Almost Real

by Charlotte Stein

  Oh God, he didn’t think it was crazy, did he?

  “Well…of course I want you to be naked. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. I’m kind of…burly.”

  “You say burly like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She wondered how many different ways she could say no. Or whether she could just invent one super word that meant no in various escalating degrees of severity. Nyenonevorong, she thought, but eventually went with something that made more sense.

  “You did see me almost faint when you had your shirt off outside, right? I mean, I’d like to believe that I seemed super cool and completely oblivious, but I’m fairly sure my mouth hung open a bit. I may have drooled.”

  “I think I would have noticed you drooling.”

  “I’m not so sure. I’ve done it a lot, but you don’t seem to have seen any of it.”

  There was a long silence, made more intense by the subject matter and her makeshift blindfold. She couldn’t search his face for an expression, or work out what he thought of her confession through subtle clues. She had to just lie there and wait for him to say absolutely nothing—or at least, she thought so. But then his hands went to the material and pushed it up over her eyes. And when she finally saw him, she knew he didn’t think badly of her.

  His face was so stuffed full of warmth it was practically leaking out of his ears. She could have melted beneath the heat, and after he spoke she almost did.

  “You like looking at me, girl?” he asked in a voice designed to turn a person’s bones to butter. It was soft without losing that gravelly edge, still incredulous but with a hint of burgeoning pride.

  It was a pleasure to tell him yes.

  “Yeah, I like looking at you. It’s not the only reason I find you so…so…I don’t even know. But it’s up there with strong and silent and strange.”

  “I see. I see I see I see,” he said, only in his low murmur those repeated words became a kind of hum. A kind of song almost, she thought, sweet enough to send a tingle through her body. “Well, that’s good to know. ’Cause man, do I ever like looking at you.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh yeah. I like these,” he said, and then he stroked over her eyebrows with his thumbs. Not her breasts or her cunt or her lips, but those big black hairy things that were pretty much the bane of her existence. And he didn’t stop there. He touched the bump on the bridge of her nose and the mole just beneath her ear, murmuring all the while about how sweet he found them, how delicious.

  “You’re not like anyone else,” he said finally, which pretty much sealed the deal.

  She was his, utterly and completely. And she needed to show it, now.

  “Oh God, please just fuck me. Would you fuck me? I want you to. I want you to so much. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for you to do it, so if you could just…”

  “Fuck you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like this?” he asked, then just kind of…bumped his hips a little. Nothing much really, apart from all the places where it was absolutely everything. His clearly hard cock nudged against something really sensitive, and she got a taste of what he would look like as he took her.

  His eyelids drooped low over his heated stare, and for the tiniest moment he bared his teeth. He bared his teeth and almost growled.

  She couldn’t say yes fast enough. Or coherently enough.

  “Mmmyerplez,” she blurted, but thankfully he understood. He understood on the same suddenly visceral level she did, all other considerations gone in a white-hot burst of lust. His hand went to the sweatpants she’d struggled with, shoving and tugging until she could only feel his bare skin between her thighs.

  And then the t-shirt followed suit. No shyness now—how could there be? They’d just stripped each other of any last lingering doubt. He liked the way she looked and she liked the way he looked and now they were going to consummate that attraction. They were going to do this thing, just as soon as he stopped teasing her with two maddening fingers.

  Oh God, why was he teasing her with his fingers? Didn’t he know it was driving her insane? He had to, and not purely because of her squirming and gasping and begging. There was also the look on his face, so riddled with frustration it could have been a mirror held up in front of her.

  He was suffering just as much as she was, yet still he didn’t quite go for it.

  And after several more seconds of agonized suffering, he made it clear why.

  “You’re so little,” he said, which in other circumstances would have probably seemed like an insult. But in these circumstances, it was just another thing that kind of made her want to kill him. She wanted to scream but knew she shouldn’t—and not just because of her need to not scare him off.

  There was also the fact that he was right.

  She was kind of small. And he was kind of…enormous. If he just went ahead and fucked her he was probably going to split her in two, so really allowances had to be made. They’d probably have to work around it for half an hour and then maybe do some deep breathing or tantric exercises.

  “I’ll just make you come first, okay?”

  Or maybe he could just do that. Yeah, he could do that all right. He was probably already doing that, in all honesty, because the second he said the words she felt a great gush of pleasure go through her. He was going to make her come so she could take his big cock—seriously, was there any sweeter concept than that?

  She didn’t think so.

  Until he eased those two teasing fingers into her pussy and it became clear how he was intending to do the deed. After which, the concept went from sweet to somewhere just below indescribable. Was he actually intending to do it like this? With just a little pressure and some…ohhhh God yes, yes he was.

  Oh Lord, she’d never felt anything like it. He twisted his fingers in a way that shouldn’t have worked, one over the other and ever-so-slightly crooked, and then suddenly sparks were going off behind her eyes. A jolt of sensation struck her in the gut, hard enough to almost make her double over.

  She could hardly believe it, but even as she was processing that first bit of pulsing pleasure he amped things up with another. And he didn’t just twist a little this time. He rocked those fingers inside her, slow enough to make her want more but firm enough to have her begging him to stop.

  God, he had to stop. She wasn’t prepared for this; she hadn’t understood. She’d thought he’d meant a little lick to her clit or something similarly understandable, but instead he was fucking her and fucking her and saying all kinds of things as he did. Yeah that’s it, he said, which didn’t seem like an arousing set of words.

  And yet they were, they were. He spoke them aloud and suddenly her pussy felt wetter, hotter, more swollen. She could actually hear the sounds his fingers were making in her slippery little hole, and the more he said the worse it got. Come on give it up,he told her, and the crazy thing was…she could feel herself obeying.

  Her body seemed to be trying to curl in on itself and she couldn’t make half the sounds she wanted to. Her jaw had seized somewhere around the time that he’d told her he was going make her come, and it wasn’t letting go. If anything, it just got tighter and tighter as this insanity progressed.

  By the time he was done her teeth were going to be pate. Her entire body was going to be pate. He’d progressed to this hard, driving sort of rhythm, and it was making her shake apart. She could actually see herself shuddering and shimmying in time to every slick thrust and each encouraging word, until she was sure she was done for. Didn’t he know she was done for?

  He had to stop, now.

  He had to, before oh Christ before…before—

  “Ohhhh God I’m coming, oh I’m coming.”

  It happened in a great hot rush, too fierce to fully accept. One second she was faintly disbelieving and sure she wanted him to ceasefire. The next it felt kind of like the world was ending. Her eyes squeezed so tightly shut she wasn’t sure she’d ever
be able to see again. Her hands made fists, but the fists seemed misshapen and unnatural. Her forefinger almost disappeared inside her thumb, which absolutely wasn’t right.

  But then, none of this was right. He’d loved her eyebrows and failed to understand the value of his body, and now here he was making her come with this little bit of penetration. None of it made the least bit of sense.

  Yet it made all the sense in the world.

  This was the pleasure she’d been meaning to feel all these years. The pleasure that had hidden behind sex toys she didn’t know how to operate and men who barely seemed interested. It crashed over her in waves, leaving her senseless and entirely unprepared for the next stage.

  His hand had been bad enough.

  His cock was beyond her ability to comprehend. She just had to hang on to his shoulders and try not to look—especially when he reacted to the feel of her soft, heated cunt giving in to the push of his oh-so-solid dick. His eyes rolled up in his head and his hands made fists in her hair, and for a second he sounded just like she did.

  “Oh no don’t I can’t,” he said as he filled her in agonizing stages. First the swollen tip of his glorious cock, so thick and heavy she was sure she couldn’t take it. But she could, she could. She simply parted for him, taking that solid shaft with the most delicious slippery ease.

  God, she was going to come again before he’d even started. She was still coming from his last little trick, and now that pleasure intensified and redoubled. It clamored and made her say things she didn’t want to, like yes and now and you’re the best—though thankfully she managed to hold on to that last little bit.

  She kept hold of her “I love you”. He would never be able to understand an “I love you”. He barely coped with lust or moderate feelings of minor affection, so love had to be right out of the question. He’d probably explode if she said it, and yet the urge to let it out was so strong she could hardly fight it. The pleasure built and built and her stupid feelings rose with it, fed on a diet of his hands on her face and his whisper in her ear and oh the roll of his hips as he took her.

  He was going to come soon, she knew. It was in his sudden loss of control, those measured thrusts giving way to a fierce and uneven pounding. The table shook and his gasps grew more guttural, mixed with words she didn’t want to hear. Oh Margot, he said, oh baby, he said, and the battle to keep her feelings in grew that much harder.

  She only hung on by the skin of her teeth when he abruptly took her hand. He bent his arm around and laced his fingers with hers, and the effort to keep silent almost proved too much. The words burst to the very tip of her tongue, and were only beaten back by the rush of sensation that suddenly overwhelmed her. Her climax hit like a hurricane, wiping out all other considerations in its path—and she was grateful for it.

  She was grateful for every piece of physical distraction, from the slow, hot pulse that went through her to the feel of his cock swelling inside her. “Ohhhh fuck,” he said, and that helped too. Everything he did from then on helped, from the way he seemed to freeze above her to the grunt of shocked bliss that he choked out as his orgasm hit.

  He looked as if he’d never come before in his entire life. As if he didn’t know how to take it or understand it, and kind of wanted it away from him. His whole body seized and shuddered as he filled her full of his hot, slippery come, and oh God the things he said when he finally could.

  “I can’t believe how good this feels,” he burst out, as though he really hadn’t done this before. Or at the very least, he’d completely forgotten what it was like. He’d denied himself for a thousand years and now this was the result—him orgasming for about a decade before collapsing onto her in a rush of relief.

  She didn’t mind, however. She had her own relief to revel in, as blissful as anything they’d just done. She’d kept the words inside, thank fuck. She hadn’t blurted anything out in the heat of the moment, and had no urge to say it now. Instead she could just enjoy the comedown, secure in her own silence.

  Though somehow that didn’t seem like much of a victory anymore. And once he’d lifted himself off her, she understood why. It was in the way he dressed, with just a hint of awkwardness. She could see it in his expression—nearly shame-faced, as though he’d let everything go without meaning to.

  Of course, he did his best to hide it. And this time, there was no running or sudden bouts of fury. He didn’t try to escape. Maybe he would never try to escape again, and that was good. But still, still…not escaping and completely surrendering were two very different things. They sat on opposite ends of the spectrum, divided by years of locking things down and keeping things calm and never even being friends with someone…just in case. Just in case a feeling slipped out. Just in case you felt like saying I love you.

  And that was the problem, really.

  It wasn’t that she had to strain to keep silent.

  It was that he was probably incapable of ever saying anything at all.

  Chapter Eleven

  She woke some time just before dawn, still bound tightly in a dream she didn’t want to be having. For some reason she’d been searching and searching for something that didn’t exist, and her failure to find it remained with her. She could feel it in the ridiculous wetness on her cheeks, and the fierce urge to check that he was still there.

  Despite the fact that he was always still there, now. He no longer rose at silly o’clock to avoid her. He didn’t run away when something happened between them. And true, occasionally he looked a little like he was having his teeth pulled out with pliers while these things were going on. But she was willing to take what he could give.

  Anything more was just a bonus, a possibility, a far-off thing she didn’t exactly hope for. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying, or what her dreams thought they were doing putting in heavy subtexts like that.

  He gave her a lot. A lot was enough. A lot was her reaching across the bed toward him, without fear. It was no longer thinking about touching him as invading his space, but as something an ordinary woman did to her equally ordinary lover. He was her lover, she thought, and if it had to be without the L and the O and the V and the E, she would live just fine on the R. She’d lived her life with nothing but the R, and been perfectly happy. She wasn’t even sure what she’d ever liked about the other letters now, in truth.

  Love was messy, it was sticky, it fucked things up. It had almost spoiled some perfectly reasonable sex on more than one occasion, and now here it was interfering with her hand on his arm. She just wanted to stroke over his biceps with the back of her hand. Love wanted her to cuddle.

  After all, it would have been easy to. He was sprawled out on his back rather than curled into a tight corner—a change that was as dangerous as it was awesome. On the one hand, she really liked the gradual move he’d made from stone statue to comfortable bed partner. But on the other, it was far too easy to fall into bad habits.

  She could already feel her hand trying to inch over his chest, despite her best intentions. And the justifications were starting to come thick and fast too. Why, he’d done the same thing to her the other morning. He’d draped himself all over her like a wet rag. What was wrong with her returning the gesture?

  Apart from the fact that it made her a different person. She wasn’t a hugger. She didn’t hug people. She was like him, wary of feelings and impervious to anything other than a kind of messy affection. She didn’t even react when he took her hand, which was good on a number of levels. The first being her current resistance to anything that might be read as love, and the second was the reason for the sudden gesture.

  It wasn’t because of some mooshy feeling that he probably abhorred.

  It was something else. Something she could scarcely comprehend.

  “The house is surrounded,” he said, so low and plain she was sure she must have misheard. Maybe he’d told her he hated her guts, and she’d just translated it into something more palatable. Or could it be that he wasn’t really awake at all? H
is voice had the ring of someone who’d spoken in their sleep, too flat and too strange to be real.

  Surely it wasn’t real.

  “It can’t be. The alarms would have sounded,” she found herself saying, even though a big part of her already knew. She knew because she knew him. This was the voice he used when he wanted to be calm and cool and not alert any possible threat to their awareness. He wasn’t sleep talking or being paranoid or any other explanation she could frantically think of.

  If he said it, it was happening—though that still left the question of how. Her mind couldn’t get around how, no matter what sort of slant he put on things.

  “They must have blocked the signal somehow, cut the connections. Something we didn’t bank on. Something the company missed,” he said, but even he sounded dubious. Of course he sounded dubious. You couldn’t just cut connections. You didn’t just block signals. The resources needed for something like that would be astronomical.

  Which left only one possibility.

  This was an all-out assault. It had to be. It seemed incredible, but even as she was still boggling over it she could hear what he had heard. Just barely, but it was there—a faint scrabbling sound at the door, punctuated by a strange hollow susurration she didn’t recognize. She had to strain and strain before she finally got it.

  But once she had she wished she hadn’t.

  It was the noise boots made against wood when their owners were trying to be quiet…only multiplied by God knows how many. A dozen? More?

  “Think there might be a whole pack of them.”

  “I’m getting more than fifteen.”

  “I’d say that’s conservative,” he said, and she could only nod in response. She couldn’t make any more words about this. Terror had sort of seized her by the throat—though maybe that was for the best. They’d already wasted too much time on incredulous conversation, when action would have been so much better. They needed to get out of bed and get to the control room, or maybe go for some weapons. Either one would do, but first they had to move.