Run To You. Charlotte Stein

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ want to touch me. You want me to carry on touching you. You want me to peel off your blouse and your bra and get right underneath. And when I’m finished there, you want me to start on other items of clothing.’

      He gestures to my skirt, though perhaps gesture is the wrong word. It’s much more like a caress, from the curve of my hip over and down my thigh to my knee. And I suppose it would be, if his hand wasn’t around two feet away from any of my actual body parts. It just dances through the air over certain places, and I shudder as though he really touched me.

      I’m fighting a losing battle.

      ‘You’re wrong. I hate being naked.’

      ‘You hate being naked because you think you’re unappealing. But secretly you long to be confident … to have a man’s eyes following your every move as you strip out of your clothes, so sure and certain that he wants you. That he craves you. Isn’t that so?’

      ‘No.’

      This time he stops in front of me, and tick-tocks his finger back and forth.

      ‘That’s another lie, Alissa.’

      ‘How can you always tell?’

      ‘I make my living from being able to tell.’

      ‘Really? True or false, then: I threw my childhood pet in a lake.’

      ‘Are you challenging me?’ he asks, laughter in his words. ‘Very well: true.’

      ‘You honestly believe I’d do something like that?’

      ‘Whether I believe or not, it’s obvious you aren’t lying.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because you wanted to trick me, so told me the most ridiculous thing you could think of in the hopes I’d get it wrong.’ He sits back down in his seat by the table, while I make every effort to close my gaping mouth. ‘Correct?’

      He’s so correct it hurts. My pride is still reeling from the blow.

      ‘Correct.’

      ‘I don’t know why you did it, however. Are you going to enlighten me now?’

      ‘You really want to know?’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘I killed it by accident. It was just a mouse and I was mostly afraid of it and it jumped out of my hands when I tried to hold it too tight.’ He was right about the ridiculous part. This story is so absurd I’m blushing over it, and not just because of the content. There’s also the fact that he’s making me tell it to someone like him. What does he know about petty concerns like this? I wish I wasn’t telling him about petty concerns like this. ‘And then I was scared my parents would find out, so I got rid of the evidence.’

      ‘That’s a sad little tale.’

      ‘It’s a stupid, meaningless little tale.’

      ‘Yes, I’m sure it’s meaningless that you were afraid, and that you tried to hold on tight, and then couldn’t tell the people closest to you,’ he says, and something rises in my throat after he’s done so. It kind of feels like a knot of frustration on the way up, but it comes out in the form of a word.

      ‘God,’ I snap. ‘Do you really have to be like this? You can’t work me out so easily, you know. No one can work out another person so easily.’

      ‘I never claimed I could. I only claimed that I can interpret some of the things you say and do, and that I know when you lie. And I believe I’ve proved that much, at least.’

      He’s right. He has. But I’m not willing to accept that. I’m not willing to accept any of this. I just want to go back to the touching and the guessing, and that urge is so strong it’s making my teeth ache. Before I answer I have to clench them together, and the words come out all grating and ground up.

      ‘Not enough for my liking.’

      ‘No? Then perhaps we should play another little game,’ he says, in a way that suggests it isn’t going to be little, and it isn’t going to be a game. People don’t brace themselves over little games – but that’s what I’m doing. I’ve stiffened my shoulders and tightened my hands into fists, and when he finally speaks I close my eyes. It seems better to close my eyes for something like this: ‘If you tell me a lie about your desires and I catch you, you then have to do whatever it is you tried to conceal from me.’

      ‘And how would you go about catching me?’ I ask, in some vain attempt at injecting some bravado into this. I already know it’s the wrong thing to say, however. The second I speak that word aloud, my mind starts picturing him chasing me down hallways. In some of the scenarios he has giant metal hands or a big chainmail net, but in all of them I’m exactly the same way. I’m panicking and stumbling and completely unable to escape.

      He’ll have no trouble, I think.

      And apparently, we’re of one mind on this.

      ‘I don’t believe it will be so very difficult.’

      ‘I could lie about lying. I could tell you it isn’t true no matter how hard you pressed me, and then what would happen?’

      ‘Then the game comes apart.’ He picks at lint that isn’t there, somewhere around his right knee. ‘Though I trust that you won’t let that happen. No matter what you say, I think you like it when I guess.’

      He’s right and wrong at the same time. Sometimes he speaks and my insides soar, but I always have an urge to punch him afterwards. I have an urge to punch him now, and it’s really only being eclipsed by the need to play this game until it reaches some probably nightmarish conclusion.

      He’ll ask me if I’d like some anal sex, and I’ll lie and say no.

      And then I’ll have to do it.

      Oh, God, yes, I’ll have to do it.

      ‘All right. I haven’t the faintest clue how this is going to work, but all right.’

      ‘Excellent.’

      He shrugs around inside his jacket, as though to make himself comfortable. And when he finally is – when he’s completely at ease and the master of his own domain – he speaks in this casual way.

      It’s just a shame that the words themselves aren’t casual at all.

      ‘What are you waiting for, then? Take off your clothes.’

      ‘What? That’s not the game.’

      ‘Of course it is. You lied about not wanting to be naked, and I caught you. So now you have to remove every … little … thing.’

      For a moment I’m too taken aback to speak. He’s like a wizard. He’s like the designer of terrible traps for foolish people, and somehow I’ve stumbled right into one without even realising it. My leg is caught and I’ve lost my map, and I’ve really got no one to blame but myself. I actually feel stupid for complaining, though I have to do it.

СКАЧАТЬ