She sat back into the couch and tried not to fidget.
Twisting as she sat a little deeper, the muscles in her hips contracting, creating a pressure that made her feel warm in the middle, and served to release a tiny bit of the tension. She let out a low sigh, looking over at the glass of water on the side table. Half empty, the surface of the liquid appeared as a floating disc, undisturbed in the centre of the clear vessel. She lifted it and took a sip.
'No drinking' he'd said. Fuck -- she wanted a gin.
Even just a red wine would've settled her nerves. But that was kind-of the point. It was all part of the game, the planning, preparation, the feeling of doing things to lead into it.
It had made her feel tingly for the whole day.
He'd been very specific in his messages:
I'm coming to see you Friday evening
No playing from Tuesday onward
And no drinking - I want your senses sharp
I want you totally present
I want it to be 100% you
I want you to feel it all
The thought of it both excited and terrified her.
A couple were arguing on TV, with canned laughter bellowing out, indicating that it was at least meant to be funny, but she couldn't concentrate. It was just people talking somewhere, like background noise in a crowded room. As she stared blankly ahead, her phone buzzed with a short, sharp vibration, and the screen illuminated on the arm of the couch.
Looking down, she read the notification.
Two words: I'm here.
She muted the TV, stood up and crossed the room with four light steps, her bare feet padding soundlessly against the wooden floor. She reached for the lock to the front door of her apartment, turned it, and the bolt slid back with a satisfying 'shunk'.
She reached for the handle, paused, breathed out, and opened the door.
Stood in the open hallway, about three steps back, he looked straight at her and smiled. He was exactly as his pictures promised, and they'd already had a few rather fun, funny and in-depth video chats, so no surprises here, but it was still different. He was 'real', moving in space. He had depth.
They regarded each other and attempted to quietly conceal their own personal mix of relief, approval and a slight fluttering in the stomach. This part never got any less weird - when someone you met online suddenly has mass. It can all go wrong. They transform from flat imagery to something that 'is'.
She took him in - tall, athletic, with smooth caramel-coloured skin and a light dusting of stubble, a few patches of grey peppering his face and temples. His skin was clear and soft and he looked radiant - healthy, he looked strong. She almost had to stop herself from nodding in approval.
He was wearing tight, dark blue jeans and a dark grey T-shirt with a deep V, a patch of dark, soft hair showing at the top of his chest. As she scanned him, a million little processes between her eyes and brain considered this beautiful man. Everything about his stance, his posture, his manner, looked relaxed, confident, ready.
Her brain subconsciously searched that mysterious database of every gorgeous man she'd ever seen, concluding that he looked like a younger version of Lenny Kravitz in The Hunger Games (minus the sparkly makeup).
And his eyes. My god, his eyes were mesmeric -- a shade of green like the colour of jade. Bright and lustrous, they locked with hers. It wasn't confrontational or assertive, he just looked straight at her and could hold her gaze without looking away.
There was something so fucking hot about that.
Looking back at her, illuminated in the doorway, her hair appeared as a mass of dark brown, the light behind catching slivers of rich red running through it in long unravelling curls that rounded out at her shoulders.
She was dressed exactly as he had requested in his message: 'Wear something loose and comfy -- the sort of thing you'd wear when you're binge-watching a box set. This isn't about trying to look sexy or alluring -- I know that you're hot. It's about something else'.
She felt a little odd about not getting dressed up in something at least a bit more sexy, but she also loved to receive instructions, to prepare for something specific. She'd opted for a simple white camisole top, the thin straps running alongside the straps of her bra (a very subtle white with turquoise lace threaded through) and a pair of really-quite-little grey shorts. Basically, she was wearing something she would sleep in on a warm night.
He tried not to obviously scan her, but it was hard not to look.
He applied some self-discipline. Eye contact -- lock it in. She already looked gorgeous -- cute, unassuming, like he'd just interrupted her on a warm summer night - and he easily recalled the pictures she'd sent him which showed off her shape. He'd always asked for clothed shots -- enough to let him see her body type, but not more than he would see if he had met her in a club or bar.
Anticipation. Build-up.
No one did that shit anymore.
For him, it was the best thing there was.
She stepped back and held the door open, hoping it would be enough of a gesture to usher him in. As he stepped forward, a nervous flutter in her stomach made her throat feel tight, and she worried that if she spoke, he'd hear a shaky, tentative quality in her words.
Oh god, he smelled good. He smelled really good.
Don't say anything yet.
Quiet was good.
Quiet worked.
He stepped past her into the room and she pushed the door closed, reaching down to twist the lock into place. She paused for a second, which he noticed, then committed to the idea. To the entire premise. To locking herself inside her home with this man. She knew was going to touch her, control her, he might put his hand on her throat, maybe even hurt her a little.
------------
They had messaged each other incessantly for the last week, and she had decided to take a chance. She told him about her desires. About the dark things that made her stomach warm. About the loving, supportive, kindhearted boyfriends who had brought her gifts and showered her with compliments, who made love to her tenderly with the lights out and touched her so gently that it made her feel like she was soft, like she was fragile.
About the one night she went to her friend's gallery opening in London, and the artist from Norway she had chatted and drank with. The older man who reminded her of Mads Mikkelsen, who talked to her about seeing darkness and light in everyone, about the joy and cruelty of love, the Jungian shadow, the potential that every person has to be terrible, to be monstrous.
He said we have a duty to integrate that terrible self, instead of fearing it. So when she realised he was flying home in two days, she decided to take charge, to use that terrible self, to follow a primal urge to its primal end.
About how she felt strong, decisive, empowered, and took charge that day - and yet discovered on the same night, that she liked to be restrained, mistreated and denied breath. To have someone whisper terrible things in her ear while they pinned her down. About how his perfectly placed hand lit up her skin with a sharp, resounding crack that would sting and throb... and yet somehow she'd want another.
About how all of it made her senses feel like they were dialled up to eleven, like she was truly awake -- finally connected to a level of experience where she could so clearly see why Thomas, and Luka, and Alexander had never been able to make her forget herself. To lose herself in a beautiful, brutish, frenzied act.
She'd been with each of them for years.
They had loved her, she had loved them.
They made her feel nice, pretty, safe.
But not like she was on fire, not glowing like there was electricity running through her, not feeling like she might faint - where, at the edge of her pleasure with her stomach tied up in equal parts fear and excitement, she was desperate to see what would happen if she pushed just a little more.
She closed her eyes and listened to the deliberate sound it made as the bolt found its home in the doorframe. It was the sound of letting go, of giving up control, of falling into the sea and letting the current take you somewhere unexpected, it was..
As she moved to turn, hands appeared on her shoulders. The touch was gentle, but the strength of his arms held her firmly in place. She stood there, looking forward, unsure. His hands travelled down from her shoulders and slid slowly over her forearms until they found her wrists.
He leaned in, his chest brushing lightly against her exposed skin, every hair on the back of her neck standing up, as if charged with static. Her eyes closed for just a second and she swallowed. He reached forward and up, bringing her hands out in front and she watched, puzzled but curious, as he gently placed them flat against the white wood of the door.
His voice suddenly appeared at her right ear, low, calm and steady: 'I'd like us to play a game'. She flinched, surprised by the sudden intimacy, but closed her eyes again and listened. 'Your hands stay here' -- he pressed gently forward to emphasise where they now rested.
A second of silence passed. Her lips parted, a slight intake of breath to ask a question.
He spoke. 'There are three rules to this game'.
She kept her eyes closed. 'I'm going to touch you, use my hands on you, use my mouth on you, find all of the things that you love, all of the things that make your breathing change, that make your hips twist, that make you want to grind against something, and let out dreadful, unfeminine sounds... and I'm going to do them for you, and you're going to keep your hands on this door...'
She swallowed hard.
'...and if you take them off, I'll open it, walk through and I'm gone.'
Another pause.
'Do you understand?'
