Lord, if only he’d known. He could have gotten me to bum sex way before last night. I’d have probably given up my ass three weeks before I met him, with just a bat of those pretty eyelashes and an uncomfortable clearing of his throat.
‘We can’t do anything in here,’ he says, but he’s totally lying. He’s lying. He’s playing coy on purpose, because apparently that just excites him more. He practically arches up off his seat when I suddenly fall to my knees, and his ‘no’ is quite something to hear.
It has seventeen extra syllables. It’s as elaborate as a game of Mousetrap, and it shows me clearly why I seem to like it so much. The word ‘no’ makes it forbidden, I think. ‘No’ makes it wrong, so wrong.
And it does it whether you’re Kit Connor or Dillon Holt.
‘Just say “fire”, if you really want me to stop,’ I tell him, with the wryest smile I’ve ever felt on my own face. Seriously, this is the most fun I’ve had in my life – and it’s so easy, too. His eyes actually fly open at that sound of that one little word, and he remains speechless throughout the rest of my little explanation.
Then less speechless once I’ve done.
‘I’ve created a monster,’ he says, with just a flicker of amusement in his eyes. The rest is all red-faced flusteredness, to the point where I get that vertigo-inducing sense again. That sense that we’ve swapped places, just for a little while.
Just long enough for me to be even more daring than I was the day I told him what I was going to do to him, whether he wanted it or not. Maybe because now I don’t care if it’s not. I just slide his zipper down – so loud, in this closed little space – and then when he’s at his most rigid, when his back’s right up against the wooden wall and his Converse-covered feet are rubbing holes into the stone floor, I lick him in places he least expects.
Like over that strip of skin he loved me pressing my fingers into. Like the tops of his thighs, where he tickled me; like up and underneath his shirt to the sharp points of his nipples. I do all the things I’ve only guessed at or extrapolated from bits and pieces of information.
But apparently I’m getting good at doing so.
Because he definitely reacts, to almost everything. He moans at the flicker of my tongue in those secretive places, and rolls his hips to help me work his shorts down – even as he says no. He says no and no and no until I’m sure what each one really means.
It means the same as it does when I say it to him.
‘You want me to suck this big thick cock?’ I ask him, and when he shakes his head and peers through the little grating, I take the head in my mouth. I swirl my tongue around the tip, and then I say what I’m sure he wants to hear: ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t help myself. You make me so horny, Father,’ I say.
And he responds with:
‘Oh my God oh my God oh my God we’re going to burn in hell.’
‘We are?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Well, I guess you’d better come in my mouth before that happens.’
‘No.’
‘Or maybe you’d like to do it all over my face.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Or between my tits.’
‘There isn’t enough “no” in the world for that – you’d better not take that shirt off. You’d better keep your clothes on. Do not take your clothes off in here.’
And I think we have a winner. He wants me to get half-naked in a confessional and rub my breasts all over him – something I would never have considered a month ago. But apparently I can be persuaded to do just about anything, with the help of two seemingly opposing techniques:
Either he makes me.
Or I make him.
Oh, God, I think I like making him. I think I like the way he looks at me as I undo the buttons, all wild-eyed and half-disbelieving. Suddenly I can see the appeal of myself, and how I’ve behaved for him – even though I rarely if ever understand why anyone might like me. I’ve spent my life feeling singularly unattractive and unspectacular, and it’s there, on the stone floor of a church at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, that I finally and truly feel like something more than that. I feel voluptuous, and daring, and sexy.
He makes me feel all of those things, just by looking this shocked. By shaking, when I bring his hands to my bare breasts. By acting the part of an innocent so perfectly that I’m not even sure if he’s acting right now. I think it really does stun him to be fondling someone’s naked body in a church, despite his lurid past and his cocky swagger.
And that’s so exciting that I’m pretty much shaking too, by the time I manage to get his mouth onto mine, and his slick cock between my breasts. ‘Give me a pearl necklace,’ I whisper in his ear – probably because it’s the dirtiest thing I can think of to say.
Though I don’t know how dirty it is until he presses me back onto the floor and rubs himself right there. He ruts, like he’s suddenly out of control, hands squeezing and squeezing at my flesh. It’s really the rudest, most ridiculous thing, when you think about it: his thighs straddling my body, one of them almost at my ear. Erection sliding and slipping between my breasts, mouth open, head back … and me sprawled out like this with my head against the door.
So it’s rather disturbing that those treacherous words enter my head at that exact moment. Just as he’s about to give in and offer me that gift I’ve suggested, and then after it too. He lets out the most desperate groan of pleasure I’ve ever heard him make, and I feel the hot spill of his come all over my throat as I think it, stupidly, crazily, insanely:
I love you.
Chapter Twelve
There’s not really any getting around it now. He came on me in a confessional, and I thought the words I love you. That’s probably a marriage ceremony, in some cultures. We’ve done the sacred ritual – which means, at the very least, that we have to have some kind of chat about this. About him, and his weird communication issues.
And I suspect he knows this.
In fact, I’m absolutely certain that he knows this. Because when I turn up at his place with deep discussions about his innermost self on my mind, he heads me off at the pass. He performs a pre-emptive strike against my efforts. I’m about to burst in the door and just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind – something about religion, maybe, or his fantasies, or, hell … his job would do. I’m constantly wondering if he gets to manhandle the penguins or poke the seals, and by this point I really shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to wonder. We’re not just fucking any more, and people who aren’t just fucking need to understand these kinds of things about each other.
Though I know as soon as I’m inside that he thinks otherwise. In fact, I think he might be actively avoiding divulging any information, in case me knowing him too well accidentally leads to a relationship. Somehow he’s going to stumble into it, I think, unless he takes drastic measures.
And he has.
He’s really taken some drastic measures.
He’s laid out seven strips of red ribbon on the bed. Like the first chapter that’s also the second-to-last chapter of my book. And because of that – because they’re there at the beginning, but also at the end – they seem ominous. Exciting, true, and certainly as distracting as he’s probably intended. But there’s something else about them.
They’re like a message. Keep going, and I’ll completely shut down the way your hero does, I think; though the idea is more shocking than I expect. It’s more blistering, like a wound I didn’t anticipate, healing before I’ve got used to the pain. I thought he was fun, and silly, and full of light … but when I think of it this way …
He’s not so different to the hero of my story. He’s just as cold, in his own way. He’s just as impervious. He doesn’t say anything about his own wants and needs, exactly as the Master didn’t. He won’t share his life with me, and that’s true of my cologne-soaked businessman too.
And yet somehow that’s not half as sexy as it was in the story. It’s not cool to be with someone so shut of
f. It’s not full of thrills. I’m not going to ride off into the sunset with him, happy with a word or two about his feelings, for ever.
That’s reality, I think.
That’s what my story lacked: the sting of love. This sharp pain just under my ribcage, when he wraps the first ribbon around my eyes. Because it’s blissful, of course it’s blissful. It’s almost unbearably arousing and so utterly lovely to have someone be this willing to make your fantasies come true. It fills me with a shaking sort of gratitude, and persuades me to do as he’s suggesting even as all my intentions turn to dust and blow away.
But it’s not enough. It’s not enough to live your life with a cipher. He said it to me the first day we met: ‘I’m empty.’ And that’s what weighs heavy in my heart as he leads me to the bed. As he undresses me, piece by piece, until I’m just standing there, naked and sightless.
While he remains aloof and detached. He could be anyone, I think – and in truth he sort of feels like it, as he smoothes his palms over my breasts and my ass. I’m used to the slight roughness of his touch, and the startling sense of the size of his hands. But here and now his touch is almost elegant, as though he wasn’t content with simply distracting me with the sharpest fantasy he could find in the book. He also has to be that man, utterly. He has to smell like something other than himself – not of fabric softener and sometimes of salt, but of thick, rich perfume.
And of course I can’t tell him that I prefer the former.
Because I’m aroused, in spite of myself. I’m very aroused now. There’s just something about a touch that’s this impersonal … like seven different men are doing the stroking. One of them dips his fingers into the V of my sex, testing my wetness. Another probes me, somewhere really rude. Something ghosts over my stiff nipples and I forget that I’m supposed to stand still.
And then I’m punished for it. A ribbon is wrapped around that place I’ve just quivered over – thick and silky and too tight around my breasts. So tight, in fact, that for a second I can’t breathe … though I’ll admit it might be more to do with the situation than anything else. I’m all jumbled and conflicted, wanting more of this then needing to back down.
Just say, I think.
Dillon, we need to talk.
But it’s easier thought than done. Of course it is. Everything is always easier in my head. In my head, my heroine didn’t feel trapped by this act. She didn’t want to say the safe word – she didn’t even have a safe word. She just went along with everything like a good little lamb, and I confess: I kind of hate her for it now.
I hate her for being so selfish and so accepting at the same time. I hate her for moaning the moment he ties her hands behind her back – though I’ve no idea how I can be so unforgiving. Because I do the same thing when he does it to me. I moan his name when I feel him lacing that ribbon over and over around my wrists in an endless loop.
And when he leads me to the bed by the length of material he’s left, I let him. I go willingly. I bare my throat for the ribbon there, too, though naturally I know what that means. I understand the connotations of a collar, even if I’ve no idea what I’m collaring myself to.
Mindless, mind-blowing sex, for ever? Awkward moments when he almost seems to know what a relationship should be?
Perhaps, perhaps. But in that moment I don’t care as much as I should. I’m too busy enjoying the sensation of the silk sliding against my skin. In the story, it was more about the bite of those thick edges, the sense of being bound. But in reality it’s so much sweeter than I would have thought. It’s slippery and slick against my stiff nipples and the sensitive skin of my throat, and when he runs it between my legs, briefly …
Ohhh, my clit jerks at the feel of it. My back arches without having to be told to do it. He’s got me on hands and knees on the bed, but it’s me who puts myself into the right position. It’s me who gasps and rocks back to feel the heavy press of him between my legs.
He’s going to take me right away, I think – not like in the story. In the story the Master waited, because he could. But maybe … maybe Dillon can’t. Maybe he’s so turned on he just has to have me, now, and the thought is desperately exciting.
Until I realise what it means.
I’m panting after his every tiny reaction, just as my heroine did. I’m sifting through him constantly, waiting for a sign of something. And though he gives me more than the Master ever gave her, though he shakes for me, and flushes for me, and tells me he can’t wait, it’s all just nothing, without the core of him.
It’s nothing, I think, as he slides into me.
Even though my treacherous body believes otherwise. It always reacts the same way when he fills me with his thick cock – excitement slithers down and sensation slithers up, and both things meet in the middle in a big burst of pleasure. I gasp at feeling it, and immediately do what I hardly dared to before.
I fuck back against him, with all the desperation I’m currently feeling. I jerk and work and go for it, pushing him the way she pushed him, refusing to stay still. And when he gives me nothing but:
‘Yeah, show me what you want. Tell me what you want.’
I think something cracks inside me.
And it definitely smashes into smithereens, once he’s followed it with this:
‘Why can’t you tell me, huh?’
Why can’t I tell you, my mind bellows, and then I do something my heroine never ever did: I rip the blindfold off. I turn without permission, and stare at him with all the incredulity I can muster. It’s molten hot, this incredulity. It’s burning inside me as hard as the edge of my orgasm is, and it doesn’t take much to get it out of my mouth.
‘I have. I did. I do, all the time,’ I say, but that’s not enough. I’m not satisfied with that. I have to move away from him and sit up, and maybe bunch his shirt into my fists, too. I have to wrench him down onto the bed, and once I have the rest comes out easier: ‘But you don’t.’
I think I intend it to come out quite accusatory, or at least to have a hint of detachment. But somehow I find myself kissing him in-between the words. And he kisses me back in return. He kisses me with the greed of someone who knows they’re going to be starved soon, and I just can’t help responding.
But I do my best to stay true to my course at the same time.
‘You never say a thing,’ I tell him, as he runs both hands down my body and gets a fistful of my ass. Before I know it I’m almost over him, his cock pushing against my belly, his mouth against mine.
And this sexual distraction isn’t his only weapon, either.
He has other ways of making me not talk.
‘I say plenty,’ he tells me, and how can I say that’s not true? He does say a lot – during sex and outside it. He’s got the ultimate defence: ‘I want to talk all the time.’
Though I’m starting to see that need to chat in a different light now. Maybe it’s just what he thinks he should do, rather than what he can do. Maybe it’s just more deflection from the real matter at hand.
‘Yeah, but not about you. Not about things you want, and the things you fantasise about. Where’s your book, huh? Where’s your book for me to read?’
‘I told you. I’m not that deep.’
‘You’re so shallow you can’t tell me what you want?’
‘I want you to fuck me.’
‘You can’t tell me what you need?’
‘I need you to fuck me,’ he says, and though I try I can’t resist that. It’s so close to what I’m asking for that I can’t possibly deny him. In truth, it’s so close to what I want that I can’t possibly deny him. My body’s still buzzing from the feel of him, and it buzzes harder the longer we kiss like this – so fierce and wet. And the longer we talk like this.
Like we’re going to take each other apart with words.
‘What else?’ I demand, as I take him in my hand. He’s still slippery with my slickness, and so hard it’s impossible to resist. Only the struggle of straddling him – and the sudden sense of
just how big he is, like this – stops me sliding right down on him immediately.
I have to work for it … but that’s fine.
Because working for it gives me a real chance to turn us both inside out. It makes it easy to keep this conversation going, with him all eager to feel me again and me all eager to feel him. All I have to do is keep doing this, I think. Keep teasing.
‘Fuck me like you mean it,’ he says, which isn’t quite enough to warrant the long slow slide I’m dying for. It gets him a stroke through my slit, and nothing more.
Much to his consternation.
‘Come on, Kit.’
‘You want me to come on, you share.’
‘And what if I don’t have anything to share?’
‘You did it well enough when we first met. You did it well enough in group.’
‘That was different,’ he says, and in a way I know he’s right. Of course I know he’s right. I even know why he’s right, though I can’t quite accept it until he spells it out, as clear as day and twice as large:
‘It was just about meaningless sex,’ he tells me, with the unspoken words left hanging in the air afterwards.
And this isn’t any more.
This isn’t some jokey anecdote that he can tell some stranger about one day. It’s a river of murky water, full of sharp things and creatures with teeth. It’s crazy and compulsive – to the point where I can’t even stop him rolling me onto my back. I don’t want to stop him rolling me onto my back.
I’m just as lost as he is, I think, feeling blindly through physical sensation, instead of dealing with anything deeper. I let him take me like that, roughly, passionately – until we’re both drenched in sweat and criss-crossed by nail marks, and I don’t say a single thing. I don’t try to make it anything other than meaningless, even though I know it isn’t, somewhere inside me. And I know we could see that, too, I know we could if we tried.
But I also know that we won’t.
We can’t.
We’re too hopelessly addicted to everything else.
Addicted (Mischief Books) Page 17