Anything for You

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  But even so these little doubts linger in my mind, until I’m not really sure what I’m thinking anymore. I just do it, instead, and that’s much better. I tell him to move forward into our house and not to make any sudden moves, and he obeys me exactly in these little, tentative, shuffling steps.

  Just like the real thing. Though I’m not sure how I know what the real thing is like. Or why I enjoy this, if I let myself think of things like that—how scared and full of hesitation someone would be, with a real gun to the back of his head. How his mind would race with everything some pervert could do.

  Only I’m the pervert. Once we’re safe inside, I tell him to start taking off his clothes, and there’s really nothing more you can say about that. It’s weird and wrong and my body hums with it until I think I might pass out. My clit is a swollen heartbeat between my legs and my nipples are diamond hard, and when I hear the jangle of his belt and the rasp of his zipper, everything gets worse. Or better, depending on your point of view.

  I wonder if it’s the wrongness that makes it sweeter. That vague idea that this is his weird fantasy, but I’m the one getting some illicit, bizarre sort of pleasure out of it. Does he know I do? I can’t see how he could fail to. Whenever we get to the good part I’m always as wet as rain, and I come hard. I come with barely a hand or a mouth on me—I can just slide down his cock and that’s it, right there.

  I suppose it’s the power dynamic. The shift. Something like that. But when he’s stripped from the waist down and I can see the strong shape of his good thighs and the almost-tender curve of his ass, I’m not so certain anymore.

  I want to bite that ass. I want to scratch it. I want to leave perfect red streaks all over his pale, unblemished skin, so that he’s just a mixture of white and red and black. And that seems even more wrong than the thrill I get, the pleasure of putting two fingers to the back of his neck. I mean, I love my husband. I love him truly, madly, deeply. There’s no urge in me to hurt him, not really. We’ve never so much as exchanged brutal words, the way some couples do. Just the thought of seeing his face fall as I say something rotten makes me curdle inside.

  The rotten things don’t ever even occur to me, because he’s a wonderful man. He doesn’t leave his socks out; he’s never late. He supports me in everything I do and it feels like something natural to lean into him when I’m in need or feeling blue.

  And yet here we are.

  “Is that enough?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. No, the pants are not enough.

  “All off, bitch,” I say, and though the word feels kind of silly in my mouth he shivers on hearing it. Shivers, and obeys. I step back and he pulls his shirt over his head, then the T-shirt underneath.

  It feels kind of weird to keep the pretense of a gun up, clasping one hand over the other and poking one little finger out, but I do it anyway. Because that’s as much a part of the game as his acquiescence. The feel of that fakery against my palm makes me strong and like a different person, until I can feel my shaking legs growing stiff and firm and my aching body aches harder, hotter.

  “What are you going to do to me?” he asks, which only makes me think of the things I’ve done before. All of them make my face heat. Once, I made him masturbate while I took pictures—I have no idea why. These things just come to me like the next bead on a rosary I’m fumbling through, and I never quite know what it’s going to look like until it’s there in front of me.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I say, and he moans. It excites me, that moan—because I recognize it so intimately. It’s the same one he lets out when I’m pushing up against him or maybe rubbing him through his pants, and he knows, he just knows that soon we’ll be making love.

  But then he says, “Please don’t hurt me,” as a little chaser to the too-excited sound, and then I’m all mixed up and inside out again. A little kick of heat goes through me and I tell him to shut his fucking mouth. I tell him I’ll hurt him if I want to, and nothing he does will stop me.

  He’s panting now. Harsh and rattling, like he’s trying to get it under control.

  “You feel so safe in your neat little world, don’t you,” I say. I’m not asking.

  “I…” he starts, but doesn’t finish.

  “Until right now, I bet,” I tell him, then press my two fingers to the naked small of his back. When that doesn’t provoke a strong enough response, I run them down his spine, over and over. I wait, until he tries to squirm away from me.

  And then I get a fistful of his hair and yank his head back.

  He makes a little sound low down in his throat, which lets me know the move has shocked him. And my teeth suddenly in the soft flesh close to his shoulder, the tauter flesh over the round bone—that shocks him, too.

  But I can tell he likes it at the same time. I know for a fact that he loves having his hair pulled and he always goes limp when I bite him, though it’s neither of those things that confirms how arousing he finds it. It’s the shock and his reaction to it. His sudden wateriness, like his knees have turned to jelly.

  He likes it best when I’m unexpected. As though this could be real, it could all be real, and there are no limits to my brutality.

  I think it’s this idea that pushes me farther. Like he’s goading me into more, and I give it. I grasp his fat, stiff cock just as he’s getting his bearings from the bite and the hair pull, and I squeeze hard.

  Though it isn’t the feel of me that makes him moan and gasp, I know. It’s what I say; it’s the words that force their way out of me—they’re the ones to blame.

  “Oh, I see,” I tell him, and I barely have to say anything more. My tone is so cruel, so cruel—god, I never imagined I could be capable of this much cruelty. I sound like the curving, sharp edge of something nastily mocking, and his moan melts down into embarrassment. Mortification, in fact.

  “One of those, huh?” I ask, and he tries to curl away from the press of my palm. The squeeze and release I get up to, with my teasing, torturing hand. It always amazes me, at this point, how I manage to manipulate a body so much bigger than mine—how I can twist him back against me and get my hand around him and whisper in his ear. Though secretly I suppose I know he’s helping me. I can feel him putting his weight on the balls of his feet. Holding himself, for me.

  Is it weird, if that turns me on more than any pretense at reality?

  “No, I’m not, I’m not,” he says, which only makes me wonder what he thinks I mean. What those am I talking about? What kind of weirdo does he think my mind is conjuring up?

  “Your body doesn’t lie,” I say, and I feel so sick, so wrong, I’m such a bad person.

  Until he moans and pushes into my hand, and then I don’t know what I am.

  “Get down on there, you little slut,” I say, then watch as he does. He even does it in just the way I’d imagined—crouched on his knees on the couch, elbows on the arm so he’s kind of on all fours.

  Though I don’t know why I imagined that. I’ve gone past the fumbling and into some kind of insane autopilot, and it’s like someone else is telling him to reach into the drawer next to him and get out the baby oil that I don’t want to think about why we keep there.

  We keep it there in case our elbows get dry, right? A dry elbow emergency in the middle of watching “The Wire.” Right?

  Somehow, I don’t think dry elbows make a person breathe as hard as he’s doing. Or shake as much as he’s doing. And from here I can see the slant of his gorgeous face, and it’s flushed and weird and any second he’s probably going to come all over the couch.

  I think I want him to. No, I definitely want him to.

  “Now make yourself nice and wet for me,” I say, though my insides balk at the words and I’m halfway certain he won’t understand what I mean. It’s too filthy. He’ll never get it.

  But then he says “Okay, okay, just don’t hurt me,” far too quickly. And he doesn’t beg, even though most of the time he at least puts up a little resistance. This time, he slicks up his fingers—j
ust two of them, as though he’s done it many, many times before—and slides them between the cheeks of his perfect ass.

  As though he’s done that before, too.

  Though he struggles, when it comes to the thing I didn’t even know I wanted. Or he wanted. And I can see he’s never really done this before, at least—penetrated himself with two fumbling fingers. His body’s long and it’s a hard reach, and when he turns a little I can see the mixture of emotions on his face. How they’ve fought until they’ve made his expression slack. He can’t hold them all together.

  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it’s then I know. I have to help him.

  “Move,” I tell him, as though he’s just a nuisance. He’s in the way and I’m going to show him how it’s done, even though I’ve got no idea.

  Lucky, really, that it’s so easy. I just kneel behind him and stroke between the cheeks of his ass until he stops jerking or trying to jolt away from me, and then real sudden he spreads open beneath just ever so slight a pressure, and I’m sinking one finger all the way in.

  Of course, it’s gentler than a real attacker would be. But he still begs and says “No no no,” and tightens around that intruding thing, to the point where I’m sure I should stop. He doesn’t like it. This isn’t what he wants. It’s hot and amazing and the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, but he doesn’t want it.

  So I go to pull away. I think of some bullshit thing I can say that will keep us in the game but let him off the hook, like, Knew you couldn’t take it—but that’s the moment he chooses to push back against my hand. The way I do, when he’s got me on all fours and he’s just teasing me with his cock, just promising to thrust in hard and fast until I’m sobbing.

  I think he sobs, too.

  “You like that, huh? Look at you, taking it. Whore,” I say, because I’m bad but he’s worse. He tells me “Ohhhhh, yes I am, I am, I’m such a whore,” and pushes and pushes back against the finger I’m fucking him with as though he can hardly contain himself.

  I can’t concentrate on how it feels—silky, I’ll probably think later, and vise tight—or whether it means he really does want a man to fuck him. Maybe, though I don’t think wanting to experience something in your ass is quite the same as wanting some hairy big-thighed fucker doing you—but I can concentrate on how it feels for me. I’m too hot inside my clothes and I’ve soaked through my panties, while the urge to rub myself against the curve of his ass grows immense, impossible.

  I need to come. I think he needs to, too. He’s babbling things that are not words and every now and then I catch him trying to push his swollen cock against the silk of the couch. I tell him I’m going to fuck him, now, and he tries harder, moans louder, his eyes barely seeing me when I force him to turn over.

  I slide my finger from his ass and he rocks back and forth as though feeling the absence too strongly, but when I push my little fake gun into the soft place just below his jaw, he goes still—the kind of still that suggests a trembling tension, just below the surface.

  “Don’t you fucking move while I do this,” I say, but he’s too far gone to stop himself making noise. Or jerking upward as I wriggle out of my panties and get myself over him.

  “Please,” he says, though I can’t tell if he means please do or please don’t. He just stares up at me with his dark, too intense eyes and waits for me to slide my embarrassingly slick pussy down over his tensely hard cock.

  It feels like bursting. He feels much too big, and I’m much too worked up, and I can hardly do the thing I usually do—fuck him hard and fast and brutal, as though I’m sticking something in him rather than taking something in.

  So to compensate, I get a fistful of his hair. I clench it tight between my fingers and call him a slut, a dirty slut who just loves getting fucked by anyone, anyhow. I think of lurid porn movies and a million men saying You want every hole filled, don’t you, whore? and it comes easier, then. I tell him he wants something in his ass and something in his mouth and something around his cock, and though I’m sure it should sound silly, it doesn’t, somehow.

  It sounds dirty and hot and nasty as fuck, and even more so when he pants “Yeah, yeah, I want to be used, I want to be used up.”

  I think it’s that word—used. I think about how many times I’ve felt that way in my life, just because someone did something he could never bear to. And then I come hard, in great breaking swells, with his cock still jerking inside me and my hand still in his hair and not a thing touching my clit.

  He can do that. And it makes it better when he follows almost immediately after, hands suddenly on my thighs as his hips snap upward, uncontrollably. I can feel him coming thick and strong, and it’s good enough that he can’t seem to make any sound. His mouth just makes one big O and his eyes go back, and I know, I know, I understand.

  What he needs—it’s not the same as what’s normal or good or right. It’s something different and strong, and it guides like a hand on the back. Like a gun at the nape of his neck. And that’s okay, because it guides me, too. I’m bleak and blank with it.

  And even if they could see how normal we’re not, I’d do it anyway. I would, I swear I would. The gun is at the nape of my neck, and I can’t do anything but.

  EVERYTHING SHE’D ALWAYS WANTED

  Ariel Graham

  The plane began its descent exactly on time. Gwendolyn watched as Seattle grew closer, as the plane cleared a million trees and bodies of water and dropped down with a thud that should have been reassuring.

  David leaned in close as she stared out the window at the airport rushing by. His breath on her neck was warm. She knew he was savoring every minute, knew what he was going to do and say before he did it.

  “Nervous?”

  His breath warmed the silver Eternity Collar around her throat and Gwen put a hand up to touch it. She still wasn’t used to the thing: its weight, the way it turned hot and cold in response to the temperature around her.

  What it meant.

  No, she wanted to say in response. Not nervous. She could deny him that pleasure and tell him she wasn’t nervous and it wouldn’t even be outside their agreement, really, the part of the agreement where she was supposed to tell him the truth about everything. She wasn’t nervous.

  She was terrified.

  She turned from the window where men in orange vests were waving the plane in despite the fact that they stood slightly behind it and, without a rearview mirror, the pilot couldn’t possibly see them. Maybe they were waving the baggage carts in. Around Gwen and David, people were standing, beginning to clatter items from overhead bins. This was usually the time Gwen found it hardest not to shove and push her way off the plane, wishing she could explain to those left tumbled in her wake that if they would only pay attention to all the obvious signs—tray tables in upright positions, flight attendants strapped in, ground coming up to meet them—they all could have been ready to go, like she was. They’d have been out of the way.

  Today she was in no hurry. Fear clawed its way around inside her chest. Her overhead luggage held her camera and laptop, a silken blindfold, a set of shackles. Her checked luggage held more.

  The skirt and heels she wore, so different from her usual travel-wear of jeans and high-tops, kept reminding her she was here. The skirt brushed loosely around her calves. The shoes pinched her feet. Things were different now.

  Her heartbeat skidded about, too fast, too hard.

  A second pulse beat between her legs.

  The rental car was housed deep in the parking garage, away from the entrance and the rental agency booths. David caught her before she headed to the passenger door. She turned to look at him, his dark hair rumpled, his pale blue eyes avid. She stood still as he finished loading their suitcases into the trunk then walked her to the car door. She didn’t climb in when he opened it, but waited for his command.

  “Climb onto the seat on your hands and knees,” he said.

  She swallowed and tried not to look for whatever security camer
as or guards might be nearby. The rental car smelled like air freshener and someone’s leftover cologne, impersonal and public. She kept her head up, kneeling on the seat, and felt him move in close behind her, blocking her from the view of any casual passersby. His hands came down on her hips, and he held her for the space of several heartbeats before he moved, lifting her loose skirt, flipping it up over her back. He grunted in approval at her stockings and put a hand between her legs, his fingers covering her mons, his palm cupping her.

  “You’re so wet,” he said.

  She shivered and prayed he wouldn’t request anything else of her. Not here. Not now. This wasn’t what she was ready for. She’d had no time to imagine it, to work through it in her mind.

  Which was why he wanted it. She felt his hands hook under the elastic of her thong, pulling it slowly over her hips, down her thighs and letting it pool around her knees. The cool northwest air stroked her wet flesh. Gwen groaned, desperate and ashamed.

  David must’ve stepped back then, because she felt the air all around her, and she almost broke from the position he’d put her in. She sensed David’s pause, knew he was watching her to see what she’d do. Whether she’d panic or whether she’d obey.

  Everything she’d always wanted, he’d said, enough times she thought she believed him, but the fear—she hadn’t counted on the fear.

  That she’d be seen. Possibly? That she wouldn’t be seen.

  David’s belt buckle clanked, a familiar sound, followed by the somehow savage and sensual sound of his belt being pulled free of its loops.

  This time she did groan, just a little, in the instant before David’s belt smacked down against her upturned ass.

  He kept it short, just six strokes across her cheeks. Anything else would’ve been awkward. Getting arrested wasn’t part of the weekend plan. Before he told her she could pull herself together, he slid two fingers deep inside her.

  “You are so fucking wet,” he said, and then, “Move your knees. One at a time. Up.” And her thong flowed away from her, tossed into the foot well of the passenger side.