The Things That Make Me Give In

by Charlotte Stein

  In answer, she pushes her fingers into his not-quite-brown, not-quite-blond hair, and finds it as soft as she remembers. His slight sideburns and his stubble were always rough as fuck, but his hair was silky and fine.

  It forces her to whisper, as his mouth finds that spot just at the end of her jaw, right before her ear: ‘You’re just the same.’

  Perhaps it is her saying this or perhaps it’s just the momentum of the thing, but he takes over the unbuttoning she had abandoned. His teeth dig into her earlobe as he parts the wings of her shirt, but he seems reluctant to disentangle himself from her in order to remove it.

  Instead they fall back on to the bed with most of their clothes still on.

  The bed protests. She’s sure it won’t last through whatever they’re about to do because, although she is a small woman, he is a big man. She can’t imagine how he ever fitted into a bed like this – his legs trail off the end even as he crouches over her, and the narrowness hardly allows him to prop himself up with his hands on either side of her body.

  Of course he won’t put all of his weight on her. He’s aware, she thinks, of his size, though he handles himself awkwardly sometimes. He’s awkward in a lot of ways – when she goes to ruffle his misshapen jumper up over his body, he snaps his hand down to stop her as though by instinct.

  She has to slow her movements right down. Slow, slow. Approach with caution, wait until his obvious embarrassment and his instinctive blocking of her disappear, and then try again. His hunger is clearly still there, but maybe he just wants her to pull it out slowly.

  He could want to stop at any time. He might not really want her at all.

  So, when she lifts her head off the pillow and parts her lips and nudges her way back to him again, she does it in little sparks of hesitation. She does it in pushes and pull-backs until his eyes sear suddenly hot and he jams his mouth down on to hers.

  Then, he lets her slide his jumper over his head, and this time only seems reluctant when he has to stop kissing her. Not reluctant because his body is covered in scars. Obviously. How had he thought she wouldn’t realise that? Even men who see very little combat usually come back with some reminder of their time in the middle of a war zone. Even if they just fall over because their pack is massively heavy and the roads are full of huge mine-made potholes.

  She can’t even walk down a non-war-zone road in trainers carrying nothing without doing herself an injury.

  ‘I’m not as . . . nubile as I used to be,’ he says, and then he smiles and she wants to eat that gentle smile up.

  She touches the scars on his face – one just at the corner of his mouth, hardly there at all. Strokes his cheeks with trailing fingers, the scar like a little hook just above his eye.

  He closes them, when she strokes close. She passes her fingers over his shuttered eyelids and he makes a faint sound that turns her heart over.

  ‘Kiss me, Kes,’ he says. He keeps his eyes closed as he says it.

  But then she can’t think about the loveliness of his soft words, the softness that he is giving way to, how big and firm he is all over, how tender she feels towards him, because excitement takes over again and it’s all so deliciously . . . base.

  While his mouth is on hers he yanks at the buttons on her jeans and then the jeans themselves, pulling them to her knees before she’s prepared for nudity. She fumbles with his own thin trousers in return and for one hot moment is sure he is just going to fuck her like this – jeans and trousers pushed down halfway, rough and frenzied and filthy. No condom, she thinks. I want you to fill me up with your come and then taste you, God, I want to taste you.

  That place is here, now. That place where all her body and her mind are fucking, and she is allowed to think and do the dirtiest things because of her aching, insistent sex. My body made me do it, she thinks, and almost laughs, but God, what if he thought she was laughing at him?

  She keeps it all inside while he wrestles to kick off his boots, wrestles to get her out of her shirt – oh, the sound he makes when her bra is finally off and he can see the breasts he used to touch with such fascination.

  ‘Jesus, you’re no different,’ he says. ‘You’re no different at all.’

  And then he cups her breasts in so strange a caress – big hands going over them and then drawing back out until he has her nipples pinched between his thumb and forefingers. He tugs ever so lightly, and only then does she realise how overwhelming is her arousal. It sucker-punches her. He is only testing, only wanting to touch something for the first time, but his restrained caress makes her pussy clench and her clit jump and her body dissolve.

  She is so wet that she can hear it, and smell it, and she thinks that maybe he can too. When he reaches between her legs and parts the lips of her sex so easily, he doesn’t seem surprised at all. Pleased and turned on, yes. Surprised, no.

  She has to push his hand away when he stirs her slickness over the swollen tip of her clit. Clearly this is going to be fast but, oh, not that fast. Not yet.

  She shoves her jeans all the way down and off, and waits impatiently for him to do the same – so impatiently that she helps him. Her eagerness makes him laugh, but amusement switches as fast as a page flip back to that intense focus on her. His eyes gleam and he threads fingers through hers, forces her back on to the bed without giving her a moment to see him completely bare.

  It’s probably for the best. His cock is as big as she had always imagined it to be, back when it was pressed into her thigh from all the way across the back seat.

  He takes a moment to fumble for condoms that she’s surprised he has in his pocket, but when he’s done his hands go right back to pinning hers above her head. She thinks of the kinds of things he might like before she can stop herself, weird and nasty things stirred by his warped mind, but weirder yet is how her body responds.

  When his grip almost hurts and he stretches over her, her skin prickles and begs for the weight of him. The rough brush of his chest hair against her taut breasts and too-tight nipples is almost agonising and she spreads her legs as wide as the bed and the wall will allow.

  He fills the space between intrusively, thickly. The pause he then takes is hugely frustrating.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Come on and fuck me.’

  ‘You want me to fuck you. Just fucking. You want me to be rough with you.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Come on.’

  She jerks her hips up against his and for a moment his eyes flash cold again.

  ‘Slut,’ he says, and nothing in her dislikes him using the word.

  ‘I am a slut. I’m a slut for you. I’ve wanted to fuck you for ten years – I’m aching for you to fuck me.’

  His hands tighten even more in and over hers, and the slight pain makes her squeak. She thinks again of what he could do and what he has probably done. Handled people, restrained people, punished them for being bad. Or at least as bad as someone else has judged them to be.

  ‘You can do whatever you want to me, you know, Packs,’ she says. It just comes out of her, breathlessly, but he doesn’t look disapproving. He answers her with the soft, drifting closing of his eyes, the rock of his hips. His cock slides between them, over the spread-open cup of her sex, brushing against her clit and through all of that slipperiness. She aches to have him rub himself there, cock pressed tight to the seam of her pussy, but he is only teasing – both her and himself.

  It’s unbearable. She twists against his restraining hands – uselessly, of course – and tries to work her clit against the meat of his cock, but he only holds her tighter and presses against her more firmly so that there’s no space to move in. He’s so heavy that it’s impossible. And then he’s laughing at her, he’s laughing.

  That’s what makes her lash out with her teeth – the laughing. She just grazes his upper arm with her snapping, reaching mouth and a strange, shocked, sinking look flashes across his face before he jerks her against the bed.

  But his anger only incites her further and, when he shoves hims
elf inside her with a rough, angry thrust, it isn’t painful. She’s so ready and overworked and expectant that it’s like being doused with cold water. Her cunt immediately clamps down hard on the fat, thick thing that fills her, but that only sends a jolt of pleasure through her.

  She gasps and his expression turns to concern, but she’s sure her churning hips tell him more about her state than anything else does. His body is so solid that she finds she can rub her clit against any part of him, and his cock presses and presses and presses against that swelling hot place inside her.

  It takes only a second of his tight jerking thrusts and her own rutting against him. Her hands burn in his and her clit aches and throbs and then he makes such a desperate, heated sound, a disbelieving sound – ‘A-hah,’ he says, while she babbles, ‘Oh, God, that feels so good, so good.’

  She comes hard, shaking inside and out, wrung dry by everything: his lair, the poetry, his cold clear words to begin with, the memory of kissing and that little neat scar above his eye. His thick cock fucking inside her and his body like an anchor weighing her down.

  But he doesn’t stop there. He whispers in her ear – in so dark and tentative a tone – that he’d like her to squeeze his hands back, and it’s only then that she realises she hadn’t been. She had revelled in the pain he was causing her and let him do it, and hadn’t thought to return it with anything like comfort. Is that what he wants? Comfort?

  Even in the middle of something so intimate, he’s impossible to read. He works his cock in her, sometimes in a way that suggests he wants to treat her roughly and gets pleasure from that, other times softer, slower, as though he truly was angry that she called it fucking, and wants something more.

  She comes again when he does her like that. When he clutches her ass and spreads her right open and fucks into her slow and easy, perspiration gleaming at his temples, each breath almost a moan. Her hands are free and she presses one into the turn of his hip to mould him against her just as she likes it, but she tells him too, ‘Oh, just like that.’

  And then a great swell of aching pleasure breaks over her – almost too much, almost.

  She kisses his face in thanks, little kisses all over, blissed out and liquid limbed. But he’s still tense and still fucking at her, tilting his hips up hard as though afraid that he’s not going to get there.

  She lies back on the pillow and he looks away. Perhaps that’s exactly how he feels. As if he can’t make it.

  It’s a disturbing idea and it bleeds some of the still humming pleasure away, but perhaps all it will take is stroking his back, some kisses, some caresses. Her mouth on him. He’s frowning, eyes closed, but it isn’t hard to nudge him up and to the side a little.

  He seems to realise what she’s doing and turns with her, his cock sliding free in a way that he obviously feels richly – he hitches a breath and lets it out in a moan – but still there’s something held back. It’s held back even more when she’s half curled over his body, him on his back, and she goes to take him in her mouth, only to be stopped.

  ‘No,’ he says, and that’s even worse. But then: ‘No, fuck me. Get over me. Fuck me.’

  She straddles him readily, new excitement in her. It’s always lovely to hear the wanting in someone’s voice – even more so that it’s Packs.

  She can’t take all of him, even as slippery and relaxed as she is. He feels immense like this, riding over him, and when his hips jerk up at her she gasps. Concern flutters across his gaze but it doesn’t stop him rocking his hips again – though gentler this time.

  When she leans forward over him and puts her palms flat on his shoulders, he moans, and his eyelids stutter closed. The harder she works on him, the more he seems to appreciate it, until she’s shoving him into the mattress and blazing with thick sensations.

  He still hasn’t come, but she’s sure she’s going to make it again. She can feel her pussy spasming around his cock, and her whole body goes electric. He looks so good lying there beneath her, straining and frowning and biting his lip.

  His hips arch up at her and that’s all she needs. It jerks through her and sends her mindless, so much so that she squeezes too hard on his shoulders and her nails bite in. She hardly even hears him when he asks her to do it harder, but she comprehends clearly when his hands go over hers and push those biting nails down into his flesh.

  Her eyes snap open and she stares down at him, still juddering and breathless.

  ‘Harder,’ he says, and she obeys purely because of the strange desperation in his voice and his expression.

  When she squeezes her nails in hard enough to break the skin, his hips snap up and he goes rigid beneath her. She feels his cock pulse once, heavy and protracted, inside her. The moan he gives up is the purest sound of relief and pleasure she has ever heard.

  Everything seems nice and relaxed and after-glowy – until he gets up suddenly and starts pulling on all the clothes she wouldn’t mind seeing off for ever. They could just be naked in this place for ever, and that would be fine.

  Why he’s getting dressed so urgently, she has no idea.

  ‘Come back to this uncomfortable bed,’ she says, before it occurs to her that this is all there’s going to be. One fun fuck and then goodbye. It washes over her in a cold wave, once those too-hasty words are out.

  But he just turns, startled, halfway through pulling on his jumper.

  ‘You want me to . . .’ he starts to say, but then the words seem to slip back down his throat.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ she asks, and sits up just a little. It exposes most of her breasts, and to bolster her courage she thinks of his expression on seeing them. Let him see them again. Let him think of more than one fun fuck.

  ‘I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘Didn’t think what?’

  ‘That you’d want me to.’

  She almost laughs, but his intent and faintly stricken expression stops her. He looks guilty, she thinks, but can’t imagine why.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she tries, and the guilt edges back just a little.

  ‘You don’t mind, then,’ he says, and immediately she runs over everything they’ve just done. Mind what? But there’s always the risk that, if she asks, he’ll tell her something bleak and horrid.

  Mind that I tortured children. Mind that I wanted to tie you up and rape you.

  ‘I just can’t . . . seem to stop myself. If you hadn’t done it, I would have.’

  Would have what? she thinks. Jesus.

  And then it comes to her what he might mean, and this time she can’t stop herself laughing.

  ‘Do you mean . . . do you mean the nails thing? Packs, is that what you mean?’

  ‘It’s not funny, Kes.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, you do mean that. I thought you meant something awful! I don’t care if you get off on a bit of pain, you daft twat.’

  His mouth comes open, but he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Is that what you mean? I barely did anything! Jesus Christ, Packs, take your clothes back off and get into bed. Start getting dressed when you want to cut off my arms and legs or show me pictures of tortured children.’

  ‘You’re not bothered. Not at all.’

  ‘Why . . . why should I be? What do you mean? Because you – what? Pressed my nails into your skin? It’s hardly S&M Monthly, Packs –’

  He shoves his hands into his hair, both sides, and draws them back until they link at the back of his head. His forearms probably make great ear mufflers.

  ‘You don’t think it’s weird, at all.’

  It’s vaguely worrying that his questions are coming out as statements.

  ‘Why would I? You didn’t do anything!’

  ‘So that’s perfectly normal, is it?’

  ‘Well . . . maybe not, but –’

  He glances away. Drops his hands. There seem to be about a million words that want to come out of his mouth, because his lips keep opening and closing and working around nothing.

  ‘I hardly thought you’d b
e completely straightforward in the sack, babe.’

  To her relief, he laughs at that.

  ‘I was more worried that you weren’t really into it.’

  ‘Oh, my God, no, Kes. No,’ he says, and then he shakes his head, over and over.

  ‘Come back to bed then,’ she says, and he does. He kisses her, and holds her so tightly to him she can’t breathe, and does.

  He’s waiting for her next time, she knows. There’s that fearful, excited look on his usually so impassive face, and it’s not a surprise that they don’t make it to drinks and casual conversation at the bar. She just walks right into the Fox and Badger and he looks at her in that expectant way, and then somehow they’re in the grotty bathroom.

  He says, ‘What are you going to do?’

  Which makes her fearfully excited.

  She unbuckles his belt quickly while his mouth slants over hers. He backs her into one of the stalls, door creaking, closed in immediately by the narrow space. The cold of the porcelain bowl bites into the backs of her calves briefly, before she shoves him forward against the now shut door.

  Of course, it’s a flimsy thing and it protests, but it only has to hold him until she has his belt in her hands. Then he steps forward, and holds out his crossed wrists.

  ‘I’m a dangerous killing machine,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what I might do.’

  ‘Behind your back,’ she replies. Talking means that she doesn’t have to laugh, which she suspects he wants to too – but then again, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe some part of him really thinks that.

  That skirting awareness settles over her again at the thought. Sexy punishments are fun. Real ones are not. It could be OK that excitement is overriding the awareness of that line, but it also might not be.

  Which is even more exciting.

  She lashes the belt around his crossed wrists – now obediently tucked behind his back – and laces it through the buckle. Then draws it taut in one snap. The leather whistles and protests.

  So does he. Though it’s really more of a hiss through his teeth when the hard edges cut into his flesh. She goes to loosen it and says ‘less’, but he nudges her with one big shoulder.