It’s almost … I don’t know. Romantic, I suppose. Though it seems like a silly word. Especially as he’s laid in bed just waiting for me, in his pyjamas of all things. He’s not even reading the paper or looking over some work thing, either, as I had expected. He’s just gazing at me and I feel awkward, suddenly, though not in the way I had thought I would.
It’s a warm awkwardness. Like lying in the sun by a riverbank, on a summer’s day – though I can’t say what’s awkward about that.
‘Come on then, Lyds,’ he says and pats the bed beside him, as though it’s nothing. As though I’m just a big silly and, oh, it makes such a feeling engulf me. It rushes through me so thick and hard I can’t help blurting out: ‘Aren’t you going to take my clothes off, first?’
Even though saying something like that is just ridiculous. He even laughs and he so rarely laughs. My face burns red to hear it.
‘No,’ he says, and that’s even worse somehow. What does he mean, no? Why does he sound so incredulous, suddenly – and he’s still smiling, too. ‘Though you might be a touch more comfortable in your nightie, don’t you think?’
It comes to me in a shameful flash, then. I haven’t brought a nightie. I didn’t think I’d need one and, oh no, I’ve made some sort of fatal error. I’ve cast myself as some sort of loose and very naked woman before he’s even made me one, though I suppose he might be joking. Is he joking?
His expression softens and he says, ‘Come on now, old thing.’
Which is very strange indeed, because in actual fact I’ve never felt younger. I go to the bed and climb in, with my dress still on and my stockings still on and my hair still done – though it’s not as though I have it all curled and set the way most of the women around here do – and he puts an arm around me, almost like a friend would.
And then he kisses me, in a way a friend definitely wouldn’t.
Of course he’s kissed me before. I didn’t expect him to at all – when he first invited me to the gallery’s new exhibit I thought he meant as a kindly patron, you know. I didn’t expect him to pull me to him and press his mouth against mine with a good deal more passion than any of those sixth-form boys ever did.
But it’s different now, because we’re in bed together and this is it. This is what he’s been angling for all of these months, in all of those almost-chaste kisses in his car outside my house, and his polite conversations with my father, and his little presents of the kind I’m sure many mistresses receive. Little trinkets, pairs of shoes. Books, hundreds of books.
‘Lydia,’ he says, as he kisses my throat, and I think at last. At last I’m not ‘dear’ or ‘darling’ or ‘old thing’ or ‘Lyds’. I am Lydia, and he has his big hands on my waist and his body almost pressed against mine and I’ve no idea what I’m doing.
Should I unbutton his pyjamas? I’m not sure that’s the done thing, but, oh, I can’t help wondering what he really looks like, underneath. I think he’s hairy, because I can sometimes see the hair over his undershirt. And I know he has a broad chest, because it fills out every suit he wears.
But when I go to touch him, he pushes my hands away and says, ‘No, no, darling,’ which quite puts me out of sorts. I hardly know what to think now, and even more so when he clasps my breast quite suddenly, through my dress, and says, ‘You’re very beautiful, Lydia.’
What on earth is he talking about? I’m not very beautiful at all. I’m sort of ordinary and mousy, even if those words sound very convincing in his low, chocolatey voice. He has a lovely voice really, a voice that makes me shiver, and, here, in the darkness, it sounds even better.
I feel certain he’s about to tell me how he’s going to make love to me now. And I suppose, in a way, he does just that. He slides a hand down over my body, slow and syrupy, and when he gets to the waiting place between my legs – the place where I’m burning, just absolutely burning – he says, quite matter-of-factly, ‘Have you ever touched yourself?’
I have no idea why. I don’t know what he means at all, though I try to force myself to say yes. Yes, of course I have. Hasn’t everybody? But instead I have to go with no, because what if he asks me a more detailed question? All I could say is Once, I thought of you so much I pressed something between my legs hard enough to hurt.
It doesn’t seem like much of anything, really.
‘Never here?’ he asks, and then he strokes me just once through all of that material, and I can’t answer. It feels as though I’m huge down there. As though I’ve grown three sizes.
‘Shhh,’ he says, and this time I know why. I’m all … I don’t know what I am. He pushes a hand underneath the material of my knickers and the whatever-it-is gets worse, because I’m wet and he can tell. He strokes through the folds of my sex and when he does he makes a little satisfied sighing sound, as though he’s not Harrow at all any more. He’s someone else, someone who talks a lot and breathes out in this soft, pleasurable sort of way, while his fingers circle my little bud.
I don’t mind admitting: it feels like dying. I can’t help bucking up into his working hand, even though I’ve always had a very clear picture of how I would behave in these sorts of situations. Rigid, I thought, and sort of indifferent, like a doll he’d decided to make love to instead of a real person.
But I don’t feel like a doll now. I’m squirming, actually squirming. He says, ‘Ah yes, my lovely Lydia,’ and I don’t know what to think, I’m not sure how to react, I’m clutching at his arm and there’s this really deep, full sensation building between my legs.
One that gets bigger when I move and bigger yet when I don’t, until I’m sure I’m about to die.
Only I can’t do that, because if I do he will undoubtedly tell everyone. I can just see him now, stood there at my funeral like a posh paperweight, nodding sagely when someone asks him how it happened.
Well, he’ll say. It was a devilish business. I touched her quim with my hand and she dissolved into a fine paste. Quite awful, really. But what can you do about these fallen women?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know that it feels blissful, and sort of like I’m exploding, and then, oh then, oh no, he does it with his mouth as well as his hand. That can’t be right, can it? I swear to you, God, I don’t like it one little tiny bit.
Even in all the places where I do. Like behind my knees, where everything’s gone all fizzy and tingly. And low down in my stomach, where it pulses the moment he kisses me just there. Right in the place he had his finger, a moment ago.
I think it’s called a clim or a clat or something like it – well, that’s its real name, at least – but in truth it just feels like a little bead, and the more he kisses over it the bigger those pulses get. The more my body thrums and thrums and wants out of its own skin, until he puts a hand on my thigh and demands I stay still.
He has to concentrate, I suppose, because it’s all very complicated when you really think about it. The way my knickers are still bunched and twisted between my legs, one side of them pulled away so he can get at me. The way he’s using his fingers to spread me open, so he can kiss me and lick me all around that little hard shape, that little nothing that I’ve never actually thought about until right now.
I mean, I knew it was there. I knew there was something there. But it’s different when someone’s running a soft, wet tongue over it, so slippery and good. It forces me to do something worse than move around and make a nuisance of myself – a sound comes out of my mouth, as loud as a firework in this snooty little room.
But he doesn’t seem to mind that half so much as he minded the squirming. He doesn’t pop his head up and tell me to be quiet, in a tone as firm as his hand on my thigh. He doesn’t even jostle me, or slow the pace of the thing he’s doing.
Instead, he licks harder. Faster.
And now I think I’m really going to die. This is it. I’m done for. He’s too good at this – whatever this is – and my end is coming, even if it’s the kind of end I’ve often dreamed of, rather than the one I’d a
ssumed would come to me, walking in here.
It’s a good end, I think. A dying-of-pleasure sort of end – like the ones the girls in the sixth-form toilets frequently talk about. They chatter about ‘mind-blowing’ and ‘awe-inspiring’, though really I don’t think they have any idea what they’re talking about.
Because my mind doesn’t go away anywhere, and my awe isn’t inspired. Instead, I think of the roller coaster at Blackpool, the one that makes you go up and down and up and down and when you get off you feel all jangled – and that’s what it’s like. These waves go up and down inside my body, and I can’t seem to breathe, and I go all tense, even though I’m sure I should be relaxing into it, or something.
And then after I feel sort of like a lunatic, because I’m shaky and not in full control of myself and he’s just staring down at me with his strange, still eyes. Everything about Harrow is so perfectly still, all of the time – so composed.
Why am I not composed? I can’t even be composed now, in the middle of sex.
‘Pleasant?’ he asks, and I think he means the thing that just happened. As in: Was it pleasant? But that seems daft, somehow, because of course it was pleasant. You’d have to be a fool to think it might be otherwise, and Harrow is no fool.
So why is he asking? Is this the one area in which he is not fully aware, fully in control, fully everything? I can’t imagine it is and yet he’s still looking down at me, waiting and waiting for me to say yes.
It makes me nervous. But it makes me something else, too. Something brilliant, I reckon – like a girl worthy of the name Lydia.
‘Perfect,’ I say, and for once I don’t feel as though I’ve said the wrong thing. I feel relaxed, and at ease, and still stuffed full of all of those bizarre roller-coaster sensations. They bolster me as he leans forwards and slides his hands back up my thighs, to catch on the elastic of my underwear and drag them all the way down and off.
Of course, I know how I should feel at that point. Naked and exposed and rude. Like those bathroom girls, flashing each other when they think no one’s looking.
But I don’t. I want him to see. I want him to see how wet I’ve gotten – because I have. I can feel it. It’s all over my thighs and between the cheeks of my arse, but when he looks me over – skirt hiked up, cheeks flushed, sex all slippery – he doesn’t look disapproving or mortified. His eyes are heavy-lidded, instead, and when he speaks his voice is hoarse.
I think that’s a good thing. In fact I know it’s a good thing, because when he unbuttons his pyjama bottoms and takes them off, I can see his prick pressing against his underwear. I can see how big it is, and how stiff – though I don’t get the full benefit of it until he’s completely naked, lying next to me on the bed.
And even then I’m not entirely sure what to think. He’s very big all over, though of course I knew that already. He used to row back when he was at university and, even if he hadn’t, I know he would have been an imposing man.
It’s the broad shoulders, I think, and the long legs. And maybe also his chest, which is all covered in rough hair and sort of like a barrel. Though none of these things adequately explain why I can’t seem to stop looking at him, because after a long moment I realise that’s all I’ve been doing – just staring at him everywhere, like a maniac.
It’s a good thing, really, that he doesn’t seem to mind. He just unbuttons my dress while I carry on trying not to look at him, and then when I get to his prick all thick and jutting up at me like a fist, he takes off my stockings, too.
It’s all very easily done, because of course my attention is elsewhere. My attention is on this urge that’s in me to reach down and touch him in almost the exact way he touched me.
I mean, wouldn’t he like it, if I did? He probably would. Most men like it, or so I’ve heard. The bathroom girls are always talking about hand jobs, and I know that they don’t mean arts and crafts projects.
They mean – you know. Giving a man pleasure with your hand. And now that I’ve looked at the thing I can see how someone could go about it – just stroke it up and down, or maybe rub it around the head a little, in all the places he looks slick and about ready to burst.
Only the thing is, when I actually do it – when I dare to reach out a hand and squeeze him, greedily – he doesn’t force me to carry on or grab the back of my head and make me suck on it, the way some of the girls said men do. He makes a soft sighing sound, instead, and then after a second says: ‘Wouldn’t you rather I make love to you?’
It’s the funniest thing. I really didn’t think he’d ask. I just thought he’d grab me and do it all over me, and when he doesn’t I am suddenly mired in indecision. This is the choice, I know. The choice between being a Good Girl or being a Bad One.
But I say yes anyway, because I want him, oh, I want him. I want him all over me and under me and inside me, with his mouth so usually cool and soft, now hot and fierce and hard. I almost flinch away from the feel of it, but not quite, not quite.
He’s too lovely to flinch away from. He’s too different, right now – like a great, unchained beast. And if I were to flinch away I think he might draw back into himself, into that cool, still place, and I don’t want him to.
I like it when he pins my wrists above my head. I like it when he sinks his teeth into the flesh of my breasts, making circles around the nipples that I’m sure will still be there tomorrow. Little bracelets all over me, little reminders of this new person he’s become.
It’s so strange – I thought I would be the one to turn into someone else. But he’s the one who digs his fingers into my hip, and makes chains of bruises all over me. He’s the one who breathes shakily when his prick slides through my spread folds, seeking the hollow of my sex.
And the moment he finds it, the moment he’s ready to thrust in and make me wicked for ever, he pauses. As though doing this – it’s one step too far. It’s too much. He needs to know first if I can bear it.
‘Do you want me to?’ he asks, and I can’t help it. I shove down on him, hard, in place of all the words I can’t say. My body just says them for me in one long frantic push and shove, until he’s buried to the hilt in my aching sex.
But he still doesn’t move. He keeps deathly still, hands still tight around my wrists, breath so hot and sultry on my upturned face. And then after the longest, most agonising moment in history he finally rolls his hips – just once.
But oh, so good. So slippery, so slick, and the feel of him spreading me open … I have to clench tightly around him, just to chase the feeling it provokes. To get a little bit more of that strange solidity, filling me. It’s almost like … almost like biting down hard to push away the ache in your gums, and I don’t know, I don’t know.
It’s too much. It’s not enough. I’m so hot I’m sure I can feel my skin blistering, but I can’t move away. I don’t want to. He’s above me, rocking slowly, and he looks like that new person again – the different one that I’ve never met before and can hardly bear to look at.
His eyes are hazy and his lips are parted, and when he does make words they’re very far from glacial. They’re the filthiest, rudest things I’ve ever heard, and they move through me as swiftly and as gloriously as the feel of his quickening thrusts do.
‘You’ve got the hottest, sweetest cunt,’ he says, and I go red for hottest and redder yet for sweetest and then practically purple for cunt.
I think that feeling is starting up in me, again. And it gets worse when he tells me how slick I feel, how tight around his cock, how beautiful I look spread out for him like this. ‘My lovely Lydia,’ he says, and I can’t help reaching up to kiss him then. It’s awkward with my hands still pinned and I’m not sure I’ve ever done it off my own bat before, but I try anyway.
Because I want to give him something back, for all of this. I never give him anything back – I realise that now. I always think about things a certain way, or imagine that I’m just a game to him, just a toy. But it isn’t like I’m a toy, right at this momen
t.
It’s like I’m Lydia, his lover. And when he asks me to tell him how it feels, how much I like it like this, like this, like this, I find I can tell him. ‘There,’ I tell him, ‘right there, do it there.’
Only I don’t say ‘do it’. I say ‘fuck’. ‘Fuck me there.’
And he does. He grips my hip hard and fucks right into my cunt, so rough I’m sure it should hurt. But it just gets sweeter and sweeter instead, all of these feelings bubbling up inside me and right out of my mouth.
‘Oh God, that’s so good,’ I tell him, but I don’t do it in a voice that sounds like my own. I do it in this high, tight, wavering sort of thing, and I press my face to his at the same time. Me – the girl who never so much as dared to take his arm, without him giving the say-so first.
But I don’t need say-so right now. My body’s in charge, electrified by the feel of him sliding all over me and inside me. The hand he’s got over my wrists goes to my hair, suddenly, gets a fistful of it and squeezes tight as his mouth moves against my ear. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, tell me how much you want it. Tell me you love me.’
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him say that word. Though happily, it’s also the first time I’ve ever been brave enough to answer him in kind.
‘I do,’ I say, in that strange tight voice. ‘Oh God, I do.’
And it’s true. It is. I may have fallen, but the falling has been into something else entirely – something I didn’t expect. I thought of hell, of disapproving looks, of all things terrible and wicked. But this isn’t like that at all.
It’s like drowning in pleasure. It’s like falling into him. My strange, cold Harrow, who has somehow turned into a different creature altogether before my very eyes – one who moans my name as that bursting thing overtakes him, too.
You Already Know Page 14