Free Deep Desires by Charlotte Stein Page B

like it to be. I mean, what do I really know about Ivan, aside from stuff about sandwiches? Why do I trust him so closely? I never thought I’d trust anyone again, and yet here I am with a blindfold on, in a strange man’s apartment, just because we ate dinner together the other day, through the phone.
    I’m crazy, I think, and the second I feel his breath ghosting against my cheek, his presence bristling so close to me, I show it. I shove back on the bed, hands scrabbling for purchase. Legs almost kicking out against the sheets, some awful sound in my throat.
    ‘No,’ I tell him, and then even more childishly: ‘No, I don’t like it.’
    But I can’t make the right moves to rectify the situation. I can’t get the blindfold off, because I’m an idiot who tied it too tightly. Now it’s like a noose around my throat, trapping me in some deadly scenario with a filthy, boorish stranger.
    ‘Abbie.Abbie,’ he says, and it’s his voice, but I still can’t. I need to get away, I need to rip this lace off, and I continue to need all of these things until he grabs a hold of my flailing hands and puts them on his face.
    ‘It’s me, Abbie. Here, here,’ he says, but he doesn’t need to. The second he offers me such an intimate thing, all the panic drains out of me. My shoulders drop; I stop the kicking. I stop and just feel that face I’ve seen a thousand times in my dreams. In the hallways of this stifling place.
    He’s just as beautiful as he seemed, when I could see him with my eyes. More so, in fact, because my fingers pick up a million things I’d missed – like how smooth his skin is, in all the places where there isn’t any stubble. He has a slight cleft in his chin that I didn’t notice before, and his jaw feels squarer than it looked through the window. Heavier.
    I thought his face was quite narrow, but it isn’t.
    And, oh, his mouth. I run my thumb over his upper lip, and feel out that soft Cupid’s bow shape, so sweet I could mistake it for a woman’s if it were not for the bristle of his stubble all the way around. The contrast is delicious, electric, and before I know what I’m doing I’m making a meal of it.
    I’m practically fondling his mouth, fingertips tracing the shape. Thumb almost daring to go in, but not quite, not quite. I can’t do something like that, while I’m still pretending I’m panicked and in need of the reassurance of his face.
    No, no.
    I have to wait,
until he goes ahead and does it for me
. He turns his head and presses into my touch, first with his face in a way that makes me sigh – like an animal seeking heat, I think, like a beast rubbing its fur against my palm – and then with his mouth.
    He kisses me. He kisses my fingers, makes them wet. And just when I’m tense all over, waiting for more … he takes one into his mouth, just like we talked about. He licks the length of one finger, and I feel what I’ve only dreamed about for days, and days and weeks.
    The warmth of his lips, his kiss … the feel of him actually touching me. It’s crazy how intense that build-up makes such a simple thing. It’s like he’s created a new erogenous zone in the webbing between my fore and middle finger. It’s like that place has a direct line to my clit, and every flicker of his tongue resonates through it.
    God knows what’s going to happen if he progresses to anything lewder. I might pass out from the pleasure, because Lord knows I’m almost doing that very thing now. I’m shaking by the time he’s done. I’m shivering all over, and half terrified of the feel of him, moving on to some place new.
    He kisses the inside of my wrist, and that’s too much. Everything is heightened to a perilous degree, not just by that long slow climb into real live touching, but by the blindfold, too. I can’t see where he’s going to go or what he’s going to do, which probably explains the little gasp I give out when he puts an actual hand on my arm.
    That’s him, touching me.