The Principle of Desire (The Science of Temptation)

by Delphine Dryden

  She looked at the tests again, picking up her red pen and considering the cheesy answer. Finally she wrote 0 pts, but you should try a creative writing class in the margin. On the clueless non-studier’s page, she penned in 0 pts and the URL to the calendar page on her website, adding a smiley face. And on the text-speaker’s test, she carefully corrected the spelling and grammar, replaced the ur and u with your and u, and gave the answer full marks for correct content.

  Then she turned to her email and started hitting Delete.

  * * *

  Ten times that morning he’d started to send her a text, an instant message, a funny picture. Ten times he’d resisted the temptation because she had asked him not to contact her.

  I bet the asshole is sending her roses by the fucking dozen.

  Ed had considered sending a simple bar of the dark chocolate he knew Beth liked, but again, he’d resisted. She’d asked for that.

  But it was all still driving him crazy, which was why he found himself sitting in his car in the burning sunset, at the curb opposite her cute girly house. It was Tuesday. He had to see her before game night. Because what if she didn’t call him before then? What if she didn’t even come to game night? That was unthinkable. He had to see her. He had to know she was okay. Just one or two minutes, then he’d leave her alone again.

  The house was girly, but it had smelled awesome. Some sort of potpourri thing, orange spicy goodness. Maybe the floor polish. It was a fresh, clean scent he would now always associate with getting pegged for the first time. Not a bad association to have. He’d very much like to form other associations with that smell, though. It smelled like a house ought to. Beth smelled like a woman ought to. Felt right, looked right, was right. Screw her unresolved issues with Aaron. They’d work that out, as long as he could just see her and talk to her. Was she crying? Happy? Did she need help catching up on grading again?

  Ed tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and eyed Beth’s front door as he started to sweat. His own apartment now seemed like a lifeless place, a purgatory. It felt like a waiting room for the rest of his life. He’d sat in it for an hour after work today, looking at stupid things on the internet all by himself, just waiting. For what? Then he figured it out. He was waiting for Beth.

  Before she came along, he could have gone on forever the way he was. His life was fine, he loved his job, he had friends and generally things were going as well as he’d ever expected. But just because your stats were already high didn’t mean you turned down a kickass staff drop that would increase your happiness and awesomeness by +infinity points any time you equipped it. A staff like that, players lusted after for years before winning. And after you’d played with it, the game just wasn’t the same without it.

  Beth was better than a kickass staff, and he needed her.

  Steeling himself for a drubbing, Ed got out of his car and made his way up Beth’s sidewalk.

  * * *

  The doorbell never rang unless it was the UPS guy. Or lately, the flower delivery guy. Sighing, Beth crossed her living room and entered the foyer to see a familiar face through the doorside window.

  She opened the door fast, pulling in a whoosh of warm air.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I knew that fucker was going to send you flowers.”

  Beth’s heart sank. So close. She felt like she’d gotten so close. Disappointment swelled, threatening her with tears. “You said you didn’t want to compete. Aaron never said that. He’s emailing, too. Texting me, sending cards. He says if he means to win my heart he can’t fight fair. And now you’re here to join the pissing contest, I guess. You know what sucks, Ed? You know what really, really sucks? I was just about to call you. I wanted to come to game night tomorrow. I can’t do those things now. This screws everything up because you were supposed to be the one who was at least doing what I asked.”

  Ed was just standing there, looking at her. Gazing at her, as though she were a statue or a painting or something else you drank in with your eyes. When she stopped talking he gave her a crooked, tentative smile.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I still don’t want to compete. I was pissed about the flowers because you said you wanted to be left alone. That’s sucky that he’d do it anyway. And I tried so hard not to come over here, I did. But I just really, really missed you and wanted to see you and make sure you were okay. I’ll stay out here on the porch and I’ll leave when you tell me. So...are you?”

  “Am I what?” Her head and heart were tumbling, a hot mess of conflict, but she had a nagging feeling that this whole thing could be simpler. Much simpler. If she could just cut through the fog.

  “Are you okay? Do you need anything? Other than privacy, I guess. Like some soup, or fresh fruit. Um...more flowers?”

  She followed his gaze to the ridiculously crowded living room, knowing the dining room was similarly bedecked with gigantic floral offerings. Roses, lilies, all manner of late summer mixed bouquets. The smell had been great for about an hour, but after several days it made her head ache.

  “No,” she said faintly. “No, I think I’m good. And I think I want you to come in.”

  Oh. That’s what I wanted to say. Yeah. That was very simple after all. That totally works.

  “You think?”

  “I want you to come in.”

  They stared at each other, and then they were kissing, their bodies as tangled as Beth’s mind had so recently been. He maneuvered her inside and somehow they closed the door, and then they were horizontal on the rather nice Isfahan rug in her small entryway.

  “Bed?” she suggested, more for hospitality’s sake than any real desire to change locations.

  “I don’t think so.” Ed pressed his pelvis over hers, lining up, grinding down as he kissed her with determined ferocity. “You wanted me to come in, right?”

  “That’s terrible.” She attempted a frown but knew she was wholly unconvincing. Pulling his head down for another kiss, she tried to sneak her other hand below his waistband. Their clothing was too twisted, pulled awry by the awkward collapse to the floor and the subsequent writhing. Also the current writhing.

  Ed gripped her hand, cupping it over his cock and pinning it there. Beth squeezed, fingers taut over fabric and hot arousal. He responded with hips and mouth, pressing and probing, easing his pace now that he had her trapped under him.

  When he finally shifted his lips to her neck, she inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, focusing on a corner of the entryway ceiling and trying to formulate a coherent thought.

  Huh. Cobweb up there. Not the thought she was looking for. “Um...we should have fewer pants on. This would be a great pants-free situation.”

  He nipped the skin over her sternocleidomastoid muscle, sending sympathetic shivers from her ear to her breastbone. “Break for pants removal. Go.”

  She popped the button off her shorts getting them down, and didn’t even care. T-shirt too, all of it had to go, because she had to be naked and rub her entire body against Ed’s right that moment. Buttons were meaningless details, skin was all that mattered. Ed seemed similarly inclined, because he shucked his shirt and jeans within seconds, then flattened her again the instant they were both naked.

  “Oh, God,” they sighed in unison, and then laughed about it. Beth stopped laughing when Ed slid two fingers inside her. She was already soaked, too turned on to even pretend at coyness.

  “Guh,” she remarked.

  “Wet,” he agreed.

  “Now. Now.”

  Words really didn’t matter at all. She snaked a hand around his cock again and shifted one leg, lined him up, and cried out when he thrust home.

  Home. It was so simple. She was full of yes, all of a sudden, full of certainty and joy. And of Ed, which seemed to mean the same thing. It had almost nothing to do with the sex, but she felt an orgasm looming anyway. Not the spiritual, ephemeral sort either, but a really promising one.

  Ed twisted his hips, pivoting into her body, groaning when he was fully envelope
d. She tried to hold off, to make things last, but that was hopeless and she knew it. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his back and clung to him as the climax rocked through her. Filthy and wholesome at the same time, surreal flight with an absolute connection to the earth and everything on it.

  “I want to do this to you on every surface in this house,” he whispered in her ear as she floated back down.

  “Mmm,” was all she could reply at first. Then finally, some slow liquid time later, she added, “You have to finish doing it this time, first.”

  “I don’t want to finish,” he admitted. “Feels too good.”

  Beth smiled up at him, his flushed cheeks and the lock of hair flopping down over one of his eyes. “Next time will feel good, too.”

  He made a noise, something between a moan and a grunt, and lowered his forehead to her shoulder as he strained forward. Two, three more thrusts and he was done, his orgasm signaled by a gasp and a profound gathering then release of tension across his shoulders.

  “You came in,” she whispered, grazing her lips over his temple.

  “Terrible.”

  “No. What’s terrible is that we have to put our clothes back on and go out.”

  Ed lifted his head and gave her a look, the one that said he thought she was nuts. “Why?”

  “The smell,” she explained, chuckling when his look intensified. “The flowers. I can’t take it anymore. Not one more minute. They have to go. So we’re going to get dressed, and you’re going to help me put all these stupid fucking flowers in my car so we can take them to that nursing home two blocks over. And then we’ll come back here and just be here. Together. Because I missed you too. I don’t want to miss you anymore. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to miss you anymore, either.”

  It was simple. She just wanted Ed, unlikely Ed. Because Ed. The why simply didn’t matter. Symphony versus Game Night was a straw man argument. She’d been stupid, which he normally hated, and she felt insanely lucky to have a second chance. Going forward.

  He had missed her, he had been worried for her, but he had given her as much privacy as she could bear, because she had asked him to do that. Aaron who? There had never really been any competition, and Beth had no idea why it had taken her any time at all to figure that out.

  “For the record,” she said when their lips finally parted long enough for speech to be possible again, “I’m not big on huge, fancy bouquets. I like Gerbera daisies.”

  “Got it. Gerbera daisies for the wench.”

  “That’s right, big boy.”

  * * * * *

  Read on for a bonus scene featuring Camilla and Ivan.

  Solving for X

  A Bonus Scene featuring Camilla and Ivan

  My skin is a closely guarded secret these days. Not always, but often enough, it bears Ivan’s marks like an ever-changing tattoo. Sunset colors, rose and violet and gold...sometimes a slash of vivid scarlet, sometimes almost black. But never blue, because I’m happy to remember getting those beautiful marks in the first place. I’ve acquired a lot of turtlenecks, and sometimes I have to wear sleeves even in the Houston summer heat.

  The night Ed showed up at the club was different. It wasn’t Ivan wielding a flogger on my back, it was our friend Ben. Double floggers. God love him, Ben just didn’t have Ivan’s mad skills and natural talent, though he’d certainly shown improvement. It was harder to take his strokes, which were not necessarily the good kind of pain. By the time he wrapped the flogger around my side, catching my bare breast in an unexpected, sharp sting, I was already out of sorts. I couldn’t catch his rhythm; there was just something off. I stood with my back to the small audience, hands secured high on the metal beam that served the club as a whipping post, and wished for it to be over.

  Agreeing to be Ben’s practice target—because I was slightly more experienced and generally more into being whipped than his girlfriend, Lindsey—messed with my calculus. Normally there was an equation in my head whenever Ivan used a flogger or a stinger or a cane. How much could I take, and how long would the marks last? I usually wanted more but took less, because I knew Ivan wouldn’t leave a new set of bruises and welts until the old ones had faded completely. He will spend days examining me soberly, every inch of me, until he’s sure I’m completely healed and it’s safe to do another intense scene. The vanilla times in between are sweet, better than I’ve ever known, so I feel greedy for wanting more of the other flavors...but he has only himself to blame for addicting me to this thing we do.

  That night, I wanted to help Ben out but I also resented every mark he might leave on my skin. One more thing that had to fade away before the next time could occur. I cursed when the flogger fall wrapped so close to my nipple, and Ivan called me on it. I’d asked him to—my mouth had gotten filthy lately for some reason and I was trying to break the habit—but still. I was cursing because the pain wasn’t doing anything for me, and it was taking me further from where I wanted Ivan to take me.

  I agreed to let Beth take a turn with the floggers because I was just so eager for a change, and the second she started in I could tell I was in very good hands. Beth had been in the scene for years as a submissive before her latent switch tendencies kicked in. She had been on the receiving end, and knew exactly what to do to make me fly.

  Starting slow and soft, she worked the twin floggers in a rapid Florentine style from my shoulders to my thighs and back again, letting the thud build over several circuits until the strokes came as heavy thumps against my body. Tension drained away, and I let the meaty thuds take over. I relaxed into it and thought of Ivan, felt his gaze on my back, knowing he approved of what he saw. None of the other spectators mattered, only him.

  He’ll call me a good girl later. That was always a highlight, the sound bite I played over and over in my brain after a session, getting a fresh charge from it each time. Good girl, such a good girl.

  I knew he approved, or he wouldn’t have let Beth play in the first place. Ivan was complicated beyond belief, but in that way he was simple; he never hid his agenda. He always told it like he saw it.

  Professor, I reminded myself, because we were in the club so I couldn’t use his first name. After another endless time, the pain started to wear on me again as Beth stepped up the power. I gasped with each strike. It was too much to process, too hard to turn into pleasure. Beth seemed to sense it too because she stopped at last. My back was a mass of buzzing tingles when she stepped away, and my Professor knew just what to do. He crowded in against me, shielding me from everyone else, which was so sweet and protective it made me want to cry. What actually did make me cry were his fingers, pinching deep against one of the welts Beth had left. Making it his own. The best kind of pain. I squirmed, his clothes scraped against my throbbing back, and he pinned me tighter to the column with his weight and grabbed my ponytail with his free hand. Holding me together so I didn’t fly apart.

  And then, “Good girl, Camilla.”

  Yes...oh, yes.

  The Professor stroked my arms and shoulders, massaging them one at a time with strong, gentle fingers. He hit all the right spots, like he always did. I knew he had a set of mental diagrams—perhaps even actual ones—where he’d labeled all the muscle connectors, the most tender spots, the places that would most likely need addressing after his sub was restrained in this or that position. My own preferences were on those diagrams, too. His brain was a vast warehouse of neatly organized knowledge, and this section was particularly well populated because he liked it. Loved it. Loved me. He’d written me into his knowledge base in so many ways, but this was a favorite for both of us. The care and keeping of your submissive.

  My high from Beth’s flogging began to dissipate a little, and was replaced with a growing frustration. When I pushed back against the Professor’s hips, he clamped his teeth on the back of my neck for a few seconds.

  “You can feel your hands?” he asked when he backed off. I nodded. “Good. My turn. Spread your l
egs a bit more.”

  Anticipation fired up my nerves, sending a thrill through my core. He’d told me what he was planning for that night. A new toy, one he’d been saving for use at the club because his bedroom was too small.

  You needed some space to throw a bullwhip.

  It was my first time, and he knew I was nervous. He let that build, took his time getting out the whip—well out of my line of sight, so I was reduced to listening for clues as to what he was doing—and getting into position. I could feel him back there, somehow. Farther away than usual, because this thing wasn’t really a toy. It was big, and scary, and the pit of my stomach was a cold knot of dread although everything south of there was begging for the first stroke.

  Not a toy, but the Professor played with it anyway. Instead of the burning fire I expected, I got a leathery embrace as the tip of the whip wrapped itself around my thigh then snaked away again. When he did the other thigh I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud. It was so far from what I’d thought would happen that the absurdity struck me that way. I was giddy anyway, still flying from the flogging. I knew objectively that I wasn’t in my right mind, but in that other right mind I’d learned to inhabit. The one that knew where the Professor was heading with this slow tease, and welcomed it.

  Twice more, he threw the whip in gentle arcs around my legs, letting me feel the weight and scrape of the woven leather as he pulled it back. Then he paused, and I tried to do the opposite of bracing myself, because bracing against the pain made it worse. You had to let it in.