fucking. There’s just no way it is. He seems more guilty than ever, and he stops going out at 2 a.m. altogether. They sit on opposite ends of the
couch like bookends, reading.

  That’s what they’re doing when her parents come downstairs all togged up and announce that they’re going to the pub. Would anyone like to come with them? And Norman replies that, no, he wouldn’t like to go to the pub tonight. He’s just got to an interesting part of his book, apparently. He’d really like to stay here and see where it goes.

  And she glances across at his completely-avoiding-looking-at-her face, and knows with a kind of giddy joy that this is it.

  ‘What about you, Lita?’ her dad says.

  She stares straight forward to avoid meeting Norm’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve got to an interesting part too, Dad. I think I’ll stay here and finish it.’

  He shrugs, and puts his arm around Mum’s shoulders.

  ‘We’ll be off then,’ he says. ‘You two have fun.’

  ‘So. What’s interesting about the part you’re up to?’ he asks, once the door closes.

  She swears by Beelzebub that she won’t be the first person to drop the act.

  ‘It’s where the heroine torments the hero until he dies.’

  ‘Really? That doesn’t sound like a very nice book.’

  ‘It isn’t. It’s awful.’

  ‘What does she torment him with?’

  ‘Her fabulous tits.’

  ‘Want to know what my book is about?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s about this fella who gets his head blown off by the shotgun of the dad of a girl who torments him with her tits.’

  ‘That sounds awful.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So what leads up to the fatal shotgun blast?’

  ‘Well . . . the tormenting.’

  ‘Like . . . what? Like maybe she strips off in front of him, really slow?’

  ‘Don’t you dare strip off in front of me, Lita.’

  She points a finger at him, triumphant. ‘Ha! I win the dropping-the-act game. Now you have to take all my clothes off.’

  He drops his book into his lap, and glances across at her. ‘That doesn’t seem right to me.’

  ‘All right. I’ll just take them off, then.’

  He doesn’t say anything this time. His eyes just follow her as she stands. His eyes follow her fingers, too, as she unbuttons her peasant blouse. She’s about halfway down when he stands up suddenly, and reaches for her.