Charlotte Stein - Run To You

‘Maybe you should tell me something about yourself now,’ I say, despite knowing what path those words are putting me on. It’s the path that leads to him, not away. And worse: I think I like that this is the case.

I shiver strangely when he answers.

‘And what would you like to know?’

‘Anything.’

‘Will you tell me anything in return?’

‘You mean you don’t know it already?’

He laughs that low laugh. It’s almost a growl, but not a threatening one. More like the sort you’d hear as an animal sleeps, and dreams of defending his home.

‘I don’t.’

‘All right, I will.’

‘Very well, then. Ask me a question,’ he says, and in the silence that follows I pick and discard several options. Some seem too personal, others too flippant. And all of them lead me back to the real issue.

My every word apparently tells him a thousand things about me. A single slip and I’m suddenly wretched and shallow, to go with all the other things he’s uncovered so easily. My habit of doing the opposite of what I want to, my tendency to hide – he had it all.

So I have to be careful here, and completely innocuous.

‘How old are you?’

‘Worried that I am older than you’d like?’

Dammit, question, you were supposed to be innocuous.

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘Really?’

‘Why would I? What would it matter to me if you were?’ I say, and try to laugh lightly somewhere in the middle. I largely fail. And even if I had succeeded I don’t suppose it would matter, because he soon blows all of that nonsense away.

‘It would matter because my intention is to do all of those things you spoke of to you, and far more than that besides. I intend to bring you pleasure and sweetness of the sort I’m sure you have not yet known, and so you can see: how old I am is of some importance. Many women don’t like to be with someone twice their age.’

‘I don’t think the idea would even enter most women’s heads, when it comes to someone like you,’ I say finally, and only because I’m afraid of something else escaping. My body pulsed once, hotly, over several of the things he’s just said, and if I give it too much leeway I know what it will make me do.

There are so many words it wants me to say, always hovering beneath the surface of our conversations. ‘Yes’ is one of them. ‘Please’ is another. Both broke through last time and embarrassed me, but I won’t let them out again.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

‘Am I pretending?’

‘Of course you are.’

‘And why would I do such a thing?’

‘To get me to admit it.’

‘Admit what?’

‘How handsome you are! You want me to admit how handsome you are. You want me to say that you’re gorgeous, that you’re amazing looking, that I was mesmerised by your great granite face and your hooded eyes and your mouth like an imprint of a kiss, and I want to because you said all of those things about me and I can’t stop thinking about any of them even though none of them are real and God, God , you’re the most frustrating person in the world.’ I pause to take a breath. ‘Why do you even need to hear this? Everyone on the planet has probably told you how handsome they find you.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he says, so coolly, so clearly. I could almost believe there was nothing else coming, until it hits me around the head. ‘But it only matters to me that you do.’

I can’t be held responsible for the one word I croak out. I’m still stunned after the blow, and probably sprawled all over the floor of my own mind.

‘Why?’

‘Because I want your pulse to quicken when you think of seeing me.’

‘You do?’

‘I want you to be wet between your legs when you imagine my face.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Are you wet now, Alissa?’

‘Can I plead the fifth?’

‘You can, if you wish. Of course it will mean that I have to be honest while you do not, but if you really must …’

‘All right. All right. I am,’ I say. ‘But it’s not just about your face.’

‘I see. How intriguing. Perhaps you could tell me what it is about, then.’

He knows I won’t refuse, now, but oh, it’s agonising to get the words out. Words he said so easily to me, so freely, and I’m struggling like I’m in a straitjacket.

‘The way you say things.’

‘So it’s the sound of my voice.’

‘Not just the sound, though that’s nice enough,’ I say, then immediately want to make it more than that. He was so generous, I think. Why don’t I know how to be generous with him? Why do I keep thinking that he’s heard it all before, when I can almost hear him waiting on every single thing I say?

He’s waiting now, I can tell, and the longer he does the more the pathways in my mind begin to rearrange themselves. The one marked sex no longer has a beware sign barring the way. And the one marked Janos is a thousand miles wide and as smooth as silk.

I could probably slide down it.

‘It’s more than nice enough. It’s so beautiful I hear it sometimes in my dreams. The first time I heard it in the hotel room it was like I’d known it all my life, and just hadn’t listened before.’

‘Ah, Alissa.’

‘And your words …’

‘Tell me about my words.’

‘They make me crazy.’

‘Which ones, specifically?’

‘All of them. Any of them.’

‘So mostly “and”, and “when”, and “if”.’

It’s another challenge, ten hurdles high. I can clear it, though. I can.

‘No. Mostly “sex” and “pleasure” and the way you just said “wet”.’

‘Like it excites me.’

‘Yes. Exactly, yes.’

‘Like I want you to tell me all about that slippery seam between your legs, and how eager you must be to have someone lick their way over it.’

‘Oh, God, yes.’

‘And how I would, if I were there. I’d kiss your pussy until you forgot every little sliver of that restraint, play with your nipples to make them so pretty and stiff, slide my fingers inside you just as I think you might be doing now. Are you?’

I’m sitting with my legs squeezed so tightly together you couldn’t pry them apart with a crowbar, one hand a tight fist just above that place he’s talking about. However, my imagination is an entirely different matter. In my imagination I’m sprawled back on the bed, fingers sliding through my absolutely soaking folds, everything so frantic and furtive it’s almost real anyway.

I don’t suppose it matters if I lie a little.

‘Yes.’

Only I think it does matter that I lie a little. I can tell. There’s a silence after I’ve said it, as though he’s considering saying one thing. But in the end, he goes with the other.

‘Good. And then just when you’re at the point of begging … just when you’re ready to tell me your every secret without dissimulation …’

‘Yes, oh, yes.’

‘I’d stop.’

‘No, don’t,’ I say, and am shocked by the urgency and desperation in my own voice. I sound like I’ve lost my mind, or at the very least would be willing to trade it for more. And worse, he definitely knows that this is the case.

‘It has to be so.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this way I can make you take another step, without even really trying. You’re ready now, aren’t you? You’re just waiting for the next part, hovering on the edge. So I will leave you here, sweet Alissa, with a promise.’ He pauses, almost unbearably. ‘I’ll carry on, if you come to me.’

I could kill him. I want to kill him. At the very least I want to cry and kick and scream, and have to fight with myself to stop it happening. I’m not a child who’s been denied something. I’m a rational adult, who needs to tell him rational things like: