Mercy

by Annabel Joseph

  When I came back to earth from the place I’d gone to, I saw him watching me, his lips curved in a satisfied smile. Then slowly, with his free hand, he undid first one clip and then the other, lowering his mouth to each nipple afterward, sucking away the sting. Then, only after that was accomplished, did he withdraw his fingers from inside me, and then held them to my lips and whispered, “Lick, until they’re clean.”

  I savored his powerful, thick fingers, marveled at how big they felt in my mouth. I licked my scent, my juices from him with earnest appreciation. I licked eagerly and thoroughly and delicately until he was satisfied, and then I waited to be told what he wanted from me next.

  But finally, for the first time all night, he had no words. All the guidelines had been laid down and he’d given me my tests. Now all he did for many long minutes was look down at me, stroking my thigh.

  “Little Lucy,” he said finally. “Beautiful girl. What do you think about this? Did you find it too difficult? Too scary?”

  “It was difficult and scary,” I answered. “But I liked it very much.”

  “So did I,” he said with a frown. And the frown, I wasn’t sure where that came from, but I didn’t care a second later, because he lowered his lips to mine and kissed me long and hard. His fingers, still damp from my lips and tongue, buried themselves in the hair at my nape and pressed into my scalp. I felt his chest against mine, his rock hard stomach against the arm at my side. I hadn’t been sure if he would kiss me, non-girlfriend that I was, but he kissed me as if he treasured and loved me, and for those long moments he kissed me, I let myself pretend he did.

  He kissed and nuzzled me for what seemed like ages, and then pressed his cheek against mine.

  Rough stubble across my jaw, soft breath against my ear.

  “Beautiful, beautiful Lucy,” he murmured, and I thought, here then, here is the joy.

  Chapter Five: Hands

  Finally he helped me up, and I gathered my clothes near the door. “Don’t bother to put them on,” he said. “You’ll sleep in the nude when you’re here.” He left his own clothes lying on the floor. I followed him up the two flights of stairs to his bedroom, both of us silent. What was there to say? I just stared the entire time at his awe-inspiring ass and thought that something like that was probably a punishable offense.

  He guided me into his bedroom. It contained a huge wrought iron bed and two nightstands and not much else. It was stark white and gunmetal grey, modern and formal and fastidiously clean. The bed was just as massive as I’d imagined it, and I looked at that bed for a long lascivious moment, pictured him fucking me on it. Then I turned and I froze stark still.

  On his wall were two large canvases. In the first, a girl stood casually, one hip turned out, her eyes downcast. In the second, she looked backwards over her shoulder, her hair falling down her curved back and heart shaped bottom. You could barely see her face, but I didn’t need to.

  Because the girl was me.

  It frightened me to death. I suppose it was the knowledge of what he’d paid to have them.

  The fact that they were in his bedroom where he slept. The fact that he had bought these paintings nearly a year ago. Everything, every word and action between us suddenly took on a twisted, stalkerish slant.

  He stood still and let me look, although he seemed less at ease. He stood between me and the door as if he feared I might bolt. He watched my face closely but didn’t say a word in explanation, as much as I suddenly felt I deserved an explanation of some kind.

  “So it was you who bought them.”

  “Yes, it was me.”

  “Did you...did you know they were me? All along?” I asked stupidly. As if this was all some great coincidence.

  He tilted his head, a patient smile. “Of course I did. You don’t pay that much for paintings and not get a tip about the model.”

  “Pietro told you who I was?” I asked incredulously.

  “And where to find you.”

  “So you...so you donated to the company...”

  “Because of you? I suppose. In a way. Does that bother you?”

  “It creeps me out a little bit, yes. He sold these paintings to you months ago. Last year.”

  “Yes, I know. I thought about taking them down so you wouldn’t know I had them. But I didn’t. Do you know why?”

  My voice trembled. “Because it wouldn’t have been truthful.”

  “Yes, Lucy, it wouldn’t have been the truth. The truth is that first I procured the paintings, and then, I decided to procure you. I’m a collector of beautiful things, and I find you so beautiful that I have to have you. I need you to be mine. I thought it might be enough to own paintings of you, but it wasn’t. And so here we are.”

  Yes, here we were, indeed. He watched me while I tried to still my beating heart, quiet the adrenaline roaring through my veins. Fight or flight? Why do either? He had already hurt me, and I’d liked it, and I knew he would do it again. So he had Pietro’s paintings...it was actually kind of flattering.

  “I’ve never seen them up close. The finished ones.”

  “Look all you like,” he said, nodding towards them. “Beautiful art is for looking at.” I sidled closer, looked up at the curves and lines of my body.

  “I wish I had a camera,” he said.

  I laughed softly. I was standing exactly as I was in the first painting, looking up at myself on canvas as if into a mirror. But then my eyes moved to the second painting, and I thought to myself, I don’t look like that anymore. Because in the painting my ass was white and unmarked, and now it had three vivid stripes across it that I could feel whenever I moved.

  “I’m glad they went to someone who appreciated them. Who wanted them,” I said when I finally looked away.

  His eyes flicked from the paintings back to me. “They’re certainly worth what I paid. And I’m grateful for what they resulted in.”

  “You mean...me?”

  He laughed, but the way he spoke kept me always off kilter. His compliments were delivered in the same cool, impersonal tone as his threats.

  “Yes, you, Lucy Merritt with two t’s. I’m grateful you’re finally here with me, and that you’re as submissive in real life as you are in those works.” My eyes flew back to the paintings. Submissive?

  “Don’t you see it?” he murmured. “Ah, well. I did. And I was right. Things went well for us the first time. You still feel they went well?”

  He wanted truth from me. He was checking one more time. My answer hadn’t changed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what about you, Lucy?” he asked. “What exactly do you get out of all this?”

  “Good sex,” I lied to him, even though he’d cautioned me so many times already to never, ever lie.

  His eyes roved over me, silent and appraising, looked at me standing naked in front of his naked paintings of me. All his valuable acquisitions in one place.

  “You know, they’re beautiful, Lucy, but nowhere near as beautiful as you. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, that you’d be so much more beautiful in real life. The first time I saw you by the stage door, I was too shocked to speak. Do you remember?”

  “You demand truth, but you’re feeding me lines.”

  “Not lines, believe me. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.” I looked at him then, looked at him watching me, and I remembered how he’d run his fingers over me downstairs when I’d first undressed.

  “So that’s what matters most to you? Truth, and owning beautiful things?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  I suddenly had a ghost of a memory, a high school lit class, a Greek picture on the cover of a report. “I think there’s some kind of poem about that. Beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that is all you need to know. Something like that. I studied it once.” I tried to remember the exact words of the poem, remember more about it, but he was staring at me with a look I didn’t understand.

  “Keats,” he said after a moment. “Lucy, it’s time fo
r bed.”

  * * *

  I followed him into his bathroom, which was just as grey and stark as his chamber of a room. The surfaces and fixtures were all spotless, and the towels hung from the towel racks folded perfectly as sculptures. I felt like I was in a museum, and I might have been. He certainly looked like a Greek god of a statue standing there beside me, and I stared at his reflection in the mirror as we brushed our teeth. He went through all the motions of a normal human, tooth brushing, flossing, taking a noisy piss with the door open wide. Then he pulled me into the shower with him, holding me by the arm and washing me perfunctorily, like I was a dirty window or a dish in the sink.

  When we got out, he handed me a towel and I dried myself, wondering at his sudden change of mood. He had gone from being warm and complimentary to being brusquely and puzzlingly cold. He took my towel away and pulled me into the bedroom, leading me straight to the bed. He had a condom in his hand that I hadn’t even seen him pick up, and he put it on with practiced finesse, using only one hand. With the other, he pushed me onto my stomach and held me there, bent over the bed. He used one of his legs to part my thighs, then placed his cock at my entrance and forced his way inside. I gasped, shocked, because it hurt, and I thought then that he wasn’t cold, he was angry.

  Was it my reaction to the paintings? That I’d accused him of feeding me lines? The poem I’d recited to him? He fucked me roughly, pounding me hard. My pussy ached, and I felt strangely detached from what had been for me, previously, a romantic act. Lovemaking. This wasn’t lovemaking, this was fucking, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. I’d never been with a man as large as Matthew, and I felt battered rather than sensuous. I lay still and pliant and I didn’t think of coming, not even once. No, the whole time he fucked me, I just stared at the paintings, and I thought, those paintings are beautiful, but this, what he’s doing to me, is not.

  I heard him grunt, felt the last thrust, felt him hold himself tense against my back. He pulled away as soon as his orgasm was over.

  “Up. Into bed,” he ordered, slapping me once on the ass. I crawled quickly onto the bed and moved to the side where he nudged me. He went to discard the condom and then got in on the other side. He pulled the covers up over us, turned his back to me and turned out the light, settling down with a sigh. The silence was deafening. I would have given anything just to hear him mutter goodnight. So that was the first time we had intercourse together. To say he’d made love to me would be a laughable deceit. He had used me, exactly as he’d told me he wanted to, and while I knew this was what I’d signed up for, I started to cry.

  After a moment, he turned the light back on. “What? What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I sniffled through tears.

  “I’m going to hang you from a hook and flay you alive next time you say ‘I don’t know’ to me.”

  “I’m confused!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t—” I stopped myself just in time.

  “You didn’t like what we did tonight?”

  “My ass hurts,” I finally said, and the welts did hurt a little, but that wasn’t really why I cried.

  He just watched for a long time in silence, just watched me cry as he had that night in his car, as if I was some kind of museum exhibit. What do we have here? This is fascinating.

  Intense.

  “Are you really hurt, Lucy? Or are you just ashamed? I thought you said you liked it.”

  “I did like it.”

  “So you cry then, when you like things?”

  “I’ve just never...felt anything like this. I don’t know how to feel about this. And I do feel a little ashamed about it all.”

  He was quiet for a long time, and then he sighed again.

  “Listen to me, Lucy, I’m not a big fan of shame. I know I’m kinky. I know I’m crass. But I’m not ashamed, and I don’t want you to be.”

  He lifted my chin, made me meet his eyes. One broad thumb swept the tears from one cheek and then the other as he spoke.

  “So you like to get roughed up, get fucked, get ordered around. So what? I like doing those things to you. So you being ashamed around me is both annoying and ridiculous. Just go to sleep, instead of lying there crying like an idiot.”

  “I’m not an idiot.” I tried to say it respectfully, but I guess I failed from the look on his face.

  “Listen to me,” he said, his fingers digging into my chin. “You’re whatever the fuck I say you are when you’re with me.” He turned away from me again. “You’ll learn,” he muttered, and turned off the light with a snap of his wrist.

  * * *

  When I woke the next morning, it was because his hand was jammed between my legs. His fingers spread me deftly to find my clit, and began to trace slow circles there. I was still groggy and achy from the night before. I pressed back against his front, half expecting him to shove me away. He didn’t though. He pulled me closer, molding his body to mine and nibbling on my neck.

  “Good morning, Lucy.”

  “Good morning.”

  “Do you want to fuck?”

  It was a rhetorical question since he was already sheathed and nudging his cock into my wet slit from behind. He drove in, holding my hips still, pulling me back against him. The whole time he never stopped the slow circles on my clit, slow rhythmic circles that made my thighs clench. I leaned my head back and he nuzzled me with his rough morning stubble. The sensation was overwhelming, and I feared he would stop what he was doing before I could come. I put my hand back on his thigh, and the other over his hand on my clit, but he made a disapproving sound and I took them away. He caught both my hands hard in one of his and held them trapped between my breasts, and the whole time, the slow circles never stopped. I felt like I was melting right into him, the delicious heat of him. The pleasure he was giving me crowded everything else from my mind.

  I moved back against him restlessly, never wanting the sensation to end. I could feel the sparks and tension building inside me. I wanted him to make me come, but knew very well he might choose not to. He kept on driving me, driving me to the very edge of that cliff. Finally I whimpered, a sound of entreaty, begging for release.

  “Yes, okay,” he said, driving deeper. “You can come.” The moment he breathed his words in my ear, his fingers found the very part of my center to trigger it, and so, that instant, I did. My walls contracted and I shuddered, pushing back against him, riding out the molten waves of pleasure. He grunted and bucked jerkily through his own orgasm just after mine. Our soft feral noises blended together in the silence of the morning, and his hot, strong hands didn’t let go of either part of me. He still kept my hands captured tightly in his left hand, and his right remained between my legs, possessively stroking my mound.

  “Little girl,” he said, “who taught you to come like that?”

  “I thought—you said—”

  “Yes, I said you could come. And you did. Jesus Christ.”

  “I’ve never come like I have...last night...and now...” I stammered, totally at a loss for words. Or more accurately, I was afraid to spill out words I shouldn’t say.

  “Well, I like it,” he said. He stretched beside me, warm and masculine. Hard muscles, soft, ticklish chest hair. I lay still in his arms shivering from aftershocks. I looked over at the paintings and unexpected tears came to my eyes. I’d actually had no intention of crying again. I was terribly embarrassed that I was, and steeled myself for another lecture. Where the tears came from now, I had no clue. I thought of all those nights before I’d met Matthew, when the tears wouldn’t come. But I couldn’t talk to him about that, I couldn’t explain that to him no matter how hard I tried.

  He turned me back to face him. Again, that look of detached curiosity.

  “I’m sorry. For crying again. I…I don’t know why. I can’t help it.”

  “You’re allowed to cry. It’s pretty common in relationships like this.” I brushed at the tears. “I guess it’s because I don’t know how to feel.” />
  “What do you mean, how to feel?”

  “I don’t know what I’m allowed to enjoy.”

  “You’re allowed to enjoy it all. I told you that yesterday.” I could barely meet his eyes. What I really wanted to ask was, am I allowed to fall for you?

  But I didn’t ask that, of course. I tried to turn off those feelings that I suspected were leaking out from my eyes in those undisciplined tears.

  “It’s always an adjustment in the beginning,” he said to me. “It will get less confusing. At least I hope so.” He kissed my forehead and, slowly, both of my eyes. “You can leave after breakfast,” he said, and got up and dressed and went downstairs.

  * * *

  My muscles protested as I climbed down from his Mount Everest of a bed. I took a quick shower, even though I wasn’t sure if it was allowed. I really felt the need to wash myself off. I needed to wash off all the depravity of the night and that morning if I would be expected to face him over breakfast.

  I was shocked at how my muscles ached, muscles I didn’t know I had. It had been so long since I’d felt aches like that, being a dancer. I maintained a relatively standard level of fitness.

  Matthew had somehow exercised muscles my body didn’t use in dance, or perhaps, exercised them beyond what they were accustomed to.

  As quickly as I could, I got ready and went down the stairs to the modern kitchen where Matthew was eating. Not just Matthew, but the driver too, whom he introduced as Davis.

  Another woman, Mrs. Kemp, bustled around serving everyone. I soon learned that Mrs. Kemp cooked for Matthew and kept his house, while Davis ran his errands and was his “jack of all trades.” I also discovered later that these two people knew everything about his proclivities, but that morning, I only wondered, and felt humiliated as I took a seat at the table. Mrs. Kemp brought me piles of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Matthew looked at my plate over his paper and snorted.

  “Mrs. Kemp,” he said. “Lucy is a dancer, not a farmhand,” to which she laughed. And yes, I could eat probably a fourth of what was on the plate, although Davis and Matthew ate twice my serving and more. I guess it took a lot of energy to fuck the way he did. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, so I guess he burned it all.