Free Sweet Agony by Charlotte Stein Page A

least expect him to. There I am, minding my own business, fervently sweeping the ceiling in order to take my mind off things, and he has the effrontery to come in and be sexy and attractive and probably Byronic.
    All of which sounds stupid, considering what he usually wears around the house. I swear to God, he spends most of his time in pyjamas and robes. On one occasion he sweeps in wearing a smoking jacket, with nothing on his feet. I see his bare toes, and that just makes this all the more hellish.
    Somehow the skin on his feet is better than the skin on my face. It looks so smooth and pale and tender that someone should probably write a poem about it. An ode to his toes, I think, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time. It seems that even the smallest, strangest things about him turn me on.
    I know they shouldn’t. After all, no one could really find a man perched in a chair like a great black bird the least bit enticing. There is nothing sexy about someone who forgets he dropped a stick of chalk into his tea and drinks it anyway, or a guy who craves cigarettes so much that one day I find him rubbing an empty packet of Benson and Hedges all over his face and body.

    Those things are repellent.
    I want them to be repellent.
    I wish with all my might that they were repellent, but they almost never are. Take the last example. It probably would be unattractive if it were any other man, if he were just a friend of the family who had a ferocious need for cigarettes. But the problem is that this is Cyrian who has a ferocious need for cigarettes. This is sexless, passionless Cyrian letting me see that he has a ferocious need for cigarettes.
    And oh, Christ, it’s hell.
    I have to watch him smear the foil from inside the packet over his closed eyes and his open mouth, so desperate that he barely cares that I am standing in the doorway. I doubt he would care if the Queen was standing in the doorway. He just wants to lick every last trace of cigarettes from the wrapper, in a way I know is completely helpless. There is nothing sexual intended.
    It just feels sexual to me, the hormonal morass.
    As does the next thing he suggests to me, much to my horror and consternation. All he says is that my posture is a little poor. At best, it seems like concern, albeit with a skilful hint of insult. But then he suggests I let him correct it, and everything starts to slowly slide sideways.
    I have no idea why I say yes. I am going to get myself into serious trouble again, and I see that even before he opens his study door for me. He moves with the same grace as when he sat down and took out that smutty story, that lesson-giving look all over his amazing face. And then he hands me a book and tells me to balance it on my head, and I immediately understand what is going to happen here.

    I am going to walk up and down in front of the desk in his study.
    And he is going to watch me in a way that makes me go out of my mind. Hell, I am already going out of my mind, and nothing has happened yet. I am just gingerly trying to balance the book and he is just sitting at his desk, hands neatly folded in his lap. No one could think this was a big deal.
    But then no one would have had his eyes on them while they did it. They probably just played at this once when they were kids, or maybe the headmaster made them do it once, after they were caught slouching in class. A stern and forbidding figure, but even so – nothing like this.
    His gaze feels like the sun on the side of my face. I want to stop right there before I get burned, but of course I can’t now. I’ve already agreed to it. If I back out he will know something is wrong, and I never want him to. Not if he has no idea what all this is doing to me. Not if he thinks it should never do anything to me at all. He is repelled by sex, I think, and will see me as disgusting if I try to force my feelings upon him.
    So I walk when he tells me to. I take a tentative step in the glare of that unwavering