His polite tone is insulting, but she controls her temper. She hopes this isn’t how he plans to punish her. ‘What have you got?’ She falls onto the couch.
‘Anything you can possibly desire.’
His arrogance also annoys her, but the couch is as comfortable as it looks expensive. His home is furnished exactly as she had imagined it would be, in a modern minimalist style relieved by plants, and what she judges to be a variety of antique furnishings and objects strategically scattered around the room. She kicks off her high heels, and stretches her legs across the firm leather cushions. ‘You don’t have to go back to work, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’d like a cold glass of Chardonnay.’ She deliberately leaves out the ‘please’.
He comes and stands over her. ‘Are you going to be all right?’
His sudden tenderness brings tears to her eyes like a blow. ‘I have no idea.’ For once, she is being completely honest.
Staring down into her shining eyes he caresses her cheek with his thumb, and runs his fingers through her hair. ‘I’ll make us some sandwiches.’
‘Can I help?’
‘No, just take it easy. You’ve had a hard day.’
She manages not to flinch. ‘And it’s not even one o’clock,’ she informs his retreating back, then stares blindly in the direction of the kitchen into which he disappears. Her stunned mind hits a mysterious ‘pause’ button then waiting for him to emerge, and she closes her eyes.
She opens them again when something smooth and cold slips between her lips.
She savors the mouthful of baked ham wrapped around a cube of Gouda cheese.
‘I decided against sandwiches, since I’m out of bread.’ He seats himself beside her and pulls the glass coffee table closer.
She reaches gratefully for her sweating glass of white wine, and they eat and drink in silence for a moment.
‘Well, Carmen,’ he says finally, ‘either you’re a witch, or something strangely profound is going on here.’
‘Feel free to check my purse for little wax figurines, but they’d only melt in Miami.’
He laughs. ‘You have no less than four familiars.’
‘Three of which I have to give away soon.’ She can’t meet his eyes, wondering if Mike still plans to come by her apartment tomorrow night.
‘Look at me, baby.’
She has to obey him.
‘Have you fucked your boss?’
‘No,’ she replies with conviction, because telling him the truth is simply out of the question.
‘What about that cop?’
‘No.’ At least that’s true, she only gave him a blowjob.
He smiles. ‘You’re not a very good liar, Carmen. You’re a greedy little whore, is what you are, but that doesn’t change the fact that something else is going on here. My wildly imaginative diagnosis fits the symptoms, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cure other than letting the ailment take its natural course. These men are actually losing sleep over you.’ He unbuckles his belt, and leaves it hanging open as if he ate too much, which he didn’t. ‘They’re completely obsessed with you.’ He unzips his pants, grabs a handful of her long, soft hair, and pulls her head down into his lap.
She pulls his soft penis out through the opening in his underpants, and nurtures it like a seed against her warm tongue.
‘That’s better,’ he says, ‘now maybe I won’t find it so hard to talk about something that’s absolutely fucking impossible.’
The dark curtain of her hair sways gently back and forth between his thighs as her tongue strives to give the performance of its life for him.
‘Viking nobles were dispatched with all their wealth, Carmen, and this virile warrior whose grave they just discovered even brought a girl with him into the next world. She was probably picked out from amongst the household slaves by his widow, who I’m sure would have known who his favorite was, and enjoyed getting her revenge.’
She recalls Linn’s eyes meeting hers in the mirror at John Martin’s as she slips off the couch to kneel more comfortably between his legs. Now she can bring her hands into play. His underpants are an encumbrance; they won’t allow her to cradle his balls, or to tease them with her fingernails. She moans in frustration, and reaches up into his shirt so she can at least feel the skin of his belly and of his chest as she grabs the base of his erection with her other hand, and starts pumping him slowly and firmly as she sucks hungrily on his helmet.
‘In the article, it said that on the evening of the funeral,’ he sounds unaffected by her hard work, ‘the poor girl was escorted to the grave site by the dead man’s closest friends. They might have drugged her, or she might have been fully conscious of what was happening to her, but hopefully they at least got her drunk. Anyway, the only other person who attended the rite was an old woman who stood for the corruptible nature of the flesh, which not even the greatest warrior can hope to conquer. She chanted and rattled some bones with runes carved on them while the men laid the girl on her back next to the open grave. They tied her arms over her head, spread her legs, and fucked her, one after the other. Mm, yes, this little story’s exciting you, isn’t it, baby…?
‘When they were all finished with her… you like the sound of that, don’t you? When they were all finished with her,’ he repeats kindly, ‘two of the men wrapped a cloth around her neck, and strangled her.’
Her response to the story of a girl’s brutal murder is perversely intense. She takes full, passionate possession of his penis with her lips and tongue and throat, her hands, and the dark web of her hair that clings to her fingers, sticky with the adult candy of his semen, which tastes deliciously of his pleasure.
‘What if you were a girl like that once, Carmen? And what if your boss, that cop, and me, were three of the men who fucked you, then killed you? Maybe that’s why you like it when I hurt you, and maybe that’s why I enjoy hurting you.’
In her hands, and between her devoted lips, his erection is as hard as an ancient standing stone commanding her fervent worship as in her mind’s eye she sees a girl’s body – her body – the pounding heart of a scene that, until that moment, had remained buried deep in the darkness of her subconscious. The dirt between her thighs is wet from the salty tide of sperm flowing out of her body, completely surrounded by the rugged mountains of naked male chests. Then the two men kneeling on either side of her head wrap a long, crimson strip of fabric around her neck. She looks up at one of them, and the tenderness in his eyes fills her with hope. Holding on to it, she is barely aware of the cloth tightening inexorably around her throat. She is conscious only of the curious sensation of rising weightless off the ground on her fluttering pulse as the first stars appear in the sky just beyond his eyes…
Emptying her mouth, she looks up into his eyes and says breathlessly, ‘You were one of them!’
‘Yes, the one who was about to come,’ he replies dryly. ‘Did I tell you to stop?’
‘Jay, you were the one I was looking at when I died!’
*
Carmen takes her time in the stand-up shower. She is enjoying the contrast of the black-and-white tiles and cold stainless steel fixtures with her own rosy flesh. Jay had some phone calls to make before he could continue giving her his undivided attention, so she is free to relax for a while.
Her senses are performing at peak efficiency. She seems to be able to hear every individual burning spear of water hitting the tiles, and the bar of soap is a slick chunk of jade in her hand dissolving into a fresh-smelling sea foam. The light out in the bathroom glows gold as sunlight captured by the shower stall’s frosted glass, and the tiles beneath her feet are as perfectly smooth and hard as her skin is beautifully smooth and soft.
She passes the soap slowly across her breasts, then down over her womb, thinking about the mysterious fact that her consciousness is embodied. Because without her body nothing would be what it seems to be, nothing would feel the way it feels, nothing would be what it looks like, taste
s like or sounds like. Without her body, her unique sense of self wouldn’t exist at all, and the thought excites her. It turns her on to know that, in a very real sense, her body is the world. Because if it wasn’t for her eyes there would be no such thing as color, only the electromagnetic radiation that through her senses’ unique way of receiving and categorizing information becomes color and shape, texture and form, sound and sensation. Therefore, it seems wrong to say that her sense of self is merely the sum of her senses, as if there was a better way to know herself.
Right now part of her (all of her?) is attempting to translate the memory of Mike’s clenched fingers into philosophical thoughts in an effort to hold on to the pure, hot joy she experienced while he fist-fucked her. Her constant state of sexual arousal is beginning to feel like a fever, and yet also, mysteriously, like the very nature of good health.
She steps out of the shower, and reaches for one of the thick black towels that hang from a stainless steel rod as fine as a saber. Everything about Jay’s bathroom is modern and masculine.
She wraps the towel around herself, and walks out into the bedroom in a cloud of steam.
A queen size futon mattress adorned by a black comforter is set in a metal frame that evokes a ship: small spheres like portholes are cut out of both the headboard and the baseboard. The wall across from the bed is dominated by a state-of-the-art entertainment center. Stereo, receiver, CD player, DVD player, and no less than six speakers of varying sizes, surround the temple god of a television so big it makes her think of a temporarily inactive portal into another dimension.
Holding the damp towel closed, she perches on the edge of the bed. That terrible night in the Grove was a storm that set her life on a whole new course. She is in uncharted territory now, navigating blindly through the dangerously choppy waters of all her desires and fantasies. Yet she doesn’t want to slow down. She doesn’t want to play it safe.
She sits listening to the quiet, even rhythm of Jay’s voice in the other room. He is still on the phone, which is good. She is relishing her timeout. She has so much to think about. Yet her thoughts are only the masts supporting the fully open bed sheets of her passions, which are caught in no less than three powerful currents. She is going down, and that’s all there is to it.
She falls back across the bed, and lays sifting fragments of dreams and recent events like the pieces of a puzzle across the ceiling.
She remembers watching the news the night she was almost raped. That was when she found out about the Viking grave, which explains why she noticed the cover of National Geographic at the supermarket. The fact that Jay bought her Thor’s hammer earrings in Washington
D.C. before he read the same article on the plane is significant, yet also completely coincidental. That Mike suddenly noticed her after months of working with her can be explained: she told him she was almost raped, which made him see her as vulnerable and desirable. A psychiatrist would probably tell her she was channeling her forbidden lust for her boss into dreams about Vikings in keeping with her vivid imagination and her love of history. Will probably can’t stop thinking about her because he feels cheated of what he almost had, and any obsessive thought process inevitably leads to lack of sleep. That Mike is also having trouble sleeping is perfectly understandable. As a married man he has a lot to lose by having an affair with his secretary.
She closes her eyes.
The time has come to face the memory of those few terrible seconds when her arms were pinned over her head and her legs were spread open…
She was only a heartbeat away from being raped, from being stabbed by some nameless dirty cock that would have killed a part of her forever even if her body had survived. In retrospect, her glimpse of the skeleton on the television just a short while before seems like a sinister warning of what would happen to her if she went out that night. Yet her subsequent interest in the ancient grave could just be a natural identification on her part with another victim – a young woman like herself who was not, however, miraculously saved at the last moment. Jay’s theory about what is happening is a thrilling fantasy, but it can’t possibly be true.
She sits up, suddenly realizing that the hypnotic flow of his voice out in the living room has stopped.
The bedroom door opens.
The damp towel feels cold and heavy around her as she stands up.
‘That takes care of work.,’ he closes the door behind him, ‘now I can take care of you.’
With one hand she pulls out the bobby pin holding her hair up. ‘And just what,’ she shakes it loose around her shoulders, ‘are you planning to do with me?’
He approaches her. ‘Whatever I please.’ He yanks the towel off her. ‘That’s the second shower my little pussy’s taken today. Is she feeling dirty?’
‘No, I just like—’
He slaps her.
Even as she catches her breath she admires how neatly he does it, and how casually he exerts just the right amount of force.
‘Carmen,’ he bends over and opens a drawer contained in the bed frame, ‘what did I tell you about lying to me?’
The glimpse she gets of the drawer’s contents makes it impossible for her to think straight enough to answer him
– coiled black shapes with the dangerous aura of sleeping
snakes.
He casually plucks one out, and turns towards her.
She instinctively steps back, picks the towel up off the
floor, and holds it in front of her. Slowly and deliberately, he runs the whip’s full length through his hand. ‘Jay, what exactly are you planning,’ her stomach clenches, ‘to do with that?’
His smile strikes her as a naked extension of the black leather strip. ‘What do you think?’
She considers locking herself in the bathroom. But fascination and fear have her equally in their grip like fangs, and she can’t seem to move. Even as her hands clutch the towel, the rest of her begins to feel oddly languid.
The end of the whip slithers towards her bare feet.
She takes a few more steps back.
Obeying his wrist, it follows her, hissing.
‘Stop that, Jay!’
‘You have a lot to learn, Carmen. Drop the towel.’
‘No…’ She edges towards the bathroom.
‘Trust me, baby.’The whip merges with his black slacks as he lets it fall to his side. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
‘But—’
‘Once you’ve tasted real pain, once you know what real punishment feels like, Carmen, you’ll understand yourself better. You’ll understand that you’ve been begging for this without even realizing it.’
The fact that what he says makes no objective sense, and yet perfect sense to her, imbues her anxiety with arousing dimensions.
‘Would you care to tell me,’ he holds himself utterly still, ‘what you and your boss were doing in his office just before I walked in?’
She can’t answer that question, so she lets go of the towel.
The damp cloth slides slowly down her body to the carpet.
‘You told me you hadn’t slept with him.’ The whip stirs at his feet like a demonic pet. ‘Was that another lie?’
‘He kissed me.’ She desperately offers him a fragment of the truth.
‘And?’
‘And he put…’ she keeps her eyes on the whip knowing she has to give him more, ‘he put his hand inside me.’
He repeats quietly, ‘His hand?’
She doesn’t answer, simply stares at his fingers wrapped around the base of the whip.
He sounds stunned. ‘The man you work for fist-fucked you?’ He also sounds oddly impressed.
Confessing this to another man helps her vividly relive those powerful moments, which turns her on, and gives her the courage to look up at him. His cold gray stare feels like running into her own tombstone, yet for some haunting reason, her self-esteem doesn’t feel buried beneath it.
‘Did you enjoy being fist-fucked, Carmen?’ he asks tightly.
There is no point in denying it, her body will only give her away eventually, so better to be totally open with him now. ‘Yes, I did, sir.’
‘Walk over to that wall, turn around, and put your arms over your head.’
She obeys him at once.
‘And don’t turn around,’ he adds, ‘you’ll be very sorry if you do.’
He was right. Her first impulse is to face him and beg him to stop. It takes all her willpower to keep her palms and forehead resting calmly against the wall as the whip slices into her back. She manages not to scream, until the fourth lash.
‘Do I have to gag you, Carmen?’
‘No, sir!’
He immediately tests her resolve with a fifth vicious stroke.
‘Oh, God,’ she gasps, ‘oh, God!’
He swiftly subjects her to three more swift, penetrating blows.
Her eyes closing she sinks to her knees, and barely hears him when he says, ‘That’s enough for now.’ Then she feels his hands on her shoulders. ‘Did you enjoy that?’ he whispers.
She can’t answer. Her mind tells her she definitely did not enjoy that, but her body isn’t sure about anything anymore.
‘It’s like learning to drink, baby, you have to take it a few sips at a time. If you try and handle too much at once, you’ll pass out, and where’s the fun in that? Come on.’ He helps her up. ‘On the bed.’ She stumbles as he shoves her towards it. ‘Lie on your back, spreadeagled.’
She discovers what the ‘portholes’ are for as he quickly ties her wrists and ankles to the bed frame with a rough white rope. When he is finished, the only part of her she can move is her head, which she raises off the pillow to keep her eyes on him. She is completely vulnerable now, he can do anything he wants to her, and today this frightens her. When he tied her up those other times, she hadn’t just confessed to letting another man fist-fuck her. She is afraid he won’t be concerned with her feelings now, that he won’t worry about taking things slowly and paying attention to her limits because he is angry with her, and wants to hurt her. As he looks through another drawer she suffers a climax of anxiety. ‘Jay?’
Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica Page 17
