Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission

by M. J. Lawless

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Oh, you know. Work. You.”

  “Work sounds like a repetition of your old excuses. I can’t see why I’m to blame, however. I rather liked your depiction of me as a birdman. Some of those drawings were... flattering to say the least. Why don’t you draw here? I can provide you with whatever you want.”

  That was true. Her wardrobe had been completely renovated following a delightfully indulgent day shopping, but the idea of drawing or painting in this apartment struck her as wrong. It was perfect in its luxury, but had Daniel not been here it would have been too cold, too clinical. It was a show home waiting for the next occupants to arrive.

  “I can’t,” she said quietly. “Look at your walls. How can I compete with Hirst, Hockney, Tillmans and all the rest? Each time I come here they’re a slap in the face, a reminder of all my failings.”

  His frowned at this and said nothing for a while. “I can have them removed, if you want,” he told her at last.

  “No!” Her heart beat a little faster at the thought—not because it was what she wanted. That would have filled her with horror, but her heart beat more quickly because he had simply considered it. “I love them. Truly I do. But... I don’t know.”

  She stood up from the sofa where she had been sitting. She was wearing one of his shirts, and her limbs pleasantly ached from their previous lovemaking. Walking on her bare feet, she crossed into the kitchen and went behind him, her head rising to the middle of his back as she hugged him. “Thank you, though—for suggesting it. That’s not what the matter is.”

  As they ate, neither spoke for a while. At last, holding his fork in his hand and waving it around like a conductor’s wand, Daniel said: “As for work, you don’t need to do that, you know.”

  Kris squirmed slightly in her seat. “I guess not, but...”

  “What is it?”

  “I need something of my own...” Her words faltered. What she wanted to say was: You’re the guy who walked out on me, remember?

  Daniel seemed to recognise her implicit accusation and nodded. He was still watching her intently with his strange, brilliant eyes, and his silence prompted her to continue.

  “We’re an item, kind of. I guess. But... but I can’t talk about you, to anyone. I’m scared Daniel. What about if this comes to an end at any moment? What if you get bored of me? What am I left with then?”

  He smiled a little sadly at this, and placed his fork down on his plate before placing his hand beneath his chin and staring at her once more.

  “I don’t think I can ever get bored of you.”

  “Really?” Kris scoffed. “Look, I know, deep down why you were attracted to me—at least initially. But I’m a nobody really. There must be plenty of other women in Daniel Stone’s life.”

  This made his smile more ironic. “There were, indeed. Lots.” He shrugged. “For a long time women came and went in my life, then I got bored of them—yes. But more than that, sick of myself.”

  Kris felt a chasm opening up inside her as he spoke. This had been a subject she had pondered on, fretted over, for days now. She was a twenty-eight year old nobody, pretty enough, but hardly a model. Men looked at her twice, sure, but she was lucky to get a third glance from the really good looking guys. And she had realised more and more just how handsome Daniel was: his face was certainly unconventional, but he carried a presence with him, a charisma that was not just about money and power, nor simply about his physical size—although all those things certainly contributed to the effect he had on her.

  “Why did you get sick of yourself?” she asked.

  He paused, looking out across the room and out of the large windows that dominated the apartment, the roofs and towers of London visible beyond.

  “After... after Karen died,” he started to say, still looking away from her, “for a time I gave myself over to every... pleasure.” He paused. “At least I thought they were pleasures. Some were, some were not. Or rather, those that stimulated me at first, some I soon came to hate.”

  Kris felt very strange now. He had gradually begun to open up to her, but this filled her with trepidation. She felt that really she knew very little about this strange man. It had become clear that he had discovered a great deal about her, but then the facts of her life were petty and, she suspected, worthless. What was inside her, he had more slowly begun to discover this, but in many respects he was still closed to her. She hoped that he could trust her now, but she realised that part of his reserve was less to do with her and more the fact that he was a man for whom the facts of his life were not petty, but coin that others were willing to exchange—or steal if necessary.

  “Anyway,” he said, looking back at her and smiling ironically. “You’re changing the subject. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.” He glanced about him. “I can see what you mean about this place, though. And it’s not all those other art works, is it?” He pulled a mock face of disgust. “Looks like something you’d buy out of a magazine. In fact, I think I did buy it out of a magazine, or one of my PAs did. Not even sure that I like Damian Hirst.”

  This made her laugh and he watched her good natured for a moment. “Well, I can perhaps do something about this environment,” he said at last, “but that will take time. In any case, I don’t think that’s the root of the problem.”

  “No?” she was eating her food tentatively, not wishing to miss any nuance of his conversation.

  “No,” he replied. “I told you not long after we first met: I think your problem is that you lack discipline.”

  That simple word, which all her life she had rejected, rebelled against, in his mouth it did something else to her. She felt herself flowering a little down below, her sex stirring in anticipation. Suddenly she didn’t feel hungry, at least for the kind of food remaining on her plate. She placed down her fork and looked at him. She suddenly realised she was trembling.

  “Discipline?” she asked. Her voice sounded a little squeakier than she had intended.

  “Yes, discipline.” His eyes glittered as he spoke. “You worry that I will get bored of you, but I tell you, Ms Avelar, I have never encountered someone like you before.”

  “Never?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even...?” he knew whose name she was going to say and he raised a finger to his lips. “No, not even her,” he said quietly. “Don’t mistake me. I loved her, but the resemblance between the two of you is purely on the outside. It’s strange: I needed her, wanted her more than anyone in my life when she was alive, but I’m not... I’m not the same person I was when we were married. I’m not her Daniel anymore.”

  “And who are you? Daniel Stone... or Logan?”

  He smiled this. “Both,” he replied. “Logan was my mother’s name.”

  “What was she like?” Although Kris wished to learn more about Karen, she suspected that this was not the time for more questions. Instead, there was an opportunity to discover more.

  “I wish I knew. Both she and my father died when I was very young. I have vague memories—a beautiful woman, a tall man. But I’m not even sure they’re not tricks of my mind culled from television programmes or the movies. I was sent to various care homes. That’s where I got this.” He pointed at his eye with the enlarged pupil. “Detached retina when I was eleven years old. Quite a fight. I lost.” He gave a low laugh and flexed his arm. “I was determined that was the last fight I was ever going to lose. Then I was sent to Lincoln Hall. The first couple of years were as depressing as anything else I ever encountered, but then Miss Christiansen took me under her wing. I have a lot to thank her for, really. If you’re looking for my mother, I’d recommend you take her as your study.”

  Kris thought of the stern headmistress and shuddered a little. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” she said.

  “And you’ve done it again!” he said suddenly much louder. “Your ill-discipline, Miss Avelar, is contagious. No, this will not do!”

  Standing, he came
to her side of the table and took her by the arm, lifting her firmly but not roughly so that she was standing and then frogmarched her to the window. She trembled a little as he held her in his grip: it was not cold, but her body was shaking, a twitch down below telling her that this was not so much fear as something else.

  “You know, sometimes when I stand here, I can feel for a moment that I’m a master of the universe, that I can have anything I want.” He was not looking at her, but instead watching the sun as it began to set. “And then I realise that everything I have, it’s not enough. That’s always the curse, isn’t it. More. More.”

  “What do you want?” Kris’s voice was very quiet. He turned and looked at her. His eyes were very distant, and now her desire was mingled with a little apprehension.

  “I want you.”

  “You have me,” she told me.

  “I want everything. I won’t lie. We’re beyond that now. You know that I’m a dominant man, but with others that dominance is so little. Chaff, to be blown away on the wind. But you, you are the pearl of great price. A man should give up everything he has for possession of you. I want you to submit to me. Completely. Do you understand?”

  Gulping, she nodded but did not reply.

  “I don’t think you do,” he said. “I don’t just want this for myself. I want it for you too. I want you to want it—more than anything. Submit to me—submit completely—and you’ll find your real desires, I’m sure of it.”

  He looked back to the window, but still Kris could not speak. Yes! she wanted to shout, but at the same time she was frightened.

  “In the old days, I’d have drawn up a contract, or something. Rigid. Formulaic. But that’s not going to work with you. You’re a work of art yourself. And I found it, just for a little while, at Comrie. When you give yourself up to me, you’ll create again, I know it.”

  Swallowing, Kris finally managed to speak. “And what if I don’t like it? If I don’t like what you do?”

  He smiled. “Yes, this will be an experiment, for both of us. It’s uncharted territory we’re entering, even for me. Especially for me. My legalistic, corporate mind doesn’t know how to cope with this one, I must admit.” He returned his gaze to hers again, looking at her gently. “We need a safe word, again. That’s one ritual that I think is useful. For both of us, actually.”

  “Alfama?” she asked. He suddenly looked pained at this.

  “No, not that,” he said. “My rules were too rigid there. I want something that we know will take us to the boundaries, but that we can pull back from without recrimination. I’ll push you—don’t doubt that. I’ll fucking push you, but I know you want to be pushed, want to push yourself.”

  She nodded. “I do,” she told him quietly.

  “So, what will it be?”

  She thought for a while, then said, simply: “Braganza.”

  He frowned, looking at her. “Catherine of Braganza,” she said. “She was a Portuguese queen, married Charles II.” This amused Daniel but he nodded in agreement. “Very well,” he agreed. “Braganza it is. Don’t overuse it, please, but we both know that will mark a limit.”

  Without warning, he walked away from her and went to the bedroom. Kris returned her gaze to the window, only looking around when she heard his footsteps behind her. He was carrying a cord from one of her dressing gowns.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  He smiled and paused, a few inches away from her. He towered head and shoulders above her, and she felt so fragile before him.

  “Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he said very softly. “It’s time for us to celebrate, don’t you think?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “I have a present for you.”

  “Oh?” Kris was intrigued. Following their agreement the previous day, she wondered what it would be. Although he had explicitly stated that he wished to avoid the clichés of a dominant relation with her his sub, she half began to fantasise about some variant on a collar, perhaps a velvet necklace inset with a delicious cameo. Perhaps it would be something closer to her personal tastes—an art work perhaps.

  She watched his muscled thighs swing from the bed, his feet making contact with the floor as his strong arms pushed his body upright. As he walked away, she enjoyed watching the tensing and untensing of his buttocks, his arms swinging freely by his side—and the merest glimpse of his scrotum a dark shadow at the top of his legs.

  While he was gone, she lay back on the bed and stretched herself out. Once more her body felt well-used. He understood her, understood her without words, and perhaps he was right. Perhaps this new discipline was what she had always wanted, the opportunity to bring a focus back to her life. Lifting her thigh so that her leg formed an arch on the bed, her arms placed up behind her head, she watched the shifting light reflected from a mirrored surface as it played upon the ceiling, swirling and entrancing her.

  When he returned, the sex between her legs moistened as it always did whenever she saw him. His chest and shoulders were so broad, his torso so exquisitely muscled. The scars on his face were, she thought, like one of those imperfections that she had read that Iranian carpet weavers had purposefully worked into their creations, the flaw that demonstrated the perfection of God’s work. And his thing, his thick, hanging, cock, an object of mass even as it slowly swayed from side to side, demonstrating the very pull of gravity itself... that was what she worshipped.

  He was carrying a box and, curious, she pushed herself up into a seated position. The object was the size of a small shoe box, but its exterior gave no indication of its contents. Sitting beside her feet, he pushed her eager hands away as she reached out. “Gimme, gimme,” she joked, he slapping at her while she groped more at him than it.

  “Where’s your phone?” he asked, letting one hand rest on the surface of the box.

  “I don’t know. Why? Is it important?”

  “Crucial,” he replied, bending forward to kiss her. When he leaned back, she leaped from the bed in glee and skipped through to the other room where she had left her clothes. As she went, he watched her admiringly: the marks across her buttocks and lower back were wounds to match his own, though ephemeral and delivered in joy, rather than the permanent traces of sorrow that he carried.

  She came back into the room, light and shadows falling between her thighs and across her abdomen and chest. She had never looked lovelier, he thought, so fresh and free in herself. In her hand she carried her phone and as she passed it to him, she watched him curiously as he adjusted some of its settings and then opened the box.

  “What is it?” she asked, frowning as she peered over his arm.

  The interior of the box was lined with velvet, and in the centre was placed a smooth, plastic-sheened device. The whole object was perhaps four centimetres long and two and a half in diameter, a cylinder with rounded, oval ends. Looking closely, she thought that the surface was slightly transparent, so that she could see the hints of something that looked electronic inside. He did not answer, but instead returned his attention to her phone and pressed a few keys on the screen.

  “Today,” he said, “this is my mark of ownership. When you wear this, I’ll know without a moment of doubt that you are mine.”

  She looked at him oddly, plainly with no idea of what he was talking about.

  “Here,” he said. “Hold out your hand.”

  She did as she was told and he placed the rounded object in her palm before standing up and going around to the other side of the bed. Retrieving his own phone, she watched him as he typed in a message. Suddenly, the screen of her own phone lit up on the bed—and the egg-like object buzzed and vibrated in her hand.

  “Oh my God! Oh my fucking God!” she exclaimed in excitement, giggling as the device continued to wiggle, raising a hand to her mouth. “That’s fantastic! How does it work?”

  He sat down next to her, holding up his mobile. “When I text you with a certain pin number, it activates the toy through the bluetooth in
your phone. The length and intensity of the vibration depends on what I type in. For example.” He held up the phone and entered: “I love you.”

  “Ah, that’s sweet,” Kris said and kissed him on his neck. Almost instantly, the toy began to buzz, quietly in her hand for a second or two.

  “Now, watch this.” His gaze was focussed on his screen as he entered the words: “You are mine, utterly mine. You must submit to me in all things. You are a slave to my will, and your pleasure will be my pleasure, in all things.”

  This time, the vibrating toy lasted nearer thirty seconds, moving so violently at one point that it almost rolled off her hand.

  Kris squealed with pleasure, like a young girl. “Yes! Yes!” she shouted, and Daniel thought that she was having an orgasm immediately just at the thought of this. “I’ve got to try it—now!”

  So saying, she pushed herself with her hands onto the bed, lying backwards and pulling back her thighs as she did so, parting them with no qualms in front of her lover. She looked at him almost shyly.

  “Sir,” she said. “If you would be so kind.” She held out the toy in her fist, dropping it into his hand. He could still feel the slight warmth of her fingers upon its surface.

  Lying between her legs, he paused for a moment, enjoying the beauty of her sex. The short tuft of pubic hair, neatly trimmed, was soft and dark against her skin, and he admired every little bump upon her pubis, letting his gaze fall to the swirls of her clitoral hood, the tiny pink bud appearing beneath it. Her labia were parting slightly, already excited—always so excited!—at the thought of this new game. A tiny glaze of her juices was trickling down, forming a jewel at the base of her vulva. So frenetic had been their activities that the inner walls and the rim of her mucus membrane was pink and tender, her perineum glistening warmly as her lust made it slick, while her anus, so tightly curled up when he had first met her, now opened and breathed whenever she moved, inviting him into it again and again.