Page 32 of Way Down Deep

Partof me thinks I should pretend I’m demure. But I’m doing my best to give you the truth. To tell you that I wouldn’t stop with the zipper—in my head I’ve already divested you of most of your clothes.

Pity for you, here in reality we’re still poised to deal with the zipper. Let me tell you a couple of things.

I’m hard. It’s dim in this room, there’s just the streetlight slipping through the window, but you might be able to tell. Or see enough to think you can tell, but you’re not sure. Not until your fingers are on that zipper, sliding it down slow. Then there’d be no mistaking it.

Your knuckles would brush me, and the whole of my body would twitch and buck, and my breath would come up short. Would yours do the same?

So you wantto torture me in return? Good. Good. Yes, my breath would come up short. If I felt you and knew that you were in that state, if I brushed you and you bucked into my eager hands … I don’t think I would breathe for a week. I’m not breathing now.

What’s anticipationif not torture with a prize at the end?

Talking with you like this is making me notice a thousand things I otherwise wouldn’t. Like the way it feels, laying my palm over myself there. My open fly is soft—these jeans are ancient. There’s the raspy edge of the zipper, the cool metal of the button quickly going warm from my hand. More softness, the cotton of my shorts. So much softness, but you know there’s more. Heat and hardness. You can feel my pulse there, ticking in time with those heartbeats you were listening to.

If I took your hand and put it on me, what would I feel? Soft skin, I know that much. Any rings? Short nails, long ones? Tell me.

Iwish they were long. I wish they were so you could feel a hint of them as I explore. But I want the reality of this, too, so I’ll tell you. My hands are bare of rings; my nails are bitten down to nothing. My fingers are feverish on you, though. Quick and feverish, mapping out everything you’ve just exposed.

Idon’twish for anything other than your hands, exactly as they are. You must feel so much in the tips. No nails there, protecting them like tiny umbrellas. No calluses like the ones that’ve stripped my fingertips of all sensation. If I ever caught myself wishing for your nails, to feel them raking my skin, I’ll ask for your teeth instead. On my neck, my ear. Dragging down the length of my thumb.

Doyou really think your thumb is where I want my mouth to be?

Now you’ll haveto picture me smiling, here in this dark room.

Very well, I can sense you’re impatient. I’m tempted to tell you you have no idea what impatience feels like, but if I did it’d only be to make you wait a few seconds longer.

And wouldn’t that just be so cruel?

Enough teasing, though. Your hand is on me. Your soft hand on my hard cock. I’d hold it there until neither was cooler or warmer than the other, just until it began to blur, the edge where one ends and the other starts. Then I’d guide you by the wrist, ease your palm low, then back up. Slow. Not light, but not rough either. Not yet. I’d make you take the measure of me, with that maddening sliver of my shorts still keeping me half-secret.

Would you try to rush? Try to slip your thumb beneath my fly, wrap those fingers around me? Or would you go still and curious and obedient and take only what I offered, nothing more?

Ithinkyou know the answer, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ll tell you that I’d be breathless, flushed, desperate. That those things would make me try to push past the tiny little steps you want us to take.

But then, oh then I’d revel in you stopping me. Hold me back. Tell me I’m wicked for wanting to map out every inch of your cock with my hands and lips and tongue.

Because that’s what I’d do, Malcolm. I’d want to taste you now. My hot breath would ghost over the soft material between you and me before you could stop me.

Oh, now that’ll never do.

How can we both have come this far after all this time, only to rush? You, you’ve never done these things. Me, I feel as though I haven’t, the way we talk about them. I’ve begun to doubt I’ve ever kissed a woman, or felt her hands, or tasted her skin. How can I have, when the things you say fade all my memories to nothing more than ashes?

Okay, enough poetry. Here’s what happens, Maya.

I don’t tell you you’re wicked. I don’t tell you a thing, in fact. I turn you onto your back, brace my body above yours, pin your hands to the bed above your head. Get one knee between yours, then the other. Edge them wider, driving your legs open. Then I lower down, center my cock there against you, with the tangle of my belt and my jeans, the hem of your overlong shirt, all of that maddening mess there between us, reducing me to one word. Hard.

No other details. You tried to rush, so you don’t get those details yet. All you get for now is my weight and the feel of my excitement, muffled and dulled. The shackles of my hands. And my face above yours, smiling. Smiling to hide the fact that I’m aching so badly I could scream.

Do you want me to move now? Against you? Tell me, and I will.

Doyou think muffled and dulled is a punishment? That the shackles of your hands make me sorry? They don’t. My legs spread automatically the moment you said you were between them. I can practically feel you there, pressed hard against the swell of my sex. Every time I imagine you moving against me, I shiver. I rock, as if you’re really here.

So yes. Yes. Please, yes.

Fuck. Fuck these pants.

Okay, picture them gone. Picture me kicking them away in a fit of annoyance, the whole effort a clumsy, frantic affair, then hear the clatter of the buckle hitting the floor. Because that’s exactly what just happened, here in reality.

Better. Slightly better.