Make Me. Charlotte Stein

in a sitting position, without anything under me to sit on. It’s like doing a series of really, really awful squats, only I don’t get to relax at the end of each one. I just have to keep going and going, until I faint.

      ‘Great,’ I tell him, though my treacherous voice belies that one word. It comes out all wavering and near to exhaustion, until he simply has to say. He has to. He wouldn’t be the gentleman I remember, if he didn’t.

      ‘You know, you can sit back a little, if you want,’ he offers, but he doesn’t shout the words over the thrum of all this noise. He slides them underneath, low and furtive, and when I shove myself back into the welcoming curve of his body I understand why.

      He’s hard.

      He’s so hard that he actually makes a little sound when I push into him, and tries to shove me forwards again. Like if he does it fast enough, I won’t notice his hugely stiff cock. I won’t remember exactly how it felt, rubbing up against me. I’ll just continue not listening to the conversation around the table, oblivious and innocent.

      Though I think he knows, on some level, that this won’t wash. I can feel how tense he’s gone, and those hands are now iron in the hollows of my hips. Any move on my part and they clamp down tight, like a warning: Do not take this any further. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds, do not turn around and look at me in that way.

      But he’s out of luck on the third thing. I have to turn around and look, I have to. What expression goes with sudden erection? And how different is it from the ones he levelled at me earlier, which mostly seemed to be about getting away from me, as fast as possible?

      The answer is: not that different at all. He’s still got that touch of pain around his ever-square and too-tight mouth, and he won’t meet my gaze. He just does what I did earlier – fixes his eyes on some point just north of my shoulder, and hopes for the best.

      But I can’t give him what he wants. I can’t be the way I was before, passive and silent and sort of unsure. That girl hadn’t lived through five years of boyfriends falling asleep on top of her, and endless nights with nothing but a vibrator for company. She didn’t understand what it’s like to regret a missed opportunity, but I do.

      And I want to rub myself against the thick, stiff shape of his cock, until I hear him moan. Oh God, he moans – and not even in a quiet sort of way, either. It just blurts out of him like a short sharp shock, and once it’s done I think we both know we’re in trouble.

      I glance up and, sure enough, Tyler is looking our way. And though his expression is mainly amused, there’s something else there, too, buried deep down in that foggy gaze of his. It’s a look I recognise – a look I’ve seen a million times before, without fully understanding what it meant.

      But I understand now.

      Ohhhh, yeah. I understand now. He wants to fuck me I think, blindly, and once the idea is there I can’t shake it off. It gets a hold of me between my legs, and forces me to do things I wouldn’t usually. I’m sure I’d just leave it at a little light rubbing if I were left to my own devices.

      But once Tyler’s got his lust-fucked gaze on me I find myself doing much worse. I actually ease myself back and forth over Brandon’s solid prick and, when he protests – when he gasps and digs his fingers into the hollows of my hips – I put an arm around his shoulder.

      So that my breasts are almost pressed against his face.

      ‘Maisie,’ he says, but he sends the word high and wild. And his efforts at following it with something saner – something like please stop, maybe – don’t quite pan out for him. Instead he ends up turning until his mouth is very close to my mouth and his hands are very close to holding me, and, after a moment of this delicious tension, I think: We’re going to kiss. That’s what this is: the leaning into one another, and his hand suddenly on the nape of my neck. He wants to kiss me, but something’s holding him back – perhaps Tyler’s gaze burning across the table at us, too intense for me to fully process.

      I can’t even look at him directly without assuming what Brandon probably does – that it’s anger, or jealousy, or something else similarly crazy that he’s levelling at us. And I think this until the point where I actually do meet his eyes and see for myself what he’s saying.

      It’s not stop. It’s go. Go on, he says to me with his smouldering stare. Go on, kiss him. Touch him. Fuck him right here on this table until you’re wrung out and slippery with your own come and his spunk … Oh God, how can one look be so filthy? How can it make me so crazy?

      Because it does. The feel of Brandon’s stiff cock – now almost in the groove between the cheeks of my arse, rubbing and rutting insistently – is bad enough. The tension of this almost-kiss, so hot and slick, is bad enough.

      But Tyler’s gaze makes me weaker. My nipples stiffen under the weight of it. My sex grows full and fat, every bit of pressure against it suddenly maddening. I want to rub just to relieve that sensation, I realise – maybe spread my legs over one of his thighs and get my clit right up against that meaty muscle – but I don’t get the chance to.

      A moment later, Brandon shifts all in a big rush, some unearthly sound bubbling out of him as he does. And though I’m sure he means to be careful he isn’t – his hands turn rough on my body, manhandling me in a way that’s simultaneously exciting and disheartening. Exciting because there’s a new urgency to the move that I can’t deny. Disheartening because once he’s done, I’m left sprawled on the seat, while he blunders off in the direction of the door marked STAFF.

      In his defence, he does offer me a few blurted words before leaving. Something about the bathroom and needing it, and that he’ll be back in a minute – probably sans erection.

      But, unfortunately for him, I don’t feel like letting him reset the clock. It’s already been done once, and once was enough. Now it’s time for seizing the day, rattling the cages, feeding the thing that’s grown inside me over five years of wondering, What if?

      What if I hadn’t left, without a goodbye?

      What if I’d gotten up off my seat, pushed through the crowd and gone through the door marked STAFF, to see what was on the other side?

      

      ‘Oh Maisie, come on. Give me a break,’ he says the second I uncover him, hiding in some storage room at the back of this place. I understand why, however. He looks like some wild, slightly insane version of himself. His hair is standing on end from what I can only imagine were a million hand-strokes through it, and somewhere along the way he’s lost his suit jacket.

      The one that Tyler probably picked out for him in some fancy shop. I can almost see the scenario in my mind’s eye: Brandon squirming inside material too expensive for him; Tyler straightening out the collar, in firm, sort of … brisk movements.

      Like the kind of movements he used on my body when I lay naked in front of him.

      ‘A break from what?’ I ask, but I’m not being fair here, and I know it. It’s obvious what he needs a breather from, all things considered. And by all things considered, I mean I rubbed my ass against his cock, while his best friend watched.

      ‘Just …’ he starts, only there’s no finish. His hands make frustrated patterns in the air, instead, before returning to that crazy hair.

      And then I’m just left to interpret this new form of sign language.

      Which I do. In the worst possible way I can.

      ‘You want me to not touch your cock?’ I say, only this time my faux-innocence has a little bonus on the end. It features the word ‘cock’, and the word ‘cock’ has rather unexpected side effects. It sends a bolt of heat, right through me. It strokes a slow, slick hand between my legs. And, best of all, it turns his face the colour