The word he used was cock.
Not a soft word. Not a medical word. No sentence built around the thing he meant. He said it flat. He looked at me when he said it. He looked at me to see what my face would do.
My face does something.
I don't know what my face does. I can feel heat on my cheeks. Heat at the back of my neck. Heat at a place low inside me that's new and not new, the place where the pull is.
“Okay.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
His hand finds my hip and settles there.
“Say it out loud, Theo.”
“Yes.”
“Say the sentence.”
I breathe four in. Seven hold. Eight out.
I say it.
“You can put it in my mouth.”
He closes his eyes for one second.
Just one second.
When he opens them, his hand goes to his belt.
He unbuckles the belt.
He does it slow. He's not performing. He's doing it slow because he knows I haven't seen this before and he's giving me the time to watch.
I watch.
The buckle. The leather tongue out of the frame. The click of metal. He leaves the belt in the loops and opens the top button of his shorts. The black elastic of his compression layer is just under the shorts. He puts his thumb in the elastic and stops.
He looks at me.
“On your knees, sweetheart.”
The word does a thing to me that words aren't supposed to do.
I go to my knees.
I go down on the rug in front of him. The rug is cheap. My knees feel the hard wood of the floor through it. The rug smells like carpet cleaner and not enough of it. My hands are shaking on my thighs. My breath isn't four-seven-eight anymore. My breath is nothing. My breath is gone.
He looks down at me.
His whole face softens for half a second when he sees me on my knees. Just half a second. I see the soft thing before he puts it away. Then his jaw is set and his mouth is a line and his hand is back at the waistband.
He pushes his shorts down.
He pushes the compression shorts down.
