Jude - 2. The Puppet and the Puppet Master

The project was finished and ready to be handed in. We were sprawled on my bedroom floor, surrounded by crumpled papers and our laptops. We briefly discussed the presentation—the order of our slides, who would say what—but the conversation felt empty, a mere formality. The real show was about to begin. Jude abruptly changed the subject.

"When you..." he started, his head tilted at an odd, unnerving angle as he looked at me.

"When I what?" I asked, my voice a little too high. A sense of unease, sharp and sudden, prickled at my skin. The air in the room, which had been so comfortable, suddenly felt heavy and suffocating.

He didn’t reply immediately. His eyes, which had been fixed on me, now roamed around my room as if he were cataloging every detail. The posters on my wall, the books overflowing from my shelves, the mess of clothes on the chair—he took it all in, ignoring me completely. When his gaze finally locked on mine again, a strange grin played on his lips.

"When you get off..." he said, letting the words hang in the air between us.

There was no mistaking what he was talking about. I was frozen, stunned into silence. A blush, hot and searing, crept up my neck and bloomed across my cheeks. I could feel the heat. My heart hammered against my ribs.

"You getting hard?" he said, the grin widening.

What the fuck was going on? I wanted to leave, to get up off the floor and go downstairs, do anything to escape this moment. But this was my bedroom, my sanctuary. The sudden interest in... in sex... in me... was completely out of nowhere.

"No!" I replied, a little too loudly, a little too forcefully. My reaction was all wrong. I knew it as soon as the word left my mouth.

He moved across the floor and leaned over me, his arms on either side of my head, pinning me. He looked down at me, so close I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. His breath was warm on my face.

"I know what you're thinking," he whispered.

My heart was now a frantic drum solo against my chest. "Know what?" I said, my voice barely a whisper. I was panicking.

"Not gonna kiss ya." And with that, he moved away. He got up and sat on the edge of my bed, leaving me lying there, stunned, and breathing a panicked sigh of relief. The game had begun, and I had no idea of the rules.

He sat there on my bed, a king on his throne, watching me as I lay on the floor, still stunned. The silence stretched between us, thick and charged. I could feel his eyes on me, sharp and dissecting.

"Bet you're lying there now, thinking about me," he said, his voice low.

I didn't answer. I just wanted this to be over.

"Bet you're thinking about how it would feel to have me touch you."

A new wave of heat, of shame, washed over me. I wanted to disappear, to sink through the floor and out of his reach.

"Know what I'm picturing?" he continued, a taunting grin on his face. "I'm picturing you in here, all alone, on your bed. The door locked. Your hand... thinking about me."

He was painting a picture, vivid and humiliating, a scene of me in my most private moment, and he was the star of my fantasy. It was a twisted violation, a complete stripping of my privacy and dignity.

"You're red," he noted, his voice amused. "See? I was right. You think about me like that."

I finally found my voice. "Stop it. I don't." My words were weak, a desperate lie.

He just laughed, a cruel, short sound. He knew I was lying. He knew he had me. He had taken my desire, my secret, and turned it into a weapon to use against me. He had total control. I wasn't just attracted to him anymore; I was his. The master of the game had won, and I was just a player in his twisted fantasy.

"Lock the door," he said, the words an order, not a request. Without thinking, I got up and moved across the room, my legs feeling heavy and detached from my will. The click of the key turning in the lock was loud in the sudden silence. I turned back to face him, my heart pounding a desperate rhythm.

"Come here," he commanded again, his voice like a taut wire. And I obeyed again, moving towards the bed where he sat, my feet shuffling across the floorboards.

He watched me approach, a predator sizing up its prey. He patted the space on the bed next to him. I sat down, the mattress sinking slightly under my weight. He didn't look at me, but stared straight ahead, as if contemplating something in the distance. Then, he spoke, his voice low and deliberate, each word a hammer blow to my composure.

"I know what you want," he said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, a declaration of his complete understanding of my inner world. My mind raced, a torrent of frantic thoughts. What did he know? Did he see it in my eyes? Was I that obvious?

He finally turned to look at me, his eyes boring into mine. "I'm not going to touch you," he said. "You're going to touch yourself. For me."

My breath hitched. The heat that had been a slow simmer was now a raging fire. My thoughts, a jumble of panic and fear, all coalesced into a single, undeniable focus: sex. The sheer, overwhelming reality of what he was asking. A part of me, the part that was still innocent, wanted to run. Wanted to scream no. But another part, the part that had been drawn to him, the part that had been so desperate for his attention, felt a thrill of terrifying excitement.

He didn't move. He didn't have to. His will was a physical force, a heavy weight pressing down on me. My body, a traitor to my frantic thoughts, was already reacting. A shiver ran through me, a mixture of shame and desire. My mind was screaming, "No, don't do this!" but my body was whispering, "Yes, please."

He just watched me, a small, knowing smile on his lips. His power was in my willingness to comply, in my own overwhelming need for him. I was trapped, not by his hands, but by his gaze. He had already won. I had been his from the moment I locked the door, and now, I was his to command.

"Undress," he said, his voice a soft, simple instruction. It was a command, not a request, and I obeyed. I was a puppet, and he was the puppeteer, pulling my strings with nothing more than his gaze and his will. My hands, trembling slightly, went to my shirt buttons. I undid each one slowly, the fabric a barrier I was now desperate to be free of. I pulled the shirt off and let it fall to the floor.

He watched, unmoving, as I continued. My jeans felt impossibly heavy, a weight I was struggling to shed. I fumbled with the button, the zipper, and finally, they were pooling around my ankles. I stepped out of them. No more words were spoken, not until I had stopped.

I stood before him, half-naked and burning with shame. He just watched me, a small, knowing smile on his face. Then he spoke again.

"Everything." The single word was a clear instruction, a demand for complete obedience. My heart hammered against my ribs, but I did as he said, pulling off my socks and underwear.

I stood there naked, a blush I was sure had reddened every inch of my body. My cheeks were hot, my gaze fixed on the floor, unable to meet his eyes. I felt a confusing mix of humiliation and a strange, almost sickening thrill. My body, a traitor to my mind, gave me away. I was erect, and he saw it. The same smile was still on his lips as he took in the full picture, the complete surrender. He had won. He had stripped me of my clothes and my dignity, and I had let him.

He stood up, his movement so smooth it was almost imperceptible. He moved so close that I could feel the heat radiating off his body, the scent of his skin filling my senses. He was a hair's breadth away, a physical presence that was all-consuming.

"Think about this," he whispered in my ear, his voice a low, rough rumble.

My mind was reeling, a chaotic storm of emotions—shame, confusion, a horrifying kind of thrill. I watched him turn his back to me, heard the soft click of the key in the door. The finality of the sound, a symbol of the line he had crossed. "See you at school," he said, the words a promise and a threat all at once. The door opened and then closed, and I was alone.

The silence that followed was deafening. I felt a wave of nausea, a dizzying sense of disbelief. The air felt thin and cold without his presence. I moved like a ghost across the room, my legs unsteady, and locked the door. Then, I collapsed onto the bed, the mattress swallowing me whole.

My state of mind was a battlefield. One part of me was screaming, telling me to hate him, to be furious, to run and never look back. He had humiliated me. He had used me. But another part, the treacherous, desperate part, was replaying every moment, every word, every look, with a feverish intensity. Think about this. Those words echoed in my head. And I was. I was thinking about how his presence had felt, how his voice had made me feel, how he had brought my body to life even as he was destroying my mind.

I was no longer just me; I was a thing he had touched. A thing he had commanded. I lay there, my body still on fire, my heart pounding a furious rhythm, and I gave in to it. I reached down, my hands trembling, and did what he had told me to do. It was a strange mix of shame and necessity, a desperate attempt to satisfy the craving he had ignited and then abandoned. I was his now, a puppet on a string, which he wasn't even there to pull.