by Wendy Leigh
But then I remind myself of all the evil she has done and would have done, had she not been stopped, and I don’t feel sorry for her any more.
Once I judge that the bath must be ready, I climb in, sink into the bubbles, close my eyes, and drift away on a cloud of dreams and fantasies. The air is thick with the scent of Egyptian jasmine, the water is warm, and the tub is deep enough for me to feel as if I am currently encased in a cocoon of luxury—safe, cosseted, and protected.
In just half an hour, the makeup artist and the hairdresser will arrive, along with the stylist who will put the finishing touches on my extravagantly glamorous engagement dress.
The rest of the suite and the massive terrace are already set up for the reception. They’re big enough to accommodate sixty people, but today there will be just seven of us: Robert and me, Mom and Alex, Lindy, Mary Ellen and her husband, Rory.
I’m still massively jet-lagged after the flight, and although I don’t want to, floating in the tub, relaxed and happy, I fall into a deep slumber.
The sound of the shower wakes me.
Robert! I’m thrilled, but also annoyed. Why is he up here when he isn’t supposed to see me until I’m dressed and ready for the party? And why is he taking a shower up here and not by the pool?
Just as I am about to call his name, the shower stops running. Stranger than strange . . . the ghost of one of the celebrated former inhabitants of Cliveden? The Duke of Buckingham? Churchill? Or even Lady Astor herself?
Or perhaps I’m still dreaming. I close my eyes again, about to grab a last few minutes’ rest, then—on instinct—open them again. Out of the corners of my eyes, I see a flash of silver. The air splits apart for a second, and I look up to see a swollen, bandaged face, the eyes and mouth mere slits, looming over me, with a bandaged hand aiming a gigantic knife downward at me.
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.
But instead of slashing down, the bandaged hand holds the knife in midair, taunting me, and if I had any doubts about who the hand belongs to, they are dispelled when I catch a glint of violet eyes behind the bandages.
“Just a few seconds and it will all be over, Miss Miranda Stone—never to be Hartwell. And to think that your genius god Robert didn’t figure out that two security guards wouldn’t be a match for me. Within days, they were both at my feet, then in my bed, and then I owned them, body and soul. And after that, it was easy. Not as easy though, as it will be when I’ve disposed of you once and for always, little Miss Miranda,” she says.
“But what will you do then, Georgiana?” I say, trying to stall her.
“Ever the little ghostwriter. A ghostwriter about to become a ghost,” she says.
“You were a ghost once . . .”
“But you, Miss Miranda, aren’t me. Only an act of God will stop me from getting what I want, remember?”
“And what do you want?”
She laughs her tinkling glass laugh, and—to my relief—puts down the knife.
“Robert, of course. Robert and only Robert. And for that . . .” she says, then picks up the knife again and starts to run her long fingers up and down the flat side of the blade.
Instinctively, I cover my breasts.
“Ah yes, the crown jewels. Maybe I should cut them off first, then leave them outside the suite for Robert to slip on when he comes to claim his blushing bride. Scratch that; his bleeding bride.”
She raises the knife high above her shoulder.
If I stand up, I’ll make myself into an easy target.
If I don’t, it will be even easier for her to knife me.
I don’t want her to kill me. I don’t want to die. But if I have to, let it be fast, let it be painless, let her slash the artery of my neck so it will be instantaneous.
I take a deep breath.
Just as I expect to feel the blade to slice into me, Georgiana lets out a bloodcurdling scream and the knife falls to the ground with a clatter.
To my shock, she crumples into a heap on the floor.
And I see Robert, a fireplace poker in his hand, bringing it down on her over and over again, while I watch, mesmerized.
And then it’s over.
“You’re safe now, Miranda, we’re both safe. And I’ll never leave you again,” Robert says, and I know that we are, and that he won’t.
Georgiana is now dead and buried. This time, for real, and our nightmare is over at last. Fortunately for me, Robert’s trusty P.I. was more loyal to him than the hired security detail Georgiana had seduced—he sent word of her escape just in time, and Robert deduced immediately that there was only one place she would go. Now that I’m sure she can never again come between us, I find it in my heart to pity her at last. After all, in some small way I understand her—twisted and vicious though it was, her love for Robert was in some ways as powerful as mine.
Robert’s and my belated engagement party was beautiful, and just a few days later, we were married at last.
This evening, my wedding night in the Duke of Windsor Suite in the Paris Ritz, I feel so strange, naked in the four-poster bed, under the pale-blue canopy, waiting for Robert to make his grand entrance, almost as if I were a shy virgin bride and he my new husband, about to deflower me.
Robert Hartwell, my new husband. My husband, Robert Hartwell. Just the two of us, no more Georgiana, no more shadows. Just us, our love, and our white-hot, carnal passion for each other.
I hear the suite door open. My pulse quickens and blood floods my brain. Robert, in a black satin robe, naked underneath, I know.
“You belong to me, Miranda,” my new husband says, and he’s right—and has been from the moment I first set eyes on him.
The throbbing ache between my legs is almost unbearable. Robert slides his fingers into me and gives me temporary relief. Then he stops and leans close to me, whispering, “Say it. Say it now. Say you want me to fuck you!”
“I do. I do want you to fuck me, Master, I do, please, I do.”
“Beg for it then,” he says, with a devilish smile.
I drop to my knees, about to beg him to fuck me, just as he wants me to do.
As I look up at him, my stomach starts to flutter.
“You love being on your knees to me, don’t you?” he says, almost accusingly.
I look up at him, so tall, so strong, so masterful, and I find it difficult to breathe, never mind answer.
I manage to nod.
“You know you can’t always have what you love, don’t you?” he says suddenly.
There is a slight tone of menace in his voice and a raw flash of fear surges through me.
His hand presses into the back of my head.
“On all fours, your ass in the air, your face pressed to the ground,” he says, and I immediately obey but feel humiliated.
This is my wedding night; surely he isn’t going to spend it degrading me? The somewhat disloyal thought goes through my mind. Disloyal because, of course, punishment and degradation are both integral parts of our bond, of what brought us together, along with the passion and the romance.
I yelp out in shock as I feel his teeth nip into my ass.
Then he stops and I feel his hand smack hard on the exact spot that he has just bitten me.
I moan in pleasure.
“Stay in place now, and don’t move,” he says.
Then he gets up, goes over to his briefcase, and—to my fury—takes out a newspaper.
A newspaper!
He is going to read a newspaper on our wedding night!
The nerve!
But if that’s what he wants to do, I guess I’ll have to put up with it.
I shift my position slightly.
“I thought I told you not to move,” he says, and I brace myself for another slap.
But he does nothing.
Instead, he sit
s down on the four-poster bed, opens his newspaper, then slowly, very slowly, rests his feet on my ass, while I remain silent and in place.
“You make a very useful piece of furniture,” he says, and—over what must be the longest ten minutes of my life—stays there, his feet resting on my ass, and reads the paper.
My breath slows and—probably for the first time in my life— my mind becomes empty, blank.
And as the ignominy of my servile position washes over me, I surrender to it, utterly and completely.
I am Mrs. Robert Hartwell now, the wife of one of the most powerful, wealthiest, and most famous men in the world. I have unlimited riches at my disposal, mansions, castles, planes, yachts, jewels, everything, anything.
Yet tonight, on my wedding night, I am here, on the floor, reduced to being just a piece of human furniture, and nothing else.
And all of a sudden I feel a rush of exhilaration, a sense of freedom—the freedom to live and to be myself, at last.
For as strong as I am in my vanilla life, and as self-directed, this is the real me, the pure me, the me that I want to be, the me that I truly am.
And only Robert—like a high priest, or a guru—can help me to be what I am, to live out my vocation without hesitation or shame, and to soar.
For the more he punishes me, the more he humiliates, the stronger and more powerful he becomes, and the more I am able to be myself, at last.
Gently, he moves his feet to the floor again, but I stay where I am, immobile.
“You may look at me now,” he says.
And as I do, even though he isn’t touching any part of me, my heart begins to beat faster, and my breathing grows deep and almost convulsive, as my entire body starts to shake in an earth-shattering orgasm.
As wave after wave ripples through my body, my heart, and my soul, I lose myself and am transformed into pure adoration, pure spirit, pure submission, and my vocation, my destiny is fulfilled.
Robert takes my hands and helps me to my feet.
“God help me, I love you more than I have ever loved anyone else in this world. All the years, all the loss and the loneliness have brought me to this moment, to you, Miranda,” he says.
Then he kisses me, slowly, searchingly, passionately, tenderly, and I feel the hardness of his body, the roughness of his chest across the softness of my nipples.
For a second, I start to swoon.
Then he steadies me.
“Miranda, my Miranda,” he says.
Author’s Note
The Unraveled trilogy is fiction and a work of the imagination. However, as an investigative journalist who has spent a great part of her career writing about all aspects of sex and sexuality, and as an author who has published three nonfiction books on sex—What Makes a Woman G.I.B.* (*Good in Bed), What Makes a Man G.I.B.* (*Good in Bed), and The Infidelity Report—I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and become inspired by many sexual revolutionaries, icons of sex, and sexual adventurers. Some were well versed in BDSM, some in commercial sex, and most of them were willing to talk to me about their proclivities in depth. Much of what they told me, and the essence of who they were as human beings, has infused the texture of the Unraveled trilogy.
These include Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, the sexologist who worked with Dr. Alfred Kinsey on his seminal research; Gore Vidal, who was one of Kinsey’s subjects; Marilyn Chambers, the Ivory Snow girl who starred in the groundbreaking Behind the Green Door, and her then-husband, Chuck Traynor, former husband of Deep Throat’s Linda Lovelace and the man who taught her how to give oral sex; Harry Reems, Linda’s costar in Deep Throat; John Holmes, the genetically gifted porno star who was the prototype for Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights; Sir Dai Llewellyn, the Old Etonian baronet who was vocal to me about his passion for what was once known as le vice anglais; Vicki Morgan, Alfred Bloomingdale’s S&M mistress who interviewed me as the potential ghostwriter for her book, and whose revelations propelled alternative sex into the headlines.
Heidi Fleiss, who also interviewed me for the role of ghostwriter, but who subsequently decided not to write her autobiography after all; Lyle Stuart, publisher of The Sensuous Woman, by J, the most sensational sex book of its day, who wanted to publish my book but whose offer of a contract I refused.
Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who did publish my first book and granted me an interview for it—during the course of which he was open about his dominance and his requirements for a submissive.
Along the way, I also witnessed Belle de Jour’s explicit S&M show, which took place at her establishment on a Wednesday night and included displays of practices on the heavier side of S&M; the Mineshaft, the gay S&M club portrayed in Cruising, which banned women but to which I was able to gain admission on a rare ladies’ night; the Hell Fire Club; the Vault; Paddles; Le Trapeze, Plato’s Retreat; the Fetish Factory, Fort Lauderdale; as well as an unnamed S&M fantasy parlor, high above Sunset Boulevard, which comprised a dungeon with a pit in it; Sherri’s Ranch, one of Nevada’s legal brothels; the Chardmore Society, England (www.chardmoresociety.com); and the Eulenspiegel Society (www.tes.org), the BDSM education and support group in Manhattan.
For anyone who is seeking to understand BDSM in all its real-life, nonfiction permutations, I recommend:
Bentley, Toni. “The Thin End of the Whip: France’s Most Famous Dominatrix, Catherine Robbe-Grillet.” Vanity Fair, February 2014.
Brame, Gloria G., William G. Brame, and Jon Jacobs. Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission. New York: Villard, 1996.
Broomfield, Nick. Fetishes, 1996.
Merkin, Daphne. “Spanking: A Romance,” in Dreaming of Hitler. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997.
Miller, Phillip and Molly Devon. Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism. Fairfield, CT: Mystic Rose Books, 1995.
Tynan, Kenneth. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan, edited by John Lahr. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001.
A final caveat: The Unraveled trilogy is fiction, and it’s important to point out that the reality of BDSM can be dark and dangerous.
Thus it would obviously be a big mistake for any reader to follow in Miranda’s footsteps and have blindfolded sex with a stranger, because while being lured into surrender by a deep and gravelly voice may be a compelling prospect (see Walt Whitman’s poem “Voices”), the reality could end up being far from romantic.
In the same vein, if you ever encounter a man who, like Warren Courtney, keeps a bullwhip on display in his apartment, try to draw the line between fantasy and reality, then run and don’t look back . . .
All in all, any submissive eager to put herself or himself into the hands of a dominant should be wary, circumspect, and make sure that everything in which he or she engages is—as the classic saying goes—safe, sane, and consensual.
Acknowledgments
for the Unraveled Trilogy
First and foremost, all my thanks to the beautiful and brilliant Jen Bergstrom, publisher of Gallery Books, whom I first met at the auction for Life with My Sister Madonna, the book I wrote with Madonna’s brother, and which she subsequently won. Thanks, Jen, for having the vision to suggest that I temporarily jettison ghostwriting and plunge in and write erotica instead, and for believing in me as an erotic novelist, against all odds.
Thanks to Abby Zidle, whose peerless skills as an editor make her the best in the business. Those skills are matched only by her mellifluous speaking voice, and the subtlety of the velvet glove that encases her steely but sure touch. Thank you, Abby, for guiding me through this new and unfamiliar world of erotic romance, for never being shocked, for always being patient, and for molding and crowning the Unraveled trilogy with your remarkable gifts as an editor.
Many thanks to the accomplished and charming princess of PR, Kristin Dwyer, associate publicity director of Gallery Books, for her terrific work on the Unr
aveled trilogy.
Thanks to the stellar team at Gallery: the capable and congenial Marla Daniels, copyeditor Jane Elias, proofreader Polly Watson, production editor Ciara Robinson, and art director Lisa Litwack, whose sophisticated and elegant covers grace the Unraveled trilogy with allure and star quality.
Thanks to the effervescent, adorable, and unendingly talented Nina Bocci, now a writer herself, and destined for the top, but in this context the best publicist in any hemisphere. Your knowledge of romance, of publishing, of social media, and of just plain story is unrivaled, and I feel fortunate to have you on my team.
Thanks to Dan Strone, CEO of Trident Media. As always and ever, the best agent on the planet, bar none. The day I first walked into your office was one of the luckiest and best of my life. I love working with you and always will, and thank you, too, for your patience in the face of my passion for astrology, which manifests itself whenever I sign a contract, or embark on a new book.
Thanks to Jodie Johnson, my right hand, and my left. You were just fifteen years old when we first met, and even then, when both of us were a million miles removed from the world of the Unraveled trilogy, and you harbored far different ambitions than publishing and journalism, both your high intelligence and your innate goodness shone through everything. Thank you for being steadfast, and true, for learning faster than the wind, for your unquestionable loyalty, for your lightning aptitude in conquering each and every challenge, and for coming up with the immortal description “Gone Girl Gone Wild” for the Unraveled trilogy along the way, as well.
Thanks to John Townley, the erudite king of astrology (www.astrococktail.com), who pioneered the composite chart, for his continuing astrological advice and friendship. His insightful study of the sun signs most prevalent among the practitioners of BDSM (Virgo and Scorpio, take note . . .), published in his book Planets in Love, is riveting. An inspiration to me in so many ways, and a million miles away from “Grandpa.’ ”
Thanks to Bridget Kennedy Duvall, the talented photographer who took my author photos, to Carl Stanley, the terrific makeup artist who made me up for the shoot, and to Mauro Sergio, the gifted hairstylist who did my hair for it.
