‘Yes,’ said Alberic, striding back and forth. ‘It’s invasive, which is why your instinct will always be to close yourselves off. But then it worked this time. Why?’
I looked at Susan, and she looked at me. For the first time since the day we were chained to each other by our destiny, we looked to each other for help. I realised that it disturbed me to see her so lost. I volunteered my ignorance. ‘No idea, sir.’
Without a pause, Alberic leant down, grasped Susan under the arms and yanked her on to her feet. Before she could as much as squeak, he was kissing her with aggressive gusto, one hand fixed in her hair. One moment, two – and it was over; he allowed her to breathe again. Her eyes were glazed with dreamy pleasure, but for once I felt no jealousy.
‘This was invasive,’ he said calmly. ‘Yet, you didn’t resist at all. Why?’
‘It felt really good,’ whispered Susan, flushing a deep red.
I had never thought she was capable of blushing.
‘Not only is it nice of you to say so, but it’s the right answer,’ said Alberic. He grinned a toothy grin, and walked over to me.
I couldn’t yet be sure what he was going to do, but I knew what I craved, and I lifted my face to him. He leant down towards me, and pressed his mouth to mine. Our teeth clashed together as I hurried to welcome his tongue, which pushed and pushed deep into me. His fingers dug into my hair at the back of my head, holding me still for his insistent exploration. It took just instants but, when he withdrew, I felt exhausted from the intensity of this one moment.
Unlike with Susan, he didn’t let me go. His hand still holding a firm grip on my hair, he drew me up from my chair and guided me around the desk. My head leant slightly back; I took little breaths, giving myself up to the lesson. Alberic gently pushed me forwards over the desk.
‘Come here, Susan,’ he said. ‘Sit at the desk in front of her – no, move your chair back a bit – and look into her eyes. Meg, no matter what happens, I want the two of you to connect.’
Her cheeks were flushed, eyes huge. An embarrassed heat rose in my face; more than anything, I wanted to look away, but Alberic’s hand in my hair anchored me to the reality of my lesson. Magic was invasive, yet we must not resist.
Alberic’s free hand was stroking the inside of my thigh, playing with the top of my stocking, sliding to the bare skin above. As he drew it up and down my leg, never quite touching my damp panties, he spoke into my ear. ‘My connection with you works because, on a deep level of which you’re not aware, you know that magic feels good. Even so, every time you try it, you will have to work through resistance. Learn to connect to each other. To others. To objects around you.’
His warm palm cupped my sex, fingers pressing gently against the sweet centre. I swallowed a moan, and closed my eyes; finally, finally. The fingers gave me a little smack right on my lips:
‘Look at Susan, girl, this is how it needs to work. No matter what happens. Susan, help her.’
I had hated that her face was so smooth and perfect, but now I was glad; its lovely symmetry helped me hold my gaze. Ever the diligent student, she looked straight at me with her huge eyes, chewing her lip, yet not flinching. With a forceful tug, Alberic’s fingers grasped and ripped away the slippery silk of my panties; the hem of my skirt slid up and settled around my waist. With the backs of my thighs, I could feel his jeans obediently slither downwards, to leave his bare flesh pressed against mine. A firm hot presence pushed itself between my thighs, glided lightly along my slick lips, back and forth, and back. My eyes watered, but I looked at Susan.
‘Engage,’ whispered Alberic, and thrust himself inside me.
The connection was immediate. She was frozen on the spot, but I could feel her warmth, the throb of her heartbeat. Alberic began to ride me with a measured rhythm; his hand left my hair, and instead he grasped the sides of my waist, driving himself inside me. Tears rolled down Susan’s cheeks; I couldn’t tell whether the tears were a reflection of my joy.
‘Very good,’ said our master, only slightly out of breath. ‘Feel it, Susan. Can you feel the friction inside her? My skin against her cheeks? Meg, let her feel it; keep yourself open.’
I was open; split like an oyster, exposing my warm centre. Alberic raked a nail over my skin, and Susan twitched. He thrust deeper; she and I gasped in a single voice. I tried to sneak my hand between my thighs to bring relief to the sweet tension, but he slapped it away. ‘Not yet. Not you. Susan, what am I doing?’
Her voice was breathless, as though it was her and not me he was shoving into the desk with his quick thrusts.
‘You’re – oh! – you’re squeezing her cheeks and spreading them wider and – oh my God.’
We shouted out together as Alberic changed the angle, jabbing a sensitive spot inside me and burying himself in my heat to the hilt.
‘Good girl. Keep yourself open, Meg, my girl, you’re doing well. Susan, tell me how turned on you are.’
‘Sir, I …’ She opened her mouth and closed it again. I could feel her embarrassment as keenly as the heat of my desire.
‘Let go of resistance, girl, follow the magic. Doesn’t it feel good to be fucked like this over the desk, Susan?’
‘It feels …’ she sobbed. ‘It feels hot, I need it so badly, oh, please, sir, do it again.’
My reflection; her arousal and mine were fused together. I didn’t need to keep her gaze any more to feel the tension in her slender thighs, her nails digging hard into her palms as she clenched her fists.
‘Susan, touch yourself,’ Alberic ordered, tightening his grip on my waist again. ‘You’re so close.’ He began thrusting in earnest, so quickly and forcefully that my shouts of pleasure came out as a gasping stutter.
Susan gratefully yanked up her expensive skirt. I saw a narrow palm slide between the lacy tops of her stockings; she clenched her thighs together, flooding my senses with the sweetest pleasure. She pushed aside her panties and easily slipped her finger inside her drenched sex, only to draw it out, moistened, and push it against the bud of her clit.
I knew that my own hands were clutching convulsively at the edge of the desk, but the relief of the delicate touch of those cool fingers drew a scream from my throat.
‘Yes,’ Alberic hissed. ‘Meg, yes.’
Full and stretched, I pushed myself back on to Alberic, and I bucked against the silky fingertips, which played around and around my clit, and the intense sweetness turned into a wave of relief, beating inside me, stopping my breath. ‘Oh, God,’ moaned a voice, Susan’s or my own.
Alberic breathed: ‘Disengage.’
He slipped out of me with no more warning than that, but I had been ready to let him go. My cheek pressed against the grainy wood of the desk, I closed my eyes, and relaxed against the receding sweet storm. I vowed to find Tom, and fuck him the same night, because he would make me feel good, and it was our magic that mattered.
‘Very good,’ said Alberic smoothly. ‘Now we are getting somewhere, girls; I was beginning to lose all hope. Meg, you have done very well. You can go back to your desk. Susan, would you like to have a go?’
Sweet Dreams A.D.R. Forte
We spend 80 per cent of our waking lives at work. By my count, it’s a hell of a lot more than that, and, with that kind of time spent around people, you get to know them well. Real well. When they’re nervous or annoyed or lying. Or secretly pleased. What makes them tick. Little things: gestures, tones of voice, catchphrases.
You learn enough to paint a person inside out. Finish their sentences, know what they’d say, know when they’d roll their eyes. You get inside their head and don’t even realise it until you find yourself laughing with them for no reason at all.
I got to know him that well. Scary well.
But I didn’t think anything of it because I don’t like boys. Never have, never wanted to. I didn’t try not to; I just never felt that spark travel down my spine and between my legs for a boy. I felt it first for a girl in tenth grade with long pin-straight, blonde
hair and small round breasts. She always smelt like plumeria body spray and being around her made my soft bits tingle and my head spin. She was the first, and there were many after.
But no boys. Not for years. Not for all my adult life up until that day in the break room, when he said something utterly stupid and I burst out laughing, almost spitting coffee all over my lap. He sat there grinning at me, with sunlight caught in his hair. I looked at his face and my heart kept on beating hard even after my laughter subsided. I noticed that the sight of the watch on his wrist made me feel hot all over. I noticed his fingers, and I pictured him reaching between my legs. And I looked away.
It didn’t do any good.
I went home to the beautiful woman who shared my life and my house and lay beneath her with my eyes closed. Thinking about him fingering me. Kissing me. Easing his hard cock between the lips of my pussy and watching me squirm under him.
I’d never had a fantasy like that before; I didn’t know what to do. It was cheating; it was bad. Thinking about it turned me on more than I could imagine.
I stood in the shower the next morning, playing with my nipples and thinking about what he’d look like naked, and wanting him so much it hurt. And I knew what he’d say, just how he’d say it. Knew just the way he’d look at me before he put his mouth over mine. You learn those things even if you’ve never seen someone actually do it. Instinct tells you.
I’m sure he figured out things were different between us because he changed a little, in subtle ways. His smiles became fewer, but they lasted longer. Especially when no one else was around. His voice when he spoke to me was softer. He always turned up where I did, when I did: the break room, the front desk, the parking garage.
I sometimes caught him playing with his wedding ring, sliding it off his finger and back on. And he would look up and catch my gaze for a few seconds before he looked away again. Just my luck I would decide to want a boy who was as taken as I was.
I thought it would go away; I wanted it to. I told myself it was a passing infatuation that would eventually fizzle, and I tried to act like I always had around him, but something kept intruding. Making me stumble over my sentences and feel much too warm, even in the coldest room. Making me forget what I was going to say every time he smiled at me. After months had gone by, I realised I was hiding from the obvious.
That I should have this little control over myself rankled, but I couldn’t shake the need. Craving his touch like a junkie craves a hit. I thought, soon enough, my head is gonna explode and how am I supposed to explain that? Was it normal to want to fuck someone this bad?
The evening I got home frustrated like I’d never been in my life because he’d been wearing a sweater that hugged his chest and arms and outlined their shape to my ravenous gaze, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about normal.
I needed touch, but I found myself alone. Belatedly, I remembered Casey was gone to her mother’s for the weekend. I could’ve broken something, smashed it with my bare fists just to release the wound-up energy, but it wouldn’t have done any good. It was just me with the empty house on a Friday night, and my need for a gorgeous off-limits boy.
So I did the only thing you can do when you feel shitty and don’t have a solution: watch TV. I settled into the couch with a pop tart and a frown to stare blankly at the screen. There was someone talking in that wise lofty tone they use for documentaries, and I was half a heartbeat away from changing the channel when the words registered and caught my attention.
Dreams. The gateway into the vast uncharted subconscious where lurks who the hell knows what. Lucid dreaming: the ability to impose control on the subconscious mind and turn its ramblings in whichever direction one chooses. I sat still and listened in spite of my angst. What if I could control the tumble of thoughts when I dreamt of him? Wouldn’t that be nice.
I grabbed the remote, paused the show and rewound it before I went to find another pop tart. Hooray for DVR. I lingered at the kitchen table for a moment on my way back, and then picked up a pencil and an empty envelope. Why not? I had to give my fevered brain something to do when it came up with those explicit depraved images late at night. Why not try to teach myself to lucid dream?
I got comfy again and watched the entire show from start to end, and this time I took notes.
It was easier than I’d thought. So easy in fact I got it on my very first try that Friday night, stopping a fascinating dream about remodelling the back porch dead in its tracks and turning it instead to a windswept country lane. Miles eaten up under the wheels of the Mustang, wind in my face. I woke up exhilarated.
That should have maybe clued me in. After all, controlling dreams was supposed to be difficult. But I didn’t think anything of it; I’ve always been able to remember my dreams in full technicolour detail. I used to tell my mother about them and she would look them up in one of her books and tell me what they were supposed to mean.
‘Dreams don’t just happen at random,’ she’d say.
None of the meanings in the dream books ever came close to being right, of course. Sceptic that I’ve always been, I didn’t expect them to. The trick my mother forgot to tell me, or perhaps she left it for me to discover in my own time, was that the real meanings are what we infuse dreams with. What our own subconscious minds give to the tangle of pictures in sleep; that’s where the power in dreaming lies.
And I had plenty to fuel the imagination. I took all I knew from watching straight porn and reading dirty romance novels and poured it into the fantasies I created about him. Palatial beds and nightclub-restroom stalls and the hood of the Mustang. I made his dream-self pleasure me until I couldn’t bear it any more and woke sweating, with my legs and clit still trembling and my panties sticky with my own come.
I would wake Casey sometimes, tugging her nightie off and burying my face in her soft skin and softer curls, and ravage her until my need was finally satiated. She would laugh in the morning and call me a slut, and I would laugh and kiss her. Feeling a little guilty because she had no idea how much of one I really was.
Casey didn’t guess at the smutty depths my mind achieved each night, but, if I hadn’t known better, I would have bet good money he did. During the day, he would catch my gaze and shake his head, smiling as if he knew the fantasy I was replaying in my mind as I looked at him. But he couldn’t have; I was sure I’d simply been giving myself away through body language. The odd coincidences on the other hand were harder to explain. Like the day I found him listening to Marvin Gaye when the night before I’d dreamed of fucking him on the leather couch of an apartment I’d had years before while we listened to Motown and got drunk on brandy. He looked at me when I passed his office and looked away while a guilty stain coloured his cheeks. And if I hadn’t known better …
When he started avoiding me, I told myself it could have nothing to do with those strange little occurrences. It just had to be his guilt over the attraction between us. Or maybe the hectic pace at work when things kicked into high gear and we found our days swamped with meetings and fire drills. The stress of work, the fact I didn’t see him every day: that had to be the reason I in turn stopped dreaming of him. Had to.
The trouble with that was I didn’t want to stop. I could still turn my dreams any which way I chose; I could still change them like scenes on a DVD, but I couldn’t summon the sweet fantasies of him. Not even for a few moments. They faded away and, if I stubbornly held on to the scene, it would be empty. Flat pictures on a screen instead of living breathing 3D.
I didn’t want that. I wanted that feeling of being with him, as if I could really smell him and taste his skin. Feel my arms stretch as I put them around him and he pushed my body into his. But the images were hollow, so I stopped trying; I avoided him too.
Not the best idea in the world.
I felt deserted. Cranky. Like I’d lost something. I guess in a way I had. By day I couldn’t get my dose of him and by night I avoided REM, fearing the disappointment of half-baked dreams, and it was telling
on my nerves. I found myself snapping at random strangers in the checkout line or at the drive-through window and, around the people I knew, the effort to appear normal stretched me thinner than fishing line wound too tight. I was about to snap.
So, since there wasn’t a way around his distance at work, I went back to the dreams. I couldn’t shake the feeling there was a barrier that, if only I could push through, would let me back to ‘normal’; that place in sleep where I could almost feel him. I just had to look harder.
As always I wandered in my dreams, but now I wasn’t looking for fantasy vistas and landscapes; I wanted real and raw. Here in the present. In my mind’s eye, I left my bed, passed through the walls of the house and out into the night to haunt the places I knew from waking hours. Night-time streets, empty office buildings. Cruising the familiar twists of city streets in the Mustang.
And as I would stand on a terrace looking out over the sleeping city, or sit on a damp park bench listening to a homeless guy mutter gibberish, I felt less deserted. I felt he was out there, somewhere in this dreamscape; and, if I tried hard enough, if I learnt to fly, eventually I’d find him again.
Then came the night when Casey was travelling for work and I fell asleep longing for him. I’d seen him only briefly that day.
He came up to me and touched my arm with a smile, asking how I’d been; saying that he hadn’t seen me around in forever.
‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ I asked him, and his smile faded a little.
He looked down and shifted his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Things have been crazy around here.’
I nodded.
‘But I miss talking to ya,’ he added.
His gaze strayed up to mine again and that time I held it, not letting him run away. I looked into his eyes for far longer than I should have before I released him.
‘Well, don’t be a stranger,’ I said.
He nodded, swallowing hard and looking at me as if willing me not to walk off, but I was late for a meeting. I let his gaze go, took a step back and turned, but I heard his voice, compelling me to listen for one moment more.
Love on the Dark Side Page 16