Page 100 of Degrees of Control

“What’s coming?” Charlie lied.

James gave her an indulgent smile. “The best thing there is. Lemme show you.”

He slid a finger through her folds and braced it at her entrance. Before she could warn him away from her ‘virginity,’ his mouth re-fastened itself to her clit and he resumed his gentle sucking. Pleasure hazed over her vision like honeyed mist and for a long moment, or a few minutes, or maybe an hour, Charlie hovered in it, feeling the soft wetness of his lips, the rasp of his taste buds, the scrape of stubble on her inner thighs.

She wasn’t the tantric ‘enlightenment through boning’ kind of hippie—how could she be with such sadistic fantasies? But she could recognise the power of sex, its ability to turn two people into one, to transcend words and even time. As he worked, she floated even higher, toying with her orgasm, letting herself get close and them come back. Edging, as people called it. When she returned to herself she realised that James’ finger was no longer pressed at her entrance but pulsing gently, in and out. She whimpered. “I told you, you can’t have sex with me.”

“Ain’t havin’ sex with you.”

“But you’re—”

“Not gonna put it in. Just giving you a nice little taste.”

She closed her eyes, loving, as she always did, this imitation of cruelty, of being treated like nothing but a body he could use. James’ finger slipped progressively higher and higher, spreading her damp flesh and making her pant her pleasure.

“Please,” she whispered. “Stop.”

James, of course, kept going. “Yeah you like that, huh? Feels so good gettin’ somethin’ rammed deep in there. You might not believe that, but it’s the gods’ honest truth.”

He slid his big finger in to the knuckle.

“Ooh!” Charlie squealed, unable to help herself.

James’ laughter was hard with disdain. “You’re enjoyin’ this, aren’t you? Me stretching you a little bit, showing you how good it’ll feel when you finally realise how stupid waiting is and give in.”

“You said…you wouldn’t…make fun of me…” Charlie breathed, her orgasm hovering in front of her.

“And you said you wouldn’t let me lay a hand on you.” He gave her clit a long slow lick. “Guess we’re both liars, huh? Now, how ‘bout we both be cheaters, too?”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

He pressed his finger in to the hilt, curling it with intimate malice against her g-spot, so Charlie cried out loud.

“I mean, how ‘bout you let me put my cock in you? It’s a nice cock. I promise you’ll like it.”

I already love it,she thought, shaking her head.“I can’t let you do that, please just keep going like this? Please?”

“Oh, just fuckin’ service you like a rent boy, is that what you’re asking? I don’t think so, Peaches.” James slid his finger from her cunt, every lost centimeter an agony.

“No! Please?”

“No, please, what?” His finger pulsed at the very opening of her cunt. “No, please, you’re ready to get fucked?”

“I’ll touch you back,” Charlie said, her desperation for him to finish entirely real. “I’ll make sure you finish, I promise.”

“How? You’ll give me some sloppy handjob or suck me off, your teeth hittin’ the head every other time?” James removed himself from her entirely, wiping his fingers on his jeans. “It’s pussy or nothin’, little virgin. You don’t know what you’re doing. I do. Fuckin’s the only way I’ll get it done right.”

Charlie felt a hot prickle of humiliation. That was what happened when role play got intense. All the bad feelings that came along with an extreme power dynamic came with it. She wasn’t a virgin, obviously, but she felt acutely how much stronger and sexually experienced James was, how that had always touched an insecure place in her heart. She let those feelings rise up now, let them take her over. The fear that she wasn’t enough for James, the anxiety that he would never want her like she wanted him, the terror that other women he’d slept with had been better lays than her.

“I can’t sleep with you,” she said. “My boyfriend, Ipromised—”

James made a noise like an irritable bear. “Your boyfriend’s a limp-dick asshole who’s not man enough to fuck his own girl. I know your kind. You want him to lose his mind an’ insist, that way it won’t be your fault for giving in. Well, you picked the wrong asshole. You’d be better off sittin’ on a fuckin’ cucumber. Or becoming a nun.”

His words reminded Charlie of her monastery plan and her belly and hands tensed. Was that her future? Meditating in a stone room, trying to accept that she and James were never to be?

“Don’t go,” she blurted out, apropos of nothing but paranoid thoughts. “Please don’t leave.”

James frowned, and for a moment he was utterly familiar, then he laughed. “I’m not going anywhere, Peaches. You been pent-up for too long. It’s turnin’ you screwy.”

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