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Authors: Cara McKenna

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BOOK: Curio
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“How hot do you want the water?” he asked me.

I balked a moment, worried he thought I wanted to join him.

“Choose for me,” he elaborated.

“Oh.” It felt like an odd request, but when I rose and put my hand under the flow, it made perfect sense. Did I want him to be warm and comfortable? Cold and tense? Scalded to within a gasp of fainting? I opted for the temperature I like myself, hot but not too hot. I took my seat.

“Thank you,” he said, and stepped inside.

I don’t know what it is about a man in the shower… His eyes shut and his dark hair turned black as the water cascaded over his face and shoulders, down his chest and stomach and legs, slipping from his oiled cock. My pulse sped as he took a bar of soap from a tray, turning it around and around. He taunted me until the lather was thick and dripping from his hands. His eyes opened, holding me hostage.

He slicked a palm across his throat, his shoulder, down his arm. As he stroked his chest, the suds slid down the crests of his abdomen and between his legs. He broke eye contact to turn, letting me watch as he soaped his hair and his elegant back. He slicked lather between his ass cheeks with a slow, explicit sensuality. The caress unleashed strange, taboo possibilities in my head, ones that had never held much interest for me before that precise moment.

He turned to face me again, leaning back against the tile with his feet braced at shoulder-width. For what felt like ages he soaped his chest and neck and stomach, before he finally slid his hands lower. Those dangerous eyes closed as he cupped his balls, fondling and lingering, the filthiest act of ablution I’ve ever seen.

After a few more slippery turns of the bar in his hands, he lathered his cock.

“Good,” I murmured.

He didn’t touch himself as he had on the bed. This was for me, first and foremost, not merely a voyeuristic glimpse at private acts. He gave himself long, lazy strokes, as if he knew exactly what I wanted—to savor every wet, glistening square inch of his bare body.

“Tell me what you think I want,” I said. “Not just tonight. But eventually.”

Eyes still closed, he paused before he spoke. “I think you want me to take you.”

“How?”

I could have sworn his fist gripped tighter, his strokes no longer a show meant only for me, but pleasure for himself. “Slow,” he said. “Slow at first.”

“Where?”

“In my bed. You want me on top.”

My throat and pussy tightened.

“You want to be taken, your first time,” he went on. “You need to be passive before you can feel ready to take for yourself. When you trust my body, then you’ll explore.”

“Explore how?”

“Find out what it feels like, to have a man in your mouth.”

“That usually comes first, doesn’t it? Before the actual sex?”

He smiled to himself. “That
is
actual sex. And yes, it does often come first, but I don’t think it should.”

“No?”

“No. I think that act is more explicit than mere fucking.”

I shivered, wondering if maybe I shared this view.

“To trust someone when you can barely see their eyes,” he murmured. “To give up your own comfort and control and take pleasure in their commands, their experience. And for the one who receives, the vulnerability of being seen so close up, smelled and tasted.”

“I never thought about it like that. It always seemed like…like the thing you do between fooling around and going all the way.”

“It can be, if you like. But it isn’t to me.” His brown eyes finally opened. “When sexual pleasure loses its mutuality, that’s when the fear and the trust emerge. That’s real intimacy. To me.”

I was being offered lessons on real intimacy from a man who fucks for money, yet I was inclined to subscribe. Then again, with that deep and nasty-sexy accent, Didier could tell me how to strip wallpaper or press flowers and I’d still be riding on the brink of orgasm.

“I like that,” I told him. “Your views about it all.”

“This is just what I’ve learned from the women I’ve been with. When you leave here, I’ll have learned something from you as well, I’m sure.”

I found that hard to believe…I’m the least sexually experienced woman I know. But the way he said it had me
wanting
to believe it, which was enough.

“You’ll teach me what it’s like to get a private woman to open up, perhaps.”

“I hope so. I’d like to learn that, myself.”

“What else would you like to learn?”

“Well, how to be with a man, I guess.”

He gave me a strange, crooked smile. “You want me to teach you how to be a good lover?”

“Maybe. Well, no. Not really. I just want to know all the things I should by now…what it’s like to touch a man, what everything feels like.”

“I can only teach you what it will be like between you and I.”

You and I.
I could’ve sighed aloud at that concept, the two of us encapsulated as a couple. “Then that’s what I’d like to learn. At my own pace.”

“At your pace,” he agreed.

Didier’s own pace had me hypnotized—the slippery, gliding pulls that had his cock looking so hot and thick. How would I want it to be, when I touched him for the first time? Who would be above whom, or how could it be made equitable? I thought perhaps I’d like to touch him as we kissed…or did I want both our pairs of eyes on my hand, his cock? I was already trapped in the worries of what would come, wasting the magic of the present.

“Are you enjoying this?” he asked me.

“I am. But I’m making myself anxious, thinking about whatever’s going to happen next.”

“Did you think when you first arrived that we’d come this far?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“What happens will happen, exactly the way it’s meant to.”

As I nodded, I truly believed him.

“All you need to do is be honest with yourself and with me about what you want. You’ve done that perfectly so far.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you wanting?” he asked. “Right now?”

“I think I want to touch you. But not here. Maybe on your couch.”

He released his cock and set the soap aside. As he rinsed his magnificent body, he said, “Then we will go to the couch and find out if that is meant to be.”

I preceded him to the living room, turning on a dim reading lamp and refilling our glasses while Didier dressed. He joined me on the couch in his pants, his shirt unbuttoned, to my great delight. He accepted his glass and took a deep drink, staring at me over the rim.

“So,” I said.

“So. You are pleased with how this is going?”

“Very. You’ve made me way more comfortable than I’d guessed was possible.”

“Good.”

I leaned a bit closer, addressing his chest. “You’re very intuitive. What else do you think I want, tonight?”

“I think you want to control when I come. You want to feel some control, but also feel safe. Passive.”

“I think you’re right.”

“You’ve seen that before, I’m sure. A man pleasuring himself? Coming?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you enjoy watching? Videos? Or looking at pictures?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been curious enough to check them out, but I don’t really enjoy it for more than a minute or two. I’m never attracted to the men, and I don’t want to see the other women, in case I catch myself comparing myself to them.”

“I think you’re possessive, maybe?”

“I think I’m too fussy. And I think I’ve spent too much time in my own head, imagining things I’ll never be able to have, and no one in real life could ever live up to my ideas.”

“You can have those things with me.”

“I hope so. But once I leave…I’ll never really be able to have you, a man like you. But I want to experience it anyhow. Like a wonderful feast I’ll never be served again.”

Didier’s face turned thoughtful and he sat up, drawing a knee to his chest and wrapping his arms around it, obscuring my view. “What do you mean, a man like me? Why can’t you have whatever you want?”

“I’m not pretty enough,” I mumbled. “And even if I could land a man as perfect-looking as I want, I don’t think I could ever relax, I’d be so worried he’d leave me.”

“Do you think maybe that’s not what you’re afraid of at all?”

I
did
think that, sometimes, but I just shrugged.

“Maybe,” Didier said, “you’re more afraid of being left by a man you see as your equal. So you tell yourself you’ll only ever be satisfied with one you think is better than you are, and you give yourself permission to not bother.”

“But I don’t want to settle. I don’t want to spend my life pretending the man I’m with turns me on when he really doesn’t.”

“What turns you on, aside from the perfect face and body?”

I blinked. “I’m not sure. Charisma, maybe.”

“Wit? Kindness? Talent?”

“I guess.”

“You like the way I look, yes?”

I nodded. “Very much.”

“Say we fell in love, got married.”

“Okay.” I shifted in my chair, unnerved by the impossibility of such a notion.

“All of this,” he said, circling his face, “will become mundane. What if you do not like anything beyond what’s on the outside?”

“You make me sound like a man, after a trophy wife.”

“And if we are together forty years, for maybe ten of those I might still be the object you crave. What then?”

“Are you trying to make me feel bad?”

He smiled. “No. I’m trying to understand why you’ve constructed these rules for yourself. Why you seem to want permission to opt out of love.”

“It’s scary.”

“Of course it is. That’s what makes it so exciting.”

“Maybe.”

“On your end,” he said, pointing at me, “you fear the rejection of a man you deem too attractive to ever want you. On my end, I might fear that what I have on the inside will only disappoint you, once my looks are gone. Put out on the pavement like a once-loved chair, after the cushions are stained and worn.”

I frowned, a potent pang of sadness twisting my insides. “I don’t think about men that way. Really.”

“I’m not suggesting I understand you,” he said in a kind tone. “But I’d like to. That’s why I’m asking all these questions. You’re a very extraordinary client. You interest me very much.”

I blushed at that. “You must think I’m a sociopath. Or some female chauvinist.”

“I don’t. I think you’re just scared. I want to know what you’re scared of.”

“Of being left, I guess. Of not being good enough.”

“Did that happen to you, when you were young?”

I laughed, partly uncomfortable, partly amused. “You
are
a prostitute, right? Not a shrink?”

“If I’m prying too much, tell me so.”

“No, I don’t really mind. And I wasn’t ever really left as a kid. Both my parents were around until I was in high school, and when my mother moved out it was actually a relief. But I was a really awkward kid. I know, all children are at some point, but I was like, properly homely. I didn’t really get it together until I was out of high school.”

“And your classmates were cruel to you?”

“Yeah, but not just because I was weird-looking. I was mean, too. Bossy and rude when I thought I was smarter than other kids.” Why was I telling all this to the sexiest man I’d ever met, sitting open-shirted and wet-haired mere feet from me? And why precisely did it feel so good?

“A bully?” he asked.

“No, not quite. I didn’t go after anyone, wanting to hurt their feelings. I was just clueless and reactionary. I didn’t know how to hold back whatever I was feeling. I couldn’t separate emotions from reality, my dad used to say. Everything hit me on this intense, visceral level, and if I was angry or insulted, I couldn’t step back and calm myself down before I reacted.”

“I could see how that would be alienating.”

“My mother was the same way, sometimes. But she’s severely bipolar. I’m not, but I learned how to interact with people from her. It wasn’t until she left and I went to college that I really realized how not-normal it was, living that way. I’d grown up seeing that my dad always caved in the face of her mood swings, until the day he filed for divorce. So my kid brain thought, hey, that’s how you get your way.”

“Usually it is the parents who teach the child that tantrums are not the way to get what you want.”

I nodded. I felt odd, woozy from having told this stranger so much. Much more than I’d ever shared with anyone since moving to France.

“It’s nice,” Didier said, “getting to hear about you.”

I laughed. “Really? I must sound like such a mess.”

“Everyone is a mess. If you and I are meant to make love, I wouldn’t want to do that without trying to understand you first.”

“I thought this would be way different.”

“That I’d be some object?” he asked.

“Kind of. Just that it’d be all about appearances. I mean, I figured the women who come to see you are looking for the fantasy, the illusion. Like a place where they don’t have to worry about sharing anything personal.”

“I suppose some whores offer that.”

It gave me pause, hearing him use that word. An ugly, blunt word, though his heavy accent made it less a cinderblock than a strong shot of liquor.

“For me,” he went on, “I think the experience is better for everyone when there is a connection. And you cannot connect to someone if you know nothing about them aside from their body. A woman could have a scar across her throat, and I cannot help it—I want to know, was that from an assault? A surgery? A cycling accident? I’m curious. Every woman goes beyond a body and a collection of kinks, even a personality. Each woman is like a landscape to me, and I want know the history, not just the placement of the rocks and trees.”

“That’s rather poetic.”

Didier grinned, that smile that makes my middle melt.

“Would you like to kiss?” he asked.

My stomach gave a flip. I hadn’t expected him to initiate anything, but he must know as well as I do, I need coaxing if I’m ever to get anywhere. “I’d like to try that.”

He lowered his leg and turned onto his hip, leaning one arm on the back of the couch. I scooted closer and did the same, pulse speeding.

“Do you like to kiss, or be kissed?” he asked.

“Somewhere in the middle.”

BOOK: Curio
7.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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