Taboo Unchained

by C. M. Stunich

  I move over to my bag and dig inside, searching for something exotic. Everything I've done lately just feels … vanilla. And a scoop of fucking ice cream isn't going to do it for me today. I need pain and blood and sex. Taboo sex. Only the filthiest will do.

  I extract a condom – something I rarely use considering I've had a vasectomy – and a silicone cock. I can't abide the word dildo. It simply bothers me. Call it what it is – a faux dick. A cock. Hell, call it a penis like you're the dirty-clean Mrs. Braxton, but don't you dare say dildo. Nobody wants to get fucked with a fucking dildo.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Lauren asks, too eagerly in my opinion.

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” I respond as calmly as I can. My locks are hanging loose and someone's thrown away the key. I need to move this session along faster than usual. Most often, my clients and I start off like any other pair of capable adults. Heavy petting, the brush of skin on skin, a slow slide of my cock inside their moistened pussies. Then comes the dirty talk, the light spankings, the hair pulling. We don't delve into the barrel of rotten fruit until all of that is done. Today, I'm speeding things up. I can't wait and Lauren won't complain. She'll relish this. One of the reasons I don't come over here more often is that Dr. Houssard can get antsy.

  Oh, and she bites.

  “You disgusting little whore,” I whisper as I rise to my feet, a few extra tools in hand. “Here you are, in your basement, willingly chained to a concrete slab, so I can, what? Cool my ire in your liquid heat?” I dump my supplies on Lauren's back and enjoy the gasp from her throat as she feels cold metal. If I can't get violence, then violent sex will have to do. My clients come to me willingly, so no, I don't consider myself anywhere near Mark's level, but I suppose some might have a problem with what I do. If they knew about me, that is.

  A smile quirks my lips as I lift a blade to my mouth. Six inches of naked steel, gleaming under the warm yellow lights from above. When I said basement, I didn't mean concrete floors and exposed wires. The Houssards are both doctors for goodness sakes. Above this concrete sex slab is a tasteful, little chandelier with black shades over the bulbs and carefully arranged strings of crystal. It's quite cozy actually.

  The blade bites into my tongue with a sharp sting, drawing hot copper liquid into my mouth. The blood runs down my throat, teasing my tastebuds with the flavor of my own despair. I hear Lauren's chains clatter as she turns, trying desperately to look at me. I watch her struggle with glee, happy with the bindings on her wrists and ankles. Working with someone like Lauren has shown me how important it is to check my knots once, twice, three fucking times. Like I said, she bites. Hard.

  I spin the blade around in my fingers, drawing my silicone cock up to my mouth. I don't make a habit of sucking on dick, but sometimes it's necessary. I run my tongue along the toy, letting my blood and saliva coat the surface until it gleams. Not that Lauren really needs it. Her pussy is soaking wet, the juices still glistening bright on my stiff cock. I touch my fingers loosely to my shaft, sliding the tips along my rigid flesh. A shudder passes through me an instant before I shove the toy into Lauren's eager cunt, slamming it right down to the base and the faux balls.

  “You always did like it hard, didn't you, bitch?” I whisper, running my fingers up her perfect ass and giving it a sharp slap. Lauren groans and arches her back, body twisting and thrashing in pleasure. I leave the cock where it is and move up to Mrs. Houssard's face, cupping her jaw in falsely gentle fingers. Her brown eyes search mine with an eager desperation and a flash of darkness that chills my soul to the core.

  “Do horrible things to me,” she whispers. “Before I do them to everyone else. Please. Please, Lucas.” I smile softly and bend down, teasing her mouth with mine. But I don't offer my lips. I'm not opposed to kissing my clients; I simply don't enjoy it. I stand up straight, spinning the blade around where she can see it.

  “I'm going to cut you, Lauren. Bleed you all over this floor. And then I'm going to let you go, and you're going to clean it up on your hands and knees.” I grab her hair and squeeze until she screams and the silicone cock falls to the floor, pushed from the tight walls of her pussy with the tensing of muscles. “With your tongue,” I whisper and release her, taking the blade in my shaking fingers and slicing a neat three inches down Lauren's upper arm. It's one of the four places she's designated for me to cut. Her work attire covers her skin in that particular spot, and her worthless, limp dick husband never bothers to remove his wife's blouse when he's fucking her. Mr. Houssard is a selfish lover, the kind of man I love to hate. I've always been under the assumption that I'm straight simply because I prefer a woman's body, but there's a sneaking suspicion in my mind that I just hate men for being men. A self-hating man. It would not be my worst offense.

  Lauren's deliciously delectable flesh splits, giving me what I so desperately need: the hot rush of red down her arm, the cry of pain from her lips, the clenching of her muscles as they rally, trying to get Lauren to defend herself. But she doesn't want to. Oh, no. Dr. Houssard is a very willing participant in this duet.

  I step back and enjoy the trickle of blood down her arm, admiring the way it falls. There's just something about blood. So perfect. So artistic. This, this is my medium.

  “What a work of art you make, Mrs. Houssard,” I say, emphasizing her least favorite word in the English language. Poor Lauren. She fell for the age old trap of marriage. People like her, like me, we don't do well in that sort of situation. It simply doesn't behoove us to join a partnership, particularly not one where the partner doesn't share our same affliction.

  My mind flickers briefly back to my wife. To Mrs. Carter. Who was only such for a single day. Oh, Isadora, you stupid fool. How could you not have seen this demon inside of me? Didn't you once say that the eyes were the window to the soul? How did you miss the darkness staring back out at you?

  I sigh and flip the knife again. My second slice is much slower than my first, a shimmer of blade dragged across Lauren's flesh as she screams, partly in pleasure and partly in pain. I take her shoulder from unblemished perfection to a blight of red agony. My breath hisses out between my teeth. My shaking hands get the better of me, and my third cut is a slash, drawn messily through Lauren's skin with splatter of red across my face. Two marks on her shoulder now, like an X, etched in her flesh.

  I drop the blade before things go too far and move around to her spread eagled legs and the notch in the cement between them. Just enough room to step up to her cunt and insert the toy back into Lauren's heaving flesh.

  I'm sliding the condom onto my dick, getting ready to fill her ass with my nearly painful erection when I hear the creak of stairs behind me. Lauren doesn't hear it, but I do. An instant later, my cock is back inside my pants and I'm tearing up the stairs behind a second set of footsteps. My first thought is that it's Mr. Houssard come home early, but that doesn't make sense. That fool would run at me, not away.

  The front door cracks against the wall, and I catch a hint of pale flesh and black flats on perfect feet. I swing around the doorjamb, my fingers catching on the white trim as my eyes take in the massive driveway and the orange Mini Cooper roaring to life on it.

  Audra Holiday's red hair shines brightly, catching the sun as she peels away, tires spinning on the pebbles beneath her car. I'm breathing so heavily, I hardly process the screeching from the basement. My hands curl tightly around the door frame, my tongue struggling to wet my lips as I glance down and catch some bloody smears on the floor. My eyes flick up one last time, watching as Audra disappears down the driveway and out the open gate at the end of it.

  Well, now. Things have certainly gotten interesting.

  My first instinct is to rush off after Audra, chase her down and shake her. I want to find out why she's following me, why there was blood on her shoes.

  I don't.

  I make the right decision, the one that the sane, emboldened, self-assured Lucas Carter would make. I don't feel at all like myself however, and I
can tell Lauren knows it. When we're finished with our session, she doesn't even invite me to stay for a drink as I've often done. Wrapped in a towel, legs shaking and covered in her own blood, Dr. Houssard puts on a grim face and kicks me out with a large check clutched in my palm.

  I even pay a visit to Leslie Catsitch, but she isn't home. In the end, I return back to my own house, pausing in the driveway with my hands on the wheel and my breath shaky. Robbie finds that moment the most opportune to walk out and casually check the mailbox, never mind that it's Sunday. She waves to me, and I wave back, not at all in the mood to play the perfect neighbor. I feel better, much better than I did earlier in the day, but not like myself.

  I climb out of the car and lock the doors with my key fob, not bothering to glance over into the other yard or make conversation with Robbie. As soon as the door is closed behind me, I switch off my cell and toss it onto the coffee table, retreating to my room and collapsing onto my carefully made bed.

  My mind swims with images of Isadora in her wedding night attire, decked out in white, face eager and open. I'm reminded of our first kiss that evening, the sultry spiciness of it. How her long nails clawed the skin on my back and her neck arched for my kisses. I bit her flesh and she reveled in it, drawing me down into a black pit that I just couldn't crawl out of. I spanked her, slapped her face with gentle playfulness. And then I pulled her hair. Hard. Harder.

  I knew the moment the game changed for her, saw it in her eyes when I tied my belt around her wrists and bound her to the bed. I remember that first cut, across her inner thigh, my pocket knife gleaming with the ruby red of her blood. Isadora's screams were so loud that I was soon overrun with fucking do-gooders and concerned bridesmaids. Her drunken friends led her out of that room in tears, and I never saw her again. The sad part is, I hadn't even come close to showing her what I show even my lightest clients.

  After that, I walked away and ended up here, doing this. The job is in no way what I'd envisioned for myself at age twenty-eight, but it certainly beats being a slave to a corporate god. Corporations are for worker bees, and I'm a wasp. My dream with Isadora devolves into a swarm of bees blanketing my skin, stinging me, dragging me to my knees until her screams become my screams, and I wake up drenched in sweat.

  A nightmare. I can't claim I've never had one. I'm a monster; it's what we do. But there was something unsettling about this particular play of imagery.

  “Get yourself together, you fucking fool,” I chastise myself as I rise to my feet with a growl and a sneer. I forgot to shower. Again. And I'm covered in Lauren's filth. I despise leaving my client's essence on my skin. It simply doesn't feel right.

  I strip my clothes and my bedding, jamming it all into the washing machine before I hit the shower. I let the water scald my body, and when I get out, dress myself in a fresh suit, I feel right again. My sins have been washed away with the soap.

  I brush my sleeves off and head into the living room, pausing when I find a body lying across my couch.

  “Fuck.”

  That's the only appropriate word for my situation.

  “Fuck.” I say it again and jam my fingers through my hair. How on earth did this get here? I move over to the body and push at it with my foot. Most definitely a corpse. If the bloody shirt and the gaping wound across the throat weren't enough to tell me, the smell most certainly would. “Oh, Mark,” I say with a wrinkled nose. “What on earth did you do now?”

  I frown down at the body, the waxen skin, the stiff limbs. My couch is ruined. I tilt my head and gaze at the taupe and beige stripes, frown deepening into a glower.

  “Fuck.” I run my hand down my face and do my best to stay calm. The front door is locked, the curtains closed, and I don't expect any visitors. I have time to deal with this properly, provided I don't panic. Not that I would. Panic denotes a sense of fear, and that emotion still lies dormant inside my chest – if it's even there at all. “At least I have some answers to my questions. Audra, you silly, silly girl.” I grab the afghan off the back of the couch, spreading it over Mark's body as I think about the bloody footprints on Lauren's floor. Did Audra kill Mark right after I left? Did she come seeking some sort of council from me? If so, I could've taught her the first rule of being a monster: never bleed your pain where you sleep. Now there's DNA evidence slathered all over my living room. Wonderful.

  I head into the kitchen, checking the back door, the windows. Until I figure out how Audra got into my house without my knowing it, I won't be satisfied. I also find it hard to believe that I didn't wake up. Dragging a body is a lot harder than it sounds. Audra Holiday is no body builder, so how did she even get Mark in here?

  I grab a box of garbage bags and carry them into the living room, dropping them onto the coffee table before picking up my phone. I power it back on and find my way to Audra's phone number.

  “I've been expecting your call,” she says before I get the chance to speak. I grit my teeth and feel anger surge strong and hot through my body. This woman will be lucky if she makes it out of this alive. I have half a mind to twist her neck from her shoulders. My voice, when I finally do find it, comes out in a snarl.

  “Get your ass over here and help clean up your mess.” I end the call and toss my phone at the wall as hard as I can. The plaster cracks and my phone shatters, plastic bits flying across the polished perfection of my floor. My throat twists, and I have to bite back a scream. My carefully crafted facade slips back, letting the demon peek through, and it doesn't like what it sees. A muscle in my cheek twitches as I squeeze my hands together, the muscles in my arms bulging against my skin. A beast, barely kept in check by my sacrifices, raises its head and tears into me. All around me, the air swells with heat and pain and anger. When the doorbell rings a second later, Lucas Carter doesn't have enough control left to check the peephole.

  The monster practically tears the door off its hinges, only to find a wide eyed Robbie Carrell staring back at him. I'm seeing things through a haze of red, my body reacting on its own, my cock rising at the sight of her low cut shirt and her feminine curves. Roberta wants me, doesn't she? She flirts with me at every given opportunity, rests her fingers on my arm, gazes at me with adoration shining in her bright, blue eyes. I step forward onto the porch and pull the door closed behind me.

  “It's awfully late, Roberta,” I growl out between clenched teeth. I see her react to me right away, see her gaze catch on the swell of my cock in my slacks, her eyes flicker to the sweat on my forehead, my clenched hands. “Shouldn't you be at home asleep?” I snap the last word off and close my eyes, fighting to regain control. My anger should be unleashed on Audra Holiday, not on Roberta. Robbie. Who is still in high school.

  “I … I was having trouble sleeping,” she whispers, her soft voice blending into the hush of the neighborhood. “And I saw your lights on, and I thought … I just thought … ”

  “Go home Robbie,” I snap as an orange Mini Cooper pulls into the driveway. Hmm. I almost assumed Miss Holiday had changed her mind about coming over. My eyes stay locked on the driver's side door as Robbie starts to stutter again.

  “I … I … thought you might want some company,” she continues, oblivious to the vehicle in the driveway or the whirl of rage spinning around my deathly still body. For a moment there, I don't breathe, don't blink, I just exist. And that's hard enough. When Audra fails to climb out of her car, my eyes drop back to Robbie's. She has ridiculously long eyelashes, dark swirls sweeping up from her innocent eyes to brush against her pale forehead. My gaze finds her throat as she swallows. What a graceful neck, Miss Carrell has. Long and curved, like a swan. I find my fingers drawn to her chin, my lips to her mouth. And all the while, I know Audra is watching me. “I turned eighteen last week,” Robbie whispers suddenly, and my entire body goes cold. Then hot. Then cold. “I sent you an invitation to the block party. I was hoping you knew. Luke, I like you. I've always liked you.”

  Her words undo me. Yet again, I'm torn apart and shredded by a woman. The b
east screams and withers inside my chest, falling away at the innocence of Robbie's words. I like you. Robbie's fingers curl gently against my chest as she rises to her toes, her mouth pressing soft like butterflies against my own. In my mind, I'm suddenly eighteen again, standing on a porch in the cool evening air, my arms wrapped around the girl of my dreams. My life is an open playing field, a realm of endless possibilities and promised joys. My lips part softly, exploring gently, my eyes fluttering closed to block out the world. The monster inside of me becomes a fragment of a distant future, one where my hopes and dreams weren't buried alongside a beautiful face.

  “Oh, Luke.” Robbie's gentle whisper snaps me out of my past and back into the present – where my soul is black and my couch is currently occupied by a dead man. My hands move from Robbie's waist to her arms, squeezing hard. Too hard, maybe.

  “Get away from me!” I yell. I don't mean to, but that little bit of self-control I'd regained is gone in an instant as I find myself shaking, confused, and for the briefest of seconds, almost afraid. Not for myself, but for Robbie. I help monsters control their darkness; I don't turn doves into ravens. Robbie stumbles away from me, her white sandals slipping on the edge of the deck. She falls to her ass on my front walkway, eyes filling with tears, face upturned in desperation. “Stay away from me,” I growl at her, coming down the stairs and wrapping my fingers around her arm. I jerk Robbie to her feet and then push her away from me when she tries to cling. “Don't ever come over here again,” I whisper angrily, dragging her down the driveway at arm's length, practically shoving her across the divide that separates her parents' property from mine. “Don't talk to me. Don't even fucking look at me again. Do you understand?”

  Robbie's crying silently, tears streaming down her perfect cheeks in glistening wet lines. Her pink lipstick is smeared on her face, and her hands are bleeding from her fall. I have the strangest urge to take her in my arms, brush her hair back and tell her that everything's going to be okay. But what a joke that is. What a lie. I refuse to lie to Robbie Carrell.