Lately, a young man caught my eye in the front row of the theater. He was always alone. He had neatly trimmed brown hair and a clean-shaven face. His dark eyes turned up at the corners, almost like cat’s eyes, and a youthful grin hinted at how he might have looked as a boy. He was well stationed in life, conveyed by the sharp cut of his black suits, sometimes adorned with touches of blue and gold at his cravat.
The evening I learned his name, he was the only one to toss a scarlet rose upon the stage. A note was secured to the stem with an ivory ribbon.
Would you accept my invitation for a moonlit stroll? I would take much pleasure in becoming acquainted with the woman behind the enchanting performer.
Ever yours,
Dr. Gabriel Blackburn
Thus began our courtship. It wasn’t long before he paid visits to Château Angélique de Verre. Given the maze-like structure of my home, we played hide-and-seek, as if we were once again children. However, our games were laced with carnal sweetness. He would sometimes snatch me by the waist as I hid among the white tulips and marigolds, cover my eyes as he snuck up behind me in the library, or part my lips with his tongue as he pressed me upon a carpet.
However, we had yet to consummate our infatuation.
The evening I planned to lose my virginity, I slipped into a scarlet dress that bared my shoulders. The fabric was so sheer, it revealed more than a mere silhouette of my figure. I relished Gabriel’s reaction when I seated him in the dining hall. He had no control over the coughs or chuckles or the blush that bled into his cheeks as he remarked, “Giselle… You’re wearing a… a…um, a…”
“A dress?” I giggled like a naive schoolgirl.
“Yes, a dress!” He glanced down upon his empty plate. Like a shy schoolboy unsure of how to answer a teacher, he mumbled, “You… You look…beautiful.”
He thought I couldn’t hear him. I reached out and curved my slender fingers beneath his chin. He had no choice but to meet my eyes.
“What did you say?” I sweetly asked.
His large Adam’s apple bounced like a wine cork in a filled glass.
“You’re beautiful.”
I squeezed his chin more firmly. “Tell me how beautiful.”
“Your hair…it’s as golden as the sun—”
“Ha! How unoriginal!” My nails dug into his skin. He clenched his teeth, but the curves that teased the corners of his lips betrayed his amusement. “Hair like mine is always compared to the sun. Or gold or honey. I would appreciate an exercise of your”—the joints of my fingers turned white. My nails nearly drew blood from his jaw—“imagination and creativity.”
He chuckled. His large hands stroked and snaked up the arm that imprisoned his chin. He started with my wrist. Soon, he reached my shoulder, relishing the silky skin beneath his grooved palms. His dark eyes never left mine.
“You are a pearl from the dark confines of the violent ocean, an embodiment of purity amidst our ruined world. A pearl, a paragon to be cherished.”
His fingertips probed the thin skin stretched over my hard yet delicate collarbones.
“Do you know those moments of fleeting beauty?” he continued. “I think of a rosebud, so tightly closed, how bulbous it looks, tapering to a narrow tip, like the pucker of a pair of lips. Ah, I believe moments of such shyness are when a rose is the most beautiful. Once it blossoms and splays open its petals without shame for all the world to see, allowing the world to violate it with their eyes and shears, it becomes tarnished and vulgar.”
I gasped. His hands flew to the sides of my neck. He then slid his hands upward so that his fingers combed against the back of my scalp.
“I think of your lips as a rosebud.” His whisper felt like the flutter of a feather upon my lips. Suddenly, his nails dug into my scalp. He pulled my face closer to him, so that our noses, but not our lips, caressed.
“Kiss me,” I ordered in barely more than a gasp.
Our kiss may have bridged our tongues, but the rest of our bodies were still firmly rooted in our chairs. I would have abandoned my seat for his yearning lap, but a bell rang to signal dinner. Regaining propriety, we ate in relative silence. The slick bloody juices of the tender steak made me wonder how I would taste to him.
When he swallowed his final morsel, my hands pounced upon his to lead him to one of my favorite bedchambers. It looked like a garden with fireflies flittering all around the fragrant green foliage that composed the walls. A waterfall generously gushed down one wall, creating a stream by the bed, which looked like a giant water lotus, large enough to cradle a pair of lovers.
I imagined kissing Gabriel as we both fell upon the lotus petals. Because he was considerably taller than I was, I cupped his face between my hands and rose to the tip of my toes, intending to pull his lips down upon mine.
“Giselle, please, no.”
He gently pushed me. I could not help but to topple backward and land upon the bed alone, my mouth slack with surprise. The sheer fabric of my red dress clung to my skin, doing nothing to hide my erect nipples. I brushed away my momentary shock by flashing him a smile, which I meant to be seductive.
He only coughed into his fist.
“Giselle, dear, don’t you find your conduct a touch too bold?”
“Don’t you dear me!” I slapped the air and laughed. “I shall feel as though we’ve shrunken into married old prunes if you address me so!”
“But we cannot share a bed without the blessing of marriage,” Gabriel replied. “I haven’t given you a ring!”
“Oh, are you intending to propose, Doctor?”
Gabriel did not look at me. His muteness smudged away my smile. I closed my legs and crossed my arms.
“Gabriel?” I drew myself before him. “Gabriel, what’s wrong?”
His dark eyes gazed at nothing upon the floor. He took a deep breath.
“Giselle… I cannot marry you.”
A frown yanked my face. “Why not?”
“You are too perfect. The entire city speaks of you in such a way. You must be an angel from the heavens, a star out of reach in the night sky. When you perform every night, you captivate everyone.”
“But doesn’t that make me all the more desirable?” I touched Gabriel’s warm cheek. He flinched, but was otherwise still. “How am I out of reach? You know I am infatuated with you, Gabriel!”
“I am indeed a lucky man to court you, Giselle. But…I fear…the entire city, in fact, fears that, because you are so immaculate, to deflower you would ruin you!”
“What is this nonsense?” I snatched my hand away from him. “How would I be ruined?”
“Your purity is the appeal of your performance,” explained Gabriel, now meeting my eyes. “Losing your virginity, whether you’re married or not, would mean destroying your appeal to audiences.”
“Then why did you court me?”
I clenched my teeth like a dog challenging an opponent, daring Gabriel to explain, or better yet, profess his love.
Instead, he coughed again.
“I was engaged before I gave you that rose.”
I widened my eyes. “You were?”
“The engagement was called off. The pain of losing her was so great, I thought courting the famous ballerina would help me forget her.”
“But it didn’t,” I snapped.
His Adam’s apple throbbed like a heart beating in desperate need of respiration. “She and I are still very much in love. I admit, there were many times when I pretended that you were her when I kissed you—”
“I was only a plaything to ease your pain, wasn’t I?” I snarled.
“Giselle—”
“Get out! Get out and return to her if that’s what you want!”
He thinned his lips. He turned away, not needing my guidance to slip out into the evening streets.
In the following evenings, during my performances, Gabriel no longer sat in the front row. I spotted him perched high up in a balcony, seated by a round-faced young woman with slanted dark eyes. She
had lustrous black hair elaborately braided and pinned, and her skin was the hue of lightly toasted almonds. I did not find her attractive, but she had the effervescent grin of a young girl, able to provoke Gabriel to laugh at ease. He had a sense of comfort that I never witnessed when he was in my company.
The city newspapers announced that their engagement was official. The evening of the announcement, during my performance, anger ripped through my body, causing me to slip as I split my legs into a long leap. Upon my landing, my toes brushed against the hard stage floor, failing to provide foundation. I screamed as I swung my arms in desperate frenzy and collapsed on my back.
The audience gasped. Yet, the orchestra continued galloping through their music sheets as I bit back my tears. I smiled as I leapt back to my feet, to make believe that the mistake had never occurred, that I really was as immaculate as the entire city believed me to be.
It was when I slipped out into the evening streets through the theater’s back door in my heavy coat that I let the trickling tears brand my cheeks with overt shame.
When I arrived home, I was surprised to find a man standing before the entrance with a book of poetry. He was sharply dressed in a black suit and a midnight cloak. As I came closer, he raised his face.
“Gabriel?” I asked.
He stepped into the dim glow of a lamppost, his grin glistening like pearls. Despite the almost twin-like resemblance, he was not Gabriel. His skin was slightly darker, and his jawline was pricked with black stubble. His eyes were not brown. Instead, they were bright green, glinting like absinthe by the light of a flickering fire. Gabriel may have been handsome with the charms of a gentle youth, but this stranger had a feral rawness to him that made my shoulders clench.
As he gave me a low bow, he grasped my hand and kissed it. His stubble tickled me, and his full lips were soft, like warm velvet.
“You’re not Gabriel,” I said.
He leaned closer to me. “Would you like me to be him?”
His whisper left a lump in my throat. I wanted to say yes. I wanted Gabriel to encase me in his arms, to slip a ring on my finger and brand me as his carnal property.
“You look like him,” I told the stranger.
He grinned. “I can show you the proper way a man can love you, more than he ever can.”
I wrinkled my nose and brushed past him to unlock my door. “Sir, you are trespassing upon my time and home. I wish you a good night!”
I shut the door behind me. But when I turned, there he was again! In my hall! His green eyes stabbed me as I backed away. Before I could scream, he remarked, “You do understand the feeling of being lonely, do you?”
“Wha-what is it to you?”
“Who do you envy?”
There was such compassion in his voice. It was like the mew of a kitten in need of shelter during a snowstorm.
“Gabriel’s fiancée.” I could not help but blurt it. I thought of how beautiful she actually looked sitting next to Gabriel, dressed in a violet gown, her black hair adorned with opals. I held my breath as my heart felt as though metal clamps were compressing it, clawing into it with nails, making it bleed.
His breath licked my neck, almost as slick as a sliding tongue. “Why do you envy her?”
“Because she’ll marry him.” I felt as though a thick rope had looped around my neck, forbidding me to breathe, to speak, to cry.
Another blast of warm breath against my neck. He purred, “What else?”
“She’ll sleep with him.” Now a tear slipped past a blinking eye.
The tear was suddenly kissed away. His lips caressed my cheek like a butterfly fleetingly perched upon a dewdrop.
“She’ll share his bed, and you fear you’ll forever be denied conjugal bliss, don’t you, Giselle?” The stranger stroked my hair, his warm fingers long and strong, capable of strangling me. “He’ll touch her the way he touched you, but will touch her in ways beyond what he’s ever dreamed of doing to you.”
One finger lightly traced the smooth outer whorl of my left ear. “She’ll share his bed with him every night, as both his pretty little wife and as his wanton whore, hungry for his fingers and whatever secret crevice they may explore.”
I thought of how much this stranger resembled Gabriel—his height, his bone structure, his nose, his lips, the shape of his eyes.
“Are you related to Gabriel?”
He smirked as he shook his head.
“I’ve never seen you in this city before. Are you new?”
“I’m an emotion that strikes every person in the world. I look different to everyone, but I enjoy paying visits when I am called on, particularly if my hosts are suffering broken hearts, unrequited love, and betrayal.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What is your name?”
“Envy.”
I felt breathless as I continued to stare into his eyes. Green with envy. Green-eyed monster.
“Are you real?”
He chuckled. “You feel me, don’t you? I’m throbbing in your veins as you think of that woman sitting by his side. I’m eating you alive as you can hardly breathe knowing that she quenches his desire in ways you can’t. I lie by your side every night as you crave a man like me to shower you with kisses.”
He kissed my cheek. His lips seared me like glowing iron. His touch caused streams of warmth to course through my veins, prompting my breath to heave. He smiled at me again, his teeth straight and white. “No one but you will ever see me.”
Rising to the tips of my toes, I pecked his lips. His eyes flashed with a surge of glinting pleasure. Hooking his arms around my torso, he jerked me closer. My waist collided with his pelvis.
“Would you like me to show you what pleasures Gabriel would grant on his wedding night?”
A lump grew in my throat. I thought of how Gabriel’s large hands would imprint me if we married. I thought of how I would wrap my calves around his waist, how he would sound if he were to enter me for the first time. Would he moan and roar or purr words of eternal love? In my reverie, my heart sank as I realized I would never find out. Only his fiancée would discover the secrets I longed to know.
I pressed my head against Envy’s shoulder. “Yes, please.”
What followed was a blur of roughness as he cupped my face between both of his hands and yanked it up for a voracious kiss. My feet dangled inches above the floor as he embraced me, imbibing my breath with such thirst. He climbed the many stories of my home, stripping my coat, dress, corset lacings and chemise as easily as slicing the curling skin off a ruby apple. I was fully nude when he reached the room where I had planned to give Gabriel my virginity. The waterfall roared as Envy and I crashed upon the lotus bed. My body curved within the contours of the petals, and he shoved away the curtain of hair that shrouded me, stripping my breasts of their last shreds of modesty.
Envy bent over me, drinking in the sight of my vulnerability, relishing the honor of being the first man to see me so exposed. I felt a foreign sensation of constriction between my legs.
“Are you scared?” whispered Envy.
I bit my lip. I had never seen a nude man. His erection was thick and riddled with bulging veins like a maze of wires. I failed to fathom how something so long could fully enter me without stabbing my intestines, how such girth could manage to squeeze into such narrow space. To top it all off, the tip of his member was bulbous, tapering into a sharp tip, like a knife.
“How will that fit inside me?” I hunched my shoulders away from him, though my legs hung open.
He softened my brows with a kiss. “It will hurt, but it won’t last.”
As he lowered his body between my bent knees, I wrapped my arms around him. Without warning, he nipped my neck. I gasped with little gusts of ecstasy as he traced his incisors down the curve of my neck and over the tip of one of my breasts, trailing red territorial bite marks along the way.
Envy pinned my arms above my head with one hand. His other hand ran up and down the length of his shaft.
“You will f
eel pain, dear Giselle,” he warned. “But it will soon be over.”
I could feel the tip of his member now probing my slit. I was soaking with molten desire. Yet, he did not enter me. With his hand wrapped around the base of his penis, he kept thrusting the tip against my wetness, colliding with my throbbing clitoris.
“You’re too big!” I whimpered, lamenting that I was a failure as a woman, that I was too small, too tight. No wonder I failed to inspire lust in men.
“Wait,” murmured Envy. “Wait, Giselle.” With his knees, he pushed my legs wider. Years of flexibility permitted my muscles to stretch, but my bones creaked. Envy spread my wet cavern open with his fingers. He thrust two, three, four and then, with slightly more difficulty, five fingers into me. His fingers curled and thrust within me, drawing slick juices as one would draw water from a pumping well.
“You’re so small, so tight,” Envy remarked with a chuckle. “But you’re a precious commodity. You haven’t been pillaged by other men.”
He drew out his damp fingers. Still pinning my arm with his other hand, he grasped the base of his erection once again. He moved slowly, as if fearing that he would startle me, that he would transform from a lover to a predator.
I screamed. I bucked my head against the bed beneath me as I felt a popping pain like the stab of a dagger.
“Did it go in?” I shrieked.
With a forward thrust of Envy’s hips, I felt the smooth sensation of him gliding into me.
I gasped. “It… It went in?”
Envy slid his member out of me. Or most of it. I felt a sudden tugging at my opening. He tugged once, and then a second time. He pulled once again, but with a great yank.
I screamed and jolted beneath him, as if needles stuck me. I could not help but realize a slack emptiness where there was once unsullied tightness. I breathed heavily and remained still within the curve of the giant petal as I stared at Envy. He was gasping for breath as well, but pleasure and pride gleamed in his eyes.
Darker Edge of Desire Page 17
