Power Play Read online

  And all of it intensifies when I realise: he’s never seen a completely waxed pussy before. He’s seen everything all hidden away and veiled with hair that I just don’t have, and oh God this must look so rude by comparison.

  ‘Did you do this to yourself?’ he asks, and then it gets even ruder. I can tell what he means without inquiring. He’s thinking about someone doing this to me – maybe lathering up my soft sex with something that feels just so … delicious over my stiff little bud. And then when it’s done, the sharp edge of a cold razor cutting through my curls …

  It excites me to imagine it, God knows what it does to him. The expression he levels at me looks caught somewhere between a kind of bitterness and an inescapable sort of arousal – and both feature in his words.

  ‘Or did someone do it to you?’

  I raise an eyebrow at him.

  ‘I don’t know, Benjamin. You’re the one with the inside information. What do you think?’

  Of course I know we’re both thinking of Woods, and not the beauty expert who removes every hair from my body, once a fortnight. But he has no idea about the latter and seems to know a great deal about the former, so let’s go with that, shall we?

  Only he doesn’t go with that. He won’t answer me.

  His gaze drops too heavily, instead, back to the smooth expanse of flesh he’s now definitely stroking. I can feel him gathering just a bit of wetness with his thumb to spread over the outer edges of those slippery folds, and he’s making a mess, I think.

  But ohhh, it’s a good mess. I want him to smear my slickness all over my body, and all over his body, and just everywhere, everywhere.

  ‘I think your pussy looks very pretty,’ he says, finally, decidedly. ‘I think it’s amazing to see everything all bare and exposed like this.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask, and it comes out a little bored and sardonic, though that’s the opposite of how I’m feeling. My pulse is beating in my clit again. Everything seems slow, so slow, in a way that makes me think we’re just kind of falling into this, instead of actively doing it. We’re falling through honey, into a sort of sex I don’t fully understand.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. God, you’re sooo wet … and your clit …’

  Said part of my body responds to its label. It jerks, as though he put a little hook in it and pulled, rather than what he’s actually done – left me hanging on the edge of his words, all of me waiting breathlessly for the rest.

  ‘It’s all … stiff and swollen. You want me to …?’ he asks, and I consider for maybe five seconds. Though in truth, consider is perhaps the wrong word. Really I don’t do anything of the sort. I just put my hand between my own legs, two fingers sliding down, down over my plump sex lips, parting everything as I go.

  And once I’m more rudely exposed than I already am – clit standing proud and unmistakable amidst my slick folds – I tell him what I want him to do more than any other thing.

  ‘Lick me here,’ I say. ‘Lick me right here.’ It’s a mistake, however. The moment he goes ahead and obeys me – that wicked tongue of his just flicking ever so lightly over my clit – I know it’s going to be too much. I can feel it burning into me before he’s even begun, and it burns hotter when he licks more firmly. He just curls his tongue over the underside of my too sensitive bud, and lashes upwards, and then after he does it I come apart.

  I make a sound, too loud and not like me at all. Usually I’m as silent as the grave in bed because really, who knows what a person might say in the throes of passion? But here, now, I can’t be. He’s looking up at me with those eyes as he gets up a slick rhythm, and I can feel his hands digging into the backs of my thighs.

  And then he asks somewhere in between it all: ‘Is that good?’ and I actually want to answer. It feels so good that I’m almost rubbing myself against his face, and there are words in the back of my throat, and when he just slides the tips of two fingers over the entrance to my cunt, I let them out.

  ‘Yeah, do it,’ I tell him, though I don’t mean it. I really want to say no, don’t, but something gets mixed up in the translation. Instead of no I’m saying yes, and I’m now definitely urging myself against his face. I’ve even got a hand in his hair, squeezing too tight for his probable comfort – but it just makes him lick faster, harder.

  He gets the flat of his tongue right on my straining little bud, and just sort of … rubs it over me. Those fingers easing into my clenching cunt as he does it, everything about him so patient suddenly. Apparently he can’t wait when it’s him getting all the attention, but when it’s me he can wait for-ev-er.

  He just eases his fingers into me, twisting as he goes. Those hubcap knuckles of his running over a million nerve-endings that didn’t previously exist, all of my wetness so apparent now that he’s sliding around in it. I can almost hear how slick I am – that’s how bad it is – and that little dirty clicking sort of sound gets louder the more insistent he gets.

  He pumps those fingers in and out, in time with the stroke of his tongue over my clit. And if that wasn’t bad enough on its own, he’s moaning too. I can hear him over the slippery noises I’m making, caught somewhere between a breathless gasp and a hum of pleasure, and of course every time he does it I can feel it.

  It starts in my stiff little bud and works its way up through my body, until it connects with all the sounds I want to make too. I want to moan more than anything, to tell him how this feels: like someone’s squeezing a fist between my legs.

  But instead I do something very bad indeed. I put my fist to my mouth and whimper into it – though that’s not the bad thing. No, no … the bad thing comes after I’ve realised that I’m not going to be able to take this, and in response to the overwhelming sensation coiling in my belly I just sort of … maybe … dig my heel into his shoulder.

  My sharp stiletto heel, right into that flesh I’ve already bitten and marked.

  Of course I don’t mean to do it. I’m sweating and shaking and heaving on the bed, hips no longer just rocking. Now I’m almost making a kind of arch, and I’m definitely forcing his face right up against my creaming sex.

  So it’s not quite intentional, this move. It just sort of happens as a result of everything else, and if it only makes things worse, well … that can’t be helped. I don’t mean to force a thick gush of pleasure through my body because of something so brutal and cruel. And I certainly don’t mean to make him push out the sound he then does – like a grunt of pain, only not.

  It has an airy, open note to it that I can’t explain or deny, and his body jerks when he makes it. His mouth works harder, sliding messily through my slit, and I can feel his hand squeezing and relaxing on the back of my thigh. He’s getting as close to orgasm as I am, because of a heel in his shoulder and maybe the sense of me shaking and shaking as my body gives in.

  Of course I try to hold it in, and maybe push it down a little to some point in the near future. But unfortunately it doesn’t want to be stopped. It wants me to jerk unsteadily into my orgasm right now, while saying things I don’t want to say like God, yes.

  And I don’t feel resentful about any of it. It feels too good to be resentful – intense in a way I’d always imagined an orgasm should be. I actually grit my teeth at some point through it, and dig my nails into his back, and it’s only when he gasps that I become sensible of what I’ve done.

  I’ve made him a pair of wings, from just above his ass to the nape of his neck. Four lines on either side, not quite bloody but not quite painless either – though he doesn’t make me feel bad about them.

  On the contrary.

  He makes me feel bad about something else, instead.

  ‘Did you seriously just come?’ he says, incredulous frown in place, mouth as wet and rude-looking as fuck. And then I glance at the clock on my bedside table and realise it hasn’t been an eternity of pleasure after all.

  It’s been about the time it takes to boil a kettle.

  Chapter Nine

  I halt about three paces from the inside
of my bedroom, all the things I thought of to say to him in the bathroom now sliding away from me. They just go in one big rush, and I’m left transfixed by the sight of him, stood in front of my full-length mirror.

  It’s all right, though. He can’t see me making a girlish fool of myself like this, eyes on him as though I can’t bear to ever look at anything else again. He’s too busy looking at his own reflection as it twists and turns before him – in just the way I’d imagined, when he told me he couldn’t stop checking out the marks on his ass.

  His big body just eases around at the waist, and then he can see what I’ve done to his back. Four distinct marks on either side, all not half as vicious as I’d thought they were a second after I’d made them. They’d seemed very red and cruel through the sagging daze I’d found myself in – so much so that I’ve spent the last five minutes in the bathroom trying to think of a way to apologise for them.

  I mean, he asked for the other stuff. He had the opportunity to do vital things, like say no or use that fucking safe word he so spontaneously thought up.

  But he didn’t have a chance to do anything about this. I just did it, like a reflex, and now he’s marked from the nape of his neck to the backs of his thighs. I’ve left a trail of destruction everywhere, and though I know how normal people feel about that I can’t see any evidence of such on his face.

  He doesn’t look disturbed, I know. He looks proud that I did that to him, and proud that he can wear it so well, and all I’m left thinking after that is: I never felt that way. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror, as though the marks had somehow made me more beautiful. I don’t know what that emotion’s like, in truth, or if I’m capable of it.

  I don’t know if I’m capable of feeling anything at all, when I really think about it. Most of me just seems frozen the second he finally catches me looking, next to his reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Have you seen what you did to me?’ he asks, voice some sort of unholy mixture of disapproving and delighted. ‘I’m like a hot griddle pan.’

  Of course my immediate instinct is to laugh, because really – what a ridiculous thing to say. And it’s just so typically him too, to talk like that while his cock sticks out at me like an accusing finger.

  He hasn’t had any fun yet, my mind reminds me, but doing so just makes me go over to the bed and start doing something odd, like smoothing my hands over the sheets. By the time his focus is all back on me, I’m actually primping the damn thing. I’m making hospital corners, and fussing over the edges of things, and as I’m doing so I’m becoming more and more aware of the robe I definitely shouldn’t have put on.

  It’s very thin, and flimsy. And the second I bend over I know what he’s looking at. I can practically trace his sightline all the way down to the open V over my bare breasts, and though he just spent a good two minutes with his face buried in my cunt, there’s something very … exposed about that.

  I’m not in my jacket and skirt and shoes any more. I’m barefoot and I’m doing a series of very weird things, and all the while he’s watching me. He follows me all the way around the bed to my alarm clock, which I pick up and fiddle with.

  Despite the fact that it’s already at the exact right settings.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks, but I really, really need to concentrate on changing the time my alarm goes off at from 6:00 to 6:03. It’s of vital importance to my mental wellbeing. ‘Do you maybe want me to go?’

  I stop then and glance up at him, alarm clock and mental wellbeing briefly forgotten, because it’s a question I’m not sure how to answer. I mean, it’s hard to come to a decision on something like that when he seems to have stretched himself out on my bed, one long leg crossed over the other, cock still jutting up at me all thick and faintly glistening.

  It doesn’t help that he’s kind of pointing at the door and looking at me all guileless, as though he really might just leave if I said so. He didn’t really think I’d mind if he made himself comfortable, and now that he knows I am, he can go.

  He can save all of that delicious, rampant horniness for later.

  ‘I don’t …’ I start, then somehow end up taking a big breath in between. It’s pathetic really. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  He leans towards me, just a little. Winces on my behalf.

  ‘Kind of a deal-breaker for a Dom,’ he says, and I don’t mind admitting that I jolt a little on that last word. I have to. He called me a Dom, and I’m guessing the real end of that word isn’t -inic. He doesn’t think I’m secretly a man with a three-syllable name.

  He just thinks I’m awful at this thing I’m not even sure I’m trying to do.

  ‘Am I … am I really that bad at it?’ I ask, but he doesn’t respond the way I think he should. He doesn’t get out a five-point plan of how I could possibly improve – number one being don’t start fiddling with your alarm clock because you’re terrified out of your mind.

  He almost laughs instead. A little sound comes out of him, and he’s smiling in this kind of gentle way, and somehow that’s worse than the imaginary five-point plan. He’s better at this than I am, I know. He’s better at it just because he knows exactly what he wants, and isn’t the least bit fazed by anything.

  ‘Actually, you’re kind of awesome at it,’ he says, while I wring my hands around the stupid clock I’m still holding. He’s naked on my bed and I’m doing … this nonsense. ‘Pretty sure it’s not sexually dominating me that you’re nervous about.’

  He’s also way, way too astute for his own good. God, what a mistake I made, thinking he was big and goofy and kind of a mess. He’s actually much more like some sly Parisian whore who gets you to give her all your money. Or all of your feelings, if we’re really going to be honest about it.

  ‘What do you think it is about, then?’ I ask, though as soon as I’ve said it I wish I hadn’t. He could go with just about anything, after all – accusations, further criticisms of my BDSM abilities, the truth …

  ‘I don’t think it’ll make you more comfortable if I advance some of my theories.’

  Or, you know, maybe just some kindly vagueness that makes me more unnerved than I was before. I burst out something I don’t intend to, and do something crazy like put a hand to my head while I’m going about it.

  ‘Jesus, this was all just so easy before.’

  ‘What – you mean back when you were letting Woods stand on your head in some kind of weird silent sex agreement?’

  My hand drops from forehead all on its own, but it’s not really a step in the right direction. Moving it just seems to make my face sag, as though that one slight pressure was holding everything together. Now my mouth’s open and words are coming out of me, and none of them are the right ones.

  The right ones would be something to do with the silent sex agreement that Benjamin apparently knows about, I think. Whereas I go with the following: ‘I never let him stand on my head.’

  Like some idiot who’s been caught out in open court. I didn’t do it, your honour, I swear. I’m perfectly innocent, even in all the ways that I’m totally not. It’s obvious that I’m not. He knows I’m not, because after I’ve spoken he raises an eyebrow, and said eyebrow hauls me right back to something like honesty.

  ‘OK. Maybe … maybe I let him do it once,’ I say, and then I wait for the recriminations. Strong women aren’t supposed to let men do things like that to them, etcetera etcetera. You’ve set the feminist cause back three hundred million years with your sexual fantasies, and so on.

  How dare you want to explore the entire gamut of your own weird desires!

  But of course he doesn’t give me any of that. He doesn’t look mildly perturbed to discover that I’m less of a Dom than he thinks. He just shrugs instead and goes with something effortlessly breezy.

  ‘It’s not a problem for me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t mind.’

  Seriously, how is he this easy-going? How? How does he do it?

  ‘So maybe you want to stand on my head,
is that it?’ I ask, though I can see by his expression that it’s not. For a start, if he did something like that he’d probably pop my skull like a grape.

  ‘No,’ he replies, and when he does he’s near-laughing, incredulously. ‘Don’t you know by now? I want you to stand on my head.’

  Yeah, I probably wouldn’t pop that like a grape. Unless I was maybe wearing stilettos, and accidentally caught him in the eye.

  ‘I just meant … if that’s the kind of thing you really like, it’s OK. I mean, that is what you like, right?’ he says, but he’s got to be kidding with this. Does he honestly think I know the answer to that question? I don’t even know whether I should go over to the bed and sit down, instead of standing here with a clock in my hands like a moron.

  ‘Do you like it?’ I ask, purely to turn the conversation back on him. Yeah, I’ll make no bones about that. I want that heat off me.

  ‘Do I like what?’

  ‘Someone standing on your head.’

  He actually narrows his eyes, as though he’s thinking real hard about it. That mouth of his going up in the middle in a way I’m coming to know too well. It’s like he’s almost shrugging with it; it’s like he’s using his lower lip and part of his chin to aid rumination.

  And Lord, it’s cute. He’s just much too cute for his own good.

  ‘I guess I might. I don’t know. I didn’t really think about all of this until Woods started talking to me.’

  I want to roll my eyes, but fail hopelessly. Fucking Woods.

  ‘He has that effect,’ I say, and when I do I picture my former lover with his hands out, several strings attached to each finger and all of us mere mortals dancing below.

  But apparently Ben doesn’t see it in quite the same way.

  ‘No, no – it wasn’t the effect he had. It was the effect you had. At first I just thought it turned me on because he went into all of this … detail. And he was obviously trying to make me go all … you know. The way I do.’