Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  I smiled, looking away. My disappointment in my father had been hard-earned and well-hidden. I tried not to think about it, because my face gave me away. I didn’t like who I was when I was angry at him. I enjoyed the company of Loyal Ella more than the bitter ranting of Disillusioned Ella.

  “When he closed the door,” I continued, “I took the urn off the shelf, and—I don’t know if you know this, but I found out—ashes are pretty heavy. I ran upstairs, changed into jeans, and took the bus to Griffith Park. I dumped my mother’s ashes at the Observatory, where Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune, which—shit, this is our stop.”

  I pressed the tape to alert the driver, and she stopped in time. Logan and I leapt out the back doors onto Beverly Blvd, and the bus rumbled away. The air was crisp, and in the moments of silence between cars whooshing by, you could hear crickets.

  “Come,” Logan said, holding out his hand. “I know the way from here.”

  I took his hand, and we crossed Beverly into the residential zone, with its massive, hundred-year-old houses set behind long, grassy front yards.

  “What did your father say when he found out?” Logan asked.

  “He never did. I put the urn back, put my dress on, and waited for the wedding to end.”

  “Were they worried?”

  “I called from a pay phone. Told the staff I went for a walk and got lost. But I was fine. They told my father I was home.”

  “He believed you got lost?”

  “Probably not. But I missed the wedding. He never forgave me for that.”

  “Never?”

  “Basile Papillion wasn’t a forgiving guy.”

  Before I reached “forgiving,” I realized the treachery of what I was saying and lifted my voice to a jokey pitch. Because, so what? Was this supposed to be a big deal? Was my father’s inner life any of my concern? His forgiveness wasn’t withheld to make me suffer. It made him suffer more.

  Right?

  After the wedding, I’d gone bad. I stopped coming home. I got into trouble. I cursed and smoked and broke windows because of Bianca, not Daddy.

  It was her fault. All hers with her snooty little voice and the way she pointed her pinkie when she drank her fucking tea. Tears of rage formed, but I didn’t wipe them, or Logan would turn to me and see them. I didn’t sniff, or he’d hear. I didn’t speak, or he’d know I’d run headlong into a brick wall separating me from a pain I couldn’t look in the face.

  “Hey,” Logan said from high up in his orbit, snapping his fingers. “Star. You with me?”

  “My mother called me Star Child.” I turned away to look at an obscene Tudor in case Logan faced me and saw the tears that fell when I blinked.

  “But your satellite just thinks you’re the star, Estella.”

  “Stop that,” I said at the red light.

  There were no cars, but Logan stopped at the corner and faced me, bending to make level eye contact. “What’s wrong?”

  What could be wrong? We were three blocks from home, if home was a place where you slept alone and pretended you didn’t. If home was living with furniture you didn’t pick and a stranger you agreed can’t ever, ever love you.

  But there was a truth inside his house. An honesty about who we were and what we wanted. Between us, there was no lying, no regret, no grudges.

  “How about this?” I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. “Last one in gets locked out.”

  “Wha—”

  I took off before he finished, running along the smooth sidewalk with long strides, barely slowing at the corners to check for cars. With the wind in my ears and a cramp forming at my side, I ran to safety.

  But your satellite just thinks you’re the star, Estella.

  No. He wasn’t allowed to say stuff like that. He didn’t circle me. I wasn’t the center of his universe. We were lost planets from separate systems, looking for different suns.

  I collided into the front door and was surprised when his body crashed into my back, reaching around me to hit the door code. It opened and we tumbled in. He slammed the door and came to me in half a stride, putting his hands on my arms and his lips level with mine.

  “Stop!” The word bounced off the high ceilings, taking on a life of its own.

  I didn’t know what I was doing or what I wanted but the security of his arms around me. I wanted to give into the impulse to let him have me, but I wouldn’t.

  I’d promised myself I’d be good. And I was going to be.

  Spinning on my heel, I ran upstairs before my cry to stop finished echoing. I burst into my room, and he thrust himself in after me.

  “Ella!” He cupped my jaw in both hands, bending again, so I could see the tenderness he should be reserving for another woman.

  “Just stop. No pet names. No more”—I pushed him off me—“touching. Don’t lead me on. Don’t care about me. Don’t offer me anything but what we signed off on. Okay? Can you do that? Can you just help me be good?”

  He opened his lips to answer. To agree to anything I wanted. That beautiful mouth was going to make a promise I didn’t want him to keep. I tightened the muscles of my face and the walls of my heart. That was the right thing, and he was going to do it.

  He was going to say yes.

  Please say yes so I can be good.

  “No.”

  23

  ELLA

  No.

  Just no.

  I didn’t expect it or know how to respond. I was frozen in place when he came to me, put his hand at the base of my throat and—with a steady, gentle, and unrelenting pressure—pushed me until my back was against the wall.

  “No,” he repeated in my ear. “I will not stop caring about you. I will not limit what I want to the terms of the deal. I will not help you be good.” His lips drew a line across my cheek, stopping when his nose was astride mine. “I’ll agree to one thing only.”

  With his hand on my throat, I swallowed so hard I heard it. “What?”

  “I won’t touch you.”

  His palm bent, and his thumb stroked the length of my collarbone. It was suddenly the most erotic place on my body, pulling the breath out of me, eyes fluttering.

  “Say that’s what you want,” he said. “Say my feelings are mine, but not your body. Tell me never to put my skin on yours. Say I should never lay my hands on you again.”

  He took his hand off my neck but kept his body an inch away, and his lips close enough to brush mine. I wanted those lips and the tongue behind them. I wanted the teeth and the breath, the jaw and the hunger.

  “Say it, Ella.”

  If there was a future past this moment and a place past his body, it had nothing to do with me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Touch me.”

  He pulled back far enough to look into my eyes. “What happened to being good?”

  “Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s hurt each other. Let’s hurt each other so bad we walk out of this thing on broken legs, screaming in pain. When it’s over, I want to be praying for death and wishing I could do it all over again.”

  He pushed me into the wall by the sternum and held me in place as he unbuttoned my jeans. I didn’t have any fight left in me. Resisting what I wanted had been exhausting, and letting him hold me down and have me was a blissful relief.

  I’d regret it. I regretted a lot of things, but they were my things.

  He pushed down my waistband, kissing every butterfly tattooed on my belly, and stopped, looking from my bare skin to my face. “I want you to be sure. Because I am.”

  My body was a hungry mass of liquid fire, like lava rolling down a hillside, scorching reason and sense in unstoppable destruction.

  “Break my heart, Logan.”

  “I’m going to break more than that.”

  He threw me over the bed, face down, and pulled my jeans down to my knees. He was rough—demanding that I cede control to him, and I did out of an arousing habit, pushing away the little voice that wanted
to remind me it could all go wrong.

  “You know what happens to bad girls?” he said.

  I looked over my shoulder. He kneeled on the bed and undid his belt.

  “They get punished?” I said, savoring the word.

  “Some do.” He opened his fly. “Do you?”

  “I do. I want to be. Yes.”

  I could have thought of a hundred more ways to agree. Logan ran his hand along my ass, squeezing me, teasing the seam between them.

  “How did I keep my hands off you this long?”

  “It’s hard to be good.”

  He nodded and pulled my hips to the side of the bed so my waist bent over the edge.

  “This is for not talking to me.” He slapped my ass so hard I yelped. “This is for pretending you were happy.” He slapped me again, then ran his fingertips along my wetness, then added another slap. “That’s for being a shitty actress, and the rest, my star, are for letting yourself be miserable.” Slap. “For treating yourself that way.” Slap, slap.

  He kept hitting my bottom, over and over, until I was crying and gasping, eyes and cunt wetter than they’d ever been.

  “Do I stop?” he asked, bending over me to kiss my cheeks. “Because I have one more.”

  “Give it.”

  He pulled off my pants and turned me over, standing at my feet.

  “The last six months,” he said as he peeled off his clothes. “They’ve been hell. All I can think about is getting inside you and what a mistake it would be. What a fucking mess.” Naked, he knelt on the bed and pulled my knees apart. “If I hurt you, you could come after me. Expose me. If you were unhappy, that was just the price for a clean divorce.”

  He ran his hand between my thighs, eyes between my legs as if he could see how I ached for him.

  “I was hurting you anyway,” he continued, barely touching my clit. “And in the end, I’d do it without getting something I wanted.” He slid two fingers inside me, and I moaned, overwhelmed as all my senses shut down except where our bodies met. “Tell me you wanted it too.”

  “I did.”

  “You were a good girl.”

  “I was.”

  He took his fingers out, and before I could react, he slapped my pussy. Pain and pleasure fought for dominance. Pleasure won.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “That was your punishment for being good.”

  I laughed. “Now I don’t know if I should be bad or good.”

  “Be both.” He slapped again, bringing me close to climax, but no. It was gone, leaving me unsatisfied, as if he’d given a starving woman a peanut.

  “Take me, Logan. Please.”

  “But I can do this all night,” he said, putting my right leg over his shoulder.

  “I’ll kill you dead.”

  “I like it when you’re demanding.” Kneeling while I was on my side, he rubbed his head on my clit. “That’s how I know you’re not bored.”

  “I’m not. Just… do it.”

  “I’ve waited too long to rush.”

  “Fuck me. Please.”

  “Are you begging?”

  “Yes!”

  He slammed into me, burying his cock and taking my breath away. He growled, pushing deeper, then pumped his hips against me. My leg bobbed over his shoulder next to his face, which was fierce with lust and an expression that entered me deeper than his dick.

  “This what you wanted?” he asked, pushing me against the mattress, twisting me like an object.

  “More.”

  He pushed against my clit with his fist, rubbing the hard knuckles along my swollen nub. He was cruel and careless with my body, and I loved it, winding with pleasure until I was on my hands and knees and he drove me from behind, spreading my cheeks open so he could get even deeper. I grunted as if he’d pushed all the air out of me.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Don’t stop.”

  He wrapped his arm around me, flicking my clit with the tips of his fingers. With every stroke, he slapped away the barrier between the waiting orgasm and me.

  “Make me feel how hard you come,” he said. “Give it to me.”

  I wanted it deeper. Faster. Harder. But words wouldn’t form, only a blanket of insensate blackness that sent me out of myself where I heard myself cry out, saw the bursts of orange behind eyes shut tight, and felt his fingers as if they were doing their cruelly pleasing job on someone else’s body. Over and over, on an undulating wave of overwhelming sensation, I came with him until his name on my lips fell into sighs.

  “I don’t know if I can take six more months of that,” I said when he rolled off me and I could form a coherent thought.

  “You’re taking it for six more months.”

  “I might die before you buy a single share of Papillion.”

  He got on his side and turned my face to his. “I’m putting it in the contract,” he said with a kiss. “I know you. You’ll live just to see the end of it.”

  He thought he knew me. Funny thing to think when I wasn’t sure I even knew myself. He touched my jaw and cheeks with frightening tenderness, appreciating every bone in my face. A minute ago, I’d begged him to break my heart, but in the afterglow of sex, the armor against hurt clicked back into place.

  “You’re on my side of the bed,” I said with a push.

  He got on top of me and pinned my wrists above my head. “This is my side.”

  “I mean it,” I said. “We need sleep.”

  “I’m not tired.” He kissed me, and I felt him harden against my thigh.

  When his tongue tasted mine, I arched, ready again. “Me neither.”

  He let my hands go, and I put my arms around him, wrapping my legs around his waist. He entered me again. We made love slowly, mouth to mouth, breath to breath, touching tender place to tender place.

  I was in a tunnel, and he was the oncoming train. He’d crush me or he’d put on the brakes. I was too deep in the shaft to run.

  “Logan,” I whispered when I was close. “Yes.”

  Yes, to what I felt.

  Yes, to him.

  Yes, to us.

  “Yes,” he replied, tightening his hold on me.

  I didn’t ask him what he was agreeing to. It didn’t matter. I was at the end of the tunnel, stock still, waiting to learn my fate.

  “I’m…” I lost the rest in a gasp.

  “Mine,” he said, closing his eyes. “You’re mine.”

  I lost sense as the orgasm hit me, dying for a moment in his arms.

  24

  LOGAN

  When our sticky bodies pulled apart, Ella got out of bed, shirt hiked over her magnificent tits, bottom still pink where I’d spanked her.

  “You need to put something on your ass,” I said, sitting up. “Let me.”

  “I have it.” She pulled her shirt down and headed for the bathroom.

  I stood. “I want to.”

  “If you start manhandling my ass with lotion, you’re never getting out of here.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “What if Colton sees us in this room in the morning?”

  “He has no reason to come up here.”

  “He’s going to ask questions.” She laid her hands on my bare chest. “Keep your bed messed up. Let’s not blow it.”

  We’d invested a lot of time and energy into making sure he thought we slept in the same bed in my room. She didn’t turn her lights on when he was around, and her door stayed closed. Sure, we could make a ton of excuses for why we’d slept in a guest bedroom, but she was right. Any change could crack the dam of lies.

  “My room next time then,” I said.

  Her hands slid off me and she looked away, as if she had to process the idea that there would be a next time.

  “Sex is one thing,” she said. “I don’t want to get used to you being next to me in bed.”

  She was afraid of being hurt. As much as she’d begged for the pain, she wanted to limit it, and all I wanted to do was inflict it. A decent
man would have felt a tug of guilt. All I felt was the pull of desire.

  “I’m not finished with your body, Ella.”

  She smirked, covering up the flash of uncertainty, and stepped away from me.

  “Tonight, you are.” She crossed into the bathroom and turned on the light.

  I plucked my things off the floor while she watched. “See you in the morning, star.”

  “Good night, satellite.”

  I opened the door between our rooms and stepped through.

  “Hey,” she said. “I thought that was locked.”

  “It was never locked.”

  She smiled, and after she closed the bathroom door, I closed my door.

  My room was empty, and the bed was too big. An ocean of mattress. A clean wood floor. Hard edges and sparkling surfaces. A space devoid of her.

  If anyone saw this, they’d know we didn’t sleep together.

  On her side, the shower went on. She was cleaning me off her, rubbing away the places I’d touched her. I found myself standing by the door the way I had the night I heard her masturbating, envisioning her hands on herself and the paths water took down her body.

  The shower stopped. The towel over her tits, between her legs, rubbing her hair damp. I didn’t need to hear it to know what she was doing, but I put my ear to the wood anyway. I could hear the scrape of a toothbrush, drawers opening and closing before the rustle of fabric as she put on pajamas and got under the covers.

  I should do the same instead of eavesdropping. I stuffed my clothes in the hamper and got into sweatpants, brushed my teeth, got my laptop, and went to my side of the empty bed. Emails needed to be answered and an output report needed going over.

  At about two in the morning, I got tired and closed my laptop.

  Same time as always, but she was on the other side of the wall. Something more pressing than a distraction, she was a gravity, and the wall between us blocked my orbit.

  She was right about us sleeping in the same bed for all the reasons she professed, but there were more. We were the same kind of crazy. Revolving around each other meant giving up our priorities. I’d sent her off course already, and falling for each other would only make it worse for her.