The Mistress and the Mouse

by JJ Giles

  “So...I’m looking over this report about this sweet young valedictorian of her high school class, a victim of sexual abuse, an orphan at sixteen. She comes so highly recommended by the mental health professionals who refer their patients to her, yet others claim her to be Atilla the Hun in drag...”

  A little embarrassed, she smirked.

  His vision veered off into a distant corner as if he were still studying the contradictions. “So I’m wondering...what would it take for a girl of sixteen to kill the man who beat her mother to death? Because, you see, you fucked up. You lost your shoe when you got out of the car. If the old man had driven over the cliff, the gearshift would have been in drive rather than neutral. If the car was going highway speed, it wouldn’t have just tumbled over the cliff and bounced down the face of it, it would have gone airborne and hit the valley floor some distance away from the cliff. The police knew you killed him. The police also believed it was self-defense. They watched over you while they took your mother’s body out of the house until the good priest came to pick you up. Because of the priest, they wrote up his death as an accident.”

  She didn’t respond. She merely stared at the salad, frozen in her seat, unable to speak.

  “You have to know how curious I was...and am. To think of a sixteen year old sexual abuse victim who’d watched her mother getting beat quite regularly, if the police reports were any indication. What is it inside of a girl like that to cause her to stand up and say, ‘I’m not gonna take it anymore’?” He bowed his head knowing he’d swallowed it down all of his life. “What could possibly be in this creature to take matters into her own hands when the legal authorities so badly failed her? To cling to a Roman Catholic priest, a harsh disciplinarian I understand. And then to go from being orphaned to being the class’s valedictorian, no university education, yet become a woman of incalculable strength unaffected by the massive amounts of money she earns and invest every dime in the stock market, bonds and real estate? To have so much self-discipline and self-control when you would expect that girl to become an addict, a low-life streetwalker, a drunk mother with ten kids by eight different guys. What in the hell could possibly be inside of this woman? I wondered day and night.

  “Conclusion? None. Guesses? Hundreds. A retaliatory predator ready to nail every wife-beater she can get her hands on? Easily. A man hater? Probably, yet that didn’t jive with the reports from your psychologists that you’ve successfully treated hundreds of premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction cases. And those little worms who groveled in the dirt for the lousy thousand bucks my investigators offered and said nothing good about you while so many others couldn’t be tempted with even ten grand? Was it fear that kept them quiet? Or was it love?”

  She sat back against the diamond-tufted leather of the booth. Noted the fish as they swam without concern. “And now that you know me?”

  “Both. But it’s not the kind of fear I expected to find. They aren’t controlled by the fear of injury or death inflicted by Morgan McFaye. It’s the fear of the loss of your love that makes them loyal to you. You. You are the mirror upon which our vision fixes and we find ourselves in your depths. But what we see and what you reflect are very different things. We see little more than the pain we suffer and you offer the purified reflection of the inner soul. We hear recrimination for our sins and the sound of your voice offering absolution above the din. We come to you broken and battered, beaten and maimed and leave healed and whole.

  “How?” His eyes began to water. “How do you do it? I can sit here and look at you and know that you killed a man. It wasn’t self-defense. It was retribution. It was the willful act of taking another life. It was a capital crime, first degree murder. You know what drove you to it. The disgusting disgrace in which every man finds himself at one time or another in his life. You’ve wallowed in the depths of human despair and with only the aid of a priest pulled yourself out of it. You’ve done time over it. Hard time. You’re doing time still in the various charitable organizations you fund and support, mostly for disadvantaged kids to go to school.” He paused for a moment to watch her tears form and leak down her cheeks. “You’ll perform that penance the rest of your life, charged and sentenced by yourself, because you enjoyed that murder. Never felt the least remorse for it because something in you knew it was the right thing to do. But it scares the hell out of you to know you’re capable of it. And you’ll continue to make the sacrifices, to force others into the dirt from which you arose and pick them up. You know the way to and beyond Hell because you’ve traveled those roads. You...are an incredible woman. I can easily understand the fear of the loss of your love.”

  Finally, she exhaled, her eyes averted from the horrors he’d spoken of. “I uhh...I don’t know what to say.” She pressed the heel of her hand on her cheek to collect her tears.

  “Don’t say anything, honey. Just be with me. I know exactly who you are and I love you all the more for it.”

  So unhesitatingly and hopelessly revealed, she held the napkin to her eyes and gently dabbed. She knew she looked like screamin’ hell, all this emotional bullshit dripping from her eyes. Yet she remained in the seat when the urge to run nearly overwhelmed her.

  “There’s something else, though,” he admitted. “I wanted to get to know you to understand how you survived.”

  “You tell me. Statistically, a man rarely becomes a wife-beater unless that was what he saw growing up. So you tell me how you survived.” She had witnessed the brutality he suffered in the scars on his body.

  “Very good.” He pushed the salad plate away. “But at this juncture that feels like an excuse. I may have lived through it, but to say I survived would be erroneous, wouldn’t it? I’ve beat my wife, three times in fact. Put her in the hospital twice. The third time she was in critical condition in intensive care. I beat my son once,” he admitted filled with shame. “That was the thing that scared the shit out of me. It was my son who turned me on to you because he thought I was beating her still.”

  “He wanted me to punish you, didn’t he?”

  “I think so.”

  “But you took him very seriously, obviously.”

  He threw up his hands. “I’m fifty five years old. Been miserable for fifty four of it. I thought, what the hell. Maybe there was something in my life I could put right...my son. At the very least, just another hooker, right?

  “And then the investigation reports came back. And then you kicked down my door and left me standing there with my dick in my hand.” An embarrassed smirk creased his face. “The most satisfying sex I’d ever had and you never even touched me.”

  “Say it again.”

  “Standing there with my dick in my hand and I fell hopelessly in love with you.”

  “Tell me I don’t know what turns men on.” Yet she refused to accept his confession of love.

  “Indeed you do, My Sweet Lady Morgan. But I’m more concerned about the guy who gave you that ring. Refined, you say. Elegant. Educated obviously.”

  “How would know that?”

  “Unless he’s a very clever jewel thief, you’re flashing somewhere in the vicinity of a million dollars there.”

  Easily, she laughed. “No way. No way he makes that kind of money.”

  “You sure about that?”

  She hesitated. “Truthfully, I don’t know that much about him at all, or at least what he was doing before we met. Where he’d been, who he’d been with.”

  Jerry tossed his head. “Maybe he’s hiding out from the law. What’s his name?”

  “Ohhh...no. No, I don’t want you to investigate him for me. If he’s got something to hide, something to forget about, it’s none of my business.”

  “Because you’ve got something to hide, something you don’t want revealed so you wouldn’t force the same on him, would you?”

  “I would never force anyone beyond their capacity...”

  “Bullshit. You’re afraid of what you might find. That it could be some kind of criminal b
ehavior, a wife and kids he ran out on. Or maybe you’d find out he’s just a loser, a no-count bum living in your house, off your money. If he’s not man enough to tell you about it, maybe he’s not all that much of a man.”

  “He’s a good man. Very caring, very loving, dedicated. A very hard worker and a pervert like me. But I certainly do wonder about it.”

  “And you’re afraid to marry him because in the phrase wife-beater, the operative word is wife.”

  Dismally, she looked up at him. An uncomfortable confusion settled in her heart. Jerry knew everything, knew it before he even e-mailed her, much less gave himself over to her. Long before he fell in love with her and still, he let himself fall in love.

  “It never occurred to me anybody could accept that.”

  “And Mr. Wonderful doesn’t know he’s engaged to Lizzie Borden?”

  She shook her head, the throbbing in it almost deafening.

  “And the only reason you won’t marry him is because you know you’d lose him if ever he found out. Much easier to part unwed.”

  “Yes.” She was unable to look at him now. “Left me on my fortieth birthday and telling me he’s getting married in September with or without me. Supposedly, she’s younger than me, got more money than I do and she loves him. Had one sitting on the back burner.”

  “Ouch. And you’re waiting to find out who it is.”

  Angrily, she dragged the napkin under her nose. “All of my intelligence is telling me he’s driving fancy sports cars and running around on her already. She’s getting what she deserves. And then sometimes I think he’s just trying to punish me.”

  “But you’re very much in love with him?”

  “Yeah, I am.” She felt an incredible and undeniable pain in that confession. “The truth is he’s my baby. He couldn’t find the water bowl if I moved it on him. But...I guess I’m wrong about that, too. I hear he’s turned in a totally different direction...and enjoying it.”

  Bitterly, Jerry smiled. “Shamelessly and unhesitatingly submissive and for someone like you...”

  “Yeah. A dream come true.” She smiled bitterly. “And emotionally, he’s not the strongest thing going. He needs a lot of reassurance, a lot of support. So if he ever found out about me...”

  “It would scare the living shit out of him?”

  “Easily. And for some reason he’s not content for us to be what we are and the fact is we’re not getting married, so...we’ve parted company.”

  Deeply, he bored into her. “Honey, you’re making me ache.”

  His gaze held her as if the bond were of leather rather than love. “You don’t know what I need.”

  His voice, low but with unflinching command, he offered, “I know exactly what you need. You want everything I put in those e-mails delivered with such authority, a kind of power you’ve never experienced before. You want a fire kindled in the depth of your heart and suffer the conflagration and be born again. You want me to deliver you from an ordinary mortal existence and travel beyond into something you don’t even know exists. I want to give it to you.”

  Her stomach churned; her intestines quivered. “It will hurt.”

  “You can bet your ass it will hurt.” His eyes filled with a wildness only she could comprehend.

  “Yes.”

  “Follow me.” Without further delay he arose from the table and moved away from it, his back to her. It was a command, something she could understand, something she could surrender to. That she could be swallowed into and digested only to be regurgitated whole.

  He disappeared around a corner. Merely the loss of sight of him caused her to panic and she jumped up and grabbed her bag, leaving her untouched dinner on the table and hied after him.

  So perfectly still, so perfectly erect she sat in the limo opposite him refusing to meet his gaze. Surrender, so easy and if only Brian knew how she cheated on him because she needed this so badly at times, he wouldn’t want her at all. There was nothing that caused or preluded that need, nothing that she was aware of anyway. Only that she trusted Jaxx and that need was just there. Mindlessly, she followed into the elevator, somehow detached from herself, mentally preparing herself for a meltdown.

  Dark. Enveloped in total darkness inside of his apartment at the very top of the Tower. She stood so perfectly still awaiting his command.

  He threw her bag away from her. Pulled her jacket off her shoulders. His own jacket crumpled to the floor. He stood behind her in the darkness, his hot breath falling over her bare shoulders, the white hot heat of one disposed to command. She trembled inside only until she felt his hands stroll up her sides and catch the band of the halter-top around her ribs. It dallied on the soft silk, the fingertips reveling in that smooth slickness until she felt the strength of them as they slipped into that band and tore through it. He broke the strap around her neck just as easily and it fell away from her, her breasts now exposed to his control.

  But he didn’t touch them, or pull her back against him as she desired. His hands grasped the waistband of her jeans. Without first opening them, he merely tore them open, the sound of the tearing zipper cutting deep to her very soul. They too, fell to the floor in a ruined heap and left her exposed like never before.

  But rather gently, he gathered up her hair and twisted it away from her face.

  Like a firestorm, it swelled up in him, she could smell the flames in his heart. The hand that held her hair jerked her head horrendously. It lifted her a little and then dropped her to the floor. The sole of his shoe met the soft roundness of her ass and shoved her forward.

  Quickly, she crawled away from him. Through the darkened passageway, she felt the cold wall brush her hip. Yet she heard the cackling of that fire behind her consuming everything in its path to catch her. Her hand raised to turn the lever of the only door before her. Unhesitatingly, she crawled in.

  “Down,” he growled.

  She laid her body on the cold stone floor and tucked her arms at her sides. The lights went on, but they were a mere haze of black light making her feel like she had fallen from earth to hell. She heard the soft rustle of cloth as he disrobed.

  She could do nothing more than pant, her eyes closed, thinking only of what Cherry said of his talent and experience. Drawers opened and closed, the ingratiating creak of stainless steel and chains sang to her. And then she felt him near again. Standing over her only a moment before he descended to his knees, his body straddled over hers, flattening her into the floor, the heat of his sex between her shoulder blades enough to warm her.

  Without warning he pulled her arms away from her. The loops of arm cuffs slipped over her fingers and the leather wrapped all the way to her shoulders. Her wrists were held together by the cold metallic strength of stainless steel cleats, and then her elbows. He raised from the floor and yanked her with him, dragged her to stand under the chain hung from the ceiling. Rather than hitch her wrists to it, he attached it to her elbows, leaving her forearms to dangle behind her head in a typical stance of defense.

  She had forgotten to breathe. To feel the overwhelming strength he exuded left her powerless. She refused to open her eyes on it and let the spell be broken. He stuffed her ears with cotton. The last sight of him was obliterated by a length of black cloth wrapped around her upper arms and head allowing her to breath, allowing her to cry out and beg, but preventing her from knowing what would come next.

  Pain. It was a twisted kind of pain in the thrust of cane. It broke against the muscular flesh of the back of her thighs and thrust her forward. A sizzling pain, excruciating in its sharpness.

  He backed away. Didn’t feel like that at all tonight. So little response and he dropped it to the floor and went for a cracker.

  Yes, much better as he held to the grip and twitched, feeling the sensation of vibration in the fiberglass shaft. Much better. He struck out at the vinyl cover over the exam table. A lovely keerack was the reply. It made him think of a walnut crack under the blow of a sledge.

  She heard the sound o
f the whip and steadied herself. Why couldn’t he start with a flogger, that sweet little cracker merely the dessert after the entrée? But she steadied herself, ready to be thrown into boiling water, the meat roasted from her bones.

  She cried out to the feel of it, the continued stinging, the afterburn across her ribs.

  He only smiled to the see the thin red six-inch welt rise there. He struck out at her hip, one leg and then the other. Both calves and then both sides of her ass.

  Her moaning drove him on. Doggedly, he pursued her breasts, the generous fat of her mound. The flat of her stomach, again over her ribs until finally she did cry out, her chest heaving to sustain her. But it wasn’t words, it wasn’t human at all. It was only a guttural pleading, a voice so filled with longing and loneliness and he stilled the better to hear it. To let it into him as if the very angels sang alleluia on high and only he could hear it.

  The refrain of that song echoed out of her throat and reverberated as if this were a cathedral. Ah, this was it. For him, only this. His entire life had been wasted in the pursuit of something profane all the while this beckoned him. He had played at the game without becoming a participant, but this was it. He returned to the assortment of things he’d previously spread and grasped a phallus.

  Quietly he approached her, her soft sobs beginning to fade to quietude. His hand laid on the soft swell of flesh at the end of her spine soaking in the heat of the welts there, the thin red raisures burning with holy passion. Yet he didn’t linger, he wanted to be inside of her. He parted her only enough to find the entrance.

  Please, she begged silently, please, just do it. But it only dallied there, reticent to rend her, it seemed. When she needed to feel him, to be entered by him, he slowed as if in reverence for her.

  I want you, baby, he thought. Yet only a slow but steady insistence melted into her. She only sighed.

  Not good enough, huh?