Breaking in Waves Pt. 04

Notes: Sorry for the wait. I felt like editing this part of the series a little more intensively than the rest. It always sat a little painful with me, this part, like working through something real and sharp. And now I'm older and I smile wistfully at the way the level of technology freezes their story at a certain place in time, something that happened in the past. I hope you enjoy this one!

Book 2: Trading Tides

.

NOW

The night sky is dark and starless, steeped in the feeling of approaching dawn. It's in the sound of water rushing from showers all around my flat, and in the hum of the first underground train. It's in the off-black color of the sky, that mud grave charcoal where the night is laid to rest. It's in my stomach, too, in the aching hollow that isn't hunger.

I stretch, roll my shoulders back one by one, savor the little ache as I pull my elbow towards my chin. I've had too much wine and my head feels heavy, but I can't go to bed.

My alarm will go off in forty minutes. It is sitting there on the ornate driftwood nightstand Paul made for me. I reach out in the dark, fingers grazing the smooth, varnished grain. It still smells faintly of him--sawdust and salt, impossible to wash away. Just for a moment I can almost pretend I am touching him, touching something his hands knew that well, sanded down to this warm sheen for hours.

I think my body has been half asleep for an hour or so, but my mind is still spinning up a slow, rainy storm.

I think about having a shower. There's something about hot water and a confined space, about the lower oxygen content in the water vapor that seems to heal most things. I'm cold, too. But it's just that time in the morning and chances are there won't be any hot water to speak of. One day, I'll be promoted to staff writer, or I'll sell one of those screenplays that populate my head, and maybe then I can move--somewhere with proper heating, a water system that doesn't surrender at 5 a. m., walls thick enough that I don't have to hear the couple next door fucking every night.

I try to find some sense of justice in the fact that, surely, I paid them back tonight, both in noise and duration--but the memory just makes me come up short and wrap my arms around my body so tight all the sore little places come to life.

I think I screwed up. Big time.

And still, I can't believe he didn't come back.

I force myself to get up, to stop clicking on random links, on trailers and kitten videos. They make me want to buy a pet, and I'd be a terrible pet owner. I close the browser, and turn off the screen so that the computer can switch itself to standby. The room sinks into blue-grey nothing, and my reflection ghosts up in the dark monitor--pale, unmoored, floating the way I did once, in a room that smelled of wood and salt, with a hand in my hair telling me I could let go. It occurs to me, standing there in the glow of standby lights, that I have been trying to get back into that room ever since. Somehow, I always thought I would.

I didn't think--

I pull my shirt off over my head; my hair crackles with static. As if my body recognizes the motion, it moves into a stretch, a yawn so wide it feels like my jaw is trying to escape its shackles. I take a pint glass into the bathroom, fill it with water and gulp it all down with an aspirin. When it's empty, I'm out of breath, swaying on the spot. The act of brushing my teeth feels beyond me, but I fumble for paste and brush anyway.

I look at myself in the mirror cabinet, watch the way the toothbrush distorts my mouth. My hair's a mess; there's a bite-mark on the swell of my breast, a bruise blooming dark against pale skin. I run my fingers over the spot, and instead of tenderness, a spike of heat flares low in my belly. A reminder that I was claimed. But am I still?

My eyes are red and puffy and my lips look huge, like they're leaking color into the adjacent skin.

My hand goes still; so does the toothbrush. I feel the plastic against my teeth.

Why did I have to say it?

Somewhere, in my throat, in the back of my skull, deep in my diaphragm maybe, there's a need to cry. But I'm not letting it happen yet. I clear my throat, brush until I bleed. Then I spit pink bubbles into the sink and watch them run down the drain. Down, and down, all the way to the river.

I'm washing my face when I hear the doorbell. It's loud enough to make me jump, and for a second, I confuse it for the alarm. It's too short, though, too loud. It's 4:55 in the morning--but I know who it is. Water drips from my lashes. For one long second there is only the hum of the pipes and the thudding of my own pulse in my ears. Maybe it's wishful thinking, maybe it's a deep expectation that finally pans out, the last note to complete the melody, the final twist on the screen that turns two hours' worth of suffering into a happy ending, but I know. I can feel it deep down in the aching hollow of my stomach.

Paul is back.

THEN

I

I was in a meeting when my phone hummed, vibrating on the table and sending a jolt of anticipation down my spine. One of the senior editors, George Lyle, was droning on about the quarterly sales and the future of print in the digital age; he gave me the stink-eye and I snapped the phone off the table, muffled the vibration against my thigh. The glass and plastic casing was warm. For a stupid second, it felt like a hand.

He was fifty-eight, a paper man through and through; the Internet was enemy territory, purveyor of pornography and stupidity. Someone recently told him what click-baiting was, and he'd been proudly appalled by its effect on journalism for weeks, like an old dog with a very stinky bone. And I was the millennial with my smartphone and the magazine's twitter account who represented all of it.

I waited another minute or so, until his attention was fully back on his topic, before I switched my phone on under the table and unlocked the screen. I closed my eyes, just for a moment, and breathed in deeply, tuning out the rest of the room, savoring the anticipation.

The table disappeared, then the people, the voices--and I was back by the sea. I could almost taste the salt in the air. The bracing wind. The cool and sticky feeling of Paul's leather armchair on naked skin.

Paul: Babygirl, please find tonight's instructions down at reception.

I came up for air and the room rematerialized around me. I was biting my lip, had been holding my breath lest I exhaled an audible sigh. My face felt flushed and heated, but nobody had taken any notice of the distances I'd crossed in my mind. The intern across from me was still staring at the table trying to keep his eyes from falling shut; the guy next to me was rubbing his nails until they sparkled in the artificial light.

Before the text, I had been in my element--bored and frustrated maybe, but focused. Now I would have given anything for Lyle to run out of righteous indignation already, so I could leave.

I read the text again, and again--but the effect came with diminishing returns and the tingling heat between my legs faded just like its power to transform the room around me. What stayed somehow was the sound of him whispering Babygirl into my ear, hoarse enough that I felt it in my throat as if he'd wrapped his belt around it. It rang in my ears with each new reading and then echoed for a long time to come.

There was an arousal that came with a certain sense of panic, Paul taught me that. With that particular tingling between my legs, I found myself thinking about whatever was waiting for me at the reception desk. In my head it reached ridiculous proportions: a bouquet of flowers with a card directed at Babygirl, why not a giant dildo wrapped in partly torn wrapping paper? Smiling, I thought of last week; when he'd sent a tiny parcel with what looked like a jewelry box. I stupidly opened it at my desk and only just realized there were nipple clamps inside before anyone could see.

Most likely it would be a letter, but there was no stopping my imagination now. Paul liked putting instructions down in his own handwriting. He'd write me long emails about his day and the fish he'd caught or the thoughts he'd had, but when it came to the weekend and our Skype sessions, there'd always be a small envelope waiting for me in my letterbox. He had beautiful, meticulous handwriting, and he'd list items or instructions after long elegant dashes. It made me feel as though I was dating someone from a different century.

I sneaked a glance at the clock on the wall. If the meeting went according to schedule, we would wrap it up in fifteen minutes. Something like an eternity.

I missed him; that was what I wanted to write back. The same thing every day, every hour. It was also the thing I almost never put into writing. I missed his voice and his hands, and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. We don't often think of wrinkles that way, as a feature to enhance someone's looks, but that's what they were in Paul's face. They showed a man who smiled from within, a man who smiled not because it was expected but because it came out of him unfiltered and without guile.

I asked him for a picture once, but like the ones from his press releases, it didn't really depict him--not the Paul I knew. It depicted Paul Archer, recluse and eccentric: a fictional character he made up. And Paul Archer didn't smile that way, he glowered intensely even when the corners of his mouth curled upward. A certain roguish, patronizing glint in his eyes that wasn't completely lost on me, but wasn't my Paul.

I had feigned frustration; secretly I loved him for it. Loved that the Paul I knew was exclusive, intimate, that he didn't belong to the whole world the way Paul Archer did. And I loved that it condemned me to hours of trying to recall the features of my Paul, the smile, the depth, the sweetness.

It passed the time.

***

I was first out of the room when Lyle adjourned the meeting, jumping up almost before he'd finished the sentence. I didn't care anymore, as I clutched my phone and squared my shoulders in determination. What could he see but a hungry young journalist, eager to get back to work?

"Miss Ellis?" I turned around, trying to make out the speaker amid the throng of colleagues leaving the conference room. George Lyle waved his hand once over their heads. I sighed inwardly, tracing the sharp outlines of the buttons along the edge of my phone. "Do you have another minute?"

When I trotted back inside, he was at the head of the table again. I didn't slink back into my chair. I held my head high as I approached, leaning my hip against the table.

"How can I help you?"

"I was wondering when I can expect your first presentation. It's been more than two weeks."

I nodded, stopped myself from running my fingers through my hair, from thinking about the package at reception, about Paul and the fact that it was Friday.

"Yeah, I thought I'd emailed you. Next week should be good. The team has another session planned before we go home later and that should do it for now."

He nodded; I tried not to narrow my eyes at him. He could just have answered my email, but I suppose that would have been too simple.

"Monday, then. I'll get two other members of the senior staff to sit in if you don't mind?"

Shaking my head, I clicked my thumbnail against the metal casing of my phone. My pocket muffled the sound. I was looking forward to presenting, or more accurately to finishing the project. The following week, I'd be back to writing full time, with far fewer company politics and old men's egos to navigate. I would be able to put in for a few days off--even spontaneous ones. I could write from anywhere, after all.

I breathed against the inappropriate smile trying to sneak onto my features. "If that's all..." I gestured back to the door, "I have a mountain of work before the weekend."

***

It had been sweet of Paul to assume we occupied a whole building and that I'd have to walk down into some elaborately decorated entrance hall. The reality of our magazine came closer to half a floor in a run-down office park. A short trip down grey cubicle walls led me straight to reception. The desk stood by the elevators, and the staff constantly complained about the drafts and the noise.

"Hi, Stace." I waved nervously and put on my brightest smile. "Anything in the mail for me by any chance?"

She looked at me just a second too long, and my face turned pink. I stepped from one foot to the other and while she tilted her head, I raised my brows in a pleading expression. Please don't say anything. I swear it's not my dildo.

"A pretty heavy something," she said, eyeing me suspiciously. "I already put it on your desk."

I mumbled my gratitude and turned away.

"You know you're not supposed to get personal deliveries here?"

Was there a greater than normal stress on personal? I was in the kind of mindset that could have made anything she said sound like I'd received a fucking machine wrapped in nothing but a bow. My mouth was dry and so I nodded, cleared my throat and tried to smile.

"I know. It's research, actually."

I didn't think she believed me. When it came to lying, I was usually better, but anything even vaguely connected to Paul turned me into such a damn ingénue. I think that was part of his appeal, but it felt jarring when my work personality clashed with his babygirl.

I smiled at the receptionist; she rolled her eyes and I scampered off. I'd buy her coffee on Monday and she'd forgive me. Maybe a large one, with sprinkles and cream. It felt warranted when I reached my desk and saw the package. Easily three cubic feet in size, it dwarfed my little cubicle. My keyboard had been pushed as far back as it would go, but when I moved my mouse, I still found 15 pages of lower-case b in the document I was working on.

I hefted the package onto my chair and looked around. Almost everybody was back at work, catching up on the emails that had filled their inboxes during the enforced break of the meeting. I took a deep breath, found a box cutter and slid it across the tape at the side so I might spy in. My fingers were shaking and Paul's handwriting on the address label was smiling up at me.

I liked the way he wrote my name. The dashes at the top and bottom of the capital I were long and curved and the s at the end swirled back to underline the rest. Iris. My hand stilled and I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with the memory of his face when he said it, whispered it, groaned it into my ear.

I looked around. Still, nobody paid me any attention. I felt like I needed a glass of water. Or a shower. Fast.

The rough cardboard cut into my hand as I pried it open. It was hard to tell what I was looking at: something large and round and covered in bubble wrap. I made sure one more time that nobody was watching and then slid the box cutter along the large opening on the front, pulled the cardboard wings apart and, carefully, plucked out the envelope on top. I didn't even dare to have look myself before I snapped the box shut again, just in case.

My dear babygirl,

Don't worry, today I am not telling you to strip off your underwear at work or to make yourself come in the ladies'. For tonight, I have something different in mind.

Tonight, I request the pleasure of your company for dinner, my Sweet.

I stopped reading; my heart rattled in my chest. Was he here, just waiting for me to get off work? I couldn't help it, I looked around again--but no Paul melted out of the grey wallpaper or appeared from behind a potted plant.

On the back of this letter, you will find a list of ingredients to buy on your way home. I took the liberty of filling your present with a few specialty items you might have trouble finding in a hurry.

I will call you at 6 p. m.

Paul.

P. S.: I am sure, by now, this does not need saying, but you are not to touch yourself today until I tell you otherwise.

I stopped holding my breath. I put the box on the floor and dropped into my chair. Stood up. Balled my hand into a tiny fist and sat back down. It was exactly that last command that made me want to--no--need to disappear into the bathroom.

I wouldn't even have to come, that wasn't important--I'd just press my palm against my clit to stop it tingling, to stop it feeling like a single huge and raw nerve ending.

I hated him so much. Wanted him so much.

It was still a whole hour until five. My body was aching for him, worse with each day. I tried to settle, but every time someone walked past my cubicle, I tensed--conscious of my posture, of the slight heat pooling low that I couldn't name to anyone. A colleague brushed past with a stack of papers and I froze, wondering if my face was giving me away, if the way I held myself betrayed that something was demanding to be answered while I sat there pretending to read an email about circulation figures.

And the smug asshole was planning to spend our special Friday night phone call giving me cooking instructions.

Even just in my head, I had to take that back. He wasn't an asshole--smug he was, but an asshole, no. Just occasionally deviously evil in his ideas for me. This time, I opened the box with less fear. It held a large, cast-iron wok, filled with Asian spices and sauces. My stomach grumbled unhelpfully.

I wasn't a great cook, and Paul knew it. I'd mentioned take-away a few too many times. He, of course, was incredible, and apparently, had more to teach me than just the bliss of submitting to him. I wanted to slap him or roll my eyes at him, but mostly I wanted him with me. All the time.

I hated being where he was not.

II

I wasn't ready when my laptop started to ring. I'd come home less than fifteen minutes before; the lines in the supermarket had stretched almost through the entire building and I'd left there exhausted, sweaty and frazzled. I don't like crowds, or supermarket music. I'd had the fastest of showers, barely blow dried my hair and was just trying to put a few dabs of make-up on the dark spots under my eyes, when he rang. It was six o'clock on the dot.

Dashing back into the kitchen, I hit the button and his face appeared on the screen. There was something about the light at his place that always sent a shiver of familiarity down my spine. It was fading already, but the bright, reddish tint grew only stronger during the early evening. It was a salty kind of light, a light that smacked of an old signal fire in the surf, the way it reflected off the stark planes of his face.

"Good evening, beautiful," he said and it hardly mattered that the tinny speakers distorted his voice, made it metallic and robbed it of its timbre. I still felt its power traveling through my system.

"Hi," that's all I could say, hardly more than a vocalized breath. "Sorry, I have to plug the headset in."

He was wearing his already and looking good in a white shirt, leaning against what seemed to be his stove, his arms crossed casually in front of his chest. Where, normally, I could see his office or--sometimes--the bedroom in the backdrop, today's video feed brought me back into his kitchen. I could see the fridge, a corner of the little window, the fresh herbs he kept on the sill.

The sight brought the taste of prawns back to my mouth, of cheese and salad and somewhere deeper, somewhere more hidden, the taste of his cum. It tingled on my lips.

He had that knowing look on his face when he nodded, and I reached for the headset, uneasy of leaving a view of my own kitchen. I'd only just managed to deposit his package and the groceries on the table. There were still dishes in the sink, and the remains of breakfast on the counter. And so I stood there with as much dignity as I could muster and I plugged the headset in.

"You seem a little rushed?" he asked once the sound was redirected to the headphones. It was better that way, no crackle or distortions, no air, no space between me and the source of the sound. It went straight into my ears, straight into my head, the low hum of his voice settling somewhere beneath my skin. I shivered.

"It's that obvious?" I asked, looking at the small window that fed my own image back to me. My hair was a mess and haphazardly stuffed under the headset. I could see it in my face, too, although that was harder to pinpoint, and I wished I'd spent a little more time choosing a nicer blouse.

"Not too much." He was being generous, I thought, and wrinkled my nose at him. I still hadn't quite forgiven him for that moment of thinking he'd be there to take me out himself, for being so far away. It wasn't fair, but I missed him and I didn't want to cook; I wanted to be in his arms or over his knee--God knows, I wanted to be back over his knee, pulling down my panties at his behest.

He watched me, silently; his head tilted to the side, and it took me several moments to understand that he was waiting for something. I blushed, and as bad as my laptop's inbuilt camera was, I could see it picked right up on that--maybe not the color, that was never as stark as the heat in my cheeks seemed to suggest, but in the set of my eyes and my lips, in the way my shoulders tightened and with them the sound of my breath.

"I'm sorry, Sir," I mumbled, then scratched my cheek. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, or say; what he was waiting for. We phoned sometimes, just to talk--but Friday evenings, by the long-standing tradition of the three weeks it had been since I came back from his seaside home, were his nights. His and mine.

"Could I..." My voice was high and brittle and I tried again: "Could I start over? Please. I'd just need five minutes."

I don't know why he smiled, but it helped. He nodded, then blinked, only once, in a slow and deliberate gesture that warmed me up from the inside.

"Let me know when you're ready." And then his face vanished and so did the background static in my headphones. I set them aside and rubbed my face. The need to cry sat high in my throat. I didn't trust what would come out if I opened my mouth. I bit my lip, grabbed a hairbrush and opened the window. The cold air smelled of exhaust fumes, but it was bracing as it caught in my hair. I brushed it carefully, deliberately, one brush with each deep breath.

When I came back into the kitchen, I'd left my hair in a braid so as not to get in the way. I unpacked the wok, freed it from its bubble wrap coat, emptied the different spices and sauces onto the table, and set it on the stove. It still looked huge, but rather beautiful. The cast-iron was smooth and heavy; it was a warm sort of material. I rested my palm on the rim for a second. The weight of it steadied me more than the braid had.

I set out a cutting board and knife, too, and unpacked my groceries so that I would have them handy, and finally I chose a fresh shirt: green with a tight V-neck. With every step of preparation, the turmoil in my stomach lessened.

I looked around, then leaned over the laptop to type a few words.

Iris: Is it okay if I just take 5 more minutes?

Paul: Take whatever time you need.

I used them on the dirty dishes, careful not to get my shirt wet. It didn't magically turn my kitchen into a sparkling catalogue model, but I felt better.

Being with Paul had already taught me not to question these impulses when they came. I could deliver them to detailed analysis later, but trusting impulses, desires and needs was something we talked about a lot--even if it was something as silly as not having dirty dishes in the backdrop when I talked to him. It also helped to set the mood. We were in my kitchen, not my bedroom. We were here to cook together.

Iris: I'm ready now, Sir.

When he rang this time, I was sitting calmly on a kitchen chair and smiled into the camera, just as his face appeared.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes, Sir. Thank you." I think my cheeks still flushed a little, but not enough to give me away. Just calling him Sir made me feel warm and good in the pit of my stomach. He looked satisfied, nodded to himself, and even though I still had the distinct impression that he was watching me very closely, I knew I'd made the right choice.

"Good. Would you like to start with a glass of wine?"

I did, thanked him again and then we both poured. I had to chuckle at hearing the same gurgling sound from the headphones that permeated my own apartment.

"I had you buy the one I like," he admitted with something of a boyish smile. "You might remember it. You seemed to enjoy it when you were here."

When I brought it to my lips, my eyes stung with sudden moisture. It still tasted strong and heavy, coated my tongue in the exact same flavors of his first kiss. I held the glass against my lower lip a moment longer than necessary. The cold of it was almost a mouth.

My fingers shook when I set it down. I was biting the inside of my lip to keep my mouth shut. I miss you. I miss you so much. I miss you so much it hurts, Paul. His lips curled in pleasure; I heard him breathe a little heavier, just like I did.

"I remember," I finally whispered and touched my lips. "Thank you."

He opened his mouth then, as though to say something, but he closed it again. Another smile hushed over his features, and when he reached for his glasses, my heart leapt in anticipation of the sight. He plucked them from his nose, rubbed the lenses clean and reset them on his nose in that gesture that had charmed me from the start.

"I just wanted to spend time with you tonight, pet. That's why we're cooking. That's what I'd do if you were here. I'd cook and let you sit in that chair over there. We'd talk. Drink wine."

I licked my lips and nodded. I felt ungrateful and stupid for my expectations, my reservations. It passed only slowly.

"How was your week?" I asked instead. He'd been busy, and we hadn't talked as much as I had come to need, like a physical addiction, with symptoms of withdrawal when I didn't hear his voice at least for a few minutes every day. Maybe that was why I put so much stock in this evening--but then so had he; with the wok and the menu, he had to have been planning this night for days. I just hadn't caught on.

"Long, but in our business you're a fool if you complain about work, huh?"

I chuckled, took another careful sip of wine. It stung in the corner of my lips, and down under my tongue, but it was a bracing sort of pain. Like his hand when it cracked down across my ass, like his kiss, like his bite.

"It does make for very boring stories, however. I spent all week at the computer, drinking copious amounts of your tea."

"My tea?" I teased, grinning. The tip of my tongue slipped out almost against my will.

"Yes, yours babygirl." He raised his glass at the camera, toasting me and chuckling. "It's your country's influence after all. What good is dating a beautiful British girl if I can't hold her personally responsible for her nation's effect on me?"

"Plenty good," I protested, laughing. It was easy to do now, once the strange spell I had fallen under was broken. He was good at that. It wasn't the first time I'd noticed this: he put me at ease, he stilled the droning of thoughts, of doubts and questions that formed the constant backdrop of my mind. And he did it so effortlessly, just by being there and by taking me as I was. There were days when I tried to find a way to thank him for that, but words always failed me, and maybe courage, too.

"Is that so?" His brow jerked up sweetly, and I stifled a giggle. I was leaning my elbows on the table by then, chin resting on my hands. "Why don't you enlighten me?"

"They make you smile," I offered. "Try to, anyway. They want you happy and relaxed and--" I stopped, looking for something lighter. "They also make excellent drinking buddies."

He smiled, but it was the small one. I felt the miss. I gulped down a sip of wine, the sharp taste making me shudder.

"Put your hand on your cheek."

His voice went quiet and rasping, and I would have missed it, had it not been for the headset. It fed even the softest sounds straight into my auditory canal.

He was watching me intently, and--like every other time he'd uttered an instruction, a command, a request--my body reacted on auto-pilot, short-circuiting the rational, questioning part of my brain.

"Close your eyes," he went on, "That's my hand, isn't it? It's me who's touching you, babygirl. I'm. Right. Here."

I felt it, too. For one glorious, suspended moment I was with him. I smelled the sea, the wood polish, the salt, and my hand--his hand--felt stronger, more calloused than just a second before. It radiated heat and safety, all the way into the pit of my stomach--and then tears welled up in my eyes and the sensation was gone. My own fingers were just fingers again. The distance rushed back in, cold and precise, and I had to press the heel of my hand harder against my cheek to keep the tears in.

I'd tried to remember once what I'd told him that day by the sea, when my mind was full of him and nothing else. I didn't remember much. It hardly felt like it had happened to me anymore, like it could have been a really good movie or a book, or maybe a dream.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded.

"I'm fine. I just miss you."

Two contradictory statements, but he didn't correct me. This time, I kept his gaze, and maybe he felt it too, the rope that spanned between us, and how hard it was to keep it taut and strong the further we were apart from each other.

His lips curled into a sad smile, and I was grateful that he didn't try to make me feel better, didn't say anything. In my mind, I was back at that little train station; in my mind, I'd cared less about standing my ground, about declaring my independence and I'd returned with him to his cottage, leaning my head on his shoulder on the way back, not allowing this distance to seep between us, until the time we spent together in his world was like something that happened to somebody else, intangible and out of reach.

"I miss you, too, Iris. I miss having you here."

I looked up, and it didn't matter that it was what I'd needed to hear. It still wrapped iron bands around my chest, made it hard, made it painful to breathe. I swallowed. The tightness stayed. I licked my lips, then rubbed my face with the heel of my hand as if I could press the feeling back under the skin.

The intensity sat between us on the table. I did what I usually did with it.

"So, this cooking thing," I started, putting on a brave, fluttering smile. "I hope we're starting on a pretty basic level here, because I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing."

He smiled, slow and wicked over the bad video feed.

"Then we start at the beginning. Garlic. Break it with the flat of your knife--I'll show you. Put the clove down, blade over it, and hit the spine of the blade with the heel of your hand."

I did as he said. The clove cracked; the papery skin split, releasing its sharp, earthy smell into my kitchen. It felt oddly good to obey something so small. It made my mind go calm and soft.

"Good girl. Now curl your fingers--like this." He held his own hand up to the camera, fingertips tucked in, knuckles forward. "The knuckles guide the blade. If you cut yourself tonight, pet, it will upset me."

"It'll upset me," I muttered, then caught his look and smiled. "Yes, Sir."

I copied the grip and started chopping. Wrongly, apparently.

"Slower. Smaller. Watch the angle of the blade--let it do the work, don't push." He corrected me three, four times, patient and exacting, and each correction landed in my body the way his instructions always did, deep and warm and certain.

He chuckled quietly at the triumphant look on my face when I finally managed it to his impressive standards; and I heard him pour himself more wine. I shifted on the chair without meaning to. The edge of the seat pressed against the back of my thighs.

"You're chopping onions next," he said, in that mild voice that allowed no complaint. "And Iris--" a pause, deliberate, "--no looking away. It's been too long since I've seen my Babygirl cry."

III

There was a mountain of dishes in the sink; the entire flat smelled like lemon, cilantro and spices, and I was drunk and full, swaying as I carried the laptop over to the bed. It came down hard on my nightstand, and I giggled as I tilted the screen up.

"This is really not a flattering angle."

I scrunched up my nose as I inspected the little moving image of myself next to his face, the way I stood there, hands awkwardly on my hips. "I just thought you should, you know, know that before..."

Paul chuckled, shaking his head and I fell silent. He'd moved, too, and settled himself on the living room floor, but the image cut off at the middle of his torso. I imagined him sitting cross-legged, his spine straight and strong, his fingers just out of frame maybe rolling up a rare joint or resting on his crotch. The thought filled me with envy, with longing like a constant, persistent ache that lodged itself under the arch of my ribs, pressing on my diaphragm and making it hard to breathe.

I knew what his expression meant, too. I was supposed to stop talking, or at least to stop criticizing myself, but as I'd discovered before: back at his cottage that day, I'd reached a mindset I just couldn't access over the phone. It was a place where all I'd wanted to do was please him, where his command was literally impossible to deny. But I wasn't at his cottage; I was drunk and both feeling bittersweet and lonely, and well aware that the best I could hope for that night was an orgasm at my own hands.

"I also just ate a lot..." I added, fingering the hem of my shirt.

"I know what you look like."

His reminder was uttered gently, but I still fell silent, bit my lip as he went on. "I held you. I bathed you. I felt your flesh quiver under the impact of my hand. I didn't ask you to strip in order to judge your appearance."

I knew that, of course I did. I gave him a contrite smile.

"Here, let me just..." I picked the laptop up again, plucked a few books from the shelf and set it back down at the height of my chest. It was better that way and I breathed in deeply.

"Are you ready?" he asked. I recognized the tiny stress on the last word; it stirred the part of me that wanted to sink to my knees and call him Sir. I shuddered and took a step closer to the camera.

"Yes, Sir."

"Then remove your clothes for me. Now."

I shivered, but not from the cold. His Thai food was still keeping me warm from within, and the radiator was on. Outside, a few snowflakes plummeted to the ground; they were wet and too heavy to fly. Sucking my bottom lip between my teeth, I closed my eyes. He was still watching, and I was still his.

I pushed my fingers under the hem of my shirt, pulled it up over my stomach and held my breath. My hair crackled with dry winter air static. The shirt fell to the ground. In the one suspended moment that it blinded me, I slipped a rung deeper into his gravitational pull. The warmth of the room settled on my bare skin, total and indifferent--the kind of touch that couldn't be imagined away. I had never felt so looked at in my life, and there was no one there. Just the small black eye of the lens, patient, unblinking, holding his gaze open where his eyes should be. My breath came slower now, more audibly, and the tingling between my legs intensified.

"Come closer, pet," he whispered. I could hardly hear it, even though I'd turned the volume up to max, but while I was undressing for him, the headset was in the way. I took a step closer to the camera, then another. My face, my shoulders, the swell of my breasts filled the frame.

"Close your eyes."

I nodded, memorized his face one last time and then let my world go dark. I sucked in a loud breath; there was a breeze that ran through the apartment; somewhere below me, a door was slammed. I listened hard for each change in the crackle of the speakers, waited, swayed on the spot as the wine swirled in my head.

"Imagine I'm coming up behind you," he whispered, and something like relief, like need, like longing shot through my system. "Reach into your hair and pull it up. Yes, like that. I want to kiss the back of your neck, run my fingers down your spine. Can you feel my breath on your shoulder?"

I nodded without thinking. Of course I couldn't and yet, I could, too. It was warm and smelled of wine; it ran up my neck and promised lips and teeth that would fall on my skin at any moment.

"Good." He was silent while my breath picked up, while goose bumps rose on my skin. "Take your free hand and brush your bra strap off your shoulder. That's where I want to kiss you. Bite you. Can you feel it?"

"Yes, Sir." It was the brush of my own fingers, I think, or the memory of it, the aftershock of touch that was magnified by the darkness in which I held myself. That was the rational explanation, but I could only half believe it. The rest of me was sure, somehow, in some metaphysical way, that he really did stand behind me. Not Paul's physical body, of course, but still Paul--in thought, like a ghost. He couldn't touch, not directly, but he was there and I could feel him. He drove my heartbeat, labored my breath.

"Take it off for me now. Drop it on the floor. Don't open your eyes."

The bra left my fingertips. I heard the flutter of lace as it hit the carpet. The breeze hardened my nipples, and I think the first hesitant whimpers invaded my breath.

"Are you thinking of me?"

I nodded again. "Yes, Sir."

"Tell me about it."

I hesitated, not sure what he wanted to hear. My mouth opened once but then I closed it again, realizing I was about to repeat only what he had told me.

"In your imagination, babygirl, what happens next? What do I do to you?"

Swaying again, I licked my lips once. The answer to this was easier, almost shockingly so. I'd done little else the last few weeks: thinking of him, imagining what he would do, how he would kiss me, hold me, how he would hurt me.

He was with me in my morning shower, in the bathroom stall at work and the small bistro at lunch. He rode the tube home with me and took off my work clothes. He ate with me, read with me, slept with me. Imagining what he would do to me had become my peaceful place; it was where my mind slipped off to whenever I didn't force it to think of other things.

"Your hand, you hold me by the back of my neck," I whispered; then I realized that the microphone had to pick up my voice, and stepped closer to the laptop, tried to raise my voice a little. "You push me against the wall; my cheek rubs over the wallpaper. You pull up my skirt, find me wet."

"I always find you wet." He was smiling, I could tell by his voice. It was raspy and wanting, and I smiled, too, because more than ever, he was with me now.

"Show me. Get rid of that skirt and show me."

This time I lost my balance, staggered out of frame. My knee bumped against the bed and I whined, wriggling out of my skirt and tights. I still smelled the laundry detergent in my sheets, the lavender-scented candle that was supposed to help me sleep.

"Are you okay?" He was trying not to laugh and it struck me as so funny, I tried to barricade my throat against the giggle that was brewing in my stomach. It was no use though, and he joined in, loud and barking. His laughter was like a physical sensation, I don't know how else to describe it, but there were only a few things that made him feel closer, more like he was right there with me.

"Yes, Sir," I finally answered, beaming at the camera. I realized then that my eyes were open and that wiped the smile off my face so fast, his laughter doubled. Maybe we were terrible at this Skype sex thing--or maybe, just maybe, we were amazing.

"Leave your eyes open. I want you to see this, too. Show me."

I exhaled an audible breath, then reached between my legs. Even the passing touch that brushed over my clit made me moan. I wasn't usually so loud, but something in Paul brought it out of me. It heightened the sensation--to vocalize it like that.

When my fingers reemerged, they were both coated thickly in viscous fluid. It glittered in the overhead lighting. I could see him smiling wistfully.

"Closer," he said, and I bring them to the black little lens at the top of the screen.

"Taste it," he whispered. Again, I could hardly hear him, but it wasn't necessary. I'd read his desire in his eyes. "Lick them clean for me, baby. Like you'd lick my cock clean."

I held my breath, relished that moment of anticipation, of imagining him here. I would kneel, not stand, and he would be bigger than my fingers, better--he would smell like Paul, and I would lick up his shaft from every angle until all of my juices were on my tongue. And then he'd push his cock deep into my mouth and all thought would stop.

My mouth watered and when I finally brought my fingers to my lips, my mind was ready to accept the pretense with ease. I licked them first, then sucked them into my mouth, tasted salt and need. It was my kind of salt, not his, but in my state of mind the difference was negligible.

"Am I still there with you?" he asked, and I looked up at the hoarseness in his tone. There was an aching quality to his eyes, it flickered past, hurt somewhere deep in my chest, and then he smiled again as though it had never been there at all.

I nodded.

"What do I taste like?"

"Me..." I whispered. "You taste like me, Sir."

"Yes, I do." There was a pause, a long one, and I let my hands fall back to my sides. The tips of my hair brushed over my shoulders, then my neck, like a feather in his hand. "Pick up the laptop again, take me to bed with you. Don't forget the headset."

I took a deep breath, nodded and a smile crossed my face. It was the way he phrased it, of course, that brought the ache again.

Paul's face came to rest by my pillow and I curled up on my side, facing him.

"Hi, baby," he grinned, and I had to restrain my hand, curl it into a fist and hold it against my thigh to stop myself from reaching out and caressing his face on the screen. I had enlarged it to cover it all, and he was now as close to actually there as I could make him--his face almost life-size in front of me, his voice, his breath in my ear.

"Hi," I purred back. My fingers inched to the corner of the laptop.

"Tell me how much you touched yourself last week."

I pulled the duvet up over my breasts before I caught myself--then remembered and pushed it back down. I hesitated, but only for a moment. The hint of a grin spreading over my face was clue enough, I suppose, but he asked me because he wanted to hear, because he liked the way my voice went brittle and nervous when I confessed. It had been a long week, aching for him between texts, guilty each time I sent a new one because it might distract him from his work. I knew how I was with deadlines.

"A... lot, Sir" I started, rubbing my nose.

"Every day?"

I nodded. My tongue snuck out to lick my lower lip. "Sometimes not just once."

"And you did it... here in bed?"

I nodded.

"Where else?"

I was getting better about blushing, but the nervous, delighted feeling in my chest was still there, almost like the first time he'd interrogated me like this. His voice was always calm and collected, and sometimes, it went a little raspier and then I knew he wanted me badly. When he questioned me, though, he acquired a hint of an officious tone that went right through me, tingled in confusing places.

"In the shower." I swallowed down a lump in my throat. My ear burned hot against the pillowcase; I turned my face half into it, then made myself look back at the camera. "And... at my desk, um. At work once, in the bathroom, but I didn't come there, I was too nervous. I just needed... I just needed..."

"What did you need, pet?"

"You," I breathed and cringed. "Sir."

It was the truest answer I could give, but I still wasn't sure I was supposed to say things like this. It seemed too close, too needy a thing to feel for someone I'd known for about a month, had kissed only twice. Was it normal that someone like that could live in my head twenty-four-seven already? "And, I don't know, touch? Relief. Just for a moment."

He nodded, and didn't press. A tenderness washed over his features and this time, my fingers made it all the way to the bottom of the screen before I could rein them in again.

"And did you do as I told you?"

"Yes, Sir."

He smiled, but didn't speak again. By now, I knew to interpret his silence as a command to go on, to elaborate and I took a deep breath, gathering my thoughts. "I kept you in my mind, Sir. Every time. I made my hand become your hand, I imagined your voice. I called your name when I came."

"That's my good girl."

I beamed, glowing under his praise.

"What was I like in your head?"

"It changes." I bit my lip, my gaze wandering to the window as I thought about my answer. He never rushed me. I think he understood that sometimes I needed to think before I could speak.

The snow had grown thicker over the last twenty minutes, thicker and softer, fluttering past my window. It was late in the season for snow, mid March, but the snow didn't seem to care. I swallowed again to moisten my throat, then looked back at the camera.

"Sometimes I think of you as you are now, like you're there on the phone talking me through it. You tell me what to do; my hand is just, you know, your tool. But sometimes, especially when I can't touch myself immediately, like on the tube or in a meeting or doing the dishes, I imagine being with you. Sometimes I just replay what already happened. Sometimes, it's all new. I think about..."

My glottis closed there, and I had to force myself to go on when the silence stretched. "I think about when it hurt." Under the duvet, my thighs pressed together, barely stilling the tingling.

"Did you like that?"

Another nod, and I gasped for air.

"Yeah. I liked that. I mean, liked it because you... I liked it because of you." It was another one of those answers that the logical, analytical part of my brain wasn't satisfied with. It didn't make sense, that wasn't the right way to explain it at all, but I didn't have the words to translate my feelings; they resisted clear-cut explanations that would rob them of their mystery.

"Try harder," he whispered as though he'd read my mind, or more likely my face. I tended to scrunch up my nose when I thought about something; he'd told me that before--whispered it tenderly just before I fell asleep.

"I tried, you know, doing it to myself." This time I did blush. My clit tingled at the flash of humiliation, and I still don't know why it was so much easier to confess that I had my hands between my legs every free minute, than to admit to trying to spank myself.

"And?"

"It... wasn't the same." I shook my head; my ear rubbed against the pillow. "It was hollow. When you do it, there are so many dimensions and layers to the sensation and I don't know, it made everything go quiet in my head. But when I did it, it was just that. The sound echoed through the bathroom, but..." I shrugged, shook my head. "It wasn't you."

He nodded, and I knew this time he wasn't waiting for me to go on. He, too, had to follow his thoughts sometimes. In the end, he gave me a small, deep smile.

"Don't worry, little pet. I'll give you a fix when I see you."

His words shot through me, pulsed in my clit and I sighed. Tears welled up and went away and I scooted closer to his face on the screen.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you."

"What's on your mind?" I shivered when he said it, rubbed my face with the palm of my hand. "I can tell something is."

"I guess." I shook my head, squeezed my thighs together for some kind of relief. I wanted to cry and to come, and that heady mixture made me dizzy with need. "I just... It's normal, isn't it? I don't think I'm a masochist, I don't want to be a masochist, but I can't stop thinking about... when you..."

My voice gave out, my hand inched to my stomach and then I stopped it short.

"When I made you hurt?"

I took a deep breath. His voice was calm and quiet and the headphones fed it right into my ears, into my veins and my nervous system. My heart started to slow down.

"Yeah. That. And, you know, and cry."

"And cry. That's part of it. If you're that kind of girl."

I bit my lip. "Do you like that kind of girl?"

He held my gaze for one suspended moment, and he chuckled, shook his head and sighed. "And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Of course I do. Can't you tell?"

I wrinkled my nose at him--and could just resist poking my tongue out. But some kind of tension loosened in the set of my shoulders and my head felt lighter on the pillow. I exhaled a sigh; my fingers ran along the edge of the laptop, caressing the closest piece to him they could.

"And baby girl?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Don't do that again. If you try to hurt yourself, you only do so at my behest, understood?"

I nodded again. My face felt hot and pulsing. "Yes, Sir."

"Good girl. No need to make things more confusing than they already are, okay?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Now, what about the other thing?" He shifted in his seat, maybe crossed his legs the other way over. Then he reached for a mug of tea. His eyes never left the screen. "Did you do as I asked you to do? I hope you didn't forget."

I shook my head forcefully, as my hand formed a small fist in my sheets. "No Sir, I did not forget. I did as you said."

"Tell me."

"I practiced." The word sat in my mouth. I was a grown woman. "I pushed a finger into my," I coughed out a chuckle to buy time. "My ass, Sir."

"Atta girl. Was that really so hard to say?"

The answer was yes, but I shook my head, contrite enough to at least not lie out loud. There it was again, the quick pulsing sensation in my neck and my temples as my heart rate picked up.

"What did it feel like?"

"Good. Um, good, Sir. It felt, you know, good."

He chuckled, but something flickered across his face. I knew then that I was going to be punished. I didn't know how or when, but it would happen. Nothing too big, small enough to befit falling so far below my usual level of eloquence.

"Show me," he rasped then and I squeezed my eyes shut. There it was. My fingers started to tremble, but he didn't stop. "Get your lube and come back. I want to see how your practice is coming along, pet."

It was still on the nightstand, so that wouldn't buy me any time. My heart raced and I felt dizzy when I rolled onto my back and reached for the small tube. It still had that new look to it, glittering and almost full, still with edges sharp enough to cut my skin.

Paul hadn't moved when I turned back to the screen. He was watching me intently and I held the tube up, struggling for words. I tried to remind myself of that afternoon in his cottage. We were in his bathroom, my ass was red and sore. I'd cried a lot and felt empty and floating and all his. He'd bent me over in the shower, started to clean me there. I remembered the water running down the crack of my ass, the smacking sound the bathroom threw back at us, the way his fingers had worked me open without asking. I'd loved it then, and later spent cumulative hours getting off to that memory, and still--it was different when I had to do it. Even doing it alone was different. Dirty. And I cringed at the idea of his eyes on me, witnessing.

He knew though. Maybe he'd seen the look on my face when he'd first told me to start practicing, or heard the flutter in my voice. But he knew. Just like I knew he was making it hard for me on purpose--because I'd seen that in his face. It seemed contradictory, but it made me miss him more, want him more.

"Are you going to be good?" He paused, let his eyes wander to the tube of lube and then up to the camera, so that it felt like he was staring directly into my eyes. "Are you going to be a good girl, and show me how obedient you can be?"

I nodded so hard my chin hit my chest. "Yes. Yes, Sir."

Of course, I did. I wanted him to be proud of me--even for something as small, as embarrassing as that. I wanted to prove that I was a good girl, his good girl and I don't think I could have borne letting him down. He knew that, too.

"Do you... want to see?" I asked, stammering and feeling stupid, but this time he didn't make me say the actual words. He shook his head.

"I don't want you to move. I want you to stay right here, looking at me. Look right at the camera when you finger your ass for me. Do it now."

His words shot through me, pulsed softly in my clit. Damn him. Damn his beautiful face and his hands and his voice and how much I wanted him. I unclipped the lube with shaking hands, squeezed a bit on my finger and reached back. I was already lying on my side and it was easier when I pulled my knees up a bit.

I looked into his face for a suspended moment, he nodded and I looked up at the tiny black eye of the camera.

I pushed my finger against the ring of muscles. I flinched, fought against the need to squeeze my eyes shut. I breathed through it, heady and good and wrong.

"Deeper. Take it, babygirl."

His voice was hoarse, and I nodded, swallowing against the dizzying need. I moaned when I pushed my fingers past the knuckle. The camera lens blurred before my eyes.

"In and out now, slowly."

Yes, it felt dirty, and wrong in all the right ways. His directions made it easier, though; my hand was his tool, I just moved it, and with each new word he uttered, it felt more like he was fingering my ass, not me.

"Have you tried two before?"

"No, Sir," I coughed out, but already, I was begging him to make me try it then. Not with words, I wasn't quite ready for that, but with my eyes and my voice.

He hesitated, watched me as I fucked myself. He hadn't told me to stop and so I kept going, and each time I pushed the knuckle back and forth my breath grew shallower and another little moan escaped my throat.

"Try it for me now, babygirl. Two fingers."

His word was my code of law, my world, and I obeyed. I sounded like an animal, a guttural groan that echoed through my apartment, and then I pushed harder and rolled my eyes back into my head. It felt full, and hard.

"There you go, that's a good girl. That's my beautiful girl."

And so I pushed harder. I fucked myself until the world around me started to fade, until it was made up only of Paul and I and the aching, desperate need to come.

"Please..." I know I said it, whined it, gasped it between moans, over and over. "Please, Sir?"

"Please what, pet?"

"Please... I need, please, please may I come?"

My free hand was literally shaking, yearning to cup my cunt, to find a way to reach the apex of this swirling mountain of need. "Please?"

The words just came. They added to my pleasure and in the corner of my eyes I could see they added to his as well. He nodded, breathless himself.

"Yes. Yes, pet. Come for me."

My fingers snapped to my clit, trapped it between middle and ring finger. Sparks went off behind my eyes. I rubbed harder, squirmed and spasmed there in full view of the camera.

"Now, pet," he growled. "Come now."

My eyes flew to the screen. I needed his face, needed it to be the thing I shattered against--but the light at his place had guttered low, and what the camera gave back was barely him: a dim, beloved smear, his features breaking apart into grey-blue squares the longer I stared, my fingers a desperate blur against my clit. His voice came back, hoarse, and held me: "Iris!"

I came against that broken image. His name was on my lips. Paul. Paul. My beautiful Paul. I howled it, and gasped it, and then it was over and I lay still while my cunt grabbed at the emptiness inside in pulsing contractions.

He groaned softly, a small, choked sound and I cracked my eyes open again, saw him reaching for a tissue, and smiled. I was jealous of that piece of paper, of his hand, stupid as that sounds. We smiled at each other, each still too far gone to speak.

He was inside of me, and I inside of him. Just a second, two, as we stared at each other's faces. For one moment there was no distance. But the orgasm faded, and like the tide rolling out, we were left apart and alone.

"I miss you..." I whispered. His eyes narrowed tenderly and he took a breath so deep I could see his chest extend all the way through the little screen.

"I'm almost done with this script," he said, "maybe you could get some time off. Come be with me."

We had talked about this every time we phoned, but his voice sounded more urgent now. I found his eyes on the screen; I could hardly see him now, the lighting had gotten worse and everything felt a little blurry in my post-orgasmic haze.

"I want to," I breathed, knotted my brows. "There's this project I'm going to be running the next week or two, but..." I didn't have to finish. He nodded; he knew. I would try.

"Hey you could, you know, you could come here?"

He looked up, and nodded. I think we both felt the aching, hollow feeling more starkly now.

It wasn't the same on the phone, however hard we tried. It was like the rest of my life now, walking around in Plato's cave--everything real just dim shadows on the wall.