Tasseography by ObsceneQueen

Email: obscenequeen@hotmail.com

He said, "I've gotten so big lately. It's really unattractive."

She ran her hands over the smooth white swell of his belly and up to his chest. "You're getting breasts," she said. "I think it's beautiful." She tugged his broad pink nipples between her knuckles. "I should clamp your tits." She pulled harder, pinching, until he made a soft, pained exclamation. "Do you have any rouge?" she asked. "I want you to rouge your nipples for me. Make them nice and dark, so they show through that little silky slip I gave you."

He laughed, and twisted away from her sharp fingers. "You want me looking like a slut."

"And if I do?" She never removed so much as a stitch, of course, not even her shoes when she climbed up on the bed with him: sometimes she scraped her spiky heels down his shins, leaving raw red furrows that stung for days. That was all part of the deal. Tonight, as ever, she was wearing black - long sleeves that fell almost to her knuckles, a clinging ankle-length skirt, worn crocodile-leather boots. "So," she said. "Tell me. Monday night."

"Monday night?" He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling as she hunched over him. Her long hair hung down. "What do you want to know?"

"What happened?" She pressed her palms flat upon his chest. "Did you come back here? Did you fuck?"

"We came back here. He rimmed me, then he buggered me. He didn't ask to stay, I didn't offer."

She poked him hard in the ribs, making him yelp. "Smartarse. How did he have you?"

"On my back, the first time. With my legs up. Right here. And then bent over the sink in the bathroom, later on." He hesitated, then added, "I was looking into my own eyes, you know. When I came."

"Tell me," she said.

He told her everything. He told her everything because he knew she demanded to hear it all, but still he could not meet her gaze. The sensation of being coldly, clinically cross-examined left him prickling with humiliation, and he never seemed to quite escape a feeling of unease at allowing his most intimate actions and reactions to be hauled squirming into the fierce light of her interrogations. So why did he not simply shake his head, get up, walk away? She held no real power over him, they both knew that, and she would not - could not - stop him from leaving. It was the growing ache in his balls that told him to stay, every time. I want this, he realised, as if for the first time. The thought struck him with a dull surprise, like the throb of a half-forgotten bruise. This is what I want.

He never knew when it was going to happen, which made it worse, or better, perhaps, depending on your point of view. Earlier that afternoon, he'd made them both tea, good leaf tea in a sea-green crackle-glazed teapot painted with whiskery Chinese dragons, cups and saucers instead of mugs - an affectation, but one he knew they both appreciated. They had talked for a long time, long enough for their third pot of tea to be slowly cooling on the table, and at some point he would have read the leaves, because he always did. (Well, so much for his powers of premonition). Now he was sure that he could not remember a single word, only the abrupt rattle of china as she set down her cup, the moment before she said, Get your clothes off.

The world tottered infinitesimally on its axis, but that was all. He took a sip of tea then stood up and began to undress. When, finally, he was naked, he stood in front of her with his arms hanging loose by his sides. She rose from her chair and touched him gently, his face, his shoulders, his stomach, avoiding his stiff prick straining to meet her fingertips. She turned him to the door with her hand on the back of his neck. Now get on the bed, she told him. Lie on your back and spread your legs.

More than once she had made him dress up, helping him into the spaghetti-strapped slip that barely covered his arse, twanging the suspenders against his thighs, laughing softly. She had used her own makeup on his lips and eyelids, and even though the effect was smudged at best and he was actually no slouch at applying the stuff himself, he liked to smell the shadow of the perfume on her wrists. Sometimes it was like a delirious, delicious secret between them, a midnight feast, a pillow-fight. Sometimes. And other times, with his cock and balls pressed like fleshy flowers against the cheap lace of a pair of women's knickers and her fingers crooked beneath the damp gusset, massaging his perineum as he pleaded for her to take him, fuck him, hurt him, it was nothing like any of those things.

She said, "Next time, I'd like to whip you a little first. Would you enjoy that?" She stroked the inside of his thigh. "Your skin is so soft here, you'd mark really easily." He moaned and tried to bring his legs back together, but she held his knees apart. "I'd tie you down," she said. "You wouldn't have to think about anything."

He laughed breathlessly. "I stopped thinking a long time ago. It's so totally over-rated."

"Isn't it just? On your stomach now."

He rolled over onto his belly, pulling a pillow down under his hips, so that his big buttocks stuck up in the air. "Fat arse," she said, affectionately. She caressed him for a moment, squeezing his flesh, then gently thumbed his cheeks apart, exposing the tender bud of his arsehole. "Such a pretty little boy-cunt," she said. She licked her finger and stroked him there. "Did he give it to you good and hard, my love? Are you sore?"

His voice was muffled. "It's not so bad," he lied.

Her slippery finger circled his anus again, and he tensed and gasped as the tight muscle spread open. "Do you want me to touch you? Inside?"

Were they lovers? Despite the apparently one-sided nature of their love-making - if that's what it was, but "sex" seemed too bald a word for something conducted with such tender, ruthless precision - he supposed that they must be. Once, sticky and sated, mingled feelings of guilt and politeness had driven him to ask if he couldn't "do something" for her too. "Like what, exactly?" she'd asked. "Would you like to fuck me? Lick me out?" - as if this was quite the most ridiculous idea she had ever heard, and he had demurred, secretly relieved. "I get off on getting you off," she told him, but the exact nature of the feelings she experienced under her black carapace remained a mystery. She drew spunk and sweat and tears and occasionally blood from his body, but her kisses - and these were oh-so-rare - were always dry, chaste.

"Please," he said, and she fucked him with her fingers, beckoning inside him, searching for the spot that made him shake.

"I have something for you," she said, "sit up and close your eyes" - and she was sliding off the bed as he shuffled obediently onto his haunches. He heard her footsteps track from room to room.

"Now," she said, and the mattress twanged as she bounced back to his side. She placed one hand flat between his shoulder-blades. "Open" - and she was pushing something into his mouth, something that was soft and smooth and yet hard, and he could smell her skin and himself on her fingers. He ran his tongue over it, he learnt the shape of the thing. It was familiar and yet strange, the fat flared head and the ridges along the shaft. He felt his cheeks hollow as he sucked, a snail-trail of drool escaping his lips and running down his chin. And then it was gone - his teeth clicked together, emptily - and she was pushing him back down into the pillows, onto his elbows (no, not like that, stay up on your knees) and he was aware of his cock hanging heavily between his legs and of her fingers plucking at the thick root of muscle that ran from his arsehole to his balls.

"Keep your eyes closed," she said. He felt it nudging at the entrance of his body, blunt and inexorable.

"God," he said, as she coaxed his anus open, "Oh God, oh God..."

She rubbed the small of his back. "Come on. Let me in." He moaned as she worked deeper inside him. "Breathe. Breathe." There was an undercurrent of irritation in her voice, she was pushing him too far, too fast, impatient, he could feel it at the back of his throat. His heart thumped dizzily.

"Take it," she snapped, and smacked the side of his head. Startled, he pushed himself back to meet her, again and again, the delicious pressure building in his guts. Her fingers closed over his own, between his legs, and he was shaking and crying out and coming beneath her, shameless and appalled, sick in his heart.

***

Later, after she had left - an arid, business-like peck on the cheek, a promise to call at some unspecified future time - he poured the icy-cold pot of tea down the sink and set the kettle to boil. Once again, he tried to look for answers in the leaves but they swarmed like flies at the bottom of the cup, a psychic static, unreadable.