He didn’t count—he couldn’t count, under the circumstances—but it was probably a dozen solid hits before she abruptly stopped.
“Let me answer a question you asked me yesterday on the phone,” she said, sounding professorial. He almost didn’t hear her over his own hard breathing.
“Question?”
“Yes,” she said. “You asked me why you miss it. The pain. In Victorian England, a romantic practice arose. Giving gifts of flowers coded with secret meaning. The language of flowers. If a girl passed a male friend a jonquil, she was confessing she wished him to return her affection. A primrose was a promise of eternal love. A red poppy an invitation to an evening of pleasure. White for purity. Pink for affection. Black for death and dark magic.”
As she spoke she caressed his scalding flesh where she’d scored it with the strap. Her fingers were cool against his hot skin, and though it hurt where she probed him, he welcomed the pain.
“We, too, have a language of sorts,” she continued. “A secret language that only those of us who live this life understand. Your lover, the boy, did he tie you down to the bed?”
“Yes,” Kingsley said.
“You know what that means?”
“He wanted to make me feel like a prisoner.”
“No,” she said. “He didn’t want you leaving him.”
Kingsley didn’t speak, couldn’t speak.
“Did your lover bite you?” she asked.
“I told you he did.”
“What do we bite every day?”
“Food.”
“Correct. Do you eat what you like, what tastes good to you, or what you despise?”
“What I like,” he said.
“He bit you because he loved your taste and you nourished him like food. Food for the heart. Food for the soul. Did he strike you?”
“All the time,” Kingsley said.
“Why?” Madame asked.
“He’s a sadist.”
“But why strike you when there are so many other ways to hurt someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“The same reason I struck you,” she said. “Because it leaves marks. What do we mark?”
“What do you mean?”
“What is the last thing you wrote your name on?” she asked.
Kingsley swallowed. “A book.”
“What book?”
“Histoire d’O,” he said. “It was my parents’ copy. If it got lost, I would want it back, that’s all.”
“Exactly,” she said. “He tied you up to tell you he never wanted you to leave him. He bit you because you were the food to his soul. He struck you to mark you as his possession, as a valuable he would want returned to him if lost or stolen. That’s why you miss it, Kingsley. That’s why you miss the pain. Because every time he hurt you, he was trying to tell you in the only way he could how much he loved you.”
“I want to believe that.”
“No, you don’t. You want to deny it. Because if you believed it, it meant you left him for no good reason.”
“I had a good reason for leaving him. It’s just…I don’t know what it is.”
“Let’s keep playing then. Maybe we’ll find that out, too.”
33
After the strap came the crop. A flexible black leather crop that she wielded against him with terrifying precision. If a fly had landed on his back, he had no doubt she could have killed it with one quick snap. All along his body from his shoulders to his ankles she struck him over and over again. A light hit would follow a dozen hard hits. A dozen light hits after one hard hit. He had no idea what would come next, and where, and how hard. Then she stopped and caressed his hair again, damp with fresh sweat.
“What does it mean?” Kingsley asked between heavy breaths. “When you hit me, I mean.”
“I put bruises and welts on your body for the very same reason I put flowers in vases on my mantel. Because I find them beautiful to look at, and I love to decorate. The question is, Why do you let me hit you? What does it mean to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Yes, you do.”
“Maybe it means…the first time he hurt me, I was covered in bruises. Took me weeks to heal. When I stood naked in front of a mirror and saw what he’d done to me, it was like looking at my real self for the first time.”
“That’s why you let me hurt you. You want me to see the real you. This…” She touched a burning welt. “This is you.”
“This is me,” he said. He found it harder to admit than he expected. Doing it was so much easier than saying it. Even Maggie, who’d been his lover and girlfriend for nearly six months, hadn’t known about this part of him.
“The real you is very beautiful,” she said. “Let’s make you even more beautiful.”
After that there was little talking. The only sounds that could be heard in the room were the slaps of straps and the flicks of whips. And, of course, the cries, the gasps, and the moans of a man being pushed to his breaking point and left there hanging. The pain was so insistent, so merciless, so abundant that he lost track of time. One second Madame was taking a thin cane to the soles of his feet, and the next second the clock struck one in the morning. He only became aware of himself again when Madame ceased her beatings and instead laid her hands gently on his back. For a long time she simply rested her hands on him, letting her body heat scald his raw flesh. He felt flayed open on that table and so when her bare skin touched his, it seemed they melded for a moment into one single person—or, if not one person, one purpose like rain falling on the ocean because all that mattered was water.
“There, there,” she said as Kingsley took great gulping breaths, his back shaking and his legs trembling. Her hands roved all over him, scouring his skin again. As the tension left him, she soothed him with the very hands that had scourged him.
He forced himself to open his eyes. He saw her standing at his side, her eyes half-closed and hooded, the slightest smile on her lips. Moonlight surrounded her, and she appeared utterly at peace. Her facial expression was the same he’d seen in religious arts, in icons of saints who’d been given glimpses into the world beyond and whose eyes had never completely returned to earth.
“You’re beautiful,” Kingsley said to her. Or to himself. Or to the room. Or to the world.
Madame’s smile disappeared. He wished he’d said nothing.
“Are you trying to make love to me?” she asked.
“I would love to if you would let me.”
“I won’t.” She leaned over and kissed his shoulder, put her lips to his ear. “But don’t think I’m not tempted.”
He smiled.
“You’ve earned another hour’s beating for trying, however,” she said.
He stopped smiling.
The hour took an eternity to end. She brutalized the back of his thighs with tawse, then a thin metal rod that both stung and left bruises. Shallow pain and deep pain all at once. He didn’t scream but he came close a few times. He thought if he could make it through the beating without screaming, he might earn her respect. And also…perhaps…if he could keep from screaming, she would keep torturing him until he did. He wasn’t sure why he loved it so much, why he didn’t want it to end. Maybe it was because his little cries and grunts of pain seemed to have an erotic effect on Madame. For every sound of suffering he made, he heard her make an equal and opposite sound of pleasure. A quick intake of air when he flinched. A gasp when he grunted. A sigh when he cried out. Lovely sounds, like a woman being fucked by a man who knew how to fuck her.
Of course, the beating had an erotic effect on him as well. The pain set his nerves and skin singing. He was hard against the table and had been for hours. As the minutes passed and the beating continued, he grew so aroused by his pain and her pleasure that he writhed on the table. Blood pumped through his hips. His cock was an iron bar between the table and his stomach. He’d never been so close to coming but so unable to come in his life. If she just touched it, he would
spill everywhere. He was so desperate he started begging, first softly so that she couldn’t hear his words but then louder, out of sheer desperation.
“Please,” he said, panting. “Please, Madame.”
“Please, what?” She stroked his hair, now wet with sweat.
“Let me come. Please. Touch me or let me touch myself or something. Anything.”
“If I let you come, then I’ll have to stop watching you squirm like a whore.”
“I am a whore. I’ll pay you to let me come.”
“Do you need me to explain to you how whoring works?”
If he hadn’t been so out of his mind with need, he might have laughed. Instead all he said was “please” again. Madame untied his wrist.
“Don’t touch yourself,” she said. “If you do, I will be deeply disappointed in you.”
That wasn’t much of a threat, but it worked far better than any threat would. He sensed she knew that.
She untied his other wrist, and then both ankles. She ordered him to turn onto his back. Putting his weight onto his ravaged skin was equal parts agony and ecstasy. The greatest test of Kingsley’s willpower in a long time was not touching himself the instant he was on his back with his hands free. But he wouldn’t do that because that would mean disappointing Madame. And he’d rather cut his hands off than disappoint Madame.
“I will let you come,” she said. “But only when I say you may.”
He nodded and waited as patiently as a man with a throbbing erection could wait as she secured him to the bed again, both arms over his head, both ankles strapped down. He was at her mercy again and at her mercy was exactly where he wanted to be.
He watched in eager anticipation as she took a bottle of oil from a shelf and poured it into her hands. If it were possible for him to grow more aroused, he did. His breaths came fast and hard and sweat beaded on his forehead. Everything between his left hip and right hip ached. And Madame standing at his side rubbing oil into her hands was not making the wait any easier.
“If you come before I tell you to,” she said, “you will be in a car and on your way back to Paris in five minutes. You will never be allowed back here again.”
“I won’t, I swear,” he promised, although he wasn’t sure if he could keep such a promise. The second her hand touched him, he would probably lose all control of himself. Did she sense that? Is that why instead of taking hold of him she simply held her hand out, palm down over his straining cock without touching him?
“Fuck…” he breathed, in English and with extra syllables—fu-uuuuck. She was so close to him he could feel the heat of her hand radiating against his skin. He’d die if she didn’t touch him.
She did not touch him.
He died a little.
“Please,” he groaned. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. This was real pain. This was real torture. The crops and the canes and the straps had been nothing but foreplay compared to the unbearable, unbelievable, incredible misery of her beautiful wet hand hovering a centimeter over his cock.
“You brought this upon yourself,” she said. “Every secret you tell me is a weapon in my hand.”
“God,” he breathed. He’d told her about the time he’d been tied to the bed and wasn’t allowed to come until he’d begged and begged and begged. It was happening again. And he was just as desperate to come now as he’d been all those years ago. If he had to beg just as hard, he would.
“Please,” he said again, softly this time as he fought the near overwhelming urge to lift his hips off the table and push himself against her hand. Madame must have heard the note of anguish in his voice because she finally met his eyes.
“Please,” he said again and swallowed.
“Why should I let you?”
“I want you to see me come.”
“Why?”
“To please you,” he said. “It will, won’t it? You touched me when I was inside Colette. You didn’t mean to. I saw it in your eyes—you didn’t plan to. You couldn’t stop yourself.”
“Arrogant boy.”
“You call me arrogant but you don’t call me a liar. Let me come for you, Madame. I want you to see what you do to me.”
She moved in closer, close enough he could feel her breath on his face. She slipped a hand into his hair and pulled it back, forcing his chin up.
“Don’t blink,” she said. “Don’t close your eyes. Don’t look away. Not because I’ve ordered you to, but because you want to see nothing but me when you come.”
“What else would I look at?” he asked. “There’s no one else in the world.”
She touched him.
34
Finally. At last. Thank God, she touched him.
With a slick hand she grasped him and stroked the full length of his erection. The contact hit him like a bolt of lightning, but Kingsley managed—a miracle—to keep his eyes open and locked onto hers. She stroked again, harder, once up and once down. He pulled on his bonds and writhed on the bed, but even as he reached his climax he didn’t break eye contact. As she stroked and massaged and caressed and pulled, he fucked her hand with everything he had. And when the climax came, it came from the bottoms of his feet and worked all the way up his legs to his aching testicles and cock. A nerve twitched inside him, one tight little nerve, one quick little twitch and he flinched in pure pleasure. The first spurt of semen shot out of him and onto his stomach. Waves of release washed over him as he came and came in hot spasms. For one insane moment, the only parts of his body touching the table were the back of his head and the heels of his feet. He arched so hard he would have floated to the ceiling if he hadn’t been tied down. It was a violent orgasm. It wrenched everything out of him and when it passed, he was left with nothing. He was empty and spent. He had no will, no breath, no energy, no hope, no dreams, no nightmares.
“Thank you, Madame.”
“My pleasure.”
Limp as a rag, he lay on the table as Madame untied him. His eyelids were so heavy he could have slept there, despite being covered in his own come and suffused with pain from the hours’ long beating.
It started to rain. Warm rain. Gentle rain. Kingsley opened his eyes and saw Madame sponging his body off with water from a porcelain bowl. With infinite care she bathed him clean, washing the come off his stomach and chest and then ordering him onto his stomach again to tend to his back, which was still scalding from the beating and bleeding from a few small wounds. Her touch was so very tender it was almost impossible to believe this was the same woman who had just inflicted a beating on him that had lasted half the night.
“I’d forgotten about this part,” Kingsley said.
“What part?”
“When it’s over,” he said. “And you monsters turn back into human beings again.”
“Was he kind to you after he hurt you?”
“Sometimes. The second time we were together, after he’d beaten and fucked me, he held my head in his lap and said, ‘You did well.’ I almost cried. I would have taken ten times the pain, a hundred, just to hear him say those three words.”
“You did well,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, smiling to himself. Those three words worked their magic again on him. He had pleased her. That’s all that mattered. He had pleased her and nothing could have pleased him more.
“Don’t fall asleep,” she said. “We’re not done yet. Up.”
With a groan, Kingsley rolled up.
“Come here,” she said, motioning with her finger. She walked to the wall where a tasseled blanket hung over something. She pulled it off to reveal an oval mirror, full-length with a silver frame. It wasn’t the same mirror that had hidden the passage into the dungeon, but he felt a twinge of guilt just the same.
“There we are,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him close so he could see his own reflection in the looking glass. “Who do you see?”
He saw a man covered in welts and bruises, so many of them that they looked like shadows on his back. He sa
w those same shadows around his wrists and his ankles, marks from where she’d bound him, from where he’d flinched so hard that the cords had cut into his skin. He looked like a man who’d survived.
“I remember him,” he said softly.
“He remembers you, too.”
He turned to Madame, still looking prim and perfect in her nightgown and peignoir.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
“Of course.”
He started to bend his head to touch his lips to hers.
“Not there,” she said.
He smiled and went down on his knees. He removed her silk slippers and kissed the tops of her feet. He sat up, still on his knees. It had been a long time since he’d kneeled for anyone.
“Please let me serve you,” he said.
“You already have.”
“I want to make you come,” he said.
She smiled and touched his hair. “If I thought I could be with you without thinking of him, I would.”
“Your husband?”
“You are not the only one wearing the shackles of an old love around your ankles.”
“Maybe if I can take off your shackles, you can take off mine,” he said.
“Ah, but you know the truth, don’t you? About you and me? You know.”
He nodded slowly.
“Say it,” she said.
“We don’t want to take them off.”
She brought her fingers to her lips and kissed them and then pressed those just-kissed tips to his mouth. “Come with me,” she said. “I’ll let you serve me tonight. You’ve earned it, and I need it.”
She snapped his fingers, and he followed her across the hall to her bedroom.
Her room wasn’t what he expected. After seeing where she played, he assumed where she slept would look equally dark and strange. But no, the walls were painted a pale yellow with white wainscoting. A blue-and-silver damask armchair sat by a white fireplace. A Tiffany lamp sat on the bedside table. And the bed itself was neither intimidating nor grand, but simple and elegant, with a plain iron frame and a white quilt on top and a large gray and blue striped rug underneath. It wasn’t a bit frilly, yet it was undeniably feminine.
The Chateau: An Erotic Thriller Page 19
