Winner Takes All
Play croquet for an hour after school. See her jaw clench every time you score a point off her. Know that she's counting how often you do.
Wonder if anyone notices how much winning at croquet makes you squirm.
Accept Mrs. McNamara's offer of a ride home, but get out at the Chandlers' house instead. Know that Heather's parents are in Jamaica all week.
Call home to say that Mrs. Chandler invited you to dinner with the family. Force yourself not to laugh when you say that you think you'll be eating out. Agree to be home by ten. Know that you're lying.
At Heather's voice, duck your head in supplication. Hope she'll be pleased.
Secretly prefer that she isn't.
Hear, rather than feel, your shirt being ripped as she tears it off of you. Try to obey her and not let anything touch you where you want to be touched, even though this whole scene is playing out like a live-action version of the pictures you and Martha had found in your father's "secret" collection of Playboys and Penthouses.
Complete with the gorgeous blonde pulling her red blazer off as you watch.
"God, Heather," you whisper. She's perfect; she's absolutely fucking perfect. You're fairly certain she's never gotten so much as a single pimple. You used to think that she had flaws, but they were hidden beneath layers of expensive clothing and more expensive makeup. Now you realize that the only reason you hadn't previously seen imperfections is that they don't exist. Her pale white skin is completely unmarked, except for four thin parallel scars on her left breast.
You asked her about those once, and she hurt you, not how she normally does, not with flowers and sunshine and liquid sex, but harshly, unwaveringly, sending you home to nurse your bruises and scars without so much as an "I'll see you tomorrow".
She never did tell you where they came from.
"Don't do that," she says.
"Do what?"
"Talk like that."
You bite your lip and try to remember protocol. "Mistress?" you offer weakly, uncertainly.
"Don't speak." She places two fingers over your lips. "Shh."
Her touch removes all hesitancy, all doubt. She might not want you to speak, might want to believe Kurt or Ram or even Rodney is the one who will be kneeling in front of her tonight, lapping and sucking until she can finally, for a few minutes at least, relax.
But you're the one she's touching.
She doesn't kiss you; she never has. To kiss you would be to make this real.
She guides you down her body, surprisingly gentle as she brings you to your knees. You move to undo her skirt, but first try to ask permission without speaking. Somehow, she knows anyway. "You may," she says. You smile so hard your cheeks hurt as you carefully pull the material down past her thighs, her knees, her calves. She steps out of it, leaving herself in nothing but a bra and brightly-colored tights. You reach to pull them off.
"No," she whispers.
No? Your hands freeze at her waist, the juncture between skin and nylon.
"Leave them on."
You lower your hands uncertainly. "Rub," she instructs softly. And what could you do but obey?
She moans softly, grinding against your hand. You grow bolder, and she responds; the thin material grows damper with every subtle movement of your hand.
You want to do what you've always wanted to do. You want to pull your hand back, pin her arms down, and refuse to do anything else until she admits that she loves you.
But you will never ever do that to her. She isn't just anyone. She's Heather Chandler.
You can count the number of times she's gone down on you while drunk on one hand; the number of times she's gone down on you while sober is too nonexistent to even try counting.
Sex is a power play, and you both know who's the dominant party.
You want to push her down, rip off her tights, and lick her, suck her, shove fingers into her until she comes from the pain and pleasure and amazement of the event. But you won't.
You'll just continue to rub at her through the material until she decides to change the rules.
Which she does, slowly herself, gently coaxing your legs out in front of you. She's straddling your leg and you can feel her, every inch of her, just a few layers of fabric away from your skin.
You want to go down on her, hard and fast, until maybe for the first time when her hands are tangled in your hair she'll shout your name.
Or hers. It doesn't matter, really.
Even hearing "Veronica!" would be better than the nothingness you normally get, the panting and silent screaming whose name you will never learn.
Raise your knee gently so that the bone hits her right where she wants it to, and you're rewarded with a slight keening noise. Some days you worry about being the human equivalent of a vibrator, but not when you're with her, not when you can see the raw animal lust in her eyes and know that at least part of that is for you.
None of the college boys she fucks can ever turn her into this creature of need.
Just you.
You can tell she's on the brink because she suddenly pulls away from you. She snaps her fingers and you force yourself to hide the forming smile because you know exactly what this means.
She's the one who peels off the tights. You lean back while she does it, trying to allow her all the control you know she needs.
She's completely naked now, and absolutely fucking beautiful. Peaches and cream skin and that hair she brushes one thousand strokes a morning and right now it's all yours. You think for a moment of what the kids at school would say if you walked around together at school, if you were acknowledged as being Together.
But if you really think about it, the only difference between that and now would be that she'd probably force you to crawl behind her, naked on a leash.
Wonder if that would be so bad as you finally get to claim your prize.
Plunge into her, exactly the way she wants, you tongue playing simple melodies against her skin. She's so wet. She needs you. She needs you.
Without anything even brushing against your own skin you're already practically coming by your proximity to her. But you're not, because she wouldn't want it that way. She knows exactly how to make you obey. Once, when you were giddy, you played against her, hoping for more punishment, more physical contact. She tied you spread-eagle on her bed and ignored you to do her homework, never touching you the entire evening. She might not show it at school, but Heather is a special kind of brilliant.
So you just go after her, licking and sucking and making her squirm as much as you wish you could. She pants so hard, you wonder if she's going to have a seizure, and if she did, how would you explain why you're both naked and her skin is warm and flushed with excitement when the doctors come?
You know exactly what she wants and you give it to her, just the way she likes it, and sometimes you wish you knew her just a little less so that you could keep your face between her thighs a little bit more, skin brushing up against skin, without her being disappointed in you. As much as you love being punished, as much as you know you'd deserve it, the only thing you truly want in this world is her acceptance. It doesn't come in words, or in public; it's just a sideways glance or a slight smile.
It's the most beautiful thing in the world.
You know you've done a good job when her body loses its tenseness and she just lies there for a minute, her sharp angles smoothed to soft curves shiny with sweat. Then she smiles, a slightly teasing vindictive smile that always means one thing. "I haven't forgotten, you know," she says.
"Forgotten?"
"You humiliated me during croquet today. Did you think that was good? Did you think that was funny?"
You shake your head no.
"Speak."
"No."
"No, what?"
"No, mistress." Your voice is so soft you can barely hear it.
"Why did you do it?"
You know no answer will be good enough. "I don't know, m- mistress. I was wrong."
"Do you know what that means?"
You have to fight to keep your voice level, contrite. Lie. "No, mistress."
"You have to be punished, Heather."
Nod. "Yes, mistress. I deserve it."
The whole mistress thing kind of amuses you, because you know that you both get off not on the words but on the actions. She would be just as happy if you called her "bitch" when you went down on her. But this is protocol, the same protocol you learned when first found your father's porn collection, and while usually Heather's the last person to follow the rules, this is one of those set-in-stone exceptions.
So you wait patiently for her to choose something, a belt maybe, a way to hurt you and not hurt you, to make your skin blister and your heart soar. Because you're ready. She loves you. No matter how much she tries to hurt you, she loves you. You know she does.
You watch for her to see what she'll use- a belt, a ruler (the only time, you know, that her school supplies get any use), her wooden hairbrush- but she doesn't take anything out. She instructs you to strip instead, and you can feel the butterflies in your stomach as you do so. The shower this morning had first accentuated the bright red on your skin, but then caused them to pale into almost skin tone. You can see her appraising you, judging your body, from the heel of your foot to the curve of your shoulders. She never looks higher than your neck.
"Come over here, Heather."
You do.
And suddenly, you're on her knee. She's spanking you over her knee like you're a little kid, and it's her skin against yours, her knee nudging you right there, and you can't even gasp because you're sure that if you do she'll stop, but her body is right there and it's all for you and and it just feels so good.
She's alternating rubbing and hitting, and you're trying to keep count but it's hard; you do your best to gasp out the numbers but can barely remember how to count anymore. You honestly can't tell anymore if you like the pleasure or the pain better, because they're blending together and feeding off each other and they're building up to the crescendo that you just-
you just--
You're mewling, which is bad, and you've lost count, which is worse, but none of this matters because it's her and it's you and even though you're not counting, her hands are still going, and you can't remember the last time you were this wet and--
"Thank you, mistress," is what you finally murmur, because how else would a punishment end? and even though you don't want it to, want to stay like this forever, you know the next part is just as good-
So you give in to tradition, and now she's not hitting anymore, just massaging, and your body is much closer to a bowl full of jelly than Santa's tummy ever was, because Heather would never, ever have sex with him.
You're lying there when you feel something probing against you down there and you absently wonder what it is but it's her and it feels so good that you can feel yourself opening up and it takes you a while to realize that she's fucking you. She's done it before- she has a pornographic collection that would put teenage boys to shame- but this feels different, the shape and texture, and it takes you a while to figure out that it's her brush, the one she uses every morning, that she's ramming in and out of you, hard and fast, slow and gentle, and you can barely moan because the sensation is so fucking good and her hand is at the other end of the brush and every so often her hand will brush up against you and this is the type of thing you've always dreamed of, and you can't quite tell if this is reality or not, but you realize that you don't really care as long as her hand keeps ending up right there.
She stops you just before you can come, and it's such exquisite torture that you can't even formulate words, and if you could, you're not sure what they'd be anyway. She barely gives you time to collect yourself; she merely guides you down to where she needs it and you pick up where you'd last let off.
It's the end of the decade, the end of an era, and once again you're going down on the most beautiful girl in school, who's pretty and popular and of course straight, at least to the rest of the world, and you know that everything is changing and the planet is going to be different tomorrow, but right now things are just how they should be, and in a way you wish you could stay here, nestled between her thighs, forever.
You decide to practice at croquet so you can win again next week.