Page 42 of Fierce

The Spider Decides

I never wanted to hear people’s stories. What Hope had said was true. Everybody had a sad story. But I’d wanted to hear hers, because she hadn’t wanted to tell me. And still, she’d sketched out only the barest details.

I’d have said that I knew a bit about courage, but she’d taught me something new today. About the quietest kind of courage, the kind that kept you going when you wanted to quit, the kind that made you put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, because stopping wasn’t an option. And because you were carrying somebody else, somebody you loved, and you couldn’t let them fall.

And then she did come to sit on the couch, and that was taking courage as well, because she didn’t sit at the end. She sat next to me.

Don’t be a spider.When I was with a woman, we normally just got down to business. Courting, the kind of foreplay that was more like “warmup?” Pure inefficiency when both people knew what they were there for. But Hope wasn’t sure what she was here for. She was as nervous as she was excited, and if that excited me, too—well, that would be the bonus.

I needed to make her want it as much as she feared it, if I was going to make it good for her when it finally happened. And so much of that would be what was in her head beforehand. What she imagined. What she fantasized about. I was going to be fueling those fantasies, and then I was going to fulfill them.

I pulled the bottle out of its nest of melting ice and refilled her glass and my own, and she let out a soft sigh.

“I shouldn’t,” she murmured, pulling her legs up under her again as I leaned over to set the wine back in the bowl. And when I sat up again, it was the most natural thing in the world to put my arm around her.

She tensed beneath my hand, and then, when the spider didn’t pounce, she gradually began to relax. I picked up my glass, touched it to hers, and said, “Cheers.”

She took a sip, her eyes watchful above the rim. I kept my hand where it was, but brushed my thumb over the smooth skin of her shoulder, absently at first, and then, when she shivered, with a bit more intent, exploring the gentle dips and curves.

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment before opening again. “Mm. That feels good.”

When my thumb traced down the front edge of the sleeveless dress, lingered over that most sensitive of spots at the edge of her small breast, she shifted a little, came a little closer.

“Hemi…”

It wasn’t a warning. It was a sigh, and an invitation. But I didn’t take it. Instead, I sent the back of my other hand on a slow journey down her other arm where it lay against me. The lightest touch, the gentlest caress. When my thumb began to graze the inside of her forearm, I could tell from the way she was breathing that she was feeling the tingle all the way down her body. She was so responsive, all it took was my touch on her shoulder, her inner arm, to light her up.

It was going to be good for me, when it happened. And it was going to be even better for her. I was going to make sure of it, starting right now.

I kept it up, a slow, steady, patient assault, touching nothing but her arms, her shoulders, and before long, her eyes were shutting again, and her head was back against the cushions, all her attention going to what she was feeling.

“Hope,” I said softly. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

The surge of power flooded me as she obeyed, as I watched the lids flutter open. Another deliberate trace along the edge of her dress brought another shudder. And then, at last, she said it.

“Could you…could you kiss me?” As if she couldn’t help it, as if the words had been dragged out of her.

“No,” I said, and felt her jerk back a little in shock. “No,” I said again. “I’m not going to kiss you. Not today. I want you to go to bed tonight and think about me. I want you to imagine me kissing you, to think about how it’s going to feel to have your mouth under mine, to have my tongue inside you. To open your mouth wider so you can take more of me in. And then I want you to keep imagining. I want you to take off this dress tonight and imagine it’s my hand unbuttoning every one of these little buttons.”

I ran a slow hand down the front of her dress, circling each tiny button-flower in its turn. All the way to her waist, and then slowly, deliberately, below it. Almost to the spot, stopping just short while she waited, frozen, holding her breath. And then moving back up again just as slowly, until I wasn’t touching fabric anymore. Until I was touching skin. My fingertips drifting up between the wings of her collarbones, up the front of her slim neck, forcing her to lift her chin, to open her mouth at the age-old threat of fingers on her throat. Until my index finger was tracing the shape of her lips, and she was opening up more for me, just like that. Just the way she was meant to do.

“I want you to imagine being put on my bed,” I told her, my mouth near her ear, one slow finger still tracing the shape of those soft lips. “I want to you to think about your dress falling away from your body as I unfasten those buttons. I want you to imagine me looking down at you while I do it, and how you’ll rise to my hand, and then my mouth. Your own mouth opening just like it’s doing now, panting a bit, needing me to kiss you so badly. Needing my mouth on yours so much. My mouth and my hands everywhere, all over every inch of you, while your hands try to reach for me and can’t, and it feels so good to know they can’t. So hard, and so good, knowing you have to wait for me.”

“I…can’t?” Her eyes were enormous, and, yes, her mouth was open a little.

She was burning. Time to make her burn some more.

“Yeh,” I told her. “You’ll be trying, won’t you? You’ll be pulling so hard, but you won’t be able to reach me. Not with your pretty wings spread wide and fastened down tight. Not if all you can do is lie there and wait.”

“Oh.” It was a sigh.

I rose to my feet, then turned to her and brushed the back of my hand over the curve of her cheek, felt her lean into it. “Yeh,” I told her. “That’s nice, isn’t it? That’s what I want you to think about tonight. I want you to remember that next week, we’ll be in Paris, and we’ll be spending time together. You can count on that, and that we’ll be alone, and that your dress will be coming off. Eventually. But you won’t be telling me to kiss you, because the butterfly doesn’t tell the spider what to do. The spider decides.”

She didn’t slap me. She sat there, eyes wide, breath coming fast, and looked at me. I smiled just a bit, said, “I’ll check how Karen’s feeling tomorrow,” and left her to think about all of it.

If you couldn’t get there one way, you didn’t give up. You found a new tactic. And, sometimes, the new way would be even better.

Anticipation was doing so much for me, but it was doing even more for Hope. It was burning her alive.

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