Lord and Master

by Kait Jagger

  ‘I’ll sort dinner reservations for tonight and a surprise for tomorrow morning,’ she said mysteriously. ‘You see if you can find us somewhere to stay. I’m not fussy, but I would remind you that I’ve just been at one of the premiere establishments on Miami Beach. So the bar has been set.’ With that, Luna sashayed off down Duval Street, grinning a little grin to herself.

  She sorted out the surprise first at a little shack near Mallory Square, then booked them in for a late dinner at a very basic outdoor seafood restaurant where she’d eaten several times in the past – little more than a series of fish tanks, an outdoor grill and a dining room comprised of a metal roof with four open sides, two of which looked straight out onto the ocean.

  After that she texted him: I find place for lunch? Only for him to immediately text back: Lunch and accommodation arranged. He also included a street address. Luna looked at her watch: only half an hour since they’d parted, swift work!

  And the bed and breakfast she found waiting for her was everything she could have hoped for, with a massive, wraparound porch, wood siding painted a lovely shade of pink, and a peaked metal roof with gingerbread trim. Luna walked up onto the porch and tentatively opened the screen door, to be greeted by a middle-aged, moustachioed man in a fuchsia polo shirt and khaki chinos.

  ‘You must be Luna.’

  Inside, the sitting room was decorated in an attractive mix of antiques and more modern furniture, with some striking artwork, including several photos by Robert Mapplethorpe.

  ‘Your boyfriend asked me to show you the two rooms we have available so you can take your pick.’ Luna followed the owner to the first of the rooms, a ground floor en suite he introduced proudly as ‘our Madonna room’, decorated with prints of the singer throughout her career. All very lavishly and expensively decorated, but Luna preferred the upstairs Oscar Wilde suite, with its hardwood floors and sumptuous bedspread.

  ‘We’ll take this one,’ she said happily.

  ‘Ah, a traditionalist,’ he said approvingly. ‘Your boyfriend’s in the back garden. My partner’s just whipping up a little lunch for the two of you.’

  Shortly thereafter, Luna stepped out onto the lushly planted, walled patio to find Stefan drinking a lager beside the pool, looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘Did I pass the test?’

  ‘You did,’ she said, walking over to him, bending down and giving him a slow, appreciative kiss. ‘I picked the Oscar Wilde room, by the way.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  Luna sat down next to him, removing her sandals and dipping her feet in the pool. She cleared her throat. ‘Um, I’m not sure you’ve realised, but I think this is actually a gay guesthouse.’

  ‘Really?’ Stefan said, looking around him. ‘What makes you say that? Is it the homoerotic art in the living room? Or the signed photograph of Cher on the upstairs landing?’

  He said this so guilelessly that Luna looked at him with mild concern. But then he shook his head at her, like do you think I’m completely thick? and she began to laugh. ‘And you don’t mind? I mean, you’re okay with…’ she waved her hand towards the house, ‘all this?’

  ‘What, did you think I’d feel threatened by it?’ Stefan took a swig of his beer, adding drily, ‘I’m assuming, of course, that you’ll defend my virtue if it comes to it.’

  Luna was laughing incredulously now; really, he was astounding her this weekend. ‘I thought these places were very, um, exclusive. How did you convince our host to give us a room?’

  ‘One, I am very persuasive,’ he said, standing and placing his bottle on a wicker table. ‘Two, he’s had two cancellations for tonight.’ He stripped off his t-shirt and hitched up his rather fetching light blue swimming trunks, gesturing to his perfect abdomen. ‘And three? Need I say more, Luna?’ With that he went to the deep end and executed a textbook dive into the pool. Luna watched him sink, then swim the entire length of the bottom before swimming back to her and emerging next to her feet. He gave her his honey on toast smile. ‘The water is very, very nice. Come in.’

  They went up to their room after lunch and kissed on the hardwood floor, underneath the spinning ceiling fan. ‘Shower?’ Luna asked, undoing her bikini top as she walked into the bathroom.

  The shower enclosure was massive, tiled completely with blue mosaic tiles, with a little seating area and about ten different shower heads at various heights. Luna experimentally twisted a handle and yelped as a waist-height spigot spat cold water at her.

  ‘I don’t think I’m sexually experienced enough for this shower,’ she said speculatively as Stefan stepped in and immediately figured out how to turn on the overhead rain shower attachment. She raised her eyebrows and he shrugged, ‘I am Swedish, after all.’

  Sitting down on the tiled ledge, she rifled through the copious complimentary bath products, crowing like a child at Christmas. ‘Look, two different kinds of shampoo, conditioner, facial scrub, bath oil…’ Handing Stefan some shampoo, she crossed one leg over another and leant back against the wall, pointing a tube of scrub at him and saying, ‘Well played, sir. Well played.’

  She watched him wash his hair, tried some of the scrub on her elbows, then stood and kissed him on the shoulder. ‘Thank you for this,’ she said, leaning her head into his arm, feeling the water streaming through her hair. He washed it for her, applying roughly half the bottle of conditioner, murmuring, ‘So much hair…’ After he’d rinsed it, they stood together, kissing under the water.

  Then he patted her bum and said, ‘Let’s try a little exercise, Luna,’ and turned her to face the wall, placing first one, then the other of her palms against the tiles. ‘These need to stay here, yes?’ he said, and she nodded. He placed his hand on her stomach, then inserted his knee between hers, nudging them till her feet were about a foot and a half apart. He adjusted the flow on the shower till it was coming down in a fine, hot mist. She felt his hand on her ass, felt something cool and liquid flowing between her cheeks, then, ah…his fingers, caressing her where no fingers had caressed before.

  She squirmed and tensed, till he whispered, ‘Relax. This won’t go any further than you want it to.’ Then his chest rumbled and he added, ‘When in Rome…’

  His fingers moved again, lightly stroking her, teasing her. She focused on the feeling of it, the transgressive feeling of it, and found it to her liking. And when he reached his other hand to her vulva, she liked it even more.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said, giving him a quick nod. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he replied, immediately inserting a fingertip into her anus whilst rubbing a finger up against the side of her clitoris. She jumped slightly, then stilled herself, pressing her cheek against the wall, stretching her fingers along the tiles. His finger circled to the other side of her clitoris, then back again, and his other finger…moved within her.

  And so it continued till she made a panting, pained noise, and his fingers paused. ‘Don’t stop,’ she moaned. His fingers began to move again, and soon she was begging, ‘Please…ah, Stefan, please.’ She felt his hard cock against her hip, looked down and saw it, then looked further down to see his finger sliding in and out of her mons. She pictured what she couldn’t see, his palm resting on the cleft of her buttocks and his finger…

  She came silently, hands crawling the walls, legs shaking uncontrollably. He slid his own leg between hers to keep her from falling as her orgasm stretched all the way up to her eyeballs, rolled back into her head. His fingers didn’t stop until she was literally juddering against the wall. And then he reached one arm up across her chest and under her arm, the other circling her hips, lifting her up on her tiptoes till her legs stopped trembling.

  ‘That was very, very promising, Luna,’ he said eventually, and she sagged against him, laughing weakly.

  *

  That night, after Luna took Stefan to see the nightly sunset celebrations at Mallory Square, they sat at a waterside table in the restaurant watching the very last light fade onto
the horizon. Following some deliberation, Luna had donned another legacy from her Miami days, a slightly diaphanous, very girly flowered sundress with multiple layers of ruffles in the skirt. ‘Don’t laugh,’ she’d said before displaying it for Stefan as he lay on the bed, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

  ‘Why would I laugh?’ he said quizzically, standing and running his fingers under the spaghetti straps on her shoulder. ‘You look beautiful.’

  And she felt beautiful, sitting with him, eating corn on the cob, coleslaw and mahi mahi and drinking beer.

  ‘This place isn’t too casual for you, is it?’ she asked, looking around at the locals and young college kids sat around them. ‘There were fancier places we could go.’

  ‘This is perfect. I’m glad we came to Key West, glad you thought of it.’

  ‘And I’m glad you flaunted yourself to our host, got us a room for the night,’ she quipped. He looked at her for a second, then at his empty plate, arranging his knife and fork neatly in the middle of it.

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ he said, looking slightly ill at ease. He drew a breath and met her eyes again. ‘I just thought you should know, my father is gay.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Luna exclaimed, then cringed slightly as the three tables around them turned to look at her. ‘I knew it,’ she repeated softly. ‘I wanted to ask you, but I thought you’d think I was prying.’

  ‘How did you…?’

  ‘No straight man has that kind of good taste,’ Luna said, shaking her head. ‘And one time, when he was at Arborage for a board meeting, I took a message for him from a fellow named…Christian, I think?’

  ‘His partner.’

  ‘I thought so. He was very nice, and he asked questions, seemed to know things about me. The kind of things a boyfriend might tell him…’

  Stefan exhaled, looking relieved. Luna reached for his hand.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d have a problem with this, did you?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head adamantly. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Later they walked along the streets of Key West, avoiding the more crowded tourist areas and sticking to residential streets. Under a streetlamp, they passed an elderly couple who smiled at them, and for a second Luna tried to picture her and Stefan through their eyes, she in her sundress and him with his messy hair. It occurred to her that circumstances had left them both older than their years. Being with Stefan here, away from work commitments and the rarefied surroundings of Arborage, had allowed her to see him in a different, younger light. Maybe she looked different to him too.

  Holding his hand, she gently questioned him about his childhood. It seemed to her that he needed to talk and she was glad to listen. His father had married his mother, a socialite and aspiring model, when he was very young – Luna got the impression that she might have been pregnant with Stefan when they wed. And it had been a happy marriage at first, and Stefan a happy, much loved baby.

  Inevitably, though, in a marriage with such a large, corrosive secret at its heart, the happiness didn’t last.

  ‘I think my father first tried to tell my mother the truth when I was around ten, but she wouldn’t hear it, and they struggled on for a few more years. It was a very unpleasant time for all of us, though I didn’t understand what was going on. And then he finally left my mother, and she was very angry. She remains angry to this day. And she told me about my father in the very worst way she could. Ugly words.’

  Luna’s heart contracted in sympathy, but she said nothing, sensing that he didn’t want kind words from her, not yet.

  ‘Although they had joint custody of me, she made it very, very difficult for him to see me. And I colluded in this. Because I was angry at him too, for not being what I thought he was.’

  They had walked all the way to the end of White Street, where a pier stretched out into the ocean. They went and stood against the railing, listening to the water moving below them.

  Stefan continued, ‘Eventually I saw that I was being manipulated by my mother, and we began to fight, she and I. But I still couldn’t forgive my father…I’ll tell you, one thing I took away from this is that no matter what I do, I will not have an only child. I wished I had a brother or sister to talk to, someone to deflect my mother’s attention. No,’ he shook his head, ‘I will have at least two children.’

  ‘I completely agree,’ Luna found herself saying vehemently before she could stop the words.

  ‘And they’ll never be alone…’

  ‘Yes—’ Luna choked herself off before she could say more, gripping his hand in the darkness.

  There was a moment’s silence before Stefan continued, ‘I think my mother was pretty desperate, fed up dealing with me, so she tried one last gambit and packed me off to England to go to boarding school. Where I was miserable. About the only good thing to come out of it was spending time at Arborage, and getting to know Augusta. I owe her a very great deal. She was kind to me at a time when she was in pain, when being asked to look after a teenage boy must have seemed like an especially cruel trick.’

  Luna was glad it was dark and he couldn’t see the remorse that was surely etched across her face at hearing this. She had been right: sixteen-year-old Stefan had deserved her pity, her understanding. And hadn’t gotten them.

  ‘And I might have carried on being miserable and angry,’ Stefan said quietly, ‘but one day – I am not making this up, I promise you – one day I heard a voice telling me what I should do.’ He paused. ‘And the voice told me I should fuck off back to Sweden.’

  Luna dropped Stefan’s hand and turned to him. They were too far from the nearest streetlamp for her to make out his face clearly, but she thought he was smiling.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’ she said finally.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he riposted.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Not as long as you, clearly. But I recognised you from the moment I saw you, Luna. I just couldn’t place you. And then one day I saw you in the garden, talking to Nigel. You’d been running and you looked as wretched as you always do when you’re running.’

  Luna bridled and he grabbed back her hand, holding it between both of his, continuing, ‘It was raining and you were dripping wet. And then I saw you, I saw the arg flicka.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The angry little girl. The girl who told me where to go, literally.’ She could see he was grinning now. She pulled her hand away from his.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he mocked, then sighed. ‘You seemed not to want me to know that I’d met you in your shaven-headed phase. And I couldn’t completely blame you because you were literally the most terrifying girl I have ever seen. So I decided to wait, see if you would tell me eventually.’

  Luna was silent, and after a minute Stefan went on.

  ‘But the terrifying girl was right, you see. Her words stayed with me, and one month later I did go back to Sweden. I went to see my father and put things right with him. I had one last, very big fight with my mother, then I moved in with my father and Christian, and the following year I started university. Eventually I came back to England and realised that I loved it. The funny thing is, over the years I used to think about the arg flicka. She came to me sometimes, when I was facing a challenge or having a particularly difficult time at work. I’d remember that cold stare of hers and think, I’d better pull my bootstraps up.’

  Luna felt exposed all of a sudden, and more than a little foolish for guarding a secret that hadn’t needed to be kept. And she felt something more, something deeper and murkier.

  ‘Really, I can’t believe I didn’t know you straight away, with those eyes of yours,’ Stefan was saying warmly.

  Luna made a sound, a pained little sound.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were, Luna?’ he asked.

  ‘I was not a good person back then,’ she heard herself say, her voice deep with unspoken, dark
things.

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘You didn’t know me,’ she said sharply. And stopped herself.

  And then, with great effort, she pictured her mother’s apothecary chest, imagined herself shutting a drawer in it. After a few moments, she felt calmer, able to speak. She reached out her hands towards him and he took them, warming them with his own. ‘But I’m glad, really I am, that something I said back then helped you. I’m so sorry about what you went through, Stefan.’

  He pulled her into his arms and laughed. ‘I won’t have you feeling sorry for me. I was a horrid little wanker and I deserved far worse than what I got from you.’

  An hour later, Luna was conducting an exercise of her own, the fingers of one hand delving into Stefan’s delectable ass as the other held the base of his cock. She looked at him, lying in the bed, the lights from the pool below illuminating his face, and enquired innocently, ‘Gay men, they do this sort of thing too, don’t they?’ And lowered her mouth onto the head of his penis, sucking it gently. Running her tongue along him, she added, ‘When in Rome…’ before taking him more fully into her mouth whilst at the same time wriggling her fingers further into his bum.

  ‘You devil!’ he panted.

  His cock was incredibly hard and smooth in her mouth. Luna’s saliva dripped down onto her fist as she moved her mouth up and down on him, taking him as far in as she could without gagging. Stefan twisted beneath her, his hips rising up off the bed until she shook her head at him, meeting his eyes from her prone position between his legs, unsheathing her teeth and lightly running them along his tight glans. He forcibly stilled himself and threw his head back on the pillow, and she carried on fucking him with her mouth and touching him with her fingers till he hissed at her to stop. To which she carried on, tasting the tiny drop of pre-ejaculate that came from the head of his penis.