Women in Lust (23 page)

Fuck. I nearly came like that, against the counter, in front of this strange man and anyone who might have walked in the door. Kade’s hip pushed against me, sliding so I could feel just the tip of his cock tucked into his jeans, the already-hardening length beneath the fabric. He held me like that, pinned between the cold glass counter and the heat of his hips, reaching around me to pick up the knives from the counter, flicking them open and closed in front of me. The ones he really liked, he would draw the back of the blade along the inside of my arm, laughing when goose bumps broke out. On the other side of the counter, the knife-seller stood with his arms crossed unless he was handing Kade a knife, looking at ease, only his still smile and the growing outline of his cock in his black pants showing his pleasure at the scene.

Kade had two knives on the counter—a blood-red one with a
partly serrated blade and a black one with a thin, sharp-looking blade that reflected my flushed face when he held it up. Kade has a thing for red, especially blood-red, and I thought for sure he’d choose that. I hoped so—it looked less menacing, less sharp, almost as though it was just a toy and not dangerous at all.

“Black or red?” he asked me, watching my face.

I opened my mouth to answer, but he was already turning away. “Good choice. Black it is. We’ll take it.”

“And no bag necessary. I’ll be using it before we get home.”

 

Surprisingly, the first thing Kade did when he got in the car was to take the knife out of its box and hand it over to me. It weighed more than I expected, fitting into my palm and hanging off it like a live thing. “Get familiar with it,” he said. “Open and close it. The blade is seriously sharp though. I wouldn’t recommend touching the edge.”

“But…” I was confused, and disappointed. I didn’t want to learn about it. I didn’t want to hold it or use it. I wanted
him
to wield it, to scare me and arouse me with it.

He turned from the wheel, his expression saying everything. Those golden eyes could turn into steel if I disobeyed, especially when it was something important. “Handle it,” he said. “Or I’ll return it right now.”

I handled it. The whole ride home, as he took the side streets and went slow, I fondled the gift he’d given me. At first, I was afraid to open it, so I held it, letting the weight of it rest on my palm. With my other hand, I traced the lines of the handle, the almost filigree-like design in it. It could have been a flower. Or snakes entwined.

Finally, I opened it. Not like Kade did. A slow, soft open that made my pulse stutter in my wrist. He wasn’t kidding—the blade was so sharp and thin. I could see how sharp it would be
against someone’s skin, how easily it could cut right through body and bone. It made me want to throw it away, just roll down my window and chuck it into the road. I was afraid to admit that it also made me wet. I could feel the heat soaking my jeans, even before Kade reached over and put his free hand between my legs, curling his fingers into damp fabric.

Still, he was right. Handling it made me more afraid. But it also made me less afraid. And, beneath that, the other thing that I knew was true, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit it yet: afraid or not, I wanted it. I wanted that knife in Kade’s hands. I wanted him to cut my clothes off, piece by piece, the knife so close to my skin, but not touching. I wanted him to bend me over and fuck me with it. But more than that, I wanted to know what it felt like when he put that blade against my skin, scraped it over my back, dragged the tip between my shoulder blades. I wanted to hold so still that I was sweating, to hear his voice above me, reassuring me while he fingered me with one hand and cut me open with the other.

 

On the bed now, I take a deep breath and remind myself this is what I wanted, what I asked for: To be more naked than naked, to shed my skin, literally. To be bared to his hands and eyes, to be exposed by his skill and blade. I remind myself that I can trust him—he pushes me to the edge, but never farther. He knows what he’s doing.

I dip my head down then, taste the metal of the blade as I catch it carefully between my teeth to pick it up. The feel of it in my mouth is so intimate that I groan softly around the blade.

When he comes back, he’ll find me. He’ll know I am ready.

 

The knife is heavier than I thought, and he doesn’t come back for a long time. I hold it tight between my teeth and lips, trying
to breathe around it. Trying not to cut myself in the process. Now that I’m used to it, my body has dried up, sweat and juices, and I can’t remember if I’m aroused or just holding this object out of rote and ritual. I’m considering dropping it, but then he’d think I don’t want him to use it.

Finally, I hear his footsteps. My teeth ache. My lips are so dry I swear I can feel them cracking. The knife has been in my mouth for a long time now. It’s become part of me. I know its edges and its flavor. I am still afraid, but not the way I was before. That was the kind of fear that would have made me jump and clench, that could have put me in danger. This fear is sharply honed, as finely pointed as the blade in my mouth, and it narrows into a straight line at my clit.

“Open,” he says, and I drop the knife from my mouth into his hand.

He catches it easily, flicks it open where I can see the blade shine. “Good slut.”

Instantly, I’m wet again. All that time waiting slips away and my body returns to where it was, hips rising up into the air in want. I lick the bit of dryness from my lips, my tongue already salivating around the missing taste of metal.

Kade presses me down with the flat of his palm, until I am a long straight line on the bed. One hand reaches between my thighs, a few fingertips stroking.

“Still scared?” he asks.

“Yes. No.”

“Perfect.” The not-sharp edge of the blade makes a few slow, long sweeps across my back. I hold myself still, don’t arch up into his touch, even though that’s what I want. Harder. Stronger. Faster.

He sees the restrained movement. “Do I need to tie you?”

“No.”

“Good. Breathe.”

I exhale, then exhale some more, pushing out all the breath I have in me, emptying my lungs and then whatever reserve lies beneath my lungs. And then I am still, not just the outside, but the inside, in that place that never, ever quiets.

Kade turns the knife, lets the very tip drag across my skin. The pain is not as bad as I expected, a sharpness like a nail. It is both dulled and heightened by his slippery fingers slowly teasing my clit. It’s a very light touch. He’s breaking my skin, but barely. Like the scrape of a fingernail. Not even a paper cut.

The next path is spine to shoulder, a sweeping drag of blade. He isn’t cutting into me, I don’t think, not enough to draw blood, but it’s hard to tell.

I breathe with my whole body.

He draws with his whole blade.

Together, Kade and the knife create their unknowable pattern across my skin. Every touch of the blade sends me somewhere deeper and somewhere higher. My nipples are hard and sensitive, and when I exhale, they brush against the sheets in a sharp ache that’s so different from the thin lines of pain across my shoulders.

Each pull of the knife is different from the last, and the same, too. The way it starts, sharp pinprick; the way it slides, slippery line of pain; the way it ends, fading so quick into nothing that I am already aching for the next one. I feel like a knife myself, lying so straight and still, everything honed. Invincible even as Kade is opening my skin, exposing the part of me that no one else has ever seen.

“Don’t come,” he says. “You’ll shake too much.” His voice is low and growled, his breath tight and quick, and I realize suddenly how much restraint he is showing, how hard he must be working to hold back.

This alone makes me want to come. I let out a sound that might be a response, or it might just be the final bit of breath leaving me.

“No, please,” I say, which makes no sense, but my mouth is not working, my brain is not connecting to my tongue. “I can’t…”

“Just a few more,” Kade says.

I breathe.

He stops drawing.

“Done,” he says.

At the same time, he sends his fingers deep inside me and leans down to lick the edges of his work. The heat of his mouth, the slow draw of his tongue over my teased skin, his fingers curling inside me while his thumb circles my clit—it sends me down and up, every bit of me clenching and releasing until my head goes dark. I see red and black, I feel red and black—they’re the colors of my nipples against the sheets, his fingertip across my pulsing clit, his hand holding the knife against my back.

When my head stops spinning and sliding, Kade kisses my neck, softly. “Beautiful,” he whispers. “You have to see.”

I reach for him instead, my hands trying to find his body. Right now, all I want is his cock—I want to see his arousal from what he’s doing, to wrap my tongue around the curve of his head while my back pulses and aches, to lie down on the sheets, feeling them scratch my tender shoulders with every thrust inside me.

“Later,” he says.

He holds me tight, then helps me up and positions me so that my length is in the bedroom mirror, my back to the mirror. One of Kade’s hands is on my neck, the other still holds the blade.

I turn my head so I can see. Kade’s blade has cut me, not to bleeding, but to marking. A pair of raspberry-colored wings
feathers out across my back and shoulders.

“It’s…” I don’t have any words for what I feel when I see it.

I am marked. Seen. Exposed. I am all of these things, but only for Kade. Only because he makes me do the things that I am most afraid of, the things I want most of all. I feel a sense of relief, as though I’ve passed a test, a test of strength and arousal, of my ability to be stretched and broken open.

“Thank you,” I say, and I sag against his body, let him hold me up.

“I’m not done,” he says, and his voice shifts, deepens. His hand on my neck tightens, and fear slides down through my belly, clinches my pussy in a tight pulse. The knife in his hand flashes and shines. “In fact, I’ve hardly begun.”

“On your knees, slut,” he says and when I don’t move fast enough, he bends me down on the bed, his nails digging at the back of my neck as he forces me into position. I shiver against him, let out a noise. I can’t help it.

“Aw,” he tsks. “Are you afraid, slut?” he wants to know, his teeth edging my ear, that hard edge cutting the corners of his voice.

“Yes,” I say. My voice is muffled by the sheets, by the greedy clenches of my pussy, by the pulse that pounds in my throat.

The point of the knife draws lazy circles across my back, begins a soft, slow cut into my skin just as he slides the tip of his cock between my legs.

“Good,” he says. “You should be.”

O
ne bite of that butterscotch pudding and suddenly I knew everything was going to be all right.

If one of my more sensible friends had been sitting at the table with me, she would have told me the pudding had nothing to do with it. The new buoyant sensation in my chest was the natural outcome of a relaxed vacation by myself at a charming country inn. The crazy grin on my face, the almost sexual quickening of my breath, were but a long-delayed visceral understanding of all the work I’d done in therapy over the last year. There was no need to wallow in misery any longer. Dylan’s affair and my subsequent decision to divorce him were only symptoms of our buried grief for the real death of our marriage years before. It was time to move on.

However, since I was alone and had no need to be reasonable, I knew the epiphany was all in the pudding. Perhaps it was the creamy smoothness caressing my tongue like satin? Or the bottomless depth of flavor: caramel, tropical vanilla and an
almost floral sweet cream, all mixed together with something else mysterious, alluring, even addictive?

Whatever the reason for the magic, at that moment, I was very glad to be alive.

When I finished my dessert, resisting the urge to lick the bowl clean, I waved over the pretty waitress.

“Does your chef give out recipes? I’d love to make this pudding at home to remember my vacation.”

“Actually, I’m new here, I’m not sure,” she said, blushing. “I’ll ask Joseph.”

I gazed out the window overlooking the lodge’s perennial garden, wondering what trials of the spirit awaited that fresh, young thing in her life ahead. Or would she be one of the fortunate few who enjoyed the thrill of love without tasting its sorrows? Did such a person even exist?

I was still lost in my reverie when I became aware of a stocky male form in a white chef’s coat standing beside my chair. Already my nerves were singing from the warmth of his body, his scent of cumin and olive oil, but when I looked up and met his sky-blue eyes, my pulse skipped two beats. “Joseph” was younger than I expected.

“I’m glad you enjoyed your dessert,” he said.

“The pudding was exquisite,” I said, pleased at the strangely sultry depth of my voice. “I’d love to have the recipe as a souvenir of my stay here.”

The boy chef hesitated. I took advantage of the pause to drink in his smooth skin kissed with a touch of five o’clock shadow, the sensual yet determined mouth. Beneath his chef’s toque, his chestnut hair was tousled and very touchable. And who wouldn’t be enchanted by those cerulean eyes, boring into my soft, secret places more pleasurably than my favorite ice-blue dildo?

Here was a tasty dish indeed.

Finally he spoke. “Again, I’m delighted you liked it, but I’m afraid I don’t give out my recipes.”

I’m not quite sure what possessed me then. I’d spent most of the last year either sobbing or staring off into space in a self-pitying gloom, but suddenly a fire I’d thought dead forever sparked to life.

I tilted my head and smiled. “You remind me of my great-aunt Patricia. She was a fabulous cook, and I know she seduced more men with her culinary talents than many a beauty queen. But, tragically, she refused to share her recipes. They all died with her. Isn’t it a shame to deprive the world of your treasures?”