Master of Desire

by Multiple

  Mistresses were for slutty excitement, but wives were pure, surrounded by the hum of harps and cherubs. Any children came from Immaculate Conception, delivered by stork on snowy nights.

  Every time I imagined 7 and ½ minute missionary with Michael Gregory for the rest of my life, I started to hyperventilate. I’d feel my lungs constrict and as oxygen wore thin, my vision would swim and I’d go light headed and sick to my stomach. I cared about Michael, but Alston women didn’t love. We didn’t know how and anyway, that sort of thing showed too much weakness, too much passion. It wasn’t conservative enough for the Alstons. Love was made for fiction and poor people.

  And I’d locked my heart away a long time ago.

  That didn’t mean I didn’t want to have my hair pulled. Far from it. It only made my hunger worse. It made me a little foolish and weak-headed, so I wrote that ad for the Midtown Edge under Women Seeking Men as a way to keep breathing.

  I received about twenty responses in three days, all from men who were either too forward, scary, or weird. I read through them and ultimately knew I had no intention of answering them. I just wanted to know I had options.

  Then he responded.

  Unlike all the other men who wanted to teach me to submit, he begged me to take my ad down. He worried about the kind of monsters who preyed on women who didn’t know how to find legitimately good men who’d play Dom for them in the bedroom.

  He told me I deserved better.

  That was supposed to be the extent of our correspondence, but somehow in the span of three weeks, we managed to exchange an email or two or a dozen a day. He wouldn’t let me tell him my name. Instead he called me Jane and pointed out that even if I thought he was nice, I didn’t know him and shouldn’t trust him.

  So I became his Jane.

  Then when emails weren’t enough, we started texting.

  After dinner with my parents where my mother berated my job/apartment/body and my father ignored me, I went home in tears and compulsively called him…just to hear his voice once. Just once.

  Oliver. His name was Oliver. He sounded like dark coffee and late nights and cigars and we talked until four in the morning. We talked and turned each other on and made each other moan and beg and since he whispered Jane, Jane, Jane, I could pretend there was nothing wrong with what we’d done. I hadn’t broken any promises to Michael. Avery Alston was a good girl.

  Jane…she liked it rough.

  Oliver had money, a good job in South River, and though he often went to expensive restaurants for dinner, he preferred the Gyro cart outside his condo building to any other chef. He liked to watch movies in his underwear and he rarely dated the same girl twice. He never seemed to be in short supply of lovers, either. I imagined he was a playboy, rich and young and handsome. He liked women, but I pretended he liked me best. Even if we’d never met.

  And he was a member of the local BDSM community, which I knew existed because I read Midtown Edge’s personals section like they were my very own Harlequin romances. I worked in a bookstore, my imagination was limitless when it came to lives I’d never live. Oliver gave me a way to be a part of the festivities without having to step foot outside my bedroom door. He descried it to me in graphic, beautiful detail and I lived vicariously through his playdates. Not a player, but almost.

  So it wasn’t surprising when my phone buzzed at a quarter to eleven after my lunch with my mother and sister followed by a very long day on my feet at the bookstore. I knew he’d had a date that night and would be eager to tell me all about it.

  “Oliver.” I pressed the phone to my ear as I stumbled into my apartment, simultaneously stripping off my shoes and locking the door. “Are you spying me? I just got home. How did you know?”

  He laughed, that cool, smoky voice sending snakes of pleasure up my body. “Jane, if I were spying on you, I would not waste time with a phone call. I’d be at your door, begging to come inside.”

  “Oooh, innuendo. Nice. Someone is in a good mood. What was her name?” I dropped my bag on the couch and stripped on my way to my bedroom, leaving a trail of clothes on the way. Michael would have had a heart attack. Him being gone for four days made it so much easier to be myself, slob and all.

  “Angela. She’s a police officer, serving and protecting and serving again.” I heard him open his fridge and rustle around inside. “She played herself and I played the role of the bad guy, a young revolutionary involved in local protests and vandalism against the one percenters. We’d learned an undercover cop had infiltrated our group and it was my job to get a name from her. She held out for two hours. It was extraordinary.”

  “Oliver, you’re a one percenter.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m also not a pirate captain or harem lord or devious doctor and yet I have props for all three. I am a talented thespian, what can I say.”

  I tried to imagine him, tall and muscular, donning an eye patch and whip and I both wanted to giggle and whimper. I shook my head and took down my pony tail. “Was the sex extraordinary too?”

  “Ah, we didn’t have sex. I got her off and then sent her on her way. I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “That is tragic.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Was she beautiful?” I slumped into my desk chair and stared at myself in the mirror hanging above it. I wondered, for the thousandth time, if Oliver would want me if we met on the street. Probably not, and that was the ugly truth of it. But it didn’t matter, he was my friend now.

  “Yes, very.”

  I smiled and stabbed the twinge of jealousy that bloomed where my heart used to live. It was a little torturous, these details sometimes. But it was hard to stay too jealous when I was his phone call before bed nearly every night. I got him at his best, tired and happy and normal.

  And, there was Michael. Gargoyle Michael. I would never disrespect you Michael. 7 and ½ minute Michael.

  “How’d you finally get the traitor’s name?”

  “Sensory deprivation and a riding crop. By that point I think she would have sold out her own mother if she had to. I’d make a great spy.” He sighed dramatically. “My natural talents are lost on the corporate world.”

  We were quiet as I drew my knees up to my chest. He moved from his kitchen to his hallway to his living room, the only sound the shuffling of mail and a faraway crooning of some romantic, somber music he had on in his bedroom.

  I set my chin on my knees and picked at a corner of pink toenail polish that had chipped. “How did you know I wanted to talk to you tonight?”

  “I just knew you needed me. It’s my superpower. Also you had lunch with your mother. You always come home sounding like you’ve been to war after you’ve faced her.” He made a soft, hungry noise. “I thought you might like to play with me.”

  My silent heart tripped over itself to start beating for him. I sat up straight. “Yes, please.”

  “Yes…?”

  “Yes, sir,” I corrected and bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. “Yes, sir. Please, sir. Please, please, please. Tell me a story.”

  Oliver chuckled and I could hear him ease himself into his leather chair and settle back. I pictured him shirtless, pants unbuttoned and loose on his sculpted hips. I imagined his knees parted, his right hand settled onto his lower abdomen. I could scarcely breathe, the image was so powerful. So familiar.

  “Do you have a marker handy?”

  “In fact I do.” I plucked a Sharpie from dish on my desk and pulled the cap off with my teeth.

  “Spread your knees. Write my name on your inner thigh. Nice and big.”

  “Like you?” I teased and he snorted derisively.

  “Brat. Sarcasm is the fastest way to get pulled into my lap and taught a very good lesson.”

  “Your hand will be very sore, I think.”

  “So will your ass, so we’ll be even. Have you finished? Am I branded on your skin yet?”

  I drug my tongue across my lips, biting it gently as I wrote each letter reverently. I made
the script pretty cursive, dotting the ‘i’ with a heart.

  “There you are. Now what can I do for you, sir?”

  “Take a picture. Send it to me.”

  Oliver had never asked for a picture of my face, but I’d sent him other body parts, pretty poses and some slick with sweat and dangerously provocative. I still wore panties and the picture barely caught their pink and white polka dots. It wasn’t a scandalous picture, but there was something greedy about his name stark against my skin, surrounded by pale freckles. I hit send and waited.

  He responded with a hitch to his breathing and a murmur of approval. “What would Michael say if he saw another man’s name on your body?”

  “He’ll never notice. He doesn’t like to have the lights on when we’re naked.”

  “I really hate that guy. He has no idea what he’s missing.”

  “Technically, neither do you.”

  Oliver was quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled. “Get on the bed. Knees up.”

  I obeyed, settled into my pillows, and bent my knees. “You wouldn’t want the lights on either.”

  “I know what I crave, Jane. I know I’d want to leave traces of my name all over your body. I know I’d want to see everywhere I’d touched. Every inch I’d claimed.”

  With those words, I slipped my fingertips below the waistband of my underwear. If only he could feel what his voice did to me. How could this stranger have such profound power over me? I sighed and sunk deeper into my pillows. His breath was so close, so heavy, that I could almost imagine him here, leaning above me.

  Maybe that was part of it, that I would never have to deal with the reality of him, or him with me, and that made it easy to feel excited. I couldn’t disappoint him. He couldn’t disappoint me. It was a perfect relationship. Kind of.

  “You’ve started without me,” he warned. “I can hear it in your gasps. I could listen to you touch yourself every night.”

  “I would let you in, if you asked.”

  A rumble of pleasure escaped his usual cool. “Temptress. I’m trying to do the right thing. You make it so difficult when you say shit like that.”

  I moaned softly, slid my fingers where he ought to have been touching me, spreading me, stroking me. I curled my toes into the blanket and listened to him exhale against my ear. He whispered my name and I knew he was touching himself too.

  This was our game. This was as much pleasure as he’d let us have.

  “Oliver…” I slid my fingertips inside, waiting for his murmur of approval before pushing further in. It should have been him on top of me. It should have been his fingers.

  Should have, would have, could have. Dreams almost as good as the real thing.

  “I’d like to tie you down, princess. Your wrists and your ankles. Tight so there’s no give, no forgiving slack. Your knees bent, just like you have now, but with your thigh and ankle tied together so you can’t lower them. You’d look fantastic restrained to my bed, spread open. Blind folded.” His breath caught sharply and he moaned Jane like a prayer only he knew the words to. “Gagged. You wouldn’t appreciate me easing you into the role as my submissive sweetheart. You’d want it immediate. Colorful. Unapologetic. I’d touch you until you were struggling to free yourself, struggling for release.”

  I gulped and arched back into the mattress. Something about the heaviness of his words that brooked no objection made it feel like my ankles were secured to my thighs, that I was already restrained. Phantom bondage, I didn’t even try to test them. Real. Not real. When he breathed my name and insisted I was his, it didn’t matter.

  “I’d be gentle,” he rumbled. “And soft and loving as I brought you to climax. And when you were sweating and begging against your gag, just on the very edge of your pleasure, that’s when I’d take a flogger to your inner thighs where my name was branded. A stingy flogger, thick and noisy against your soft skin. You wouldn’t be able to tell if you were going to come or if you were screaming in pain. You wouldn’t know if I was about to strike you or stroke you until I was upon you. I’d repeat one after the other until you couldn’t tell the difference anymore anyway. You’d come from my flogger, during the pain. You’d forget my title and come screaming my name into your gag, messy and sticky and completely unrestrained.”

  “Ah--ah--Oliver.” I clenched my teeth and dug my free hand into my thigh where his name was written on my skin. I spread my thighs open, scratching at the letters, feeling them sear right through me. My hips met my fingers, stroking with each of his panting promises. My body tightened, warning I was almost there.

  The dirty sounds of his own pleasure echoed a dozen or a hundred miles over phone lines, gasping moans zooming through the air from one receiver to another. He swore. I begged.

  “Jane, dammit, Jane. I’m coming, baby…I’m coming…” There was so much panting, growling, swearing. A thousand thick, hungry noises.

  He came, gasping in the darkness of his apartment. I followed seconds later, pushed over the edge by his whispering my name over and over like he could summon me to his arms if he begged hard enough. My thighs shook as tremors of pleasure radiated out from my fingertips where I pressed my clit on and on in rhythm with his pants. The phone fell aside as I let out a shout, his name jumbled with my pleasure.

  Everything quieted. The tremors kept going, slower but constant, causing my slick sex to contract, my toes to curl and uncurl. I felt dizzy with pleasure, dizzy with longing.

  The light from my bedside table sent shadows over my rumpled blanket. My hands shook. My thighs shook. I swallowed and scrambled to put my thoughts together. It took a second to realize he was saying my name.

  I found my phone half buried under my pillow. “Sorry, I dropped you.”

  “Hazards of long distance pleasure. You ok?”

  “Yes.” I gulped. “You?”

  “Mmm. Oh yes. It was well worth the wait.”

  The cop. He could have slept with her, but he’d hadn’t. “You waited for me.”

  His voice dismissed with a casual little grunt. “Maybe I did.”

  “You did,” I said softly. “You’re not as cool as you think you are.”

  “I am more cool, in fact. I try to downplay it with you so you don’t think I’m self-absorbed.”

  I laughed and eased my tired legs down onto the bed. I stretched out and wondered what it would be like to cuddle up against him. We had the pillow talk down, though.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time as he dozed lazily. I don’t know what came over me when I whispered. “My mother thinks Michael is going to propose soon.”

  “Really.” Oliver exhaled rudely. “What are you going to say when he does?”

  “I don’t know.” I drew his name with my fingertip on my naked belly. I made the O swirl around my belly button. “My parents would like me to say yes.”

  “Your parents don’t have to sleep with him for the next fifty years.”

  “The good news is, I probably don’t have to sleep with him for the next fifty years either.”

  “Well, when you put it that way.”

  “We’re a good match.”

  “Now that’s romance, Jane.”

  I snorted softly, rolled onto my side, and drew my knees to my chest. “My family doesn’t need romance. It needs a good reputation.”

  “Don’t do it.” His voice lowered, darkened. His growl made my heart pound noisily against my rib cage. “God, Jane, don’t say yes. Please.”

  “I have to go,” I said quickly. “Sweet dreams Oliver.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. For too many long moments. I wanted to know what he was thinking, was afraid to know what he was thinking. The few times I’d asked to meet him, he’d said no. He’d told me I shouldn’t pick up strange men from the personals section who liked to tie their women up and spank them. It was hard to argue with him when he said it like that, but we’d been talking for months and though we knew almost nothing of each other, I knew his voice, his moods, the way he wanted wi
th his whole body. I could picture a map of his apartment, from his kitchen to his bed, filled in with little details he let slip, and all the places he’d come for me in the middle of the night. We knew each other better than I knew anyone else, even if we didn’t know each other at all.

  “Goodnight, Jane.” He said finally. “Remember whose name is written on your body.”

  That wicked little girl who never properly learned to hold her tongue whispered back.

  “Remember whose body you waited for tonight.”

  Three

  Michael came home on Tuesday. I didn’t see him until he picked me up for dinner with my parents, but he sent me several nice text messages telling me he missed me. When I came downstairs, he met me at the door with an umbrella, kissed my cheek, told me I looked nice, and helped me into his car. I wore a beige dress, a present from my mother. If I’d had it my way, it would have been purple. Except purple would have made my mother crazy so beige it was. Oliver would have been disappointed in me.

  And the whole time, as we rode towards my parent’s golf course adjacent house, as Michael told me all about New York and the law firms he’d talked to and the boring dinners he’d attended, I kept checking my phone.

  Because since Saturday night, Oliver hadn’t returned a single text. He hadn’t called or emailed and I was far too nervous to call him. It hadn’t felt extraordinary, what happened that night, but it must have been for him to go radio silent on me. It was at least the first time he’d ever waited to get off for me. Maybe it scared him. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it to his attention. Maybe…

  Had it been the idea of Michael proposing?

  I squeezed my thighs and tried not to think about the name still written there. I was a little embarrassed…I couldn’t stop rewriting it after every shower. I didn’t want to wash it away.