You Already Know

by Charlotte Stein

  But I stiffen my own resolve and keep my voice light and disinterested.

  ‘Did you have a good time while I was gone?’ I ask, and his glorious lips move soundlessly around words he can’t say. They make me think of other things he could move them around, thicker things, more solid things, and then my clit jerks and more slickness spills down my slippery thighs.

  I think I know what I’m going to do to him today. He always says go further, do more, make it a surprise, and I think this is going to fulfil those criteria very nicely.

  ‘You haven’t been bad, have you?’ I ask, and he mmpfs in discomfort when I trail a finger down over the solid mass of his body, to the straining stalk between his legs. It jerks upwards when I fondle it, briefly, and then again when I scratch at his tightly drawn up balls. Another second or two of contact and he’s going to come, and it isn’t just the leaking state of his swollen prick that tells me so.

  He’s so breathless, and his whole body trembles, tautly. There’s a flush all over his cheeks and whenever I get even the slightest bit close, he can’t help moaning.

  ‘If you’ve been bad, I might have to punish you,’ I say, but he just strains further forward. As though instead of punishment I said pleasure and instead of tying him I let him go. It’s always Oppositeland with him, my Artie.

  ‘But if you’ve been good,’ I tell him, ‘if you’ve been good, I might give you a reward.’

  The two are interchangeable, and he knows it. It’s why he tenses when he hears me moving towards the bedside cabinet, because I could be doing just about anything. I could be finding something to spank him with, something to whip him with. Once, he begged me to hit him with a belt, right across his back. Hard, he’d said, like you want to mark me, like you want to hurt me.

  And I had obeyed.

  But it’s always better when it’s secret and special and he doesn’t quite know what’s next. In fact, he’s trembling when I return to him. His whole body has drawn taut, and it gets tauter when I go back to him and run the thing I’ve brought over his only-just-hairy chest.

  I think he can tell what it is. It’s pretty new and still smells latex-y, because I’ve hardly used it. Why would I want to use it when I’ve got his big thick cock at my beck and call, almost the equal of this toy in my hand? I don’t even understand why he bought it for me, though I’m getting a clearer picture right now.

  His face has gone bright red, despite the fact that almost nothing humiliates him any more. I can grope him right between his legs in the middle of Marks and Spencer’s, and nothing happens. He just goes boneless and parts his lips, waiting for more.

  ‘You want it?’ I ask, and he groans loudly. Of course he wants it! I should have known. All I have to do is run the head of this thick latex cock over his mouth and he shudders like a struck dog.

  He pokes his tongue out and tries to wet his lips, but it just means he ends up inadvertently licking the thing. Or possibly not so inadvertently – I don’t know. When I press it to his mouth he won’t take it in, but he’s not exactly stopping it either. As though most of him is screaming no, but some of him just wants to know what it would be like to take someone’s cock in his mouth.

  Not that he’d ever admit it. Of course, I’ve suggested it to him before, in the panting heat of a marathon sex session. Usually when he’s on the verge of orgasm and too far gone to care, his cock lodged deep in my pussy and my finger somewhere rude, like between the cheeks of his ass. And he’ll squirm and try not to look at me, but I can almost feel what he’s thinking – what would it be like? What would it be like to have some guy in his mouth, thrusting until he came?

  Like this, I think, and then I order him to suck the vibrator in my hand. As though I’m the guy, and I just can’t wait for him to do it. I’m hard and eager and wanting it, and he’s a wanton slut, almost but not quite willing to give it.

  ‘Yeah, take it,’ I say, and he moans around the thick length of the thing. He moans and grimaces and doesn’t want to do it, I can tell, but he keeps going nonetheless. He sucks even though I haven’t told him to, as though he can taste real flesh and feel real heat and wants nothing better than to please.

  And it’s so … so … oh …

  ‘Yeah, you like that, baby?’ I ask, as my sex swells and more liquid trickles down my thigh. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take, in all honesty, but I’ll do it just for him. I always do it just for him. ‘Feels good, huh? Feels good taking that big cock in your mouth.’

  He squirms and jerks forward, the tip of his cock just skimming the material of my nightie. Though I suppose even so slight a contact must feel like bliss, when you’re so close to coming.

  Which is why I give him a spank, for his trouble.

  ‘Bad boy,’ I tell him and take the sex toy away – like a punishment, I think, though of course I don’t know it is one until he actually tries to go after it. His mouth opens and closes, searching and searching for the thing I took away, while my clit jerks and my body thrums and I can’t stop myself running a hand over my own nipple.

  I have to. He’s the one tied up, but I’m the one losing control. I need to dig my fingers in for just a second, feel the flesh of my breast as it gives under the pressure. And once I’m done, I lick the tip of the thing he’s just sucked. Just to give myself a little taste. Just to know, for a second, what it’s like.

  Before I move on to the next stage of the plan.

  ‘Move back,’ I tell him, and of course he obeys. He shuffles and wriggles awkwardly, until the leash bows and there’s space enough in front of him. Of course, the whole thing is still going to be difficult for him – he can’t rely on his arms, after all – but I can’t afford to care about that.

  Caring is not the point right now.

  ‘Bend over,’ I tell him, as abruptly as I can. And though he hesitates, I only think he does because he’s considering how best to do this thing. Should he just lean, gingerly? Go face first into the mattress? I don’t think there’s enough length to the leash to allow the latter, but for a second I think he’s going to attempt it.

  And then suddenly he’s shuffling on the bed again, rearranging himself until his legs are spread almost embarrassingly wide, body straining as he attempts to go on all fours – only without the two stabilisers in front. Instead, he’s just clinging to the leash behind him, muscles straining to keep him in a rough L-shape, shoulders creaking with the effort.

  It’s only after he’s completely still and in position that I realise I’ve been holding my breath. Would he do anything, just absolutely anything, if asked him to? If I told him to?

  I think he would and yet I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. It strikes me hard, in the gut – my husband’s almost total willingness to obey – and then once the feeling has dissipated I’m just left with this …

  My almost total willingness to push him as far as he can go. It soars through me, so strong suddenly that I’m momentarily stymied. I’m not the cool girl, wandering oblivious around the supermarket. I’m just Clara Henley, clumsy and unsure.

  Then less so, when he strains just that little big further and finds the head of the cock I’m still holding, with his mouth.

  Of course, it’s entirely different when he does it like this. We’re on different but familiar levels now, me knelt on the bed in front of him. Him with his face so close to the mattress.

  And also to the thing I’ve inadvertently put in almost the right place. I mean, it’s not as though I can avoid the idea. I’ve done it without thinking, and now it’s as though I really do have something thick and stiff between my legs.

  Something thick and stiff that he’s now sucking. Because he definitely is, and I definitely like it. I know I do, even when I don’t exactly want to accept it. Words just come to my lips, and they make me accept it.

  ‘Yeah, suck my cock, you little bitch,’ I say, far fiercer than I was a moment ago. Far gruffer, too, though that sound has almost nothing to do with wanting to feel like a ma
n, in some way. It’s because I’m aroused, so aroused at the sight of my husband debasing himself like this, and I just can’t keep my voice on the straight and narrow.

  It goes up and down and left and right, then drops out altogether when he starts moaning around the thing I’m now holding like a raised fist. Jutting and rude and angry, almost, only pulling back on it when that soaring feeling inside me gets too much.

  I could drown in that feeling. I could get lost, and worse – I think he knows it. He wants me to go past that point, but I can’t, I can’t. This is enough, just this.

  Just slapping my husband’s face, when he gets too greedy with the cock.

  ‘Enough,’ I tell him, while his mouth moves soundlessly around words he doesn’t know how to say. Perspiration stands out at his temples, along his hairline, on his upper lip – but it isn’t unattractive. Quite the contrary. It spurs me on, in the same way his squirming, heated body does.

  Though nothing gets me as good as his response, when I tell him plainly:

  ‘I’m going to fuck you, now.’

  It’s like I’ve touched a live wire to his spine. He shoves into the bed even though he knows he’ll be punished for that. And he moans so loudly, which he definitely won’t be punished for, at all. I could never punish him for something that makes my clit swell and my cunt clench around nothing, every inch of me suddenly right on the edge.

  I’m going to come, I realise, calmly. Detached from it, almost. I’m going to come without anything touching me, and all because of the thought of what I’m about to do. I’m going to slick this big cock with oil. And once that’s done, I’m going to finger his tight little asshole until he opens up for me.

  Then after all of these frankly excruciating stages, I’m going to ease this big thing past that ring of muscle until he begs me for more.

  Which he duly does. I knew he would. It’s like we’re connected too tightly, when we get to this place, every action familiar even though it’s absolutely not, in most other ways. My hand feels too slippery – I’ve used too much oil. I’m conscious, so conscious of hurting him, even though the sight of the plastic sliding past all of his resistance is enough to almost send me over.

  And yet that feeling remains. Of knowing him and understanding. It sings in me as he chokes out that I should fuck him so, so hard. Do it, baby, do it, he says, but I wait right on the brink. I stay just like that, with the thick shaft only partway inside him. Oil dripping and dripping down over his spread thighs, onto the sheets. Onto me.

  Then just as he’s ready to beg again, just as I feel it shuddering through me too, I push in hard. I draw the cock I don’t have back out again, searching for a rhythm, searching for what he’ll like, and oh yes when I find it … when he gasps for me …

  ‘There?’ I ask, but I don’t need to. He’s already shoving back against that feeling, chasing it. He’s already saying things I don’t dare to, like ohhh yeah. Make me come, make me feel it, give me that hard fucking thing.

  Of course, I notice that he doesn’t use the word cock. But that’s OK, because somehow the evasion of it hits me harder. My clit jerks again, just once, as though there’s a little string attached from it to the shaft I’m now pumping in and out of him, and I think that’s it. I’m going, I’m sure. I’m doing it, without so much as a rub over that swollen little bud.

  But no, there’s something more to come, yet. Something I need, without even understanding that I do.

  It’s OK, however. He knows.

  ‘Oh God yeah, baby,’ he says, as he works himself back on the thing I’m almost not holding any more. As he shudders, and gets so close, he follows it with other blissful words like: ‘You love it, don’t you.’

  It’s not a question, I know. It’s permission. Permission to love it, permission to love this. Permission to dig my nails into his back and sob something garbled and frantic like take it take it take it, as my orgasm blooms so low and thick in my belly.

  It’s almost like pain, I think. And it’s too all over the place, too unfocused. It runs riot through my body, glancing over my clit and striking me hard at the tops of my thighs. I almost sink right down onto the bed. It’s so strange and not right and good all at the same time.

  But I stay up, for him. I keep the twist I’m giving to the cock inside him, until I hear him choke the words out. The ones I can hardly believe myself, even though the thing is still happening.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he says. ‘Oh fuck, are you coming? Are you really coming? Ohhhh baby yes, yes. I love you, I love you.’

  And then he goes over himself in one big, incredible surge. Body stiffening under its pressure. Near soundless grunts of pleasure throttling their way out of him. Every one of his shudders running all the way down him, and out through me.

  Because by this point, I’ve sprawled all over his back. I can hardly help it – every bone in my body seems to have turned to soup. I’m wrung out, done in, turned upside down. Of course I am. I’m in Oppositeland, where orgasms happen without touching and he gets fucked, not me.

  Where instead of saying I despise you for making me wait like that, he murmurs, low and sweet:

  ‘You’re so good to me, my lovely girl. So good in every way.’

  I’m not, though. Sometimes I’m thoughtless, and impatient. Occasionally I cry without warning, and won’t let him comfort me. Hell, there are even times when I can’t let him comfort me, when I can’t let him in, when I don’t know what to say a second after he’s told me he loves me.

  But I can do this.

  For him, I can be the person I pretend I’m not.

  Falling

  Charlotte Stein

  I suppose I’ll be a fallen woman, soon. Of course everything seems respectable on the surface – he takes me out to tea and he tells my father there’s a chaperone, you know. There even is a chaperone, though mostly she seems to sort of fade away once we’re sat together in some secluded corner.

  I suspect she’s a friend. A mistress, perhaps, though whenever I think of the word it sounds almost unbearably exotic. Too exotic for the likes of me, little prim Lyds Alcott, in my flowery dresses and cardigans and sensible shoes. I look so out of place in the restaurants he takes me to, like a plain daisy amidst the roses. Or perhaps something better than roses. Some flower I can’t even imagine, rich and vivid with colour and scent, petals too thick and the heart of it pulsing and pulsing.

  This is how his world seems to me, though I don’t say so. I don’t say anything at all, really, because I don’t want him to know how small and gauche I am inside. How I want to finger the fur of his suits and how I marvel at the littlest thing he does, like the way he smokes. He smokes as though he’s done it for a thousand years, effortlessly, in rich curling plumes that emerge from between his parted lips in ways I’ve never seen before.

  All I have are memories of sixth form, so close and yet so far away, girls lined up behind the greenhouse, plucking at their cheap little cigarettes. Spitting out puffs of smoke as though it were the height of sophistication, unaware of this secret world of champagne in shallow, narrow-stemmed glasses and jewels dripping off people like marvellous fruits, and Harrow, Harrow gazing at me with his still blue eyes.

  ‘Would you care for another, Lyds darling?’ he asks, but I know why. He isn’t being polite. He wants me to have another so by the time we retire to the hotel room he’s illicitly gotten for us I’ll be half drunk.

  That is the way men of ill repute persuade naive young girls to part with their modesty. It’s the way naive young girls go from being such to being mistresses or fallen women or whatever it is you want to call it. But he should really know, funnily enough, that these terms do not scare me. In fact, I find myself welcoming them, I find myself just waiting for them to come, for the time I will no longer be Lyds Alcott and can at last become Lydia.

  Perfect, poised Lydia, hard-hearted mistress of the exceedingly rich and titled Henry Harrow. She wouldn’t care whether Harrow loved her or not. She wouldn’t care a
bout the path she finds herself on, so lost and alone in a world that can never be the way she longs for it to be.

  The world is cold and hard and brutal, and dressing up in all the jewels and flowers in the world won’t change that.

  ‘Should we retire?’ he asks, and I say yes. It’s time to retire.

  We go up to our room and I slip a hand over his arm when he offers. He probably thinks I need support and I suppose in one way I do. I’m about to lose my virginity and even when I squint at that fact hard-heartedly, it’s still a daunting prospect.

  His thirty-eight seems very far from my eighteen, suddenly, and I find myself thinking of all the things he must have done in his long life. All the strange things with women far more worldly than me, that all appear behind my eyes as a succession of contorted limbs and sliding, slippery bodies. Everything is golden in these imaginings and yet somehow still nightmarish, and when we get to the room and he slips out of his jacket, I’m suddenly afraid.

  Of course I understand the practicalities of the thing. He’s going to take off all my clothes, and then all of his clothes, and then he’s going to climb on top of me and push his great thing into my body. And it is a great thing, too, because I saw it once when he was changing, through those modern underthings of his and with the suspenders clipped to his socks down below – so funny, somehow.

  Though it’s not really so funny now. I go to the bathroom and stand in there for ages, unsure as to whether I should take my dress off or not. He hasn’t said anything but then again he so rarely does. He’s not a big talker, Harrow. The most I can remember him saying to me when we met in the gallery was ‘Well, what are you doing here?’ As though he could hardly comprehend a single girl, alone, looking at the paintings.

  I decide to go back out again in my dress. If he wants me to take it off he can say so, though when I do actually find myself in the bedroom with him something seems not quite right. The room is lovely – of course it is – with a set of double doors that go out onto a balcony, you know, and he’s opened one of them so the night air can come in a bit.