Sweet Agony (12 page)

But it does. Holy crap, does it ever. The sensation is so thick and strong, I sort of want to stop there. Let him just strike me again, and I’ll probably come over that alone. I can already feel it welling up inside me. A little more and it will happen.

I think I
want
it to happen, so he can see me do it. I want him to see my fingers playing between my legs – and he will be able to, with very little trouble. I’m in such a lewd position he can probably make out all of me, especially if I’m really bad. If I part my folds for him and really fuck into that greedy pussy, over and over, and not just with one finger but with two, both nice and stiff so that when they slide in everything opens up for them. Everything spreads, in a way I know will look so filthy-dirty-disgusting.

He might even tell me as much, I think.

Then I feel a great wave of pleasure. I don’t even know why. His scorn should be the last thing I should want, yet somehow it only seems to take things higher. I think I hear him hiss in anger and I almost fall to my knees. I’m so bad, I think, so wicked, so completely lost to my own insatiable lust.

And that’s when it happens.

My cunt tightens around my still working fingers, so hard it almost brings everything to a standstill. So hard I have to say it out loud, no matter what the consequences. He might hate me for making it all so overt, but I don’t care.
I’m coming I’m coming oh God you make me come so good
, I tell him, as pleasure shudders through me. Glorious, golden pleasure, of the kind I could never regret.

Until it’s over.

It drains away, and I’m left with something far worse than the reaction I received last time. He doesn’t pick up his paper, and there’s no pretence at indifference. All I see when I turn is plain horror at all the things I made him do.

And all the ways he saw me be.

Chapter Nine

I can tell things are different between us. And since our relationship was quite strange to begin with, any shift to something even less normal feels enormous. He seems doubly awkward around me now, as though I have told him a terrible secret about myself and he has no idea how to handle it. Somehow it has reduced me in his eyes, though I could have sworn there was nowhere lower to go. I thought I was already at rock bottom, and that he kind of liked that about me.

But judging by his current behaviour I was incredibly wrong. He goes back to avoiding me, in a way that seems even more brutally obvious than it was before. Now he doesn’t just turn around at the end of the hall. He leaves rooms when I enter them. He has to brace himself before he goes into a place where I am – I know he does, because one time I catch him.

I hear him in the hall and fling open the door, to find him standing there with his hand hovering where the handle was. Face like something recently stripped of all protection. Eyes almost hot with anger or confusion or fuck knows what. Everything about him telling me what I should have already understood: I shouldn’t have fucking masturbated. It was too filthy, I know it was too filthy. It crossed the line from pseudo-punishment into full-blown fuckery.

And all after he told me specifically what he did not want.

He said in no uncertain terms that he hates sex and touching and anything affectionate. He’s in love with logic, and what did I do? I gave him greedy feelings of the filthiest sort. It’s really no wonder he hates me now, though man I wish things were otherwise. I don’t just miss whatever we were slowly descending into. I miss talking to him about things, and hearing all his weird opinions. I miss sharing
my
weird opinions, and having someone accept them.

Because he always does. He may not agree, but he will go with it to the bitter end. Nothing I say is beneath debate, no idea I float is unworthy of his attention. Sometimes he
acts
like it’s unworthy or beneath him but carries on talking about it anyway. He gives more attention to things no one else bothers about than most people will to things they think matter.

And I am beside myself without it.

I find myself doing the same stealthy things I did before for sex, only now I am foraging for conversation. I say ridiculous stuff and write it on post-its, then paste them in the books he’s reading. I even go so far as to answer questions he asks in the margins. ‘Why would she do something so ridiculous?’ he asks, and I answer, ‘She does it because she loves him.’ I tell him, because I feel sure he has no idea.

Then afterwards realise my mistake.

It sounds like
I
love him. It sounds so much like it that I want to take the post-it back before he can read it, but when I go to get the book from the study the door is locked. It’s the first time I have been forbidden to enter it, so I don’t think I’m overdoing things to have a mild panic attack in the hall. Most likely he found the post-it, decided that I am a danger to myself and others, and barred me from his presence. Or maybe he just wants some private time to laugh and laugh and…oh, God, this is not going well.

And it continues that way even after I get my hands on the book. I find it back on the shelf in the library, but when I frantically open it at the right page I find nothing but hatefully post-it-less pages. It hasn’t slid into some other section, because of course I check. I would check every book in here, if it meant I could get it back.

But there is nothing.

He found it and threw it away – an idea I am so convinced by that I search the bins. I look through the one outside, pretending I’m searching for a lost fiver, and feel no comfort when I don’t find it there either. It probably means he got rid of it even faster than I thought. He saw it and was so allergic to the contents that he wrapped it around a brick and hurled it out of a window.

Which would be fine.

If it didn’t feel like he was doing the same with my heart. My poor heart, so suddenly sore that I come back inside from my search in a thoroughly bedraggled state. Everything inside me seems slumped, defeated. I suppose I should have known things would end this way. What did I think? That he was going to suddenly become a completely different person and spend long nights making love to me? That’s not so much a fantasy as a ludicrous descent into madness.

Or so I would probably carry on believing, if it were not for the clothes he leaves for me to take to the dry cleaners. He always does it the same way, everything so neatly hung on hangers that you would never know it needed cleaning. And I always search the garments first, because he leaves all sorts of stuff in them. I find sticks of chalk in his suit jackets and paper clips attached to his cuffs. Sometimes there will be items I can barely identify, and this time is no exception.

There is a box in the inside pocket, only I know right away that it’s not really a box. It reminds me of those Chinese finger cuffs that trap you the second you do anything with him. Or a puzzle, maybe a puzzle, but I can hardly imagine what purpose it could serve. It’s too small to open and reveal something, I feel sure – until I see the design on the back.

I recognise it right away. It’s the flower from the wall in the parlour. I can tell, although the petals are in the wrong order. It’s arranged in concentric circles, first smaller shapes, then bigger ones, somewhat like a rose. And though the inner ones are filled in, the outer ones are empty – only here it’s all higgledy- piggledy. They’ve been rearranged into the complicated mess I remember from a million solve-that-shape puzzles.

So I just put them back. I stand in the hallway, and fumble with it until they’re right again.

Though still I don’t really expect it to open. And even if it had – if I’d imagined for one moment that I was doing this for a reason – I could never have imagined what would be inside. It seems like I should or I would, or that I knew all along, but I swear I didn’t. I see it and still it doesn’t connect in my head.

I was so sure, you see, that I was the one who went too far.

I never thought that he would go further.

But as soon as I process I know that he has. It sends a shockwave through me, as though someone had thumped me on the chest in an attempt to restart my heart. All I can do is stare at the little slip of yellow inside the box, suddenly certain what it is but hardly daring to believe. I didn’t even mean anything by it. I barely thought of the implications.

He clearly has, however.

He thought about the note I left in his book. He read those words of love and longing, however accidentally they were given. And he kept them, close to his heart. More than kept – they seem treasured, in a way I didn’t think he was capable of. I
still
struggle to think of him as capable of it, in spite of the evidence in my hands. I try to turn it into something else, but he seems to have decided to make that virtually impossible. When I go to him and hold it out – now neatly closed with its secret locked inside – he doesn’t do what I expect.

I imagine retribution, or denial.

And instead he says, ‘Thank you, Molly.’

He says, ‘I thought I had lost it.’

But some part of me knows what he really means. He holds my gaze as he takes it back, and in answer my heart thunders. It reaches towards him, half-stunned and half-soaring, as I slowly realise that he wanted to say something other than ‘lost it’ – so much so that he almost does. He almost tells me that he thought he had lost
me
. The last few days I spent without his company, he spent without
mine
.

And he missed me. Maybe he even thought I was avoiding him because of some minor infraction in BDSM etiquette – an idea that seems insane until he breaks the practically glowing silence that is still between us. I begin to smooth my dress – most likely out of awkwardness – and wince. I forget about the row of jagged teeth-like marks on my backside, still as sore as anything.

Though I’m glad I do, because then he says this:

‘I wish I had not hurt you – more than you could possibly imagine.’

Just like that, without artifice or evasion. There isn’t so much as a hint of sarcasm, and certainly no sudden rush to correct himself. No changing of that word ‘wish’. It stands as it is, completely astonishing just because it’s so singular. He never expresses wishes to me. I wasn’t even sure if he had them, and certainly I had no idea he had them more than I could possibly imagine.

That sounds like hyperbole to me, and Cyrian despises it. He told me so only last Wednesday, when I said Brussels sprouts were worse than biting into something Satan pooped out. ‘If Satan took a shit in your mouth, Molly, you would probably dissolve from the inside out. Honestly, you exaggerate with such flagrant disregard for sense, you make me discuss a made-up religious icon simply to set you straight.’

And yet here we are, in the aftermath of him doing the same. He is even less likely than Satan to admit a feeling, a longing, a regret, but he still did it. And about something so ridiculous, too – does he really think
he
was the one who went too far? He has to know he never could. I have to tell him he never could, so that he doesn’t think so for a second longer.

But he gets there first.

‘I also realise that I have neglected to do what I ought to have in these circumstances, for which I can only ask your forgiveness. I was ashamed and therefore convinced myself it was not a concern. But it is and it must be, or else the whole business is barely worth a thing.’

I’m stunned, and spend far too long trying to make sense of it. By the time he asks the next question I’m so lost in the fact that he apologised that I fail to see what he’s suggesting – or even what he apologised for. I just nod when he asks if he may rectify it, then let him lead me to a room I’ve never been in.

Once we are there, though, it starts to sink in.

I see a bed with a great brass frame and covers folded so neatly they could have been done by a machine, and my stomach decides to drop right out of my body. It can’t take any more revelations. It hears my mind whisper the words ‘his bedroom’ and just has to go.

And I don’t blame it. I feverishly review all the things he just said, trying in vain to work out what he intended. He told me he has responsibilities, but I am almost scared to imagine what they might be. All I know is that he wants to rectify something in this spare little room like something from a monastery, and despite my best efforts that makes me shake. Not out of fear, I think.

But out of some new thing that has no name.

Some emotion too intense to speak of, three parts anticipation and seven excitement. Add a little uncertainty and there it is – the thing I am feeling when he asks me to turn around. By the time he gets close enough to touch, my body is shuddering with it. And then he
does
touch, and I think it’s possible that I may just die. I certainly stop being able to breathe.

I know, because he comments on it.

‘If it is of any comfort to you, I have no intention of doing what I did before. You can be at ease, Molly, I promise you,’ he says, but only because he is an idiot. He has to be. If he was really as smart as he mostly seems, he would see this for what it is: he touched me somewhere on my back, and my body went absolutely to pieces. Seriously, I’m never going to be able to get it back the way it was.

He touched me.

With his fingers.

And granted, he only did it where the buttons are. But the fact that he makes no real contact with my skin nor puts any pressure on my flesh doesn’t matter in the least to me. How could it, when he’s touching the buttons to
undo them
? He undoes the buttons. He undoes them. He doesn’t reorder them until they’re the right way. He gets all the way to the waist and then he keeps going, until my dress parts like wings to reveal everything underneath.

My bare back, the silky underwear he bought for me, the stockings he asked for and that I wanted to give him, all so suddenly exposed I should feel self-conscious. I know why I don’t, though. I should ask him to stop – but I know why I don’t do that too.