In Her Service. Various

he knows it. He wants me to go past that point, but I can’t, I can’t. This is enough, just this.

      Just slapping my husband’s face, when he gets too greedy with the cock.

      ‘Enough,’ I tell him, while his mouth moves soundlessly around words he doesn’t know how to say. Perspiration stands out at his temples, along his hairline, on his upper lip – but it isn’t unattractive. Quite the contrary. It spurs me on, in the same way his squirming, heated body does.

      Though nothing gets me as good as his response, when I tell him plainly:

      ‘I’m going to fuck you, now.’

      It’s like I’ve touched a live wire to his spine. He shoves into the bed even though he knows he’ll be punished for that. And he moans so loudly, which he definitely won’t be punished for, at all. I could never punish him for something that makes my clit swell and my cunt clench around nothing, every inch of me suddenly right on the edge.

      I’m going to come, I realise, calmly. Detached from it, almost. I’m going to come without anything touching me, and all because of the thought of what I’m about to do. I’m going to slick this big cock with oil. And once that’s done, I’m going to finger his tight little asshole until he opens up for me.

      Then after all of these frankly excruciating stages, I’m going to ease this big thing past that ring of muscle until he begs me for more.

      Which he duly does. I knew he would. It’s like we’re connected too tightly, when we get to this place, every action familiar even though it’s absolutely not, in most other ways. My hand feels too slippery – I’ve used too much oil. I’m conscious, so conscious of hurting him, even though the sight of the plastic sliding past all of his resistance is enough to almost send me over.

      And yet that feeling remains. Of knowing him and understanding. It sings in me as he chokes out that I should fuck him so, so hard. Do it, baby, do it, he says, but I wait right on the brink. I stay just like that, with the thick shaft only partway inside him. Oil dripping and dripping down over his spread thighs, onto the sheets. Onto me.

      Then just as he’s ready to beg again, just as I feel it shuddering through me too, I push in hard. I draw the cock I don’t have back out again, searching for a rhythm, searching for what he’ll like, and oh yes when I find it … when he gasps for me …

      ‘There?’ I ask, but I don’t need to. He’s already shoving back against that feeling, chasing it. He’s already saying things I don’t dare to, like ohhh yeah. Make me come, make me feel it, give me that hard fucking thing.

      Of course, I notice that he doesn’t use the word cock. But that’s OK, because somehow the evasion of it hits me harder. My clit jerks again, just once, as though there’s a little string attached from it to the shaft I’m now pumping in and out of him, and I think that’s it. I’m going, I’m sure. I’m doing it, without so much as a rub over that swollen little bud.

      But no, there’s something more to come, yet. Something I need, without even understanding that I do.

      It’s OK, however. He knows.

      ‘Oh God yeah, baby,’ he says, as he works himself back on the thing I’m almost not holding any more. As he shudders, and gets so close, he follows it with other blissful words like: ‘You love it, don’t you.’

      It’s not a question, I know. It’s permission. Permission to love it, permission to love this. Permission to dig my nails into his back and sob something garbled and frantic like take it take it take it, as my orgasm blooms so low and thick in my belly.

      It’s almost like pain, I think. And it’s too all over the place, too unfocused. It runs riot through my body, glancing over my clit and striking me hard at the tops of my thighs. I almost sink right down onto the bed. It’s so strange and not right and good all at the same time.

      But I stay up, for him. I keep the twist I’m giving to the cock inside him, until I hear him choke the words out. The ones I can hardly believe myself, even though the thing is still happening.

      ‘Oh Christ,’ he says. ‘Oh fuck, are you coming? Are you really coming? Ohhhh baby yes, yes. I love you, I love you.’

      And then he goes over himself in one big, incredible surge. Body stiffening under its pressure. Near soundless grunts of pleasure throttling their way out of him. Every one of his shudders running all the way down him, and out through me.

      Because by this point, I’ve sprawled all over his back. I can hardly help it – every bone in my body seems to have turned to soup. I’m wrung out, done in, turned upside down. Of course I am. I’m in Oppositeland, where orgasms happen without touching and he gets fucked, not me.

      Where instead of saying I despise you for making me wait like that, he murmurs, low and sweet:

      ‘You’re so good to me, my lovely girl. So good in every way.’

      I’m not, though. Sometimes I’m thoughtless, and impatient. Occasionally I cry without warning, and won’t let him comfort me. Hell, there are even times when I can’t let him comfort me, when I can’t let him in, when I don’t know what to say a second after he’s told me he loves me.

      But I can do this.

      For him, I can be the person I pretend I’m not.

      How Was Your Day?

      Valerie Grey

      Made sure everything was in place and did a final check of the things I would need: a blindfold, a feather, a bowl of ice, a candle, a lighter and a rubber glove – just in case.

      This thought made my stomach tighten and for a moment and I wondered if I was making a terrible mistake.

      The sound of a car pulling into the drive cut that apprehensive thought off before I could change my mind. How long would it take to put all this away and do the dishes? Too long – oh, one look at the sink full of this morning’s dishes and she’d know something was suspicious. It was the one thing she’d asked me to do before she left.

      Asked?

      In her own way she asked: ‘Make sure the dishes get done before I get home tonight. Do you understand?’

      ‘Yes,’ had been my simple reply.

      Oh, yes, I understood perfectly well. I knew that if they weren’t done I would pay for that transgression. I didn’t know how the consequences would occur but I had no doubts that they would, indeed, occur. Of that I had no doubt. And now it was too late to question the intelligence of the decision I had made not to do them. They still sat stacked in the same neat piles they had been in this morning. I could almost swear they were taunting me now. Now, when even they must know it was too late to change my mind.

      The sound of a key unlocking the door invaded the thunderous silence of my own thought. Holding my breath, I watched as the figure of my lover filled the doorway. She had a way of making me forget even to breathe and my heart fluttered like a princess catching sight of the royal queen in the nude.

      Seeing me standing in the entrance with signs of obvious apprehension made her raise an eyebrow inquisitively. A gleam of curiosity flickered in the depths of her hazel eyes before being shadowed by a mask of indifference.

      ‘Well, well, what has made you so eager to greet me and yet so hesitant to speak, little one?’ she asked softly.

      It was a softness of voice that could be misleading. Now more than ever I wanted desperately to have just a few more minutes to do the damn dishes and how I anticipated pleasing her as well. Words were stuck in my throat. I felt my mouth open and close again but no sound came out.

      She knew more by my silence than by my words that I had not done as she had asked. She was not going to let me off easily. She was not going to fill in the blanks for me; she was going to demand that I admit to my sin. And she was going