Yle and Sarah

This is part of a longer piece, but should make sense on its' own. Would love to know what you think. Thanks.

Eight o’ clock sharp, he’d said. And there she was. Right on eight o’clock. To be honest, Kyle hadn’t fully noticed her predilection for doing what he said, until it was pointed out to him. But once he’d seen it, he wondered how he’d managed to miss it.

He’d noticed her attraction to him, which was easy enough. They’d been introduced by her husband, Luke. He was a big noise in Human Resources. A nothing job, and it fitted Luke like a glove. He was a bland, grey, ineffectual man. As if painted in pallid watercolours. He seemed to melt against any surface he contacted. He’d introduced Sarah at some corporate gathering or other. Kyle wasn’t in the habit of keeping track of where he’d first met people. They tended to gravitate back towards him anyway, so why should he care when they first met?

He’d seen Sarah from the back a couple of minutes beforehand, so he’d already checked her out. She was slim, admirably so, with suppleness to her movements that reminded Kyle of a gymnast he’d once dated. She had a certain fluidity to the muscles that caught his eye. She was pretty, but not spectacular. Her skin was pale, and beneath the make-up Kyle foresaw a slightly hollow look to her features, as if permanently convalescing from something significant. As they shook hands he saw that her eyes were a warm blue, almost purple, somehow deepened by the paleness of her skin.

As the handshake finished, she stroked her fingers across his palm as she withdrew. He flicked his eyes back to hers, and her eyes had widened, almost flashing a signal to him. He briefly wondered if Luke had noticed, but the stupid bastard was already speaking to someone else about golf. He glanced back to her as she looked down at her chilled chardonnay, the kind of cheap piss a bank of this stature should send back to the caterers.

“Why?”

She looked at him quizzically, neither understanding the question nor its context.

“What do you mean, why?”

He extended an arm around her shoulder and led her away from her husband. In every possible way. She went willingly, allowing him to stroke her collar bone as they passed by several groups to a quiet corner. He briefly wondered if she was used to cheating on her husband, or if this would be a first.

“I mean, why did you marry Luke?”

She stared at him. With her in strappy heels, they were virtually the same height. If she was staring at him hoping to get a window to his soul, she was out of luck. He wasn’t aware of having one.

“What the hell business is it of yours?”

Kyle smiled. He’d seen this type of moral indignation before. How dare you. Who do you think you are? What right do you think you have to….and so on. It was an opening gambit he often used, and with marrieds and long-term partners, it had an impressive success rate. He thought he could see where this was headed.

“Because I’m interested in you. Very interested. If you tell me you married Luke because you’re madly in love with him and he’s your soul mate for life, I’ll back off. But you won’t tell me that. Not if you’re honest with me, anyway. And why shouldn’t you be honest with me? I’m being totally honest and upfront with you. We’re both adults, so playing games is just wasting both our times.”

Sarah smiled.

“I’d heard you were a cocksure little bastard, but I didn’t think you were this bad.”

“Well, that’s partly right. I’m cocksure, yes. I’m sure of myself because I can be. Because I know what I’m like and because I know what women like.”

“Says you. As it happens, I did marry Luke for love.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And when did it start going wrong? When did it turn into something you’d settled for? When did you stop seeing him as an object of passion, and more as your best mate? When did you stop being the one he broke all the rules for, the one he wanted to touch every hour of the day? When did he stop wanting to hold you all night?”

Sarah’s response was something between a laugh and a choke.

“Christ, you’re full of shit. What the fuck do you know about it? And, I repeat, what’s it got to do with you anyway?”

Kyle smiled a little half-smile like he knew a secret.

“Because if you were crazy about your husband, you wouldn’t be about to cheat on him. You wouldn’t have done that little thing on the handshake, you wouldn’t have been so eager for me to take you away into a corner, and you would have slapped me and gone back to the party by now.”

Sarah was silent for a second. Kyle waited patiently, staring at her fringe until she lifted her head again.

“Maybe I’m too passive. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to cheat on him.”

“Yes you will. Look, I make no bones about it; I like to sleep with a lot of women. That’s me. That’s who I am. You can call it shallow or selfish if you like, but it’s all about me getting what I want. Sometimes they’re married, sometimes they aren’t. It doesn’t matter much to me, and it usually doesn’t matter to them. So believe me, I know what I’m talking about.

“You’re what I would call a waverer. You’re not unhappy in your marriage. It gives you a lot of things you want in life, both emotional and financial. But it doesn’t do enough for you. It doesn’t make you scream during sex, it doesn’t make you tingle inside to think about it, it doesn’t make you neglect your life and your friends. But you want that. You want the rush of excitement, a bit of adrenaline. Sooner or later, that urge will be too much to contain, and you’ll stray. Maybe not with me, maybe not soon, but you will. It just needs the right blend of opportunity and desire.”

“Perhaps I should just slap you.”

“Perhaps you should.”

He backed off slightly, and spread his arms wide, offering her a target.

“So go ahead, if you really think you should. But if you don’t, I’ll take that to mean you’re interested. And I will get to you. And I will make you scream.”

Kyle turned and strolled back to the party, trying not to think of her face.

He wandered over to the drinks, helping himself to an orange juice, deciding he would prefer a clear head for the rest of the night. He was pouring when he became aware of her beside him. She poured herself some water, and spoke without looking in his direction.

“If a woman like me wanted to try something else, she’d go for someone with discretion. Someone who could keep the whole thing clandestine, not go blabbing to the rest of the guys about what a score he’d made. She’d want someone who could conduct himself with a bit of dignity and class, so she could keep the things she liked about her marriage. And that, Mr Cocksure, certainly isn’t you.”

She moved away, leaving Kyle to smile into his cup. Yes it was. It was him. And it was him she wanted. Now it was just a question of logistics.

The next day, the company Intranet turned up Luke’s home telephone number. It wasn’t difficult to find. All that corporate bullshit about being open, and forming teams, made it a slam dunk. He waited until four o’clock before he rang. If she was one of those women who “did lunch” she’d be back from shopping about then. He knew she didn’t work, and there were no kids to worry about. And Luke didn’t earn enough to have a house that warranted a full-time domestic.

“Hello?”

“The Dominion Hotel. Room 233. Eight o’clock tomorrow night.”

“Who is this?”

He put down the telephone, and went back to work.

In the hotel room, the telephone rang. He answered it curtly, and the receptionist placed through the call. It was Sarah.

“Why do you think I would possibly come to see you, in some sleazy hotel room, for some sort of secretive fuck behind my husband’s back? There are thousands of men in this city, why would I want an arrogant little shit like you?”

He paused. Perhaps he had misjudged the other night. Perhaps she thought it was all a harmless game, a mild flirtation that, in the cold light of day, had lost its flavour. He wasn’t wrong often. But he could be this time. She sounded composed, poised.

“You’ll come because you want to. No-one’s forcing you, Sarah. You’re an independent woman. At least, you are when you don’t have to drag around behind Luke and pretend to laugh at his stories. Let me guess. You liked his sense of humour when you first met him, didn’t you? Thought he was wry and amusing. At least, you told your friends that. And you told yourself that. It made you feel superior, to be interested in a man because of his wit, rather than looking for the most attractive guy you could get. But now you’ve heard all his funny comments a thousand times before. And they’re old and stale. And the way you fuck with him is old and stale. Am I right?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. A brief hesitation that said he was correct.

“Maybe…..but before we go anywhere with this, I have to know that it won’t get back to Luke. He doesn’t deserve to get hurt.”

Oh yeah. The clincher. He knew where this was going now. Of course Luke deserved to get hurt. He deserved it for neglecting his wife. He deserved it for getting emotionally involved, and falling in love, when he could have been like Kyle. And he deserved it for being a boring little shit. It was all self-inflicted. Still, if Sarah needed to hear it…..

“I won’t say a thing. What you tell him or not, that’s up to you.”

“Goodbye, Kyle.”

The phone went dead. He started at the receiver in his hand for a second. Then replaced it.

Two seconds later was a knock on the door. She’d been standing outside the room for the whole conversation. He smirked. She’d been coming all along. The talk was just to salve her conscience. Make her think that this was safe. That it wasn’t really quite like cheating somehow. That it was all…..acceptable. He opened the door and walked away without greeting her. All part of the same thing. Not identifying himself on the telephone yesterday, and now not acknowledging her presence. He sat down in a chair that faced the door.

She was standing in the doorway, framed against the cream light of the hall. She was unsure, and her glance down the corridor made his heart flicker. It might have been a little fear that she’d walk away. So he swallowed it down and re-focused. She stepped into the room and placed her purse down on the edge of the bed. She turned and closed the door, sliding her coat off one shoulder. A bare shoulder of smooth, alabaster skin. As the door clicked shut, she turned the lock, and the coat slid from her body.

He hadn’t told her to, but she’d arrived naked, but for the coat.

He struggled not to look impressed. Wherever she worked out, it had done good work. She’d retained her muscle tone without bulking up, or losing so much fat that she got skinny. She looked slim and athletic. And very nervous.

He rolled a glass on the palm of his hand. He leaned his head from one side, to another. As if he was passing judgement. Just to let her know that his judgement, his opinion, what he wanted, was what mattered most. She just stood there, waiting. She was, he decided, waiting for instruction.

He nodded towards the bed, a large, wooden framed bed with way too many cushions on it. She sat uneasily on the edge of the bed, her head down and hands clasped awkwardly in her lap. She was blinking too often, and he could see a flush brought to the skin around her shoulders.

He put the glass down, the noise echoing through the room. Only the background hum of the heating filtered through the silence, which grew heavier by the second. He watched her patiently, even though she didn’t move. Just by watching her he could get her to move, to speak, before him. Then he’d know. Then he’d know what he could do to this woman.

She bit her lip, and the stillness dragged on. Two minutes, three minutes, four. She sat mutely, barely moving her fingers. Her skin began to acquire a sheen, a gossamer-thin film of sweat. She bit her lip again and looked up and in front of her. She caught a sight of herself in the mirror opposite the bed. A pale, naked woman waiting patiently for a relative stranger to fuck her. A cheater-in-waiting. The view made her face crumple slightly. He thought for a moment she was going to cry, but she fought it back and swallowed. And waited some more.

After six or seven minutes she couldn’t take it. She looked across at him. He could see that tears were welling in her eyes.

“So what now, Kyle? Are you going to fuck me or just sit there?”

He smiled. A slow, almost savage smile that never got anywhere near his eyes.

“Sarah…Sarah. So much to learn……one thing you’ll find out about me is that when we fuck, we do everything by my rules or not at all. I’ll have to teach you what that means. Don’t worry, you’ll like it. In fact, you’ll be begging me for the next lesson by the time we’re through. But you will do that, Sarah. You will do that.”

His voice was calm, steady, and low. He kept it that way deliberately, and she did his bidding by straining to hear him, leaning over towards his chair. When he got up she flinched, and he ticked another box inside his mind. This was going to be good. She was compliant, responsive and passive. And someone else’s wife. Just the way he liked his women.

He crouched down in front of her, his face barely six inches from hers. He could see her eyes dancing, as if she were trying to pick out some part of his face that would tell her some inner truth. He could see she needed some kind of absolution for what she was doing. Not that he was about to give it. He wasn’t an absolution guy. He wanted her to feel how wrong this was, even while she was doing it, even while she was enjoying it, and especially when she was asking for more. That’s what sexual control meant to him.

Her breaths were short and intermittent, needy. He decided to take his time with her. Sometimes he met a girl and the attraction was instant, and animal. They seemed to connect on a raw, instinctual level – though rarely on any other – and it wasn’t necessary to establish any ground rules. But it was different with Sarah. He wanted her to be gradually drawn into his world. He wanted her to sink slowly into his mire, feeling herself drowning in the quicksand, but knowing that to struggle, to fight it, was going to make it worse. He wanted her to feel every inch of her descent. And that meant going slowly.

He whispered.

“Lay back, Sarah, and close your eyes. And don’t open them, not even once, until I tell you.”

As she closed her eyes, he thought he detected a glimmer of a smile dance around her lips, but then it was gone. She gently eased herself back on the bed, her stomach muscles flexing as she moved.

He watched her ribcage rise and fall as she breathed. He just stood there, taking her in. Time was something he had plenty of. Time was his weapon. He trod heavily towards the door and opened it, his eyes fixed on her. He saw her flinch as she heard the latch click, but she redoubled her efforts and gripped the sheets with long, slim fingers. He could see when she swallowed.

He glanced up and down the corridor and saw that it was entirely empty. He made his voice slightly louder than normal.

“Hey, come and look at this, man…..look, take a look at her.”

He watched her the whole time. He saw her tense once when he spoke, and again when she started to understand what he was saying. He saw her feet rise slightly off the bed, toes curling, before she regained her control and tried to relax. He could see the tendons on her forearms flexing. And he could see her screwing her eyes even more tightly shut, as if that would hold out the humiliation. He waited, and waited, until he felt she was becoming more controlled and less agitated at the situation. Then he laughed.

“Yeah, I know. Okay man, maybe I’ll let you play with her later. I’ll see how she fucks first.”

He saw her flinch again, and for a second he thought she was going to blow it, open her eyes or blurt something out. But she didn’t. She didn’t twitch when he closed the door.

He stood by the door and regarded her again. She was good, very good. Impressive, in fact, for a non-professional. And the more he watched her body, the more he liked it.

He moved slowly, noiselessly, to the side of the bed, not wanting her to know which direction he was coming from. He could imagine her trying to heighten her other senses, to compensate for her lack of sight. Maybe trying consciously to pay more attention to her hearing, to her sense of smell. He’d deliberately worn no scent of any kind. He consciously moved lightly and softly whenever he changed his position in the room.

Now he was standing over her, slightly to one side, making sure his shadow didn’t cross her face and give her an inkling of where he was. He had a chance to really look at her face. She was, he was beginning to appreciate, a very beautiful woman. He wondered why he hadn’t really taken that in before. Her cheekbones were fairly high, and her nose was what they termed ‘aquiline’. In repose like this, albeit a nervous and edgy repose, she looked almost porcelain in the delicacy of her face. He liked that. Not just because he liked anything beautiful, but because he loved to watch a face change as it went through conflicting emotions. It was like watching a prairie sky, a whole year’s summer days, winter blizzards, thunderstorms and sunsets.

He leaned in close to her. She twitched at his first words.

“Very good Sarah. I’m impressed so far. Now, put your arms above your head and hold onto the headboard…..that’s it, hold on tight. I don’t want you to make a sound. Not under any circumstances. If I hear any sound from you at all before I give you permission, I’m walking. Do you understand?”

She nodded mutely, and bit her lip again. Kyle withdrew and watched her breathing. It was just a little bit more restless, a little bit more hesitant, than before.

It was time for the first lesson.

She kept her head very still. Her body moved occasionally as he stood watching. A little shuffle or twist of her body, as if to remain comfortable. He could see from her fingers that her grip on the headboard was tight. But her head remained still, as if she thought that was the key to keeping control. Kyle smiled to himself. If she thought that, she obviously didn’t realise who was in control….

He leaned over her and kissed her forehead. Very lightly, and very tenderly. He checked his own breathing to make sure his own was regular and even. The sheen of sweat was now covering most of her body, and he longed to just lick it off her, but he needed to show some control, too. It wasn’t easy being the dominant one. He had urges and desires to restrict, as well.

He licked her neck instead. Long, slow circles with his tongue, snaking into the little well below her ear. He felt her shudder slightly as he did it, and marked it down for later. His was a very methodical, almost forensic, inspection of her body. He wanted to find out what got to her, what reached new levels inside her, what set off the sparks. So he could exploit it.

As he licked her neck again, he ran his nails along her side, raking into it as much as he dared without breaking the skin. He wanted it to hurt, though. He felt her flinch once again, and smiled to himself. The sweet contrast of the pain from his nails, and the languid luxury of his tongue on her neck. She needed to understand that, and welcome it. His hand ran up her stomach, and he gently played with her nipple, running his fingers lightly back and forth over it, as his tongue snaked its way down her chest.

When his licking reached her breast, he closed his hand over her other breast, letting her feel the heat of his body against hers. With his tongue, he began rotating circles around the nipple, never touching it, just blowing on it occasionally. He kept this up for some minutes, and then began massaging the other breast with his hand, rolling the palm across it as he did so. The quiet in the room began to stretch like a wire. Her breathing was shallower, while his remained steady. They both worked silently on the things they were compelled to do – she, to endure; he, to begin the controlling process and confirm her passivity.