Addicted (Mischief Books)

by Stein, Charlotte

  He gets a handful of my hair and a fistful of whatever clothes I’m still wearing, then suddenly I’m not wearing them any more. I’m completely naked on his kitchen floor, with hardly a care in the world – though naturally it’s difficult to worry about anything when someone like Dillon Holt is forcing your mouth onto his. When he’s laid-back, it’s bad enough. When he’s like this, it’s impossible to step back and suggest we have some more chats about stuff.

  I find myself completely lost in the smallest things: the curl of his tongue against the inside of my upper lip – just a little too tickly and yet still somehow exciting. Or how about the sound of him moaning into my mouth? It excited me before but now it’s almost electrifying, when placed alongside all of the feelings he mentioned and the thoughts he expressed. It has an extra layer of longing that I can’t really describe.

  But I can at least understand the effect of honesty. This is his honest passion, I think. His true desire. I can’t pretend it’s some gimmick or gag. It’s real and unfettered and so, so good … oh, it’s so good I almost choke, in an effort to cram every feeling down into me all at once. I squeeze his hair into my fist the way he’s done mine, and, when he attempts to manoeuvre us off the floor, I almost get in his way. I’m too busy trying to eat his face and his throat and his left earlobe to pay attention to things like lifting and pivoting, and it’s really just a testament to his strength that we end up staggering towards the bed.

  Or, more, he staggers. I just hang off his hip and his massive shoulders, like a misplaced Christmas ornament. And once he’s in a position to put me down, he can’t quite manage it. I won’t let him manage it. I’m stuck on him now, and I can’t quite detach.

  Though he does an excellent job of working with what he’s got. He somehow twists me around his body like a ballroom dancer, and it’s only after I’m on my hands and knees with him inside me that I remember the promise I made, and the place we’re now in. He doesn’t get to hide from me any more. It’s not going to be all about me – though, I confess, for a moment I’m almost seduced right into it, all over again.

  He’s fucking me just like he did in the kitchen; hard and fast and without room for interjections, those big hands tight on my hips, drawing me back and back and back onto his cock until I can hardly speak around the pleasure. It’s difficult enough to think under circumstances like these, never mind question.

  But I focus. I make fists in the bed sheets and brush off my building orgasm.

  ‘Tell me what you want,’ I try, though I know it’s not quite good enough to get the desired result. He might have spilled the beans about this little poker game he’s playing, but apparently it doesn’t mean he won’t attempt another hand. He’s still set in that groove, I think – the one that tells him I might run away or be less than impressed if he doesn’t think of me first. And though I find that idea as wildly novel as I did when he first let me know about it; the urge is strong to be as selfless with him.

  It’s more than strong. It’s overwhelming enough to make me take it further. I put a hand over his on my hip, in an effort to slow him. And when that’s not enough I try to shift a little way up the bed – just to make it that bit harder for him to keep pinning my pleasure down like this.

  Of course, I utterly fail. He’s so strong and insistent … not to mention persuasive. He even knows exactly what to say to keep me in place: ‘just your tight pussy,’ he tells me, followed by the kind of groan that would make a nun cream herself. He even adds a bunch of stuff a moment later, as though he’s completely aware that one comment isn’t enough. One groan isn’t enough. One thrust of his thick cock isn’t even enough.

  But maybe this could be:

  ‘All I need is what I’m looking at right now. You around me, making my cock so wet … just taking me so easy. You like that, huh?’

  Of course I like it. He’s slowed the pace, and the sensation is a protracted, nerve-buzzing version of the thing he was putting me through a moment ago. He slides in and I flow forward as though I’ve turned to water, and then, even worse – I have to endure him pulling slowly back out again.

  I think I actually judder at that. So I’ve honestly got no idea how I’m able to squirm away from him. It’s a miracle that I manage to disentangle myself from his hands, never mind anything else – though my resolve is definitely strengthened by his expression, once I’m halfway up the bed. He looks like he did in the church: flummoxed and frustrated, ready to stop me or drag me back but unable to do either for a moment.

  His hands are still holding the air where my hips once were. His cock is a rudder jutting out in front of him, seeking heat that isn’t there any more. And though he clearly wants to say a word or three, I think he knows there isn’t much he could go with. Something’s shifted between us now. The dynamic is more level. He’s not the cocksure Svengali, teaching me a thing or two about a thing or two.

  And I’m not quite as shy as I would have been before.

  The church got rid of most of that. And the conversation put paid to the rest.

  ‘You can have it when you tell me what you want,’ I say, and to my great delight, I even manage to point to the thing I’m talking about it as I do it. I flash that wet, flushed place between my legs at him, then watch his eyes go big at the sight.

  I can make his eyes go big at the sight of my pussy, I think, which only spurs me on.

  ‘I told you,’ he says, but he doesn’t sound convincing. For a start, he’s kind of half-whining. And then there’s the fact that he goes for one of my legs, when he thinks I’m satisfied by his rubbish get-out card.

  I’m too quick for him, however. I’m fully prepared for any and all assaults on my senses at this point – whereas he’s mostly stupefied and definitely on shaky ground.

  ‘You didn’t get anywhere close to telling me,’ I say. ‘But try a little harder and I might give you it.’

  He comes close to putting his hands on his hips. At the very least, he rolls his eyes.

  ‘What if what I want just happens to be what you want?’

  ‘Then I’m probably going to doubt you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t, you know. I’m pretty sure I go nuts over some of the same stuff you do – like when I bury my face between your legs and you jump and jitter in my arms. Or how about all that storytelling I did … yeah, you liked that. You think I didn’t like it too, seeing you get so flushed and ready to fuck because of a few words?’

  ‘Lying words. Was the tale you told me about your first time even true?’

  I kind of don’t want to ask it, for many reasons. If he says yes, I’m going to be too excited to keep this conversation going. But if he says no, I know I’ll be disappointed. I can feel it spreading through me already – that little tale … the one that gave me my only clues about him and his life and likes and dislikes … all of it fake.

  It can’t be fake, can it? Oh, I’m hoping too much that it’s not fake. And I know I am, because when he finally tells me I actually feel a kind of relief. I hadn’t even realised that the lies were worrying me a little – as though everything we are has no foundation – until he answers, as calm as you please:

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you really did let her seduce you.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you liked it when she teased you.’

  ‘I loved it.’

  ‘Like you might love it if I did it to you now.’

  ‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

  ‘Then tell me. Tell me you want me to do something just for you. Be selfish with me.’

  He shakes his head in this slow, deliberate sort of way that shouldn’t give me the chill it does. But it happens, nonetheless. There’s something dark about his expression, something deadly, and it sends a little frisson through my body.

  ‘I don’t think you really want me to be selfish,’ he says, and I wonder for just the barest second – is that the secret? Is he into something nightmarish, sexually … something so bad he can’t stand
to tell me? Maybe I’m right about all of his generosity.

  Maybe it’s just evasion in disguise.

  ‘Why? Do you really think you’re going to disturb me?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You didn’t disturb me with any of your tales – true or otherwise. And the things you’ve persuaded me to do … none of them have disturbed me.’

  ‘Not even public sex?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  ‘And being your priest?’

  ‘You could be the Pope … I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I see,’ he says, but he still sounds unsure. So unsure, in fact, that it’s a little insulting. After all, this isn’t just about fulfilling my fantasies and forgoing his own. It’s not even just about evasion.

  It’s about him seeing me as too fragile to take whatever he can dish out. Apparently he’s got a red room of pain that I’m too pathetic to see. He’s into whips and chains, and I might run for the hills if only I knew.

  And that makes my tone far angrier than I intend it to be when I finally ask.

  ‘Don’t you have faith in me? Do you really think I’m so weak – ?’

  ‘It’s not that I think you’re weak, Kit,’ he says, and then he sort of sighs. His tongue touches his upper teeth, as though he’s searching for inspiration there. He’s searching for inspiration anywhere except the place he’s most likely to find it. And when he does finally wrestle with himself enough to get to the root of the matter, his words are just as daft as they were two minutes ago. ‘I’m just a little worried that you’ll think I am.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  He can’t be serious. He’s six foot three. He told me earlier. And he didn’t need to tell me about his enormous shoulders and his big-man hands and the thing between his legs that’s still pointing right at me. No one could ever mistake him for weak. He’s so strong he’s managed to forge this insane path with me for months, without me having the ability to do anything about it at all. I couldn’t even get him to share a fantasy.

  He’s like Fort Knox.

  A crazy, ridiculous Fort Knox.

  ‘You might not see me as the same person. Other people didn’t when I told them about this,’ he says, as though the person he is has such a faint, indistinguishable outline. Like he’s not stamped on the insides of my eyes for ever.

  ‘Honestly, Dillon, if your big secret is that you like to cross-dress, you really shouldn’t have put on that show for me last Tuesday. I mean, wearing my bra and panties was a bit of a clue. But jumping out of a closet while dressed in them was a mammoth giveaway.’

  He rolls his eyes at that one.

  ‘I was just fucking around.’

  ‘And you think that, if you weren’t fucking around, I’m somehow going to be really upset here? Oh, no, my boyfriend likes to do something that may make other members of society question his complete and total burly masculinity! Whatever shall I do?’ I say, expecting maybe a sarcastic answer in response. Or perhaps he’ll be serious, and focus on the kink that he may or may not have … it’s right there in the words I’ve just said, after all.

  So really the last thing I’m anticipating is him lasering in on this:

  ‘I’m your boyfriend?’

  Yeah, that throws me all right. Here I am, blustering about his lack of faith and men wearing panties, so sure and certain of my own ability to cope with anything. And he lunges at the one thing that actually throws me for a second.

  I don’t think it could have been worse if he’d said I like to bum goats while wearing a top hat.

  ‘Well … yeah.’

  ‘Holy shit, I’m someone’s boyfriend. Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘And you’re not just saying it because it pretty much means I have to tell you now?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m kind of scared that the word slipped out.’

  I love him for doing a little fist pump after I’ve said that. I love him for sounding so delighted about the whole idea. He keeps saying ‘boyfriend’ in this wondering, chuckling sort of manner, and then when he’s done I love him even harder.

  Because he tells me stuff.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK.’

  And then he winces, and I wince, and finally he explains in a great rush of unfettered shame and uncertainty and obviously mixed-up feelings:

  ‘I kind of enjoy being … tormented.’

  At which point, I’ll admit: I’m a little disappointed. It’s sort of an anticlimax. I’m really not sure what I was imagining, but I’m equally sure it wasn’t nearly as untroublesome as that. I was thinking illegal throughout most of Europe, banned in twenty countries as a war crime, so bad I can never look at his face again levels of disturbing.

  I was thinking I’d start spontaneously crying.

  Instead I sort of deflate – which in hindsight is just as bad. They probably look like similar reactions: abject horror and mild disappointment. And of course the moment he sees it all over my face, he puts his hands in his hair.

  ‘See, I knew you’d react like this.’

  ‘No, Dillon –’

  ‘You’re appalled. You want a Master … a big, masculine, tough, bastard of a Master, and I’ve just confessed to you that I like to be slapped around.’

  I can’t help it then. It makes things worse, but I really can’t help it. When he put it the other way, it was sort of like something I already knew. He’d confessed to liking certain aspects of torment, after all – the holding off, for example. But now that he’s put it like this, it’s all fresh and new and wild.

  ‘You like to be slapped around?’ I say, but I swear I only do it because of the great gust of God knows what that goes through me, once he’s laid that idea out on the table. I’ve never experienced incredulity that feels arousing before, but, by Christ, does he ever achieve it. He likes to be slapped around. As in … maybe me smacking that gorgeous ass and those amazing biceps and oh … oh … what if he wanted me to crack a hand across his face?

  Oh, my God. What would that be like?

  I can’t even think about it in a reasonable and rational manner. I’m too busy remembering how his flesh had felt under my hand when I gave him that playful slap. He reacted to that too – I can see it now. I can picture it in my head, suddenly clear and bright.

  And then he goes and takes it away.

  ‘Well, maybe not exactly that.’

  ‘Dillon –’

  ‘And even though I occasionally fantasise about stuff of that nature, I’m a fan of everything else too. In fact, I love everything else. I love being all masterful, and can totally be that way for you if –’

  ‘Dillon!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if you were into bonking goats! I’m not the least bit bothered by your masterfulness, whether it’s there or not. You know why I like you? Why you drive me crazy? Because of that word you just said: ‘everything’. You’re everything, all at once. You’ve shown me things that I would never have imagined, and been willing to go to places I was too afraid to venture. In fact, you’ve done more than that. You’ve removed that fear in me.’ I take a moment to swallow my own heart, which is trying to make its way up my throat. It’s always trying to make its way up my throat around him now. It almost succeeds, in fact, as I squeeze these words out: ‘So I’ve got to ask: do you really think I’d back out now?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Do you really think I’d want to back out? My book lacked something because I lacked something. I lacked the ability to see things differently, to be different; to enjoy the whole of life and not just the bits I felt safe in claiming. You really think I want to stay within the confines of something I wrote before I felt any of this?’

  He’s not quite ready to say no yet. But I can see him wavering on the brink of it. I can see it because it looks the same way I did, when I first started this crazy journey with him. It looks like acceptance, and giving in, and most of all …

  Relief. />
  ‘It’s OK to be you,’ I say, and when I do I think of that tattoo on his back. The one that I still haven’t asked him about, but which now seems much closer – was this what it was about? Did he wonder if he was OK, because of desires he couldn’t reconcile with his outer self? I don’t know, I don’t know. But I’m not going to let him continue, if that’s so. ‘Because I like you. I more than like you,’ I say.

  And then the rest spills out, twice as brave as anything I’ve ever done, and so exhilarating for it.

  ‘I love you.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’s very quiet for a long time after that. But I’m used to this happening by now. We’ve pretty much lamped each other with the truth for the last five hours, so recognising shock when it happens is not exactly hard.

  It’s just that it’s worrying here. It’s very worrying. I didn’t really mean to reveal that much, and yet somehow I’ve done it. I’ve given away more than he has, even though he looks like he’s gradually handing out bits of his immortal soul. He’s told me how unsure he is, underneath the bluster – unsure enough to believe that I’ll only stay if he makes himself into someone he thinks I want.

  And yet somehow I’ve just bested him.

  ‘Well … what I meant by that is –’ I start, but he stops me.

  ‘No, don’t take it back,’ he says. ‘Don’t ever take it back.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you want to take it back?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘And you feel it, even though I’ve just … told you all of this weird stuff about me? About my need to please and my disposable feelings and the tormenting thing?’

  ‘You’d already told me about the tormenting thing. I just didn’t listen hard enough.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to listen hard enough. Especially after reading your book. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends who didn’t write a book about wanting a Master who were kind of put off when I really started to share about myself.’