Slip of the Tongue

by Jessica Hawkins

  “What else?” I ask.

  “What about this one?” He shows me another. My head is twisted over one shoulder, my expression playful, my hair plastered to my cheeks. I don’t remember biting my lip, but the evidence is there on the screen. I’m not looking at the camera, though. I’m looking above it. At Finn. My insides tighten.

  Finn touches something, and the screen goes black. He holds the viewfinder over his eye. Snap.

  “Finn . . .”

  He brushes his knuckles softly down my cheek and clears some hair off my neck. He takes another, but the graze of his touch remains.

  “I took my makeup off.” My attempt to thwart him sounds as lame as it is.

  “Hmm.” He adjusts a dial before taking the next photo. “I noticed. Funny how I . . . I mean, the camera . . . likes you anyway.”

  This time, when I say his name, it’s a warning. “Finn.”

  “I can’t help myself.”

  “You can’t?” I ask. “Or you don’t want to?”

  I see the edges of his smile from behind the camera. He lowers it. I’m likely wearing the same expression I was in that last photo. I’m not a model, and I’m no actress. That lusty look in my eyes was the real thing, and it’s not going away.

  Finn reaches out and traces my neckline. Just the feel of his hand through the fabric sends my heartbeat racing. Lights up my skin with goose bumps. He pushes a fingertip into my dress, against my skin. It’s not enough. That simple, barely-there touch puts me more on edge than if he’d just gone and grabbed me. He tugs until I sit forward.

  “Can’t help myself,” he answers my last question. “Don’t want to. Won’t.” Slowly, deliberately, with ample time for me to protest, he lifts my hair off my neck and slides my zipper down the length of my spine. He peels the dress over one shoulder, exposing the curve of it.

  And he takes my picture.

  He angles my jaw a little to the side. The room is darkening from the storm. The only sounds are raindrops against glass, my body-swaying breath, the slice and click of the camera.

  “Fix your hair,” he says quietly.

  “How?”

  “However feels right.”

  I rake a hand through my roots. I gather it in a loose, damp ponytail.

  “Pull it.”

  The little I’ve already given in makes my restraint slippery. He’s not asking, so I don’t have to decide for myself. I curl my hair around my hand and make my scalp tingle. I wait for his next command, my ass melding to the couch cushions. My dress is stiff. He pushes it down by the neckline, over my bra, to my waist.

  “You’re made for the camera. For this lighting.” His voice scrapes like a dull knife on my skin. “For me.”

  Despite the heat, a series of tremors run through me. I try to keep them inside, try not to move, as if my participation is ambiguous. There are things I want to feel—Finn’s tongue in my mouth. His hands on my breasts. The rock hardness of him pressed to my thigh. I don’t know if all that means I want to do this, though.

  “It’s okay to move,” he says.

  I hug myself to stave off any more trembling and run my hands over my biceps. I drink more coffee and Kahlúa. The heat coats my throat and chest like a syrupy waterfall.

  “You asked what I like to take pictures of,” he says from behind the safety of his black box.

  I look at him. His one exposed eye is squeezed shut. “Strangers,” I say.

  “The opposite. I prefer someone I know. I get to see a new side of them.”

  “What are you seeing now?”

  “You have a lot of levels, Sadie. You don’t show them easily. Maybe you don’t even realize they’re there.” He can see all of me, yet I’m missing most of his face. I’m not sure if that’s making this descent into moral gray area easier or harder. His words are physical, hands on me, several of them all at once.

  I suppose Finn is right—people are just layers upon layers, some permeable, some impenetrable. I’m no exception.

  “You wear nude, lacy bras,” he adds. “I didn’t know that.”

  My laugh dies before it ever leaves my mouth. Instead, I exhale softly. My panties match my bra, and he must be wondering about them. I shouldn’t encourage him, but his attentiveness feels like a warm lamp in a cold room. “What else?” I ask.

  “You take direction well.”

  “There’s one I haven’t heard before . . .”

  “Lie back. Feet on the couch.” His voice has taken on a new tone, one not to be argued with. I move lengthwise on the couch and rest my shoulder blades against the arm.

  “Let me see you. All of you.”

  The pulsing swell of arousal between my legs is the only thing driving me now. I’ve barely slid my dress over my hips when Finn comes around the table and grabs the hem. He yanks it down, down, down, over my thighs, calves, ankles, to the floor. When was I last undressed in front of someone other than Nathan? I cross my ankles and cover my bra.

  “How can I see when you do that?” he asks.

  “You can’t,” I say. “That’s the point.”

  “You don’t want me to?”

  I hesitate. I’m not worried he won’t like what he sees—I’m worried he will. That he’ll want to do more than look. That I won’t stop him, even though I should. Shouldn’t I? It’s not as if Nathan has made any effort to stop me. He watched me walk away this morning. He ignored my requests for him to participate in the shoot, to come home, to let me come to him. He’s turned down sex, intimacy, conversation. After a quick glance over the past few months, I’d be stupid to think he wants me to chase after him anymore.

  I unfold my arms first.

  “I’ve never seen anything like you,” Finn says, capturing my every move. “Now your legs.”

  I uncross them, bending one knee, scraping the velvet over the ball of my foot. It’s more coarse than comfortable. “Have you done this before? Photographed someone like this, I mean.”

  “Haven’t taken things this far, no.” He pauses. “I guess I never had the right subject.”

  “Not even—”

  “No. She doesn’t inspire me.”

  I keep my eyes on the lens. To him, I’m the right subject. The only subject. How can so much have blossomed in so little time? Yet, I understand it. I’m wrapped up in him enough that I want the camera gone, but not enough that I’m bold enough to do something about it. I want to pause time. For this not to count. In the steely gray early evening, in a warm place that seems as if it could only be my imagination, I think, maybe for tonight, this could be a private space between realities. Somewhere only we exist.

  A bolt of lightning reminds us how dark it’s gotten. Finn switches on the lamp at the foot of the couch. I look down the white-dune hills and curves of my body at him.

  He takes my ankle and lengthens one leg. His touch on such a private part of me is foreign at first, and then it liquefies, melding with my skin. My silence is a form of trust. I’m not stopping him.

  Keeping a firm grip on me, he puts a knee between my feet. “Are you shaking because you’re scared?”

  Since I first saw Finn in the hallway, we’ve been engaged in this drawn-out, fucked-up dance of innuendo and lingering glances. Foreplay with him is the space between us: the things we haven’t said; the admissions we haven’t made. If I’m scared, I can’t feel it, and if I’m shaking, it’s surpassed by my anticipation. “I’m not scared.”

  “Good.” He leans forward so the camera looks directly down on me. “Show me.”

  “What do you want to see?”

  “Whatever you want me to see.”

  His attention is heady, addicting. I won’t know how far I’m willing to go until I get there. When I do, I’ll stop. It won’t ever be too late to walk away. And if I don’t walk away at all? I’ll have my answer—I can’t stop.

  My hands are unsteady as I reach under myself, arching my back. I unclasp the single hook-and-eye of my bra and remove it with the delicacy it demands. My nipples pebb
le with their freedom, with Finn’s eyes on them.

  Finn watches my every movement, unwrapping his present with captivated eyes. His gaze devours this private part of me. “What fucking tits,” he says, and my body trills. It’s crass and unlike him, as if he just had to say it. I’m getting wetter, too swollen for my panties.

  “Finn,” I say like a prod in the arm, because he’s not taking pictures.

  “Sorry.” He aims the lens right at me, but nothing happens. He sets the camera on the table with a thud. His hands are on my waist. Large. Warm. He slides me down the couch until my head falls from the arm to the cushion, and my crotch is pressed up against his knee.

  For an electric moment we stay that way. Only my chest moves, and his hair, which lags behind his sudden movements, falls sluggishly over his face. He lowers his head.

  When he’s an inch away, I slap my palms against his chest, halting him. “Finn.” His name comes out like a moan. “God. We can’t.”

  His hair is liquid gold, tickling my forehead. “I can.”

  I open my mouth to say “It’s wrong” but it comes out as a hoarse whisper.

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So let me satisfy it.” He cups his hand under the hem of my dress, right over the core of me. I hiss through my clenched teeth. “Your curiosity, that is.”

  I should leave. I should be outraged. I should not, however, be surprised it’s come to this. As if I didn’t know it might.

  “I want you, Sadie.” I can practically taste the coffee on his breath. Lightly, over my lace thong, he strokes my opening with his fingertips, presses his palm to my clit. “I think about nothing else. Just you. Your eyes. Your lips. Your wet cunt.”

  I groan. A flush overtakes my entire body—embarrassment. Arousal. He’s only touching me enough to tease my pleasure to the surface, just to where it overtakes my protests.

  “We can do it this way if you want,” he goads. “If it makes you feel less guilty. It’ll take longer, but I don’t have anywhere to be.”

  I’m trying not to squirm. His gentle, fluttering touch is infuriating. My panties are wetter now than they were even seconds ago. Knowing one word will get me what I want destroys my control.

  “I think about you too,” I say.

  He stabs a finger into the fabric, almost piercing the lace, nearly inside me. My hips buck. I put my palms on his cheeks. I don’t know if it’s to stop him or bring him closer. The thought of another man terrifies me. The reality, though, excites me. That he wants me this badly. That he can’t keep his hands off what doesn’t belong to him. My mind is wondrously wrapped up in him, and we’ve barely touched.

  With his other hand, he grabs my hair by the roots. “If you can’t do this, I will,” he says. “I’ll make this decision for us. When you hurt tomorrow, physically or emotionally . . . when you question what we did . . . when you ache to do it again—I’ll take the blame for all of it, Sadie.”

  He assaults my mouth with his kiss. My heart seizes up with surprise and fear. His tongue dominates mine, his lips hard and bruising, and the burn of desire scorches my final reservations. I catch up with his greedy lips, sweeping my tongue in broad strokes, searching for purchase with my teeth. I nab his pouty bottom lip, as I’ve wanted to for weeks, and he growls into my mouth.

  He’s stopped touching me, but I bury my hands under his clothing. He’s fiery hot, shuddering when I spread my fingers across his abs. I pull at his shirt, and he props himself on one arm to remove it by the collar.

  As I thought, my blond, bearded lover has the physique of a Greek god. I run my hands over the planes of his pecs, the grid of his stomach. He doesn’t let me adulate long. He pinches my chin between his fingers and turns my head toward the room, the front door. “I saw you in the hallway with him the other night,” he says into my ear. “I was crazy over it.”

  I curl my fingers into the scratchy velvet. It’s infuriating—Finn watching us, thinking he has any right to be crazy over me, bringing it up now. Any emotion I have is fuel on the fire, though. It just makes me twist under him, desperate for some measure of relief.

  He jams my underwear to one side, and my groan is guttural. He smiles. “There she is,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for that.”

  I turn my head back to him. “What?”

  He kisses me once, much more gently. “I saw it through the lens. It’s hard for you to open yourself up, but you want to. You want to be explored.” He drags his hand from my throat to my chest and spreads his fingers between my breasts. “Open for me.”

  My exhale stutters from my mouth. I try not to hear his words. My body is asking for this—not my mind, not my heart. We’re connected, but not bound. If anything’s going to open, it’ll be my legs. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

  His eyes twinkle as he narrows them. He takes both my wrists, clasps them in one hand, and pins them by my head. The angle of my right arm blocks part of my vision.

  “That what you want?” he asks. “Me to stick it in without any fun first?”

  A mischievous thrill shoots up my spine like an arrow. “Fun?” I breathe.

  He slides his free hand under my ass and squeezes. His fingers roam, tracing the elastic of my panties. My stomach dips and swells with each breath. I haven’t shaken this hard since high school, since the night my dad caught me trying to sneak his car out of the garage.

  “Fun. You know, F . . .” Finn nips my stomach. “U . . .” He dips his hand between my legs. “N.”

  He snaps the elastic of my panties against my skin. I gasp loudly. The sting makes me writhe, my wrists still secured by his hands. He breaches my opening and without ceremony, his fingers are inside me. I don’t stop his sudden, searching thrusts. I’m in trouble, and I can’t seem to put the brakes on. My compliance is easier won than I thought. All I can say is “God, oh, God” over and over. No other words seem to fit.

  “How’s it feel to be this wet for so long?” he asks. “To finally be this close?” He releases my wrists before I can answer and sits back on his calves. My hands tingle as blood flows back to my fingers.

  He undoes his pants with focus, his lips parted, the bottom one exposed to me. How would that plush mouth, that scratchy beard, feel eating me out?

  He looks up as he takes out his cock, huge and hard in his fist. His fingers glisten with my juices. “I just want to taste—” He gets a condom from his back pocket and rolls it on. “Just for a second—” He pulls my hips up his thighs, fits himself to my opening, and slides inside me. His eyes go to the ceiling like he’s in prayer, and he clenches his teeth.

  My vision doubles. I was expecting the fun first, but the surprise of him, stiff as stone, tilts my center. He takes me by the waist and pumps into me a few times. We both grunt.

  After weeks of foreplay, I think I’m going to come already, but he pulls out and drops me back onto the couch.

  I lift my head, breathless. “What’re you doing?”

  Removing the rest of his clothes, he says, “Warming you up.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Finn wants to make art of his fucking. His prize-worthy lips are on my pubic bone. A few licks, a chaste peck on my nethermost lips. He sucks my clit, kisses me right on the pussy, dips his tongue in me like I’m ice cream melting over a cone. He’s warming me up.

  I arch my back, moan at the ceiling, rake a hand into his hair. The strands are soft, but I pull them hard. He eats me more furiously. I slap my other hand over my mouth, as if screaming will give us away. I can’t take it. My thighs quiver around his head. He stops and looks up at me. “How do I make you come?”

  “For one,” I pant, “don’t stop to ask questions. I was almost there.”

  He grins lazily at me, his eyes hooded. “Flip over.”

  “But—”

  He lifts me with a hand under my ass, urging me onto my stomach. I do as I’m told. He covers me completely with his body, somehow both comforting me and sending me to the e
dge of madness. He knows what I need before I do. We’re both sweating, our bodies suctioning together. “Here’s a tip,” he says, pushing my hair aside. “Don’t make it easy for me. You tell me how to make you come, I’ll find another way. I want you on the brink for as long as I want to keep you there. Until I decide to push you off.”

  “You don’t have to push me at all.”

  “Is that right? You’re the type who comes at the drop of a pin?”

  “Right now I am,” I say.

  He kisses his way down my spine. Bumps tingle over my back with the scrape and scuff of his beard. He pinches the meat of my ass between his teeth, then tongues my slit from behind. With each lick, I mash my face harder into the couch. He pushes my thighs apart and kisses the insides, massages them, his hands dangerously close to my core. He loves every inch of my legs with his mouth, then the bridges of my feet and the paper-thin skin around my ankles.

  “This is what happens to a man consumed by a woman he can’t have,” he says from somewhere I can’t see. “I get carried away. I want to see and touch as much of you as I can, while I can.”

  I’m still thrumming from how heavy his cock felt inside me for that brief moment. I want it there again. “Fuck me now,” I plead. “Get carried away another time.”

  He chuckles, low and deep, and climbs back up the couch. He puts his mouth in my hair, nuzzles me. “Do I have to fuck you?” he asks. “Can I make love to you? Can I do a little of both?”

  I am, almost literally, jelly underneath him. There isn’t much I’d protest to at the moment. “Whatever you want.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. But the first time, I want you on your back so I can see you.”

  I turn over. I admit, I couldn’t give a damn how he takes me as long as it’s without mercy. I don’t deserve mercy tonight, and I don’t want it. He settles himself over me. I lock his big body up in my thighs, calves, and ankles.

  Looking between us, he takes himself in his hand. He tests me with just his tip and checks my expression.

  “Let me watch,” I say. I want more, even just a little bit.