Control. Charlotte Stein

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      I was mistaken in Kevin, too. Kevin liked to speed walk. He went for power runs. I had high hopes for our bedroom adventures, but sadly his can-do up up up attitude did not extend to sex.

      I think I may just be too difficult to please. Even today’s encounter, on reflection, doesn’t seem that exciting. Despite the fact that just remembering the wood against my cheek and the sound of harsh breathing in the tiny downstairs kitchen sets me off again.

      I stop pretending completely that the television is holding my attention and play him back in my head, instead. The couple in the flat next door to mine—they own the pet store next door, too—are going at it, and it makes for a good soundtrack. Headboard banging against the wall, lots of grunts and sighs…they usually don’t make much of a fuss, but this time I definitely hear Jeanette, crying out with something that could possibly be real pleasure. It makes me wonder if I sound the same when I’m with someone.

      It makes me wonder what I’m missing out on, if timid Jeanette’s getting better sex than me.

      I press my finger against my still aching clit and sigh, just to hear my own voice. Then louder when I rub, gently, then louder yet to think of someone over me. The first applicant, with his sinewy arms and his tattoos and his narrow sly face, all rough with stubble. I imagine said stubble scraping against my sensitive places—my tight nipples and the soft expanse of my thighs and my clit—oh God rub my clit.

      I’m wet before I know it and clutching at the pillow, the first applicant turning quickly into the usual suspects: that hottie from my latest favorite movie, that waiter from Delmonicos with the weird manner and then weirder yet…oh Lord, I always go weirder yet when I’m this close, body tensing and mind homing in on things I didn’t even know I wanted.

      Like that guy, staring at us from the doorway.

      I try to switch the channel back to the first applicant, to being pushed down over the kitchen table and shafted hard, but it’s too late now. My clit is jumping against my busy fingers and my juices are running between the crease of my arse cheeks, and I couldn’t stop even if the couple next door banged on the wall and told me to knock it off.

      In fact, I think I’d quite like them to do that. There’s nothing like being caught in the act, it seems, even if the act is solo. I have a secret streak of needing-to-be-spied-on, and my mind won’t stop going there. To him, and his too-thick glasses and his tweediness and those hunched shoulders and Jesus, that’s a good image. Oh, that’s so good. I bet we really shocked him—I bet he couldn’t walk straight all the way home.

      I bet when he got home he did just what I’m doing right now.

      The thought is enough to send me right over the edge, so fiercely that it shocks me. All the sounds I wanted to cry out catch and stutter in my throat and I arch up off the bed, wanting more. I want a cock in my pussy and someone else’s fingers on my clit and when we’re through, I want to start all over again.

      As I lie on the bed still shaking and dazed, I realize what I must want: someone to watch. I want to be watched, right now. Or else I want to watch someone else, someone tweedy and uptight. Is that it? I just don’t know. I own a smutty bookstore, and I’ve got no idea.

      Could somebody tell me, please?

      Jeanette from next door brings me a pie and I have to wonder: Did she hear me the night before last? It’s a possibility. But then again, she often brings me things. I think her and Derek believe that I’m lonely or too young to be running a bookstore or some such.

      They’re nice people. She stays and has a chat with me during the before-lunch lull. We sit in the general romance section where I’ve got my comfy chairs and my little antique table so that people can pretend they’re in one of the big chains while they shop for porn.

      Of course, I don’t sell erotica alone. But truth be told, that’s why people come to me. The big boys are terrified of being anything but family-friendly, so my store continues to make money. And I feel that I am family-friendly, anyway.

      Families are born, after all, because of some of the things I sell. I’ve wanted to do the thing that makes babies plenty of times, after reading something from the erotic romance and erotica sections. Hell, sometimes the paranormal romance section gets me going, too. Sometimes just standing in front of shelves and shelves of reds and purples and flaming silvers gets me going.

      I do love my store. Occasionally I’ll take my shoes off, just so that I can wriggle my toes into the thick crimson carpeting.

      Jeanette seems to appreciate it, too. She keeps pushing her plain white trainers into the pile and she has that look on her face—the one she always gets when she’s in here. A kind of wonderment, I think, despite her sure and certain knowledge that I am a lonely spinster. She giggles every time she has to say the name of my store: Wicked Words.

      Though at least she gets the intention. I honestly didn’t think people could miss it, what with the red lettering on black and all the glossiness, but I get a lot of disappointed Goths and Wiccans, too. Some who are expecting handcuffs, some who aren’t.

      Not that I mind. In truth, I thought it would alienate far more people than it actually ended up doing, in such a bustling but twee city as York. And I honestly didn’t think that so many romance fans would be attracted, but I get more romance customers than any other. They like me, because I get in a lot of the big American names that take seventeen years to filter down to us. I get the smaller ones, too, that never appear on these shores.

      I fill a niche with my Wicked Words.

      “Did you manage to hire anyone yet?” Jeanette asks, just as I’m busy trying to think about books.

      At least I can answer no, thank God.

      “Really? That chap who came by yesterday looked…interesting.”

      I think about his mouth, crushing mine. The wood against my cheek.

      “Him? Oh, he was awful. No good at all. Couldn’t hire him.”

      “That’s a surprise. He looked just the sort to fit right in here.”

      She glances around as she says this—it’s pretty obvious what she means. Big, liquid-sex Andy Yarrow, surrounded by books that feature men just like him, doing plenty of randy things. Yes, I’m sure he’d fit right in amidst all the sex and the horny shopkeepers.

      “He didn’t know the first thing about books,” I say, which is perfectly true. He did have plenty of firsthand experience of the kinds of things that go on in my books, however—though of course I don’t say this.

      “That’s odd. Maybe he was just nervous.”

      As Andy appeared about as inclined to nerves as a robot programmed to kill, I have to start wondering if Jeanette knows him somehow. Perhaps this is some sort of defense of him, which will then be followed by her persuading me to hire him. I can’t imagine why she keeps banging on about him, otherwise.

      “I don’t think he was the nervous type,” I say, at which she laughs.

      “What, that little mouse? I think we’ve got our wires crossed, Maddie. He was the most nervous I’ve ever seen such a tall man be! He could hardly ask me if you would make a nice boss. I told him yes, of course—”

      “Who on earth are you talking СКАЧАТЬ