Control (5 page)

The memory of which makes me stand up, book in hand.

He looks angry at first, I think. That line appears between his thick brows; his dark eyes flash even darker.
How dare you
, that look says, as his hands ball into fists at his sides. Strangely, however, I feel no compulsion to apologise. I feel nothing besides the pulse between my legs, and the insistent buzz of a thousand heroines, rattling their way through my mind.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he says, and the buzz grows louder, stronger.

‘Looking through your things, dirty boy,’ I reply.

His face drops, the crease-frown and the balled fists forgotten. He blurts out, rather embarrassingly:

‘They’re not mine.’

I love him for trying to deny it – it just makes the whole thing so much less awful, somehow. So much more like a game. Now I get to force him to confess.

‘Really? Old girlfriend’s, then?’

I can practically see him trying to work out the mathematical probability of such a thing being true. The odds do not look good.

‘I’m keeping them here. For a friend.’

‘Did you read the books in my store for a friend, too?’

Even in the one-lamp-lit dimness of his bedroom, I can see that blush creeping up his throat. He fidgets, glancing from the book in my hand, to the open drawer, to me and then back to the book again.

‘No …’

‘Then what?’

‘I haven’t read any of them.’

‘Really? Not even this one: “Layla enjoys anonymous sex with hot young studs”? Or how about this one?’

I reach down and pick up another – a seedy looking thing called
Breathless
.

‘This looks fantastic. “Before Cathy split up with her husband, she didn’t understand the joy of a hard, healthy cock.” As opposed to a soft, sickly one I suppose.’

I toss it back into the drawer, and have to bite back a laugh when he winces. He’s wincing for his injured, insulted books! As though I really mean it – as though I’m really mocking his taste when I love and sell books like this for a living.

‘And what about this one?’ I start, but he stops me, this time. He lunges forward and snatches it out of my hand, clutching it to him like it’s his dying lovechild.

‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘Don’t say any more about them. There’s nothing wrong with it, all right? I just like them.’

He doesn’t sound so sure, however. About the
nothing wrong
part, I mean.

‘Tell me what you like about them, then,’ I say, and his expression confirms my assessment of what he really thinks is right and wrong.

‘The psychological depth,’ he tries, but he doesn’t seem convinced. I think he needs some convincing. I think he needs some help, from me.

‘All right. Then why don’t you read out some psychological depth to me.’

His eyes freeze in place, wide and staring.

‘I’m sure that Gemma Golightly you’ve got in your hand has plenty of choice moments.’

Words are definitely trying to push against his pouty lips, but they’re not making it out. Instead he shakes his head in this slow, almost resigned sort of way.

‘Go ahead,’ I say. ‘Open it up and read something out to me.’

At first I’m sure he’s going to outright refuse. But he surprises me – he bends his head to read with barely another word or look.

I notice that he opens the book carefully, which makes the cracks on all of the spines something of a mystery. Until I consider what he must look like, clutching a book in one hand with the other on his cock. You don’t typically think about spine cracks, when busy masturbating to some psychological depth.

‘“Kelly Matheson liked nothing better than a … she … when she went to work the next day …”’

He frantically rifles through pages, searching for the cracks in between what I know is steamy, steamy sex.

‘“She told him without hesitation: it was him who had done this to her. He made her want to stop being prim and proper, and claw at him like a wild animal. Her puss – her … she …”’

More rifling. His face looks so hot, I’m sure it would burn me if I reached out and touched it.

‘Why don’t you just skip to the part where she has a threesome with those two hot gay guys?’

His gaze flicks up to me, bright and feverish already.

‘I can’t read that part aloud.’

‘So you know what I’m talking about, right? The bit where she gets fucked while the other guy fucks the guy on top of her. Right?’

His voice comes out wavery and oddly robotic.

‘I’m not sure what you’re referring to.’

‘Or how about the part where she makes him lick her pussy on that dirty staircase, that leads up to her apartment? Oh, I like that bit. She’s so good at describing all the juicy details – the way his tongue thrums back and forth over her clit, the way he begs her to let him come, the way she gets so hot all over – are you hot all over, right now?’

‘I feel lukewarm, actually. Almost cold, in truth.’

‘Such a
liar
. You know what I said about lying to your boss. I think I’m going to have to punish you, now.’

God, those heroines would be so proud of me! He swallows, again – looks to the book for inspiration. I really doubt he’s going to find anything lukewarm, there, though, I’ve got to say.

‘Aren’t I already being punished?’ he asks, bless his heart.

I crouch, to find something even worse for him to read. That seedy one by Barry Haydon, perhaps.

But while there, I find something much, much better. I can hear him protesting from somewhere above me, but he doesn’t try to snatch anything away from my greedy grasp. He just waits, probably paralysed with mortification, as I stand back up with something absolutely astonishing in my hands.

I could almost believe that he really did have a girlfriend, who left all of this here. Because for the life of me, I can’t imagine Gabriel going into Ann Summers to buy a sex toy.

He groans and his eyes flutter closed, briefly. But despite this humiliation – or maybe because of it – something is pushing at the front of his trousers.

‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ I tell him. ‘I have one just like it.’

It’s true. I do. A little pink toy – a real back to basics sort of thing. The kind of gift you get when you buy five books from certain online stores, maybe. I can just see him hunched over a computer, eagerly picking smut so that he can get something that buzzes neatly against the head of his cock or just behind his balls or something more, something else – good God, who knows?

‘I’ve never used it. I don’t use it – for anything.’

‘Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t want to discover that you’re lying to me, again.’

Panic wrestles with his features.

‘No – I’m not. I would never use that thing to – I don’t. I don’t.’

‘To what?’

‘What?’

‘You said
to
. You would never use that thing
to
. To what?’

He runs an addled hand through his hair, then smoothes it back down again.

‘To … you know.’

‘To bring yourself off?’

‘Yes, exactly. Exactly.’

He sounds relieved to have been given the answer. I’ve no idea why. Someone else is at the helm, now, and apparently she is a
hardass
.

‘By … what? Rubbing it over your nipples? Pressing it to your stiff dick?’

‘No! No, I don’t use it to … do what you said.’

‘So if I put this in my mouth, I won’t taste you all over it?’

He rolls his eyes skyward.

‘Don’t put it in your mouth.’

‘It smells like you. It smells like come,’ I tell him, though it doesn’t really at all – it smells like antiseptic and soap and plastic. But he blunders into the trap, anyway.

‘Oh God does it?’

My sex shivers and pulses. The image of him wanking all over this pink plastic, hot streaks of come covering its surface – it’s too much.

‘What a liar you are,’ I say, and he moans helplessly. ‘You know what liars have to do, don’t you? Spread their legs.’

He’s sweating. I can see it gleaming on his upper lip. His cock has created all sorts of right angles in his trousers and he’s practically squirming on the spot, but I don’t blame him – only this new me is holding the real me up. The real me wants to faint beneath the pressure of this almighty arousal.

The arousal that’s made me so wet I can feel it, trickling into the crack of my arse.

‘What are you waiting for? Spread them.’

He glances at the bed and I understand immediately why – he thinks I mean get on the bed and spread your legs, like an eager slut. It makes me wish I had meant that, briefly, before I turn back to the matter in hand.

‘No – just stand with your feet apart. Really, Gabriel – you’re usually so good at taking direction.’

He shuffles and makes this adorable little clucking noise at himself, the way people do when they’ve just fumbled something really easy and obvious. Then he just stands there and waits, and waits, for me to make my next move.

For some reason, I’m certain that when I turn the base of this little ridiculous pink thing, it won’t buzz to life. There’ll be no batteries in it, he’s never used it, it was a free toy for girls who buy books that are only meant for them.

But I’m wrong. It hums away merrily the moment I turn it on, and I feel his mortification press against my skin, sticky and delicious. It presses again when I step forward and whisper as close as I can get to his ear:
show me where you touch yourself with it
.

Of course he won’t, I know he won’t, but I also know that he doesn’t have to say at all. The little shuttered gasp he lets out when I pass the thrumming tip over his shoulder and down the inside of his arm gives me all the information I need.

He likes it everywhere.

I let it slide down his suddenly very thin tank top, clinging briefly to the poly-blend before finding that little hard nub – the one that’s pressing eagerly against the material. So easily worked up, so sensitive – he gasps again when I let the vibrator trail over the jumping muscles of his stomach and ever down, down, down.

He knows where this is going to end up, I’m sure he does – he’s vibrating too, with tension. And when I get to the twisted heavy shape of his cock, pressed tight against the material of his trousers, he lets out a low groan that makes my clit ache in sympathy.

I don’t even have to get the vibrator that close. Just a light slide around his upper thigh, a twist beneath the buckle of his belt, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth. He
mmmpfs
for me.

‘Does that feel good?’ I ask, but only to be cruel.

Before taking pity on him, and inching that maddening buzz over the thick shape of his prick, through his trousers.

His eyes close. I don’t think he knows he’s rocking his hips towards me and my devilish little sex toy, but either way he’s doing it, and he doesn’t stop – not even when I pull back.

‘Is this what you do when you’re alone?’ I ask, and this time he surprises me. He answers in a broken gasp, ‘Yes.’

I don’t think such a simple word has ever had this profound an effect on me. The urge to push my hand inside my knickers threatens to overwhelm me and I suddenly need that buzz all over
my
body, right now.

‘What about here? Do you touch yourself here?’

I press the vibrator to his balls, firmly. Almost like an admonishment, I think, though he doesn’t take it as such. He widens his stance, instead – almost unconsciously.

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘I bet it feels so good buzzing you all over when you’ve got your hand on your cock, am I right?’

Before he can reply, I push said buzzing thing right between his spread legs.

He moans helplessly before I’ve even got it pressed tight to his flesh – his trousers are pulled taut and I have to work to get it in there, to get it flush against his perineum. But when I do finally get it, when I rub the thing nice and firm in the place he clearly likes it, he grunts and shivers.

His face is a picture of lust, hanging and absent, no longer looking away but looming over me. I missed out, the last time, on seeing him all body-shocked like this, but I revel in it now. His slick lips, parting. Those low lids lying heavy over his deep chocolate eyes. The way I can almost see his sighs wavering out of him.

And then beneath it all that steady buzz, prickling through my fingers as though it’s already on my clit. Already sinking into my slick cunt.

‘Is this what you do?’ I ask, as I trail it back over the hump of his balls again.

‘I don’t remember,’ he replies, but he still jerks forward, when I suddenly remove that nagging pleasure.

‘If you tell me, maybe I’ll keep doing it,’ I say. ‘Maybe I’ll unzip your trousers, and run this thing all over the slippery tip of your cock. What do you say?’

He says
unnnhhh
, apparently.

‘Or maybe I’ll just stop it, altogether.’

I take a step back, and his expression snaps to attention automatically. He even reaches a hand out, as though he’s going to dare to pull me back.

‘Please,’ he says.

I lick the tip of the vibrator, and he groans. That lust-blank look comes back to his face.

‘Please what?’

‘Please just …’

He searches the room for inspiration.

‘Do you want to come?’ I ask, even though it’s blatantly obvious that he’s gagging for it. It’s obvious because I am too, and he’s just me, mirrored.

‘Yes, of course –’

‘Then show me how you like it.’

His face scrunches up in frustration. His shoulders bunch up.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not? I bet you get enough practice. How many hours have you spent in here, doing yourself?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘What about if I tell you my business first? Think that’ll make it easier?’ I ask. I take a teasing step closer to him. ‘I masturbated yesterday, thinking about you. I fucked myself with something thick and fat, while rubbing my clit. I imagined it was your hands, and your cock. I came twice, thinking about how I’d probably have to instruct you. Boss you around. Then torment you until you gave it up to me, like you’re going to give it up now.’

He’s breathing hard by the time I’m done. His hand is at his zipper, just hovering there.