Make Me (13 page)

‘You ready, Maisie?’ he asks, which is hilarious, really. It’s him who doesn’t sound ready. He’s panting and moaning, and the hands on my hips are slippery now. Whatever this is, it’s going to hit him hard.

And, oh boy, does it ever. I’m caught momentarily between two sensations I can’t bear to experience – the slide of Bran’s tongue around my clit, and the feel of Tyler swelling and jerking in my ass. I’m not quite sure how to respond. I can’t back away or move forwards. I can’t escape.

I just have to endure the pleasure as it ebbs outwards from my pulsing clit, and ends up somewhere close to the shove and thrust of Tyler’s cock.

‘Uhhhh I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he tells me, but he doesn’t need to. The ring of muscle around him is sensitive, and I can make out every little stutter and jerk as his cock spurts and fills the condom.

And then it’s over. It’s over. It’s done.

Only this time when we lie on the bed together, I have no urge to watch where my hands are going, no sense that I need to take eight showers immediately, to think things through.

I only know this:

I’m done eroding everything. From now on I’m rebuilding, instead.

Tyler’s different now, and I know it. I know it the second he slips his hand inside my dress and fondles my bare breast, right there in his own crowded bar. People are looking, I think, though I don’t know for sure.

I’m too busy moaning into his mouth, as he gropes me and swamps me and makes me his.

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? A hallmark of ownership? I’m his little pet, now, his little toy, and that means I basically go limp the moment he does something beyond
making out in a public place
.

Though I get some of my senses back when I notice Brandon’s not sat next to us any more. And I noticed he wasn’t sitting next to us the night before, either, after a while of the kind of games Tyler likes to play. A threesome’s a tricky thing to negotiate, it seems.

Who knew?

‘I should go see where Brandon is,’ I say, but Tyler just laughs. Which is the main problem really. We’ve kept our grips on this whole thing for a couple of weeks, but the grip is tenuous. One false move, one bit of laughing carelessness, and it could all go to hell – and I don’t want it to. I’m seriously
this
close to quitting my job and taking Tyler’s bullshit offer.

Be our publicist
, he’d said. But what he really meant was
be our sex slave
.

And I’m surprisingly down with that. Last night, they made me come so many times I forgot my own name. Once they were through, I actually fell off the bed. I just slid right off, as though all of my bones had fled my body and left me with a sort of gelatinous mess.

But that’s fine. It’s good. I
want
to be a gelatinous mess.

What’s
not
as good is Brandon’s tendency to freak out a little bit. It’s as though he’s experiencing all the feelings I probably should, on top of his own.

‘He’s fine,’ Tyler tells me. Unfortunately, the hand he keeps on my boob makes me doubt the veracity of what he’s saying.

‘Are you just going to keep telling yourself that until he has a meltdown?’

‘Probably.’

‘Tyler …’

‘He’s just jealous,’ he says, as though
jealous
is really a code word for
awesome
. Thankfully, I still know it isn’t. ‘That’s not a
good
thing.’

‘Why not? He likes being jealous.’

‘Nobody
likes
being jealous.’

Tyler raises an eyebrow at me. It’s his very best ‘you can’t be this naive’ expression, and I brace myself for impact. ‘They probably do if they’re into cuckolding. But carry on. I think he enjoys your desperate efforts to make it up to him, too.’

I have to take a drink. A long one. Shame it’s just lemonade. ‘I’m so out of my depth,’ I say, and though that’s hard for me to admit in front of the Sexual Svengali over here, Tyler just smiles, faintly, to hear it.

‘It would seem so. That’s part of the fun though, isn’t it?’

I eye him warily. If I say no, I’m going to have to go back to being a librarian. If I say yes, he could just fuck my ass again – only this time he might do it right in the middle of this bar. How far out of my depth does he want me to go, exactly?

‘Yeah, but maybe it’s not always fun for Brandon. I don’t want him to feel … forced into something.’

‘Is that what you think is going on?’

‘Well, sometimes he seems really uncomfortable.’

‘And you think he doesn’t want to be uncomfortable? He wants to be secure and safe?’

I’m not sure who we’re talking about any more. ‘No, not exactly. I just want to reassure him, sometimes. Tell him … you know … that I … that I love him.’

It feels weird to admit it to Tyler before I admit it to Brandon, but somehow I can’t help it. The words just spill out when I’m faced with Tyler’s calm and steady version of persuasion.

And then I’m left with a lifetime to regret it.

‘You love him?’ he asks, and I can hear it, right there at the back. That slight change in his otherwise sturdy voice.

‘Of course I do,’ I say, but his expression doesn’t change. It freezes in one default position – complete control, I’ll call it – and remains there. I have to change the subject, slightly, just to make everything less nerve-shredding. ‘Don’t you?’

He shifts in his seat and, for the first time since this started, he looks away from me. Which probably means it’s not any less nerve-shredding, at all. It’s actually more nerve-shredding, because now he’s going to open up or expose himself in some way, and I won’t know what to do with this new, raw Tyler.

Or at least, that’s what I think, until I hear his steely tone of voice. And his dismissive choice of words. ‘Look, Maisie, what you’ve got to understand is …’

That I can’t love anyone. I’m an emotionally dead sex robot.

‘… Brandon likes certain things. And I’m only too happy to give them to him.’

Now I’m on autopilot. A really, really bad sort of autopilot that makes me push for answers to things he doesn’t really understand or want to know. ‘But what if he wants more?’

‘Then I’ll give him that, too.’

He sounds so sure, so very sure. But I find I can’t really believe him any more.

‘Even if what he wants is for you to stop forcing him?’

He rolls his shoulders, irritated. Like I’ve got a finger under his skin, and I’m just burrowing and burrowing away until that facade finally cracks.

‘Nobody gets
forced
. Is that what it feels like, to you?
Force
?’

I consider, briefly. I consider his voice like a silken rope, and his broad hands spread over my body.
You want to turn over, don’t you, Maisie
, he says, in my head – and I know the answer.

‘No. No. But I don’t know how
Brandon
feels.’

He turns back to me – those eyes of his burning bright suddenly. The itch beneath his skin is gone, and this is what I’m left with: empty hands and no will to do anything, anything but what he says.

‘I’ll tell you how he feels: like he doesn’t have to be in control of his own desires. And because of that, it doesn’t matter what those desires are. He’s abandoned responsibility for them, and handed it over to me.’ He leans in close, and traces one finger over the curl that’s come loose, from the topknot I tried. ‘Now doesn’t that feel good? Doesn’t that feel like a relief?’

‘To what?’ I ask, and am embarrassed to find my voice has gone all breathless.

‘To let go. To let someone else carry the burden.’

He’s right. It does. Most of my body has felt around twenty pounds lighter since last Sunday. ‘Go on,’ he’d said. ‘You can if you want to. Who’s going to stop you?’

No one, I think. No one but me.

‘Yes.’

‘And as you probably know by now, Brandon’s burden is pretty big. He worries that he’s gay; he worries that he’s straight. He worries that he’s warped inside, because it turns him on when I fuck you and tell him how much you enjoy my big fat cock.’

Brandon’s not alone on that score.

I enjoy it, too – though one thing lingers in my mind, as I do. The tangled memories of the things we’ve done flicker through my head, and end on this one point. This one thing I hadn’t considered, in the middle of all my concern about Brandon and how he’s feeling.

‘And what about you?’ I ask, and when I do I meet his heavy-lidded gaze. I meet it dead on, in a way that almost makes him pull back. ‘What do you worry about? What’s your burden?’

His eyes drop before mine do, and I don’t mind admitting I thrill in a way I hadn’t fully considered, in amongst all of this submission.

‘I don’t know.’

I lean in close, as he did not a moment before. Just to, you know … try it out. ‘You do know. Tell me. Tell me what kinky thing you’d like me to do, when your conscience isn’t looking.’

‘There’s nothing,’ he says, but he’s lying. I can feel it buzzing through him, when I press a kiss to the curve of his throat and slide one hand inside the V of his shirt.

‘If you tell me,’ I whisper. ‘I might do it.’

And then he gives it up, just like that. Just as I would if the positions were reversed. He’s right – it’s so easy when someone else takes the reins, takes control, lets you know that you don’t have to do anything but say the words he gives to me, without hesitation: ‘Make me.’

* * *

There’s just one problem I hadn’t fully considered when I squeezed those two words out of Tyler. It’s very easy to be the one under control – of course it is! That’s the whole point. You give up everything you are and just allow someone else to do all the thinking for you, for a brief time.

But being the one
in
control … that’s much, much harder. I suddenly find myself fumbling in the dark, completely unsure of what he might want me to do, but certain I want to do it, whatever it may be.

I want to give him it, if he craves it so. And he does, because the second we get up to the apartment he disappears into the kitchen, leaving me on the couch with Brandon – just like back in college, only with the pieces moved around. And Brandon, of course, gives me a look. He already knows before we’ve said a word or done a thing, I can tell. He can feel the shift in power, but that’s OK.

I can feel it too.

It’s what’s terrifying me.

‘Is everything OK?’ Brandon asks, and I have to think, really think about what I should say, here. How does Tyler start things off, exactly? What did he say to Brandon, all those years ago, on a couch very like this one?

And then I remember. He
teased
him.

‘You’ll never guess what he did to me downstairs.’

Brandon gives me this wary look, but here’s the thing – somehow, it only spurs me on. I look at those suddenly parted lips of his and his faintly wide eyes, and I want to carry on.

‘What?’

‘He fondled my breasts, while everyone watched.’

And OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But who gives a shit when Brandon’s expression goes like that? It’s not even an expression, really. It’s as if his face falls down somewhere inside him.

‘Are you serious?’ he asks, but I can tell he knows I am.

‘Yeah. And then he slid a hand under my dress, and stroked my clit until I came all over his hand.’

I think I’m getting the hang of this. It’s all about playing as hard and fast as you can, until the other person breaks – like a really aggressive game of poker. I’ve got nothing but a pair of twos and Brandon’s got a full house, but he doesn’t know that. I can’t let him know that.

‘You’re lying. Are you lying?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, as I trace the curl of hair that’s made its way over his ear – just as Tyler did to me. ‘Which would you prefer?’

‘What’s going on, Maisie? How come he’s in the kitchen? He never goes in the kitchen. I don’t even think he knows what a kitchen is.’

‘We can talk about that, if you want,’ I say, before glancing pointedly at his crotch. There’s definitely something there after all, and I want him to know I know it. ‘Or we can talk about whether you’re hard, or not.’

‘Maisie …’

‘Are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Are you hard?’

He rolls his shoulders, like he’s getting a kink out of his back. ‘Yeah,’ he says, because really, what else can he do? He can’t lie. His cock is already pressing at the material of the sweatpants he’s changed into.

‘Are you thinking about him, or me?’

This time there’s no shoulder roll. No glancing away, towards the kitchen.

‘Both of you.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe you’d like me to talk about what I did to him, rather than what he did to me.’

‘Maybe,’ he says, and I can hear the waiting at the end of his words. He’s staring at some point just past my shoulder, now, but I know why. He’s imagining it before I get to the good stuff, and when I do he slides a hand down over the ridge of his stiff cock.

‘You want to hear that I sucked him off in front of everyone? They all just stood around and watched him fuck my face, and, when he creamed all over my bare tits, they applauded.’

‘OK, I
know
you’re making this stuff up, now,’ he says, but the beautiful thing about it is that he doesn’t sound sure. I don’t think he
wants
to be sure.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not really,’ he says, and I can understand why. He’s lifting his hips in time to the stroke of his own hand, now, and his cock looks like iron underneath his clothes. He’s getting close to that excited state in which he’ll do just about anything, and more than that – so am I.

‘So I can say something worse then? Something that would never happen in a million years, like
I bent him over one of the tables and bared that perfect ass of his, and then I forced a couple of the men down there in the bar to fuck that virgin hole
.’

‘Jesus Christ, Maisie,’ he says, but he doesn’t put a hand over his face or stop with the light rubbing he’s doing over the head of his cock.

Far from it. He sits up, instead, and puts a hand on one of my tits – which makes me wonder if that’s what he did to Tyler, when Tyler got him riled up about me. Did he put a hand on Tyler’s solid chest, and slide in close enough to mouth the heavy line of his jaw?