Gagged (2 page)

He still hasn’t touched me, and yet my every nerve expects it. I can no longer sense the movement of my nightdress and am suddenly positive it’s no longer there, my panties gone with it. I’m nude, from my toes to the top of my head. I don’t know how it happened, and without opening my eyes I can’t look around, even within the dream, to be sure. But I can feel the way my sex feels cold, cool air wicking moisture from between my legs. I feel gooseflesh everywhere.
 

It’s terrible that this has happened. I don’t know this man, and if I had any choice at all, I’d grab my pile of clothing, wherever it is, and run. But it’s too late. He’s made me do this. He’s stripped me bare. He’s parted my legs and bent me somewhat forward; I can feel the window’s cool press against my palms, the way my small breasts hang away from my chest.
 

I don’t know how this happened, but I can’t stop it. I don’t want to be here, but the decision’s been seized from my hands. There’s nothing I can do but wait for him to do as he pleases — and touch what he wants to. But it arouses me so much, and I know what is coming. I’ll feel his hand brush my erect nipples. I’ll feel his palm high on my inner thigh, his fingers sliding upward to brush my wetness.
 

When that happens, I may feel a thrill. I’m tensed, waiting for it, forgiving myself in advance. The body is wired to respond. It’s programming, not enjoyment.
 

I swear I can sense his fingers already between my legs, not touching anything, merely hovering in the high space between my parted thighs.
 

And I tell myself:

If I tilt my hips, that’s because I want to get this over with, if it’s inevitable.
 

If my nipples are hard, that’s because it’s cold, not because I’m turned on enough to burst.

My eyes are still closed, but I’m sure his hands are
right there
, scant milimeters from my bare skin. One near the swell of my hanging breast. One so close to my pussy I can almost feel him tickling it, triggering sensations I’m reluctant to feel.
 

The anticipation’s so intense that he doesn’t even need to touch me. Sensation has built so high, I might have my orgasm without him. At any minute. I might just
come
, standing here with a stranger, without so much as a touch. The idea is humiliating. And yet I can feel the wave building as he refuses me.

My knees buckle.
 

I feel myself getting wetter.
 

My breath comes faster. I lick my lips, and my exhales make them cool as the moisture evaporates.
 

Oh my God. Oh my God, I’m going to come.
Right here. Right in front of this man, and he hasn’t done anything to prompt me. I try clenching it back, knowing I didn’t ask for this, but it’s happening whether I want it or not.
 

I hear a beeping.
 

Maybe it’s his watch … but no, a man like this would wear an analog watch as jewelry, not some digital thing from a dozen years back, worn as a reminder of years, not just minutes, past.

The beeping continues. It’s broken the spell. My orgasm retreats. It’s not yet gone but will no longer bloom without touch. The need is still there, and I’m seized with an intense impulse to thrust my hand between my legs and bring it around.
 

But I can’t do that. If I’d already come, it might have been an understandable involuntary reaction. But this? The blonde girl rubbing herself to a peak in this man’s office while he watches, her one hand pressed against the window?
Unthinkable
.
 

But maybe the strong, broad man behind me will intervene as I fade away. Maybe he’ll take pity on me and help me along. Maybe his will be the hand to bridge the widening gap so it doesn’t have to be mine. And no, of course, I don’t want his touch. But if it happened now, I’d accept it. Reluctantly. Blissfully.

But he’s gone. The dream dissolves like cotton candy on the tongue.

And now I’m alone.

I wake to the beeping alarm, eyes opening to my plain bedroom, legs parted and sweating.

CHAPTER TWO

A
URORA

I
TAKE
A
SHOWER
,
AND
some part of me seems to hope that the water, as it trickles down my body, will caress me in the way the dream man never did. But the flow from my bare chest and back isn’t enough, and although the twin streams meet between my legs, it’s not quite arousing.
 

I adjust the shower head in its little holder, hearing Jasmine’s voice in my mind. That shower head was fixed in place when we moved in, but Jasmine hired a guy to replace the head with a removable massager. Now it hooks into the wall just above the tub’s rim and sits in a cradle where the old shower head was located, trailing a long, flexible metal hose. Jasmine explained her reasoning for the replacement in her usual direct way: she masturbates in the shower and bath, so the sprayer must extend enough to the job.
 

Jasmine, right now, would tell me to spend a few extra minutes on myself.
 

She would, in fact, mock my refusal to do what my body wants me to do.

But I’m not planning to tell Jasmine about my dream, or the few tense minutes rolling around afterward, wondering if I should finish what the dream started even though I’ve been programmed to resist. I have sex dreams often and refuse their bounty, but of course I’d never admit it to Jasmine. She isn’t shy like me. She doesn’t have my past or its baggage. She’s told me things that make me blush — just like thinking about the dream, even now, is heating my cheeks.
 

I take one final look at the shower head then straighten it with my hands.
 

I turn the water a bit colder, finish up, dry off, and get dressed. I put on a blue top, a light white sweater, my knee-length wool skirt, and the tall boots that I think are chic but that Jasmine says mean I’m down for a party. It’s perhaps a bit overly composed for what’s on tap today, but I’d rather err on the side of
professional career woman
than
college senior who’s out of her element.
I check myself in the mirror, knowing Jasmine will say I look good but feeling more average than usual. Either way, it’ll do.
   

I find Jasmine in the kitchen. She’s eating Frosted Flakes, but the actual flakes are going soggy in her bowl. She’s laid the box flat on the table and is using one of my Sharpies to trace her way through a maze on its back. But she’s doing it with the cap on, making no marks on the cardboard.
 

“Morning,” I say.
 

“Fuck,” she tells me.
 

I look down. Jasmine doesn’t look up. Her bright red hair is all I can see. She’s bent over the kid’s maze like a PhD student, radiating focus.
 

“You know,” I tell her, “that will work better with the cap off.”

“I don’t want to draw on the box.”
 

“Why not?” I consider asking Jasmine if she’s saving this particular opened box of Frosted Flakes to give as a gift.
 

“I’m trying to set a record.”
 

I don’t want to respond, so I wait for her to look up. Jasmine has wide-spaced green eyes, arched eyebrows, and lips that draw up into a wide bow. People tell me I look a lot like her — swap the straight red hair for wavy blonde and change the eye color to blue and we’d be twins — but I’ve never seen it. Jasmine is beautiful. I’m plain. She’s outgoing and adventurous, brash and sexy. I’m quiet. No one’s ever called me sexy.

Jasmine looks up. Her eyes are intense; she always wears eyeliner and brushes out her dark lashes. You can’t look into Jasmine’s eyes without being sure she’s about to mock you for something.
 

“If I mark the box, I can’t try the maze again,” she elaborates.
 

This explains nothing, so I open the fridge, reach for the glass carafe of orange juice, and say, “I don’t think there’s a record for what you’re doing.”

“I did it in five seconds. Now I’m trying for three.”
 

“Why not four?”
 

“That’s just shooting below my potential.”

Jasmine looks back down at the box and drags the Sharpie’s capped tip through the maze. A few seconds turns out to be longer than I’d thought, when spent on the back of a cereal box fronted by a cartoon tiger.
 

“Shit,” she announces. “Five seconds.”
 

I pour myself some orange juice. I’ll grab my bagel in a second, but for now I’m more interested in being indifferent to Jasmine’s quixotic pursuit. She does this. She’ll decide to try something pointless then won’t sleep until it’s done. She could solve a Rubik’s Cube in three minutes once upon a time simply because she decided to try. But like all the dumb things Jasmine tries on for size, she forgot how to do it after reaching her goal. I doubt she could finish more than two sides on a Cube now if given a day.
 

“Where’s your timer?” I ask, leaning against the counter. The normality of this moment is a comfort. The memory of my dream was heavy through my shower and getting dressed, probably because both chores involved nudity and the touching of sensitive areas, but now it’s dissipating and I’m returning to normal, the uncomfortable memory mostly relegated to the past where it belongs. Jasmine, in my shoes, would be telling me all about her hot and heavy dreams. But I’m not like her.

“I’m counting in my head.”
 

“How do you know you’re accurate?”
 

“I can walk and chew gum at the same time, you know.”

“Don’t you know the maze so well now that it’s just a matter of moving quickly?” I look down at the thing. If I had to guess, it was made for an eight-year-old. Jasmine isn’t trying to solve a puzzle, really. This is closer to an agility test. And there is no reason to even try what she’s doing. I’m pretty sure Jasmine has undiagnosed OCD, but I’ve stopped pointing it out.
 

“Shh. I’m focusing.”
 

She tries the maze again. It takes the same length of time, but she raises her hands triumphantly in the air and looks up at me as if waiting for praise.
 

“What?”
 

“I did it.”
 

“I don’t think you did.”
 

“I think I did.”
 

I look at the box. If I deny her again, she’ll resume working on her pointless maze game. And she shouldn’t; Jasmine’s not showered yet and needs to get ready. She’ll be crushed if she misses her appointment. Jasmine has hours but will require every minute to primp. She isn’t usually so vain, but today isn’t a normal day.
 

“Congratulations,” I say.
 

This seems to satisfy her. I pull a bagel from the bag and pry it apart with my fingers. I don’t have much to claw it open, but even Jasmine has to use a knife every time so it’s not like long fingernails are an advantage. She gets bread under her nails and will follow up by saying something inappropriate, like asking how she’s supposed to scratch her man’s back as she comes with bagel under her talons.
 

I give Jasmine another look. Her eyes are, as usual, circled with eyeliner. She either slept in her makeup or applied more today before breakfast, and her shower, just because she’s Jasmine. Her lips are red and glistening, but she has a lip gloss addiction, so that means nothing.
 

Jasmine stands, slides the cereal box back onto the kitchen shelf, and sits with her slim hip against the countertop. She’s positioned between me and the refrigerator so I’ll have to go through her to get my cream cheese. This is intentional. Jasmine moves like a cat and is equally wily. I anticipate her torment before she opens her mouth.
 

“What?” I ask, watching Jasmine’s eyes.

She’s wearing a tiny, knowing smile. For a half second I’m positive she knows about my dream, about my breathless state on waking, and the way I did nothing about it in the sheets or the shower. Not masturbating is, to Jasmine, like not brushing your teeth. If she suspects, I swear she’ll point a shaped fingernail toward my bedroom and scold me, demanding that I get back in there and do what she’s told me a thousand times must be done daily.
 

“How tall do you think he is?” Jasmine asks.
 

I don’t know what she’s talking about. But then again, I totally do.
 

I take a sip of my orange juice. “Who?”
 

“Caspian. He always looks so tall, but the magazines do that on purpose, right? Tom Cruise usually looks tall too, and he’s a midget.”
 

“I don’t know,” I say. But Jasmine’s question, totally innocuous, doubles my heart rate. I’m not sure why. Jasmine has been going on and on about Caspian White ever since she managed to line up today’s interview with the new
best young thing
in startup CEOs, but she’d been going on and on about him for a while beforehand, too. He’s the definition of inaccessibly sexy for just about everyone other than me. I don’t see the point in getting all wobbly-kneed over icons and heartthrobs. You’re never going to be with them, so why waste the energy? But Jasmine practically has posters of the man plastering her walls.