Control (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels)

by Stein, Charlotte

  But I know that’s what he was doing. I can feel a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth even as I play along with his total innocence, that little pink flash of book cover I saw through the glass playing over and over in my mind. I guess his secret porn stash in the cistern is actually my book shop.

  The smile pulls at my mouth harder, but I get it under control.

  ‘Hello, Gabe,’ I say, and, as with all guilty people, he seems to find it hard to make perfectly articulated words. He says something that sounds like hi, but could reasonably be anything. His hands go into his pockets – as they often do when he’s having to do something awkward, like make casual conversation.

  The problem is that I actually want to make casual conversation with Gabriel. I want to chat about the weather! When is he going to talk to me about the weather?

  Instead he helps me with my bags, and I spend my time guessing about him. Did his mother make him like this? Some spank-happy teacher, at the Enid Blyton School For Unruly Boys? Nothing at all but his own strange need to be so self-contained? He’s not irretrievably weird, exactly, but you have to be a certain sort of man to feel you have to hide your need to read naughty novels from naughty novel store owners.

  God, I’m dying to know if it really was Sins of the Flesh he was reading. It’s right there on the stand by the counter, and it’s got a hot pink cover, and it is absolutely unabashedly filthy. It’s just the kind of book you’d read if your draconian parents stopped you from looking at girls’ breasts until the age of thirty.

  I stop just short of saying to him – as he puts the teabags away, in the almost-too-high-for-me-to-reach kitchen cupboard – that he can read any book he wants, whenever it’s not busy. I could tell him it’s a good advertisement – that customers often ask about the books they see we’re reading.

  But then he turns around, and there’s this look on his face. His eyes are big and sweet and clearly the sort that are easy to wound, but there’s a furtive smile there, too. His mouth is curling – the way I suspected mine was doing, when I first walked in.

  It makes me not want to spoil his secret. I doubt he’s been entitled to many in his strange little life.

  ‘I shelved the books that came in this morning, and watered the plants. Oh, and I got that big cobweb out of the top right corner,’ he says. It’s where we’re stuck – in boring work exchanges.

  I never thought I’d be concerned about too much attention-to-detail talk, when I imagined hiring an assistant. And he’s so good at the attention to detail! He polished the little lip of non-carpeted stuff on the step up to the second tier of the shop, for God’s sake! He cleaned the little window at the back – without having to be asked!

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ I tell him, though I wish I had less patronising and/or dull things to say.

  So it’s something of a shock, when he takes a big leap beyond silence or casual conversation or something boring. He does it without warning, too, with his face turned away from mine.

  ‘I’m used to keeping things neat, you know? My parents were pretty forgetful.’

  Something jumps, inside me – a small electric shock. It’s like being given an unexpected gift. It’s like I’ve been digging in the dirt for weeks and weeks, and finally got to the treasure at the bottom.

  Though the thought of what sort of treasure it’s going to be makes me hesitate, before digging further.

  ‘Were you very close?’

  Even with his back half to me like that, and his hands busy on a counter that’s already perfectly neat, I can still make out the expression on his face – an almost-grimace, as though he’s just tasted something bad.

  ‘We were … I took care of them. We weren’t alike, though.’

  No sense in stopping now.

  ‘In what way were you different?’

  He shrugs, ever so slightly. A tight nudge of his shoulder.

  ‘They weren’t particularly sensible.’

  It’s ridiculous, but my palms are sweating. I have broken into the Pentagon of him, and now I’m slinking down nuke-laced corridors. I am a Russian spy, interrogating him in a darkened room.

  ‘So you were responsible for everything?’

  ‘I … yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  I can feel him pulling away from me. He goes to the bookshelf adjacent to the counter, and tidies a mess that isn’t there.

  His back is fully to me, now.

  ‘I don’t know. Since I was a boy, I guess.’

  For some reason, Quentin Blake’s drawings from The Twits comes to mind. Two scraggly, hairy weirdoes, living in a maze of filth. A small, slight Gabriel trying to keep on top of everything.

  God, I should never have hired this one. He’s making me feel obliged. I can sense it welling up inside me. It comes up my throat and spills out of my mouth:

  ‘My father was very strict.’

  It’s true. He was. But I don’t know why I’m telling him so, when I’ve never told a soul. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I told anyone anything about myself.

  He turns, quite suddenly. There’s a queerly eager look on his face that makes me both sick and something else. Something like excitement.

  ‘I can tell,’ he says, which should make me even sicker. But somehow, it doesn’t. Not when it’s Gabriel. It would be different if it were Andy, sure of himself and rich with arrogance. But this isn’t the same.

  ‘How?’

  His eyebrows lift, a little shrug of the face.

  ‘Just something about you. Something so … in control.’

  How odd that he should say so, right when I haven’t felt less in control in my entire life. I’m surprised my knees aren’t knocking together. I need to get a hold on myself. I need to –

  ‘Maybe that’s just what you want to see. Maybe you like that about me.’

  ‘Why would I like that you’re in control?’ he asks, and even tilts his head to the side – for all the world like a curious little boy.

  But I think he secretly knows. I think I know too – of course I know. I’ve been playing this game ever since I hired him.

  ‘So is it all right if I go?’ he says, quite abruptly. It sounds as though he’s waiting for something – or looks like it, at least. But he’s so closed and tightly wound, how can I know for certain what it is?

  ‘Of course.’

  He flashes me that smile, the one with the pointed incisors and the curling tongue. The one that makes him boyish and not so weighed down by whatever he’s weighed down by. And then all at once I know what he was waiting for.

  Permission.

  I flick through Sins of the Flesh, looking for all the things he will have seen. He strummed her clit with thick fingers, that sort of thing. I want to get inside his brain and swim around in it, understand all the things he thought and felt when reading words like that.

  It’s not like with Andy. Andy’s brain runs on one track, it’s obvious, he reads those words and gets an erection. It’s a simple reflex.

  But I remember what it was like to know nothing about words like that, to uncover a whole secret world one page at a time and be both baffled and awed. Is that the way Gabe thinks? Or has this always been his little furtive habit, while dodging around his crazy parents? If he reads this sort of stuff all the time, likely he knows more about fucking than Andy does.

  That thought pulls me up short.

  As does the scene in Sins of the Flesh where the heroine tells the hero to get on his knees. Though it’s not the fact that the scene is hot that pulls at me. I think of Gabe liking it, instead, and feel my sex grow warm and plump. I’m supposed to be catching up on a little bookkeeping, but somehow the room has grown dark and my receipts have gone untouched and I’ve got this book in my hand while thoughts of Gabriel, downstairs in the shop, fill me up.

  It’s not the book, it’s Gabriel. It’s not that someone was watching, it’s not the idea of being watched. It’s the fact that it was someone so dark and strange and potent
ially pliable watching.

  The realisation makes me cover my face with the book.

  I like it. I like teasing him and tormenting him, peeling away all his layers and giving him permission. I could have chosen the girl, if I wanted. I could have chosen Andy, to be my assistant. But I didn’t. I chose Gabriel Kauffman.

  Probably because of my strict father, thanks so much Dr Gabriel Freud.

  Fuck knows what I’m going to do, from here. K-I-S-S-I-N-G my brain sings, and I hate myself. Why can’t I just be satisfied with Andy?

  Because I’ve been satisfied with Andy all my life, maybe.

  I throw the book aside and stand, straighten my shirt, smooth my trousers. I look neat and professional, which should help with the firing of my almost perfect assistant. I can tell him that we’re just not busy enough – which is a lie – or that the economy is biting too hard, or some such nonsense. And then I can go back to the way things were and the way I was.

  Straight, simple, professional.

  Unfortunately, even before I get to the shop I know something’s going on. I know the way I knew when I saw that little flash of hot pink and he stood up too hurriedly. The kitchen door opens out almost on top of the counter, and he’s not there. He’s not anywhere in the main space of the shop – though I suppose that isn’t too unusual, considering that it’s closing time. It could be that he’s just tidying the second tier, the little alcove at the back of the store that made me buy the place.

  And yet I know he’s not tidying. I don’t do anything as clichéd as keeping the filthiest books back there, but it’s where I catch the most embarrassed-looking men in macs. I don’t get all that many, however – I think because I sell so much romance, too. It’s hard to lick the pornography amidst the hearts and flowers.

  I like Gabe, a lot, for not seeming to mind how many hearts and flowers flutter around his smut. In fact, I think he prefers it that way. He’s standing right in the corner, in front of the bookcase beside the window, reading Passion’s Flame. I can tell it’s Passion’s Flame, because it’s one of my all time favourites.

  I can also make out his teeth, biting deep into his lower lip. That furrow he sometimes gets between his heavy black brows, as though he’s uncertain how to proceed. But then his head turns slightly – I think so he can look at the right-hand page – and I can no longer see the lovely slant of his face. His back is almost completely to me – though that’s not exactly an unpleasant sight.

  He isn’t big, like Andy. But that curve, to his back. The narrowness of his hips – so clear in those tidy grey trousers he always wears – contrasting giddily with the broadness of his shoulders …

  I don’t want to alert him to my presence, just so that I can keep looking at his back. I don’t want to alert him to my presence because then he would stop reading, and biting his lip, and acting like a 19th-century maid who’s doing something she shouldn’t.

  I think I know when he becomes aware of me. His back stiffens ever so slightly. He doesn’t turn the page when it comes time to.

  My heart thuds, low and long. I’m not going to fire him. Oh my God, I’m not going to fire him. He’s wrong, he’s wrong – I’m not in control at all. I’m taking the step up. I’m strolling across the lovely plush carpet towards him.

  When I get up close – so close that I can smell that old-fashioned pine-y aftershave he wears – the full pleasure of his height strikes me, as it did before, when I asked him if there was something he wanted. He must be six foot three, and yet so often he doesn’t seem it. He hunches.

  He’s hunching right now. I can see him doing his best not to let me know he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He’s keeping very still, juddery breathing aside.

  I have to put my hand on his back. It’s practically a necessity. I need to feel those unsteady breaths, vibrating through his sinewy body. I want to see him jerk when I touch him – and he does. But he keeps still, then, for the slide of my hand – all the way down that glorious curve to the hollow at the small of his back.

  He won’t look at me. So I just do my business while his back is turned. I slide my hands over his narrow hips and feel him tremble, then go further yet and pass them over the firm cheeks of his arse.

  He makes a little startled sound when I touch him so intimately. His body vibrates with it, but he doesn’t try to escape. So I rub harder, caress him more firmly. I slide my palms over the crease between his buttocks, pressing that tweedy material as deep as it will go.

  He’s taking tight shaky breaths, now. When I squeeze one arse cheek, the breathing gets even tighter, and shakier. He even lets out something that’s almost a wavering moan – though not quite.

  It definitely becomes a moan when I slide my hand around his hip, and go for the parts between his legs.

  My hand immediately encounters the thing that’s making him moan. A rigid erection, thick and pressing out the material of his trousers. It’s so heavy and ready that just a brush of my fingertips makes it clear to me what’s there, and he gasps, for extra clarification. He drops the book he’s still holding, just so I’m sure.

  I think he goes to say something then – something like stop. I can’t. Don’t. But when I finger the stiff shape of him through his trousers, the words trail away. He wants this. He’s too eager for it to let propriety or repression or whatever else it might be stop him. I think about all the nights he must have spent with just his own hand for company, urging himself to lonely orgasms while flowery pages flutter through his head. I think about why he wanted this job, why he must have wanted it.

  Because he’s horny, so horny, even if other things inside him conspire to keep him alone. Just his little breathy sighs and his thick erection tell me how horny he is. Still, I want to hear him say it.

  ‘Do you want me to give you a handjob?’ I ask. Perhaps it’s the wrong thing to do. He glances to the side, briefly – almost looking at me, but not quite. His teeth are worrying into his bottom lip, again, and there’s a high glorious flush on the one pale cheek I can see.

  Finally, he turns his face back to the bookshelf. Puts his hand over mine, suddenly, shockingly. He moans at the extra pressure.

  ‘Yes,’ he forces out. ‘Yes.’

  I think about that point of mindlessness, when suddenly you just have to. When all possibilities open up. I think of him being there, of the book pushing him, of me pushing him, as I slide his zipper down.

  Just the feel of his fingers pressing against my wrist, urging me on, is intensely arousing. My clit aches to be touched and wetness eases between my slippery pussy lips, sensation tight in the pit of my belly and ebbing and flowing with every new move I make. But it’s building, and I want to build it higher. It’ll be sweeter if I do. I want to come with the sounds of him going first in my ears.

  The cotton of whatever underwear he’s wearing is damp. More than damp. So much so that I wonder if he’s already come, until I get my hands beneath the elastic and feel the slick bursting tip of his cock.

  When I finally tug him free of his underwear and his trousers, I’m desperate to look. I need to look around his body and see what I’m holding, because good Christ it feels big. He’s swollen and taut with arousal – of course he is – but I don’t think it’s just him being turned on that’s making his cock a challenge for my circling grip.

  I think of his broad shoulders and his large hands. Of course he’s got a big one. It would be weird if he were small. But this is something, even by those standards. It’s something by any standards – heavy against my palm and straining against my grasp.

  I map him out as much as I can while he judders and gasps, forming a picture in my mind of his length. No wonder he sometimes walks funny, with something in front of him. It’s probably why he hunches. You couldn’t hide an erection like this.

  I wonder how many quick tight orgasms he’s jerked himself to, out of necessity. In the little toilet off the kitchen, perhaps, while I shop or book-keep. Muffling his cries of pleasure in th
e sleeve of his jumper or against the back of his hand.

  I thumb the slit at the head of his prick, and feel him buck against me.

  ‘Please,’ he groans. ‘Please –’

  I understand. I need it too. I’m rubbing my swollen nipples into his back, by the time I get around to tugging at his cock in rough little jerks.

  Of course, I don’t think it will take long. I squeeze and oil the way with all the slippery pre-come he seems to be producing. I twist my palm over all the good spots and work him nice and quickly. It shouldn’t take long at all.

  And yet it does. He grunts and rocks his hips into my hand, eventually giving in to leaning against the bookshelf. He rests his forehead on the arm he plants over the other copies of Passion’s Flame, and his body trembles and trembles like a live wire, but he doesn’t come.

  He only comes when his own hand snaps down over mine, whip quick, and guides me desperately in a different sort of motion. His gasps have turned frustrated and he’s practically whining, but as soon as his own strong hand squeezes mine almost painfully tight around his shaft, it’s clear that he’s getting what he needs.

  ‘Ah, that’s it,’ he blurts out, body tensing suddenly and his hand speeding up on his swelling cock. My hand speeding up on his swelling cock.

  It feels as though I am him. Bristling, shameful pleasure rocking through me, jerking at myself like a dirty little slut. More than likely about to spurt all over the books, and with thoughts of such only making the whole thing seedier, better, more.

  My legs are shaking, in almost exactly the same way as his. I can’t catch my breath, and I have to press myself right up against him to keep myself steady. Delicious urges thrill through me, and I give in to at least one of them – I turn my face against the bobbly wool of the little olive green tank top he’s wearing, and bite, hard. I bite material, and the jut of his shoulder blade, and flesh.

  My eyes open wide, when he cries out in a way that suggests he doesn’t hate a move like that. Not at all. In fact, he squeezes my hand tighter, around his cock. He jerks forward, as though pulled. And then his heavy prick leaps and spurts, thickly.