Nervous

by SM Johnson

  He relaxed beside me then, as if something was over.

  I had a fleeting thought that I might never recover from this. Might never stop feeling his fingers against my neck. Perhaps I’d never breathe normally, ever again. I closed my eyes.

  Avery nudged his shoulder into mine. “Well? What did you think?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t talk yet. I certainly couldn’t talk here, where I could see the cab driver’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, watching us, curious.

  Avery took my chin between his fingers, turning my head so he could study my face. I studied his, too, what I could see of it in the semi-darkness of the cab. He didn’t look angry, or disappointed, or like anything much, really, except like he was trying to read my mind. “Your eyes are lovely,” he said, and I closed them, overwhelmed. He was overwhelming me.

  “No, open them. Let me look.”

  So I did, blinking a couple of times. The city was never completely dark, but it made me wonder what he thought he could see. “What do you see?” I asked him, testing my voice.

  “Like you’ve just seen something you never believed existed. Confused. Scared. Excited.”

  Well. That was about right.

  “Tristan wanted that spanking, you know. It was probably the highlight of his evening. And I did promise you it was the sort of club where spankings happen.”

  For some reason this made my eyes fill with tears, and one slipped free and slid down my face.

  Avery brought his other hand up and cupped my cheek. His thumb brushed away the tear, and his fingers curled along my jaw. He was holding my face with both hands, and I didn’t dare move as I watched his mouth swoop toward mine.

  It was a gentle kiss, a nibble at my lips, but no less real or shocking than the others had been. More consuming than even his fingers in the club, at the back of my neck, but I felt that same lightning bolt into my dick. If I died this instant, I’d have no complaints.

  The kiss grew into something less gentle, and he did something with his whole mouth, his jaw and even his teeth, that prompted a kind of boneless surrender in me. My body, yes, but more importantly, way deep inside my head, like something dark and hidden and hardly recognized was waking up and reaching for the light.

  There was a whimper building in my throat, and it escaped as a small, soft cry when his tongue invaded the inside of my mouth. That butterfly feeling in my stomach again, so wild and strong it almost felt like illness, and I wanted to curl up around that feeling and hold onto it and never let go. It was exactly like anxiety and terror, except it was a good feeling, and I still didn’t understand how something I liked could feel like something I was afraid of.

  He pulled his mouth away, and I felt a fierce loss, as if he’d offered himself to me and then taken himself away.

  But the cab was pulling over, and I recognized the front of his building.

  Oh.

  “You’re going to have to talk to me, Jules,” he said, as he slid to the door and opened it. He got out of the cab and turned back to offer me the assistance of his hand. “And I’m not accepting emails tonight.”

  I gave myself a second just to stare at him. He was so incredibly good looking. Not just his face, and his hair, and those eyes that pinned me to the seat. It was more than that – how he carried himself, self-assured, competent. I still couldn’t imagine that I could be anything but a passing fancy to him, a challenge to be conquered. I nodded, but hoped he wouldn’t take that social nicety as a promise.

  chapter eight

  name four things you can touch

  Once inside his apartment, Avery parked me in a chair in the living room, then wrestled the other chair in the room so it faced mine, and sat down. We were sitting knee to knee. It felt like an interrogation, which I doubted was an accident.

  “Talk. Tell me everything.”

  I let out a choking noise, an uncomfortable strangled sound. Like I could just casually speak out loud all the crazy confused thoughts in my head. “I can’t. I don’t even know everything yet. I don’t know anything. I need to think.”

  “Think fast,” he ordered. “Did you like our little date, or hate it?”

  Thinking fast was a disaster waiting to happen. I always said the wrong thing.

  “I don’t know. There’s just so much –”

  “Like or hate, Jules.”

  I could feel the blush crawling over my cheeks, and used my fingers to cover the hot flush of my face. “Like,” I said, the word muffled against my fingers.

  He grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away, lowing them to my thighs. “No hiding. Sit on them if you have to.”

  Oh, God. I slid my hands beneath my thighs, noting the smooth fabric of the chair.

  “Spread your legs.”

  What? I was fully clothed and sitting in a chair. I eased my knees apart, but only a little.

  “Wider.”

  I inched my knees apart a little more.

  “You are terrible at following directions,” he said, and used his hands to wrench my legs as wide open as the chair would allow.

  My dick, which hadn’t softened since getting out of the cab, somehow went even more rigid. I could feel pressure where it poked up past the tight band of my new underwear.

  Avery stroked it through my jeans.

  “Very nice,” he said, and smiled at me. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was hungry and self-satisfied at the same time.

  I started to bite the inside of my lip, but caught myself. Not a good idea. Not when he already looked like that – like he was eager for me to challenge his authority, even just a little.

  I held myself very, very still, because that’s what you were supposed to do when faced with an animal that looked like he wanted to eat you.

  “You’re helpless, and you like it,” Avery said. “Your pupils are dilated, and you’re afraid to move.”

  I gave the tiniest possible nod. Even tinier than the finger wave I’d given him the moment we’d first met.

  I had no idea what to do next. Maybe just wait.

  I licked my lips. Nervous.

  He was off his chair and on my lap, kissing me, one hand clenched into my hair, his mouth hard and hot and definitely hungry. Our teeth hit and clicked, and my lip was caught. I tasted blood. Avery adjusted his mouth, and I wondered if he was tasting my blood now, too, but before I could worry, he was tugging at my shirt, one hand sliding beneath the fabric to rake his fingernails down my flank.

  I cried out, and still he kissed me, sucking at my lip, pulling my hair, his breath harsh between us, a blizzard in full force.

  My hands were trapped beneath my own thighs, Avery heavy on my lap and holding me down. Don’t ever let me go, said the inside of my head. Take-me-keep-me-own-me-hurt-me. Hurt me? My own thoughts startled me, and I hissed in a breath. God. His weight and his hands and his teeth and his fingernails.

  I’d never been so turned on in all my life.

  Before I could think or process further, Avery yanked me from the chair and pushed me down the hall, his hands never leaving me, stopping our forward momentum just once, and only for long enough to jerk my shirt over my head and toss it to the floor.

  And then he was pushing me through the doorway to his bedroom and I was looking at a bed. His bed? There were handcuffs hanging from the headboard, but before I’d even completely registered them, or what it might mean, he was shoving me down on my back, and one cuff and then the other clicked as my wrists were enclosed.

  He was on the bed with me, his hands grappling at the front of my jeans, tearing them open, yanking them down, along with the silly underwear, and I was lifting my hips to help him without the slightest hesitation.

  He cursed when my shoes blocked his progress, then scrabbled to get them out of his way, pulling them from my feet and tossing them aside. One of the shoes hit the wall with an alarming thud, but I didn’t even startle, just kicked my jeans off the rest of the way, and used my toes to escape my socks.

  He left me ther
e, stood beside the bed, and unbuttoned his shirt, again with slow, precise movements. He stared at me the whole time, and just as he started to slide the shirt away from his shoulder, he spoke.

  “You have to be able to tell me to stop. If you don’t want this, or you get scared, or I’m hurting you. Can you do that?”

  I couldn’t hear him. Or rather, I heard him, but I couldn’t process his words. My eyes were glued to his naked shoulder, his well-formed arm that looked as strong and self-assured as Avery himself. His nipple. An unexpected tattoo that spanned his chest. A blue and green phoenix on his left pectoral, its tail feathers dropping down to follow the lines of musculature beneath both nipples. I wanted to examine it, touch it. The rest of his shirt slid away and fluttered to the floor. I saw it as if it fell in slow motion. This man was getting naked. Because I was in his bed.

  That sense of disconnect, unreality, hit me again. How could this be my life? Not only had Avery Phoenix kissed me, but he was taking off his clothes, and he was a… a very sexy, competent man.

  Anxiety rolled up from my gut, scared and weak and vulnerable, and I had to look away from him in case it was all some kind of joke.

  “Jules.”

  The way he said my name pulled my gaze back to his face.

  His eyes were gleaming, and I was somehow aware of his chest moving with each breath he took.

  “Can you tell me to stop?”

  I shook my head, a tiny almost non-movement. I couldn’t speak. I thought perhaps I was paralyzed. Stunned.

  Avery groaned, still staring into my eyes, the sound rolling from his chest like thunder in the winter, low and far away, as if it had been imagined.

  He was on the bed then, the skin of his upper body pressed against me, one hand on my side, his fingers resting in the notches between my ribs. I tugged at the restraints around my wrists, wanting to touch him. His hand felt heavy, foreign, and the nerves beneath my skin twitched, like ticklish, from his touch, from the gentle circles he was making with the pad of his thumb.

  It was almost too much. Me naked, Avery touching me.

  He still had pants on. I turned as much on my side as I could, wanting to get closer to him, and my bare feet found the smooth silk of his socks, and my toes couldn’t help but curl and flex, investigating this new texture. Our legs tangled, and Avery’s toes moved along the curve of my calf, the sensation, the intimacy, making me suck in a breath.

  I hadn’t been touched in such places by another person since I was a child too little to wash myself.

  I was too aware of his hand on my side, of his foot dragging along my leg, of every single place his skin pressed into mine.

  “Breathe, Jules.”

  I realized I was holding my breath, almost dizzy from lack of oxygen.

  “Your eyes are so big.”

  I panted with the need for oxygen. I was going to hyperventilate.

  Avery’s other arm, the one that wasn’t pressed to my side, slide beneath me, and I could feel the flat of his hand against my back. He fit his hips to my groin, and the hand that was on my side also moved to my back, until I was wrapped in his arms. Then he was rocking me, our faces pressed together, cheek to cheek. “Breathe, Jules. Just breathe.”

  His voice, so loud and warm in my ear that I shivered.

  I didn’t want to breathe. I wanted to memorize every little bit of this, in case it never happened again.

  “This is as far as it goes, Jules, until I know you can tell me to stop.”

  “Don’t ever stop,” I managed to whisper.

  He rocked me and didn’t answer for a long time. So long that I thought maybe he didn’t hear me.

  “That’s a problem, Jules.”

  He held me for long enough that the inside of my head went quiet, and his hands became warm, familiar imprints on my skin.

  My arms started tingling, but I ignored the discomfort until the tingling went away and they just felt cold and disconnected from the rest of me. I started getting drowsy, but then woke myself up with the worry that something bad might happen if I fell asleep with my arms fastened so awkwardly above my head. I tried to wiggle my fingers, and the tingling started again, and this time it was almost painful. I felt the bad anxiety in my stomach. What if all the circulation was cut off from my hands? What if I had to go to a hospital to fix it? I wouldn’t lose my hands, would I? Was that possible, just from something like this?

  I suddenly understood what Avery had been trying to tell me. Why he wanted me to be able to tell him to stop.

  “Avery,” I said.

  “Mmm.” He moved his head, nuzzled his lips against my cheek. “I like it better when you call me ‘sir’.”

  The club, the collar, his friends. I was starting to figure this out. It was kind of a kinky sex game. But not a casual one.

  “Yes, sir. My arms and hands feel funny.”

  “Fuck.” He jolted away from me with a quiet curse, his hands leaving my skin, his body shifting up and away. “I should have gotten you out of these cuffs sooner. I’m sorry, Jules.” He had my hands released in seconds, without needing a key.

  “It’s okay,” I said, as I sat up and rubbed at the pins and needles sensation. “I should have mentioned it sooner. I think I understand what you were asking, earlier. Why you stopped.”

  “Look at me, Jules.”

  I was naked. He wasn’t. But it was much less noticeable if I didn’t look at myself, didn’t think too much about it. I stared into his eyes. His pupils were blown so wide they nearly erased the blue irises around them.

  “I meant it when I said I don’t want you suffering unless I’m making you suffer on purpose. If something feels bad or wrong, you have to be able to tell me. The people you saw at the club? My friends, the bartender, the customers? Every member signs an agreement that they understand the rules. If we go there again, you’ll sign one, too. It’s a lifestyle… a… kind of culture, in a way. Nothing happens without consent, and there are safewords – code words – that we use to make sure everything is going okay. At the club, the words are stop light colors – green for ‘I love this, keep going’. Yellow means something doesn’t feel quite right, a restraint is pinching, or something that’s supposed to hurt a little is hurting too much. Red is ‘I need all of this to stop’.”

  As he explained the culture, or the rules, or whatever, a part of me was watching the intensity of his eyes, the way his eyebrows moved as he talked. I thought, Wow, he’s really into this. He was earnest, not arrogant, and wasn’t at all embarrassed about this kind of stuff. He was, well, he was lit up, from the inside out.

  “This is the birds and the bees?” I asked.

  That changed his expression into confusion.

  “Sunglasses. Your friend who offered to explain everything.”

  Avery laughed. It was the whole body laugh, the one I loved. “That was Thomas. And yes, I think we’re having that conversation.”

  I nodded. “Can I put some clothes on? If we’re going to keep talking?”

  I hated to suggest that the naked touching was over, but it felt like the naked touching was over.

  Avery grinned at me, and gestured toward the hallway. “Yes, Jules. You may put some clothes on. We should eat something and go to bed.”

  After I put on sweats and a t-shirt, I found him in the kitchen eating ice cream. There was a dish and spoon set out for me. He was still wearing jeans and no shirt. The tattoo was stunning. He was stunning. When he put the spoon in his mouth, his eyes closed and he looked like he was swooning. “You’re cute when you eat ice cream half-naked,” I said, without rehearsing a word.

  “You’re cute when you’re completely naked,” he answered, and I felt my face flush.

  “Not fair,” I muttered, then sat down and filled my dish. It was some brand I’d never heard of, vanilla with ribbons of caramel and chocolate mixed in. The first decadent taste made my eyes close with absolute pleasure, and I laughed as I opened them. “It’s good. Do you –” I stopped myself. I was
doing okay, being around him. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself now.

  “Do I what? Ask me anything.”

  There are people on Tumblr who post that. It’s a… I don’t know. A thing. Like a meme. Or where a meme comes from. Ask me anything, they post, and I think they hope for outrageous questions, but usually people are only brave enough to ask What’s your favorite color? or What kind of pizza do you like? And it’s probably disappointing, because Ask Me Anything is a promise to tell the truth, a willingness to be transparent and vulnerable. I had no idea if Avery was willing to be transparent or vulnerable. I was trying to think of a better question than the one I was about to ask, just in case.

  “Jules. Ask the question.”

  He was pushing me. Hurrying me. Ok, fine. I blurted out the original question. “Do you always eat ice cream before bed?”

  He laughed. “That was the big scary question you stopped yourself from asking?” I must have looked uncomfortable. “Never mind, I’m only teasing. Give it a few days and you’ll find out the answer. My turn. Do you always wait for a near-panic attack to mention that something’s wrong?”

  I scraped the bowl with my spoon and shrugged. “I don’t like bothering people.”

  “You are as important as anyone else. You should never worry about bothering people. Or you should at least assume they’ll let you know if you’re bothering them.”

  “Well, what if they think they’re letting me know, but I’m so focused on everything going on inside my head that I don’t notice?”

  “Then they’ll just have to let you know a little more firmly. For the most part, you have to trust people to take care of themselves.”

  It seemed so simple. Too simple? I had never considered social interaction from this angle. I always assumed I would do or say something wrong, and whatever it was I did or said would create awkwardness. I hadn’t considered that other people have some responsibility for their own comfort. “Does that work? Trusting people to take care of themselves?”

  Avery didn’t seem aware that I was having an epiphany. This time he was the one who shrugged. “Seems to work for me.”