The Lover's Children novel Chapter 121

GEORGIE

I'm not sure when I close my eyes, but I feel him. I taste him. The scent of his skin and some lotion he's wearing, drift with the air I'm breathing in.

Such delicate skin, the lips. So sensitive. The merest touch is enough, the sensation fluttering through me, shivering over my neck and breasts, sending goosebumps spiking up my spine and scalp.

Involuntarily, I shiver.

He pulls back. “Georgie?”

Opening my eyes, I meet his. It's fine. No, it's good. It's just very… intense. Such a small thing, a kiss. The sensation is all out of proportion to what we're doing.

His lips pucker and his gaze goes distant. Then, “You have given me a gift today. Will you allow me to give you one?”

“A gift?”

“Lie back. Let me pleasure you.”

“You… don't want me to do anything?”

“You could undress, so I can touch you properly, but… um… leave the stockings.” Borje wrinkles his nose. The grin is wicked. Infectious too.

Grinning back, I unclip the bra, slip off my panties, then lie back.

His grin fades, but his eyes are like great, eclipsed moons, mere rings of silver around the dark heart. Taking my hand, raising it over my head, he presses it to a bar of the bedhead, curling the fingers around.

“Borje?”

"Shhhh…." he whispers. "Humour me." He wraps my other hand around a bar, again curling the fingers tight around. "Hold the bars. Relax…" He grazes over my length, long slow strokes of his palm. "Close your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“Yes, close them. You have dressed for my pleasure. Now let me work for yours. Concentrate on what you feel. And what you hear and smell. Give yourself to the pleasure. To me.”

“I don't understand.”

“I know you don't. But try it. You've already taken a step today. Take another.”

“I'll… try.”

“That's all I'm asking.”

Gripping the bar, I close my eyes…

Relax…

Warm air drifts over a breast. Something touches the nipple.

Flicks…

Flicks again…

The barest of contacts. The most fleeting of touches…

But it sparkles through me, igniting me inside…

And I know that the nipple is nubbing. The skin crinkling...

Arching, I hiss air through my teeth…

But…

But…

Eyes flinging wide, I burst into giggles…

Borje sits up, propping himself on an arm, face perplexed. “What's funny?”

“I'm sorry. I can't keep my eyes closed. Until you asked me to do it, it seemed natural. But now I just want to look up at that cobweb in the corner.”

“Cobweb?” He whips round, looking up. “Hmmm. I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with you now.” Shaking his head, “You know how to flatter a man.”

Panic flutters in my stomach…

Don’t fuck it up…

“Why don't you want me to see?”

His face softens. “Because if you're not using your eyes, it will intensify your other senses. Georgie, will you let me blindfold you?”

My throat tightens. “Blindfold me?”

Hmmm…

“You… own a blindfold?”

Borje hesitates. The smallest of hesitations, then, “I'll improvise.”

He rises, opens the wardrobe door and slips a tie from a rack. Sitting beside me again, he holds it between his hands. “Will you allow me to do this?”

The word whispers from my throat. “Alright.”

He pauses, frowning. “Why so nervous, Georgie? You think I would hurt you?”

“No, it's just… Just…” But I don’t know the reason.

“Give yourself. Here. Now. Surrender the control. Just for a while. You can put your hands on the reins when you're back at work. But right now, just give yourself to me.”

My heart accelerates. I nod.

Borje brushes his lips to mine. “You'll enjoy this. I promise.”

He slips the tie over my eyes, looping it around to the back. “Not too tight?”

“No. It’s fine.”

“Good. Now lie back again.” His hands guide mine back to the bars.

I'm not truly blind. Light filters through the silk, a greenish haze.

There’s… noise. Movement. Perhaps a drawer opening and closing.

Something drifts past my nose. Something unfamiliar. “What's that?”

“You tell me.”

“Some sort of perfume?”

“A scented candle. Tea tree and cedarwood.”

Something slides over my skin.

The merest glimmer of sensation… But intense… Piercing… Somehow more… more… real.

The sensation skitters and dances on my skin.

Here… then gone.

There… then gone. Only to return somewhere else.

And the touch, slight as it is, like the pebble that starts the avalanche, sets me thrumming inside.

“Borje, what is that?”

“A feather. Like it?”

“Yes, it's… I don’t know. Like you said, the blindfold…”

The feather weaves over my breasts, twinkles magic over a nipple, then skitters down my body.

“Perhaps,” says Borje, “you've read those accounts of people who, finding themselves blind through accident or illness, operate through other senses. There are even documented cases of people finding their way around a room with a very basic kind of sonar.”

“Like bats?”