Deep Desires (9 page)

This could be anyone. Maybe it’s the intruder I made up in my head to explain why he is the way he is. Maybe it’s that big guy, and actually this scenario really is all Ivan – he hired that musclehead again, to give me the going over he can’t.

Oh God. Oh God, that last one sounds much more plausible than I’d like it to be. I mean, what do I really know about Ivan, aside from stuff about sandwiches? Why do I trust him so closely? I never thought I’d trust anyone again, and yet here I am with a blindfold on, in a strange man’s apartment, just because we ate dinner together the other day, through the phone.

I’m crazy, I think, and the second I feel his breath ghosting against my cheek, his presence bristling so close to me, I show it. I shove back on the bed, hands scrabbling for purchase. Legs almost kicking out against the sheets, some awful sound in my throat.

‘No,’ I tell him, and then even more childishly: ‘No, I don’t like it.’

But I can’t make the right moves to rectify the situation. I can’t get the blindfold off, because I’m an idiot who tied it too tightly. Now it’s like a noose around my throat, trapping me in some deadly scenario with a filthy, boorish stranger.

‘Abbie.Abbie,’ he says, and it’s his voice, but I still can’t. I need to get away, I need to rip this lace off, and I continue to need all of these things until he grabs a hold of my flailing hands and puts them on his face.

‘It’s me, Abbie. Here, here,’ he says, but he doesn’t need to. The second he offers me such an intimate thing, all the panic drains out of me. My shoulders drop; I stop the kicking. I stop and just feel that face I’ve seen a thousand times in my dreams. In the hallways of this stifling place.

He’s just as beautiful as he seemed, when I could see him with my eyes. More so, in fact, because my fingers pick up a million things I’d missed – like how smooth his skin is, in all the places where there isn’t any stubble. He has a slight cleft in his chin that I didn’t notice before, and his jaw feels squarer than it looked through the window. Heavier.

I thought his face was quite narrow, but it isn’t.

And, oh, his mouth. I run my thumb over his upper lip, and feel out that soft Cupid’s bow shape, so sweet I could mistake it for a woman’s if it were not for the bristle of his stubble all the way around. The contrast is delicious, electric, and before I know what I’m doing I’m making a meal of it.

I’m practically fondling his mouth, fingertips tracing the shape. Thumb almost daring to go in, but not quite, not quite. I can’t do something like that, while I’m still pretending I’m panicked and in need of the reassurance of his face.

No, no.

I have to wait,
until he goes ahead and does it for me
. He turns his head and presses into my touch, first with his face in a way that makes me sigh – like an animal seeking heat, I think, like a beast rubbing its fur against my palm – and then with his mouth.

He kisses me. He kisses my fingers, makes them wet. And just when I’m tense all over, waiting for more … he takes one into his mouth, just like we talked about. He licks the length of one finger, and I feel what I’ve only dreamed about for days, and days and weeks.

The warmth of his lips, his kiss … the feel of him actually touching me. It’s crazy how intense that build-up makes such a simple thing. It’s like he’s created a new erogenous zone in the webbing between my fore and middle finger. It’s like that place has a direct line to my clit, and every flicker of his tongue resonates through it.

God knows what’s going to happen if he progresses to anything lewder. I might pass out from the pleasure, because Lord knows I’m almost doing that very thing now. I’m shaking by the time he’s done. I’m shivering all over, and half terrified of the feel of him, moving on to some place new.

He kisses the inside of my wrist, and that’s too much. Everything is heightened to a perilous degree, not just by that long slow climb into real live touching, but by the blindfold, too. I can’t see where he’s going to go or what he’s going to do, which probably explains the little gasp I give out when he puts an actual hand on my arm.

That’s him, touching me. Only he’s not just touching. He’s grabbing, I know, and pulling me down, down into what is obviously going to be a kiss. Oh God, he’s going to kiss me, or maybe I’m going to kiss him, because once I’m halfway there I forget every fear I ever had and just sink into this thing I’ve wanted for so long.

Of course, I realise then that I never thought I’d get it. I didn’t think I’d get to put my hand in his hair, shaky but sure. I didn’t think I’d feel him sliding his own hand up through
my
hair, like a mirror of my touch.

Or the climax of some Hollywood movie.

And then his mouth touches mine all tentative and tender, and I could drown in it. He doesn’t kiss me, he feels me out, searching for that rhythm I like best before falling into it. His mouth slants against mine, not quite open at first but then, oh then … I feel him give himself over to it. He catches my upper lip between his, draws the movement out as slow as syrup …

Before going back for more.

It’s the best and worst kiss of my life. The best because of how new it feels, like I’ve never done this before and every move I make could be wrong, or right. Everything is startling, everything is fresh, and I’m trembling with it. I’m almost sliding off the bed, because most of my muscles don’t want to hold me up.

But there’s a worst part to this, too, and it comes about five minutes in. It comes when I actually realise that we’ve been making out for
that
length of time, without going any further. He’s not got his hand up my skirt and I’m not groping under his clothes for that incredible body.

We’re just doing this, like two teenagers starved of contact. It’s no wonder it feels like the first time – we’re only doing what first-timers do. He isn’t even using any tongue, until I realise how slow this is all going and how desperate I am for more and, ohhh, I don’t mean to.

I just do. I use that sudden lack of muscle mass to just ease myself off the bed, and then once I’m in his lap I get my arms around his neck. I press my body to his, in that way I’d imagined doing.

But, most importantly, I kiss him like I’m never going to get to do it again. I cram every little part of him into my memory: the taste of his mouth, like mint and like that wintry smell. And I get great handfuls of his short dark hair, burrowing through to the root. It’s so soft, softer than it looks, though his hair is not the thing I’m concentrating on.

I focus on the feel of his mouth, wet and hot and suddenly really open. Most of me is sure that he’s going to back off at any second, that he’ll find this too much or too clumsy. But it’s not like that at all. It’s like I thought before instead … about the mess that he secretly wants.

The greedier I am, the sloppier I am, the more he seems to enjoy it. I devour his mouth whole and he groans for me, and when I just let my tongue flicker into his mouth – just a little – the groan gets louder. I feel it vibrate on down through my body, before finally pooling between my legs.

Where everything is far too hot and far too wet. I think my pussy’s been replaced by a great throbbing fist, and I know I’ve soaked through my panties. We’re just kissing, but I’ve soaked through my panties. I’m groaning and wriggling, and of course I only get more shameless when I feel his hand on my back.

And then my ass.

He makes the move slowly, like maybe he’s thinking I’ll say no halfway there. But once he’s got a handful of me he gets bolder. His other hand joins the first, and suddenly I’m lifted off my knees.

He actually
lifts
me. All I can do is hang on tightly and kiss him harder, because, good God, I don’t think anyone’s lifted me before in my entire life. He even stands with me clinging to him like some sort of sex-crazed monkey, legs wrapped tight around his waist, arms around his neck.

He has to practically prise me off him, just to get me spread out over his bed, and even then I seem to have a complete absence of shame. I reach for him once he’s no longer pressed to me, searching for the other things I desperately want to feel, like the solid shape of his chest, under his shirt. He’s just wearing a thin sort of item of clothing, I think, no coat, just as I’d hoped. And when I wave my hands around in the air I get little fleeting impressions of his body.

He’s knelt astride my thighs, torso ramrod straight over me, and I know this because my hand glances against the taut muscles of his abdomen. I flutter my fingers over him, searching and searching, then finally find other things, further up.

Like his incredible chest. Oh Lord have mercy, is it ever incredible – sort of dense and so much more powerful seeming without the ability to see. When I look at him in the hallway or through windows, I see Ivan – cautious, closed, careful. But when I feel him, he’s this overwhelming creature, big and beautiful. It’s a primal thing, so raw and almost scary.

But here, I’m allowed to be scared. It’s safe to be that way, to be thrilled, and that’s a great feeling.

Though it’s a better one when he eases my hands away from him. He does it slowly, without insisting upon the move. And once he’s done, he trails his own hands down over my body from my throat to my stomach, passing oh-so-sensitive things in between.

I jerk when his palms slide over my breasts, though really it’s the way he does it that affects me. He’s firm without being too forceful, greedy without going too far. I feel the taut curve between his thumb and forefinger, pressing into the shape of them, mapping them out, before he slides on down.

It’s sort of like he’s cupping my whole body as he goes. I’m contained by his hands, closed in by them; I’m a series of details that he’s uncovering one by one. Like the way my breasts curve outwards slightly at the edges, when I lay down – I think he likes that. I think he likes how my waist feels – almost circled by his two massive hands – before those two hands come apart to cover the swell of my hips.

At which point, I expect him to do more. Start taking off my clothes, maybe – a thing that seemed horrifying an hour ago but is now a near necessity. I’m dying for him to do it, because, really, what do I have to worry about? I’m secure behind the sanctity of the blindfold. I don’t have to see his expression when he sees me, or look at myself while he does it.

I can just feel his hands fondling and stroking me, and imagine he’s appreciative.

Until he speaks and spoils the illusion.

‘I didn’t think you’d be like this,’ he says, while a dozen flaws crowd their way into my head. I’m
too
sloppy,
too
slovenly. I didn’t do my shoulder exercises or my waist crunches or my breast tighteners, and now I’m all wrong.

‘Like what?’ I ask, though my head tells me not to. No one wants to hear that they need to buy the new breast-hardening system from ExtremeBody.com.

‘So soft,’ he says, and there it is. Like pudding, I think, but he proves me wrong again. ‘Sometimes I think I see angles underneath your clothes, things to ward people off. The spike of an elbow or the jut of your hip. But you’re not like that at all. You’re so, so …’

He pauses, then, only this time my brain doesn’t fill in a bunch of bad words for him.

I know what’s coming now. I can hear it in his voice, as it struggles to get the feeling out. It’s what he wants, I think. It’s what he longs for.

Just this:

‘… inviting.’

As though being that way is as rare as a precious stone from a world we’ve never been to. It doesn’t even really exist for him, out there in the outer reaches of space. He can’t even imagine what it looks like, until it’s right there in front of him.

And even then he seems to doubt it.

‘Is that what you are, Abbie?’ he asks, though he doesn’t need to. I was five seconds away from reaching for him anyway, now I’m just going to do it. I put my hands out – surer, this time, and without that nervous flutter – and find the waistband of his trousers. The slope of his abdomen.

And this time, he doesn’t stop me. I hear him sigh, instead, soft and so good. That body of his leaning ever so slightly into my touch. Though of course with Ivan, leaning ever so slightly is more like going absolutely nuts. I can almost feel the greed vibrating off him, before he even says the words.

‘I want you. I want you. I want to let you in, too.’

It’s like being offered food for the first time. I’m starving for it, ravenous for it and, when he’s done, I push for more. I show him how welcoming I can be, in kisses pressed to his belly, beneath his shirt. In the long slow slide of my tongue around his taut little navel, and the ridged shapes of his every muscle – all of it enhanced by this sightlessness.

I can’t see what he looks like. I have to taste him and smell him and feel him, and, oh, all of those things are so good. There’s a slight tang of salt that lets me know he’s sweating from this close contact, and I can feel his stomach muscles jumping beneath this suddenly so intimate touch.

All of these clues, I think. All of these clues. I’m Poirot in the parlour, waiting for him to confess and prove me right. And the best part is: he does.

‘I’ve never let anyone be like this with me,’ he says, while I buzz all over at words like those. He could arouse me with a letter from the gas board, I think. He’s arousing me now, even though he’s barely doing anything at all.

He’s just keeping perfectly still, as I explore him the way he explored me a moment earlier – though, I confess, I go a little further. He didn’t go underneath my clothes, but I get underneath his. I find his too tight little nipples and remember how much he seemed to enjoy playing with them.

So I do. I try pinching them between thumb and forefinger, rubbing them a little, just the way I like, back and forth, and then soft, soft on the very tip. Of course I can’t use sight as a guide. I can’t see if he likes this thing more than that thing, pinching more than stroking, pleasure more than pain. I have to go by the rhythms of his body. The way his chest heaves just a little when I scratch my fingernail over one. Or the sound he makes, ohhhh, the sound he makes when I wet my finger and apply that slickness to those spiky tips …