Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  Like something I want to kiss, openmouthed and eager.

  The curve of it is so clear, the outline of that little ridge around the head so obvious. He must be swollen there, and aching – just like I am. And if I doubt that for one second, well, there’s other evidence for me to see. In fact, my breath catches in my throat when I see it.

  He’s so excited, he seems to be leaking a little. There is the slightest damp spot close to the tip, barely there, but no less arousing for it. I swear, if I wanted to kiss his cock before, then God knows what I want to do now. I think about pulling my panties down and rubbing my wet cunt all over it. Or pulling those slack things down so I can get a better look.

  It’s really a miracle that I settle for the slightest touch.

  Though it doesn’t feel like a miracle. It feels bad. It feels like throwing myself off a cliff. I hardly even understand how I do it – my hand seems to move independently of my body. It jerks forward and suddenly I’m making contact, and then after that everything is fucking terrifying.

  An electric shock seems to go through me. The bad kind of electric shock. My teeth clack together, and more than anything I want to take it back. Pretend I didn’t do anything at all. Make out like it was an accident.

  Only I can’t because he just got the electric shock, too. I swear to God I hear his teeth clack the same as mine. At the very least he jerks back, and his eyes go wide, and he seems to want to say something without really knowing what to say. Probably something like how dare you touch me, I think, even though that doesn’t quite seem to fit his expression. He looks stunned, true. And his body makes a bow, so he can get away from my hand.

  But there’s something else in his eyes, too. A kind of disbelief that has nothing to do with my daring and everything to do with the way it felt. I think... I think it felt good. I think it sent a little sizzle up his spine, the way his words and his urging send one up mine. His breath comes quick and shaky, and though he puts a hand between us like a barrier, I can see his hips are still rocking toward that touch.

  So much so that I sort of move toward him a little. Not enough to get past his force field, but enough to get words out of him. Loud words. Wrong words.

  “I can’t,” he snaps, at which point I need to make it clear between us.

  “Even though physically you want to?”

  “It’s not about being physically wanting to. A corpse would get excited by what we’re doing. Just look at you – your eyes are enough to turn me on. Sometimes I can barely stand to hold your gaze because it feels like a hand around my cock,” he says, and I’m thankful that he pauses after that. I need a moment just to recover from the word cock and the sense of being complimented. In truth I could use an industrial fan and three ice packs – but I make do. I get through to the other side, where he’s saying things that are a little less exciting. “My problem is that after a certain point it just... feels unpleasant.”

  “So you lose your erection?” I ask, even though I know what the answer is. I can see the answer, still so thick and heavily curved.

  “No, not exactly,” he tells me. “I just want to stop. I get certain images in my head and I want to stop. I have to stop.”

  “Would it be different if I bit you?

  “What? What do you –”

  “You seemed to like... I thought maybe...” I start, and then he gets it. A half-amused light sparks in his eyes – though when he speaks his voice is gentle.

  “Beth, I didn’t get an erection because you bit me. Pain is a good distraction, sure, but it’s not what’s going to keep me in the moment. If anything... it’s...”

  “Go on, please go on.”

  “I like it when I know for certain that you’re enjoying yourself. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you so much as groan wrong, it will make me freeze up. I have to know you like it, and that I’m not hurting you or frightening you. That’s what excited me the other day – when you said that nothing had ever felt that good. That was... stirring.”

  “So how about I –” I start, but end up cutting myself off before I can finish. His eyes close and I simply stop right there, and I’m glad I do. His words back up the sudden tension in him. They underline what I know already.

  “Please don’t make suggestions. Let me just...”

  “Okay. Okay we don’t have to. I need you to know at this point – I only want to because it seemed like maybe you did. That maybe you kind of do. But if I’m wrong...”

  “You’re not wrong. I feel very... frustrated.”

  “You do?” I ask, and it’s all I can do to keep the eagerness out of my voice. He says that one word and excitement almost gets the better of me. Images flash behind my eyes, and all of them are filthy in the extreme – or at least filthy for him. He could probably pose fully dressed on a chaise lounge and I would lose my mind over it.

  So when I think of him in the shower, completely unclothed, covered in soapy slick water with his hand on his... on his... on that thing I can see through his sweatpants... yeah, that kind of finishes me off. If I was wet between my legs before, I’m a river there now. And though I feel bad about that, there isn’t much I can do about it.

  Not when he just goes ahead and makes it worse.

  “Yes. Of course I do. Have you any idea how amazing you look when you come? Or what it’s like to kiss you and feel that heat rising between us and see how pink your cheeks are and how hungry your eyes seem and just shut it down? I don’t want you to think it’s always easy for me. It isn’t. I tried to...”

  “Tried to what?” I ask, in a voice that could be carried away on a stiff breeze. It’s a miracle I manage to get out words at all though, all things considered.

  Did he just say when you come?

  I think he did. I think he suggested that he has real and visceral sexual responses all the time, and most of them concern things that I actually do. He sees me getting excited and that excites him, and then he tries to do something.

  God, I don’t want to hear what he tries to do.

  Except for all the ways in which I want to hear it more than anything in the world.

  “I tried to masturbate the other day,” he says, and my heart bangs against something inside me. My hands have made fists and my mouth goes all dry – though to be honest I have no idea why. I have no idea why all of these tiny things affect me so much. It’s like that horror movie thing again, only instead of everything being terrifying everything is a turn-on. It even does something to me when he adds, “Needless to say, it didn’t go well.”

  “So you get to a certain point and you just have to...” I say, too afraid to add any specific detail to the end there but just willing him to give it anyway. Maybe he does things, you know? Maybe he does things that make him stop. Like squeezing at the base of his cock or biting the meat of his own bicep.

  He might. He could. I wish I didn’t wonder if he does.

  “I have to stop, yes. I don’t physically want to but...” he says, and though he steers clear of any kind of exact descriptions, it still has an almighty effect on me. I think of his body suddenly, like some runaway freight train with his mind trailing behind. I see him as he has really been all this time – full of barely checked desire that he tries desperately to master.

  And I consider how nightmarish all of that is.

  “Christ. Okay. That... okay,” I say, because what else can I do? I have no helpful advice for him. He has to fathom this out for himself, no matter how long it may take him. We could still be like this in a thousand years, barely making it to second base and struggling to so much as kiss. We could be, I think, as he searches my face for answers he might never find, not ever.

  Unless he just grabs for them, quite suddenly.

  “Do you want to touch me?” he asks, and at first I don’t get it. I have to ask, I have to put barriers and provisos in the way.

  “Only if you want me to,” I tell him, thinking that I’m being good.

  This is what he needs. He needs slow maneuve
rs toward things.

  Or so I think, until he comes close to cutting me off midsentence.

  “No, don’t think about me. Think about you. Only you,” he says, and I’m so startled and so unsure of what he might mean that I answer like a robot.

  In my effort to be careful I go too far.

  “Yes, I want to touch you,” I say, and so he has to press on.

  His voice is oddly impatient, for him.

  “How badly would you like to?”

  “I don’t know if I should say. I don’t want you to feel obliged –”

  “I don’t feel obliged. You can go ahead and tell me,” he says, and there it is again.

  That hint of impatience, so unfamiliar coming out of his mouth.

  “Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”

  “And in these thoughts... what usually happens?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Things. Stuff.”

  “I would really like you to be specific,” he says, at which point the light starts to break through the clouds. I have to want it, that’s the thing. He needs to know this is everything I need. He craves my lust, the way a man might after starving too long in a desert of oh God, I don’t want to worry about doing the wrong thing.

  And, holy fuck, I want to give it.

  God, if only I knew how to give it.

  “I imagine you stroking yourself,” I try, but that isn’t nearly enough. He prompts me almost immediately, and suddenly I have to face the thing I want the most.

  The thing I don’t even know I want the most, until it’s right there.

  “And then you show me how you like it.”

  “I see. So I hold your hand over my cock.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. You kind of... stroke yourself by using me.”

  “So you like that idea.”

  “I do. And I like the words, too.”

  “What sort of words?”

  “The ones you’ve just used. When you say things like cock it makes me get all... you know,” I say, and get a blast of double embarrassment in the face for my troubles. The first lot because I just told him I get turned on, and the second because I said it in such a childish way. You know – like I’m twelve.

  Instead of twenty-four and so fucking horny.

  “I don’t know. Can you describe it to me?” he asks, and this time I do better.

  How could I not, when he’s looking at me like that and I can see his cock is hard and I know his hand is soooo close to that swollen thing? How can I not when everything is suddenly this exciting? All I have to do is literally describe what’s happening to me.

  Most of which he probably knows anyway, with his psychic fucking powers.

  “My clit swells, and everything is suddenly real wet down there.”

  “That sounds good. That sounds like you like it,” he says, and, oh, I don’t know why that thrills me so. His words are so... simple and innocent.

  They shouldn’t make my voice waver when I answer.

  “I do. I absolutely, one hundred percent do.”

  “Do you imagine me doing things to you?”

  “God, yeah. All the time. Constantly.”

  “Tell me what they are. Tell me how badly,” he says, and it’s the badly that makes me do it. Or is it the hand he suddenly brushes over one of my bare arms? Maybe it’s both combining into one unholy mess of just fucking go for it.

  Certainly feels that way, when I say:

  “I lie awake at night, thinking about you licking me.”

  Licking, I said licking. And when he adds, “I know where you mean, but say it anyway,” I go one worse than that. I get worse. Somehow the undercurrent of hunger in his words just pushes me up a level, and filthy stuff comes rambling out of my mouth.

  “Licking my pussy. Licking my clit,” I say, and you know what?

  I love it. I love it so much I almost don’t hear what he tells me next. My brain is so preoccupied with that one naughty word and how open he’s being and all the things I might say to him next that I don’t quite process it.

  “Like I’m going to now?” he asks, and then three days later it hits like a lightning strike. All the gears inside me kind of slow to a halt. My mouth opens to answer, but no sound comes out. How could there be? There are barely any words suitable for this situation. The best I can think of is praise God, but if I go with that I might disturb whatever fragile fog that seems to have descended over him.

  He looks like he’s teetering on the brink as it is. His jaw is tighter than my entire body, and his eyes can’t seem to stop searching mine. In the end I have to say something, because not doing so might be worse in the long run.

  Though all I can really manage is a fumbled:

  “I... are you... yeah... if you want.”

  None of which is right. His jaw gets harder, if that is actually possible. And for a second, his eyes kind of flutter closed in this near-withering way. So withering, in fact, that I almost take it back – until he explains.

  “No. No. It has to be if you want. I can’t –” he starts, but of course I don’t let him finish. I jump in before he even gets to the part that’s difficult for him.

  “Yes I want that yes God yes please okay yes I want that,” I babble, and, oh, his responding expression is a peach. All that tension runs right out of his face. That contempt or frustration he felt a second ago – more for himself than anything else, I think – disappears altogether, and in its place is something that verges on happy.

  More than that: it verges on greedy.

  It might even be lustful, if I squint a little.

  “Do you want me to talk while you do it?” I ask, but only because he’s fucking reaching for me. He’s reaching for me and not in the shaking-hands sort of way.

  “That would be... preferable,” he says, only I don’t think he really means that word. I think he means fuck yes, now, right now, and that idea gets a whole lot less dubious when he puts a hand on me. Mainly because he doesn’t put it on my hip or my knee.

  He puts it underneath my dress – just like in my dream. He puts it high up on my thigh, and then, just as I’m trying to choke that little move down, he moves that hand. He uses it to lift my dress. And he kisses the place where he just touched.

  To say I don’t know how to react would be an understatement. Total-body paralysis seems like a better way to describe it. For a second I think I forget how to breathe, and every muscle tenses to some impossible degree. I can’t even put myself into a more attractive, normal sort of position. I just have to lie there in a kind of weird banana shape, which is a problem for more than one reason.

  I mean, if I want him to do this, I’m going to have to open my legs.

  But really, doing that is a different story altogether.

  They feel glued together. I think I can see the muscles in them standing out, and no amount of mental effort on my part will make them relax. I can’t even use my hands to forcibly wrench them open, because my hands have made nervous fists somewhere close to my face. God knows how many weeks of waiting for him to be okay with this, and I’m going to be foiled by my own contrary limbs.

  And then he kisses me again.

  He kisses me all hot and wet and right over the material that covers my swollen pussy, and suddenly my contrary limbs are no longer the problem. My rampaging excitement is the problem. It charges through me the moment this thing becomes real and it makes me do all kinds of things I didn’t think possible a second ago.

  I spread my legs without even thinking about it.

  And I speak without thinking about that, too.

  “Maybe... maybe I could do something for you, while you do that,” I say, fully expecting him to shoot me down. He dosen’t, however.

  He kisses me again, right on that good, good spot, then says:

  “If something occurs to you, I doubt that I would mind. And especially if you keep talking the way you’re talking and moaning the way you keep moaning.”

  Funny, I didn’t even realize I had m
oaned.

  I certainly didn’t get that I’ve been continuously moaning since he started doing this. He uses his tongue and I just can’t seem to stop this long keening sound from coming out of me – though if I’m honest, stopping it isn’t top of my priorities.

  “Like this?” I ask, and then I just do it louder.

  I do it longer. I add a guttural note on the end.

  All of which creates the desired effect.

  “Jesus. Yes,” he says, in a voice that is definitely not his own. It sounds like someone is strangling him as he speaks, and then just to cap it off, oh God, just to make it that little bit more blissful... he shifts in a way I could never in a million years mistake. He turns his body so I can reach him, and by reach him I don’t mean a friendly pat on the back.

  I mean his cock. I mean his cock is right fucking there, just as solid and curving as it was before, only with one tiny electrifying little difference.

  That damp spot has spread. It’s darker and bigger – most probably because he feels just as crazy as I do, which is very fucking crazy indeed. I keep thinking of the term sixty-nine and almost lose my mind, and of course all of that gets way more intense when he kisses again. When he does it with just the barest hint of tongue, dragging at that already wet material, pulling at my swollen clit beneath...

  And when I think about what he might possibly want me to do.

  Stroke him there, maybe through the material?

  Or something more? Something more exposed? Something with bare flesh and my hot, wet mouth sinking down on his stiff cock?

  All of those things seem like far too much – until I use words in among the moaning. He goes for me again, and it just blurts out of me. Probably because he definitely uses his tongue this time. He pulls aside the material a little, and the feel of that slippery, mobile slickness against my overheated flesh is just too much.

  I have to speak. I have to tell him.

  “Ahhh, Noah, that feels so good. Yes, yes, just like that yes just like that,” I say, and by God, I’m glad I do. Mainly because two things happen, once I have.