Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  Brightly-colored spray paint had a single, basic use as far as I was concerned. But Logan wasn’t me, and I could tell he only made the connection when I said the word vandalism.

  “You in or out?” I asked, putting my foot on the bottom rung of the billboard’s ladder.

  He picked up the duffel bag. “In.”

  He was still and always would be handsome. He was commanding and confident, assertive and poised. I remembered his dick with more fondness than any other. But on my rooftop with a bag of cans in a hard fist, the hottest thing about him was his readiness to follow me. I almost stopped myself from leading him further so I could protect him from the very intimacy he sought.

  “Well?” he asked. “You want me to go first?”

  No. I didn’t.

  He wanted to know me, but that was half the story.

  I wanted to show him who I was, even if opening the gate and guiding him down the path to my heart ended up breaking it.

  So I climbed.

  Past the NO TRESPASSING sign. The DANGER warning. The AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY badge. I went over the locked gate and dropped onto the catwalk behind the sign.

  Logan slung the bag over the gate before he mounted it and launched down to the narrow walkway.

  The lights were in the front of the billboard, but we were behind it, where the plywood didn’t need to be seen or covered. Dwarfed by the scale of it and protected in the shadows, we were both very exposed and very alone.

  “You’re good at this,” I said.

  He cupped my face and kissed me before I could finish, pushing me against the raw wood as if he wanted to merge our bodies. His intensity had its own force, a gravitational pull I couldn’t—and didn’t want to—resist. If only I could fall into that depth of passion forever, with my unmet desires expanding to the surface of my skin and my fear sinking endlessly into darkness.

  I pulled away, gasping for breath. “We’re not done.”

  “I know,” he said, picking up the bag. “I wanted to kiss you first.”

  This time, he led the way around the catwalk to the front of the billboard, where the lights were blinding and the faces were the size of a house.

  “What now?” he asked, squinting in the light.

  I took out a can of blue and shook it. Click, click, click.

  “Whatever.” I wanted to make a point, not art, so I scrawled a curly moustache over the newscaster’s mouth because it was as high as I could reach.

  “You live here.” He popped a can of red. “Won’t they know it’s you?”

  “Maybe they’ll ask.” I finished with a little flavor-saver under the lower lip because I was a child. “But they have to catch us red-handed, so hurry up.”

  He reached up and scripted I want…

  “What are you writing?”

  “Patience, my star.”

  …to fuck…

  “Language, Mr. Crowne.” I jabbed him in the ribs under his outstretched arm.

  …my wife.

  He tossed the can with the rest. “Now it’s in writing.”

  His voice was liquid and solid at the same time. Forceful, impenetrable, and mutable enough to fit into the shape of my desire. His kiss was fullness, heat, the taste of what we could have had without the deals and contracts. He grabbed my ass and lifted me until my legs were wrapped around his hips and his erection was pressed against my heat.

  “Inside you,” he growled, grinding into me. “Now.”

  “Yes,” I groaned.

  Holding me up, he navigated around the billboard to the back where it was dark. He pushed me against the plywood, hands digging under my stretchy pants, past my ass, driving the elastic down my thighs. Reaching around, he ran his fingertips along my seam.

  “I’m going to ruin this.” He teased my clit. “Drive so deep you can’t see where I end and you begin.” He flicked the nub and I arched into him. “You want that?”

  “Do it. Take me.”

  I held myself up on his shoulders as he undid his jeans, releasing his cock and positioning it to enter me.

  “Don’t.” He jammed inside me, stretching me open. “Don’t ever dare me to own you.” He pushed again. “Once this cunt is mine”—with one last thrust, he was in to the core, so deep I existed only where we were joined—“it’s mine to wreck.”

  I meant to make words, but I only found the vowels, and with every thrust, I found more. My world was his dick. The night was his voice. My life was the growing sensation between my legs as he stretched me, pushing his body against my nub as I clawed at his shirt.

  “You want to come,” he growled, driving hard.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to know you.”

  “Okay. Please. Go.”

  Rolling his hips, pushing to the base with thrusts so deep and hard, he touched places I didn’t know I had. He grunted right before I exploded into a cone of light and dark, blindness and vision, where the silence was as loud as a siren.

  The world came back in stages. The sound of cars whooshing by on Highland. The smell of his cologne. The feel of his lips on my neck. The ache in my thighs.

  He eased me down to a standing position and kissed my lips. “Let’s get out of here before the neighbors call the cops.”

  We scrambled back into the warehouse as if the cops were chasing us.

  He dropped the bag and came for me again as if fucking against the back of the billboard hadn’t satisfied his hunger. As soon as he touched me, I knew it hadn’t satisfied mine either. We groped each other’s clothes, attached at the mouth, unbuttoning, unzipping, grasping for bare skin, finally naked when we fell onto the bed and rolled around like wrestlers on my little mattress.

  We hadn’t defaced much. Hadn’t gotten caught or faced consequences, and yet it was enough. He didn’t just accept me or tolerate who I was. He embraced how different we were and had dared to experience a little of my life.

  Straddling him, I put my hands on either side of his head and shifted so his shaft ran along my seam. “You ready for me to run this show?”

  “Ready for you to try.”

  I straightened, moving back and forth without letting him enter me. He took my breasts, kneading them as he jerked his hips with mine, trying to take control of how his shaft ran along my clit.

  “I want you to fuck me,” I said, putting my hand on his chest. “From there.”

  “Yes,” he growled.

  “Let me do it. Watch me.” I took his hands off my body. “Just watch.”

  Crouching, I lined his dick up with me and impaled myself on him. He reached for me, but I pinned his wrists over his head.

  “No hands,” I said, letting go and kneeling straight.

  “This is how you want it?” He seemed concerned he’d been doing it wrong the whole time.

  “This time.” Getting on my feet, I lifted myself and slid down.

  When I rose again, he looked between us, at the place we were connected, and watched his cock enter me. “Fuck, that’s so hot.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  He glanced up at me, and I smiled. The shoe was on the other foot. I had the power to deliver his satisfaction. All he had to do was say it.

  “Faster.”

  I gave him what he asked for, increasing the speed of my crouches by the look on his face and how hard he worked to not touch me.

  “What do you want, Logan?”

  “See you come,” he snarled, demanding it from under me.

  I put my middle and index fingers in his mouth. “Make them wet.”

  He did it, growling against my hand, sucking and licking. I pulled out and put my wet fingers on my clit, pushing him in and out of me, stretching the pleasure of his dick to a tingling fire.

  “That’s it,” he said, jerking upward to push himself deep. “Show me how you make yourself come.”

  The command in his voice and the sharp jolt of his dick brought me closer, demanding a surrender to pleasure even as I tried to dominate him.


  “Give it to me,” he said. “Let me see it.”

  We moved together, each stroke pushing me just enough, but I needed more. Not more stimulation… more him.

  “Say something!” I cried.

  “Come on my cock.”

  Like magic, I exploded into an orgasm, pulsing around him as he’d told me to, bending backward until he slipped out of me.

  When I opened my eyes, he was on all fours over me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For letting me be in charge.”

  “You’re good at it.” His erection pressed against my thigh.

  “You didn’t come,” I said, putting my hands on his face.

  He took them away and put my wrists over my head as I’d done to him. “I’m saving it.”

  “For what?”

  “I want to make a suggestion first.” He rolled away.

  “What?”

  “I want to renegotiate the contract.”

  My lungs squeezed all the blood out of my heart. “Okay.”

  “Let’s say this.” He traced the line of my breast, over the last line of inked butterflies. “Let’s say we don’t have to get divorced.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not saying we won’t. But we treat this like a normal relationship. Just… married.”

  No. Everything in me said no. I’d clung to the security of knowing I’d be hurt and that I had control over how much and when. His change meant the sky was the limit.

  “I don’t know.” I got off the bed.

  “Why not?”

  “Nothing’s really changed. I’m not a good wife for you. And you…”

  I couldn’t finish with him reclined on my bed like a god, with his hammer of a cock waiting. I couldn’t kid myself into thinking it was just his beauty or our sex. He was loyal and stable and sincere even when he was lying.

  “Me, what?”

  “I was going to say you’re not my type. But…” I stopped myself again before I said a stupid thing. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Not waiting for him to answer, I did my business, sore from the violence of the first fuck and the pace of the second. He’d made me raw and I loved it. The way he’d given me control but taken it back exactly when I needed him to.

  Naked in front of the mirror, I washed my hands with an unwilling smile because he’d listened. He’d heard me and adjusted.

  Logan Crowne had changed just a little for me.

  That was cool.

  When I opened the door, he was standing there, dick still at attention.

  “I want you,” he said, coming toward me. “We’re married. That is what it is. Whether or not you’re the wife I need in six months or ten years doesn’t matter. You’re the woman I need right now. I’m not giving you up. You’re mine.”

  I put my hands on the counter behind me. “I can’t let you break me.”

  “Listen to me.” He laid his hands on my shoulders, moving them to the sides of my neck. “No man is strong enough to break you.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “I know they tried. But look at me. Compared to you, I’m empty. Hollow. The slightest tap from you and I’ll crack in a hundred places. I belong to you. If anyone’s walking out of this broken, it’s going to be me. I want to risk it, and if I bleed when you leave me, it’ll still all be worth it.”

  He wasn’t lying, but he was misinformed. He’d misjudged my resilience and miscalculated my strength.

  But as wrong as he was about me, and for me, I wanted him.

  I wanted him for more than six months, more than a lifetime.

  “Let’s give it a shot then.”

  The light of his smile was so real I nearly had to squint. “Good.” He kissed me. “Good girl.”

  His kisses went from loving pecks to deep passion.

  As sore as I was, I was wet again. Then he pulled back.

  “New rule,” he said.

  “There are rules?”

  “No more playing wife. You have to do what makes you happy.”

  “Did the nineteen-fifties kick you out?” I ran my nails down his chest and stomach.

  He laughed and kissed me again.

  “What if you make me happy?” I asked.

  He hitched me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. “Then I’ll be the happiest man alive.”

  That night, my husband slept in my bed for the first time, as if that was what I needed to do to let myself love him. The fact was, I already did.

  30

  ELLA

  Ted and Doreen had never claimed there was anything special about this wedding anniversary. Thirty-six wasn’t a nice round number people usually celebrated. It didn’t roll off the tongue, and my mother-in-law swore up and down there was no personal significance to the numbers. But the party was important to them. So important, Doreen wanted to wear her butterfly-wing dress.

  But her body had changed, and it didn’t look right anymore.

  I’d offered to alter it. I didn’t know if I could figure out how the thing even worked without taking it apart completely, but Doreen deserved every happiness, so I’d agreed to try.

  I waited for her in my studio. My altered silver dress hung on the mannequin. I’d made some adjustments in the month since I’d worn it to our disastrous dinner. It had a leather corset belt and uneven hemline. I kept playing with it. Some nights, my mind was so alive with ideas, I couldn’t sleep.

  I’d recreated it in new fabrics, trying to emulate the pattern, eating at the cutting table Logan had surprised me with, staying on Highland later than I should. The shelves were soon stacked with boxes of false starts and bad ideas.

  Logan had asked me if there was an end goal for all this time I was spending in the studio. He knew I didn’t want to mass-produce clothing any more than I wanted to do custom couture. I told him I was amusing myself and he’d better not get in the way of it with dumb questions.

  He laughed and kissed me, then laughed again when I jabbed him in the ribs. Then he pushed my wrists over my head and pinned them against the refrigerator. Then Colton had come in like a dog looking for a belly rub, and that was that until later.

  Doreen knocked on the alley door exactly at two, and I opened it.

  “Thank you!” she said, instead of hello.

  Her driver was behind her, holding a huge garment bag.

  “My pleasure, come in!” I held my hand out to the driver. “Here, I have it. Are you coming in?”

  “I’ll come back when she’s ready. You have it? It’s heavy.” He let the weight of the hanger fall on my fingers.

  “Wow, it is.”

  He said his goodbyes and I closed the door.

  “Do you want to sit?” I said to Doreen as I hung the garment bag on a rack. “It’s not as clean as you’re used to, but I vacuumed the couch.”

  Doreen stood in front of the mannequin, shaking hand pointing at the silver dress. “This is what you wore to the Crowne Jewels?”

  “Yeah.” In my fervor, I’d done things to that beautiful dress a sensible person wouldn’t, and in front of my mother-in-law, I was suddenly ashamed of reimagining my father’s legacy.

  “It’s really something.”

  Unzipping the bag, I smiled at the nice-person code for “terrible.” I couldn’t disagree with her, but I was undaunted. The process made me happy.

  “God,” I said as the butterfly wings bled out of the open zipper. “This is more amazing the second time I’m seeing it.”

  Doreen wrung her hands together, which made them tremor together. “What do you think? Can you fix it?”

  “Let’s get it on you.”

  She undressed down to her leggings and tank. I helped her get the gown on, tucking in the NORA WARREN tag, and stood behind her in front of the mirror. She looked pretty good, but I made a list of things I’d change if I could. Which I couldn’t. Forget it.

  “See?” she said.

  “Tell me what it feels like.”

  “Tight here.” She put her hand
s on her waist. “And here.” Top edge, under her arms. “And when I do this”—she twisted her hips—“it moves too much.”

  “All right, get it off and we’ll see what we’ve got.”

  When she got it off, I laid it out on the cutting table.

  “God damn, Daddy,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s so clean inside… I’m going to have to rip some seams. Do you mind?”

  “Have at it.”

  I took out my seam ripper, and for the second time in my life, I laid it in the seam of one of Basile Papillion’s gowns.

  “How are you and Logan doing?” she asked, walking around the silver dress to see my work.

  Riiiip. Didn’t hurt at all.

  “Great.” Truthful, if still part lie. I inspected the construction at the top edge. Wait. This couldn’t be right. I ripped deeper.

  “I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d last a minute with that boy.”

  “We haven’t been together that long.”

  “I was worried. I mean, he’s so tightly wound and you’re such a free spirit.”

  The edge was easy, but the way the butterfly wings were attached from the inside? It looked like glue. Brushed-on clear glue.

  “And I thought,” Doreen continued, “he was either going to crush you or you were going to get bored and run like hell.”

  I sniffed the inside of the lining and almost got a contact high. “I don’t believe it…”

  “I’m starting to.”

  “Moth-er-fucker. I cannot even with this.” I stood away from the table. “He used rubber cement on a ten-thousand-dollar ball gown.”

  “Is that bad?” Doreen peered over the gown to see the glue.

  Basile Papillion wasn’t such a genius after all. Or at least he wasn’t a perfect genius.

  “If finding out your father took shortcuts is bad, yeah.”

  “Can you make it fit again?”

  “Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen if I start cutting. The glue’s old, so the wings could drop and you’ll have bald spots.” I gathered the garment and draped it onto a second form I’d bought. “And if I take it in here, it’s not going to drape unless I…” I stepped back, dismissing the idea.