Seduce Me Tonight (3 page)

It’s not like Brian beat me or something. Nothing like that. The only bruises he ever left on me were during sex and I didn’t mind at all. But we fought a lot and we had broken up at least five times in as many years, maybe more if you counted the number of times I had thrown him out of my apartment and told him not to come back. But he always came back and I always let him. It is what it is, you know? It was just hard to say exactly
what
it was. It took me a long time to realise that the label was less important than the emotions.

My friends who have overheard some of our fights, or heard about them in the aftermath, ask me why I don’t just dump his ass and find a nice guy who will treat me right. I could. I know I could. I’m attractive, if not gorgeous, and I have a lot going for me personally and professionally. I’m not lacking self-esteem over here, trust me. But those nice guys my friends talk about leave me cold. I’ve dated those guys. The ones who won’t raise their voices when they’re angry, the ones who will take a few days to ‘cool off’ and then act as if nothing happened. The ones who remain even-tempered and good-natured no matter how many of their buttons you push. I hate those guys. They are as dull in bed as they are to fight with. Brian, on the other hand, is anything but boring.

What I don’t tell my friends, what I don’t even tell Brian because he’d say I was the one with the problem and I don’t need to give him ammunition, is that I
like
the fighting. It gets me hot. Yeah, I guess that is fucked up, isn’t it? But I think he likes it as much as I do and won’t admit it either. He pushes me and I push him and we fight. And after we fight, we make up. And the making up is hot and sexy and sweaty and rough. I fume for days after a fight, but the longer the wait, the hotter I get to make up with him.

The other thing I don’t tell anyone is that sometimes I have to change my panties after one of my screaming, throwing, slamming fights with Brian. I’m just wired that way, I guess. He pushes my buttons to piss me off and that does something to my other button. My clit stands at attention when we’re going nine rounds over who was flirting with whom at the bar or whatever. I hear myself say things I never thought I would ever say to someone I love, with my hands balled into fists at my side, not sure whether I’d rather slap his face or stroke my clit. Maybe both. Yeah, there’s something wrong with me. Right?

I’ve slapped him a few times, pushing him, taunting him. Waiting to see what he’ll do, hoping he’ll do what a nice guy would never do. When I started dating, while my friends were being told by their mothers that boys didn’t hit girls, my mother was practical and told me not to slap a boy unless I’m prepared to be slapped back. The threat of being hit by a boy scared me when I was thirteen but the thought of being slapped by Brian excites the hell out of me at thirty-three.

I guess I could just ask him to slap me. But that seems a little twisted. Nice girls don’t ask to be hit and I’m a nice girl. Except with Brian. He brings out the bitch in me. With everyone else, I’m this super-controlled, calm, rational, together woman. The female counterpart to the guys I’ve dated who keep their voices modulated and never swear during an argument. People who know me wouldn’t recognise me when I’m fighting with Brian. The problem is, I think I’m my truest and most honest self with him – when I’m longing for him to call me a slut and slap my face. Why else would I stay with him and fight with him? He brings out the worst in me – and I love him for it.

‘You’re a stone-cold bitch, you know that?’ he asked me once during a particularly gruesome battle. I don’t even remember exactly what we were fighting about – I only remember the fight itself.

Brian is a writer and works in advertising, so he’s always careful with how he uses language. He’ll say I’m
being
bitchy or I’m
acting
like a bitch, but that was the first time he’d called me a bitch outright. My head snapped back like he really had hit me. Hot tears pricked my eyes, but I furiously blinked them back. I didn’t want him to think he had gotten to me. If he thought he’d penetrated my ‘stone-cold’ exterior, he would stop taunting me. And I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted more. A
lot
more. So I just smiled. That’s something else my mother taught me. No matter what horrible insult someone hurls at you – smile. It makes them crazy. I knew for a fact that it made Brian crazy.

‘Only to you, baby,’ I purred. ‘Only to you.’

The veiled meaning was that there was some other guy who I treated better. I could practically see Brian imagining me fucking another guy, or a string of other guys. Jealousy twisted Brian’s face into something ugly and unfamiliar. I should have been scared, but that primal female part of me that loved the fighting and wanted more thought it was hot as hell. He looked like a brute – and I wanted him to unleash that brutishness all over me. I ached for it in a way I couldn’t explain even to myself.

‘What are you saying?’ His voice was quiet. Almost sinister.

I took a step forward, the threat of tears long gone, and smiled sweetly. ‘It means I know how to treat a
real
man.’

Lightning fast, he was on me, one hand grabbing my arm to push me up against the wall, the other hand coming up in an arc. I thought he was going to slap me. I really did. Even though I wanted it, was ready for it, I flinched just a little.

He blinked, as if touching me had shocked him and let me go so abruptly, I nearly fell.
Damn
. It was my own fault. This time, the tears came and I couldn’t stop them.

‘Go on, do it,’ I taunted him, though my voice sounded wobbly with emotion and had lost its previous heat. ‘You were going to hit me, you know you were. Go ahead and do it!’

I was screaming the words, like a child throwing a tantrum because she hadn’t gotten what she wanted. It sounded like a plea rather than a taunt. Brian just stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.

‘You thought I was going to hit you,’ he said, something different in his voice. ‘I was going to hit you. Swear to God, I was.’

It finally dawned on me why he sounded different. He sounded sad. I took a step towards him, tried to touch him. ‘Just do it,’ I begged. ‘
Do it
. You want to.’

He shook his head. ‘I’d never hit a woman. I’d never,
ever
hit you, Jules.’

I said what had been hanging in the air between us, the truth that I couldn’t hide from any longer, the reality that maybe was starting to dawn on him. ‘But I
wanted
you to.’

He rocked back on his heels as if I’d punched him in the stomach. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously, Jules, who says that? Who
wants
that?’

My first reaction was shame and embarrassment. I was messed up, something was wrong with me. He’d just said it. My shame was followed by white-hot anger. I said the other truth that was between us, the truth I’d always suspected and was now willing to put into words. ‘You want to. I know you do. It’s why we’re still together. It’s why you fight with me and push me and let me push you. You want to take it farther, you want to, but you can’t.’

His hand came up to my face, but too slow to actually be a blow. Instead, he tucked a lock of my dark-brown hair behind my ear and gave me another sad puppy-dog smile. ‘Maybe. But I can’t do that. I’m done, Jules.’

I thought he meant done fighting, but he fished his keys out of his pocket and took my apartment key off his ring. Then he laid it on the table by the front door and walked out. The door closed with a finality that echoed inside me. I didn’t start crying for another thirty minutes, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Some time later, it started to rain.

* * *

Some time after 2 a.m., after tossing and turning for hours, I finally got up, threw a raincoat over my short nightgown and headed out into the night. I had only intended to go for a drive, but I found myself driving to Brian’s town house and parking on the street. I sat there, windshield wipers dashing away the heavy rain, staring up at his darkened windows and wondering if this was wise. I’d already gone this far, I decided, I might as well see it to its bitter conclusion.

He’d given me his key back, but he hadn’t asked for mine. I let myself in the front door, shushed his friendly Labrador Charlie, and made for the stairs to go to his bedroom. Brian’s voice caught me up short.

‘I’m in here,’ he said, calling to me from the living room just off the front entrance. ‘I figured you might show up.’

The room was dark, so it took my eyes a moment to adjust and see that he was lying on the couch, one arm tucked behind his head. He didn’t seem like he’d just woken up, nor was he surprised to see me. I took a hesitant step toward him, not at all sure how to read his relaxed body language or his quiet, neutral tone.

‘Brian, I –’ I stopped, not even sure what to say. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I finally said, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologising for. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

‘You want me to hit you.’

It wasn’t a question, but I didn’t know what to say back to him. Did I? Maybe. Yes. In the right context. When I wanted it, but only then. But I didn’t want to have to ask for it, I wanted him to just do it. Shit. How could I explain it to him when I didn’t understand it myself?

‘Not hit,’ I whispered, my throat raw from screaming and sobbing. ‘Not like that.’

‘Like how, then?’ He sat up and clicked the switch on the lamp beside the couch. A warm glow illuminated his face. He looked exhausted, a five o’clock shadow on his high cheekbones, his black hair tousled like he’d been running his fingers through it in frustration. I knew this face, this man. I knew him and I trusted him. I owed him as honest an explanation as I could give him, even if it didn’t make any sense to either of us.

I raised my shoulders in a shrug. ‘I don’t know. A slap, I guess.’

‘Like a spanking?’

‘Yeah, sorta.’ It felt surreal to be talking about this. ‘But more. More than a spanking, more than my ass.’

‘Your face?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘You want me to slap your face when we’re fighting – or when we’re fucking?’

‘Both,’ I whispered.

‘Do you push me to fight so I’ll do that, be that rough with you?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I think so. I think I do. It’s messed up.’

He moved to the edge of the couch and rested his arms on his splayed thighs. ‘Come here.’

I went to him without hesitation. I wasn’t sure of his mood or what was happening between us, but I knew I trusted him. Despite the fights, the angry words, the years of feeling like we were never connecting, I still believed in him. In us. And I knew he would never do anything I didn’t want him to do.

When I was standing in front of him, he looked up at me. ‘You’re not messed up,’ he said softly, pulling me down in front of him until I was kneeling on the carpet between his legs. ‘I think I wanted the same stuff – well, wanted to do it to you. But that’s even more fucked up.’

I couldn’t help myself, I laughed. He was sitting on the couch, I was on my knees in front of him like I was going to go down on him, but instead we were talking about our mutual desire to do the one thing we couldn’t do. ‘Oh, baby, what the hell have we been doing all this time?’

He shook his head. ‘Hell if I know. The fighting – it’s been off the chain, right? I mean, I have never, ever fought with anyone like I fight with you.
Never
. It’s weird.’

‘Dysfunctional,’ I agreed.

‘And I hate myself when I’m saying those things. Hate you when you’re screaming at me. But I can’t resist it.’ He stroked my hair absent-mindedly, as if he was petting Charlie. ‘I try to ignore you when you start pushing me, but I can’t fucking resist it.’

‘You crave it,’ I said, running my hands up and down his thighs to the same rhythm as his stroking of my hair. ‘You need it.’

‘Yeah,’ he said starkly, self-loathing in his expression. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘What’s wrong with us? I need it, too.’

We sat there like that for awhile, touching each other as if we couldn’t help ourselves – and maybe we couldn’t. Maybe this was love, even if it was not what we thought love should be.

He looked at me, searched my face as if seeking some elusive answer. ‘What now?’

I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, ragged sigh. I felt as if a great tension had gone out of my shoulders. Something in me had opened up. For better or worse, he knew my darkest secret. And I knew his.

‘It’s on the table now. Let’s see where it goes.’

‘You’re going to have to take the lead here,’ he said, as he pushed my hair behind my ears again and cupped my face. ‘This is so outside the realm of my experience I don’t know what to do. It feels … wrong.’

‘But I want it,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m
asking
for this.’

He just shook his head.

‘But I said I want it.’ I was louder, more forceful. ‘Slap me. Slap my face.’

He went very still. ‘No.’

I could feel the familiar anger beginning to rise. He was teasing me now, playing with my emotions. ‘Slap me, Brian. Stop messing with my fucking head.
Slap me
.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I want you to.’

He laughed. ‘Not good enough. Why should I do what you want, when you’ve been such a bitch to me?’

‘And a slut,’ I said, putting that taboo word on the table, too. In for a penny, in for a pound.

He blinked at me, his breath catching in his throat. ‘Yeah? A slut?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What else?’ he asked.

It was my turn to taunt. ‘You tell me.’

‘A little whore,’ he said, the word sounding foreign on his tongue. ‘Whore.’

I was wet. I could feel the wetness gathering between my thighs, soaking through the cotton crotch of my panties. ‘You
want
me to be a whore.’

‘Yeah, I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to slap you just because you want me to, you bitch.’ There was a note of anger in his voice, as if the resentment of the past five years of frustration and miscommunication was bubbling up in him, too.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Slap me because
you
want to. You’ve always wanted to. You want to slap the smile right off my face, don’t you? You want it so bad you can taste it like you can taste my pussy on your tongue.’