“You should have seen yourself last night,” he replied and pushed himself into me again. “You were incandescent. Like a fire lit you from within. I never thought magic had a smell, but I swore I could scent magic on you. Or maybe—” He cut himself off to press his hardness into me again.
“Maybe what?” I panted, suddenly dying to know what he had to say.
“Maybe that’s just how your sex smells when you take your pleasure.”
“Oh my gods,” I moaned, and I said it with an upward inflection almost, as if I was asking anyone who could hear if they too could not believe this man’s speeches. I felt myself melt into the wall, leaning almost entirely into it for purchase, letting the rest of my weight be held in place by his body. His slow pushes and retreats—into me and away from me and then into me again—were my undoing. I could not believe the heat in my belly and the lightening in my spine.
“Is it?” he pleaded, continuing to press and then dropping his head into the crook of my neck. He swore when I dared, finally, to arch my back and add my own pressure to his. The leather he wore over his eye scraped against the tender skin behind my ear.
“Is what?” I asked.
“Is that how it smells? And answer a godsdamn question already.”
I laughed a little. “I don’t mean to not answer. You won’t give me a breath to reply.”
“Then answer one.Istorture your particular strain of pleasure?Doesyour sex smell like magic has been worked when you are pleasured?Whowas it you let pleasure you last night? Pick one, for gods’ sake.” He still continued to mimic rutting into me from behind, but his speed had decreased little by little while the pressure he used had only increased. He had me pressed so into the wall, had positioned himself so closely, that my legs were spread somewhat. And the methodical, restrained pace he used, coupled with the top of my sex now flush up against the stone, with only my dress and shift between it, had me closer than I had realized to pleasure.
“Oh my gods,” I repeated, this time from surprise. In such a short span of time, he had pushed me to that edge. And the irony of it was that his measured pace was what had me teetering, but also it was the very thing that prolonged my being able to fall. He had spoken of his own torture and with his body, he was exacting his revenge. I let my head fall back so that the side of my face brushed his, let my eyelids fall shut. “Faster,” I pleaded.
“No,” he said and there was a satisfaction in the word. “I want an answer to one question. Just pick one. Give me one answer and I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll fall to my knees in this alley and take you with my mouth. I’ll pull your skirts up and give you my prick if you so wish. I’ll give you anything—do anything—to make you come. But answer a question.”
“I don’t know,” I groaned. “I don’t know if torture is pleasurable. It could be. You are torturing me right now and I am pleasured.”
“Give me another answer.”
“You said I only had to answer one.”
“I lied,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Oh,” I half sung, letting my body sink back and writhe with his. “You sound as if you suffer too. Why do you torture the both of us? If you only went a little faster...” I pushed back again, hoping to reclaim some control.
He swore again.
“Fine,” I sighed. “I don’t think my sex smells like magic when I am pleasured. Or any other time.”
“Then why,” he grunted, applying even more pressure with his hips, but still so slowly, “did you look like that? Why were your eyes shining in the dark?”
“I don’t know,” I gasped, pushing aside my intrusive thoughts about last night’s skirmish and my near demise. The top of my sex was so flattened now, was ground into the wall so severely, I was nearly in pain, but not quite. It was as if he knew to hold back just enough so that it never quite hurt me.
“Who was he?” he sighed into my neck, still moving. “I am not usually a jealous man. I have never been. I swear it to you, but I need to know.”
Something perverse twisted in me, something petty and devious. I removed my hands from the wall and brought them to my breasts and squeezed, leaning back, letting him hold me upright. On a moan, I said, “Answermyquestion. Why do I owe you any answer at all?”
“You’re shameless,” he laughed in my ear. Then he withdrew his right hand from the wall and put it on my stomach, running it down until it cupped my sex, trapping his hand between me and the stone. “Don’t stop,” he chided when I grew a little still, and he continued to move against me, this time with less precision and restraint. His middle finger found that sacred spot through my clothes. And the flesh at the base of his thumb drove back into me so that it almost felt like his hand was about to pinch my sex. “Show me your breasts,” he said. His voice had lost that irritation. It was back to its regular smokiness. Because of my sighs and heavy breathing, he was almost relaxed again, at ease because he had regained control of himself.
My mind was so clouded, I didn’t even hear him until he repeated himself. What gave him so much dominion over me was that he was not aggressive in his command. The less authority he used, the more he had. His order was silky, suggestive even, but I could tell I was expected to obey.
My hands had stilled, gone limp at my chest after he put his hand on me. I untied the ties at the square neckline of my dress, then the ties of the shift on the inside. I had given up wearing stays in winterspast even if they did flatter my shape, so there was nothing keeping me from pulling my breasts out of both necklines, feeling them prickle to life not just from arousal but at the fresh, cool air in the alleyway.
“Godsdamn,” Reed whispered. From behind, using his other hand still on the wall for leverage, he rocked into me just the least bit faster. “Keep touching them.”
“Don’tyouwant to touch them?” I asked, almost laughing from pleasure and delirium, barely listening, barely aware of anything—even him, though it was his prick pressing into my rear, his hand trapping my sex in place, his fingertip at work, undertaking the steady strum that was so close to dropping me over that cliff’s edge.
“No,” he answered me. “I want to prove to myself that I have some restraint left in me, that I have not lost all of myself to this madness. I have thought of your hips and rear endlessly. I have dreamt of your body’s being bared to me, of your skin and your heat on me, around me, dreamt of being inside that heat. But I am, truthfully, fearful at the idea of losing myself to it. I am normally a man of restraint. Can you understand that, Robbie?”
I was making ardent sounds, half words, half cries. Vaguely, knowing I should be embarrassed, I heard them echo along the stone. I couldn’t respond because I clearly had forgotten how to speak.
“Besides,” Reed said into my right ear, “Thatis your work. As this is mine.” And then he did clutch at my sex, the base of his palm driving into my lower belly and his middle finger becoming nearly rude in its pace. When he bit down on the lobe of my ear, I was gone.
