Sweet Agony (14 page)

Like I’m coming, I think.

But I know I’m not.

I know because when he starts to stand up, I do something unthinkable. I lose my mind in that brief, lust-addled moment, so greedy for an end to this torment that I just don’t process. I put out a hand, and I grab him.

Though of course, I realise my mistake right away. How could I not when he freezes the way he does? He can’t even finish the motion he was in the middle of. He has to just stay in this odd crouching position for a second, half risen from the bed and half not. Knees bent in the weirdest way. Face half turned in my direction. I see it and can do nothing but apologise, immediately, and start to pull back.

But when I do something astonishing happens.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No it’s all right.’

And then he lets the hand stay.

Even after he straightens, he lets the hand stay.

Though none of that is as amazing as the next thing he tells me, in response to my pretty obvious shock. ‘Friends touch each other, do they not?’ he says, which is ridiculous of him for two reasons. The first is the fact that our friendship has never been unequivocally stated as fact, and the second is the sheer audacity of him claiming it now when he knows full well this has nothing to do with being friends. From where he’s standing he can see my vagina. Every inch of me is flushed a deep arousal pink.

There’s no mistaking it, and I intend to make that clear.

‘Yes, they do. But I think you know that wasn’t just me being friendly,’ I say.

Yet he persists.

‘I fail to see what you mean.’

‘You just tasted my pussy on a paintbrush.’

‘And I suppose that is a thing only enemies do.’

‘No, mostly it happens between people who want to fuck each other.’

‘So it is your belief that I wish to fuck you,’ he says, and to his credit he manages to make his incredulity sound almost real. If I were anyone else I’d probably believe it. If he’d said that to me on day two I would have thought: wow, he really finds me repulsive.

But we’ve come too far for that now.

I see him. I feel him. I know him.

‘I don’t think it strains credibility to think so when your mouth probably tastes like my cunt. You told me to take off my clothes and looked at me in a way I know was lusty, and you spanked me, Cyrian, you whacked my arse with a belt you bought especially for the purpose.’

‘Could you possibly not –’ he starts, so obviously pained that I have to stop him before he goes any further. I don’t like seeing the way his hand steeples over his brow. Or the way he almost flinches at the very idea. It should all be clear to him, but he doesn’t like that being pointed out.

‘All right, all right. If you don’t want to talk about sex we don’t have to,’ I say.

Only it seems that I have it a little wrong. Just a little, though somehow it feels like a lot.

‘No, no, I mean the way I hit you. If we could just not refer to the way I hit you, I would be infinitely more comfortable. The rest – no matter how distasteful – is fine.’

‘Is that what you want to call it? Hitting me?’

‘Oh, please refrain from explaining the wonders of consensual sadomasochism to me. There is nothing you could say that would surprise me and even if there was I still expect you to accept that there is something uncommonly unpleasant about a man punishing a woman for having the temerity to feel a little passion.’

‘Well, maybe if you tell me how you came to that conclusion I might.’

‘I am not about to share the tawdry details with you, Molly,’ he says, and I can’t help noticing two things: he stays right where he is, and he dares to mention that there might be tawdry details. The moment he did that he knew I’d keep asking, which suggests only one thing to me.

He wanted me to
.

‘Then how am I to judge? How can I know the temerity is there?’

‘You could take my word for it. Is that really so difficult?’

‘It is when you have a history of not understanding why you do things.’

‘I understand perfectly well. I would just rather not have long, tedious discussions about each of my issues as though we are guests on some terrible daytime talk show,’ he says, only this time he realises his mistake. He rolls his eyes to the heavens, as though he knows what’s coming and finds it exhausting.

And he’s right to.

‘I knew you were secretly interested in them.’

‘I only succumb to reruns of Ricki Lake. There is no reason to bring it up.’

‘Same as with everything – just sweep it under the carpet, I suppose,’ I say, as casually as I can. I even wave my hand, and shrug one shoulder.

But I know he sees what I’m doing.

‘Such a dismissive attitude towards something so satisfying,’ he replies, and I hear the snarl on that last word. The insistence in it, as though he knows how ridiculous it is but somehow wants to force the idea through. Suppression isn’t unhealthy and awful – it’s the very lifeblood in his veins. It keeps him going, even as I try to take him to pieces.

Even as he all but
asks
me to take him to pieces. He’s tired of being this, I think, despite his resistance. I have to help him go beyond, to some better place.

If only I knew how. If only I understood
where
.

‘There is nothing satisfying about sweeping things under the carpet.’

‘To you, perhaps. To me it is a wonder of the modern age.’

‘Seems positively Victorian, in my opinion.’

‘I have no idea what you want me to say,’ he tells me, so airily I expect nothing more. I’m reaching my limit, and he’s reached his. Now he’ll walk away, before this goes any further, I imagine. Then he gives me this instead: ‘That my mother was away with the fairies and my father was a cold, aloof upper-class arsehole with all the decency of a third-world dictator and a desire to repeatedly drown me in a bathtub? I can assure you that it is a thoroughly tedious tale of woe that I have no interest in revisiting.’

Yet again, it’s not just the saying of it that gets to me.

It’s the fact that he does it so calmly. He could be talking about the weather. He toys with his cuff as he speaks, and not even in an
I’m trying to pretend I don’t care
way. More in a
this is all so dull I will straighten out this crease and neaten my cufflink as I do it
manner. As though he honestly has no idea that what he just said is
awful
.

When I answer him, my voice is more grave and wavery than his ever gets.

‘Your father tried to drown you in a bathtub. On more than one occasion,’ I say, and then he looks up at me. He looks up at me with surprise, to find that someone feels horror over something like that.

‘He also thrashed me when I refused to be as closed off and emotionally stunted as he apparently was, but I feel no compulsion to discuss it. I barely even see a reason to. I am sure you could have drawn these conclusions for yourself with very little effort – after all, they are practically textbook,’ he says, and now I see why he considers it all dull.

He thinks he’s a
cliché
.

‘They don’t seem so to me. They seem sad, unbearably sad.’

‘Then perhaps you should put that mind of yours to better use.’

‘Are you really claiming that there is nothing else to it? Nothing beyond yet another tale of a teenager who had mean parents and turned into an emotionless adult?’

‘I doubt you could come up with anything different. But do feel free to try and solve the case,’ he says, eyes so bright with challenge that suddenly I want to succeed.

Even if I’m momentarily confused over what he wants me to succeed at.

‘What case? There
is
no case.’

‘Of course there is: the case of Cyrian Harcroft and his inability to give a woman what she wants or respond in an effective way to her desire or do anything but be as cruel as his father once was.’

‘This is not a game.’

‘Oh, but it is. Now play it, play it for me,’ he says, and I suddenly need to more than I’ve ever needed anything. Maybe because of the way his voice drops as he tells me to, so low I could never mistake the emotion in it for anything other than hunger. Or is it just the thrill of it? It has a heady element that I can’t quite deny.

But the moment I begin, I understand why I like it. His faith in my cleverness – cleverness I barely knew I had before him – is like a song in my soul.

‘Were you passionate, once?’

‘I suppose anything is possible.’

‘You played the piano.’

‘Very good, my little Sherlock.’

‘It meant everything to you, everything in the world, and you refused to give it up.’

‘I did so repeatedly, stupidly, against all sense and better reason.’

‘He wanted you to be something else.’

‘There is that possibility.’

‘Something small and unfeeling, like him. A dull man who lives his life in dusty leather-bound rooms populated by important people, all of whom you already despise,’ I say, and this time his voice is faint when he replies. His eyes are far away, like he can see this future he could have had.

‘Yes.’

‘A wealthy man.’

‘Yes.’

‘A man of standing.’

‘Yes.’

‘And so he beat you.’

‘He did.’

‘He beat you until you forgot what it was like to take pleasure in anything – not just in your piano but in your life and your possessions and other people. Pleasure is pain to you, now, so much so that you worry that when you hurt me, you do it because you want to take away the same things your father took from you. You think you want me to be cold and closed and so much easier to manage, a perfect little aristocratic wife to one day be your helpmeet,’ I say, almost balking several times as I do. The first time because his face seems to flinch when I tell him that he fears he wants to take from me, that he is like his father. And the last time because somehow the word ‘wife’ escapes me. I feel it coming like an out-of-control train, all these words and this knowledge running out of me almost unconsciously until finally that one does.

But I get it out anyway. I get it out because it’s
true
.

And the truth is more important than him flinching, or snorting at the idea of someone ever wanting to marry me. He will resist, I think, in the silence that follows. I even brace myself for it, and so am startled when he answers with a simple ‘I could not have said it better myself.’ He even seems darkly satisfied by it, in a way that suggests he knew I would confirm his very worst opinion of himself.

There is just one tiny problem with that: I’m not yet done.

‘Only you’re wrong. You’re wrong, you don’t want me to be that way at all. If you did you would do it all differently, as I said to you before. You know too well what sparks a fire in my soul, and nothing you do tries to dim it. Everything is designed to make it brighter, from the dress to the library to the book you chose to read to me. You say you worry you want to punish me out of a desire to drive away my passion, but you forget. You forget one vital thing missing from this almost perfect theory: you know that I enjoy it, yet you do it anyway. This is not me playing the piano and you trying to make me stop. This is you sitting beside me and teaching me to play. You put the music in front of me even when it makes you bleed to do it, and I adore you for it. I adore you, more than I knew it was possible for me to adore anything,’ I say.

And then there is a long, long silence.

So long, in fact, that I eventually have to break it.

‘How did I do?’ I ask.

To which he answers in a voice like something lost at the bottom of a well.

‘Almost perfectly.’

‘Only almost?’

‘You missed one point.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘I didn’t choose the book I read,’ he says, so cool and sure I go to interject. I assume he just wants to unravel everything I’ve said, and I’m right in one way. He does unravel something, at the very least. He unravels
me
. He waits, until a dismissal is on the tip of my tongue. And then he tells me this:

‘I
made up
the contents of the book
for
you.’

After which, of course, I can hardly say a thing. I just sit there in the silence he knew those words would create, watching the barest hint of pleasure whisper over his lips. Those eyes of his, suddenly alight with a revelation I know he’s been saving. He kept it to himself for just the right moment, the safest moment, the moment when it would mean the most. And he was right to, oh, God, he was so right.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a sentence hit me so hard.

Or leave me so in awe. He invented those filthy words. He invented them, he created them. And he did it to please me. They were designed to fill me with the utmost longing and lust, so perfect I can still hear them ringing in my head. They are deep down inside me – though God knows I’m glad they are. Now I can think of every single one, as he tells me the rest with all the relish in the world.

‘Every word is my own, put in front of you so you would play. Because you’re right about me, of course you are. What other explanation could there ever be? I see you as clearly as you see me. I just pretend sometimes, when it gets difficult to breathe.’

I rise to my feet. I have to. He gives me no choice. No chance to feel self-conscious about it. I want to go to him, so I simply do it – slowly though, slowly, so as not to startle him. And when I am just a few inches away, I do nothing but speak.

‘It never has to be. Difficult, I mean.’

‘I will be the ruin of you, Molly Parker. How can it be otherwise when I can barely bring myself to touch you? Even now when you stand before me like something from a dream once drawn by Rossetti, I want to run screaming from the room. I want to stay and yet still I want to leave.’

‘Then let me, let me do as much as you can stand,’ I say, then raise my hand. Just a little, just enough, not nearly touching but so close he is about to protest. I hear the breath he takes before the one word he wants to say, and feel the beginnings of his flinch. But before both can solidify, I show him what I intend to do. I stop just short of his cheek, yet stroke over the curve as though I closed the gap.