Sandra was reclining on the couch now, while Laney remained as she had all night, sitting crossed-legged on the floor. The two waited for Elise to settle herself. The finicky pianist seemed a little more nervous than she had been before. Once the music started playing, she took a moment to fluff up the pillows on the chair opposite Laney—the floor was no longer comfortable—then she poured herself another glass of wine and slipped into the chair, settling in with a big sigh.
The moment moved on with the sweet music lulling their wine-soaked senses, but they were immediately reawakened from a reflective daze when Elise finally made her grand announcement.
“I’ve been having an affair,” she said. Although she tried hard to sound fearless, her voice quavered slightly and she waited for her friends to say something, but neither Laney nor Sandra knew how to respond. By now, after so much delay, the announcement was hardly earth-shattering. Elise averted her eyes from their wondering expressions, while fingering her skirt nervously, making her look a lot more childish than womanly.
The awkward quiet begged to be broken, and Laney finally had to prompt her. “You obviously want to tell us, Elise, for crissakes get on with it!”
“This isn’t easy,” she whined a bit.
“Well, it shouldn’t be,” Laney came back, irritated.
“Don’t you go judging me, Laney Priestly.”
“I only meant that having an affair wouldn’t be easy for you, confessing it even more difficult. I wouldn’t think it was in your nature.”
“Well, maybe my nature has changed—matured.”
“I really wouldn’t know, but you’re dying to tell us, so…”
“It’s astounding even to me, I mean to admit I’ve been unfaithful, and yet being unfaithful to Matthew is furthest thing from my mind. It’s not about unfaithfulness at all.”
“So who’s your hot new lover,” Sandra wanted details.
“Cabral Icaboni.”
“Who?”
“He’s the new conductor of the symphony. A phenom, a virtuoso. As you’d expect, he’s volatile—just like Matthew, but much younger.” Her eyes closed as if she were bringing him to mind that moment. “He has this patrician face that’s sculpted like a Greek God’s, and a rag mop of blonde hair that plays to the crowd of old ladies who will spend their season ticket money lusting after what’s in his pants. Like they’ll ever know.” The more she spoke, the more Elise drew in on herself, half mindful of her friends, half in the dreamland of her memories, grasping for every detail. “Matthew and I haven’t been doing well, not since the island, and that’s the plain facts of it. Matthew expected to go at a dead run into this sadomasochistic lifestyle. Whips and chains and leather, dungeon houses and bondage brothels. I told him no. Of course, I was frightened, but it was more than that. It’s so much easier to put on propriety’s clothes when you live in a normal world, with normal people behaving normally all around you. It’s just not me to be parading around in leather in some seedy underground dungeon, with unwashed hairy types, beer drinking Harley riders with their trashy females hanging on like pestering flies. I know, you don’t hear this kind of judgmental talk from me, but it’s what I think inside about that crowd. I tried it once, for Matthew’s sake. We went to this pubic dungeon in someone’s rank basement. It wasn’t exactly public; they required a password to get in. Anyway, after about a half hour, I couldn’t stand the smoke or the music or the people, and I practically puked in the bathroom. I called a taxi and went home, didn’t even tell Matthew I was leaving. I called him on my cell soon as I got home. He came home furious. It’s not been the same between us since, and now I think he has plans to move to San Francisco. I don’t know that for sure, he hasn’t said as much, but can feel him drawing further and further away…”
Sandra and Laney only needed to keep their eyes on her, Elise wouldn’t need prompting.
“But this isn’t about Matt, it’s Cabral’s story,” she sighed. “About three months ago, a few weeks after he took over the orchestra, I was in the rehearsal hall after everyone had left. I was cleaning out my sheet music, bending over the piano, and suddenly Cabral is behind me. He puts his hand right on my thigh, right on top of the brand. It started to throb, like he’d turned on a switch. He started to rub it and I got all juicy between my thighs. At the same time, I was frozen, completely unable to move, I was so shocked. I’m thirty-two and married, he’s twenty-one and quite single. There’s not a runway model on the East Coast who hasn’t dated Cabral. And there are the Hollywood starlets, and a number of ingénues in the New York theatre crowd. He could have the entire flute section of the orchestra, and a couple of first violinists. But he doesn’t date the orchestra members. He said that to me as if it would be lowering his standards to fraternize with his underlings.
“I’m older though, and good for other purposes he says…but that’s getting ahead of myself. Cabral has his hand on my thigh, pressing the brand as if he knows it’s there. ‘You have a special vibe, Elise,’ he tells me. ‘I do?’ I said. I was petrified. ‘And you have a special assignment.’
“He stood up and put a key in my hand, a motel key for a place just outside of town on the state highway. ‘Come in your trench coat and a pair of high heels, red high heels, spiked high heels. Maybe a bra and panties, but that’s all. Tomorrow in the morning, ten o’clock.’
“Then he walked away. I stood up, not moving for a long time, gulping back pangs of guilty anguish, ‘what would Matthew say? … should I tell him…Elise! Are you crazy?’ I almost started to laugh out loud at how juvenile this was. I mean, isn’t that the most cliché of sex fantasies—the trench coat? I did it once for Matt in Spain, and it was hot. But to be ordered by a man eleven years younger than me, this punk phenom with the crazy hair and the swagger of a cocky adolescent…I was crazy to even consider it.
“But the mark still burned like the day it was burned into my flesh on the island,” she sighed deeply. “The feeling kept spreading upward and going deeper inside. I could almost recall the throbbing of his groin against my ass. Was that real? Or did I just imagine his cock pressed to my bottom? I could have dismissed it out of hand, but there were the repercussions of this… what if… I could lose my job if the truth of our trysts ended up in the tabloids. Cabral is tabloid fodder, and there’s some morals clause in my contract—not to mention that I am a married woman. Cabral could cost me my position without tarnishing his. He could say that my tempo was sluggish, my technique is sloppy, that he wants me out of the orchestra, and has another better pianist he wants to audition. He’s already done this to Marion Brandt, so I know he has it in him to work whatever angles suit him. I’ve wondered if Marion had been caught in his trap. Had he demanded sex from her? Was that possible? Dear Marion,” her voice fell sadly. “Some people think I’m a stodgy stick in the mud, but Marion is twice as demure, and very mousy. Maybe that’s what he likes, unlikely women. I dismissed the idea, the craziness seemed to be spreading. But my head was swimming, fear and heat coming down on me at once. By then I hardly thought of Matt. My own survival. My own pressing need. Like Sandra,” she turned toward her friend on the couch, “I was hornier than I’d been since we were together on the island…
“I assume you men him?”
“Of course, I went,” Elise went on as she took gulps of wine to refresh her palate, although by then the wine was starting to taste bitter and sour her stomach. “In my red high heels, my trench coat and my sexiest Vicky’s Secret underwear. I get to the motel, to the room, and he’s already there, pacing, a drink in his hand—mind you, it’s ten in the morning. He’s wearing jeans and a white sweater, his hair as natty as usual, but he has this allure that shouts out, ‘I’m special, worship me, bitch!’ He’s moody and cross, just as he is with the orchestra, and he’s going to play me with the same precision as he does his one hundred piece instrument in the symphony hall. I know this the moment I step in the room.
“He stares at me, while I stand shivering in my shoes. I’m a lit
tle dizzy…I mean very dizzy. I’m swaying in the high heels, nothing to hang on to but my fear. I still want to laugh, this seems so silly, he’s so serious, but I don’t laugh. I know what’s at stake and I know how my pussy lips will glisten for him once I open my coat, so I can hardly be blameless. It’s just astounding to me that he could know I’d be an easy mark.
“While he’s casually drinking his scotch at ten in the morning, he tells me to open the coat. I do and stand there before him, practically naked. ‘Turn around,’ he tells me. I turn three hundred and sixty degrees and then face him again, feeling my body teeter a little off balance like a reprimanded schoolgirl. I right myself and wait.
“‘I need a whipping girl,’ he announces without batting an eye, ‘And you’re it, Elise. I like that you’re older than me. It’s kind of like fuckin’ with the babysitter, don’t you think?’ His lip sort of turned up in a twisted, smug way. ‘You’re going to satisfy my cravings to punish women. You will bend to me, bend before me. You’ll do any damn thing I ask when I have you here.’
“I can’t believe what he wants. I’m howling inside, trying to figure a way out of this, meanwhile, I’m sweating with arousal and my pussy is leaking juices down my thigh. He notices, of course, and that only gives him more ammunition. ‘You’ve got the kind of nature that submits to men, so you might as well submit to me. I know you want me, that you despise me at the same time, but that doesn’t really matter, Elise, because you’re going to do this, so we can both stay sane.’
“I closed my coat, about to run off, and he walks closer, stands right in front of me. I smell the liquor on his breath. I feel the heat of his body, and then his hand clutching the back of my neck. ‘Someone branded you,’ he says, ‘which means you belong to some man; I think that man should be me. You think I’m insane, but look at you. You came with so little persuasion on my part. I’m sure you’re afraid of me, you want your job. It’s a good job that your talent is barely suited for, and you know that too. So, we have a deal now, don’t we, Elise?’ I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t speak, so he shakes my head. ‘Yes, we have a deal,’ I said, bowing my head. It shames me that I can be bought so cheaply.
“He shoved me to the floor, on my knees, my back to him, and took out a cat o’nine tails and whipped my back. My cunt was scorching hot and ready to come by the time he finished, and dropped to his knees behind me. He’s got a long, arched cock that goes places Matthew’s just won’t go. He had my hair in his hand, his other hand grabbing at my hip and the hot brand. He was all pent-up that first day. After he came the first time, he put me on the bed on my hands and knees and used the cat on my ass and the back of my legs, going over the flesh again and again. I thought he’d never stop. I was about to scream when he finally dropped the thing and shoved himself inside me again.”
Elise stopped for a moment, while the three collectively caught their breath.
“Two weeks later, before the opening night of the symphony season, he stopped me in the hallway just a half hour before the curtain was to rise. ‘In my dressing room,’ he says. I hadn’t been with him again since that first day, and I was a little anxious about that. Of course, I knew the whole arrangement was dangerous, but I wanted it even if it was. He’d been the only thing in my mind, and I know Cabral could see that in my eyes every time I looked at him during rehearsal. I went to the dressing room just as he ordered. He stared at me, like he’d stared at me in the motel room, then said, ‘Take off your panties.’ I was all dressed up, make-up perfect, my clothes immaculate, you know me, I won’t go on stage otherwise. This could get ugly, I’m thinking, but I lifted my skirt and removed my panties and handed them to him. He proceeded to drop them in his trash can and turned back to me, ‘Unzip your dress and straddle the chair,’ he pointed to a straight back chair he’d placed there for the occasion. I did as he asked, drawing the zipper down my back, my head bowed like a measly slave girl, then I climbed on the chair, having to hike the skirt up around my waist. I could imagine the wrinkles forming in the cloth. Something Cabral wouldn’t care about. I shrugged the dress off my shoulders and leaned into the back of the chair, as I offered my flesh for the braided flogger he had clasped in his hand. I held my breath and tucked my head, while the ferocity of his wrath rained on me again. It might have been a small flogger, but this was a lively one, jumping across my skin like a cunning joker, cutting my flesh to shreds, to the point just before it started to bleed. My naked cunt rocked against the wooden seat; I ground it in harder, the harder he whipped me, mewling softly as the rush of endorphins carried me away. He whipped me until he exhausted himself, maybe about five minutes, almost non-stop. The punishment was horrific and wonderful, but I couldn’t imagine recovering enough to play my solo—which would begin no more than fifteen minutes after the opening curtain.”
Elise paused, her eyes connected with both Sandra and the mesmerized Laney.
“Both of you were there that night, in the second row.”
“Yes, and you played like an angel, Elise,” Laney remembered.
“I know. He made me a better pianist and I made him sane enough to be brilliant.” Elise smiled. “I asked him later how he knew about the brand. ‘How do I know these things? I have no idea,’ he said. We don’t talk about why I have to do this. He knows I’ll do anything he asks. He likes thinking of me as the over-the-hill woman. I don’t think of myself that way. Not at all. I still feel foolish being dominated by this horny, overachieving kid. He’s still dating starlets, going to head-banging nightclubs, downloading hip-hop to his I-Pod and ‘IM-ing’ his Gershwin trio friends about the cute cunt with the big boobs in the first row of the string section. Dammit!” her emotions rose and her shame twisted in her gut. “I’m so deeply into this man—I couldn’t extricate myself from him without severely damaging my career. And, of course, Matthew knows nothing about it,” she took a deep breath, as she finally reached the end.
She looked up, as if a great load had been lifted off her weary shoulders. “So, now I’ve told you everything.”
All was quiet in Elise’s living room for a long time. The pretty, chestnut-haired pianist had talked herself hoarse, maybe as much as she’d ever talked at one time.
Laney commented first, “So this had nothing to do with the Island, or the Marquis…?”
“Nothing.” Elise thought a moment. “Not as far as I know. How would Cabral know about that scene? He’s just a kid from New York, who took Julliard by storm and now has taken over me. I keep thinking he’ll tire of me, and I weep about that. He even had me here, in my own house just last week, in my own bed, in Matthew’s bed. I did get him to promise he wouldn’t take those chances again, but if he showed up on my doorstep now, I’m not sure I could send him away.”
“What if during one of the little scenes before a performance, someone just walks into his dressing room?” Sandra asked, sounding shell-shocked by the torrent of raw passion behind Elises’s story.
“I try not to think about that.”
“So, does he use you often?” she probed further.
“So far, every week. Sometimes after rehearsal, sometimes before, sometimes the motel or his apartment—but only once at his apartment. I’m not a girlfriend, I’m his whipping girl. That distinction has been made very clear. I probably need to speak to him about discretion, since he’s as deeply into this as I am, and it would be damning to both of us.”
“Be careful, Elise, and be careful with Matthew,” Laney warned. “Could you imagine what he’d say, what he’d do?”
“I’m as careful as I’m going to be, Laney. Maybe I have a handle on this, maybe not. But I don’t expect it to stop anytime soon. The island made me fair game, vulnerable to creative sadists…what did it make you?” she paused. “What about you? You started this, you begged us for these confessions.”
“Begged? I don’t remember that.”
“Oh, but Laney, you have this way about you. You’ve always been an instigator, a goad. You know that.”
“My story is more simple than either of yours.” Laney smiled, unable to hide now. “As you already know, Erik and I got pretty deeply involved with Domination and submission. Now since his death, I’ve become famished…so thirsty for sex that I feel as though I’m crawling in the desert gasping for water…and none comes. I can’t continue on like this. I know it’s only been six months, but I can’t wait as my desires grow stronger every day. That’s why I’m taking off next week—call it a vacation, I really don’t know what it will turn out to be, but I’m returning to Marquis Island.”
“What? Why?” the two women chimed in at the same time, both completely baffled.
Laney held up her arm and the bracelet that encircled it. The metal gleamed yellow in the light of the flickering candles and the fire, which was nearly out.
“This is the Marquis’ bracelet,” she said. “Several months before Erik died, he met someone; I never knew exactly who he was, I never met the man. I only know that he was a member of the Marquis’ elite circle of masters. He gave Erik the bracelet and then Erik gave it to me and I agreed to wear it. In doing that, I surrendered myself to a way of life, to rules, and an extreme form of sexuality that gave me more satisfaction than I could ever have otherwise. I put my life in Erik’s hands, and because I accepted this bracelet, I became bound to the Marquis. I know it sounds extreme, but I have to pursue this; I can’t let the promise of this bracelet end with Erik’s death.”
The two women stared in stunned silence at the bracelet they had assumed was a gift from Erik; they knew it was inscribed, although they’d never seen the actual inscription.
The Marquis' Book of Pleasure & Property of the Marquis Page 17
