Chapter 14 #2
Mike lingered awkwardly, no doubt wondering why he’d let such a weirdo stay in his house. I fumbled on the floor for my phone, turning the music down to a background murmur. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t. The air was heavy and awkward.
“Right,” Mike said finally. “I’m going to go to work. I’ll leave you… to it.”
“Great,” I said, keen to be miserable in solitude. The devil you know and all that.
But something in my voice stopped Mike where he was. Slowly, with enormous care, he inched the wallet down his face, still using it to shield my breasts from view but making enough space that he could meet my eyes. “You okay, Princess?”
“Sublime.”
“Looks like you’ve been crying.”
I was so deeply frustrated—that was my excuse for being rash and following my impulses, even though all they’d ever brought me was trouble.
I heaved a big sigh and leaned my head back on the lip of the bath, then confessed to the ceiling, “I’m crying because I’m not coming .
It’s a tragedy of alliterative gerunds.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t orgasm. Not ever. There’s something wrong with me.”
After a long silence, Mike lowered his wallet. His expression was a cocky smirk I’d never seen before. “You need some Magic Mike to make it all better, baby?”
Mike had never called me baby. Princess or girl, yes. Never baby.
Swagger radiated from his every pore, evident in the way he leaned on the doorframe and in his shit-eating grin.
It would be so easy to say yes.
But it wouldn’t work. I’d have to fake it.
And then he’d never do adorable things like use his wallet to stop from salivating over my tits.
He wouldn’t be Mike anymore. He’d be this swaggy fuckboi, and I’d be no better off than I was now.
It’d be the worst of both worlds. Maybe I should just give up and drown myself in the tub. A modern Lady of Shalott.
“No,” I answered finally. “Fuckbois can’t help me.”
A fraction of his swagger fell. He nodded and turned on his heel.
Be brave.
I added, “But you might be able to.”
The muscles in his back clenched and then slowly loosened, like a tide receding into the ocean.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” But he still didn’t move, didn’t turn around.
“Will you come closer?” I asked.
His shoulders rose with his inhale. Then he did. He sat on the floor beside the tub, leaning one arm on the lip. His brown eyes were intent as he said, “Tell me what’s upset you.”
I spilled my guts. I told him it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I’d never been able to orgasm and it made me feel bereft .
My body was fine, it did all the things it should.
My head, however, was a disaster. Eventually, I talked so long, I had to stretch up and twist the faucet for more hot water.
Mike did something on his phone as I did.
“I just can’t focus.” I sank back into the perfectly temperate water.
“That’s not unusual for me. But with this, I can’t tell when I should push through discomfort and when I shouldn’t.
So many things in my life have felt unnatural, but everyone always says you should suck it up and do the thing—like studying for tests to pass subjects you hate.
Or grocery shopping. Now I know that it’s just my ADHD making it hard to focus and lots of things aren’t set up for my brain.
But what if sexual pleasure is one of those things that isn’t for me?
That would suck so bad. I want it. Like, really want it. I crave it.”
Mike’s eyes were intent, so I kept talking.
“Like, for example, that time with you? With the passenger princess video and the licking and all that? I think about that all the time. But it doesn’t matter how hard I try. I can’t get there and it feels like I never will.”
“Tell me how you felt with me in the car. You said you felt close?”
I nodded. “I didn’t want to stop. I liked…?.” I had to take a bravery breath. “I liked when you used the belt to hold me. It helped me shut off some of the worrying.”
Mike nodded slowly. “I’m no shrink. That’s probably obvious—I didn’t even finish high school. But it sounds to me like the problem is that you think too much, Lyssa, and you distract yourself.”
“ Understatement , Michaelangelo. It’s like I have six trains of thought and about 40 percent of them are disaster forecasts, and the rest are the same line of the same song over and over again. And they all run at the same time. And sometimes crash into each other.”
“I noticed…?.” He trailed off, choosing his words.
I settled back down against the enamel, tugging my dress up to make sure things were covered.
It was a bit of a pointless effort—my tits were all over the show.
Slip dresses were great for vibes and terrible for support.
But it didn’t matter what Mike thought of my tits right now.
It mattered if this situation confirmed for him that I was too much banana for one milkshake .
“You were wet when I was fingering and licking you,” he said instead, making my breath hitch. “Before Keri showed up, I mean. You were shaking like a leaf. I definitely thought you were about to come.”
Hearing him recount that moment in his deep voice made me shiver. “Yeah.”
“What about now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Let’s try again. Play with your pussy.” When I didn’t move, he rolled his eyes, “Come on, Lyssa. I know that’s what you were doing in here before I got home. Go on, do it again.”
I hesitated, and before I could blink, Mike wrapped his hand around my wrist and stuck a couple of my fingers in his mouth. I gasped as his tongue slid over my digits, dancing along the split and soothing the sides. He pulled them out with a wet pop. “There you go.”
My breath coming faster now, I tried to study his expression to see if he was doing his cocky Mike the Man shtick again. But his deep brown eyes met mine without bravado or posturing.
I slid my hand under the water and down my belly. Mike’s saliva on my fingers was immediately lost to the bathwater, but the idea of him lubricating me to ready me had quickened my pulse.
I clenched my lids shut as my fingers resumed their earlier pattern, sliding into the familiar grooves. Mike watched, leaning on the lip of my tub— his tub—as water swung up and down the sides of the enamel.
“How does that feel?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Good?”
I knew he wanted more. But honestly, this question was triggering for me.
This question was how I ended up feigning enjoyment of every single partnered sexual experience I’d had.
The broad spectrum of assholes I’d let in my pants—from a high school boyfriend who dumped me the morning after I finally slept with him to Paul, fucking Paul—all needed me to perform enjoyment more than they needed me to enjoy myself.
I stopped what I was doing.
“It’s always good, until it’s too much,” I bit out, frustrated. Then I had to swallow a few times as tears were threatening again. “It’s like I overshoot it. Like… like going on a hike only to get to the other side without even a glimpse of the view that everyone else had raved about.”
“Did you Google how to orgasm?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Like anyone could have a problem like this in a modern time and not consult Google. Of course I’d Googled it.
“All the articles I found were basically, like, ‘idk sometimes people with vulvas can’t come, shrug .’ I think a lot of the time the problem is having sex with cishet men.
” I side-eyed Mike, assessing if he was going to be one of those guys who thought this label was hate speech, instead of a fact.
His expression didn’t change and I continued.
“Because they think sex starts when they get hard and finishes when they ejaculate. It’s like Caroline says—this is more proof sexuality isn’t a choice, because women are way too smart to want to be attracted to men. ”
Mike made a face. “I’d rather not think about my sister right now, if that’s all the same to you.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. I have an idea. I need you to do something for me.”
He was asking for more than that. He was asking me to trust him.
Did I? He’d never given me reason not to. The opposite, in fact. I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Close your eyes.”
I did.
“When you’re ready, start touching yourself again. No rush. I haven’t got anywhere to be.”
I lay still in the water for as long as I thought it would take him to get bored and leave. But he didn’t. He stayed kneeling at the side of the tub, true to his word.
Eventually, the idea of doing this while he watched became exciting again.
I tentatively resumed my exploration. When I pulled the sodden fabric of my dress up my thigh and my hand disappeared beneath it, Mike’s heavy exhale hit my shoulder.
That thrilled me.
It was easier to do this when I was doing it for him. Under his gaze, I imagined his cock lengthening in his jeans, getting thick and stiff. All for me. I petted my soft, hot flesh, but when my fingertip ducked under my clitoral hood and hit the bundle of nerves there, I jerked.
Mike made a noise low in his throat, considering. “That pretty clit of yours is very sensitive, isn’t it?”
I still didn’t open my eyes, but he spoke with an easy playfulness that made me feel like I was in safe hands. Mike knew sex. He could guide me.
When I nodded, he hummed again.
“Tell me what it feels like when you push your pussy lips together and roll them between your fingers.”
I obliged. Thrills shot through my body. I did it again, and something deep in my belly clenched. Mike put his arm on the enamel behind my head, and I leaned back on it, my head cushioned by him.
“Keep doing that. Next, I want you to circle that little ring of muscle that’s feeling all tight now. Don’t push inside. Tease it. Tease it just like my tongue did. Do you remember?”
I sure fucking did. The way he’d held me open and feasted as his thick fingers pushed into my opening—that was all I’d been able to think about since.
I realized that was the whole point. Clever Mike.
Really, it was a surprise to hear him say he never finished high school.
He was such an intelligent man—flunking probably had nothing to do with his grades and everything to do with his proclivity for punching teachers, the reckless little white knight.
What was the name of the guidance counselor he said he’d punched?
Something that made me think of Tom Hanks?—?
“Lyssa,” Mike growled.
My lids flew open. His eyes were dark now, his expression unusually foreboding. Gone was the good-time guy who laughed his way through life.
He wasn’t laughing now. He was sizing me up.
“It feels too intense,” I whispered, my voice small.
“I know. Do you trust me?”
Last month, I would have said there wasn’t a man on this fucking Earth I trusted. Paul had ruined my life, my stepfather was preoccupied with his midlife crisis, and Chase had stolen my best friend.
But Mike?
I didn’t have to think very hard about that.
“Yes.”
“Pinch my arm if you want me to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Circle your clit as fast as you can. Now, Lyssa. Hurry.”
“Mike, stop what?”
He grabbed my hand and pushed it back toward the vee of my legs. Even though it would push water over the lip of the bath, I did as he said, moving my fingers as fast as I could, whimpering at the powerful sensation.
I didn’t notice Mike adjusting his stance beside the tub, nor would I have worked out what was coming if I did. When he placed his hand over my clavicle, I welcomed the contact and the grounding weight but wished his hand was a few inches lower, over my breasts. I arched into his touch.
“Big breath, Princess.”
I was doing that anyway. The advice was completely superfluous.
Then he pushed me underwater.