Читать книгу Deep Desires - Charlotte Stein - Страница 6

I’m aware that this is a ridiculous thing to do – like a stalker, rooting through things that belong to a person they’re having a fake relationship with. But, after last night, I can’t help it. I think of the name I couldn’t call out and then I just wait, and watch which mailbox he goes to.

I do it surreptitiously, out of the corner of one eye.

And then once he’s made his way past me – me with my back to him, him staring straight ahead, the air between us bristling like that moment just before lightning strikes – I go to the place he was. I run my fingers over the Sellotaped name on the front of that dingy grey metal.

Ivan. Ivan Orlinsky, it says, which of course only makes things worse. Now I’m thinking of far-off places in the past, where men with beards stride around through the snow and everyone has mysterious accents. He’s the Russian of my imagination, the Polish of my dreams, or maybe some other nationality that I can’t even think of.

Ivan Orlinsky, I think, from the land of TirAsleen. And then I have to stop, because the end of that tale is: who came across oceans of time to be with a tired, pathetic checkout girl called Abbie Gough.

It doesn’t quite go, does it? Abbie and Ivan. Abbie is the girl you shove into the road on your way to a business meeting. She’s not the mysterious sex partner of a dense-eyed man called Ivan.

And yet that’s the name on the parcel he’s left in my mailbox, in that same neat cursive script he used for the window. Abbie, it says, just above the impeccable seam he’s made with the expensive wrapping – a perfectly straight and perpendicular join, held down by tape so crisply cut it could have been done with a machine.

Hell, maybe it was. It’s called him. He’s made of metal cogs and synchronised gears, and, when he’s required to send an unexpected gift to a stunned girl, they perform the task with technical precision.

I can hardly bear to tear into the thing, it’s that perfect. The paper’s so thick, so glossy, it’s actually nicer than most of the gifts I’ve ever received. It would be a shame to ruin it with rabid fumbling by my mailbox, as Mrs Hindleman from apartment 7F looks on.

So I take the gift upstairs. I sit on my bed and place it in my lap, for further inspection, though no amount of analysis will reveal his error. He hasn’t made one. I have to somehow inch into this thing, with great and deliberate care.

Of course that only makes the anticipation greater. I can feel my eagerness clutching at my throat by the time I’ve tenderly undone the wrapping, and when I see the carved wooden box beneath my breath chokes off entirely.

He’s made this box, I think. He’s whittled it out of some dense, dark wood, for reasons I can’t fathom. I just know they’re there, these reasons, I know he’s done this. I can tell by the way the box feels and looks, and, most of all, by how hard it is to get into.

He’s made a puzzle box, seemingly equal on all sides, with no clear hinges or seams. It’s just one endless whorl and curve carved into wood, as beautiful as anything I’ve seen. As disturbing, too. It’s almost too intricate, I think, like a painting by that guy with the staircases – full of hidden thorns and secret upside-down passageways. If I touch the wrong thing, I’ll be drawn into the labyrinth that lives at the centre of the underworld, and never escape.

Which is a silly thing to think by the light of Wheel of Fortune, blaring silently from my TV. But it lingers all the same, as I turn the box over and over, searching. There’s got to be a way in, after all. He hasn’t just carved me a block of wood, I’m sure – though in some ways it’s still a surprise, when I find the key.

A little shock goes through me the moment I push against the body of a bird, wrapped all around in vines and leaves, and something that wasn’t there before springs open. A little drawer, I think it is, but of course I don’t dare look for the longest time. I glance up at Wheel of Fortune instead, and watch the colours whirl around.

And then when it seems like I care the least, when I’m barely paying attention, I slide the drawer out. I look inside the box he made for me, and find what’s going to happen next in this brand-new life I’ve found myself in.

I’m going to wear a piece of jewellery, it seems. One he’s made for me, as lovely as the box in its own way, but with a far different intent. The box is a beautiful puzzle, waiting for me to dare to open it. The gift inside is easy to read, immediately. I’ve seen similar things in dirty movies, though none quite as pretty as this. This is a work of art, really, as is the note he’s printed on a piece of perfect cream card inside.

Wear it for me, the note says, though it’s not the words I’m interested in. The words are a command, of the type men have given me all my life. But the question mark on the end … the question mark is the thing I’m drawn to. I trace it with my fingers, that curve as compelling as the wood he’s worked into such lovely shapes.

You can if you want to, that question mark says. But not if you don’t. And of course I already know what happens when I don’t – he doesn’t take all my privileges away from me. He won’t hold my head under water until I pass out. It’s not an ultimatum.

It’s just a choice.

Yes, or no?

* * *

His gift takes some getting used to. It’s easy enough to wear and fits me perfectly, as though that hand he ran over me through the glass was actually measuring the size of my hips. He made the gossamer strands with them in mind, and everything else followed: the trickling, teasing length of silver that slides between the cheeks of my arse and holds the base of the contraption tight to me. The V at the front that’s almost like a pair of panties, until you get to the smooth rounded shape that now nestles between the lips of my pussy.

It’s barely conspicuous when I look at myself in the mirror; I can’t imagine what purpose it serves for my dark voyeur. But, oh boy, can I feel it. I can feel it when I walk and when I’m lying down. I can feel it as I sit behind my till at the Minimart, serving oblivious customers – that smooth plastic shape sliding over my clit at the oddest and most inconvenient times.

But most of all I can feel it after I’ve seen him in the hallway, as composed and indifferent as he always seems in person. He could be carved in marble, as I walk past his implacable back. We could be total strangers who’ve never shared so much as a glance.

And then just as I’m at the height of this disappointment, just as I’ve convinced myself, again, that he doesn’t care for me at all, a bolt of electric pleasure shoots from that little sliver of plastic, all the way through my oversensitised clit and straight on down to the marrow of my bones.

I think I go down to one knee. I definitely stumble, at any rate. I know this because while I’m floundering in sudden stunned pleasure, he comes right up to me. He comes right up to me and then he puts a hand on my elbow.

And, as he does it, he says: ‘Are you all right, Miss Gough? Here, let me help you up.’

As though I simply slipped.

Oh, let me process that for a while. Let me drown in it. That little slip of plastic between my legs … it’s not just a covering that quaintly teases. It’s a toy. He’s built some kind of little buzzer into the thing, and when I least expected it – when he seemed at his most casual and uncaring – he purposefully activated it.

And now he’s helping me up in front of Mrs Belvedere from 8G, as though I had a funny and entirely spontaneous turn. It had nothing to do with him. He’s an innocent passer-by, a good Samaritan.

Oh, and also, he’s a genius.

I can hardly take him being this close to me, though naturally he knew I would feel this way. It was obvious that I’d be overwhelmed by his toy and then again by the clean, clear scent of him, like a forest in winter. And he knew that I’d bristle at the feel of his hand on my arm, pressing in a way that’s somehow more intimate than that slippery plastic rubbing against my clit.

Though that’s not really a surprise. Every part of my body is suddenly raw and exposed, a nerve ending he’s stripped of all covering. He could touch me anywhere and I’d shudder to feel it, and I think he knows this.

Which is why he portions out his contact in increments, each one more exciting and certain than the last. A hand on my arm, a hand on my back – ever so light, as though he’s not doing this at all. And when he finally steps away, his faint touch leaves me just as he knew it would: aching for more, but thrilling with the thought of what’s to come.

Someday he’ll actually kiss me, and I’ll turn to dust and blow away.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Belvedere,’ he says, but he doesn’t look at her as he talks. He looks at me, eyes blazing with that odd sultry heat, and then he tells me: ‘Abbie’s fine.’

And it’s true. I am.

Until he presses that damned buzzer again.

This time the sensation goes through me hard enough to force my teeth to clack together, though I’m glad they do. It stops the sound I want to make from coming out of me in a big glut, and saves me from further embarrassment courtesy of Mrs Belvedere.

She’s staring at me oddly as it is, and, when Ivan says to her that I might need a lie down, her expression doesn’t change. She’s just waiting for the Serial Killer to do something odd and perverted, with devices and implements and other lurid things.

She doesn’t know he already has. He’s doing it right now as he guides me in the direction of the stairwell, that thing almost constantly humming against my clit. I’ve got absolutely no clue how he thinks I’m going to climb these steps with this hot pleasure washing through me, constantly, but he keeps going. He keeps urging me up the stairs. Pretty soon I’m going to orgasm, and then what?

I could barely stay on my feet the other night in front of the window. I can’t keep putting one foot in front of the other like this, like nothing’s happened. I have to cling onto the banister; I have to nearly crawl. And all the while he’s walking behind me, pressing and pressing whatever sort of device he’s using to drive me insane.

Which sounds weird enough on its own, until I realise how slow he must be walking to stay behind me. Like my dark and perverted shadow, just hovering at my edges.

Waiting for me to crack, I think. Waiting for me to turn desperately and beg him to stop.

Or maybe beg him for more. Because, dear God, I want to. I feel like I’ve been clinging to the outskirts of this pleasure forever, and, though I can climb the steps and keep myself steady and not give too many outward signs, inside I’m one long pulsing ache. My clit is close to throbbing, and I know without checking that my panties are soaked through.

I’ve wet myself because of a piece of jewellery, I think, and the shame that follows is …

Blissful.

I walk slanted down my hallway, one hand occasionally searching for the wall, and I don’t care, I don’t care. I’m lost in the heat that’s engulfed my slippery pussy, and my usually so colourless face. I’m swaying down the tilted hallway in the labyrinthine box he made for me, drunk on desire and thick with sensation.