Coercion Page 4

  “Say my name. Tell me whose cock fills you.”

  “Only yours.”

  “Say it. Please.”

  “Didier.” Those six letters are more to her than some man she’s hired for an evening’s indulgence. To me the sound is like clouds parting, warm sunlight spilling out. It’s the sound of her beckoning me home, deep inside her body. I drop back to my palms, close enough to smell her sweat and perfume and the wine lingering in her throat. She says my name again, twice more until her voice is strained and words abandon her.

  “Yes.” I feel her unraveling, and when her body milks my cock, I do as it begs. My hips plow into her, too hard, but she only holds me tighter, nails clawing my back. The pleasure blinds and deafens, bright as a roaring fire. In the moment there is no too hard, no too deep, no groan loud enough to match what I feel. I push into her, so rough it could bruise, yet her legs hug me close, telling me it’s a mark she might relish.

  Even against my fevered flesh, my come is hot. I wish she could feel it too. If there were no condom, I could stay inside her as long as I liked, fall asleep there with my arms around her, our bodies joined. Perhaps one day, in some foggy, hypothetical future where my bed is hers alone to share.

  But here in reality, I hold the rubber in place and leave her warmth to dispose of it. For now it’s too sticky to suffer the sheets and blankets, so we lie on our backs, breathing deeply and watching the shadows playing upon the canopy. I link her fingers with mine and squeeze. She squeezes back.

  After a time, I ask, “Did you like it? Trying on another woman’s desires for a little while?”

  “I did. Sorry I lost the thread toward the end.”

  “Not at all. There’s no shame in the thought that perhaps the pair of us, as we are, are still as compelling as two strangers.”

  Another squeeze. “Well said.”

  I turn on to my side to meet her eyes. “The more I get to know you, the more you fascinate me.” It seems as though I navigate through one chamber of this woman, only to find myself in a new and curious room.

  “I’m different now than I was even a month ago,” she tells me. “Even I feel like I’m meeting me for the first time.”

  “That sounds very exciting.”

  She bites her lip, cheek round with a stifled smile. “It is.”

  My skin grows chilled and I pull her close, wrapping my arm around to cup her shoulder blade. Her fingertips stroke my arm, as light as the fluttering of eyelashes. Thoughts gather in my head. They solidify to take the shapes of words, words I ache to say as deeply as they scare me. My throat constricts, so tight I know it won’t let me voice my reckless realizations.

  But no matter. We have other nights ahead of us, or so I presume. To presume is reckless as well, but without it I have no cause to hope, and hopelessness is a dark and lonely cell indeed. I hold her tighter.

  Beside us, the candles burn. They will expire, whether one of us snuffs them now or we allow time to do the job. The light will go out all in one dramatic gust or a flame at a time, one by one by one.

  And I hold her tighter still.

  Chapter Three

  I love all of my clients—true and romantic love, though a breed without attachment or expectation, full of affection yet unhampered by possession. A love as one feels for a wondrous meal or a thrilling film, pure and resonant…but a love that ends, offering nothing lasting save for memories.

  For Caroly I feel far more. More than I’ve felt for anyone, and I like to think I’ve loved deeply in my life, once or twice.

  What I feel for her scares me. On fearful days I wonder, will she grow weary of playing my caregiver, once the newness of my body or our sex fades? Or once my beauty itself fades, should I manage to hold her attention for years, not weeks. She doesn’t want children, so how long will she abide a man whose hand she must hold, leading him out into the noisy wilderness of Paris? A man who cannot drive her to a hospital should she get hurt; a man who can offer kindness and passion, but so little else…

  She strokes my hair. “You’re quiet.”

  I tug her close and pepper her face with kisses until she giggles. “You have emptied my head,” I tell her. “I’m drunk from sex, and drowsy.”

  “A thousand apologies,” she says, not sounding sorry at all for incapacitating me.

  I run my thumb over her cheek and study her eyes, and kiss her a final time, a lingering press of my lips to hers. I could tell her now. Tell her I love her, but she’s heard from my own mouth that I love each of my clients, and I worry I can’t explain what about us is different. Special. I don’t struggle often with words, but here I’m lost.

  “What?”

  “It is nothing.”

  She traces the line between my brows and those beside my lips. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

  I sigh. I swallow. I frown deeper, but ask what I need to. “What do you think of me as?”

  “My lover. And my friend.”

  “Am I your boyfriend?”

  “Sort of.”

  I nod.

  “I guess I’m not sure what the definition of ‘boyfriend’ is,” she says slowly.

  “You’re not the only woman I kiss or flatter or take to bed.” This bed, where we lie now. My bed, hers, and yet so many others’.

  “Yeah. Without that distinction… I don’t know.”

  “You are the only woman I am with publicly.” A flimsy, incidental distinction, being that I am so very difficult to drag out the door and down the street. There is another distinction, as well, one it would feel crass to enumerate—she is the only woman who gets me, gratis.

  “You are who you are to me,” she says. “I don’t care if I can’t say you’re my boyfriend. I’m such a late bloomer, I don’t think I’m really ready to start… I don’t know, laying claims to anybody.”

  Her answer carves a pit in my middle, because I wouldn’t mind such a thing. Perhaps I’ve grown too accustomed to feeling coveted.

  She frowns. “Am I being too clingy?”

  “Clingy?”

  “Am I being too… Am I acting like you’re my boyfriend too much, or…?”

  “No. No no no.” I kiss her temples in turn. “No. I would be happy for you to think such a thing. Though I understand why you can’t.”

  “I just don’t know how to yet.”

  “If I was your boyfriend, you could invite me places. To parties. To meet your friends.”

  “You’re welcome to do all those things anytime you want. I don’t care what my friends think.”

  It is a brave thing she says, because some of her friends know what I am. My reputation precedes me in the city’s art circles, from the days when I sold my body for people’s canvasses and photographs, instead of their pleasure. I’m touched she would say such a thing. I’m not ashamed of what I do, but many would be, including some who leave unmarked envelopes in my mailbox.

  “You know why I can’t,” I say.

  “Not yet, you can’t. But a couple months ago you couldn’t make it to the sidewalk. Now look at all the places we’ve been.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re probably not ready to be my boyfriend any more than I’m ready to wrap my head around the idea. But I don’t mind.” She traces my jaw with her fingertips. “We make awfully good lovers. At least I think so.”

  I smile at that, knowing how a few weeks ago she would never have flattered herself so. She’s coming into her sexuality, slowly but unmistakably. I twine our legs together. “I think so too.”

  “If you’re worried that I’m not satisfied with how we are, don’t be. Really.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “If you’re afraid I don’t feel special, don’t worry about that either. I know I’m the only one who gets you, this way. I’m the only one who’d have this conversation with you.”

  “True.”

  She shrugs against the pillow. “It’s enough for me.”

  “That is good.”

  A smirk twists her pretty
lips.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I feel like you’re such an extraordinary man… It’d be a shame to keep you all to myself. Like having the only recording of some wonderful piece of music and keeping it locked up, not letting anybody else hear it.” She pauses, blinking. “Sorry if that sounded like I was commodifying you. I do that a lot.”

  I grin. “That is your job, after all.” At the museum she spends her days cataloguing and ordering beauty. Of course she would think in such a way. At thirty-four, my beauty is a gift that will only fade with each passing season, but for as long as I have it, I will maintain and exploit it. It is what I was given, after all, and what I have to offer. What a pity it would be if our great writers and composers and painters had not exploited what they were born with. I am nothing so special as that, but I can be the statue, if not the sculptor. And I can fuck a woman so well she no longer mourns the husband who’s left her or the youth that’s passed her by. A muse to inspire or a shot to dull the deepest ache. Whatever a woman needs, I can be that.

  I sigh grandly and roll onto my back, dragging Caroly with me so she lays her arm over my chest, head against my neck. I muss her hair. “I don’t mind that you think of me so. And you’re right. Maybe it is enough that we’re lovers.”

  And yet…

  Not so many years ago, I dated a woman. I cared for her very much—if not quite as intensely as I do Caroly—but her jealousy put an end to our affair. I’d have thought I’d be relieved to find a lover who keeps her envy at arm’s length, as Caroly seems able to do. And yet part of me is hurt by how easily she shares me. It is a selfish hurt, though, as few emotions cut so deep and so ragged as jealousy, and I would never wish this woman such pain. And yet…

  I stroke her back, thinking perhaps it is I who am jealous. All those hours she spends outside these walls, so many men she passes and meets who might smile at her, might ask her out. She grows more comfortable in her skin with every evening we share, more confident in her desires and her ability to give and receive affection and attention. A day could well come when she tires of her pretty tutor in his brick fishbowl.

  I would have to upend my life to stand a chance at keeping her, making her mine. But as the weeks pass, it feels more and more as though losing her would be just as traumatic a change.

  The worries gnaw at my bones with dull yellow teeth, but I press my lips to her hair so she won’t see the evidence on my face.

  My mother always said, “Show me a man who admits his love to a woman, and I’ll show you a eunuch.” She did not say this to me but to her friends, any number of times in my childhood. A grim gospel sung by a woman who still ached for a man, decades after their final caress. A man who never loved her back—a powerful man, by her philosophy. That notion always stayed in my mind, even as it depressed me. Keep a woman doubting your attachment and she will always work to earn it. Admit it, and your power over her evaporates. I believe there is truth in that dismal mantra. It offers a power I’ve never craved, myself. A power I would never want to use against Caroly, if it meant letting her think I do not care.

  I do wish her to keep wanting me, however, so I leverage the one power I’m comfortable wielding.

  She smiles when I tip her onto her back and brace myself above her on my elbows. I part her thighs with my knees, one at a time. The worries fade as the promise of pleasure snakes through my body.

  “Yes?”

  “I like having you here,” I say, and damn my mother’s wisdom to hell.

  “I like being here.”

  “Someday, you will outgrow this place.”

  “So you say. But I’d say the same to you.” She has so much more faith in me than I do myself.

  I lower my chest, drag my lips along her jaw. “You bloom wider and brighter each night we spend together,” I murmur. “Someday these walls won’t hold you anymore.”

  She doesn’t speak, just strokes my hair.

  “But before that day comes, I will know your body so well, no other man will ever be able to make you forget me.” My pulse quickens, stirring my cock.

  “I wouldn’t ever want to forget you.”

  A bleak but comforting thought crosses my mind. Should this be our last evening together, she will remember me as I am now, still young and handsome. Idealized in the most flattering snapshot. Perhaps that is the best way, for a man like me.

  Her body has cooled. She’s always cooler than I am, cool and smooth as a statue. When I hold her through the night I take pleasure in the way her skin warms, pressed to mine. There are so many things I cannot do for her, but I can do that. Warm her, please her.

  I’m stiff and heavy against the crease of her thigh, and again I imagine a life in which I could simply push inside her, the formality of condoms forgotten. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve enjoyed that intimacy with anyone, and the mere thought sets my flesh throbbing. As always, we treasure the prizes that mock us the most cruelly.

  I meet her gaze, then glance to the table beside the bed. “Would you?”

  She knows where I keep the rubbers, and everything else in this room, things she’s yet to request—toys, silk ties, oils. Those accessories only hold as much allure for me as the woman who asks for them, so with Caroly they are not missed. Though should she like to try on another woman’s interests, some night not so long from now, I would be more than happy to introduce them.

  She sheathes me with far more patience than I’d have mustered. When I sink inside her, I imagine the latex gone, nothing between our bare skin but her slickness. My hips want to race at the thought, but I command them to be slow and smooth, this sex as sensual and lazy as we’ve enjoyed on a Saturday afternoon once or twice.

  “Are you sore?” I ask, setting a slow, easy tempo. Easy sex to hide the pain that tempers my lust.

  She shakes her head, gaze focused between our bodies.

  We are us again, Caroly and Didier—no roles. Merely two people enjoying one another’s company and chemistry, a concept so simple, yet so miraculous.

  The hands stroking my arms slide over my chest and down to my hips, urging. I let my body tell her the things my mouth isn’t ready to voice, spreading my knees wider to own her deeply. Her nails graze my back, whisper-light.

  “We’re very good together, don’t you think?” I look straight in her eyes as I ask the question. Sometimes she shies from such earnestness, but not tonight.

  “I do.” She smiles, and I can’t help but mirror it. I bring my braced hands closer, butting them tight to her ribs. Those smooth thighs rise, hugging my hips. For these fleeting moments we feel like one person, and I think perhaps I could go outside just now. I could stroll barefoot through the bustle of a Paris evening without a care.

  But in the wake of the sex I will misplace my courage, and when she coaxes me from the building tomorrow morning I’ll be the man I know myself to be. We will order coffees and my cup will tremble as I raise it to my lips, clatter against its saucer as I set it down with a shaking hand. She will be sure to choose a table on the periphery, and though she’ll make no announcement of it, I will know which chair is mine. I’ll sit with my back to the wall, cataloguing each sudden sound, each patron, my temples throbbing with each of a million racing beats of my heart as I sip my way through twenty minutes that feel like a lifetime.

  Here in bed, she is smiling up at me, her expression asking where I’ve gone—our bodies joined but my mind on worries still hours away. That will never do.

  “Tell me how,” I say.

  “I’m not choosy.”

  “Tell me all the same.”

  She strokes my sides, gaze sweeping up and down my body. “Not fast or slow…just steady.” She wants to watch, I know. And all at once, I want nothing more than to be watched.

  As I find our pace, I think of how many years she spent getting herself off, imagining just this—a beautiful man in the throes of sex. She told me once how she rarely features in her own fantasies. Only men. Even in her head she fears
she won’t be desired. I hope now she conjures memories of us together, and that I’ve given her undeniable proof of how completely her lust is reciprocated. My cock turns greedy at the very thought.

  Her breathing speeds with my thrusts and the nails begin to dig. I want them at my shoulders, or her fingers clutching my hair. I want her thighs at my ears and her wetness against my tongue. I want to escape into her, to that fascinating realm between her thighs.

  Her gaze is curious as I pull away.

  “There is something I need.”

  I edge closer to the foot of the bed, dropping to my elbows to slide my forearms beneath her legs. Her lips gleam in the candlelight, and I’m high from her smell before I’ve even lowered my mouth to taste her. When I do, she sighs. The latex greets me first, but soon enough, only her. Juicy and lush as a peach from this evening’s game, though her flavor never so cloying. The animal taste of sex, dark and alive, and I’m the man who made her this way. I lap it from her swollen folds with long, slow strokes, tracing with my tongue then suckling her clitoris. Cool hands on my neck, hot flesh pulsing between my lips.

  “Didier.” Nails scrape my scalp, but it’s her voice that sets me shivering.

  I kiss her deeply, excited to think no other man has tasted her. Unfair that a whore should revel in his partner’s fidelity, I know, but I’m a man first, and selfish. With my tongue and mouth I tell her, Just try to forget me. I won’t make it easy.

  When she comes, I lap at her, drink her in until her legs twitch and the grasping hands on my shoulders plead for me to stop, the contact too intense.

  She speaks through a hiking breath. “Come here.”

  So badly I want to be back inside her, to sink deep into the wetness I’ve coaxed…but I’ve no patience left for condoms. Her mouth is warm and wet as well, but I want to taste it more than I need to feel it around my cock. So I kiss her, leading her hand between my legs.

  “How?” she asks against my lips.

  I strip the rubber. “Slow and light, until I’m gasping.”