Curio Vignettes 03 Reversal (5 page)

Caroly’s eyes are wild and bright, darting like lightning bugs. “Jesus, you’re hard.”

Any second. “It hurts,” I tell her through a gasp.

I need to come.

Why can’t I
come?

I buck with another drag of her nails. Years now I’ve been trained to wait for permission—begged or ordered or implied with the tug of eager hands on my ass, my hips, my cock. Hard as I am, as much as I’m suffering, I need to be told.

“Please,” I moan.

“Come.”

I do. I drop to my elbows, press my sweaty forehead to hers with a thump, jam our bodies together. I come like a dam bursting, the most violent, uncontrollable relief. The pleasure in my cock feeds the sensation from the dildo and back again, doubled, deepened. Each wave of it tenses me anew, each flash surely the last, until I feel the next on its heels.

I lost myself, but now there’s her hand gripping my arm, the twinge of pain where my thigh grinds against her hipbone.

I push up onto my palms and she eases the glass out, drawing a final shudder from my throat.

“Oh fuck.”

I’m drunk.

I’ve died, surely. The orgasm killed me.

Caroly combs her fingers through my hair, strokes my neck. She smiles.

She hasn’t come.
“I’m s—”

Two fingers still my lips. “Don’t you dare.”

I nod and swallow my apology.

Her smile sharpens to a grin. “Wow.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. That was… I’ve never seen you like that. So nuts.”

I get control of my legs and flop down alongside her, peeling away the rubber. “Come here.”

She does as my hands ask, letting me pull her to me, her back to my chest.

“It’s your turn.” I can’t even be bothered to strip her. I just push my hand inside her panties, finding her as wet as I’ve ever felt. She gasps, the softest, sweetest noise.

“All this for me,” I mumble, “and I haven’t even touched you.”

My fingers slip against the hard nub of her clit and she gives a thrash from the shock. I’m not the only one who suffered, it seems. I rub her in slow, light circles until she stops jolting, until her hips flex with greedy motions, rubbing her backside against my cock. I put my lips to her ear, still high from my release.

“I love the way you fucked me tonight.” I say it in French, a whisper. She tenses with excitement at the words, stroking my knuckles with frantic fingertips.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard,” I tell her.

“Didier.”

“It felt so good, being at your mercy. Taking whatever you gave me.” Even thinking about it, I’m growing stiff. I’m too spent to bother with the rigmarole of a condom, or to much care about coming a second time, but I slip between her thighs and thrust, just to make her feel what she does to me.

She draws a harsh breath, lets it out as a groan.

“Already you have me hard again.”

“Take me.”

“No. I’ve been spoiled quite enough for one night. Just feel what you do to me.”

I want the tease now, and the ache as I fall asleep. I want to spend the next morning wound up from wanting her. Hurting. Then in the afternoon perhaps I’ll take my turn at being the demanding one.

Her hair smells of lavender, her skin of summer and sex. I kiss her ear, nipping and suckling the lobe as my fingertips stroke her clit. I can nearly taste her. “I’ll spoil you tomorrow,” I promise.

“Sure,” she says, though the panting ruins her quip. “Because tonight was—such a hardship.”

“Shhh.” I kiss her ear again, imagining baubles I might find to decorate that soft skin. With my lips at her neck, I try to conjure a pendant she might prefer. A bracelet or ring or pin, or some other unexpected offering. I’ll discover soon what that gift might be. Very soon. I’ll find some pretty, inadequate object, just a token to punctuate what I really want to give her. My heart. Perhaps my hope.

Her sex is hot against my fingers, body antsy. He hand on mine has grown frantic and I give her thrusts of my cock to match, stroking her lips through the damp fabric.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“About what we did,” she mutters, squeezing my wrist.

“You liked it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you feel, fucking me?”

She doesn’t answer at once. She gulps a few breaths, squirming under my hand. “Strong,” she finally manages.

“Powerful.”

She nods, curls caressing my face.

“That’s how you felt to me too.”

I intensify the teasing and she moans, coming apart stitch by stitch.

“Come, Caroly.”

Her cries fill the room, sweet, ragged sighs and gasps. I feel when she releases, her thighs squeezing my length as her pussy so often has, fingers rubbing my knuckles before she suddenly stills my hand, pressing it hard to her clit, forcing only the faintest motions until she lets go for good.

“Beautiful.” I say it again, burying my face in that soft, soft hair. “So beautiful.”

With a spent shudder, she flops her arm along mine. I hug her tightly.

She shifts, surely feeling my cock still beating hard between her thighs. “Do you want me to—”

“No.” Let it suffer.

For twenty minutes or more I hold her, listening as her breathing goes from speeding to steady, to calm, to sleepy. My erection softens and our sweat cools, though the night is still balmy.

I rouse her, excusing myself for a quick shower to wash away the oil and the stickiness of July. My body feels tender under the cold spray, but it’s nothing to do with the sex. There’s a thinness to my skin, a persisting nakedness quivering in my very cells.

I submitted to her. There’s that. But I’ll do anything in the name of cathartic sex. No, this naked feeling tells me I’ve nothing left to bare to the woman in my bed. No secrets, not a single shadow of my body, no state of emotional crisis short perhaps of tears—and I haven’t shed those in years.

There’s only one thing I’ve held back. Those two little words—three, should I utter them in English. All just sounds in the end, just my soul tumbling from my lips into her ear. A trifle.

But I can’t tonight.

Not from a place of weakness, no matter how willing and pleasurable the deconstruction was. I’ll tell her outside as I’d planned, standing under the sky she reintroduced me to, with my hands trembling but my confidence steeled. I’ll pick the caretaker’s padlock with the very tools she handed me and take her to the roof, stare out over the city I love and hate so deeply, and tell her then. Whatever gift I find for her at that shop, I’ll fold it in her palm and wonder if she can feel my heartbeat wrapped in her slender fingers.

I shut off the water, towel myself dry. The bedroom is dark, only one candle left burning and the night sky black. I shut the curtains, but not for fear of the city’s mockery this time. Only to feel closer to the woman in my bed.

It’s too sultry for sheets, and she makes room atop the covers. She changed into pajamas in my absence, the ones she wore the first night she slept over, tiny embroidered goldfish scattered across stormy blue-gray satin. I leave the candle to burn itself out, wrap her in my naked body once more and kiss her long neck.

“So,” she sighs.

“Yes?”

“How did I do tonight? Driving?”

“How did
you
do tonight? You were a natural.” I squeeze her tighter. “What other women are you hiding behind that novice act?”

“I dunno. I didn’t even know about that one you just met.”

“Well I like her. She’s welcome in this bed.” I slip her hair behind her ear and press my lips to her jaw. “Though perhaps not until I’ve had a chance to be conductor again, for a performance or two.”

She goes still in my arms for few tight, thoughtful breaths. Her body’s cues are a mastered dialect to me now, and I wait patiently, knowing she’s choosing words.

Soon enough, she frees herself to turn over. She blinks at my chin and rubs idly at my collarbone, assembling a thought.

I smooth an errant lock. “Yes?”

“I told you tonight, I don’t want to feel like your medication. Something you numb yourself with.”

“And I agree.”

“How do you feel about the opposite, about my treating you like…I dunno. A project. A patient.”

“I’ve never thought that, about your intentions.”

“No?”

I kiss her nose. “You treat me like a friend. You soothe me when I’m upset but push me when I need pushing.”

She softens. “Okay. I just don’t want you to wind up resenting me for putting you in all these positions to
get
upset.”

“I could never resent you.”

It’s a soft, kind lie. I resent her in tiny, sharp flashes, but only in moments of deep panic. Even in the midst of those pangs, I know my anger is misplaced. It’s me I resent, that I can’t move through this world the way other men can. I accept her invitations to remind myself of this fact, but to blame her would be cowardly.

“I only want…” She trails off, not liking whatever words she found at the end of that sentence.

“You only want what?”

“I was going to say, I only want you to be happy. But that’s not entirely true. I want all this for myself too. To be able to see you, outside. Go places with you. Not that going to bed with you isn’t pretty wonderful, of course.”

I kiss her for that, liking her guilty smile. “I know what you mean. I want those things too.”

All at once she moves, slipping a bit farther down in my embrace so she can rest her cheek against my shoulder. “I think you’re very brave.”

“Even when I’m shaking, breathing into my collar to keep from passing out?”

“Especially then.”

I press my lips to the crown of her head.
You’ll see me shaking soon enough.
I glance at the ceiling, imagining the roof above, standing there with Caroly and fumbling through those words that must be said.

“What are you thinking about?” She reads my signals as easily as I do hers.

“About going out.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I lie.

“Let’s just go to the usual café. Nice and close.”

“Sure.” If she stays over tomorrow night we’ll likely do the same on Sunday, before she has to head home to her flat. I’ll kiss her goodbye, wave as she turns the corner. Let her think I’m going home as well, but I’ll unfold my careful directions and map and set out for Gobelins again. Back at my quest, lest I give her any more cause for doubt. Lest I let the prize go unclaimed for too long and allow some other man to prove himself worthier in my stead.

I picture my hutch, lined with its watches and clocks and other wind-up treasures.

They glitter like liquor bottles, I realize. I hide inside them as an alcoholic might, numbing and procrastinating and telling myself
tomorrow
.

Always
tomorrow
, I’ll be a better man.

But I’ve let tomorrows gather like bricks, three years’ worth. If I keep going that way, I’ll wake some morning and find this garret stacked dark and tight and airless as a crypt, no room for Caroly, no room for anything but me and that cabinet. Give it enough time and no one will come knocking anymore. Or if they do, my walls will have grown too thick to hear.

My heart is thumping, my mouth dry. Caroly stirs from the edge of sleep. “Everything okay?”

“I’ll be back.”

I let her go and leave the bed, finding my pants and yanking them up my legs.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“I don’t know. Not far. Just to the pavement.”

She sits up. “Really?”

“Yes. I won’t even be five minutes.”

A long pause as I pull a shirt over my head.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll be right here.”

My legs are already weak as I stride through the living room, fingers clumsy as I unlock the door. I grab my keys from their hook and pocket them.

The hall tile is cool under my bare feet, the carpet on the stairs worn and gritty, the railing smooth in my grip. The air seems to grow thin as I descend, an alpine climb in reverse. More tile as I reach the ground floor, and that dreaded rectangular slice of street at the end of the corridor is growing closer, closer. Through the first door and past the postboxes. Usually they trigger me, with their tiny knobs and hinges, miniscule windows.
Come back inside,
they say.
You like it inside.

But I think,
Fuck you all.

Fuck you and all the times you’ve witnessed my paralysis at this very threshold. Fuck you and every check slipped between your cold brass lips to keep me here.

The front door handle is cold in my sweaty palm but it turns. It turns and I pull, and Paris spills in from the street, its sounds and smells and its breezes, a living, breathing beast, jaws as wide as the sky.

The warm granite steps are under my soles, then the brick and pebbles of the pavement. I stand before sixteen Rue des Toits Rouges and jam my shaky hands in my pockets.