Power Play. Charlotte Stein

he says: ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’ And he puts far too much emphasis on all the wrong things. His want is hoarse and husky, his question mark like a hook curling around my waist. I’m tugged into this before I’m sure I want to be, and that’s prior to his gaze jerking its way back to my face.

      His eyelids are heavy, now, I notice. His mouth looks … tender. Though really I’m only using the word ‘tender’ there because my mind wants me to say like the spread split of a woman’s sex instead.

      ‘Say the words,’ I tell him, softly, so softly. And though he tells me: ‘I can’t,’ I can hear something else below the refusal. Something that’s not quite as unsure as he claims he is. For example, I’m not certain an unsure person would go from toying with the edge of their cardigan to kind of … sliding his hand underneath it. You know … just to maybe rub over his own belly through his shirt, with the softly stroking tips of his fingers. … ‘If you can do it in your cubicle, you can say it,’ I say, but now my voice is hoarse. And I’ve crossed my legs beneath my desk, though not because I want to. Because I have to. It’s the same thing as his pressed-together lips.

      I need something to keep the feelings in.

      ‘I was masturbating,’ he replies, and then unfortunately said feelings just gush their way out. Not even the leg-crossing can stop them. In fact, I think the leg-crossing makes it worse. A low pulse has started up right at the heart of my sex, and it gets stronger the longer I let this go on.

      ‘I see. And why exactly were you doing a filthy thing like that in such plain view?’

      Filthy thing, I think, and that pulse becomes a throb. I can feel the exact shape of my clit, without so much as a finger on myself.

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘I think you do know.’

      He swallows thickly. Tosses that thick hank of glossy hair out of his eyes even though it’s too buoyant to ever actually get close, then has to stroke through it nervously when it won’t stay exactly where he wants it to. The gesture is incredibly boyish and should be incredibly annoying, I know.

      But somehow it’s something else instead. It’s not childish or silly. It’s just him, it’s the way he is. He can’t help being this open and ready and kind of like he wants his face fucking.

      ‘I guess …’ he starts, and I can hardly believe I actually hold my breath, waiting. But by God, I do. Which of course makes it a hideous disappointment when he just finishes with: ‘I guess I just did it because I wanted to.’

      In fact, it’s so much of a disappointment that I actually almost do turn back to my work for real. I finger some of the contracts waiting for approval on my desk. I think about calling Anderson in here, to go over some of his slightly skewed projections.

      There’s a full day ahead of me, and I don’t have to be like this.

      Until he rolls his eyes at himself.

      After which, I don’t know how I need to be. I mean, I actually see him do it. I know that’s what it is. All of his expressions are so big he could star in a silent movie about himself: Benjamin Tate Can’t Control His Cock.

      But somehow, the way he looks doesn’t quite compute in the manner it should. Instead, it just makes me realise something: I’ve never met a man as handsome as him who behaves the way he does. Who wears all of his expressions on his sleeve and puts a hand up his own cardigan and doesn’t seem aware that he’s utterly, utterly lovely.

      Because he is. I don’t see how I could reasonably deny or push that fact away now. He hides it well beneath the goofiness and the too-big grins, but the lust haze he’s descended into makes it almost unbearably clear. His lower lip almost sulks all on its own. His eyes are like an early-morning mist over something heated and heavy.

      God. God. What’s happening to me?

      ‘I mean … it’s more than wanting to.’ He pauses, considering. ‘It’s more like … I need to. Man, I always need to soooo badly.’

      I know what’s happening to me. He says all the things I most want to hear in a tone like melting butter, and then I turn into a sexual psychopath. Observe:

      ‘So you masturbate often?’

      I mean, why am I asking him this? Why? And why is it that the shakier I get, the more confident he becomes? When he answers his voice seems almost … dry. Just hinting at a bank of sardonicism under the clean-cut exterior.

      ‘Not in public places, no.’

      ‘But generally speaking.’

      He straightens.

      ‘Yes,’ he tells me, and I can’t help it then. I have to hear the rest.

      ‘How often would you say you need to do it?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘You’re going to wear those words out, Benjamin.’

      He takes a breath, but it’s different to the ones he needed earlier. More restless, I think, as though he’s just as frustrated as I am at his sudden inability to express himself properly. I mean, usually he’s almost crazy with words – he’s a goddamn word volcano. I’ve seen him terrify Kelly with his need to share a hundred details about his childhood in Hawaii, and all at a thousand words a minute.

      But now he’s stuttery. He doubles back on himself, as though he’s on trial and has to get everything just right.

      ‘Sorry. Sorry. OK – I guess maybe once or twice a day.’

      And when he does finally get words out, they’re not the correct ones.

      ‘You know it’s very easy to tell when you’re lying. You get this little awkward crinkle above your nose,’ I say, though I’ve no idea that I’d figured out such a thing until the words emerge. It’s like what Woods used to say about the subconscious clues, I suppose – that people do things without knowing it.

      I can’t be sure, however, if this applies to him, or to me.

      ‘I do?’

      ‘Yes. And you look sort of … stunned by your own capacity for falsehoods.’

      He squirms for that one. But shamefully, this only seems to create further problems between my legs. When I shift, I can feel the slickness coating my slit. Can feel it easing over things both delightful and torturous.

      ‘OK. OK,’ he says, and then he does something that makes me want to do more than cross my legs. It makes me want to shove my skirt up and fuck myself right there in front of him, though I’ve no idea why.

      He just counts on his fingers. That’s all. And if he’s counting how many times he masturbated yesterday on said fingers, well … what does that matter? How is that an arousing thing to witness?

      ‘I’d say I maybe do it … three times a day.’ He checks his fingers and nods, then seems to change his mind when he finally looks up at me. Like he knows. Like he can feel me unravelling the lie before I’ve said a word. ‘Sometimes more, depending on what’s happened.’

      I can’t describe the heady rush that goes through me, to know that my expression alone forced him to make that correction. All I understand clearly is that it puts a quiver in my voice, when I finally get words out.

      ‘And what has to happen to make you so desperate to come?’

      Not that it matters. He has his own quiver to deal with, and oh Lord it’s big. It seems to affect his entire body, from sudden slump of his shoulders to the slow drift of his eyelids over those foggy eyes.

      It’s like all his self-control slides right out of him. And I know it does for sure, when he quite abruptly pants out: ‘Oh, that sounds so dirty when you say that word. I think I felt it go right through me.’

      But the words