Chapter 17 A British Snake
A British Snake
— F IVE M ONTHS TO A MELIE’S W EDDING —
Kicking the door closed, I glance at my reflection in the entryway mirror. My hair’s a tangled mess atop my head after the quick but exhausting jog I just went on, and the cold fall wind has my cheeks burning. “Can I ask you something?”
Ian’s voice crackles through the phone, warm as if he’s the most relaxed he’s ever been. “If you don’t, this’ll turn out to be an incredibly dull conversation.”
“You know, some people just say yes.”
“Incredibly dull people,” he says. “What’s the question?”
With a shake of my head, I walk down the hall to the kitchen. I’m not exactly comfortable discussing this with anyone, but is it crazy that I’d go to Ian before Martha or Barb? I don’t feel judged when I talk to him. Not ever. Or like I’m interrupting something more important.
“Do you ever not—hmm, if a man doesn’t feel like…” I roll my eyes and open the fridge. “What’s the best way to make him want to, you know …”
Ian clears his throat. “Some people just say ‘have sex.’?”
“I’m serious, Ian.”
“So… Frank isn’t putting out?”
I grab a bottle of water and head to the living room, flopping onto the couch. The black leather is cold against my sweaty thighs, and it isn’t by far the most uncomfortable thing going on. Frank and I haven’t seen each other in a month, but even before he moved out… things weren’t exactly hot . Physical contact between us had already been at a depressing low for a while.
But I’m trying this new thing where, instead of letting the thought send me crashing into a ball on the floor, I fight for my relationship. He said sex between us was boring, so I’ll just make it not boring.
It might sound horribly desperate, but it’s not. It’s only moderately desperate.
“Is that it?” he insists.
“Uh, yes. Sort of… yes.”
He exhales deeply, then his chuckle melts my insides, warm and throaty and calmness personified as Ian always is. “That’s… funny,” he says, as if he doesn’t think it’s funny at all. “That is really, really funny.”
“How so?”
“Because, Amelie, that’s insane. You’re hot—and that’s not just my opinion. You’re universally hot, objectively hot. Long legs, amazing ass, and you have the face of an angel, which most men appreciate on a primordial level.”
“A primordial level,” I echo.
“Yeah. So innocent and angelic. Our primal instincts tell us to mess you up.” When I let out a laugh, he continues. “I mean it! Turn you into a sobbing, desperate, dirty mess. We want to defile you,” he insists, his voice fluid and joyous, as if he’s smiling.
“Thank you, friend ,” I say pointedly. He’ll say stuff like that every once in a while, but always with a painfully playful tone. If I’m so desirable, how come Frank doesn’t want me? “I think the problem is how angelic I am.” I grimace. “How innocent .”
“Hmm. And how much is that? Paint me a word picture.”
I cross my ankles over the coffee table. “Ha-ha. What should I do, Ian?”
“I’d suggest switching your current model for a more advanced one, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be well received.”
“It would not.”
He hums, and in the few seconds of silence that follow, I fidget with my engagement ring. “Okay. How about… get yourself into a tiny lingerie set and wait for him in bed.” There’s a clap. “Done.”
“Hmm…” I doubt it’d be in any way more interesting than the girls he’s probably sleeping with right now. He’s seen my bras plenty of times.
“No? Okay… how about… role-playing? Tie your wrists to the bed and tell him you’ve been a naughty, naughty girl. No way he says no to that.”
With a snicker, I say, “I don’t know.”
“I guarantee he’s not going to be able to resist you half-naked and whispering dirty shit in his ear.” When all he gets is an unconvincing “I guess,” he continues. “Come on. Pretend it’s him. He comes in and you say…”
I get up and head to the bathroom, grabbing a brush to disentangle my hair before I take a shower. “You? No, Ian, I’m not—”
“?‘ Hi, Amelie ,’?” Ian says in a weird nasal voice. “?‘ Work has me really stressed-out, but blimey, doesss it help to sssee you in that ssssexy red bra, mate. ’?”
Snorting in amusement, I lean against the bathroom sink. “He sounds nothing like that. And why did you morph into a British snake?”
“I don’t know. Come on. What do you say?”
I let out a whiff of air, setting the brush on the marble counter. “I say… ‘Hi, Frank. Do you… I want you to come to the bedroom with me.’?”
“Mm-hmm. Okay.”
“?‘And I—’?” Shaking my head, I close my eyes and blurt out, “?‘I want to lie in bed together, get naked, kiss, then touch you and—’?”
“?‘ Crikey, Professor, thank you for the lecture! I’ve always wondered where babies came from. ’?”
“Your Australian accent is terrible.”
“So is your dirty talk,” he says flatly. “Where’s your bar graph? How are you grading his paper?”
“Just leave it be.” I look into the drawer under the sink for… nothing, really. “I told you I’m not—I don’t—” I groan, snapping the drawer closed. “I told you I don’t know how to do this.”
“Okay, okay, calm down.” He sounds far less amused now, his voice returning to the usual dark timbre, and after a couple of seconds of silence, he speaks again. “He comes in, and you say, ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day. About how much I want you inside me.’?”
In the mirror, my eyes widen, the deep brown looking even darker against my red cheeks as I press my lips together tightly so that no noise comes out.
“And then you say, ‘I want you to take me against the wall and make me forget everything else but your name. And once you shove me on our bed, I want you to bend me over, push my face against the pillow, and use me like I’m your dirty little fuck toy.’?”
“Ian,” I scold weakly, my stomach clenching. My whole face has turned a crimson red I’m not sure I can blame on the run, and it feels like my heart is beating in places it’s not supposed to.
Why is this so damn hot?
“ That sounds delicioussss, Amelie. Come here: I’ll give you the besssst orgasssmsss. ”
I don’t even know what accent he was going for this time, but my arousal and amusement have me sputtering out a weirdly high-pitched giggle that I promptly rein in.
“Did I leave you speechless?” he asks in his normal voice.
“A little.” Swallowing away the tension, I shrug. “Did you come up with that on the spot, or…?”
His sudden guffaw is raspy and way too sexy. “Are you asking if I fantasize about using you as my dirty little fuck toy, beautiful?”
My jaw unhinges as I grip the counter to keep me steady, the cold surface burning against the heated skin of my fingers. “No, not me. That’s not what I—no, I—”
“Relax, Amelie. I’m just messing with you.” He lets out something between a chuckle and a sigh. “I’ve been told that and much worse in the bedroom. Really, telling your fiancé you want him to fuck you hard is nothing special.”
“Figures you’d say that,” I say, trying to divert his attention from me. “You’re a fuckboy.”
“Maybe. But if you were my fiancée, you wouldn’t be asking another man how to get me into bed,” he says in a firm voice. “In fact, I’d keep you pinned to that mattress until it’s worn out, and then we’d move to the couch. Or the floor.”
Ignoring what his words do to my stomach, I trap the phone between my shoulder and my ear, then squeeze some toothpaste out of the tube.
“Plus, your mouth would probably be too busy for questions.”
“Ian!”
“Just playing. You basically repulse me, and anyway, I’ll never have a fiancée.” He clears his voice. “Look, Amelie, my experience with these things is that the more it turns you on, the more it’ll turn him on.” I can almost hear the mischief in his voice. “So… tell me, beautiful. What turns you on?”
“Nice try.”
“Come on, I mean it,” he says with a chuckle. “What is it?”
“I’m not saying, Ian,” I say. “It’s inappropriate.”
“Is it? Or maybe—hear me out— maybe what you like is not pure and angelic. Quite the opposite. Maybe Amelie has an angelic face and a filthy mind.”
I begin brushing my teeth, switching to speaker and placing the phone down next to the faucet.
“Just all sorts of nasty kinks.”
I say nothing.
“The dirtiest fantasies.”
He can be so annoying.
“No hard limits.”
“Ugh—stop it! I’m not saying!” Little drops of toothpaste pepper the mirror at my outburst.
“Come on! Show me yours and I’ll show you mine ,” he singsongs.
With my stomach plummeting, I sigh. He’s like a child on Adderall. “Fine. You start, then.”
After a quick cheer, he clears his voice. “All right. So I’m into a lot of things. All that pure and angelic stuff? Not me. Oral sex—love that. Even more if my face is being ridden like a train. And you remember I’m great at multitasking, so sixty-nine is one of my many talents.” He hardly takes a breath before continuing. “I’m into any type of role-playing, edging. I’m definitely a switch. Threesomes are fun. Anal—”
“Okay!” I shout, my cheeks tingling so hard I don’t even dare to look at my reflection in the mirror. “Okay, I got it. You love sex.”
“Don’t you?” he asks, the question drenched with such shock I consider not answering.
“Just tell me one. One thing you’ve never done and you really want to.”
There’s a long exhale, which—if I know Ian as I think I do—means he’s frustrated and has some opinions about my sex life. “Okay,” he says. “We’re out somewhere public.”
“ We ?” I mock.
“Yeah, me and you. Hypothetically.”
I roll my eyes and fight back a smile. I have to stop smiling. “Right. We’re hypothetically out somewhere public.”
“Yes. You go to the restroom, and when you come back, you put your panties in my hand. You don’t say anything, only look at me and sit down. But I know you’re naked under your dress. That you’re wet and warm and tight, and that I can reach my hand out and touch you, but I can’t because there’s just too many people around.” His voice darkens, his words coming out slower. “And I stare at your thighs, hoping to see underneath, terrified that someone else will. Unable to think about anything else, obsessing over how ready you are, how close, but unreachable.” He inhales, then exhales slowly. “That would drive me insane. Hypothetically.”
Am I breathing? I think I’m not breathing.
There’s a minute of silence in which my body throbs to life. In which I feel like a woman, a desirable one too. In which my skin heats and feels raw, my throat dries up, and the saliva thickens in my mouth. It’s been months, and I’m—how should I put it?—horny.
I press my thighs together, losing myself in the thought of Ian’s fantasy playing out. My underwear in his pocket, his blue eyes darting to my legs, my thighs slick with—
“Amelie?”
“No. I mean, no—yes.” Heat moves past my cheeks and all the way to my ears. “That sounds—that’s definitely not basic.”
“Nothing wrong with basic if that’s what you like,” he says. “Okay. Your turn.”
“Hmm.” I smirk at the mirror. “I’m not saying.”
“Unbelievable,” he says. “?‘Innocent and angelic’ my ass. You tricked me!”
“I did,” I confirm as I shove the toothbrush into the holder and pick my phone back up. “Considering you deceived me during our first interaction, it’s only fair.”
“That’s fine,” he says, followed by a low chuckle. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what you like anyway.”
“Really?” My brows arch. “And what would that be?”
“I’ll tell you what it’s not,” he says in a cocky voice. “It’s not the lights-off, under-the-blanket missionary sex you’re used to having with your fiancé.”