by Litte, Jane
So gentle is he that I begin to believe I imagined the ferocity of his voice, the absolute hunger in his eyes. But after he has dried me, he sets me on my feet and bids me walk to the bed and await him. It is six paces. Six steps of agony. He watches me take each one with an expression of such desire that I cannot doubt his predilection.
He bathes quickly and joins me on the bed. Had he not forbidden me the twin luxuries of modesty and shame, I would blush at the liberties I allow him. But since he bade me be bold as well as willing, I do not quail as he teaches me the harsher ways of love. He schools me with a regimen of bites and bruises, of binding ties and heavy hands.
I lose minutes, hours—days—to his whim and will, but I adore his every action. My love burns as hot as hatred. It sparks a hundred small rebellions meant to earn his ire. He repays them all with punishments divine.
I find a seductive freedom in surrender—a timeless now, immediate and eternal. It brings me pleasure, even when he does his best to bring me pain. I search each careful castigation for some sign of reciprocated love—a telling look, a careless word, or perhaps a declaration.
Of all my desires, this alone goes unfulfilled.
Five
“He isn’t yours,” the servant says as she sets up my breakfast tray. She smiles when my expression falters. “He’s a prince. You cannot believe he would love such as you, common and dumb, washed up by the sea. He’s promised to a princess, and must go to her soon.”
I want to disbelieve, but soon enough the servants begin to close the unused rooms and pack his treasured possessions. The day before his ship is to sail, he comes to me with a bundle of clothes. Inside is a page’s uniform. And a pair of golden scissors.
“I won’t be without you.” His voice is light and careless. “Don the uniform. Cut your hair.”
I touch my hair, silvery as a fish’s flank and long as I am tall. In the sea it floated around me as clouds float in the sky. It is not my only vanity, but it is chief among them. I want to shout denials at him, to curse this man for whom I’ve given up my home, my voice, and my proper form. I want to say he asks too much, but I will not refuse.
He seeks the limit of what I will endure. I’ve danced for him. I’ve bent and bruised and bled for him. But I will not break. I am too proud. I am too much in love.
He gathers up my hair from the floor and locks it in a box with some worn books and a battered sword. He runs his hand over my shorn head, and his gaze over my red livery.
“You look like a boy.”
I cast my gaze down to hide my anger. He lifts my face and kisses me. It is a gentle kiss, the kind one might use to seduce an innocent. The kind a man might use to seduce a youth. He strips the uniform from my body, and takes me as men take one another. There should be no pleasure in this act for me, and yet I find it so. The heat of his hand tracing my spine, the mastery of his penetration.
It is not the first time he has taken me thus, but it will be the last. I cannot bear the thought of his marriage to another. It is the true limit of my endurance—the point at which I break instead of bend. I run my hand over my head, angry that I’ve given him everything and received so little in return.
I draw away from him when he tries to hold me afterward, only to obey when he orders me back into his arms. Yet acquiescence is not enough, for even when he has me close he whispers, “Come back,” as I drift into sleep.
“COME back!” His cry wakes me from my troubled dreams the morning of his wedding. I open my eyes and find his focused on me with the dark intensity I loathe and adore. He doesn’t look at me as a partner, but as a plaything. I’m not a woman; I am a warm body beneath him, a willing sheath for his randy cock.
I turn my head away, but he forces me to face him. “Look at me.”
I hold his gaze as he touches me, as he takes me. As his clever hands wring pleasure from my ever-willing flesh.
“My poppet.” He traces the length of my neck with his strong hand. “I’ll think of you while I’m fucking my bride.”
After he has gone, I stand before the tall mirror near his bed. His. How can I forget it when I am what he has made me—a legged thing that walks on land, soft skin marked with love bites, my hair shorn short as a boy’s?
I strike the mirror with my fists. I cannot stop. Glass shatters, but I don’t feel the pain. Desperate and despairing, I grasp a shard of mirror and squeeze. Seawater bleeds from my cut flesh, hot and salty as my tears. Come dawn there will be nothing left of me save salt water and sea foam—my life wasted for the love of a man who would not love me back.
Six
I won’t attend his wedding. I cannot watch him pledge himself to another and yet maintain the feeble thread of hope that keeps me alive. When evening falls, I walk to the sea to watch the waves break on the shore. Too late, I realize I am not used to such exertion. Except those times he bade me walk to him, he carried me in his arms. Even in my guise as a page, he gave me a fine horse to ride that I might accompany him wherever he went.
Immersion eases the pain of my aching feet. Waist-deep in the sea, siren-sweet voices call to me. My sisters rise, one after another, pale heads breaking the waves. Pale heads shorn as my own.
What have they done?
“We traded our hair to the witch for the means to free you,” the eldest answers for them all.
The youngest raises her hand from the water to offer me a crooked dagger. “Take his life to save your own.”
I take the dagger. If I cannot have him, I will at least have my sisters and the sea.
“Go,” they sing. “It must be done before sunrise.”
PAST midnight, I creep into my prince’s chamber in the foreign palace. My bleeding feet leave a trail of salt water and sand upon the floor. His princess sleeps alone in her bridal bed, swathed in white linen, her long hair unbound, her golden skin unmarred. I search the room for signs of him. Finding none, I leave soon after.
When I return to the ship, he is standing at the bow. He stares beyond the sea to where his white palace sits upon our distant shore. I touch his shoulder. He turns, his dark eyes lost and longing.
“I came for you and found you gone.” He reaches for me. I shy away. “I dreamt last night of that first night, when you touched my cheek and left me on the stairs.”
I shake my head, but he continues. “No matter how oft I say you’re mine, I know you’ll leave me for the sea.”
I want to deny it, but all this time I have been waiting for love to run its course, to free me from its coils so I might return to the life I once knew. Even tonight, I did not refuse the knife when my sisters placed it in my hands.
I reach into my livery jacket and remove the crooked blade. He seems to grasp its purpose instantly, for he takes my hand and guides the dagger’s point to rest above his heart. “If you mean to leave me, do it. I said I wouldn’t be without you.”
I gape.
“Little fool. Don’t you know I love you?” He shakes his head. “No, how could you? I did not know it, myself, until I stood ready to marry that mawkish girl.” He looks away from me. “Her eyes were wide as I approached the altar—frightened, truly frightened. And she’d a right to be—no girl wants to marry a monster.”
Little fool, he called me. His princess is the true fool, to quail and quake at his approach. Never will she know such callousness; never will she know such care. He is a creature of contradictions, this monster. He is beautiful and menacing, and he is mine.
My heart, moments ago so close to breaking, heals and births itself anew. My fading flesh grows bright and warm again. I grasp the blade of the crooked dagger and scream with joy when hot red blood wells from the wound instead of water.
“What have you done?” He takes the weapon from my hand and throws it into the sea.
“I live.” My voice feels rusty with misuse.
“Your voice . . . How?”
“The sea-witch said that if you loved me, I would win it back.”
“And if I hadn’t?�
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I look away.
He gathers me to him and binds my wound with the fine white cloth that had been hanging loose about his neck. “You’ve no right to take such risks.”
“I’ve every right.” I brush his cheek with my bandaged hand.
“You love me.” He whispers the words with reverence.
“Yes.”
He turns toward his ship’s quarters, left unlit on this, his wedding night. “Come.”
I take his hand and walk with him into the darkness, each step sublime.
Bettie Sharpe is a Los Angeles native who enjoys romance novels, action movies, comic books, video games, and every other entertainment product her teachers said would rot her brain. She loves to write almost as much as she loves to read. For info on Bettie’s backlist and upcoming titles, visit her website at www.bettiesharpe.com.
SAFEWORD
DELPHINE DRYDEN
I would have been fine if he had never made that joke about paddling. The whole thing could have stayed safely hypothetical, safely stowed in the subtext. Safe.
And it wasn’t even the joke itself—off the cuff, wry, accompanied by that wicked quirk of his lips that never ceased to make me feel fluttery. No, it was the look in his eyes as he said it. That moment of distance, of resignation. Almost a wistful expression. It was the look a person gets when he talks about his first love, the one that got away.
I could feel how strained my face must have looked as I turned around, stopping us when we were still a block away from the office building. Another friendly lunch, another round of hinting at things we both assumed would never materialize. But on the way back, there came that one moment, and it changed us.
“Don’t. Don’t talk about paddling, okay?”
“What, Burke? Did I offend? You, really?”
“No, not really. But I can’t be listening to you talk about stuff like . . . paddling.”
I turned away and started walking again, feeling a furious blush rise. Disgusting. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if my pupils were dilated, too. But I couldn’t help it, because now the image of Nathan with a paddle was firmly implanted in my far too fertile imagination. Why had I said anything?
Fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK.
“I’m confused.”
He was at my elbow, shadowing me by half a step or so, although he could easily have outpaced me. It was his way of providing me with some space, perhaps. Or maybe he was just trying to give the crazy a little breathing room.
“Oh, that’s probably for the best. Just forget it. Don’t we both have work to do?”
Another ten steps would put me at the front door. My hand was already stretching out for the gleaming chrome handle when he stopped me, clasping my other arm just above the elbow. Lightly. He didn’t need to exert pressure. He said, “Stop.” I stopped on a dime.
If he had been the type of person I had often wished he were, that might have been a clue.
“Burke, what’s the deal?”
I swallowed hard and turned around, looking somewhere past his shoulder, trying not to imagine that shoulder shirtless and flexing, drawing back for a carefully measured stroke. I was too late, however. But I knew Nathan, knew he was a nice, wholesome guy. A shameless flirt, yes, but a pure vanilla flirt. I liked that, and wanted to keep the sparkling promise of flirtation throughout my day, the subtle and none-too-subtle innuendos that could only continue as long as they were harmless and never, never taken too seriously.
“I just had a little moment, there. My secret, evil private life clashing with my respectable work life. Stuff was leaking over into the wrong compartment. It’s all tucked back in now, nothing to worry about. Sorry.”
He chuckled, and the tension began to seep away. “Okay. I still have no idea what you’re talking about, but okay.”
“It’s just dumb.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and I felt that all-too-familiar rolling thrum of unrequited lust assault my good sense. When he smiled that same little cockeyed smirk again, I felt a pull toward his mouth like a magnet. That palpable. That elemental. He wasn’t usually standing so close. When the breeze turned, I could just smell his cologne, and a hint of something that might be fabric softener.
“I doubt that. You don’t do dumb, Burke.”
That should have been the end of it. If it had been any day but Friday, I thought later, the whole thing would have blown over. Cooled off. He would have been distracted by something else before he had the chance to delve any further into the mystery.
As it was, I could feel his eyes on me throughout the afternoon. In the conference room, while we were both involved in taking a deposition. In the small law library our firm maintained, each of us working on our respective cases in a silence broken only by the steady tap of laptop keys. The tan and red spines of the law books on their neatly ranked shelves formed a tidy backdrop to the maelstrom of thoughts and images in my head. I was relieved when I came to a legitimate stopping place and left with only the smallest wave in Nathan’s direction.
He watched me walk out the door. I knew, because at the last second I couldn’t resist turning my head to check. And just before I bolted, files held protectively in front of my chest, I met his eyes and saw that wicked little smile again, and wondered what in hell I had unleashed on myself.
Whatever it was, pursuing it was out of the question. I couldn’t, not with Nathan. I had known him for five years, since the beginning of law school. And these past two years as associates at the same firm, we had become friends. We had become each other’s mainstays. I had spent many a weepy night wishing things could be different. But Nathan was straight, in every sense of the word. And I had long since come to terms with the fact of my own bent-ness. I liked who I was. I liked the sex I had. But I was under no illusions that it was everyone’s cup of tea. And I knew it wasn’t Nathan’s.
So I didn’t really understand why I agreed to his suggestion that we grab a drink after work.
THIS is ridiculous. I shouldn’t be here.
“So. You doing anything this weekend?” I didn’t want to be the first to break the howling silence, but it was a small booth and I couldn’t take the conversational void any longer.
“Nothing special. How about you?”
Reading bondage-themed smut novels, finishing the latest draft of a particularly tricky motion for filing next week, and hoping like hell I had extra batteries for my favorite vibrator so I wouldn’t have to make a special trip to the store. Those were all on the agenda, but aside from the middle option, I thought my planned activities were probably best kept on the down low from Nathan.
“Me either,” I said, nodding.
This can’t possibly lead anywhere.
“So. Paddling, huh?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just trying to see if you were paying attention,” he said with a wink. Something about the way he tugged a sip from his bottled beer suggested he wasn’t as relaxed as he was trying to seem.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Are you going to tell me?”
Figuring it was now a hopeless case either way, I shrugged and took a fortifying sip of my wine. “What exactly did you want to know?”
“You like that kind of stuff?”
“If by ‘stuff’ you mean paddling, then yes, I like that kind of stuff. And flogging. And spanking, that’s great, too. Not so big on caning, although it isn’t a hard limit. I haven’t ever tried being bullwhipped. That seems a little too extreme, but you should never say never.”
“Okay.” He stared at his beer for a full ten seconds, an agonizing stretch of time, before taking another nervous sip. “Wow.”
“Anything else?”
“Is there more?” He sounded equal parts horrified and enraptured by the prospect, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the expression on his boyish face. Then he took another little sip of beer.
“Well. Let’s see. Have I mentioned the thing about donkeys?
”
It was worth it just for the classic spit-take. I cracked up, offering my napkin to help with the aftermath.
“Jesus, Burke!”
“Sorry. But you really should see the look on your face, it’s priceless.”
“Dammit. I just got this suit back from the cleaners yesterday.”
“Well, that’s what you get for keeping your jacket on when you go out drinking with me, fuddy-duddy.”
He was already taking off the offending jacket, wiping at the damp patch on the cuff.
“Fuddy-duddy. I see how it is. So is that why you never went out with me? So much is starting to crystallize now.”
I took a second to process that, trying to cover the pause with another laugh.
“I don’t recall you ever asking me out,” I said at last.
“I always got the impression I wasn’t exactly your type.”
“And now you know why you got that impression, I guess. Now that you know my type.”
It hadn’t been as painful as I thought, coming clean. Nathan didn’t seem as put off as I had feared. Maybe the friendship was not doomed, after all.
Oh, but that little smirk when he looked at me, that secretive little gleam.
“So if you like to be paddled, does that mean you’re a ‘submissive’?”
My mouth went dry and I felt that same vertigo, that sense of my worlds colliding. Worlds I had spent years learning to keep separate from one another. “Um, yeah. I mean, I happen to be. Not everyone who likes all that is a sub, though. A submissive. Have you been spending too much time on the Internet again, Nathan?” Lord. What sites might he have run across?
“Either that or not nearly enough time. Why didn’t you say anything before—never mind. Stupid question.”
“And you don’t normally do stupid.”
“I feel pretty stupid not to have figured this out. If you want the truth, I never asked you out because I thought you were a lesbian. A really hot lesbian. But I mean, I thought that’s why nobody ever saw you going out with guys. I just figured you were really, really discreet about it. But it always killed me.”
