Mercy

by Annabel Joseph

  I’m happy to share.

  But no, that wasn’t what happened. Dr. Rob looked over the x-rays and assured me it was only an acute sprain. He was so kind and businesslike, and seemed so trustworthy, I almost asked him for help with my other burgeoning aches and pains. But in the end I stayed silent and just nodded my head and accepted his instructions for resting and healing my leg. He taped up my ankle and gave me some medicine, which Matthew handed back to him.

  “This is too powerful,” he said. “She’s too little for this.” The doctor nodded and handed Matthew a weaker prescription, and told him if I had too much pain, to call him back.

  “She handles pain pretty well,” he said with a perfectly straight face. I just looked at my feet, flushing hot, and wished he would hold me close again.

  After that, he took me back to my apartment. He let me limp for a while, then picked me up.

  He carried me up all the stairs, and I thought to myself that there was no elevator. He thought it too, and said I would come and stay at his house. He said it just like that, that I would, not Would you like to? or If you want...

  “Just for a while, until your ankle is better. Rob said if you rested well, you’ll be mobile again in a week.”

  He’d also told me no dancing for at least two weeks, and then only a limited amount. I felt my entire career slipping away, and my entire life.

  I sat and let Matthew pack my things for me, and we left shortly afterward for his place. On the way over, he held my hand and reassured me.

  “I just want you to have a safe place to heal. I have no expectations from you.” He was quiet a moment. “Not that I haven’t missed you, Lucy. I’ve missed you a lot.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.” I thought he might ask me then why I’d gone away from him. Or maybe he knew. Knew that it was, between us, an issue of truth. Now he was taking me to stay at his house, but not to play. Did I want to play? Oh, God, yes I did. I wanted him to want me, to take me, even broken as I was. But I just said, “Thanks for that doctor, he was really nice.”

  “An old college friend. Someone I trust. I think dancers need good doctors for all that wear and tear.”

  Oh, you don’t even know, I thought.

  Then he asked me point blank, “Are you dancing with pain, Lucy? Every night?” Of course he knew. He knew my body inside and out. I played dumb. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve just noticed at the shows that your dancing is changing.”

  “How often are you coming to the shows?”

  “Enough to notice a difference. And I’m more than a little worried about you.”

  “My dancing looks that bad?”

  “To the average person, I’m sure you look fine. I probably study your body more carefully than the average person might.”

  It kind of felt good to know that, that he’d missed me so much he’d sat out in the audience to watch me. “I’m fine, Matthew,” I said with fake conviction.

  “Tell me the truth please, so I can help you.” Help me how? I wanted to ask. Maybe money truly could buy everything. Maybe he could buy my youth and my body back. If anyone could do it, it was him. “What are your plans for when you’re finished dancing?” He discussed it so easily, the end of my career. I chose sarcasm, because otherwise I’d have burst into tears. “Plans? What are these ‘plans’ you speak of?”

  “I’m serious, Lucy. What will you do when you’re finished?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it makes me depressed.”

  “It’s something you’re going to have to face eventually.”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t know what this feels like. When I have to stop dancing, it’s all over for me!”

  “All over? Lucy, how long have you been dancing? Twenty-five years? There’s more to life.

  You’re what? Not even thirty years old. And you’re smart and you’re strong and you’re beautiful. I think you should start to make some plans.”

  “I don’t want to make plans. Anyway, why do you care?”

  “I care, Lucy. You know that I do.”

  This is how I spoke to him, the man I loved, the man I was certain loved me, who had roused an old college friend out of bed at ten o’clock at night just to take care of my ankle.

  “I’m so sorry, Matthew. I’m so sorry.” I started to weep. I was still weeping when we pulled up to his house, and still weeping as he helped me in the shower, and still weeping when he put one of his soft, luxurious shirts on me to sleep in.

  He set me up in a first floor guest room with the help of Mrs. Kemp. She clucked around me with exhalations of Poor dear! and Poor thing! I remembered with a pang of embarrassment how I was the last time she’d seen me, on my knees in the hallway, sucking off Matthew while he told her to burn my dress. Poor thing indeed. Of course that’s how she saw me. And here I was in his house again, as broken as I ever was. When Mrs. Kemp felt I was comfortable enough, she finally left us alone, and I thought, please, please, please. But he seemed reluctant to come anywhere near me. He gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead and a squeeze on my arm. I cried alone long into the night. He was so near and yet so far from me. Why had I left him? It was clear now he wouldn’t be taking me back.

  In the morning Mrs. Kemp brought me breakfast, and I didn’t see Matthew at all that day, or for three days after. He’d had a business trip to take. He came to see me when he arrived home on the third day, looking like a million bucks in his power suit and tie. If I could have, I would have crawled to him on my hands and knees and begged for sex. He took off his jacket and tie and loosened his collar, then sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked my calf.

  “Have you been resting, Lucy?”

  Please fuck me, Matthew. “Yes. I stayed in bed all day.”

  “Mrs. Kemp has been helping you out?” His voice was ridiculously tender.

  “Yes, she’s been wonderful.” Please, please, please, please.

  “Is there anything I can get for you?

  Yes, Matthew, you can get me some of those nipple clamps. Get that lube that makes me burn and use it to ease your cock into my ass. You can even get the cane for me if you want.

  “I’m fine. Really, I am. My ankle’s almost better.”

  “Did you have dinner yet? Will you come and have dinner with me?” He said it slowly, as if he wished he wasn’t saying it.

  “Of course. Yes, Matthew,” I said before he could take it back.

  We ate that night at his formal table, dined on lamb and asparagus and really good wine. We ate by candlelight, which felt really romantic, but he steered our conversation to practical things.

  I told him that Grégoire had been by to visit me, that other dancers were filling in for me for at least two weeks. He told me his orthopedist friend Dr. Rob would want to see me next Monday, and that he would come to the house. He asked me how the painkillers were working, and I told him they worked great and I barely needed them any more. I actually didn’t really need them at all for my ankle, but I kept taking them because they helped so much with all my other pains. I didn’t tell him that though. I didn’t want to discuss again my soon-to-be-over career and lack of plans, especially with someone as successful and confident as Matthew. I know he would have given me anything, any money or help I needed. He would have bought me a house, a car, whatever I desired. But I didn’t want him to think that was why I loved him, the way his wife and last girlfriend had loved him, only for the things his money bought.

  I looked up at him constantly from under my lashes, and again and again our needful eyes met. I wondered what would have to happen for him to take me back, to have things be as they were. I still had to be with him, even if he was determined not to love me. I knew that now, that I had to be with him either way. But I didn’t know how to broach that conversation especially when it seemed it was a subject he wanted to avoid.

  So instead I said, “You were right.
Byron and Frank came to see me. To ask me to be with them.”

  “I know,” he said, his face hard.

  “How did you know?”

  “Kevin told me.”

  “Oh.” Of course, Kevin had been there. Where? Somewhere. Close enough to help, close enough to stop me if I had made the wrong choice. “Was he there every night?”

  “Yes. Some nights I was there.”

  “I never saw him, or you.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  He only had to look at me to see how much I wanted him, to see the desire in my eyes. If he had looked at me then, I couldn’t have stopped myself. I would have pushed back my chair and knelt before him and laid my head in his lap like the most abject supplicant.

  “I would never have gone with them, Matthew.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. It wouldn’t have been a good situation for you.”

  “What would be a good situation for me?”

  His lips turned down a little at the edges and he chose not to reply. We finished our meal in tense and miserable silence.

  If he still loved me, he was really hiding it well.

  Chapter Twelve: Pain

  That night in bed, I let the tears come. If he wanted space between us, there would be space.

  It was he that controlled our relationship, and I didn’t dare ask to return to him for fear he would deny me outright. Lying there in his house, his spare room, his bed, the feel and scent of him was everywhere tormenting me. I sobbed myself to sleep remembering the many intimate and pleasurable hours we’d shared, and dreamed of having them again.

  I dreamed that the door opened and then closed, that I heard his measured footsteps crossing the floor. I dreamed that he pulled back the covers and climbed into the bed beside me, and then I woke with a start to find it was true. He was there beside me, real, not a dream, warm and stark naked, his cock hard like granite against my thigh. “Tell me to leave, Lucy,” he said.

  His hands fell on me, roving over my skin, warm and searching. His arms wrapped around me as if he just needed to feel me, convince himself that I was really there to be touched. I still had his shirt on that I slept in every night, just to have something of his close against my skin.

  Again he entreated me, “Tell me to leave. Please.”

  “No.” I trembled at the very thought of it. “No, please don’t leave. Please!” I clung to him, pressing my forehead to his chest.

  He pulled my face up to his and kissed me deeply while unbuttoning my shirt. He pushed it off my shoulders and down, then lowered his mouth to my taut nipples and teased them with his tongue.

  “Oh, God, Matthew...please...”

  I cried emotional tears as much as I moaned. My whole body felt electrified to be under his hands again. He made no sound, only kissed and loved me, running his mouth, his lips and tongue all over my skin. It was as if he wanted to memorize me with his taste buds, and his hands never once left the landscape of me. I thrust my hips against him as he caressed me. “Matthew, Matthew...”

  “Shh, hush. I’m here.”

  “Please. Please...” I didn’t know what else to say. He pulled away from me and I clutched at him, distraught, but he was back a scant moment later. He could put on a condom in record time.

  He put his arms around me, used his big hands to align my hips to his.

  “Am I hurting your ankle?”

  I think at that point I could have felt nothing, no pain or discomfort, with the measure of lust running through my veins. He thrust inside me, so slowly, rocking against me, stretching me so gradually it seemed to take a minute or more before he was fully seated inside. When he was, he buried his face in my neck and drew his hips back and thrust deep inside me again. He felt so perfect. He fit inside me so exactly, moved so expertly, the way he always had. My whole body thrummed with pleasure as he plowed in and out of me. Within moments, the arousal of every sense, every nerve converged into a shattering orgasm. I clung to him, shuddered and shook with the power of what I felt for him.

  He laughed against my ear, feeling my walls contract around him. “Little Lucy, you come as well as you ever did. Come again for me. Over and over.” I did too, before he was done with me. My world was reduced to a wonderland of presses and sighs, grasps and thrusts and Matthew’s lips on mine, and all over my body. How had I lived without him those many weeks? How could I ever live without him again?

  When I came for the last time, he came with me and fell over me, exhausted. He held me close and sighed. I clung to him, unwilling to let him go.

  “Lucy.” That was all he said for a long time.

  Then, “Lucy, I tried not to fall in love with you. I didn’t want to. It’s not what I planned.” He said it so sadly, so wretchedly, my heart ached for him.

  “Why is that so bad? To fall in love with me?”

  “Because if you leave me...if you leave me, I won’t survive it. Not you. Not this time.”

  “I won’t leave you. I won’t. Do you really love me? Please tell me, do you love me now?”

  “You know I’ve loved you for an eternity. And it’s hurt like hell, hurt much more than anything I’ve ever put you through.”

  I buried my face in his neck. “I love you too, Matthew. I want to be whatever you want. I want to make you happy.”

  He made a soft sound. “That’s what I’ve always wanted for you. When I saw you at the Gala

  —” His voice cut off and he buried his face against my ear. “When I saw you dance at the Gala, I had to leave. I told you I had a phone call, that I missed that party because of a call. But the truth is, I was outside in my car.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why did you leave?”

  “Because it was too much, how I felt. The desire I felt to possess you, the drive to make you mine. I would have given my entire fortune that night, all of it, just to hold you in my arms.”

  “But you’re holding me in your arms right now. For free.”

  “But then, I had no way to do that. You’d already blown off my tentative attempts to get closer to you. So I just sat in my car, insane with jealousy.”

  “Jealousy of who?”

  “Whoever was going to get you that wasn’t me. Whatever normal, vanilla man would get you and not know what treasure he had in his hands.”

  “Matthew,” I said after a long silence. “Did you really know right away, that I would want what you give me?”

  “Yes. I told you, I knew the moment I saw you. I knew before, when I saw those paintings.” He laughed. “Those paintings are obscene.”

  “They’re only obscene to you.”

  “High pornography. I don’t know how everyone else can’t see it, the submission in your pose.”

  “Maybe only you were meant to see it.”

  “Me and my wallet,” he snorted, and I laughed.

  I thought of the paintings, thought of myself posing for them, alive in the knowledge that I was being used. Used to make a painting, used for my body, used for the curves of my neck, hips, and ass. I had been Matthew’s submissive in my heart, in my mind, from the second I laid eyes on him, and now, at long last, I was in the hands of my match, the man who had known even from an image on canvas how badly I needed to be controlled.

  “Matthew, please don’t ever leave me. We belong together.”

  “I know.”

  “Promise you’ll never leave me. Please.”

  “I’m more worried about you leaving me. You’re young, you’re so beautiful. I’m an old man next to you. And you’ve already left me once.”

  “You’re what? Forty years old? With the libido of a teenage boy. I think you could outfuck an eighteen year old.”

  “Not forever. I won’t be able to do that forever.”

  “Oh, I think you will. Anyway, what about me? I’m decrepit. My joints are giving out and my career’s almost through.”

  “Retire then and be my concubine,” he teased. “Live to serve me, like Slave.” I made a retching sound. “No, I don’t t
hink so.”

  We lay in silence for a long while after our laughter died down, breathing in perfect cadence, our bodies entwined.

  “I won’t be any softer on you because I love you,” he said when he spoke again. “I’ll actually be harder over time.”

  I shivered with lust and excitement to hear that. Speechless with gratitude, I bit down on his neck. He drew his breath in and slapped my ass. “No biting, Lucy. I’ve told you that how many times now?”

  I hummed and ground against him, and he chuckled at my inability to find control.

  “I see some re-training will be in order, little girl. Making up for lost time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Yes, yes, yes.

  The next night he asked me if I was well enough to go with him to the basement.

  I told him yes, I absolutely was.

  * * *

  So that’s how I became Matthew’s girlfriend, in addition to being his submissive and slave.

  He still used the favored endearments, tramp and slut and whore, but he added some new ones too. Darling. Precious. My love.

  Soon after that night, he acquired Pietro’s third painting of me. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d had to pay to make it his. He only told me he’d wanted to own them all, and I hoped, I truly hoped Pietro hadn’t been too cruel in his price.

  We played down in the basement and our sessions were more fun than they’d ever been. The first night back at our games, I was beside myself with restlessness. He knew it and made me go downstairs early, to strip and kneel in the middle of the room and wait. I knelt there, horny and wet, so wet I’m amazed the moisture didn’t run down my legs. I waited and imagined the things he would do to me, and by the time he came to me, I was reckless with need.

  He came to me naked and already rock hard. He stood in front of me and I stared at his cock.

  I opened my mouth to take him inside, but he lifted my chin instead and turned my face up to his.

  “I know you want me, you horny little slut. Did you touch yourself, or did you wait patiently for me?”