Mr. North

by Callie Hart

  I haven’t even finished speaking before he’s ripping my pants fully from my body. Tearing the open shirt from me. Yanking down my panties and lifting each of my legs in order to hurl them across the anteroom. I slap my palms against the glass as he pushes himself inside me. I’ve never felt this before—so full, so turned on, so swept away and complete. Raphael North, the most beautiful man in New York City, the most elusive man to ever grace the cover of a magazine, is inside me. Not just inside me. He’s claiming me, owning me, demanding everything of me with each and every single thrust of his cock.

  I’m lost. I’m lost to myself, and to him. There’s only pleasure… and it feels like it’s pouring into me, taking me over, showing me heights of madness I never knew existed.

  My breasts crush up against the glass, and the beat and thrum of a helicopter sounds way off in the distance, the throb and thrum of its blades barely audible. I hear nothing but the pull and push of Raphael’s breathing. I feel nothing but his dizzying touch.

  “Are you ready to come for me now, Beth?” he rasps into my ear. “Are you ready to give me what I’ve been waiting for ever since I saw that photo?”

  “Shit. Yes, fuck, I’m going to come!” With every deep thrust of his cock inside me, I can feel it mounting: that terrifying fall. Le petit mort. The little death. Except this orgasm won’t be comparable to a little death. It’ll be a monstrous death. It’s going to be skydiving and my chute not opening. It’s going to be deep sea diving and my tank running out of oxygen.

  It’s going to be…

  It’s going to be…

  It’s going to…

  It’s…

  “Oh my god! Raph! Raph! Fuck, I’m coming. I’m coming!”

  His arm closes around my chest, pulling me back to him, holding me against his body as he holds me while I come. “I know. I know. I feel it,” he whispers. “I can feel your pussy tightening around my dick, baby. Come for me hard now. Fucking come all over me.”

  So I do.

  Nine

  Beth

  T he day my father died , I was in Los Angeles visiting a friend. Specifically, I was in Long Beach at an aquarium. I was hurrying through the exhibits because I’d skipped breakfast and I was starving, trying to reach the cafeteria as quickly as possible, when my cell phone started ringing in my bag. I was going to ignore the call, but Sarah, a friend from high school who’d moved out to California to do the whole wannabe actress thing, told me I should get it. When I saw it was David, I nearly threw the phone back into my bag all over again, but Sarah had insisted. I picked up, and I received the news from my brother that would change my life forever. I remember how blue the water inside the tanks was. How lazily the fish swam from one side of the glass to the other. The quick flashes of silver from the more energetic, tiny fish that swarmed in great balls closer to the surface of the tanks. The aquarium smelled of cleaning products and pretzels. That dry, chemical, paper smell from printed leaflets, and the overpowering saccharine smell of ice cream. I remember staring at Sarah, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes fading as she slowly stopped smiling, realizing that something was wrong. I recall every last detail with a kind of precision that only comes during a momentous event. I’ve had so few moments like that in my life, but as I head home back to my apartment, the subway rocking me from side to side, I know this will be one of them.

  The sharp, floral smell of perfume the woman next to me is wearing. The sound of the tinny music escaping a guy’s headphones on the other side of the carriage. The heavy, weightiness that has settled into my bones, deep down, and the ache that seems to be throbbing everywhere along with it.

  Today, I slept with a man I’ve fantasized about for years, and it was mag-fucking-nificent. He’s so very different to the party boy Lothario I daydreamed about years ago. He’s mysterious, and he’s private. So serious and demanding. I close my eyes, losing myself in the memories of his hands on my body, and I can’t cope anymore. I feel like I’m on fire, so ridiculously turned on that I almost have to get off the line three stops early so I can walk the rest of the way home to clear my head.

  I shut my eyes, let my head lean back against the wall of the carriage, and I do my best to zone out instead. These memories are better saved for when I’m alone, when at least ten people aren’t looking at me, wondering why I’m so red in the face and I can’t stop fidgeting.

  My phone starts blowing up the moment I get service. Text after text from Thalia come flooding in, mixed in with a couple from David, but I don’t read them. I’m too utterly blissed out and in my own little world right now, and David’s weird band messages coupled with Thalia’s one million questions about Raph are too much for me to worry about right now. I just don’t want to ruin my good mood, and it’s guaranteed to happen the moment I start reading. I arrive home, I make myself a coffee, and I sit myself down on the couch with my text books, ready for a night of studying.

  An hour zips by and then another. Just before eleven, a loud hammering rings out inside my apartment, and my brother’s voice makes its way through the door, scaring the shit out of me.

  “Beth. Beth, open the damn door. We need to talk.”

  I almost trip over my own feet in my haste to get to the door. I fling it open, glaring at David, hissing at him. “Shut up! What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you trying to kick my door down in the middle of the night? Damn it, David, just shut up already. You’re gonna piss off the neighbors.”

  My brother braces himself against the doorjamb, leaning his body into the apartment. “I don’t give a shit about pissing off your neighbors, Beth. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “Have you been drinking?” I fire back. His eyes are bleary and bloodshot, and there are dark circles beneath them. He gives me a tired sideways look, pushing past me into the apartment.

  “No. I’m hung over. There’s a difference.”

  “Wow. Mom would be so stoked to see you right now,” I quip, swinging the door closed. “Her only son, reeking of stale whiskey and hollering at people in hallways.”

  David slaps both hands against his chest in mock horror. He grins, laughing under his breath. “Me? You think she’s ever going to give me shit again after what she’s probably seeing of you on the news right now?”

  “The news? What are you talking about?”

  David slumps down into the armchair, picking up what remains of a half eaten sandwich I made earlier, stuffing it into his mouth. “Oh, this is priceless,” he says around his mouthful. “You’re so fucking oblivious. Turn on the TV.”

  A jolt of panic fires through me. He sounds so confident. So smug. He knows something. Something about me, and he’s enjoying this way too much. I flick on the TV, bracing myself.

  “Pick a news channel. Any news channel,” David says breezily.

  I scroll until I find one. The female anchor on the screen is reporting on a shooting that’s taken place in Brooklyn. David scowls, obviously upset that the woman reading from the teleprompter isn’t talking, for some reason, about me. He doesn’t need to sulk for long, though. The next image that scrolls up on the top right hand side of the screen is of me. Naked. My breasts blurred out. Hands planted against a pane of glass, a look of pure ecstasy on my face as Raphael North kisses and bites at my neck from behind. My body jolts and my mouth opens, my eyes shuttering closed, and it’s obvious from the movement that Raphael has just thrust himself inside me. I remember the moment vividly. It felt like my brain was melting out of my ears. I’ve never seen my face during sex, though. I never knew I’d look like…that .

  I sink down, aiming for the edge of the couch and missing altogether, my ass hitting the rug instead. “Oh…no. What the fuck? No . No, no, no.”

  “Oh, yes ,” David counters. He points at the TV, chewing. “If you keep watching for another minute or so, they actually show that part. You were nodding a lot. I’m no good at lip reading, but they had an expert on one of the other channels who was. They said yes was the
only word that came from your mouth for about twelve minutes. They said the stuff that came after that couldn’t be repeated on national television.”

  “What the…fuck? How ? How did this happen?” The video clip is still playing in the top right corner, even though it’s obvious Raphael and I are having sex. Intermittently, our bodies will be blurred out as we shift around, to avoid showing anything too graphic, but the movement alone, the expressions on our faces, the sweat on our skin…it all tells a very damning tale.

  The news anchor is talking, one eyebrow arched coquettishly, a smirk at the corners of her mouth, but I don’t hear a word she says. My ears are filled with a high-pitched buzzing sound that seems to go on and on forever, rising in frequency, until it sounds like goddamn screaming. I can’t understand…

  We were in his fucking penthouse! That’s, what, the seventy-third floor? The Osiris Building looms over every other structure for a mile in every direction. How could anyone have captured a photo of us, let alone fucking video ?

  David says something. Laughs. He flicks the channel over to another news show, this time some shitty, cheesy entertainment type show that sensationalizes absolutely everything, and boy are they going to town. Four people sit at desks, two on either side of a large screen. They keep pausing the video at intervals and zooming in on either Raphael or me. Thankfully they seem mostly interested in Raphael, though they point out my birthmark on my collarbone, and they say something unfriendly about my ass when Raphael shoves me up against the glass so my butt cheeks are crushed up against the window.

  “Ohhhh. Sorry, little sister. That’s gotta sting.” David gets up from the couch, rubbing at his temple. “Hey, do you have any Tylenol? This headache is getting out of control.”

  I don’t breathe a word. I don’t breathe a goddamn thing.

  My career is over. It’s over before it’s begun. A sex tape scandal before I’ve even taken the bar, for crying out loud. A small, hopeful voice whispers in my ear: Maybe they don’t know who you are. Maybe no one will recognize you. I’m not even done forming the thought when my driver’s license flashes up on the screen, my address blurred out. My name and date of birth are there for all to see though, plain as day. My fucking driver’s license? How the hell did they get a picture of my license? Lord, I’ve been meaning to change that picture for years now. The photo looks like a mug shot; my eyes are wide, like I was caught off guard, and my head is cocked at a weird, barely noticeable angle that makes me look like I’m struggling to answer a question.

  “Not doing you any favors, huh?” David quips. The guy sitting on the right of the television screen is making fun of my tousled hair. He uses a laser pointer to highlight my birthmark again, as another still shot from the damning video takes over the whole screen.

  “…just weird . Really weird. I’ve never seen a more unattractive birthmark on a human being before. It looks like a huge ink spot.”

  The woman at the other desk titters. She takes a drink from a coffee mug, crinkling her nose as she cranes her neck to look up at the giant screen behind her. “I always thought the next woman to capture Raphael North’s attention would be a little…blonder .”

  The guy with the laser pointer laughs. “That why you’ve been bleaching your hair all these years, Melissa? You’re hoping to make an impression?”

  Melissa pokes out her tongue at him. “Screw you, Kyle. I met North once at a charity event. He complimented me on my dress.”

  “He didn’t rip if from your body, spin you around, bend you over and fuck you seven ways from Sunday against a ten foot high pane of glass, though, did he?” one of the other guys says.

  “He fucked me with his eyes ,” Melissa retorts.

  “And you’ve been fingering yourself every night to the memory ever since, I’m sure.”

  David’s face crumples into confusion. “Man, what kind of news show is this?”

  “All I’m saying,” Melissa adds. “Is that every single woman Raphael North has slept with in the past has been a blonde. He’s obviously trying something new on for size, but let me tell you…” She flips her hair over her shoulder dramatically. “A man’s future actions can only be predicted by those of his past. And a tall, willowy brunette law student is no supermodel. This Elizabeth girl doesn’t know the first thing about surviving in Raphael North’s world. She’s gonna realize very quickly that she’s out of her depth.”

  “So, as ever Melissa has made her feelings known straight out of the gate,” Kyle observes. “You’re saying you think Elizabeth Dreymon is now a little fish in a very large pond? That it’s sink or swim for her from here on out?”

  “Oh, no.” Melissa shakes her head as she takes a swig of coffee. “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. There is no sink or swim for this poor girl. She. Is. Going. To. Drown . She’s going to publically drown in the most humiliating way possible. There’s no lifeguard on duty to pull her out of this particular shark tank.”

  *

  I turn my cell phone off and I put it in the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. I’m not sure why I choose the cutlery drawer, but it makes me feel a little less anxious when it’s shut away and I can’t see it. The damn thing started blowing up the second I turned off the television and told David he had to leave. He hadn’t wanted to go at all.

  “You’re going to need help screening all the offers, little sister.”

  “What offers?”

  “For your story. That’s how a kiss-and-tell works, Beth. Damn, don’t you know anything about the media? This is precisely why you need me as your manager.”

  “I know how a kiss-and-tell works, you moron. If you think I want to sell my story, have my face plastered all over the internet and the television even more than it is now, you might as well get the hell out of my apartment right now. ”

  He’d sulked off, drinking a soda from my fridge, but not before a parting shot across the bow. “I don’t care what they say, Bee. I don’t think you need an ass lift. Maybe just do some squats or something.”

  Now it’s four in the morning, and I can’t sleep. I’ve taken a Valium and even resorted to chugging Nyquil straight out of the bottle, but I still can’t pass out. My phone is screaming at me from the cutlery drawer. Screaming . It’s turned off, but I can still somehow hear the notifications and the ring tone blowing up, countless people messaging and leaving voicemails, all of them asking, did I see the news? Was that really me fucking Raphael North against the window of a Manhattan high rise? What’s he like? How did I meet him? Am I going to see him again? And, of course, the inevitable, incessant calls from the media. David was right; they’re going to be unbearable. If they managed to find a copy of my driver’s license somehow, then obtaining my cell number would be a piece of cake for them. They’re relentless when it comes to anything Raphael North related, and they haven’t had anything good on him in years. They’ve been left picking over the bones of brief shots taken of him on the roof of the Osiris Building or hearsay from office cleaners and old family friends who haven’t really seen him in over a decade. And now this? Him screwing a woman up against a window? They’re going to have a field day and no mistake.

  At five-thirty, I tear the sheets back from my bed, unable to take it anymore. I’ve never been one to bury my head in the sand. It doesn’t get you anywhere, and oftentimes the longer you leave something to fester, the worse the situation becomes. Nothing I do can possibly make this situation worse, and I need to know. I need to know if Professor Dalziel has seen one of his students on the news and has already emailed her, telling her she must report to his office in the morning to discuss the matter. My hands are shaking violently as I rip the cutlery drawer straight out of the cabinet and dump it on the counter, fumbling as I pick up my phone and turn it on.

  At first: nothing.

  The blue screen lights up, a bright, cheery tone chiming out of the speakers, signaling the device is awake and functioning. I place it down on the counter, my hands braced against the wood, and I stare a
t it, waiting. Only three seconds pass before the onslaught begins. Thalia. My mother. David. A number I don’t recognize. Another unknown number. Thalia. Thalia. Thalia. Mom. A slew of missed calls from too many different people to even try and catch the numbers. And then: Raphael North.

  I open up the text app, and I almost burst into tears as I scroll down the long list of new messages. There must be at least ten or fifteen between the newest of them and the message from Raphael. My ears fill with the sound of my blood rushing around my body as I hit the small blue circle next to his name.

  R aphael : This is bad. Call me. Better yet, let me send Nate to get you.

  T hat’s not the only message from him. The very first—he must have sent it before he saw the news—has my head spinning, reaching for a chair at my small table, needing to sit down.

  R aphael : There’ll come a day when you see me the same way I see you, Beth. You’ll feel like your eyes are opening for the first time in many years. You’ll feel your heart stutter and slowly reawaken inside your chest. You’ll realize you’ve been asleep at the wheel for so long that you no longer know which direction you’re driving in. When you get to that point, you’ll realize that nothing and no one can come between us. No one can stop us from being magnificent if we refuse to let them. Trust me. Believe me. Give me a chance.

  T hirty minutes later he’s obviously seen the video footage of us online or on the giant flat screen in the penthouse living room and he’s started to freak out.

  R aphael : Beth, don’t panic but you need to call me ASAP.

  R aphael : Don’t answer your phone to anyone you don’t know, Beth. We were recorded earlier. Some footage has been leaked to the news. I’m getting it shut down right now, but it’s pretty damaging.

  R aphael : Answer your phone, Beth.