Slow Hand (14 page)

“Street Fighting Man. That was about something.”

“Yeah, I’m a street fighting man. When I get home from the riot, fuck me.”

Lucy laughed. There had to be one.“What about that song … oh, what was it called? It was on ‘Between the Buttons.’”

“‘Ruby Tuesday’?”

“No, that’s not on ‘Between the Buttons.’”

“Sure it is.”

“No it’s not.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I have the album, I’m positive.”

“So am I.”

“What do you want to bet?”

“Let’s make it juicy.”

“Okay.”

She lay down on her back to think. He slid over, lifted her blouse, and moved his lips slowly across the smooth, taut hollow of her stomach. She sighed, and reached up to run her hand along his back, but he took the hand off and set it on the floor.

“I can’t touch you?”

“Nope. You can’t do anything.” He went to the record cabinet to look for“Between the Buttons.”

“This is stupid.”

“You’ll come around.”

“What shall we bet?” Lucy said. His arrogance was galling.

“Dinner at the restaurant of one’s choice.”

“In Paris.”

“It’s not here,” Joe said.

“Might be upstairs.”

He got to his feet, she started up after him, but he turned, pointing at her.“Sit down.” She did. He walked behind her, lifted the long dark hair and kissed the nape of her neck.“Nice try.”

“I’m not going to throw this.”

He began unbuttoning her blouse.“You hold still.” She did.

He set her blouse on a table and sat about six feet from her. ‘You look better with your clothes off.”

“You’re blowing this, you know. When you want to, I’ll have cooled.”

“I’m not worried.” He sipped his drink. He was wearing a blue shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and she could not help staring at his arms. They were tan, smooth, with muscles rippling under the skin and a covering of fine blond hair. She felt a shock of desire so strong it was like pain.

“Lucy, it’s an act of almost superhuman control for me not to jump on you right now, but I’m not going to. Because delaying it will make the pleasure even more intense.”

“No!” She twisted in frustration.“You’re playing with me, and I don’t like it.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are, and I want you to stop.”

He crawled across the floor and put his face up to hers.

“Can you tell me exactly what you want me to stop?”

She considered how to phrase it.“No.”

They laughed. Joe rolled with her to the floor, kissing her again and again in the crook of her bare neck, but then he stopped himself.

“Let’s decide what the bet will be,” he said, returning to his chair.

“The loser has to be the other’s slave. See how you like it.”

“For how long?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Okay, if you want to prolong the agony. Where’s the album?” He started for the stairs.

“Not up there.”

He turned.

“In the bookcase. Bottom shelf.”

When Joe found the album, a smile came to his face.

“I’m right, aren’t I,” she said.

He slid the record out of the jacket, cued it on the
turntable, and paused.“Still want that bet? I’m willing to let you off now, because I’m such a nice guy.”

He was bluffing.“Play it.”

Lucy’s hands flew in the air, she was certain she had won, but at the first chord she was slumped in defeat. How could this be? She had believed with all her soul that she was right, and she wasn’t. She walked to the window.

“Here are the terms. Tonight doesn’t count. You’ll be my slave on any day I choose.”

“You really want to humiliate me, don’t you.”

He came up, took her by the shoulders with a gentleness that surprised her, and kissed her, a kiss like those she had dreamed of at thirteen: walking down a dappled lane in a faraway place with a strange new boy. When Joe pulled away, she burst into tears.“I’m scared.”

She saw a look of alarm. He walked closer, and when his face was next to hers, the pouting, hurt look in her eyes turned to merriment. He grabbed her.“You’re fantastic.” Then he put one arm under her legs, the other under her arms, and, hoisting her sideways, headed for the stairs.

For the next several hours, she was not permitted to move a hand, she could not tell him where or when to touch her, but he knew.

She was not fighting anymore, she was nearly out of her mind with pleasure. It was every fantasy she had ever daydreamed. Foreplay that had no end. Lovemaking that had no objective but to tantalize and please. This was going to last all night—nights and nights and nights—and it was all being done
to
her.

She was on her back, and Joe was above her, balanced on his arms.“I want you to be my slave now. Tell me I’m better than everyone.”

“You think you’re better than me?”

“I’m not saying that. Tell me I’m better than everyone.”

“You ain’t better than me.”

He slid out.“You’re my slave, you have to.” He began to stroke her with his finger.

“I can’t say something I don’t …”

“Is that right?”

“… believe, and have it be … credible.”

She loved what he was doing, she loved him, she wanted it to last forever. The finger stopped.

Looking at him earnestly, she said,“You’re better than
everyone.”

The finger resumed.“Big deal.” He burst out laughing. He slid down between her legs, homing in with the same instinctive accuracy he had shown all night. She could feel the climax now, swishing its tail like a fish. He was pulling it up and out of her. Up and up it came, big, this fish was going to set records, they were going to weigh it, they would pose beside it for photographs. You could see its powerful form rising up through the water, navy blue.

“Let me now, Joe,” she said,“please, let me …”

It broke the surface, shooting into the air with spray.

She was jelly, she could not stop laughing. He plunged into her as she lay, arms flopped above her head.“Move a little,” he said.“Okay, stop now.” She lay still, the way she had always, secretly, wanted to lie. It felt good, oh it was good like this, she loved lying back passively with her arms flung up, but as he went on, she began to move, involuntarily at first. Her small rump began to bounce, then she was matching his movements, pulling on him, squeezing.

“Oh sweetheart.”

“Yes.”

“Now.”

“So fucking good!”

It was seven in the morning. They had been making love for almost four hours. She had not kissed him or touched him with her hands, and he had been hard the entire time.

“Have you done this before?” she said.

“No.”

They stared at each other, awed and a little scared, until the room became a bubble of heightened feeling and the world outside—the
people in their apartments, sleeping, eating cornflakes, turning on the television—seemed to exist on another plane that was shallow and dull.

They tried to sleep, but kept thinking of things they wanted to say and arousing each other unwittingly as they tossed.

“We’ve got to sleep,” Joe said.“I wish I had a Valium.”

She went to the bathroom and returned with two yellow pills.

Joe swallowed his, took a swig from the amaretto bottle, and kissed her, sweetness on his lips.

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

Lisa Tuttle, a much-published writer in several genres, here shows that she’s as capable of being perverse as she is of being original. Naturally, any editor’s concern, when introducing such a blink-if-you-dare story, is not to reveal too much, but there are a few things I feel it’s safe to mention. In“The Story of No” you will encounter a wife, a husband, a memory, and a surprise, and, oh yes, there
is
a copy of a certain book by Pauline Réage.

A
t first sight I thought I knew him and felt my blood heat, my muscles loosen, the breath evaporate from my lungs.

The imprint of his touch rose like stigmata on my skin, and the memory of his tongue hungry in my mouth aroused a need I hadn’t admitted to myself for a long time, a desire for the forbidden.

“What is it?” asked my husband. Startled, I looked across the restaurant table at the well-known face and remembered who and where I was: a wife in her forties staying in an elegant, expensive English country house hotel with her husband,
the vacation our anniversary present to each other.“See someone you know?”

“No.” For that was in another country, and besides …“He wouldn’t be that young, if it was who I thought. He was that age
then.”
The man I remembered would be my age still and maybe would still find me attractive. That young man couldn’t be much past twenty. If he looked at me, he’d see someone old enough to be his mother, someone not worth noticing, sexually invisible. He turned his head, and his clear green gaze fell on me with a shock like cold water, and he smiled.

“You’re blushing,” said my husband with interest.“Was he an old boyfriend?”

“No. Oh, no. Just someone I met once in Houston. Do you want to taste my salmon mousse?”

Once. A single night. Yet the memory of it was with me always. Many a dull or sleepless night I had pulled it out to comfort myself. I had used it so often it had come to seem like a story I’d read somewhere, and not something that had really happened to me. As a fantasy, I’d even shared it with my husband some nights in bed. But it was real—or had been, once.

I first saw him in a Montrose bar, drinking by himself. He had a tumble of black curls surrounding a long, clean-shaven face, with a sensuous mouth and startling green eyes. Only the overlarge, slightly crooked nose kept him from beauty, but his was a striking face and mine were not the only eyes drawn to stare at it. Nor was it only his face that attracted. He had a physical presence as disturbing as some rare perfume. His was not an outstanding body—nobody would have picked him to model for a centerfold—but it was long and slim and wiry. My husband, handsome, tall, and well-muscled, was certainly more attractive by objective standards, but I wasn’t thinking of my husband as I admired the fit of the stranger’s jeans.

I took a seat and ordered a drink. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I hadn’t been planning adultery. I was content, I thought, to look and not touch. I liked the way his lips curled around a cigarette and his eyes narrowed against the smoke. I liked his slender fingers, and the way he moved, shifting his weight or
rolling the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders as unselfconsciously as an animal.

I gazed for a time at his intriguing, less-than-classical profile, then shifted my stare, let it fall in a caress on his shoulders, his back, down to the ass which so nicely filled his tight, faded jeans. He turned his head lazily toward me as if he’d felt, and liked, my touch. I moved my eyes back up his body to meet his eyes, and I didn’t smile. He was the first to look away. Then I did smile, but only to myself.

Someone else, a man, approached him, cigarette in hand, and he gave him a light and responded to his conversational ventures absently, his attention hooked by me. I could feel his senses straining in my direction even when his back was turned, his eyes fixed elsewhere, his ears assaulted by the blandishments of the cigarette smoker—who eventually gave up and took his need to someone else. Which was when my prey turned around and looked at me again.

I had to hide a smile of triumph. That I retained the ability to make a man desire me was reassuring. I had been feeling mired in marriage, as if my wedding ring had conferred invisibility, and his look sent a surge of well-being through me. As he straightened, flexing his shoulders and the muscles of his long back before moving away from the bar with an easy, loose-jointed motion, I imagined him naked and aroused and felt a tightening of my internal muscles.

He bought me a drink and then I bought him one. We sat and looked at each other. There were few words, none of importance. The conversation that mattered was conducted between our bodies, in minute shifts in posture and attitude, in the crossing and uncrossing of my legs as I leaned toward him and then back, in the way he stroked his own face with his long, slender fingers. He never touched me. I think he didn’t dare. I tried to make it easy for him, resting my hand on the tabletop near his, moving my legs beneath the table. With every move I made I aroused myself more until finally, quite breathless and unthinking with desire, I reached out my hand beneath the table and put it on his denimed thigh.

The pupils of his strange green eyes widened, and I smiled. He put his warm hand on top of mine and squeezed.

“Can we go to your place?” he asked, his voice very low.

Confronted with reality, I lost my smile. What was I playing at? I pulled my hand away and stood up. He followed me so quickly that he nearly overturned the table.

“No,” I said, but he followed me out of the dim, air-conditioned bar, into the parking lot. The hot, tropical night embraced us like a sweaty lover. Someone, in a book I’d once read, had compared the smell of Houston to the aroma of a woman, sexually aroused and none too clean. I drew a deep breath; spilled beer, gasoline, car exhaust, cooking fumes, perfume, after-shave, rotting vegetation, garbage, and, beneath it all, a briny tang that might have been a breeze wafted in from the Gulf of Mexico.

He was right behind me, following, and as I turned to tell him off, somehow instead I fell against him. And then we were clutching each other, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, kissing greedily. The need I felt when he first touched me, the intensity with which it rushed all through me was so powerful I thought I would faint. Then, slowly, resting in his embrace, I came back to myself, back to him. I had never known anything as sensually beautiful as his mouth; the soft, warm lips that parted against mine, dryness opening into wetness, a moist cave where the sly, clever animal that was his tongue lived and came out to nuzzle and suck at me greedily. His breath was smoky and dark, tasting of desirable sins, of whisky and sugar and cigarettes.