Deep Desires (11 page)

I don’t even know what
doing it
means.

And, apparently, neither does he.

‘Doing what?’ he asks, in between kisses.

Only it’s the sort of kisses you couldn’t tell your mother about over dinner. Kisses for my clit, for my pussy. Kisses that leave me hovering on the brink.

‘Orgasm,’ I say. ‘I’m having an orgasm.’

And then the pleasure washes over me in a bright, tight wave. It starts at my clit and bursts outwards, but there’s an underlying note to it, an intensity to it that I don’t quite know how to process. He’s been rubbing at something inside me, something I’ve never really been able to uncover myself, and when the pleasure lets go there’s a dull pulse underneath it. It’s like a weight, dragging that wave of sensation back. It pulls it in until I can hardly bear it, until I want to tell him no, no, that’s too much.

Though I doubt he’d listen. I can hear him groaning, too, over my own embarrassingly guttural grunts, like maybe he enjoys watching me lose it this way. In fact, I know he enjoys watching me lose it, because once I come around from this incredible orgasm, once I realise I’ve curled myself into a ball halfway up the bed, and that my ears are kind of ringing and my body is in spasm, I can hear him.

He’s masturbating.

He’s masturbating and, even more delightful, he’s saying things in Russian. Dirty-sounding things that drag another little spike of pleasure out of an orgasm that should be long done.

‘Tell me what you’re saying,’ I ask him. ‘Tell me.’

But of course he can’t. He’s now in the position I was in five seconds ago: struck almost mute by sensation. Even the Russian words fall away, and then I’m trapped in a sightless world made up of his breathing, harsh and frantic. The sound of his hand on his cock, slick-clicking back and forth, back and forth.

Lord, how I wish I could see him. I wish I could just rip this blindfold off, but I know the effect it would have. He’d back off, I know it, though I’m still not quite sure why. Because the closeness of this and the closeness of me seeing him would just be too much together? Because he mysteriously hates his own body?

Even though it doesn’t sound like he hates it now. The stroke of his hand speeds up, and so do his near shameless moans. It’s like he can’t help it and, of course, if he can’t help this … if he can’t stop this … maybe he won’t be able to stop a few other things too.

Like my hand tentatively reaching out for him. Just for his arm, maybe, or possibly his chest. Perhaps if I start out someplace innocuous, he’ll let me progress.

Or at least that’s the theory, until I actually make contact. I think I find his elbow, but he goes stiff anyway. He flinches as though I’ve struck him, and that maddening, delicious sound I can hear stops.

Then just as suddenly resumes. Oh, it
resumes
. Is there any sweeter sound than that? I can hear his breathing getting more unsteady and there’s a protest hanging on his tongue, I know there is. But he doesn’t really try to stop me.

He lets me run my hand up his arm, over that thick bicep, the touch made easier by the perspiration that’s lightly coating him. Then I move on, upwards first. Upwards is nice and safe, and he doesn’t have to worry about it. Who cares if I touch his shoulder?

Apart from me?

Because, God, it drives me nuts to feel him like this. His shoulder is like something carved out of wood, solid and unyielding. And his throat … ohhhh, his throat. Would it be so wrong if I just leaned forwards and bit him there, where the flesh feels firmest? He’d probably send me away and never let me come back, but at this point I’m not sure I care.

I want to taste him. I need to taste him.

Don’t stop me
, I think at him, and by some miracle, he doesn’t. He must be able to see my every move – I’m not being crafty in the slightest – but he lets me slowly lean in. He lets me put my mouth on his chest, and then, after a bit of manoeuvring, his throat.

I don’t bite as I’d been intending to.

I lick, and feel him shudder for my trouble.

‘Abbie,’ he says, but there’s no real resistance in his voice. The word is almost a sigh, and he doesn’t stop the stroke over his cock. I know he doesn’t. I’m so close now that I can actually feel the brush of the back of his hand over my thigh as he slides it up and down. And when I shift a little … that’s the head of his cock just touching my bare belly.

It’s obvious it is, because after a second I can make out the slipperiness of his pre-come. He’s marking my skin, making it shiny. And he’s moaning and shuddering and leaning into my teasing mouth as he does it.

It’s almost like a victory. I just triumphed over the opposing team – the one called
his bizarre hang-ups –
and now I get to run my hands
down
his body. I’ve won the game; I’ve got to try for more. I’ve got to rub my palms over his rigid abdomen, and map out his hips the way he did mine.

They don’t jut the way mine do, but there’s that lovely slant of muscle sliding down from them, like an arrow pointing at his groin. I remember it from the window, but it’s even better beneath my touch – so firm, and so slick with perspiration.

Followed by the things beneath it.

I hardly dare touch him there, but his lack of resistance makes me bold, as bold as he was with me. He didn’t wait when I held back, so why should I wait here? Why should I be nervous? Why is my heart beating so hard and fast?

Because it is. I’m surprised
he
can’t hear it, thundering away in my chest, and all for something so simple again. Just my hand over his hand, as he strokes himself. And then, when he lets me, a little more. I press my thumb against the rigid base of his cock so that I’ll have the memory of his actual flesh when I come away from this.

After all, this may be the limits of what I get. He’s stopped making any noises – as though he’s holding his breath, maybe – and any second he’s going to tell me that I should stop. I’ve gone too far, pushed him too hard, and I’ve got to consider that.

How would I feel if he did the same?

I’d be devastated; I’d be terrified. I’ve got to say sorry. In fact, I come so close to doing just that I almost taste the words in my mouth. I’m inches away from moving my hand and shifting back down the bed when he takes his own hand away.

And puts it over mine.

‘Like this,’ he says, and this time the sense of victory is so keen I could cry over it. He’s not resisting me; he’s urging me on. He even kisses me as he works my hand over his solid cock, like everything is fine and we’re both so normal. We’re completely normal, and I can touch him and put my arms around him and stroke him in intimate places.

No barriers get in the way now. I’m so close to him I can feel the way his body is shaking all the way through mine. And after a while those sounds he was making a moment ago go through me too. He moans right into my mouth, as he forces my hand in a steady, driving rhythm, almost too tight for me to bear it, but so arousing even so.

I can feel him swelling under my grip and I know he’s going to come. He’s going to come for me, with me touching him, and my mouth on his. All those times through the window, so far away, narrowed down to this:

His face pressed tight into my shoulder, as he finally lets go.

It takes me about an hour of lazing around in a pleasure-stuffed stupor to realise something pretty sad: I got more pleasure out of a blindfolded handjob with him than I did out of every previous relationship I’ve ever had. We haven’t even had sex, and yet somehow I’m utterly satisfied. I’m a cat, fat with food and sunning myself in the heat of whatever this is. This … thing. This … relationship.

Though I can’t really call it that, can I?

People are usually allowed to look at each other full in the face when they’re in a relationship, but somehow I still don’t feel comfortable taking the blindfold off. Baby steps, I think. If he moves too fast I might run away, and if I move too fast he might run away, so I guess we just have to take our time.

Crawl towards each other in stages, until finally …

‘I love you, Abbie.’

All right. That wasn’t what I was expecting. And I show this total lack of expectation by vacating the little comfy space I’ve made in the crook of his arm, to stare at him sightlessly through my blindfold.

It feels somewhat less erotic when we’re just having a conversation.

In fact, it feels kind of ridiculous, and this ridiculousness shows itself in the little laugh he lets out. He even reaches forwards and pulls the thing off, as though me seeing him doesn’t really matter at all anymore.

And then I go and spoil it with my giant blundering awfulness.

‘Did you really just say that?’

Why do I have to be incredulous? We’ve practically been weird boyfriend and girlfriend for over a month. We’ve had more intense conversations about feelings and issues than I’ve ever had with anyone, not to mention all the talk about BLTs.

His stance on tomatoes alone means we should be married by now. Always cherry tomatoes, never beef. Slice them as thin as the big ones, and then go to town on that bad boy.

Apart from the obvious psychological problems, he’s the perfect man.

‘I have a feeling it’s weird that I did.’

‘It’s kind of weird that you can say those words, but you can’t have me looking at you during sex. Or touching you during sex for that matter.’

‘Why?’

He sounds genuinely puzzled, and almost bizarrely unconcerned. He’s not even really concentrating on the conversation – he’s running the backs of his fingers over the long section of hair that’s fallen over my shoulder, watching it lift and then drop, lift and then drop.

‘Because loving someone is a lot more intimate than giving someone a handjob.’

‘And you think I have problems with intimacy?’

‘Don’t you?’ I ask, but when he flicks his gaze up to mine my question is answered. I can almost feel how much I mean to him, every time he looks into my eyes. It burns out through them – it has ever since the hallway.

And he’s never shied away from showing it.

‘I struggle with physical things. Not emotions.’

I have to ask. Don’t I? I’d be a fool if I didn’t.

‘Why?’ I ask, while my head fills with every terrible thing it could be. What makes someone afraid to be touched, but fearless when it comes to something I can’t even say yet? I feel it, but I can’t say it.

He could still turn out so wrong, after all. Maybe he doesn’t really want me in the messy state I’m in. Maybe he wants to mould me until I fit seamlessly into his touch-less world, both of us dancing around each other for the rest of our lives, with punishments for every transgression I make.

I get a punch, for accidentally grabbing his ass. A kick in the stomach for an elbow brush in bed.

Christ.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, but he’s lying. And though his next words are caring and sharing and they go some way to make up for that, the lie sticks in the back of my mind. ‘But this is the only time I’ve ever done anything like this. I’ve never done any of those things with someone I didn’t pay first, and, when I have done it in the past, I paid them to force me into it.’

‘Is that what it takes then? Force?’

‘Not when it’s you, no. You persuade me. You erase everything that holds me back, and replace it with something else.’

‘I do? Seems like a tall order for someone as nothing as me.’

‘You think you’re nothing, Abbie?’ He’s not playing with my hair anymore. He’s stroking the side of my face, in that same slow, wondering sort of way. ‘You, who didn’t look away? You’re still looking now, though I’ve done my best to stop you. Nothing I’ve said has put you off, even though there’s a hole in your body where your trust used to be. Who wouldn’t love you, Abbie, knowing that?’

I don’t know if he expects me to answer. He should know that I can’t.

‘Don’t cry, my lovely girl. Don’t cry,’ he says, and then he kisses my face. He kisses me close up, with my eyes on him and his eyes on me, and suddenly I don’t need to cry anymore.

I’m halfway to OK.

* * *

He doesn’t stop there. Somehow I think I expected him to – that, when I returned from this dreamland of sex and satisfaction and long low talks about feelings, everything would just flip back to the way it was. Cold nights, the store, occasional glimpses of him through my window.

But he exceeds my wildest hopes in every way. He sends me a note the next day: splinters of poems, the sorts of things I thought only existed in fairytales. He makes a game of it, where I have to guess the source of such lovely words:
I can only be complete when I am with you
, he sends me, and I uncover it quickly, avidly.

My reward is another inch of his body, another island on the map of him. He lets me kiss his chest for guessing Shakespeare, and lick the length of his cock for Rossetti. No more blindfolds, but he’s skittish, and he hides said skittishness beneath a kind of hunger for me that I can’t easily fight.

I’m not prepared for it. I’m used to tepid, or cruel, indifference.