Power Play

‘You’re going to wear those words out, Benjamin.’

He takes a breath, but it’s different to the ones he needed earlier. More restless, I think, as though he’s just as frustrated as I am at his sudden inability to express himself properly. I mean, usually he’s almost crazy with words – he’s a goddamn word volcano. I’ve seen him terrify Kelly with his need to share a hundred details about his childhood in Hawaii, and all at a thousand words a minute.

But now he’s stuttery. He doubles back on himself, as though he’s on trial and has to get everything just right.

‘Sorry. Sorry. OK – I guess maybe once or twice a day.’

And when he does finally get words out, they’re not the correct ones.

‘You know it’s very easy to tell when you’re lying. You get this little awkward crinkle above your nose,’ I say, though I’ve no idea that I’d figured out such a thing until the words emerge. It’s like what Woods used to say about the subconscious clues, I suppose – that people do things without knowing it.

I can’t be sure, however, if this applies to him, or to me.

‘I do?’

‘Yes. And you look sort of … stunned by your own capacity for falsehoods.’

He squirms for that one. But shamefully, this only seems to create further problems between my legs. When I shift, I can feel the slickness coating my slit. Can feel it easing over things both delightful and torturous.

‘OK. OK,’ he says, and then he does something that makes me want to do more than cross my legs. It makes me want to shove my skirt up and fuck myself right there in front of him, though I’ve no idea why.

He just counts on his fingers. That’s all. And if he’s counting how many times he masturbated yesterday on said fingers, well … what does that matter? How is that an arousing thing to witness?

‘I’d say I maybe do it … three times a day.’ He checks his fingers and nods, then seems to change his mind when he finally looks up at me. Like he knows. Like he can feel me unravelling the lie before I’ve said a word. ‘Sometimes more, depending on what’s happened.’

I can’t describe the heady rush that goes through me, to know that my expression alone forced him to make that correction. All I understand clearly is that it puts a quiver in my voice, when I finally get words out.

‘And what has to happen to make you so desperate to come?’

Not that it matters. He has his own quiver to deal with, and oh Lord it’s big. It seems to affect his entire body, from sudden slump of his shoulders to the slow drift of his eyelids over those foggy eyes.

It’s like all his self-control slides right out of him. And I know it does for sure, when he quite abruptly pants out: ‘Oh, that sounds so dirty when you say that word. I think I felt it go right through me.’

But the words aren’t the worst part about it. No – the worst part is when he just kind of rubs his hand all over his chest and then up to his neck, after he’s spoken. And though I try to deny it, what I’m left thinking of is a stripper, doing her best to be as blatant and sexual as she can.

You know. To lure people in.

‘Say it again,’ he says, and then I have to cut him off. Have to. Of course I do it with words that have absolutely nothing to do with how I feel, but in truth I’m just glad I manage to speak at all.

‘I think you have the wrong idea, Benjamin,’ I say, while molten lava makes its way down my body to settle in the pit of my stomach. Strange, really, that my voice comes out quite steely. ‘You don’t tell me what to do, I tell you. Of course, you can decide not to do it. But here’s the thing: I rather think you won’t.’

His eyes flash in a way I can’t quite reach with the outer edges of my imagination.

‘You’re right,’ he tells me, all low and steady. ‘I won’t.’

I don’t know what happens inside my body after that. If I tried to stand, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t make it. My sex is so swollen, so full of that sweet ache, that the idea of moving so much just makes me want to pass out at my desk.

And he’s definitely starting to know it now. He takes a step forward without my say-so, that wicked tongue of his just ever so slightly flickering out to wet his bottom lip. Gaze now as bright as it is heavy, eager and mischievous in a way I don’t want to quite face.

So instead, I say the first put him off kind of thing I can think of.

‘So if, for example, I told you to lick my arsehole – you would?’

It’s like I’m suddenly playing chicken, I think, and this is my first daring play. The lewdest thing I can think of on such short notice, and one that’s bound to put a man off. Bound to.

‘Do you want me to do that? I could, if you wanted me to.’

Or you know. Maybe it only puts men who aren’t Benjamin Tate off. Because Lord, I swear, I’ve never heard anyone sound so eager to do anything. I’ve told children they can have ice cream, and not had them respond with such breathless anticipation.

He starts unbuttoning that grotesque cardigan, as though a prerequisite for an ass-licking is nakedness from both parties – though naturally I stop him. I mean, I can’t actually have him lick between the cheeks of my arse, in my open office in the middle of the day. That would be ridiculous.

Even if he doesn’t seem to think so in the slightest.

‘I mean, I’ve thought about doing it,’ he says, before I’ve got past the hand I’ve held up to halt him in his immense, ridiculous tracks.

And then said hand is the thing that feels ridiculous, in all honesty. He’s actually thinking about ass-licking while I’m the goddamn lollipop lady stood in the middle of our road.

‘I see,’ I say, because it’s just noncommittal enough. It’s just enough without going all the way into yes, go ahead, do whatever the fuck you like. Instead it hovers on the edges of explain yourself to me, as cool and detached as my face nearly feels.

‘Though obviously, you know. Not in a lot of detail.’

‘You haven’t thought about licking my ass in a lot of detail? Well, how comforting.’

‘No – I mean … I mean I try not to think about you that way. Most of the time.’

‘And the rest of the time you’re spreading my arse cheeks and going to town, in your head?’

One of his hands pauses, mid-gesture. Finger half-uncurled from the loose fist he’s made, as though he was just about to make an absolutely fascinating point, and now has no idea what it was. Even his mouth seems caught in this feedback loop, that soft shape suddenly tense around words he’s now failing to get out.

‘You need to answer me, Benjamin – and quickly. I really don’t have a lot of time to watch you standing in front of me unable to speak.’

He wets his lips. Closes his eyes, briefly, before continuing.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Describe it to me, then.’

‘Wait – what? What do you want me –’

‘Describe what you do to me, in all of these fevered imaginings,’ I say, though I don’t do it because I really want to. I do it because I can’t not.

And apparently, he feels exactly the same. It’s like he wants to stop, really he does. He wants to have control over himself, and maybe laugh all of this off. But instead he just takes a big breath, and goes right ahead with it all.

‘Sometimes … sometimes you tell me to do it. Like this – only fiercer. But other times I’m in the hallway or your office and I drop something, the way I always do when you pass by. And while I’m down there, on my knees, I just kind of … get my face between your legs.’

He doesn’t look away as he tells me this, which I think is to his credit. After all, I have to look away the second he’s said it. I simply can’t keep staring at him, with all of these newly framed thoughts about his clumsiness rattling around inside my head.

He doesn’t drop everything because he’s just like that. He drops everything because of me. I mean, that’s what he’s saying, right? And if I ask, will that startling and too foggy fact become clearer? Will I be able to look at it head on?