“How would you evenknowsomething like that?” she asked, aiming for incredulity. Only somehow it came out restless, impatient. Go on, she heard, in the back of her own voice, behind the actual words. And he leaned in close again, at the sound.
“I told you, darling. I can hear your body. I can see every time something brings you pleasure. I can catch the scent of it before you even know it’s there. Just say the word, and I will take you to it. Give you everything you need. Make you feel so good you forget it’s even me here with you,” he said, every word like a caress against the lips he was now an inch from.
It took everything she had to not do something foolish.
To stick with at least some small resistance. “But Iwillsee you.”
“So close your eyes. Close your eyes, like last time. Think of him.”
“All right. All right. Though you have to know I’ll know it’s you, the second you touch me.”
Because your hands are colder, crueler, she thought and shivered just imagining it. The slide of them over every single place she ached—the curve of her breasts, her belly, that softness between her thighs. By the time he spoke again, it was almost a disappointment to hear him say he wouldn’t. “There is no need for me to lay a finger on you,” he whispered, before he dipped closer for the kicker. “When I can do everything you need just by saying this: Slip your hand under that pretty dress. Do it for me now, before you can even think about it. Before you can consider how terrible it is, to be doing this in front of me.”
And it was terrible, too.
She thought of him seeing her like that, all spread and lewd. One hand working between her legs, in any way he liked. Then blushed so hard it almost felt like something else. She had to rush to put in guardrails, before it got worse.
“I will, if you—”
“If I what? Tell me, if I what?”
“I want you to close your eyes, too.”
“They already are. Now tell me you’ve done what I told you to.”
How could I not when you talk like that?she thought. And it wasn’t even over that “told you to,” either. It was the first thing. The first thing. That simple admission that he had stopped looking, before she even asked. The way it sounded, caught somewhere between the idea that seeing would be too much for him to stand, and the need to not look just to make her feel safe.
She couldn’t decide which one it was.
She only knew that both of them were mad, completely mad.
And that they made her do it without even thinking. She had to, just to stem the sweet ache that happened the moment those two possibilities occurred.He wants to and yet won’t, she thought,and suddenly her hand was beneath her dress. It slid there of its own accord, and cupped the soft curve it found there. Then it squeezed, gently.
Though god it felt like anything but.
She couldn’t even tell him she had obeyed.
The only thing she could manage was a startled moan.
But naturally, he knew what it meant. He knew.
“Oh,yes. I bet it feels so sweet to cup that pretty cunt,” he said, while she searched what to be staggered by first. The sigh buried in thatyes,the wordpretty,or that last one—oh, the way that last one kept unraveling her.
“God, when you use that word,” she said.
And of course he set his mind to making it worse.
“Do you want me to use another? I could say sex, pussy, quim.”
“Jesus, that’s even worse. That’s so much worse.”
“Even though it’s making you stroke yourself, before I’ve even told you to?”
She wasn’t, exactly. She had just started rubbing a little. Only a little.
Yet still she felt like she had to explain. “Because I’m aching; god, I’m aching—oh, I’ve never felt anything like this in all my life. I can hardly take it; it feels like too much. Like I might not be able to stay on my feet.”
“Then let me hold you.”
