Soul Siren

by Aisha Duquesne

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “Relax,” he laughed. He emptied the magazine into his hand.

  “Show me there’s nothing in the chamber,” I said, because I wasn’t an idiot.

  He turned and pointed the thing at the wall. It made a soft click as he squeezed the trigger, and I jumped. “Here, feel it.” And he plopped it into my palm. It felt heavy.

  Then he scooped it up again and put the barrel in his mouth. Crazy, he’s crazy—

  Then he put it between my legs, and I understood why he had sucked it. Warming up the metal. Nudging the hard barrel against my hot gates, slowly, slowly…

  I said as bravely as I could, “I’m not sure I like this game.”

  He ignored my nervousness, saying, “Feels weird, doesn’t it? Feels like it could still go off. Like having a bomb next to your flesh.”

  The barrel against my pussy lips, his other hand playing with my clitoris, and my vagina felt the pressure of the gun and allowed it in, that metal tube harder than any guy’s cock, Steven, it’s Steven’s gun, inside me, penetrating me as I whispered you sick fuck while he laughed, while I actually covered his hand with mine to help guide that slick hard barrel a little farther into my pussy. I couldn’t control my breathing. Now his other hand was cupping my left tit, massaging it, lightly pinching my nipple between two fingers, sending a tiny electric current of pain through me, and as I yelped, I heard click. And so help me, my juices were pouring out onto my thighs, helping it to glide in and out of me with such ease. And click. I must have been out of my mind at that moment, my brain telling myself not so much in words but feelings that, yes, I could have him this way. As if he were torturing me, taking me by force. Click.

  “What are you hoping for?” I demanded in a whisper.

  He didn’t respond, only smiling. My hand reached down and clawed at his zipper. I had him out of his briefs in a minute, that smooth white cock that was now a throbbing crimson, its red tip glistening with a bead of pre-cum. It had been years, literal years, since I had wanted a guy’s dick in my hand. Poor Odell never desired at all, and here I was, jerking Steven, rubbing him to get him harder, the barrel inside me like some obscene violation, and, Jesus, sweet Jesus, my shirt open and my breasts exposed, my skirt up with my vulva on display, and half-clothed like this it was so much more erotic, his mouth greedily sucking at my tit as my fingers slid along his white shaft, and “Eeeeuuuuhhh!” Coming, coming with this gun barrel in my pussy. Coming with the barrel inside me nearly up to the trigger guard. You sick fuck, you sick fuck, just do me like this—

  I wondered what else he had in store for me.

  “So now that we’ve had the foreplay, what’s the main event?” I said huskily. “You gonna strap yourself into your golden harness?”

  “That bitch has got such a big mouth,” he laughed, and he growled as I increased the rhythm of my hand. “Bang, bang!” he whispered back.

  Click.

  His hand at the desk again, and then he was handing me a silk Hermès scarf. I didn’t know who it belonged to, Erica or someone else, but it didn’t matter. He put the gun down on the desk, and it made a dull clatter of lifeless metal. He was holding the scarf out for me with two hands, wanting me to take it. And I knew instinctively what he wanted. The guy’s really twisted, I thought. And he doesn’t know how motivated I am…

  He stripped off in front of me, and what I saw was familiar, prompting a replay of old images from the Santa Fe weekend. The boyish flat chest and narrow hips like a sixteen-year-old’s despite his real age, the arms and legs with their muscles toned from hours of practised choreography for videos, and that tight pale ass. His pubic hair a peculiar shade of dirty blonde, its silken curls lovely to touch. My hands were stroking his back and his buttocks even before he had his jeans off. He had this beautiful boy androgyny about him that was keeping me wet. It made me desire a man for the first time in ages.

  He lay down on the couch and watched me discard my clothing. I held the scarf in front of me for a moment like a veil, my breasts and belly seen through a lens of expensive silk, and then I wound it around both my wrists, snapping it tight, making it an enticement and a threat.

  “You’re crazy,” I told him. “People have died doing this.”

  He cackled, stroking himself while he watched me, so turned on by just the idea. “You afraid you won’t be able to stop?”

  “I’ll bet you’ve done this before,” I retorted. “But I bet you never handed yourself up to someone who might actually like to kill you.”

  He bit his bottom lip, letting out a long stream of nervous air and tension in his lungs.

  “Do it.”

  I took his shaft in my hand and put him inside me, felt male flesh, hot and alive, fill me up. “Ohhhh…” Groaning, grateful that I was on top and able to direct the pace. I wasn’t on my back and just a receptacle for some guy’s indifferent thrusting. This wasn’t Odell, no, he felt much better than Odell. I pumped my hips, revelling in the sensation, and Steven felt so good inside me, my eyes shut for a moment as his hand roamed up my stomach to my breasts again. I kept the momentum going, coming very quickly once and rocking and swaying, and as I felt myself almost swoon, I looked him in the eyes. Without a word between us, we knew it was time. He lifted his head off the pillow just enough for the scarf. I pulled. Tight—

  Pumping my hips again, Steven doing his best to help me, trying to lift his ass a millimetre off the cushions and brace himself against the back of the couch, but he soon fell back, letting me drive. His face was getting redder and redder, and, Jesus, I could feel his cock swell inside me and seem to lengthen with his arousal, his eyes glazed and into it, wanting to go to dark places, telling me with a crazed look to tighten the scarf, and his face kept darkening with the rush of blood. He was goddamn huge inside me, and for two seconds of this lustful insanity, I felt him like that gun barrel, and the muscles of my vagina closed around him as I pictured Erica—not him, Erica—in that golden get-up of his. Naked, bound, vulnerable, glowing with perspiration and slight fear over what I could do. Steven’s eyes rolled up inside his head, and then he was shooting inside me, spunk firing off in hot streams. A choked voice: “Fuuuuuucckk, eeeeeahhh!…” Me, in simultaneous orgasm with Steven Swann. He floated down first as my noose on him went slack, and our eyes met again. With a sudden hardening, he shot one final time. Son-of-a-bitch. He saw it in my eyes.

  How tempted I was.

  I loosened the scarf. As soft as it was, there was still an angry purple ring around his neck, not quite a rope burn but dark enough for gossip. I pumped my hips once more selfishly, leaned down and sunk my teeth into his neck, sucking hard with my lips to mark him. That didn’t bother him either. I got off him and felt my knees buckle under me, sliding down the end of the couch to the rug. I didn’t care about leaning against his legs, no emotional attachment presumed in this casual contact of our bodies. I was back to my quiet dull emptiness, and Steven…Steven was goddamn Dorian Gray with a new coat of paint slapped on.

  I showered in his washroom, and he stood in the doorway, naked, watching me through the clear glass sliding door. He sat down on the toilet, and I was busy lathering my legs, barely noticing that his hand was suddenly full of sticky lube. He was masturbating, his cock reddening as his fist shot up and down with an urgent rhythm. I stopped what I was doing for a moment to watch, pressing my tits and my pubic mound up against the glass, fascinated because he needed to come again. He shot a ribbon of milky spunk across his hairless white chest and sagged against the toilet cabinet. Strange. He hadn’t wanted to come into the shower with me. He didn’t ask me to come out and fool around again. He had made himself come in seconds just from watching me.

  “Now tell me. Why’d you do it?”

  Naked and sticky, his eyes half-lidded in that peculiar drunken afterglow of masturbation, he looked at me and seemed to be taking my measure. The man-child with the MBA who could give the Wall Street sharks a run for their money. Then his face brighte
ned, and he was gracious in victory, quite willing to be candid now that the deed was done. His voice dropped all its feeling. Like shedding a skin. Fucking reptile.

  “Do you know how many albums both of us sold the week that Erica broke the news of our engagement?”

  Jesus.

  “You know how much play Drum got on MTV Base that week? No, no—better point. You know how much play they gave Slummin’ on MTV Base? They’ve put it in the Hip-Hop category for the charts as well as Pop.”

  The water was still running. I stood behind the glass door in his shower. I was like an outsider in a rainstorm looking through the window of an exclusive restaurant. Only there was nothing palatable in there. Cascades of lather were still rolling down my belly, and there were suds over my hands as I unconsciously squeezed the bar of soap. Steven was hard again. Horny as hell. Horny and oversexed even as he explained his nifty little plan that exploited my friend and employer. A flood of images played in my head as I stared at him, trying to imagine how Erica would handle this confrontation. My beautiful friend could be so much stronger yet occasionally so much more vulnerable than me. I thought of the way she played Easy like a keyboard in his nightclub. I soaped up my breasts. Steven was jerking himself off again.

  “You wouldn’t just do this for album sales,” I argued.

  For a moment, he wasn’t with me, his eyes closed, his cock hard and thick as his left hand cupped his balls. “No…” Then eyes open, not looking at my face but at my lathered nipples. “No…But the cred I got.”

  “Credibility?”

  Bastard.

  “You got to be shitting me,” I said, half to myself. “Why didn’t you just write something that talked about the same stuff she does? Or just sing one of Luther’s songs?”

  “Guilt by…association, baby.” Laughter mixed with a grunt of pleasure. “Who is gonna believe a white kid from nice upscale suburban Santa Fe is sincere when he sings about the poor of Brooklyn, huh? You look at me, you think I can pull the Springsteen? All that aching social conscience shit? I keep my mouth shut, and I must care because I’m with her.”

  “And now you’re not.”

  He came again, gentler this time, his cum oozing down his penis, and I saw the endorphin rush snap him to attention.

  “And now I’m not,” he echoed. “But it’s all good. The numbers don’t lie. And neither did I, Michelle. Not once.”

  I turned the taps off and slid back the glass panel.

  “You fuck with me on this, you’ll lose, Michelle,” he warned. “It’s not too difficult to leak the word about her skankin’ around.”

  “Please don’t quote your songs, Ste—”

  “Michelle, I know you paid them or hired them or made them go away. Her guys. Her casual flings. I’ll just put in a higher bid to bring ’em all back.”

  “Wasn’t thinking of it,” I answered, towelling myself off. “I just wanted to know why you’re doing this. Erica made her own bed with you, and she’ll have to lie in it. Where’s that blouse you promised me?”

  I let the damp towel fall to the floor of the bathroom, and damn if he didn’t get hard again. I walked out, crossing back to the main lounge, where my panties and my skirt still lay on the floor. As I finished zipping up the skirt, Steven came out and handed me a red top. Sure enough, it was Erica’s, one she’d bought while shopping with me at Bloomingdale’s. I put it on, not caring that my nipples poked through the thin blouse and cast dark shadows under the fabric. He’d made shreds of my bra, so I’d have to go without. As I squeezed my feet into my shoes and slung my purse over my shoulder, he called out to me.

  “Mish! Catch.”

  Tossing me a set of keys. I caught them out of reflex, staring at him from the door. He stood naked in the living room, his cock still half-erect, wearing that naughty teen hunk smirk of his.

  “You were right,” he said, pausing for emphasis. “You’re a fantastic fuck. Let’s party again sometime.”

  I slammed the door behind me.

  I went for a welcome-home drink that night with Luther, and he told me stories about his stay in London. He said that after a few weeks, just before he got his major producing gigs for the British artists, he checked out of his hotel and went to stay with a new friend up in Hackney, sleeping on the floor of a spare bedroom with a borrowed duvet. He said it was as if he were going into hard training for a sport event of his own creation. He had to let life there permeate him, let go of tourist urges and old habits and breathe in curry smells, diesel, stale beer and brick. He said he could sense new textures in the music he wanted to write. He wanted to work on a big canvas, not another Drum, but, sure, his own landmark album in a way. He couldn’t stop smiling, his face aglow with the enthusiasm of the convert.

  “Luther, you talk about it like you’re a UNICEF worker in the Third World!” I kidded him.

  “But it is in a way, and they don’t see it!” he laughed. “They got these, um, what do they call ’em? Council taxes. Say you rent a place. You’re paying this council for your street upkeep, your trash collection, you know, the whole infrastructure thing. It’s not just folks who own houses or property, and I got friends there telling me how you might rent a flat and pay more in council tax than a guy with a mortgage!”

  “So this is Socialism?” I asked. Okay, I was ignorant. And naïve.

  “Don’t you get it, Mish? They’re not putting everyone on an even level, they’re sticking it to the down-and-outs in a back alley way! The poor dumb bastards rioted against what they called a Poll Tax years ago, and this is just the same thing with a different name. It just kills me when they get self-righteous about the rich and poor in America. I say, look at yourselves, man. Look at these row houses with not a stitch of green grass out front. Do you know you got to pay a fee to own your television there? You believe that shit? They say it’s to support the BBC. And I tell ’em yeah, but I don’t watch BBC1, man, ’cause it’s shit. What do I want to pay to watch snooker or ten-year-old movies from over here for? They don’t care. There’s a meanness to the place.”

  “The way you talk about, it sounds like you didn’t have a good time at all,” I said, a bit confused.

  “Are you kidding?” he answered. “I had a blast! No, this is the thing. It took me out of myself. It gives you perspective. You go over to Europe, some other country, and you try to write music about it, but you can’t escape yourself. And so you end up creating something unique but still American, you know what I’m saying?”

  He shrugged and gave a shy half-smile, embarrassed that he had slipped into a lecture. “And you, umm—” Quick cough to clear his throat. “You discover what’s important to you.”

  He speared the pecan pie with his fork and took a bite, waving to me as if to ask what did I think?

  I said, “You haven’t asked about Erica.” I paused then went for it. He’d find out eventually anyway. “Steven’s broken off their engagement.”

  He looked shocked. “He did?”

  I nodded. “It hasn’t hit the media yet. I think Steven’s waiting for the press to notice they’re not showing up together at places, and then he’ll make a statement.”

  “And Erica?”

  “She doesn’t want to make a public comment. Well…I talked her out of it.”

  Luther frowned for a moment, his expression betraying a chivalrous flare of anger over how Swann must have hurt her, and then his face was calm, unreadable. He didn’t look on Steven’s exit as an opportunity for him.

  “I had a lot of time to think about Erica. Get some distance and turn it all over in my head. I think I understand a little more about what drives her.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not going to share?” I prodded.

  Luther was cryptic. “Not now. We’ll see if I’m right. Best thing I can do for Erica is leave her alone. We’re attracted to each other, but…I’ll keep it professional. Otherwise we’ll just give ourselves a world of pain.”

  I se
ttled for that answer for now. I had my own suspicions. I think Luther was a lot deeper than your average guy whose big revelation for his woman would be: Oh, we’re mirrors, we’re the same. I don’t think he had her completely figured out. But he had found a piece of her psyche on his adventure in London. Sleeping on the floors of friends’ apartments, watching the football yobs march through the street like so many over-aged teenage boys, feeling the waves of quiet resentment over being black, being American, being there, he was alive, awake in a way that pulled him out of his streetwise complacency with Manhattan’s roughest shocks.

  And Erica: auditioning lovers and settling on Steven to escape the mundane prevalence of ordinary living. Because if you can create something beautiful it’s a high that surpasses all others, that convinces you that you matter. She’d had crap jobs waiting on tables or working a telemarketing phone for all of five minutes after high school. No more anticipation of success—she was successful. She’d made it. But we still crave anticipation, we need it, and we will go looking for our personal suspense in lovers, art, work, anything to shock us out of our wide-eyed sleep.

  I know he was still in love with her. It was all there in how he talked about her, however briefly, and his own work. He had defined his own restlessness and taken the cure. She was with him in London without knowing it, touching him in everything he did when he sat down at a keyboard or walked into a studio. But she—and I—didn’t know yet if he had left her there.

  “You told me you wrote a whole bunch of music,” I reminded him politely. “You going to play me any of it? We going to hear some of it soon?”