Power Play. Charlotte Stein

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СКАЧАТЬ eagerness. Not those sooty lashes that probably look beautiful spread over his cheeks – when he closes his eyes in ecstasy, maybe.

      God. God. How did the word ‘beautiful’ get into that sentence? How did ‘ecstasy’? I have absolutely no clue, and yet for a long moment it’s all I can think about. All of the things that are exactly right about him crowd out the things that probably aren’t wrong at all, and I’m left helpless on the burning ship again.

      Though I don’t clutch at my desk this time. I turn to my computer – the ridiculous wood-backed thing my former paramour ordered from Japan, and that I’ve already searched for any evidence of his impenetrable motivations – and do what I’d wanted to the moment I knew he was gone.

      Hell, I wanted to do it the moment I knew he was different, on Friday afternoon.

      I go online, and start looking for someone who can give me the things he no longer knew how to. The things I’m no longer getting, and apparently need so desperately that I’m willing to actually venture onto Craigslist and read insane ads like:

      I want to piss on your head. Call 1-800-asshole, if you’re into that.

      No, 1-800-asshole. I’m not into that. But of course the problem is I don’t know what I am into. It was just easy to do the things Woods wanted me to do. It was calming and pleasurable and a distraction, from Anderson in sales being a doucheknuckle. From Patterson in marketing smacking my ass as I pass by his department – then acting like I’m the sourpuss when I tell him he’ll lose a finger the next time he pulls that shit with me.

      It meant I didn’t have to go home and stare at the walls of my pathetic apartment, with my pathetically neat little dinner for one in front of me, and know that this is my life. I am the managing director of a mid-sized but well thought of publishing house, operating out of the tiny city of York.

      And that is the most of it.

      Even if it’s not, exactly. After all, I am here in this plush little office, in my prim little suit with the perfect cuffs, looking at images of women who’ve been doing some very dirty things. And though that’s not quite on the level of what my predecessor was getting up to between these classy-painting covered walls, there’s a certain frisson to it, I have to say.

      I can understand its allure exactly, and not just because I want something to replace whatever Woods was providing. It’s the look of things, I think. It’s the smell in here, of varnish and too-thick carpets, as I bring up a picture of a woman facing away from camera.

      Though I confess: it’s not her face I’m interested in. It’s her back, her naked back, and the pattern of stripes working its way down over that flesh. Red on white, red on white, from the slim span of her shoulders to the curve of her ass, everything so perfectly uniform that it’s almost not a line of cane marks at all. It’s like a dress she’s wearing, made of a million crimson stripes. And if I could just find the right person, if I could meet someone who understood the insides of me, he could give me a garment just like it.

      Or I could give the garment to him.

      Of course I try to shake it off the moment the idea occurs to me, but the trouble is, it doesn’t want to go. It’s there right behind my eyes, along with the image of Benjamin’s ever-shifting gaze, and his strange mouth, and his big hands. What would hands such as those look like dressed in red? Do people even do that – do they crack something down on their palms, in the same way someone has done it to her back?

      I’ve got to imagine they do, because the thought holds a sweetness for me that the idea of being caned across my back doesn’t. When I think of the palms of my hands, I think about holding a pen and suddenly getting an echo of that sting. I think about sitting in a meeting, and just squeezing my hands into fists until the pain blazes out and reminds me of who I really am.

      I am a person who thinks about being bent over a desk, so that someone faceless and nameless can cover my ass with a million red lines. In fact I’m thinking about it right now, while I’m supposed to be composing an email to one of the senior editors about a promotion he’s suddenly going to have.

      And it feels like a long, cool relief after everything that’s happened today. I can see it so clearly in my head – knickers around my ankles, legs just ever so slightly spread. The glistening slickness of my cunt in between, so like the girl I’m looking at right now. The one called Veronica, who likes to expose herself in public.

      I know how Veronica feels. I’m in that same mind-set currently, as I almost but don’t quite press the heel of my palm over my suddenly tender mound. It’s close enough to my clit that I get a little jolt of pleasure, but not so close that anyone could stroll in and know what I was doing, and that’s the line I want to walk right now.

      I want to be on the edge again, so close to being caught doing something very bad indeed. I’m not the prim and proper correct choice for this job. I’m a dirty girl who likes looking at filthy websites during office hours, nipples stiff beneath my immaculate shirt and jacket. Clit suddenly swollen, and just begging to be stroked.

      Though of course I don’t do it. I just flick through the images on the screen, restlessly, stopping when I find something that sparks my interest. A woman with a cock in her mouth and another in her pussy, struggling against intricate bonds that I follow eagerly with my gaze. More red stripes on flesh, some so bright and brilliant they hurt my eyes.

      But I go in close just the same. In fact, I’m leaning so close to the screen that it’s almost like I’ve got my nose pressed to the glass – like I’m a child craving sweets that I’m not allowed to have – and that’s how I’m poised when someone knocks on the door. Hunched over my desk as though I’ve turned into some sort of lust-crazed animal, hand almost over the sensitive swell of my pussy through my skirt. My arousal so sharp and keen, suddenly, it’s like slicing myself open on a knife’s edge when said someone doesn’t wait for me to invite them in. They just barge right on through as I jerk back in my chair, hand fumbling for the mouse, everything about me so red and raw. I know it must look obvious. Woods would have seen it immediately, and demanded I pay the price. Show me how wet you’ve gotten yourself, Ms Harding, he would have said, whereas Benjamin just seems trapped somehow in my doorway. It’s that thing again, I think, of blundering and yet knowing he’s made the blunder a moment later.

      He shouldn’t have come in, and he understands that perfectly. I can see it on his face, but he still doesn’t move away. He doesn’t leave and close the door behind him, then knock again a moment later.

      And there’s something about that fact that I can’t shake. I want to, I desperately want to, but I can’t. He’s saying something to me without words and, though I don’t want to hear, I’m listening anyway. Like I did with Woods.

      ‘Sorry, sir,’ he says, and my entire body melts and slides right off my chair. Whatever I was feeling before – a kind of weak and watery horniness over some paltry little pictures – folds in and doubles back on itself until I’m left like this. Stunned by arousal for something I barely understand.

      ‘You should probably go back to your cubicle, Benjamin,’ I say, and though it holds a hint of whatever frisson I’m feeling, it’s not what I want to say. Instead, once he’s left me to my own devices, I imagine telling him something very different.

      I think you’d better come inside, I near-murmur, and in my head he does. He comes inside and sits down on the chair across from my desk, hands clutching the arms in exactly the way they had before. That little pink tongue of his peeking out, to wet his plump lower lip.

      And СКАЧАТЬ