The Protégé

by Brianna Hale

  I was watching him towel his hair dry when there was an obnoxious voice behind me. “Are you perving on Laszlo? Oh my god, he’s like your dad.”

  I jumped and turned around, seeing two girls from the orchestra dressed in their swimmers, staring at me with delighted incredulity. Jaime and Ashley, a French horn player and a bassoonist.

  “I wasn’t perving,” I snapped at them. “I forgot my goggles and I was trying to remember where I left them. And he’s not my dad, he’s my mentor.” I didn’t like reminding people he was my guardian. That I was his protégé felt more special. He’d chosen me.

  “Since you were like, eight.”

  I can still remember the heavy emphasis of Jaime’s words. Her playing was as overstressed as her stupid voice. Behind them, I saw Hayley watching me with a perplexed expression. Even then she knew there was something unwardlike about my feelings for Laszlo. Why aren’t you going out with Ryan? He’s so cute and he thinks you are, too.

  Because Laszlo says I’m not allowed.

  Okay, but it’s weird you look so happy about that. Just saying.

  I was angry and upset about the exchange and I came down late for breakfast, worried that Jaime and Ashley would have told Laszlo that they’d caught me looking at him. But Laszlo had just smiled and said good morning as he’d passed me on the way to get more coffee from the buffet.

  I was out of sorts for the rest of the day and didn’t really understand why. Later I realized it was because how I felt about Laszlo wasn’t the way other people expected me to feel about him. And that it was definitely not the way Laszlo thought about me. And I worried that if he ever found out how I felt he’d be disgusted with me.

  But that didn’t wipe the semi-naked memory of him from my mind. Lying in bed that night I fantasized that I had gone to stand next to him by the pool and touched his hard body, wet from the water. Somehow we knew we’d be alone and he took me in his arms and kissed me, his lips cold and his tongue warm. Stripped the suit from my body. Lay me down on one of the long pool chairs and made love to me. It hurt, and after there was blood on the wet tiles, but it didn’t matter because he was so gentle and sweet with me. I fantasized over and over again about Laszlo taking my virginity and it was beautiful every time.

  The reality of me actually losing it in my second year of university was dismal. A boy I barely knew and didn’t much like. Discomfort, the hospital smell of latex. The long silence afterward. I don’t even know why I did it and I haven’t wanted to go to bed with anyone since.

  Anyone who isn’t Laszlo.

  As I look at him I see that he’s got no intention of disrobing. It’s just me who’s going to do that, apparently.

  Because it isn’t sex. He’s taking care of his protégé, that’s all.

  It’s not sex, but it still feels sexual. Laszlo’s been talking to me in the most understated yet kinky way for days in the full knowledge that it turns me on. Though he’s not doing it to turn me on. He’s doing it because it centers me, because I’ve asked him to, and because he likes making me happy. Now he’s offering to put me over his knee and spank me because the submission will make me feel less nervous about the performance tonight. Being submissive to him, him giving me a safeword, it’s all so sexually charged and yet bizarrely restrained at the same time.

  A blush staining my cheeks I unbutton my jeans and wriggle out of them, remembering my white briefs as I do. Thank god they’re newish as I have some that aren’t in a major way.

  He moves toward the sofa and holds out a hand to me, palm up. I put my hand in his and move closer, but then I freeze.

  Laszlo looks at me questioningly. “Sweetheart?”

  The last time I was this close to him we didn’t speak for three years. I’d rather not touch him if I have to go through that again. “Laszlo,” I manage in a whisper. “You won’t get angry with me, will you? If we do this?”

  He grips my hand tightly. “Sweetheart, I’ve never been angry with you. Not even that night. I promise.”

  That night. But he was angry that night. He was furious. When I keep chewing my lip he sits down and pats the sofa next to him, and after a moment I sit down next to him. I press my knees together, acutely aware of being in my underwear. Of how close he is.

  “I know you said you wanted to go back the way things were but this is very different to how we’ve been with each other,” he says softly. “I like doing this with you as long as it makes you happy. But only if it makes you happy, so you have to tell me if it doesn’t. And I promise to be honest about my feelings, too.”

  I nod, unable to look at him. There are so many things I want to ask him, about how he feels about me. About that night. But I settle for something much less frightening. “Would it be all right…Could I have a hug, please?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, of course.” He wraps both arms around me and holds me tightly against his chest and I want to cry it feels so good. Like coming home. My Laszlo, hugging me the way he always used to.

  “I don’t want things to be like the way they were that last year I lived with you. I want these new things with you.” My words are muffled in his shirtfront.

  When I look up he strokes a finger down my cheek. “I want that too, sweetheart.”

  Relief pours through me. It’s not like it was when I was a child, and it’s not like that terrible time when he could barely even look at me. We’re becoming something new together.

  Taking a deep breath I let go of him, and then get on my hands and knees and slink over his lap, feeling exquisitely embarrassed, the blood rushing through my body. He doesn’t seem self-conscious at all and is quite happy to arrange me in his lap, his hands on the small of my back and the fleshy part of my behind.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  I nod, and he strokes his hand up my back and into my hair, his long fingers rubbing over my scalp. He takes his time and it’s so relaxing that by increments I feel my body go limp in his lap.

  “How do you want it? Dolce? Allegro?” he asks. Sweetly? Fast?

  I swallow, not knowing what I want because I don’t know how it will feel. “You’re the conductor, sir.”

  “So I am.” One of his hands leaves my behind and he brings it down in a hard, stinging slap. There’s nothing dolce about it. It’s more like the hammer strike from Mahler’s Sixth and my head rears up in a gasp of surprise.

  “Ow! That hurt.”

  “You sound surprised, Isabeau.” His voice is as smooth as melted chocolate, almost like a purr.

  “You said you were going to go easy on me.”

  He laughs darkly. “I promise you I am. Does it still hurt?”

  My ass doesn’t sting anymore. In fact it feels tingly and sensitized beneath his touch. “It feels sort of hot.”

  “Good. That’s what we’re going for.” He spanks me again, just as hard, on the other cheek, and I yelp. He keeps going, setting up a regular percussive rhythm that makes my skin burn without quite becoming unbearable. But it’s close. Very close.

  “Ah! It’s very—ah!—loud. What if someone—ow—hears?”

  “Stop squealing so much then. And hold still.” He takes a firmer grip on my hips with his free hand, holding me tight against his thighs and belly. A bright, hot sensation shoots through my insides. I imagine someone walking past the door and hearing the rhythmic slaps of flesh on flesh. Someone who knows it’s Laszlo’s room. Someone who later sees me leave, pink-cheeked and flustered.

  “It’s not my—ow!—squealing that I’m talking about, it’s your hand.”

  His voice somewhere over my head is unrepentant. “I can’t spank you any quieter, Isabeau. This is what spanking sounds like. And I’m not going softer on you. This is meant to hurt just enough, otherwise it won’t work.”

  Well, fine, but he needn’t say that with quite so much relish.

  “Would you like me to go on? It’s up to you, sweetheart.”

  He waits, one hand hovering over my flesh, until I nod. I grab a cushion and
push my face into it as his spanks grow fiercer. I flinch against each one, wriggling this way and that as he beats the same spot over and over, making it glow white hot before moving on.

  He smooths the flat of his hand over my heated flesh, a long, hot caress as I pant into the sofa cushion, too spent to move. My heart is pounding and all the heat down there is making my sensitive parts tingle and I dearly want him to keep touching me, to move those fingers deeper. But he merely straightens the lace edges of my underwear and helps me up. I sit beside him on the couch, my ass burning, pushing a hand through my tangled hair. I feel hyperaware of everything. The lights are too bright. My breathing is too loud.

  I reach for my jeans with a shaking hand.

  Laszlo’s arms come around me, pulling me against him, and the relief is intense. I curl into him with a little moan and he gets an arm under my knees and pulls them across his lap.

  “Isabeau?” But I feel too funny about what just happened and hide my face in his shirtfront. He laughs softly. “Feeling shy?”

  I nod without looking up. Shy, but not unhappy. I burrow into him, needing the warmth of his body, his strength, and he gives it to me without hesitation, like he used to do when I was younger. Proper big-hearted, tight-against-his-chest hugs, not like the stingy, tense hugs he gave me after I turned seventeen that left me feeling bereft. Except this is better because his hand is stroking the bare skin of my thighs and I know he won’t make me let him go anytime soon.

  His lips are against my hair. “You did so well, sweetheart. That was quite fierce, but I think you needed it.”

  I’m sinking deeper and deeper against his body, more relaxed than I can remember being in a long time. Laszlo’s presence curls around me like a beloved melody.

  “You’re not going to feel nervous tonight. You’re not going to be upset about your career or worry over it, either. You’re a beautiful cello player and no one can take that away from you. We’re going to figure everything out together, all right?”

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes. “Thank you, sir.” With that simple word, sir, I know that everything’s going to be all right. If I can get through this then what’s playing for a few hundred people in a concert hall?

  He’s holding me so close that my ears are filled with the thundering of his heart, the sound of his breathing. The cologne he always wears envelops me along with the scent that’s just him. Laszlo. Masculine and comforting.

  After a minute I notice he’s humming softly, the vibrations deep in his chest rumbling against my cheek. It makes me smile because Laszlo always hums when there’s silence, or taps out a melody on his leg or the kitchen counter or the steering wheel of his car. It was one of the first things I noticed about him. Sometimes I don’t think he’s aware that he’s doing it.

  I listen to him for a few minutes, just breathing him in and enjoying his warmth. Then I shift in his lap and look up at him. “Are you always thinking about music?”

  He’s surprised by my question and stops humming, and in the silence that follows he seems to realize why I asked. “Always. For as long as I can remember. I thought it was the same for everyone and I was shocked when I realized that wasn’t the case. It used to drive me mad when I was young because I couldn’t stop it. I used to bang my head against the pillow, trying to knock the music out so I could fall asleep. I think that’s why I became a conductor. So I could take control of the music.” His lips brush my forehead. “I like being in control.”

  “Does the music still keep you awake?”

  He smiles, running his fingers through my hair. “Not anymore. It’s still there, but quieter now because I’m doing what I need to do. The music doesn’t need to be so insistent anymore.”

  Laszlo goes back to humming and watching my hair slide through his fingers like silk. He’s never said so but I think he’s always liked my hair.

  I recognize the piece he’s humming. “Dvořák’s Ninth. Are we going to perform it on tour?” It’s one of Laszlo’s favorites. It’s one of everyone’s favorites really, sweet and pastoral at times, then piping and happy, then dramatic and strained, all winding up to the most joyful climax in the fourth movement. I don’t need to ask Laszlo to know that he finds it a lot of fun to conduct. I can tell from his energy, the light in his hazel eyes. I love seeing him like that. We played the last movement in the youth orchestra the year I was seventeen and I remember what one of the percussionists said when he announced we’d be performing it. “Is that the one that sounds like Jaws at the beginning?” There were snickers, because the first few bars of the movement are a slow and ominous dah-dunnn, dah-dunnn that is very much like the Jaws theme.

  Laszlo looked pained, as if comparing Dvořák’s most famous symphony to the score of a horror film was too much for him. But he just nodded. “Yes, Mr. Baqri. It’s the one that sounds like Jaws at the beginning.”

  “In Bangkok,” Laszlo says. “The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. We have to do the Ninth. That’s the big one.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the daddy.” I say it without thinking. I didn’t mean that sort of daddy, I meant it in the way he said, “the big one,” the daddy of all Dvořák pieces. But of course I can’t say daddy to Laszlo without it meaning something very different.

  Do you like that, daddy?

  I feel a blush creep over my face. He holds my gaze, long and intense, his expression unchanging. “Yes, Isabeau. The daddy.”

  I shift a little on his lap, not breaking his gaze. Please can I call you daddy, sir? I still want to, despite everything. It expresses all the complicated feelings I have for him. That I want to submit to him. That I want him sexually. That he makes me feel safe and small and sweet. I want to call him daddy because it’s respectful and submissive and beautifully screwy at the same time. When I was eighteen I hadn’t thought about it particularly hard, I just knew that it was something you might call an older man in bed, to inflame, to tease, to make him put his hands on you with a little more tender roughness than he normally might. And because he always made me feel safe and secure and loved, like a father would. Almost, but not quite. Because I don’t love him as a father, I love him as a man. As my mentor. As whatever he is now. I think he might be my dom but I’m not sure and I’m afraid to ask. If we put a label on this it might be too much, and I’m frightened I’ll scare Laszlo away. I don’t think he likes being reminded of the fact that he’s known me since I was a child. I think he’s decided to compartmentalize me into Isabeau then and Isabeau now and the only reason he’s able to separate the two is because we spent three years apart.

  I don’t want to push Laszlo too far. I need him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Laszlo

  Now

  I lift her chin up to mine, looking into the deep green of her eyes. “Are you feeling more relaxed, sweetheart?”

  Isabeau nods, sucking her lower lip into her mouth. Christ, I want to kiss her. I don’t think I’ll ever get how she looked when she slunk over my lap out of my head. She’s so close to me and her arms are around my neck, and by moving just a few inches I could press my mouth against hers. I could do even more, and lay her out on the sofa beneath me and find out whether the spanking I gave her made her wet. My fingers were so close to the soft folds of her pussy and I dearly wanted to spread her open and feel for myself. Even better than a spanking for nerves is a spanking and an orgasm, but I’ll have to just use words instead.

  Fixing her with a stern look I say, “You’re not going to be nervous tonight, all right?”

  She nods, and when I raise a questioning brow at her, she says, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good girl.” I help her up and go to pour her a glass of water while she gets back into her jeans, and she drinks it before going back to her own room, casting a final, slightly flustered, but happy look at me.

  As soon as she’s gone I strip off and turn on the shower. I’m still hard, something I hope she didn’t notice. I don’t think she did. I wait, watching the water start to
steam but picturing her red ass in her tiny white briefs. I consider watching some porn but it’s no good. I’ll still picture Isabeau. The shy way she wriggled out of her jeans. The eager yet uncertain way she splayed herself over my lap. Her cries as I spanked her. The heat from her red, plump flesh. How I wanted to grab fistfuls of her and spread her open and bury my tongue in her pussy and ass.

  I really need to come, now, and it’s going to be while thinking of Isabeau because there’s no way I’m getting her out of my head after that. I can think about having sex with her without actually initiating anything, even when she drapes herself half naked over my lap and begs me to spank her. I groan and get under the water, taking myself in my hand, letting myself think every lurid thought about her naked body that I’ve never allowed myself to indulge in. I picture her over my lap again but this time she’s naked. It’s so easy to imagine slipping two fingers into her pussy while spanking her with my other hand; the sounds she would make as I finger-fuck her. All the while I’m picturing this I’m pumping my hand up and down my cock, eyes closed, one hand braced against the tiles. It feels so good thinking about her that I want to draw it out, but then I imagine that she’s sucking on my cock at the same time as I’m driving my fingers into her, her whimpers muffled because her mouth is so full of me, and I lose it, coming in a rush. Sweet fucking girl, swallow me all down, that’s right.

  I shake the water off my face and open my eyes, blinking to clear my vision. The release is intense, and with the memory of her sprawled in my lap and imprinted onto my hands it feels almost as if we have just fingered and sucked each other to orgasm. Is she doing the same thing right now in her own room, getting off while thinking about me, her ass still red from my hand? Is this some sort of comedy of errors where we’re both pretending we don’t want each other while we simultaneously self-immolate from desire?