I blushed but he didn’t seem perturbed at all. He just smiled and brought his index finger to my nose.
“This little thing was almost a foot further away a few minutes ago.”
It was only then that I realized my strange posture, leaning close, almost at an unnatural angle where his position hadn’t changed at all. My lips quivered until he touched them too.
“You have hardly closed your mouth at all. It is open, and you are breathing through it, shallow and warm. I would not push if it weren’t for the way you are reacting. Do you understand?”
I nodded and he pushed his finger between my open lips. Another tiny, strangled noise escaped as he opened my mouth further, pulled back my lips and touched my tongue. I did want it, all of it. Him, now, and just like in Secretary.
“Do you know what a safeword is?”
I nodded, unable to speak with the careful exploration of my mouth. Of course I knew what a safeword was.
He ran his finger along my gums and over my teeth, pushed under my tongue and curled it up as though he wanted to make sure he did his due diligence in finding every single spot, in marking my mouth with his salt and seawater taste.
“Good. But we don’t need one, today. You say stop, I’ll stop what I’m doing. You say no, I won’t do whatever I’m planning. You shake your head and I stop. Okay?”
Again I nodded, my eyes were wide as saucers and he smiled, gently touching my chin with his free hand. He tilted up my face, opened my mouth wider and then brushed over the tiny ridges along the roof of my mouth until he reached the soft palate and I snorted out tiny gagging sounds. He pulled back and let me rest for a second before going for the same spot again, while I tried to mash my heel against my clit, but with too many socks and fabric in the way, I could hardly feel anything.
“You can always ask me to stop and we’ll reassess, okay?” This time, he pulled his finger from my mouth. It was slick and shiny with my saliva.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Okay.”
Our eyes met for a long time as he smeared saliva onto my lips and a sweet smile blossomed on his face, crinkling the lines around his eyes. It occurred to me that he hadn’t even kissed me yet.
V
“There is one more thing,” he said, hand cupping my cheek. For the first time, his eyes erred just to the side of my face and he inhaled a deep breath. His smile was quick, a tiny flash across his features that left little lasting impression.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying not to sound like the cliché of a woman who’d just had her breath taken away almost literally.
“I put a lot of stock in honesty, in being upfront,” he said.
I nodded quickly. That much was obvious. When the pause began to stretch into seconds I raised my brows. “You can ask me anything, I’ll tell you the truth. I like honesty, too.”
That made him smile, tender again, he petted my hair and that warmth spread through my stomach.
“Oh, no. I don’t have any concerns about you—you’re a good person. A sweet person. And you are trustworthy. That’s why I have to be upfront. I’m not a bad person either, Iris, but I am feeling rather old these days and probably more jaded than absolutely necessary. I am in no position to promise you anything…”
His hand had slid down from my face and he looked at me, lips so crooked, he would almost not be handsome anymore if by now his appeal had not lain in his voice and his gestures and his almost shocking frankness.
“I am a film trope, a bit of a cliché. I want you. I want you so much, but you are whole and good and if that is not enough for you, then you have to tell me. You have to protect yourself.”
I was acutely aware of the ache in my knees, the unfamiliar pressure, the heat between my legs and I tried. I genuinely tried to step back emotionally and consider the situation. But his face was so handsome when he looked sad, beautiful in an entirely different way and before I knew what I was doing, I reached up and brushed my hand over his cheek, too. The first touch burned into my fingertips, that rough, weatherworn texture, the hint of a scruff that was a world of difference to my own face.
“That’s what you said,” I told him quietly, more calm, more daring than I felt. “You said you wanted to sleep with me. That’s all I assumed. All I agreed to.”
I cleared my throat and if I could have done anything to prevent myself from blushing, I would have. Paul nodded and plucked my hand from his face to kiss my palm and then each fingertip.
In hindsight, it is easy to point to moments like this one—and as honest as I am trying to be with myself, I don’t know if I believed that. I just know that I desperately wanted to be that person, that I wanted to explore the terra incognita he had opened in front of me and that I couldn’t have looked myself in the eyes anymore if I had closed myself off from all he had to offer in order to return to my flat, my cat, my job and my vibrator without even trying, without even a taste.