Chapter 21 #2
“Very much.” Caitlin looked at her with an expression that made Helena’s chest ache, open, happy, trusting. “This is what this dynamic should be like, isn’t it? Fun. Playful. Not controlling, not punishing. Just… two people enjoying each other.”
“That’s exactly what it should be like.”
“Zoe would have made this about obedience. About proving something. You’re making it about joy.”
Helena reached across the table and took Caitlin’s hand. “Joy is the point, Gatinha, for both of us. Everything else is just technique.”
After lunch they walked through more of the city.
Helena took Caitlin to the Ibirapuera Park, vast and green, where they walked along the lake and Helena told stories about playing in it as children.
She turned the device on intermittently throughout the afternoon, varying the levels…
a couple of times at level one or two while they were walking, level five while they stood hand-in-hand looking at a monument.
The realisation of what Caitlin’s body must be going through as her hand tightened on Helena’s and her breath started to come in gasps was thrilling and exquisite in equal measure.
And once, when they stopped to buy water and Helena was at the kiosk while Caitlin sat at a table, she switched it to level ten, just for a couple of seconds, but it was long enough…
Caitlin’s eyes shot to her, wide in her surprise, and she almost looked disappointed when Helena stopped it as abruptly as it had started.
“You’re getting bolder,” Caitlin managed to say when Helena sat down. She was flushed and breathless.
“You’re getting better at hiding it.”
“I’m not hiding it. I’m dying inside.”
“You look fine.”
“I know that I don’t. I look like a woman who’s been edged for four hours and is desperate, absolutely desperate, for some release.”
Helena laughed. “Nonsense. You look like a woman who’s enjoying S?o Paulo with her friend.”
Caitlin’s look didn’t suggest that she agreed with Helena on that point.
***
By mid-afternoon Caitlin was visibly affected.
Her cheeks permanently flushed, her breathing faster than usual, and there was a brightness to her eyes that anyone who knew her would recognise but that to strangers would simply look like a woman having a good time in the sun.
She was handling it with extraordinary composure, but Helena could see the cracks starting to show…
the way her hand kept going to her thigh as if she could press against the device through the fabric of her dress, the way she bit her lip when Helena’s hand went to the remote control.
“I need a break,” Caitlin said as they emerged from the park. “I need to sit down and have a coffee. More than anything I need to not be vibrated for at least ten minutes.”
“Deal.” Helena led her to a café she knew, a quiet place on a side street with tables outside, shaded by umbrellas. They sat across from each other, ordered coffees, and Helena made a show of putting the remote control in her bag. “See? Off. You’re safe.”
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
“You shouldn’t. But it is off. For now.” Helena paused. “Unless, of course, you say a certain word.” She watched Caitlin for a moment. “Do you want to?”
Without hesitation, Caitlin simply said, “Verde.”
Helena nodded with a little smile. “I thought so.”
Their coffees arrived. Caitlin drank hers with the desperation of someone who needed both the caffeine hit and the normality of a mundane act.
They talked about nothing consequential…
the coffee, the weather, a dog at the next table that Caitlin was charmed by.
A few minutes of ordinary life. Helena let her settle, let her believe the game was truly paused…
lulling her into a false sense of security.
Then, when Caitlin was mid-sentence about the traffic on the street, Helena reached for the remote control.
Level eight.
Caitlin stopped talking. Her mouth stayed open, her eyes went slightly wide, and Helena watched her process the sudden escalation, higher than anything she’d used all day except for the brief blast of level ten.
Helena knew the device was delivering a sustained, insistent pulse, and even Caitlin, for all of her resilience, couldn’t fight it.
There was a tremor in her hand, a sharp inhale of breath, the coffee cup put down a little bit too hard.
Helena left it on.
“You were saying something about the traffic,” Helena said mildly.
“I was…” Caitlin’s voice was strained but still just about under control. “I was saying that the cars are… that they’re… that…” She swallowed and gasped. “Helena.”
“Yes?”
“Helena, you need to…”
“I need to what, Gatinha?”
Caitlin looked at her. Her eyes were blazing with desire, frustration, and the looming orgasm that she’d been edging towards for hours now and could finally feel herself creeping towards the point of no return with.
Creeping towards it, though, because Helena knew that level eight felt very good, but also that level eight would take some time to push her over the edge.
“I need you to either stop or let me finish,” Caitlin whispered. “Because I’m very close, and we’re in public, and I don’t think I can hold it much longer.”
Helena looked at her across the café table.
Caitlin’s composure was impeccable to anyone who wasn’t looking closely…
she was sat straight, her hands around her coffee cup, her expression neutral.
But Helena was looking closely and she could see everything: the rapid pulse in Caitlin’s throat, the flush creeping up from her chest, the white knuckles, the tiny movements of her hips that she probably wasn’t even aware of, her body’s instinct to chase the pressure, to grind into it.
She’s magnificent, Helena thought. Truly magnificent…
hours of this and she’s holding herself together.
She’s doing better than I did when I was in her shoes.
She hid her smile at the memory of doing this with her ex, although he’d not been as gentle with Helena as Helena was being with Caitlin.
This isn’t submission… this is strength.
The force of nature channelling everything she has into staying composed while her body screams at her to let go.
Helena made her decision. She picked up the remote, held Caitlin’s gaze, and slid the setting to ten.
Caitlin’s jaw clenched. Her eyes closed, just for a second, and a moan escaped her lips… too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Helena heard. She really did hear.
“Look at me,” Helena murmured. “Don’t close your eyes. Look at me and let it happen, Gatinha.”
Caitlin opened her eyes and locked them on Helena’s. The world around them, the café, the waiter, the couple at the next table, the dog, the street, S?o Paulo, all of it faded to nothing. There was only Helena’s eyes and Caitlin’s eyes and the relentless, climbing pleasure between Caitlin’s legs.
“That’s it,” Helena said quietly, so quietly that only Caitlin could hear. “Let go, Gatinha. Right here. Nobody will know but me, and I want you to, my perfect Gatinha. Cum for me, right now.”
Caitlin came.
It was the most controlled, most internal, most invisible orgasm Helena had ever witnessed.
Caitlin’s eyes stayed locked on Helena’s, her expression barely changing…
a tightening around the eyes, a slight parting of the lips, a long, slow exhale that could have been a sigh of contentment to anyone who happened to glance over.
Her hands tightened on the coffee cup and her body went very still, every muscle focused on containing an explosion, and Helena could see the waves rolling through her, the clenching, the pulsing, the shuddering release…
all of it hidden, all of it silent, all of it happening in plain sight in a café on a side street in S?o Paulo on a Sunday afternoon.
It lasted longer than Helena expected. She kept the device at ten throughout, and Caitlin rode through it with her eyes on Helena, not looking away, not breaking, trusting Helena to guide her through this.
When it was over, when Caitlin whispered, “Vermelho,” Helena turned the device off immediately.
There was silence between them, while the café carried on around them.
The waiter asked if they’d like anything else. “We’re fine, thank you,” Helena said pleasantly in Portuguese. “Just the bill.”
The waiter left and Helena looked at Caitlin, who was looking back at her with an expression that Helena would remember for the rest of her life.
Not gratitude exactly, not afterglow, but something more complete…
the look of a woman who’d just been given an experience that she didn’t know she needed, in a way she didn’t know was possible, by the only person in the world who could have done it.
“You,” Caitlin said, her voice a little shaky, “are extraordinary, Minha Dona.”
Helena flashed a grin. “You’re the one who just climaxed silently in a café.”
“Because you made me. Because you edged me for five hours and then held my eyes and told me to let go.” Caitlin shook her head slowly. “Nobody else could do that to me. Nobody.”
Helena reached across the table and took her hand. They sat like that for a moment, two women at a café table, holding hands, looking at each other, the secret they shared as vast and as invisible as the city around them.
“Ready to go home?” Helena asked.
“Very ready.” Caitlin stood, slightly unsteady, and Helena caught her elbow. “Can we walk slowly to start with?”
“I’ll carry you if I have to.”
“Don’t tempt me. I’ve already lost most of my dignity today. Why not lose the rest of it?”
“You’ve lost nothing. You were perfect.” Helena kissed her cheek. “My perfect, brave, composed Gatinha.”