Run To You

by Charlotte Stein

  ‘I like it that you burp,’ he says, and I’m sure he means it to be comforting. I’m sure he does. But I’m still covering my face with one hand, anyway. I’m still moaning in horror.

  ‘Oh, God, you heard me.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen the strange series of convulsions you do when you’re trying to hide that it’s happening. Does that count?’

  ‘I don’t … I don’t convulse.’

  ‘Of course you do – though that’s not really the point.’

  ‘Then what is?’

  ‘The fact that I don’t care, and have no idea why you do. Have I ever made you feel as though your natural self is disgusting?’

  ‘Well … no, but –’

  ‘Do I shame you for who you are?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And do you know why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s because I adore who you are – don’t you know by now that I adore you?’

  The answer is yes, of course. It’s yes in the morning and yes in the evening, yes when I’m unsure and yes when I’m certain. And it’s especially yes when he says:

  ‘Do you know what that word I call you means?’

  Because I do know. I didn’t dare look it up, but I understand it anyway. I feel it right down to my bones before he even offers a definition.

  And then he does, and I’m undone.

  ‘It means “beloved”. It means that there is and only has been you. I did not lie when I said I had not kissed any of the other women I met through the assignations, or taken any of them out. In truth, I have not been to dinner with a woman for the better part of ten years.’

  I try to contain my shock, here, but I already know I’m failing. I started breathing hard around the time he used the word ‘adore’, and when he gets to the ten years I’m practically hyperventilating. I feel like I’m in some tense race I didn’t sign up for, but I can’t deny it’s exhilarating, now that I’m here.

  He just keeps upping the ante. He keeps peeling back more layers, as though he’s never had a problem with talking like this.

  And all I can do is listen, agog.

  ‘You are the only one. The only one who spoke in such a way that I had to hear it again; the only one who did things that meant I wanted only to return to you. And most importantly: you are the only one I’ve ever felt compelled to touch. I spent every other assignation in that seat by the window, without the urge to rise and do a single thing.’

  I’m no longer hyperventilating when he finishes, though that’s hardly a good thing. It just means I’ve suddenly forgotten what breathing is. My body is starting to need oxygen, but I don’t care. Did he just say he hasn’t been with a woman for ten years? That he just sits there and … and what? What does he do?

  I have to know. It means using up my only remaining air, but I don’t have any choice. I just need to blurt things out, immediately.

  ‘Are you seriously saying that you only ever watch?’

  He seems to take a moment – I think to muse over this concept a little.

  But to me it’s just an endless agony, waiting for him to finally speak.

  ‘Well, occasionally I comment.’

  ‘You comment? You comment? All this time I’ve been imagining you doing God knows what to God knows who – to the point where I’ve actually scared myself, thinking about limbs tangled like pretzels and women with hair like ice palaces. And the most you do is offer a few words, like some TV pundit?’

  ‘Being incredulous won’t make it any less true.’

  ‘But you … you went for me the first time we met.’

  ‘Indeed I did. I wonder why that might be …’

  ‘Because you’re crazy?’

  ‘I’m fairly sure that isn’t it.’

  ‘You’re going to have to give me more than “fairly sure”.’

  ‘Very well then: because I have never wanted anyone the way that I want you. With the others it was always easy to maintain my calm, and remain aloof – perhaps because they were all so similar. But with you …’ He trails off in this wistful way that gets me by the throat. I’m choking up before he’s even finished, which isn’t a good thing. Because, oh, his finish is spectacular. ‘I’ve spent years building up my walls, and one look at you and your awkward little striptease was enough to tear them down. Everything you do is enough to tear them down. Even now, here, when you tell me you can’t quite believe that you’re worthy of something as meagre and miserly as my love … as though my love is precious to you … as though I am precious to you –’

  I have to cut him off, here. I don’t mean to, but there’s really nothing else I can do.

  He needs to hear. He has to know.

  ‘You are precious to me,’ I blurt out, in a rush of emotion so thick it almost trips me up. There are tears in my eyes and they’re spreading to my voice, and in a second I know my words will stumble over them. I know it, and don’t care in the slightest.

  ‘You’re my … you’re my … that word you said,’ I say, reduced to some gushy inarticulate fool. And he reacts as though I am, too. He laughs in that bemused way of his.

  But it’s OK, because he also tells me this:

  ‘It’s really so much easier in Hungarian.’

  ‘Is that why you always say it that way?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right. All right then,’ I say, but I’m just stalling. It’s a struggle to get the next part out, and I need to buy time. Just a few a seconds, I think. Just a few and then I take a breath, and go for it: ‘You’re my … szeretett.’

  Only to have him laugh. He laughs at my efforts. I’m ridiculous, I’m awful; I shouldn’t have said it – that’s not the word he meant at all. He was trying to suggest I say something else entirely, and now I’ve completely given the game away.

  And then he speaks, and I realise what an idiot I am.

  ‘Ah, God, your accent is terrible,’ he tells me, and just to sweeten it further he adds some more words on the end: ‘And yet I’ve never heard anything quite so lovely.’

  I turn to him then. Not because I no longer care if he sees my watery eyes and my probably runny nose – I still do. It’s embarrassing to face him looking like this.

  But my need to see him overrides all other considerations. I have to know if he’s sincere, and the sound of his voice just isn’t enough. I don’t know if anything would ever be enough, but his expression is a start. His eyes are so warm I could sunbathe beneath them, and for a second I do.

  I bask in that dark light. I let it wash over me, without a care in the world. He said those things and feels those things and nothing else should matter.

  I wish nothing else mattered.

  ‘But why?’ I find myself asking – almost against my will. I know I need to stop with the questions. I know they’re more about me than him. And yet they keep coming all the same. ‘Why do you find my awkwardness lovely? Why is it my conversation and my way of doing things?’

  He strokes a thumb over my forehead before he answers, like maybe he wants to soothe me first. He wants to rub out the worried wrinkles there, and he almost succeeds.

  Then he speaks, and succeeds completely.

  ‘You already know why – you just refuse to hear it. I could say “because you’re different” a thousand times and in a thousand different ways, and I doubt you’d listen. To you, difference from some elegant ideal is wrong, and unappetising. But to me … to me your differences are a delight. They fill my life with the unexpected.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In every way. You think of me as a mind-reader, but the truth is … I find you endlessly fascinating because I so often can’t read your mind. I rarely know for sure what you’re thinking, and cannot predict your every move – though I do enjoy trying.’

  ‘Maybe I’m just novelty, then.’

  ‘Is that what you really believe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you still worry, though.’

  ‘Maybe.’


  ‘I don’t think the answer is maybe.’

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Because you’re still making that little dent between your brows,’ he says, and then he presses his thumb there, just to emphasise. And it’s a good emphasis, too. It feels like I’ve got a great canyon of concern just above my nose, when he touches me like that.

  ‘OK, so I’m worried a little.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, but only because it’s a struggle to get the words out. In the end I have to frame my sentences as questions, just so I can say them aloud. ‘That I’m not enough? That I’ll never fit into your world?’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘I mean, is that so crazy to wonder? We don’t exactly move in the same circles.’

  ‘No, I suppose we don’t.’

  ‘But you don’t see it as a problem?’

  ‘Now who is the mind-reader?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t that hard to guess. I can hear the laughter in your voice.’

  ‘Forgive me, love. It’s one of my many flaws.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The inability to hide my amusement when someone says something ridiculous.’

  ‘So I’m just being ridiculous.’

  ‘Not exactly. I understand why you might wonder, of course. But … you see … to me you fit in perfectly. Therefore, how can I find the idea anything other than absurd?’

  I fall silent then. I have to. He’s just presented me with the Chinese puzzle box of human interactions, and I need all my resources to work my way around it.

  ‘You make a good point.’

  ‘And yet you still don’t believe me.’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Very well, then. What if I prove it to you? What if I prove that you can fit in wherever you choose to? Will you accept it?’

  I go to answer automatically. ‘Yes’, I want to say, ‘yes’.

  But then I remember all the times he’s spun a web and caught me right in its centre. He could do something really awful – so awful that I can’t seem to imagine it. He could do a thing with some other thing that ends up really thinging me, and for a moment this insane notion is so strong I almost give in to it. I almost tell him: there’s nothing you can do.

  Before it occurs to me, in a hot rush:

  What if it’s just that I need there to be nothing he can do? He might be good at designing traps for me, but apparently so am I. I make them for myself, intricately constructed and almost impossible to see – until it’s too late. Next thing I know I’m bored and alone, sure that it was he who pushed when really it was I who ran.

  My God, I think I always run.

  ‘Do your best,’ I say.

  And he does. Oh, he does. He takes my face in his hands the moment I’ve given him permission, thumbs stroking somewhere inexplicably sweet – like my temples, and the tips of my ears. Then just as I’m about to say something more – ‘I take it back,’ maybe, because, Lord, this is too intense for me – he lifts my mouth to his.

  Like he needs a long, long drink. The sips he had earlier weren’t enough. He’s already thirsty again, and if I’m honest so am I. I’ve gone all strange and shivery from what felt like an hour of emotional overload, and now I just need something to take the edge off.

  His lips do the job admirably. They’re hungry like mine, and hot like mine, but most of all they move against me in a slow, syrupy rhythm that reminds me of his promise. He’s going to prove it by working this kiss into me, so deeply I’ll never be able to get back out.

  I don’t want to get back out. It’s better this way. It’s better just to give in, and I have no trouble doing that. I relax back into his arms, and for once in my life I simply let myself be held. No questions. No doubts. No wondering if it would be better if I were standing alone over there, the way I usually seem to.

  Just this kiss. Just his mouth on mine and the flicker of his hot, wet tongue, and oh, now his hand is moving down …

  He slides it over the line of buttons that currently lie between my breasts – promising so much but giving so little. A slight move either way would have meant he was cupping my already sensitive breasts, and if he had kept going when he got to the last button he’d be touching me between my legs.

  But of course he doesn’t keep going. He stops just shy, before easing back up again. Then down again. Then up again – and on and on until it crosses the line between soothing and maddening.

  Lord, he’s good at crossing that line. He always lets me think he might sway one way or the other, teetering on the edge of the chasm that lies in the middle, before pulling back. And then just when I’m close to begging or bursting, he starts on the first button.

  Slowly, so slowly, but hey – at least it’s something. And it’s followed by the second and the third button, too, as though he’s not going to tease me at all. Tonight is about something else entirely, I think, and I’m right.

  It only takes him a few short moments to unfasten everything, and then he simply spreads the whole thing open. No fussing, no games, no tease. He wants me bare and I can’t say I mind. It feels amazing to be laid like this over his legs – back almost arched, everything exposed. There’s something so lewd about it, in amongst the tenderness, and it makes me want to really strain up towards him.

  So I do. I stretch like a satisfied cat, stiff nipples poking up, ass almost off the bed. And in response he does the best thing possible. He runs and rubs his hand all over my bare breasts and taut nipples – not quite softly enough to be a caress, but not roughly enough to count as anything else. His touch lands somewhere in-between, and oh, it’s making me moan. It’s making me roll my hips, and doubly so when he starts plucking at my nipples.

  First one, then the other, shifting back and forth until both are tight, stiff peaks.

  Before moving on.

  Though perhaps moving on isn’t quite the right term. It implies something restless and maybe a little perfunctory, when this is anything but. It’s a smooth, purposeful glide down the centre of my body, and it ends with him cupping my sex in this possessive grip.

  However, I don’t know if it’s the sense of being so ready for him – so spread open and eager, legs almost flat against the bed in an effort to encourage him there – or his willingness to do a thing like this that gets me. Either way, arousal just gushes through my body in this great hot wave, so strong I have to turn my face away from his. I have to bury myself in the side of his throat, and let out an agonised sound.

  But doing so provides no relief. Now his lips are close to my ear, and he’s whispering and whispering. ‘Yes, yes, you want a hand between your legs, don’t you?’ he asks, as though there’s any question at all. I’m practically humping his palm, and I know he can feel my wetness. He hasn’t yet slid a finger into that plump seam, but he doesn’t have to. I’m so slippery it’s coating the sparse hair there – and it’s obvious he’s discovered it. After a moment of that holding and cupping, he starts to tease the slipperiness over my sensitive lips.

  Which is exciting enough on its own. But he couples it with constant murmuring, and that’s more than I can take. He doesn’t limit himself to pointed questions, either – now he’s progressed to hoarse, aroused-sounding stuff like ‘Ahhh yes, so wet, so eager.’

  And he doesn’t stop there.

  ‘Did I tell you how much I adore your eagerness?’ he says. ‘Because I do, I do. I have fantasies about you being like this – spread out for me, straining for my hand, your sex all slippery like this … oh. Look how easily you take my fingers …’

  By the time he’s done I’m surprised I’m conscious. His tone is just so rough with lust, like he barely has control over it any more – and, even sweeter, I suspect he doesn’t want to. He opened a door earlier and now everything is spilling through, including stuff about his desires and his fantasies.

  Apparently the latter feature me and my wet pussy – who knew?

  Not me. But then, right now
I know very little. I’m having to focus all my attention on him and his hand, and the thing he seems to be doing. The one he mentioned a moment ago, which seems to be burning a hole through my lower body. My stomach feels weird and tight and my thigh muscles are tensing like crazy, and all because he’s slowly sinking two thick fingers into my wet and wanting hole.

  They just slide right in, as easily as he claimed.

  Though that’s not the best part. No, no. I mean, it’s good, sure. And I love how it feels to be filled and slowly fucked like that. But fucking me is clearly not his intended purpose – and it’s this that makes it hot.

  It’s the way he rubs until he’s gathered up my slickness – making sure his fingers are good and glossy – before gliding them back up through my slit, to stroke my stiff little bud. Oh, yeah, that’s the thing that makes my body sing.

  The pads of his fingers are just so slick when he finally rubs them over my clit. And it’s such a rude thing to do. It’s so loose and lewd and not like him, and for a moment I can’t quite get over it. My head falls back on the bed, eyes rolling in disbelief or desire or both mashed together.

  Followed by a sound that shouldn’t ever come out of any human being. I think it’s a groan crossed with something rattling inside a cement mixer – but I just can’t help it. I skirt close to an orgasm the second he does it, and it’s important I vocalise this. If I don’t I might burst. In fact, I think I’m going to burst either way. I’m straining against his hand and nearly biting at his neck, and still he keeps on.

  Of course he keeps on. He’s got a particular goal in mind – one that he tells me about a second later. ‘No no no,’ he says. ‘Not yet, not yet.’ And just when I’m ripe with confusion, twisting and turning and wanting that yet to be right now, he lays out the rest of his diabolical plan:

  ‘I want you to come all over my cock,’ he says, and oh, the surge of sensation that follows,… It’s like before in the elevator – this heavy, hot pulse just thuds through me, so similar to an orgasm you could almost call it one.

  Only this time he stops it before it can fully develop into bliss. He takes his hand away and moves back on the bed, while I mewl and complain and do things I wouldn’t have before. I reach for his cock – only not with my hands. I do it with my mouth, licking him wetly until he’s close to giving in. I feel his hand hover around the back of my head, and I know he just wants to pull me towards him.