Page 93 of Woman on the Verge

Is he concerned about my alleged germs? Annoyed for some other reason? He doesn’t seem annoyed. He seems up to something.

“I want you to fully relax tonight,” he says. “You are not allowed to pleasure me in any way.”

“What?”

“Exactly what I said. You drove all this way after feeling sick. I want to take care of you.”

He raises an eyebrow, and I know he’s not talking about feeding me soup.

I give him a suspicious half smile. “Okay then.”

He takes my hand and walks me to the bedroom, where there is soft music playing—something instrumental—and candles are lit. It smells like lavender.

“How about a massage?” he asks.

“I would never say no to that.”

Though, actually, I would. For a while, Kyle was into offering massages, mostly because he expected them to lead to sex. I didn’t realize that this assumption was in place until he had given me a few massages and they had all led to sex, each time sooner than the last. That’s when I started to get annoyed with his “loving offerings” of massages and began to say “No thanks, I’m good” when he asked. When he acted dejected, like his feelings were hurt, I told him that the massages felt calculated, like a means to his desired end instead of an end in themselves. He said, “I thought you liked foreplay. I really can’t win,” then sulked for days.

I lie back on Elijah’s bed, and he is on all fours, hovering over me.

“Do you mind if I blindfold you?” he asks.

Well, this just got interesting.

“Go right ahead.”

“It’s just that I want you to be able to fully relax, to sink into your body. Sensory deprivation. No distractions.”

If he’s not careful, I’m going to come just listening to him talk.

He reaches into his nightstand drawer and retrieves a blindfold. I’m just uneasy enough to make a nervous joke: “So you just have blindfolds lying around?”

He laughs. “No. Ordered it yesterday. Thank you, Amazon Prime.”

The premeditation of all this has made me wet.

He places the blindfold over my eyes, hooks the straps around my ears.

“I’m going to take off your dress,” he says.

“Please do.”

“Shhh,” he says. “Just rest.”

He slips my dress off my shoulders, then shimmies it down my body. Then he reaches under my back to unhook my bra. He slides off my panties, and I’m sure he can see how wet I am, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t touch me there either, although everything in me is telling him to do just that. I lift my hips, and he gently pushes them back down, which only makes me want him more.

“I’m going to bring you something to eat,” he says.

I hear him walk away, and I’m tempted to lift the blindfold to see what he’s doing, but decide to play along.

I hear him return, then feel his weight on the bed near me. His breath is near me. He is hovering close to my face.

Something touches my lips. Just barely. I reach for it with my tongue. It’s cold, a piece of fruit maybe. He pulls it away, and my tongue chases after it. He laughs softly. Then he brings it back and lets me wrap my lips around it. A strawberry.

There is more after that—grapes, dark chocolate, spoonfuls of sorbet.

“We’ll have a full dinner in a bit,” he says. “I just wanted to give you a little appeteaser.”