‘You want to fuck me, Ivan?’ I ask, and I do it just as I ease one finger into my warm, wet hole, imagining it’s him. Imagining it’s him with his face between my legs, just like he said, and those good, thick fingers fondling me, stroking me, pumping into me steady and slow.
And then after a while he wouldn’t be able to stand it – I can tell he wouldn’t. He’s groaning almost constantly now, and it makes the image very easy to see. Him moving over me, that big thick cock seeking out my entrance.
I can almost feel it … ohhh God, I can, I can. I’m almost there, with him over me and my hands between my legs and the sound of his voice as he says it, just for me. That one thing I wanted to hear more than any other thing in the world, so sweet in my ear, as I slide down, down into orgasm.
‘There’s nothing I want more. Ohhhh, Abbie, my Abbie. There’s nothing I want more.’
We do the same thing every night for a week from that point on. He calls me, and sometimes we talk idly about this or that. He likes Russian poets, and tells me so in dream-like detail, while my head fills up with snow-covered landscapes and curling spires. He says, If I do not see you, I feel: minutes, as centuries, are endless, and then again when I ask him to speak the words in Russian.
Though it’s better in the latter. It’s like hearing his real voice, his secret voice, buried beneath a life mostly lived in America. When did you leave? I ask him, and he tells me in those same clotted-cream words, those foreign words that I have to look up later on.
He was four apparently. Four years old and thirty-five now, but his Russian still sounds as foreign and foggy to me as anything I’ve heard in old spy movies. It sounds thicker than that, in fact, guttural almost, and when he speaks it I can’t help putting a hand between my legs.
‘Say it again,’ I tell him, and he laughs and asks me if I’m really masturbating to the sound of his voice. As though it’s crazy to get off on that sultry, smoky sound.
Christ, even his English is sexy, and I tell him so.
‘No matter what language you’re using your voice drives me crazy.’
‘Really? I always thought I sounded cold.’
‘No.’
‘Mechanical.’
‘Oh God, oh God … keep talking.’
He laughs, a sound I’m getting used to hearing.
‘Now you’re just teasing me,’ he says, and I wish I could tell him I was. But he got me worked up with the poetry and now he’s being all amused and surprised … what does he want me to do? I’m still wet from the ham salad sandwich discussion we had the other day.
He likes sliced cucumber. I do not.
I get turned on over conversations about food.
Whereas he …
‘Are you really touching yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ve just got my hand a little way inside my panties. Just rubbing over the lips, there. They’re all slippery already, hearing you talk,’ I say, because he doesn’t really have to persuade me anymore. There’s no moment when I pause, nervous and afraid of what he’ll think.
He’s so withdrawn that I just need him to know before he pulls away any further. I want to go to him, for all the ways he can’t come to me – and then he does, he does.
‘I’ve got my hand on myself, too,’ he says, while I thrill over this small victory. Usually it’s all me: what am I doing, what do I want to do? It’s almost a novelty to have to switch it around on a man. Put the focus back on him, and wait for him to share.
In fact, it’s more than a novelty, more than a thrill.
It’s a huge fucking turn-on.
‘You have?’
‘I always do when I talk to you.’
‘Oh that’s good. Tell me how it feels,’ I say, because, hey, I learned from the best. If he can coax it out of me, I can coax it out of him.
‘Ready to burst. Hard enough to ache.’
‘But you’re not stroking yourself?’
‘Not yet. I like to wait.’
‘Until what?’ I ask, though I think I know what he’s going to say. He’s both unreadable and utterly easy, at the same time – like he really is a half of me. Sometimes I’m so certain what I’m going to do, and other times my will likes to turn on me, needle me, make me do things I didn’t know I wanted.
Is this what he wanted to do?
‘Until I hear you coming, too. You like the sound of my voice when I talk, I like the sound of yours when you come – those moans you make, the sense of abandonment. It’s like a promise of something I could do if I really wanted to.’
‘You could moan for me like that?’
‘Is that what you want?’ he asks, but, ohhhh, that’s a dangerous question to pose. He’s got to know what the answer is by now, because I’m sure I’ve said it to him a dozen times. We took a bath in our respective tubs together the other day, and I said it to him then. I said it to him as he urged me to use the spray from the shower head on my eager clit, and I said it to him again after he sent me a rather hard and thick sort of gift.
The one I grab now, in lieu of the one thing he won’t give me.
‘I want you to fuck me. I want to feel you inside me,’ I say, just as I slide his perfect present through my slick folds. It’s carved wood – just like the box – so of course the whorls and curves feel just incredible against my clit.
But there’s only one thing I really have in mind.
‘You know I want that too.’
‘How much?’
‘So much that I’m picturing it now, as I slide my hand over my cock. I’m so stiff and swollen I’m sure I’d hurt you. I’d have to lick that sweet pussy first.’
‘God, Ivan. Oh God, yeah, fill me with that big dick.’
‘Work you open with my fingers, get you nice and wet. Are you wet for me now?’
‘I’m so wet I can just take that gift you sent me … Oh yeah, feels so good sliding inside me. Is that what you’d feel like? It’s so hard and thick.’
‘You know what I’d feel like. You’ve seen me.’
‘Yeah. Ohhh yeah, you’re so big.’
‘Is that good? Is that good going in? Fuck yourself with it, baby. I want to hear you come on that thing. I want to hear you take it and take it.’
‘I am, I am. I’m fucking myself so hard. Just the way I want you to.’
‘You want me to get you on your hands and knees?’
‘Fuck, yes.’
‘You want me to pound into you, make you come, make you scream?’
‘Please. Just come to me, come to me,’ I say, but he won’t give in. He tells me things he knows I want to hear instead – like how hard he’s jerking himself and how close he is to coming. I’m gonna spurt all over myself, he tells me, in such a filthy, half-groaning tone of voice that it couldn’t be more obvious what he’s trying to do.
‘I know you’re trying to change the subject,’ I say, and now his groans are more frustrated – with himself, or otherwise.
‘Really? I thought it was called having an orgasm. I guess my English has slipped since meeting you.’
‘You’re not going to have an orgasm. You never come this fast.’
‘Maybe it’s the thought of fucking you.’
‘Why think when you can have the real thing? I’m so ready, so hot and wet and tight. Don’t you want to feel that? Don’t you want to feel me around you?’
He moans, then, and contrary to what I’ve just said I can hear him going over. He always makes the same sound when he does – rough and guttural, not quite in control of himself. And I can hear how frantic he’s being, how hard he’s fucking himself.
He likes a tight hand on his cock, I know, and when he’s climaxing it’s almost as though he’s punishing himself. He’s punishing himself for wanting this, the way Sid used to punish me – which is when I realise. It’s not an invisible hand he’s got, hovering over him. It’s his own hand. It’s his own hand, holding him back.
And when it slackens
, just a little, oh, it’s like the sun coming out in the middle of winter. It’s the first time I’ve ever orgasmed to words that are barely sexy at all.
‘Tomorrow, I promise,’ he says, and in answer I come, and come, and come.
He’s a liar, though. He’s a filthy liar, leading me on. I thought he meant that tomorrow would bring him, at my door. But instead there’s another gift, which I can’t quite bring myself to like. I can’t bring myself to like it until I open it, and after I have I feel bad for ever doubting him. How could I have thought he wouldn’t keep his promise? He’s done nothing but be absolutely and intensely honest with me about everything, from how hot he likes his baths to what brand of mayonnaise he likes on his sandwiches.
And if there’s one big thing he’s kind of holding back, well, that’s OK. At least he gives me his word, and holds to that. He holds to it after half an hour of mystery and me wondering what on earth this thing is.
It’s a box like before. This one is smooth, corner-less, white, though I get the impression he made this one too, somehow. He melted it and moulded it until he came up with something just as initially frustrating, and just as magical when I finally understand.
It’s not as obvious as the toy he sent me, in one way, because with that I knew what he wanted me to do. I knew he wanted me to wear it and walk around as though nothing was happening, my arousal a secret only I could know. But although the function of this item is clear, the meaning is not.
It’s just a blindfold. What does a blindfold have to do with his promise? He didn’t say, Tomorrow, I’ll send you something to cover your eyes. He said, Tomorrow I’ll be with you. I mean, that was what he meant, wasn’t it? I’ve spent all day in that wretched store, wriggling on the spot, in anticipation of what might be waiting for me.
This just doesn’t seem right at all.
And then I see the key. I see the note, in his curlicue handwriting, like Cyrillic script without the Russian.
Let yourself in. Wear my gift. Wait for me.
I can only come to one conclusion. And the conclusion turns me into a giddy, trembling wreck. My heart tries to escape out of my chest, then settles down, then goes for the exit all over again. For five long minutes, I don’t know what to do with myself, and it doesn’t get any better when I reread the note and fully consider what it means.
He wants me to go to his apartment. He wants me to go inside his apartment – maybe when he’s not there. After all, he’s left me a key. That implies he won’t be around when I let myself in to what has now become a mystical cave of wonders in my head.
I’ll get to see the table, and the carpet that I vaguely remember as a kind of rough green pile. There’s a kitchen just off his bedroom-slash-living-room, and now I’ll get to do more than just kind of see it from afar on a crackling video tape. I’ll get to explore it, as though somehow it’s going to be way, way different to mine.
Even though I know it won’t be. Everything’s the same in The Courtyard.
It just doesn’t feel it when it’s him.
That’s why I’m shaking, before I’ve even gotten to his door. I’ve got the gift clutched in my hand, half of me unsure of what the instructions were now. Did he say wear it first, and then go in? And, if he did, how on earth am I supposed to fit the key in the lock? I’ll still be stood here when he returns, hands fondling all over the goddamn door for the keyhole.
Which decides it for me. I have to go in, and then wear this strip of red lace, despite how achingly intrusive that seems. It’s like breaking the seal on an airtight bag. I open the door and almost hear something hissing or shushing, and then the undisturbed air of his apartment rushes against my face.
Everything is so still, inside. So quiet. And I was right, too, to imagine his apartment would be different, because somehow it is. Things look more polished in here than they do in mine. The walls almost have a reflective surface; the fixtures and fittings are so smooth and modern. My lights are held up by these old crooked brass sorts of things; his look near futuristic.
The kitchen’s the same, too. I hardly dare to go in it, but, once I’m sure he’s not here, I take a little step through the door. I take in the white and black checked flooring, which puts my own peeling linoleum to shame. The double-wide refrigerator, steel grey and shining, and the sink to match.
In fact, everything matches. Everything is neat and ordered and perfect. The bank of computers he’s got against one wall hum in this low, comforting sort of way, as though to say they’ll always be there and always be working, because Ivan takes such good care of them. He takes care of the single plant he’s got, of the clothes that hang in his closet, just like I thought. And lastly, the thing my eyes want to settle on after everything else has been thoroughly examined:
His bed.
It shouldn’t look inviting, but it does. Those crisp cool sheets, pulled hotel-room taut. The neat fold-down he’s done, as though this really is the Hilton instead of his home. Even the pillows are somehow wrinkle free, plumped and smoothed to perfection.
I don’t know whether to be unnerved, or oddly thrilled. I’ve never seen a man do this sort of thing for himself. I didn’t know a man was capable of living like this, unless he’d ordered and bullied and beat a woman until she did it for him.
But not Ivan. He’s got his own demons driving him to this, and that thought takes away any pleasure I found in his care and precision. He doesn’t delight in this, I’m sure. He’s just waiting to stop, he’s wanting to stop, and maybe this is what I am to him.
I’m messing things up.
His choice of someone like me says it all, really – my big, crazy hair and my sloppy clothes and my eating of things with my fingers. The other day he asked me to describe my bed to him, and when I told him – like a shipwreck, like a bomb’s hit it, like I’ve been fucked for five days in the sheets – he sighed this contented sigh and asked me to tell him again.
It hadn’t made much sense at the time, but I think it does now.
The very thing Sid hated about me, Ivan craves. He wants disorder in his strictly ordered life, and I can give that to him. I can. But first I’ve got to sit on the edge of his bed with this blindfold on, and that’s a much taller order than I thought it would be.
The material’s heavier than it had seemed in the box, once I’ve tied it around my head. I can’t even open my eyes behind it, and for a long panicked moment I consider loosening the knot I’ve made. If I get it just right, I could possibly see through the red lace, just a little. After all, I could see my palms through the material when I held it in my hands. It’s not dense and impenetrable.
But somehow I don’t. I leave the blindfold as it is, and try my best to be patient. To be calm. He’ll come in and everything will be fine, because I trust him. I do.
So why do I freeze when I hear him walk into the room? Hell, I freeze when I hear his door go, though after a moment I understand why. It’s not really because of him at all. It’s because of the sudden and sharp idea that comes to me while listening blindly for the turn of the doorknob, the sound of the door shutting, the heavy thud thud of someone’s shoes on the carpet.
This could be anyone. Maybe it’s the intruder I made up in my head to explain why he is the way he is. Maybe it’s that big guy, and actually this scenario really is all Ivan – he hired that musclehead again, to give me the going over he can’t.
Oh God. Oh God, that last one sounds much more plausible than I’d like it to be. I mean, what do I really know about Ivan, aside from stuff about sandwiches? Why do I trust him so closely? I never thought I’d trust anyone again, and yet here I am with a blindfold on, in a strange man’s apartment, just because we ate dinner together the other day, through the phone.
I’m crazy, I think, and the second I feel his breath ghosting against my cheek, his presence bristling so close to me, I show it. I shove back on the bed, hands scrabbling for purchase. Legs almost kicking out against the sheets, some awful sound in my throat.
; ‘No,’ I tell him, and then even more childishly: ‘No, I don’t like it.’
But I can’t make the right moves to rectify the situation. I can’t get the blindfold off, because I’m an idiot who tied it too tightly. Now it’s like a noose around my throat, trapping me in some deadly scenario with a filthy, boorish stranger.
‘Abbie.Abbie,’ he says, and it’s his voice, but I still can’t. I need to get away, I need to rip this lace off, and I continue to need all of these things until he grabs a hold of my flailing hands and puts them on his face.
‘It’s me, Abbie. Here, here,’ he says, but he doesn’t need to. The second he offers me such an intimate thing, all the panic drains out of me. My shoulders drop; I stop the kicking. I stop and just feel that face I’ve seen a thousand times in my dreams. In the hallways of this stifling place.
He’s just as beautiful as he seemed, when I could see him with my eyes. More so, in fact, because my fingers pick up a million things I’d missed – like how smooth his skin is, in all the places where there isn’t any stubble. He has a slight cleft in his chin that I didn’t notice before, and his jaw feels squarer than it looked through the window. Heavier.
I thought his face was quite narrow, but it isn’t.
And, oh, his mouth. I run my thumb over his upper lip, and feel out that soft Cupid’s bow shape, so sweet I could mistake it for a woman’s if it were not for the bristle of his stubble all the way around. The contrast is delicious, electric, and before I know what I’m doing I’m making a meal of it.
I’m practically fondling his mouth, fingertips tracing the shape. Thumb almost daring to go in, but not quite, not quite. I can’t do something like that, while I’m still pretending I’m panicked and in need of the reassurance of his face.
No, no.
I have to wait, until he goes ahead and does it for me. He turns his head and presses into my touch, first with his face in a way that makes me sigh – like an animal seeking heat, I think, like a beast rubbing its fur against my palm – and then with his mouth.
He kisses me. He kisses my fingers, makes them wet. And just when I’m tense all over, waiting for more … he takes one into his mouth, just like we talked about. He licks the length of one finger, and I feel what I’ve only dreamed about for days, and days and weeks.
Deep Desires (Mischief Books) Page 6