How Not To Fall (17 page)

“I went home that night and fantasized about what would have happened if I hadn't stopped you. How I could have fucked you so quietly, Diana and everyone would never have known that's what we were doing. I could have laid you across my desk and had you right there. You would have done it.”

“Yes.”

“You would have loved it.”

“Yes.”

“You would have wrapped your legs around me and begged for more.”

“Yes!”

He laughs quietly as he fucks me harder, just a little faster as he presses my fingers rhythmically over my clit, and I pant and huff and grunt. Gripping my hair, he puts his lips against my ear and says, “Do you want to come?”

“Oh god, yes.”

“Not yet.” And he pulls my hand away from my clit—I cry out in protest. He pins my wrists together above my head with one hand; the other returns to my clit.

“‘Oh, oh, oh,'” he says into my ear, moving in me again in that leisurely way. “ ‘To touch and feel very good velvet. Such heaven!' Miss Coffey, you will recite for me the twelve cranial nerves, in order, please.”

“What?” I groan, and I press my hips back into him.

“I've just given you the entire mnemonic. Can't you remember?” And then he kisses me, deeply and slowly—and has to stop when he starts laughing. “Come on, I want to fuck you while you name the cranial nerves. Is that so much to ask?” He bites my earlobe and whispers, “Do it, or I won't let you come until tomorrow, and that's twenty-three hours away.”

“Olfactory,” I groan, and then add, “weirdo,” with a grin, and he rewards me by pressing directly on my clit. “Oh, I like that a lot.”

“Good. Keep going.”

“Optic. Oculomotor. Um.” I let the sensation of his cock moving inside me mingle with the sensation of his mouth near my ear and the hot, slick pressure of his fingers on my clit. When I hesitate too long, though, he shifts his hand away.

I whine in protest and move against him, inviting, but he laughs again, and prompts, “‘To touch . . .'”

“Trochlear,” I say, remembering suddenly, and his hand returns to my clit. “Trigeminal, abducens, facial . . . oh god.” His hand is moving steadily now and firm over my clit. My breath catches.

But I've paused too long, and his hand disappears again.

I laugh at my own frustration and grumble, “Oh, fuck you! Shit. Very . . . Um, to touch and feel very . . . Oh. Charles, please.” He's still fucking me slowly, the way you'd pet a cat that's asleep on your lap, and it's just enough to make me a little crazy, though it would never be enough to make me come on its own. And I really want to come now.

“Vestibulocochlear!” I enunciate.

His hand comes back, firm and steady.

Glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal accessory, hypoglossal. He tortures me. He teases me. He wraps me in pleasure like a silk robe, and he ties it around me with his laughing exhortations, he binds me to him with the pure, easy joy of union. When I come, he goes still, lets me writhe and thrust against him, under him, and he bites into my shoulder.

He comes after I do, on my ass and all up the back of his shirt. A shower and a snack later, he hauls me over his shoulder, carries me into the bedroom, and drops me onto the bed. When he gets in beside me and kisses me good night, I sigh, “Charles.”

“Annie.”

“I just want to say that right now, in this moment, I am
completely in love
with my own nervous system.”

He kisses my temple. “Good.”

“And you know what?”

“What?”

“I love science.”

He laughs. “I love science too,” he says.

A
nd then the next morning he tells me the most astonishing thing I've ever heard, in response to what I consider a perfectly reasonable question. I'm reading
Carry On, Jeeves
as I eat breakfast, and I ask, “Why are some of the Wodehouse novels notarized on the front page?”

Answer: that's not a notarization; that's the family crest, put there by—are you fucking kidding me?—the sixth viscount.

“What the hell is a viscount?” I say, aghast, pretty sure I know the answer.

“It's like a . . . It's between a baron and an earl, if that helps.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You're a
viscount?
”

“No no, my father is. It doesn't particularly mean anything much; it's essentially a bit of a family tradition, you know, like opening presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day.”

“Dude, that is nuts,” I tell him.

“Why? Lots of people do it.”

“Not the presents, duh. The royalty whatever.”

“ ‘I do not think it means what you think it means,' ” he says in a fake Spanish accent, like Inigo Montoya.

“What, like, being rich and living in a huge house and having servants and basically wringing your bread from the sweat of other men's faces? I don't mean actual slavery, but, like, serfs and shit?”

“Exactly. That's what it doesn't mean. Certainly not anymore.”

“So what does it mean, anymore? Did you grow up in, like, a castle and stuff?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Well”—he wrinkles his nose, and the left corner of his bottom lip tugs downward briefly—“a bit like that. But not much. There's nothing left at all of the estate, so there's really nothing but the title. But people treat it as if it means something, and thus, in effect, it does mean something. My father's an arsehole, and the title means he gets away with it. He uses it to bully people.”

I am stunned. I stare at him and ask the first question that comes to mind. “Does Professor Smith know?”

He grins at me. “God no. Can you imagine what she'd say? Look, actually,” he says, his voice more serious, “I haven't told anyone in the States, precisely because it's not something that really translates. I'd be obliged if you wouldn't mention it.”

“Okeydokey, your lordship,” I grin.

But he says, “I'd really rather you didn't do that. There are . . . awkwardnesses and embarrassments I can't joke myself out of. Can you understand that?”

“Can I understand?” I consider the question seriously. “Nope. No, I probably can't begin to imagine what it's like. But I won't tell.”

“No,” he says, and he gives me the fond, sweet smile I'm starting to get addicted to.

We sit in silence over breakfast, and then I ask, “So how come you told me, when you haven't told anyone else?”

He takes a sip of coffee and says, “These last four days while you were gone, I thought about what I wanted this experience we're having to mean to both of us. And I decided I'd . . . just . . . let you have me, as it were. Give you everything you ask for that I was capable of giving.”

I smile at this. “I'll let you have me, too. Anything you ask for.”

“You've already done that.” He smiles back and touches my hair. “Though of course if I resisted anything you wanted, you'd probably question and prod and push until I gave in anyway. If you look back on our recent history, you'll find I haven't been particularly successful at saying you nay.”

“Me either.”

His eyes go a little dark, and he raises one eyebrow. When he speaks, his voice has that teachery-but-different tone, and I'm left slightly breathless. “No. You are astonishingly generous with your body and your mind and your heart. I can't hope to match you. But I will try.”

I kiss him lightly, then prop my elbow on the counter, my chin on my hand. “Is there a name that goes with it? Duke of Earl, Earl of Sandwich, Viscount of . . . ?”

“Not ‘of' anything. Belhaven. He is the Viscount Belhaven.”

“Dude,” I say, and I bite into my toast. “That is fucking nuts.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Totally fucking nuts.”

 

I am not, by nature, a secret keeper. So when we climb that evening, and I meet his climbing group, I spend the first half hour stopping myself from saying,
Dude, you guys, Charles is, like, royalty and shit. Did you know?

But one of the best things about rock climbing is that while you're doing it, you really can't think about anything else.

They're a cool group of people, Charles's climbing group, mostly grad students, all pretty experienced climbers. Some of them have only climbed indoors, but most of them tell me stories of climbing outside, on actual rocks. They clearly like Charles, though they don't seem to know him well, but then again did I, before all this started? I would have said I did, but I knew almost nothing. I didn't even know he was a psychiatrist. They don't either, apparently, though they know he's a resident in the medical school and so they talk to him about their muscles and joints, their injuries, their stretches, the biomechanics of climbing.

But they welcome me in an open, friendly way, and let me climb with them as if I've always been a part of the group. About half of them are women, and watching the women climb is a revelation. They don't climb at all the way Charles does, and finally I can see what he means when he says, “Climb with your skeleton.” The women climb mostly with their legs, and use their arms for balance and leverage.

Even Tara, whom I belay on a
5.12a
route and who has shoulders like a gymnast and forearms like a bass player, gives this as her best advice: “Hump the rock.” She has taken my T-shirt seriously—this one says,
IT'S FUN TO USE LEARNING FOR EVIL
—and is coaching me, on the understanding that I will use my new skills for world domination.

“Hump the rock,” I repeat blankly.

She walks up to the wall, puts her hands on two holds above her head, and thrusts her pelvis forward against the wall. “Hump the rock,” she says again.

“Well, okay then,” I say, and she belays me on a
5.9
route. I hump the rock. It helps.

But I still can't make it through the whole thing.

When I get down, I thank her and hug her, and then I collapse on the mats next to Charles and take off my glasses. “ ‘Upper-body strength, Coffey,'” I grumble, and I rub my hands fiercely over my sweaty face.

“Look, fuck that arsehole,” Charles says. “It's not about having a particular kind of strength; it's about using the strength you have to get to the top any way you can. Everyone here climbs differently because everyone here has a different body that has different strengths and different limitations. Everyone's power, everyone's center, is somewhere different in their bodies. Yours is about here.” He pokes a finger midway between my belly button and my pubic bone. “Tara's is here on her.” He pokes his finger just below my belly button. “Mine is here.” He pokes a finger right into my navel. “We all climb differently because of that element alone.”

I'm pouting, I realize. But it's one of those times when I have to go with it. “I just hate falling so much.”

“If you ain't flyin', you ain't tryin',” Tara says, joining us on the mats. “You don't want to fall? The trick to not fall is not to mind if you fall.”

I frown at this, thinking. “So tip number one”—I count off on my fingers—“use the strength you have, and don't worry too much about the strength you don't have. Tip two, your center is your power, so know where your center is—that one I get. Tip three, don't mind falling.”

“Tip four: hump the rock,” says Tara.

“Right. Hump the rock. Tips two and four, I think I get. It's that third one that's tricky, though. Don't mind falling.”

“Want to know the best way not to mind falling?” Tara says.

“Yes.”

“Fall a lot,” she announces.

And so that's what I do. I tie in to the
5.9
again, this time with Charles on belay, and I navigate the comparatively easy first moves. I've never struggled with these first four moves; I had them the very first time I tried this route. In a flash, it occurs to me that this is because they're close to the ground, and I know if I fall, I don't need the rope to keep me safe. I say this to Charles as I climb, and he says, “No shit, really?” which makes me laugh, but I don't fall.

The fifth move is where I start to struggle. The handhold is small, and my fingers just don't have the strength to pull me up on it. But I'm not supposed to worry about the strength I don't have; I'm just supposed to use the strength I have. So I pause on the wall, my pelvis pressed against it and my arms straight, and say, “I'm gonna try jumping for that foothold.”

I try it. I miss. I fall.

“Nice,” Charles says.

I try it again. I make it, but my foot slips, and I fall again.

“Nice,” Charles says.

I try it again, I make it, my foot sticks, and I shift rapidly into the sixth move, practically pinning my pubic bone to the wall.

“
Nice,
” Charles says.

The seventh move is a motherfucker, and I fall four times before I get it.

When I do get it, Charles says, “Come back down a few moves and try the whole sequence.”

I do, and then I finish the route.

“Nice,” Charles says, and I'm so proud of myself and so tired and my arms burn so much, I halfway want to cry.

And I've forgotten all about the secret I'm keeping.

It's only on the drive home that I remember.

“None of them know about the prince thing?”

“The what? Oh, the, er ...” He laughs. “No.”

“Do you just get used to there being a thing you never say out loud?”

“Most of the time I don't remember there's anything not to say.”

I look at him disbelievingly.

“Did you feel that by not telling them about your dancing you're keeping a secret?” he challenges.

“No, but that's not a secret—if they asked, I'd tell them.”

“And if they asked me, ‘Does your family have a hereditary title?' I'd tell them.”

I blink and try to puzzle this out. “But no one would ever ask that, for the same reason that everyone would be, like,
so
interested in the answer.”

Charles says, “Surely, there are parts of your life and your history you share only with certain people.”

“No, pretty much I'd tell anyone anything.” Then again, there's nothing much to tell.

“Well, you wouldn't let just anyone touch you, though, make love to you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, it's rather like that. Only certain people, people I trust, people I want in my life, get access to certain things.”

“Hm.” I think about this for a minute. “And I get access to everything?”

“If I have it to give, it is yours.” He parks in the garage under his apartment building, turns off the engine, and faces me. “I want you never to feel I have denied you anything it was in my power to give you. What you—last week . . .” He looks down at the gearshift, searching for words, before he looks at me again and says, “You humbled me with your generosity and trust. I want you never to feel that I took anything I didn't return in kind.”

“You mean Wednesday night?”

He nods solemnly.

“I don't understand,” I say, tilting my head. “I didn't do anything. That was like . . . You're the one satisfying the other person as fully as they're physically capable of being satisfied, and only then do you pursue your own satisfaction.”

“You don't think there might have been more to it than that?”

“Like what?”

“Like, maybe the most insidious way to control someone else is to give them everything they want, anything they want, until they can't stop you from taking what you want?”

I shrug. “Same difference.”

“If you say so,” he says, and I can tell he's humoring me.

We do it again that night, not as ritualistically as before, no stockings, no blindfold, just a silent agreement between us that I will come—he will make me come—until I physically can't come, can barely move. This time when he's inside me, he takes his time, pulling one last orgasm from me while he fucks me from behind, all four of our hands sandwiched together between my vulva and the bed as he whispers with hot breath on my ear, “One more. Just one more, sweetheart.”

“You said that about the last one,” I pant.

“I'm a cheat and a liar, my termagant, but you can do it. Don't you want to? Won't you come for me one more time? Just one more, sweetheart.”

I do. I can, and I do, whimpering and thrusting against our hands, and then he fucks into me, those three wild thrusts, coming just after I do, pressing his lips against my hair.

Then he sorts me out—lays me gently on my back, pulls the covers over me, puts socks on my feet, and kisses my eyebrows. He whispers, “You are amazing, Annie. You are unbelievable.”