Sweet Agony (9 page)

And then they stop just shy, in a way that is brutally brilliant.

I had no idea the space between bodies could be so amazing. No clue that stopping just short was more intense than going over the edge. With other guys I always wanted to rush, fumbling frantically towards some finishing line I never quite reached. But this is different. This is exquisite, this is agony, this is everything all at once.

So much so that I think a tear rolls down my cheek.

In fact I know it does, when he carries on with whatever this is. How could it not, with the excruciating things he does? He strokes my body all over, without once laying a finger on me or going over any line. He doesn’t need to. Just feeling the air stir between his hand and my lower back is enough, and even more so when he adds instructions. ‘That’s right, shoulders a little further back,’ he says, while his hands hover around my upper arms.

And I die a thousand deaths.

Then a thousand more for ‘Legs a little further apart’
.
He just adds that to his other suggestions, as though somehow it’s the same. There is nothing the least bit lewd about it. He only wants to help me, you see. He just wants to make me stand straight, even though opening your legs doesn’t help with that.

If anything, it tilts me sideways. I lift one foot and try to move it one step to the right, and my whole body seems to lose its stability. Everything wobbles and cants at a weird angle, until my heel is firmly planted on the ground again. And even when it is, I feel unbalanced. I want to lean on something, at least.

But the only thing to lean on is him.

His desk is about a mile away. The nearest wall is even further. And, as the time ticks on, the distance between me and things to hold on to only increases. Everything is narrowing down to his eyes on me, so cool and steady I could never believe he meant anything by this. Not even when he makes another suggestion, even lewder than the last.

‘A little more,’ he says, as though I moved only a millimetre last time, instead of a Goddamn mile. I think I might be starting to stretch the limits of this dress, yet he persists. And the bloody
tone
he uses, so low and sinuous. He could ruin a nun with sounds like that. He could make tea and cake seem like the most deplorable criminal act.

It certainly feels as though I might get five to ten in Broadmoor, if I do one more thing he says. I can practically hear the sirens, as I try shakily to take that extra step. Some policeman is going to ask me why I thought it was OK to stand like a slut in his study, when all he wanted was to give me a lesson in how to be a lady.

And I will have no answers. I can barely explain to myself why I feel this way, let alone to an imaginary policeman. It should be easy to avoid. I should want to respect his boundaries. He never does anything to test my restraint, and yet I practically have to limp to the door once he’s done. He tells me that this will do for now and I hobble out, so breathless I have to stop and lean against the wall outside for a second.

I have to catch my breath and cool myself down, while he probably picks lint from his trousers and has a sip of tea. No doubt he thinks he did a wonderful job of making me a better person, and I just sullied it with my soaking vagina. My only consolation is that he never seemed to notice.

But next time I know I might not be so lucky. Next time he might accidentally do something worse, like eat a banana really slowly or run a brush through his tangle of curls. And though neither seems particularly likely, it still feels best to avoid him, just in case. Better safe than sorry, I think, and then I spend most of my days dodging him the way he once dodged me.

Now it’s my turn to hide behind doors and disappear into secret rooms – or at least I would if the secret rooms really existed. But, sadly for me, all I can find is a broom cupboard and a linen closet. At one point I hear him coming down the stairs and duck into the space underneath it, almost gleeful with relief when he passes me by. I skip to the first step, thinking that this might actually be possible. I can just keep away until my crush disappears.

And then I hear him call my name, and all is lost.

‘Molly,’ he says – not ‘Ms Parker’ or ‘hey, you’ or even an order of some kind. My first name, spoken with such familiarity that my heart starts immediately pounding. I freeze on the stairs, so close to escaping I can almost taste it. I even consider going ahead with that, as though I never heard him at all. Later I can send him a note that says, ‘Sorry I missed you.’

But just as I decide to do it he calls again.

‘Molly, I know you are there.’

There is no way I can avoid that. He can probably hear me standing here like a statue, and so any attempt at leaving will seem deeply suspicious. He might even guess my filthy lusts simply because I steer clear, and so I decide to go to my doom. I take a breath and double back to the parlour, where he is sitting as though without a care in the world. It doesn’t even seem important to him that I turned up.

He just studies the book in his hand, while I stand there in the doorway.

Eventually I have to prompt him, which goes very badly for me.

‘Did you want me for something, Mr Harcroft?’ I ask, and immediately want to kick myself for about a thousand reasons. I called him Mr Harcroft instead of Cyrian, for a start. Now it seems like I went back on my earlier insistence or lost some confidence along the way. I am smaller than I was, slighter, and he has to wonder why.

And then there are the words ‘want me’.

Why did I say ‘want me’?

I can tell it gets his attention. His head turns a fraction to the right, and his gaze shifts just enough for me to know what he is doing. Watching me with his peripheral vision, I think, then I want to disappear immediately. In fact, I get very close. I even come up with an excuse – ‘I need to make a trip to the dry cleaners’ – and only fail to deliver because he gets there before I can gather myself.

‘Yes, I do want you,’ he tells me.

Then all I can do is wish I had been quicker. If I had been quicker I wouldn’t have had to hear him say something men usually say in bed. I could have avoided the sudden weakness in my knees, and left without a second glance. Certainly I could have got away before he finished, which would have been far, far better for me.

The next part is even worse.

Oh, God, it is so, so much worse.

‘I was hoping you might offer me your opinion on a passage I seem to be struggling with. You know, from the book I read to you,’ he says, so casually I feel sure I must have misheard for a second. He barely looks up from the pages. The expression on his face remains so neutral he could be talking about some weighty text he is studying. He even has a pen poised over the margin, as though he intends to make notes as he did in the Dickens.

But when I catch a glimpse of the top line I wonder what he could possibly write. Somehow I doubt arse-fucking is a suitable topic for close analysis, but he seems intent on trying. Apparently he takes his porn just as seriously and logically as everything else.

And, worse, he expects me to as well.

He gestures to the chair and imagines I will sit down, even though I can’t, I fucking can’t, oh, God, I could never. I already feel as though I’ve been on an escalator to arousal for the past two weeks, and that was over nothing. There is no way I can cope with more. I have to say no.

So why do I say yes?

Apart from the fact that he has trapped me, in the same way as he did before. If I refuse it will tell him everything, as surely as if I had lifted up my skirt and shown him my ladyparts. I will look guilty of things I haven’t done and wicked without even trying, and so here I am: forced to fake indifference under the most appalling of circumstances. And this time they are the most appalling. There is no gently easing me with peach cunts and pussy licking.

Instead he begins with:

‘She groaned as they filled every hole she had.’

And everything just goes downhill from there. He doesn’t pause, to give me a chance to catch my breath. He just keeps going, until I start to lose my self-control. I feel it slipping away from me as he flicks to the next page, then further away when he reaches the next. In a second it will just be a thread – some tiny, flimsy thing barely tethering me to my dignity. One more word and it will snap, and after that I don’t know what will happen.

I might jump on him.

I could conceivably tear off all his clothes.

But thankfully I only put a hand between my legs. It seems bad, but considering the alternatives it’s not such a big deal. It’s almost freeing to finally give in to it. Like I have an itch under some stitches, and finally get to scratch.

He can hardly blame me for that.

But oh, God, he does.

He does.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he says, so suddenly it almost takes me by surprise. I think I was just sinking into it and must have closed my eyes – lost for a second in something like relief – and then he spoke and everything turned to shit.

Now I have to answer.

Even though my answer is terrible.

‘I just had to readjust myself,’ I say, like some teenage boy on a bus trying to get out of a sexual harassment charge. He never meant to let his penis pop out. His fly was just pressing into his testicles. He is completely innocent, honest, your honour.

Not that your honour buys it.

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

‘I would really appreciate it if you would.’

‘Then I am afraid I must disappoint you. I saw it clearly and quite frankly I am appalled that you would think that appropriate behaviour for the parlour. And in the middle of the morning too – could you not even wait for a more fitting time like, say, never ever on pain of death? At the very least you could have done it furtively, in the bathroom, like a decent person,’ he says, then obviously waits for me to be thoroughly mortified.

And I am, I really and truly am.

I find myself thinking about certain things he said there. My mind drifts over the words ‘furtively’ and ‘in the bathroom’, almost against my will. Half of me wonders if that is what he does, even as the other half is fucking appalled that I could even ask the question. He must be right, I think. I really am indecent.

So much so that I say this in my defence:

‘But you just read that filthy thing out loud.’

‘So you compound your error by blaming me.’

‘No, no, not blame exactly, not
blame
,’ I say, but I can hear myself starting to panic now. There are no angles I can play here. Nothing witty I can say when I just essentially became that teenage boy on the bus.

When he responds, I feel like a serious predator.

‘But you believe I am in some way responsible for this? I asked for your opinion, Molly. Never once did I suggest that you should give it by sticking your hand up your skirt,’ he says, by which point I am starting to sweat. My hands flap and my voice is very high and very tight. ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘sorry, I really am sorry,’ but I can already tell, before he even speaks, it’s going to be too little too late.

And then he does and oh, Lord help me.

‘You think an apology will make up for such lewd behaviour?’

That leaves me almost no room to manoeuvre. If he won’t accept an apology, the next step is my untimely firing. I can see that, yet I still want to try.

‘Well, how else can I possibly make amends?’ I ask, and I really mean it too. There must be something, I think, and, thank God, there is. Though I am not sure God deserves gratitude here. I think Satan might, instead.

In fact I know Satan does, because he’s sitting right in fucking front of me.

‘Typically, I think, women who behave badly get spanked,’ he says.

The room seems to lose cabin pressure, even though we are not on a plane. At any rate, something seems to drop. Possibly the penny, but if so it must be the size of a small planet.

It all but crushes me in its path. All I can do is sit there for a second with my mouth probably hanging open, because oh, my God, he is doing this on purpose. He is doing this on purpose. How could I not have known he was doing this on purpose? He loves disguising one thing as another. He practically spent the first month of me living here carefully hiding any friendly feelings he had for me behind a lot of things he thought I would hate.

I should have known it was the same thing here. He can spot an emotion from seventy paces. He probably saw excitement on my face before I even knew it was there.

And he knew just how to torture me. He knew to suggest without really saying, to imply without ever crossing the line into the unequivocal. He played on the very problem I had before, the very thing he probably learned from our conversation in the library: I worry about imagining something is there when it isn’t. And oh, he did it so well I want to applaud. In fact, I most likely would.

If he hadn’t just completely overplayed his hand.

He just did the equivalent of throwing everything in on a pair of jacks, so sure I would back down that he barely saw the straight flush lurking in the river. He was too explicit, too rude, too eager to say that word:
spanked.
He should never have said ‘spanked’. Maybe he could have to someone else, someone who cares only a little, someone less like him. But I am not nearly so closed off, nor so silly.

And when he pushes, I push back.

I push back so hard it makes my heart thunder. When I look down I can see my chest shivering slightly, as that storm rages inside. My legs buckle a little when I slowly stand, but none of that matters. He can see me looking nervous. He can think I am suddenly weak. It won’t make any difference.

Not when I turn around with exquisite, deliberate care and put my hands on the back of the couch. Just enough so that I bend a little in the middle. So that I can stand with my legs a little way apart, in a position anyone in the world would understand. But just in case he doesn’t – just in case he is more talk and no trousers than I thought – I glance over my shoulder. I meet his gaze. His face is so pale it could pass for a fainting lady’s.