Keep Me in the Dark (5 page)

I nod. That sounds good. The sleeping bit, that is, not the tomorrow bit.

Reluctantly Dolly agrees, and Anna gives me a pitying smile.

I’m suddenly afraid because they know how much I want him. How much I need him. And I can’t hid it from myself anymore.

I don’t see him for three days. The day after we met at the club, I received a letter. Well, actually it wasn’t even that, just one line:
I hope you weren’t too cold.

It was ridiculous for him to worry about something like that, especially when I’d been interrogated by friends. He’d never asked me to keep our meetings or his letters secret, but my guess is that he preferred it that way. Now everything was out in the open.

The second morning, when I didn’t receive a letter, I wondered if it was because he’d somehow discovered my conversation with my friends. I worried I’d never see him again.

Then I told myself I was being pathetic. Sure, it was strange for him not to try to contact me, but it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before and he was never going to reach out to me.

But the next day, when I still didn’t see anything, I started to panic—and no matter how many times I told myself I was being needy and pathetic, that I was stronger than this, that no woman should never make a man the center of her life and happiness—I couldn’t banish that horrible, nauseating sensation in the bottom of my stomach.

I’m curled up in a fetal position on my side in my bed. My blankets are a mess, curled around my legs. I’m cold with just a sheet over my shoulders but I don’t want to move, even if it’s just to cover myself. A part of me needs to remain still and count my breaths.

Pathetic. Have you no respect? Look at you
.

I ignore that voice and wrap my arms around my stomach. I’m trying to hug away all these horrible feelings when my bedroom window slides open.

I don’t think it’s possible, but I become even more still. The man lowers his feet to the floor.

I recognize his shoes. His silent movements. That impenetrable black mask.

I squeeze my thighs together as he steps closer.

He’s here. Why is he here? Say something!

Something I don’t completely understand stops me. I’m as afraid to speak as I’d been to move just a few moments before. I close my eyes.

The bottom of the bed sinks. He drags his knee over the blankets. They creep up the backs of my thighs as he moves over me.

His fingers brush my shoulder as he pulls down my sheet. I try not to tremble. I don’t know if I succeed or not. My heart is beating so loud it’s hard for me to even tell if I’m moving or not.

I press my thighs together as his hand moves down my body. My breath catches as he slides his hand in between my legs. I feel myself blushing. My panties are already soaked.

“How much longer are you going to pretend to be asleep?” He whispers against my neck.

My mind is blank. “Um…I just woke up.”

“You’ve been awake since I got here.”

My heart beats faster as the ache between my legs grows. How the hell does he know that? “No I haven’t.”

“You shouldn’t lie,
solnyshko moyo
.”

That’s probably not a bad idea. Lying never seems to go well for me.

His hand skims over my hips. His fingers catch in the hem of my slip, and it moves with him, exposing more skin. “What are you thinking?”

I shudder.

He rolls me onto my back and plants an elbow by my ear. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” I don’t recognize my voice. Perhaps he doesn’t either.

He slides in between my thighs. “You sure?”

My knees bend around him. I wrap them around his waist. He groans.

God yes I’m sure. So why do I feel like I’m forgetting something. “Uh…”

He stops immediately, waiting for permission. What’s wrong with me? I look up at his masked face, searching for a name.

That’s right. I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything about him.

“Laura?”

The conversation I had with my friends a few days ago flashes in my mind. Am I content with this? I know I’m not. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and yet it isn’t enough. Not anymore.

“Laura?” His voice is strained. My legs close around him automatically and he groans again. If I don’t say anything now, I won’t be able to. I’ll slip into that pleasure that only he can give me. I’ll be consumed by it. Now is my chance.

“Uh…what’s your name?”

His hand trails from my stomach to my knee. I can feel the outline of his lips as he kisses my collarbone. I moan.

“You’re asking for my name? That must mean I’m not doing a good enough job.”

He slips the hand beneath me, sliding my panties to the side, running his fingers up and down my slit. I tighten everywhere.

No. You’re doing a good job. A little too good.
I frown, straining to think. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Still asking about that?”

“Please, I…” His fingers find my center. He pushes them in, and my muscles clench around him, trying to hold him in as he slips out. Anticipation consumes me as his fingers continue to tease. They aren’t nearly wide enough. I want to feel his cock spreading me, splitting me open, filling me with white-hot, agonizing pleasure.

“That’s more like it,
solnyshko moyo
. Let yourself go.”

My left hand fists my pillow. My right the bed sheet. I want him so bad that I want to scream.

He places a hand over my mouth as I part my lips. “Shhh. Your friends are sleeping.”

My tongue flicks against his skin as my vision blurs. I know I should care, that I should go a little slower, or at least close my mouth, but I want him so bad I don’t even care. My hips arch towards his.

“Not yet,” he says.

Why the hell not?
I shoot him a glare and he chuckles.

“I want to take my time with you. I want to see your face as I feel you unravel.”

“I want to see you too,” I whisper. Just before my eyes close I watch him shake his head. He removes his fingers and, with agonizing slowness, moves them to my clit. I close my legs around his hand, trying to lock it still with my thighs as he continues to rub against me faster but still not fast enough.

He moves his hand away, probably to get at his jeans. My mind is foggy, but slowly I remember what I’d previously wanted. “Let me see you face,” I repeat.

“No Laura.”

I move my hands to his shoulders.

He grabs them. “No.” He doesn’t sound angry. He doesn’t seem angry. So why is he stopping me?

“Why?” I ask.

“I told you—”

“I don’t care what you look like!”

“You will when you see me.”

“Why? Are you a fugitive?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

He pins my hands above my head. I strain against him for a second, but only half-heartedly try to break free. I can see the outline of his muscles through his shirt. He isn’t even flexing. Isn’t even trying. That’s how easy it is to restrain me.

He lets go with one hand. Brings the other down my side, down my stomach.

My back arches as I gasp, lungs filling with cold air. My nipples hit his shirt. It’s rougher than I’d expected, or maybe I’m just suddenly overly sensitive. I hear him breathing heavily. His lips must be parted. He must want to take me in his mouth, but he doesn’t.

You know what? Fuck it. I don’t care if I never see his face
.

I wrap my legs around him, pulling him down to me. I want to move my hands, but I can’t, so I arch up and bite at his neck, trying to fill my senses with him.

“Laura?”

His erection hits my lower stomach. It’s so hard that it’s painful for me to imagine it entering me. Still, he doesn’t try to move and I’m angry with him for stopping.

“Laura…”

He’s still waiting for permission
. I rock my hips and the head of his cock hits my clit. “I want you.”

He looks down at me, and I shiver from the intensity behind his mask. He looks like a demon. Maybe he’d disappear if unmasked. Maybe my horror waits for me behind that mask—a face I would instinctively hate. But I don’t care who he is, not when he touches me like this. I’m overcome by sensation. He floods me, devouring my protests, and I can’t help but be taken, again and again by him, begging for more, my pleasure heightened by this strange, frightening intimacy.

His grip on my wrists tightens as he repositions himself between my legs. My crushed wrists hurt a bit, but after a second I don’t even notice it. His cock slides down my slit, then into me.

It’s too fast. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying out.

He doesn’t move for a long moment. “Are you alright?”

I nod, my moist lips cooling from the night air.
I am yours
, I think, trying to find his mouth behind the mask as I kiss the black fabric. It tastes like cotton, but I can feel his lips beneath it, not quite parting over mine. He still holds a part of himself back even though there’s a barrier between us.

I want to be yours
.

I’m afraid to tell him. I don’t know why.

And then he lets go of my hands and cups my cheeks. He wants to make sure I don’t look away. I don’t remember the last time we fucked like this, face to face. Maybe we never have.

My hands feel cold from the lack of his touch. Aching. I flex them as he pushes into me. My knuckles hit the plain white painted headboard that had been left in the room by the previous resident. This place that had never truly been mine even though I lived in it fills with the scent of him, of us. His fingers dig into hips, just above my hip bone. I move my head to the side, bitting my pillow so I won’t wake anyone, filling my mouth with the taste of cotton.

Then his hand moves over my mouth, so I bite into that, and he moves faster, pushing deeper into me. He’s moving so fast that the friction of his shirt against my thighs hurts.

My mouth can’t close. No amount of air I take in is enough. No amount of him I take in is enough.

I want to be yours
.

I told people about you. They don’t fully understand, or maybe it’s me who doesn’t understand. I want to ask you these things and I’m afraid to
.

I want you to be mine
.

I move my hands over his back. He stills for a second, until I dig my fingernails into his shoulder blades, pushing him down towards me. It never feels close enough. All those barriers I wanted to exist between us—the ones I’d helped him to erect or never even tried to push away—the ones I’d placed between us myself—suffocate me. I want his body to crush my lungs and smother this cold, distant feeling, so I pull him down further, until it’s hard for him to move almost, and lock my ankles around his back.

Somehow still he moves, and it feels so good, so perfect. I feel myself disintegrating, but it isn’t enough. No matter how much I try, I can’t fully forget. I close myself around him tighter, my thighs squeezing his torso, my cunt clenching his cock.

I wonder if this small pain of mine reaches him. His hands are so tender. I can tell by the low, almost inaudible sounds he’s making that he’s close.

I wish I could see the look on your face when you lose yourself
.

My hands move up his back to his neck. Maybe he notices, maybe he doesn’t. He goes faster. Both of us are about to let go.

But I want to hold on. I want to force him closer to me. I want every part of him—even the parts that scare us both.

His hands tighten on my shoulders. He’s very close.

Now Laura, before you lose your nerve
.

And then I break our unspoken pact. I grab the bottom of his mask and yank it up.

It doesn’t go gracefully. The mask catches on his nose. Then he turns his face away my wrist, breaking my grip, and I can’t take anymore off.

For a moment I see the hollows of his cheekbones, the very corner of his eye socket. In my first glimpse of him, that’s all he is to me—a thing of shadows and harsh angles. Then dark, oddly long hair covers his tilted face. I move my hand to his cheek, to brush it away, and he grabs my wrists again.

I’m afraid he’s angry. I’m afraid he’s going to stop. But he continues to thrust, pinning my hands on my headboard and burying his face in the pillow beside me.

I feel stubble from his exposed chin on my neck. Something slick and hard is by my ear—his teeth, perhaps. I imagine them biting me. It’s pathetic, but this closeness—or perceived closeness—is the most erotic thing I’ve ever encountered. My eyes roll to the back of my head. My legs tighten around him. I can’t take the pressure that’s been building up in me anymore.

I let go.

My world goes black. I don’t know if I’ve cried out or not. I forget, even, that I tried to remove his mask. All I can think about is that blissful aching that has consumed me for so long has released. Shockwaves spill out over me, and the rides them, pushing into me once, twice, before exhaling, still turned away from me.

He lets go of my wrists and tugs the mask back over the small corner of his face that I’d exposed, and I remember.

I don’t see any more of him. I’m not even sure what I saw in the first place. Now his back is to me.

I hug my pillow to my chest and reach out to him.

“Don’t.”

I stop. Swallow. “I just…”

“Did you see me?”

He’s quiet, but there’s an underlying menacing quality in his voice I haven’t heard before.

“No, not really—”

“Did you?” He interrupts, his voice harsh.

For the first time, I’m truly afraid of him. “No.”

He’s silent for a moment, then lowers his head. “I’m sorry.”

My chest feels tight. I don’t understand what’s happening. “Why? What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I shouldn’t have done this.”

“Done what? I didn’t mean to take it off.” Alright, I had meant to, and it wasn’t like I could really hide that. Besides, I shouldn’t try to lie again at a time like this. “It was just in the moment. I won’t do it again.”

“It’s alright. It was wrong for me to ask you not to.”

“No, it’s okay, I just…I want to be closer to you.” My hand inches forward on the coverlet. He tenses, but doesn’t try to stop it this time.