Infinite thanks to antiaol, bmango, echoesoftwilight and mskathy.
As always, Stephanie Meyer owns.
Our Lives Unbound, Chapter 6: Her Whispered Yes
Bright sun and staring eyes seem to follow me as I cross the few feet from the parking lot to the door. Like a cartoon caricature of myself, I pull heavy sunglasses and a hood over the parts of me that are uncovered, knowing it only makes my every movement more conspicuous. I can't stop though, the idea of being bare here in this errand simply increasing my normal nerves and all the trembling in my aching limbs.
I can never stop.
Every Sunday, I look just like this; denied a way to pray the way that normal people do , I take the day of the Lord to add more sin to the list of things for which I would repent.
And then I shudder as I imagine someone extracting my penance of me.
A door opens and a bell chimes, my body safely hidden behind darkened glass as I avoid the too-friendly, intrusive welcome that always accompanies me here. Safe in a world of perverts and sick fucks and yet completely vulnerable at the same time, I take my usual route through the shop, disgusted fingers flipping anxiously over glossy pages and DVDs covered in the most vile sorts of art. Looking, always looking for something real.
Something like what I left on Saturday morning.
Instead of slick magazine pages covered in obscene photograph beneath my fingertips, I feel Bella's skin, soft and perfect as I pulled my shirt away from her lilting curves. I remember the taste of her mouth and then the feel of it on me, kneeling naked in a shower as she washed and bathed me and sucked me, my back held taught against the tile.
I shudder, my cock twitching uncomfortably in my pants as I close the pages in a huff.
After Bella, I know that nothing I find here will be real. That the secret shame of my previously unknown need is not so secret now, and that the anonymous ways in which I have desperately fought to push it down will seem all the more hollow when indulged in alone. Silently. Unsatisfactorily.
I am at ends, my world thrown into disarray through touch and sound and quiet confirmation and through the breathy repetition of her name. Routines I have spent the better part of a decade cultivating to drown the world of need I cannot bring myself to name crumble to reveal the bare skeleton of my not-quite-life, and all the empty spaces I have left in between. Spaces she fills with shared whispers over coffee and the warmth of her hand in mine beneath a table, quiet smiles and little looks held in soft brown eyes. Gaps she seals with the scent of sex and her and with the feel of my wrists caught up in silk and restrained with her words as she plunges herself down onto me once more.
Reeling, I turn, knowing this particular routine will never work the same for me again. The dirty edge of the magazine bounces off the shelf as I release it, wanting nothing of its artificial sexuality to touch me or to taint my vision of what I might really need, now that I've held it in my shaking hands. My heels leave black scuff-marks on the waxed tile, my retreat is so swift as I close my eyes against what has placated but never sustained me.
It is almost as swift as my stopping, my whole body seizing at an image of glinting metal, imagined lines across my wrists feeling raw in memory. I want them rawer still.
Glancing around, I change course, my feet and my desire, hot and burning now, leading me down an aisle I have never been able to talk myself into traversing before. So many times, I have seen it in the shameful lenses of my mind's wandering eyes, though, perched naked beneath a sheet, in my bed and alone, and I know the way instinctively. I gulp past bits of pink fluff, pictures of women in the sorts of chains that are meant to do nothing more than to idly titillate, none of it doing anything for me until I make the tricky mental slip, accidentally imagining our places switching.
Imagining myself again, willingly helpless and fastened securely to her bed.
My fingers twitch as they slide over shiny surfaces in chrome, rejecting each one in turn, wincing softly at pink and purple, and even at a black and crimson trim in feathered plumes. Disgusted by silk and fur, I almost run again, but there's a sick twisting in my lower abdomen, a curiosity I've not yet filled. Not in my thirty years. And not in this moment.
A lust.
For steel.
Leather.
A hard pair of cuffs, black leather fastened by shining studs and thick, silvery links sits at the bottom of the shelf. Bending, I let my fingertips run over the short chain between the two, my eyes clenching tightly for just a moment as I allow myself to imagine them around my own wrists. I try to convince myself that this is necessary, this indulgence in scarcely spoken, whispered fantasy, as I decide in my mind if they will fit, sizing them up against both the dimensions of my limbs and the scale of my expectations.
My stomach sinks and twists to realize that I am being so foolish as to allow myself to expect anything at all.
I pick them up against my better judgment, my eyes falling on a twin pair that is slightly larger as I do, and I make my way to the counter with them both before I can allow myself to think again.
The man who works the register is one who knows me well. As well as any stranger with whom I have never spoken before could, that is. "This all?" he asks, but it is with an eyebrow raised and a meaningful glance out of the corner of his eye toward the shelves that carry my more typical fare.
I nod, my mouth dry and my gaze pointed studiously at the floor as I feel my skin swiftly heat and flush. The man chuckles and mutters, "Nice," before he pronounces my total. In the single word, I hear his assumption, a shiver traveling the long arch of my back to know that even amongst this sordid crowd, I am the deviant. The exception.
My wallet opens, my wrist consciously blocking the identification card peeking through the window in it as I rifle through the billfold; I am not so foolish as to pay him in anything other than cash. As I grasp them, I find that the bills themselves feel dirty in my hands, as if they know what they are about to be exchanged for. I take my change with a pathetic murmur of thanks, my throat numbly closing.
The brown paper package held securely in my hands, I emerge back out into sunlight where I cover myself once more. And then I take myself and my shame and my restraint back to the dark corners from whence we came.
#~~#~~#
All week long, Bella throws my life into even further disarray, the carefully tucked, pressed edges of my practices and habits unraveling, and for the release of the stitches from the fabric of it, I feel freer. As if the things I have put in place to keep my wandering thoughts and my lonely need in check have really been penning them in.
As if binding my body and my will has unbound my mind.
As if opening myself up to contact has exposed all the parts of me I didn't even know I had allowed to become closed.
She calls me on Tuesday, my face burning at just the sound of her ringtone in my empty space and at the thought of the package hiding in the deepest recesses of my closet beside the collection of pornography I have rejected in her wake.
She suggests coffee, and the sheer normality of it makes me light-headed, too much air in my lungs, and I nearly laugh. I accede and meet her in a cafe near her apartment where we each sip at steaming cups and mostly stare, as if in disbelief that each has consented to be here.
When she touches my hand, I feel my breath stutter worse than my voice.
And when I kiss her, softly and almost embarrassingly tenderly, she shines a smile at me that lights things that had grown darkened and dusty in the untouched corners of my chest.
Coffee on Tuesday turns into lunch on Thursday, my speech catching on my useless lips as I extend the invitation shakily over the phone. She shows up at the sandwich shop dressed in light colors that speak of a quietly confident femininity.
And that, in and of itself, speaks so deeply to my body.
We greet each other with awkward smiles and a soft kiss, a knowing glance of her eyes to my hardness between my hips, and a smile as the back of her hand traces me teasingly. The round swell of her bottom swings seductively in front of me as she leads the way to a booth, where we sneak furtive looks at each other over open menus. The presence of a waitress interrupts our game of silent seduction and coy admiration, and reminds us of the point of meeting in the broad light of day instead of slipping, skin to skin against each other, but always in the dark.
Instead of staring at each other, this time we talk. With each word out of her mouth, I feel mine grow more secure, the stutter that has forever bound me to the burning stake of my mind loosening as it always does when I am relaxed.
Or happy.
Lingering long after any of the other lunchtime patrons have gone, we compare tastes in music and books and television. Unlike our second date, we steer clear of the more difficult subjects of family and of connection, but I feel that looming too on the horizon. Along with other things. Stories of pasts and romances.
And sex.
My stomach begins to turn, my face falling at the thought of having to sift through those crumbling ruins of my life.
In my distraction, I crumple a napkin hard inside my hand, my tension hidden completely beneath the cover of the table, or so I think. Bella sees it though, unwarranted as it would seem from the casual tenor of our conversation, and her expression is slightly confused but still tender as she strokes at my other hand.
And my gratitude for both her kindness and her touch are almost my undoing.
When we finally leave, it is with a lingering uncertainty, a temptation to retreat to one of our apartments or the other. In the end, I merely let my fingertips drag gently across her cheek, flashing a smile that is suffused with all the warmth building in the unexplored and lonely regions of my chest.
She's the one to pull at me when I make a motion as if to go, a husky whisper of, "Don't turn away from me until I've said goodbye," and a kiss that sets a burning fire to every yearning inch of me.
A kiss that speaks of so, so much more.
"See you tomorrow," she murmurs against my lips as she straightens my collar, lifting up on tiny heels to fix my hair. I let her.
That night, in my bed alone, I picture her with her hands drifting from my collar to my neck, a duality of so-soft fingertips and a too-firm grip as she yanks my head straight back, her body sliding over me in my mind the way my slickened palm does in reality. The dirty shame of the act fades away, knowing that what I am fantasizing about could actually be reality, the real memory of the look in Bella's eyes as she sinks down on me helping to keep the guilty, unworthy feelings at bay as I chase something more.
Something real.
Grunting, I come into a wad of Kleenex and fight to keep my hips and shoulders tethered tightly to my bed.
But restraint is hard to come by when inside, I feel like soaring.
#~~#~~#
I drive up to her building for the fourth Friday in a row to find her standing outside her door. Her body is wrapped in a dress that absolutely screams of sex, and the very vision of her ripe curves and steady legs reminds me of all the ways we have not touched each other this week – of all the flesh that I long to explore and that I hope so desperately she will choose to reveal to me.
She waits for me to open the door for her before she kisses me, and it is with one knee placed up on the seat and one foot on the ground that she pulls me down to her, her legs spreading and my arousal weeping when she brushes it once with her open hand. I jerk and twitch at the increasingly familiar gesture, a motion that seems as practiced as a wave to her – as if it her way of saying hello . I pull back to find a half-smirk of enticement and promises of later shining visibly on hungry lips as she licks them, releasing my tie and letting me go.
It's a different tie than the one I wore for her last week, but the sight of it wrapped around her hand still makes me so, so hard.
We drive the darkened streets as I ruminate on night and day. On laughter and companionship and sated lust – all things that I so long believed had never been intended for me. It strikes me as no accident that all week long we have been pushing our boundaries on everything except the last of these, meeting openly and in places full of light. As if the sunlight pouring in on our conversations will distract us from the things we lust for in the dark.
As if we both know that there has to be more to this than the pressure of her thighs against my hips and squeezing tightly around my jaw.
When we arrive at the restaurant that she has selected, she waits for me to come around to her side of the car and let her out, and there is something perfect in the tenderness of her hand in mine and the feeling of her weight leaning into my body. I follow with my palm ghosting the curve at the small of her back, so close that I can feel the heat of her skin, but just far enough away that I don't go mad.
By my own low standards, we make comfortable small talk, something sparkling both in her face and in my devastated heart. Something brighter than the twinkling lights above our head. Something closer than all the stars.
As we talk and eat and drink, I grow more comfortable still, until the contrast with every other date that I have ever been on becomes ridiculously stark. My face heats embarrassingly on more than one occasion when she intimates that we have been spending more time together than she has been accustomed to spending with the men in her life. And while I am uncomfortable about the reference to her past, there's a giddy elation in my spine.
I have never been the man in a woman's life before.
In all honesty, I have never really felt like a man at all when I've been with a woman before.
Still keeping our discussion to the safer edges of things, we talk about the few parts of our week that we haven't hit upon already, drifting slowly to the web of words we each endeavor to spin. She makes a flippant comment about being tied up with work commitments, only it comes out all wrong, and my cock inflates at the misplaced implication, a cough building hard inside my throat until I can't push it down.
"Are you OK?" she asks as she presses a napkin into my hand and I reach for water. I nod and grunt, remembering that this is important to prove that I am not actually choking even though my lungs feel full of fire.
When I am finally in control of myself again, I manage, "You just sssurp-prised me."
She quirks an eyebrow upward, but I cannot mistake the unusual flash of uncertainty that crosses her face, nor the implication in the double meaning of her words. "You don't ever get tied up? With work, I mean, of course."
"You know I d-do," I say, my arousal rising even higher at the continued pursuit of this innuendo. The tone of my words gritty, and even I am surprised by the seductive timber of them in my ears, and by the gasp that escapes her puckered lips when she hears.
"You like that, do you?" she breathes.
I hold her eyes levelly, my voice unconsciously dropping even lower as I repeat, "You know I do."
It is uncomfortably hot, the air crackling with a static charge, too much friction although we are barely even touching.
There's just the tiniest hint of doubt in her voice when she speaks again, even though her gaze remains firm.
And I want to take that doubt from her. To drown it in my mouth and suck it from the hot skin of her breast.
While on my knees.
"Still?" she asks, her voice breaking once. "You haven't changed your mind?"
"No."
"And you know I like doing it to you."
"I d-do."
Our server distracts us, shaking the thickened quality of the air until we are returned momentarily to our senses, but I am now firmly on edge, my body taut. When we are left alone again, I find that the full, pink pout of her lip plays just a bit more flirtily with the rim of her wine glass as she speaks, the edges of all the words we exchange feeling hotter, sweatier than the ones we traded in the brightness of daylight.
Or even the ones we traded just a few minutes before.
A single plate is placed between us, but I am too distracted to bother glancing up at the girl who lingers at our table. Bella ignores the server, too, claiming both forks in just the way she did before, feeding me a bite at a time. Chewing slowly, I fix my eyes on her mouth, thinking the way her tongue licks crumbs of cake off of a dessert fork is so innocent it must be a sin.
And then eyes full of desire stare up at me from under blinking lashes.
"So my roommate is gone for the weekend."
At the same time that she speaks, the point of her shoe makes its way up my calf and thigh until I can feel myself dizzying at the subtle pressure against my balls.
"Oh?" I choke, lowering my hand to stroke gently at the skin around her ankle, tentatively reorienting it and angling my hips to place her toe to the swollen head of my need.
"You know what that means, don't you?"
I shake my head even though I do.
She dips her pinky into a soft puddle of cream at the edge of our dessert. After sucking the tip of her finger into her mouth, she whispers, "It means I can make you scream just as loudly as I want to."
#~~#~~#
I linger beside the car for a moment after she takes my hand and joins me on the sidewalk. Kissing softly at her neck and gripping her hips, I know full well that I am stalling, but it's hard to concentrate when she hooks her leg around the back of my knee and pulls me harder against her body.
"Come upstairs with me," she purrs into my ear, my hand sliding from her hip to the back of her thigh, edging under the fall of her skirt to find soft flesh leading up and up and up.
My mouth continues to kiss a long line from her neck to her shoulder and back again, parting wetly over the hollow of her throat as she tips her head back. I hide myself in that soft skin of her neck, breathing deeply of her hair.
Knowing full well that I can't bear to look into her eyes.
"I g-g-ggggot you s-something," I stammer, shaking lips closing once more against her skin as I cringe, both at my words and at my tongue for its near constant betrayal of everything I feel.
"Oh?" I hear the way her lips smack and part, curiosity and something just ever so slightly tentative to her voice's quality.
"A g-ggift. If you'll hhhhave it."
If you'll have me.
"I don't usually like gifts." She lifts my head, our noses rubbing as she kisses me. "But for you I might make an exception."
"P-please."
She smiles, an expression that's strangely leering and sexy.
"Come."
I almost do.
With the brown paper package grasped inside my hands, I lock the car and follow her up her stairs, feeling vaguely aware of the memory of doing this once before. Only it's different when my head isn't reeling. Opening the door, she steps inside and bids me to close it behind her. Setting down her things, she makes no pretense of anything, striding back toward her bedroom without a look behind her.
The string of paper lanterns casts the same shining glow that I remember. I gulp and shift the uncomfortably tight line of my cock when I see her, sitting on the edge of the bed where she reawakened my senses the week before, leaning back on arms that are locked at the elbow and staring at me expectantly.
Hovering still at the doorway, I take in everything as if I have never seen it before. On some level I haven't, because this is the first time I have ever been convinced that it all is real.
And I just hope it won't be the last time she invites me to join her here.
I loosen my tie and take shaky steps toward her, the crumpled edge of the bag a mess of worried lines beneath my too-tense hands as I sit beside her. She pushes me back just slightly, rising up to lean on her hip so she can angle herself over me, and for a moment I give in to deep, pulsing kisses and to motions of tongues over lips and teeth. Holding tenuously to a hope, I assert just enough control to slow the pace of them. And in a small miracle, I find the will not to lean back and beg her to claim my body and my need with her hands.
Instead, I bring our kisses to a stop.
My forehead pressing hard against hers, I murmur, "Mmmay I?" and she pulls away just enough to nod. My fingers twitch, knowing that I am baring so much more than my naked skin, and that nothing about this feels right.
Sweating hard, I extricate myself from her hold and her embrace, grasping at her wrists and setting the bag on her bed before I sink down off the quilts and onto the floor. I wince, my head resting hard on the soft skin of her knees, and my heart is pounding as I kneel before her.
Vulnerable.
Erect.
There's a rush. A roaring in my ears that reminds me of all the ways that I've misread situations and people and especially women in my life before. Humiliation and misplaced, stuttering words. Disappointment and shameful, hurried goodbyes.
And even at that, I've never taken such a risk before.
There's something about Bella, though. Something soft and hard, and that pushes at me but which never pushes much too far. Reaching somehow into the pieces of my memory that feel like safety, I let myself find relief in the touch of her fingertips to my sweating cheek.
"Edward?"
"Op-p-p-p-pen it," I breathe, my eyes still shut.
Tenderly, she brushes my hair from my face before retreating, her weight shifting slightly without dislodging me as I allow myself a moment to succumb to the heady rushing of my own desperate, paralyzing fear. To my mind, the sound of paper tearing is the sound of so much wrapping being torn from my heart.
With my hands, I offer it to her, nervous fingers closing around calves. Begging.
Entreating her to want me still.
"Edward," she breathes, and her voice is shaking as much as mine would be if only I still had one. I open my eyes to the image of delicate fingers tracing over leather and metal.
But the cuffs are only the most tangible part of my gift.
Her voice is stronger when she repeats my name, and it grows even stronger still when I hear it the third time, my gaze compelled up to hers with a palm pressing against my jaw.
"You want me to use these. On you."
Terrified and certain, I nod.
Her two hands rise up to close around my face, and I am rising, my mouth pulled so willingly to hers, kisses like salvation and so much of her breath in my lungs, the taste of her and of relief suddenly flooding me . When I am pushed away, it's only so far as to be able to allow me to stare back into glassy, incredulous, but happy eyes.
"You really aren't going to run, are you?"
A sly smile finds my face, pushing away anxiety and the last remnants of a vulnerable and naked feeling.
Still clothed, we're bared together now. "Nnno. N-not from you."
#~~#~~#
I don't know how much time goes by before we come up for air, her hand so hot against the sensitive skin of my chest that has spent so many years feeling desperate for touch, as mine rises hotly up her thigh from beneath her.
"Can we wait?" she breathes.
My cock is almost painful, in a near permanent state of arousal since the moment I first imagined her slipping out of this dress, and I actually whimper before I let my head fall back against the bed.
"Fuck," I hiss, releasing her. "Of c-course."
She shifts even higher up, the silk between her legs caressing me as she settles her body tortuously over the needy apex of my hips. "Not for that." She half laughs, kissing me once more and making me throb.
She retreats just slightly, sitting more firmly on my cock as I groan, her palms flat against the skin over my ribs between the open edges of my shirt. I watch in glazed fascination and shaky need as she stares down at me almost coyly, flashes of ivory shimmering as the bottom pout of her lip slips between her teeth.
Gesturing behind her at her gift, she huskily whispers, "For those."
Something flips inside my stomach, and her face falls at my reaction.
"If that's all you want, we can," she mumbles, but she is sitting back against my thighs when I want her pressing to me more intimately, and her wide eyes are hidden from me.
I sit up sharply, pushing her hair from her face and struggling to contain myself as I pull her back to me.
"Wh-what d-do you mmmmean? Aaaaaall I want?"
"It's so funny," she says humorlessly. "At first I couldn't believe you could want me that way. That part of me." She glances up and looks away again as an ache settles deeply in my chest. So softly, she asks, "But if that's all you want..."
Her face is warm between my hands, my lips searching for every reach of her. "I t-told you. Every part. Evvvvery p-piece." With one shaking hand, I reach down to touch her heart.
"Edward." My mouth swallows her moan and we are in motion again, her hands tearing to find desperate flesh as she slips my shirt from my arms, her hips pushing down on me as I fumble with the zipper at the back of her dress.
"Evvvery part," I whisper again against her neck and then to the revealed curves of her breast. "All of you."
She pulls my face back to hers as she pushes the dress off her shoulders, rising up on one knee and then another, still hovering over me as she pulls it away, black panties the only line across the pale swells of her flesh.
"Tomorrow," she murmurs, sucking at my tongue. "I'll chain you up tomorrow, pet."
"T-tomorrow," I echo, but I'm more focused on today. "T-tonight we take care of eeeeach other."
It's a question and an affirmation.
An intent.
Her voice is shaky as she whispers, "Please." And if I'd thought her forcing me to beg made my body edge toward something indescribable, then this - to hear that she wants me...
"Yes," I breathe, helping her as she unfastens my belt, tugging at pants and boxers until the aching line of my need is revealed, her hot hand closing over the head as I close my eyes and moan, my own fingers, for the first time, dipping deeply into the heat of her pussy.
And she's letting me.
I growl as I tug the silky fabric to the side, groaning even louder at the wet heat inside her body.
"Rip them," she breathes, and I groan against her mouth. Strength I feel so rarely courses through over-heated blood, silk gathering, and the second time she urges, I obey, one swift motion as I yank and fabric tears. I bundle the scraps of them in my fist and push my fingers back into the slick and pink, pumping twice before I extract them and suck them greedily into my mouth.
She moans, her lips twisting with mine. "Did I say that you could do that?"
I want to cower.
But tonight, that's not what we're playing at.
"N-n-no. But I wwwwanted to."
"Good."
We shift so that we are both sitting on the center of her bed, with her on my lap. She reorients herself to rub the sweet softness at the top of her pussy against the aching line of my cock, slippery heat and the head pressing against the skin at her navel, and I need.
God, how I need.
"P-please," I ask just once, the inward curve of her waist held firmly in my hands as I am lifting, her body rising, and then she is sinking over me, enveloping me, surrounding me in a way that no one ever has before.
It's such torture and such pleasure. And I will always, always want more.
"God, Bella," I groan as I slide fully into her, the noises from her own lungs echoing and driving me deeper into her and into the feeling washing over me.
We find our rhythm together tonight, certainty infusing every move of it as arms surround ribs and spines, hands in hair and lips moving, seeking, kissing everywhere. Thrusting up into her every time she descends down on me, I feel the pressure swiftly building, and it's not just her this time who's claiming me.
"B-b-be mmmmine," I whisper, staring into glazed eyes as my hands settle more firmly on her hips to drive her onto me.
She drops her forehead to mine, her eyes clenching and mouth going slack.
And when she moans the single word, "Yes," I'm convinced that it means more than simply that she's coming.
Propelled by both her yes and by the slick squeezing of her sex around me, I repeat the word to her, pulling her closer as I push up a final time, my whole body exploding, as perfectly, deliriously, I release into her.
#~~#~~#
She lies naked against my side as we recover, a soft purple sheet draped over our hips. Her one finger traces teasing circles through the light hair across my chest, her head leaning on her hand as she props herself up just above me.
"So," she muses. "I guess you kind of answered my question already, but do you have any plans for tomorrow night?"
My hand closes over hers and pulls it to my lips. I stare up into her face, willing her to look at me.
When she does, I smile.
"Apparently, I do," I whisper, my lips turning up even further when I hear my voice, relaxed after coming. Smooth.
She leans in closer and grins. "Yeah?"
Pulling her lips down for a gentle kiss, I nod against the pillow. "Yeah," I murmur. "I just checked my c-calendar. Apparently I'm going to be all tied up."
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A/N: Just fyi, I'm out of town pretty much all of next week, so I doubt Our Lives Unbound will update.
See you next time ...