Marie fingered her collar.
"I didn't come home to hurt him," Wil sobbed.
"Yes, you did."
Wil looked up at Marie, tears sliding down his cheeks, eyes a lackless dark ebony.
"You always tried to hurt your father, Wil. You wanted retribution for having been abandoned as a baby. Oh, he took care of the child in mundane ways, but he deserted his son as soon as his wife died. You were never part of their family. Not for your father. His family consisted of two people, and you killed one of them."
Marie watched Wil's chest pump from the heaving roiling his insides. Suddenly Wil sprang to his feet and ran for the bathroom.
At least he still remembers his manners, she thought.
She didn't really like this aspect of Wil. The sniveling. The self-pity. She would have preferred a raging bull.
When he returned to the room, he carried one of her best hand towels, the one with the stitched poppies bordering each end. He had soaked one corner of the towel with water, and he kept rubbing it across his face.
"Want a drink, Wil?"
He shook his head and sat on the settee.
Marie fingered the collar. He didn't seem to notice.
"I could give you a little arsenic in a bit of champagne."
"I can't go back."
"To your father's house?" A smile rounded the corners of her lips.
"Back to the city."
"Do you want to?"
"I can't go back."
"Be cryptic. I don't have time to give you therapy, Wil."
"I owe a lot of money."
"The pimping business is that bad?"
"I don't do that shit anymore."
"Drugs? Gambling?"
"I borrowed money for a business I was starting."
"What kind?"
"An escort service."
"And you say your not pimping anymore."
"It was going to be legit. There's a lot of people who need to show up at functions with a companion. Some are closet gays who need to rent a date just for the evening. Business people who don't have the energy for a real relationship, but don't want the boss to know."
"How much did you borrow?"
"Two hundred thousand."
"What fool lent you that kind of money?"
"A guy who would like to step over my dead body."
"Ex-lover?"
He nodded.
Marie unbuckled the collar and removed it from her neck. She studied the collar, trying to decide whether it would fit Wil.
"You want your father dead."
"No! Damn it! I thought I could stay with Dad for a while until..."
"Until he dropped dead."
Wil flung the towel across the room.
"You need a shower, Wil. You stink. There's an open shower in the basement. Use it."
"I'm not good enough for the upstairs bathroom?"
Marie sat next to him. She measured the collar around his neck.
"You need something to relieve the tension. I can help you."
Wil undid the buttons on his denim shirt.
"I can make you forget for a time."
"I don't want to forget. I want to be made to pay for what happened to my father. And you, bitch, know how to do it."
Marie chuckled. If she had only known sooner.
"Take the collar with you and put it on after you shower. Wait for me downstairs." She dropped the collar into his lap. "Now!"
A flash sparked his eyes, and by the time it disappeared Wil had taken the collar in his hand. They both stood. Marie slipped the denim off his shoulders and down his arms. His muscles sagged a bit, the confidence and power gone from his body. She unbuckled his belt and undid the trousers. He was erect beneath his trousers; a horizontal bar with a metal ball at each end pierced his cockhead.
When she finished undressing him, she held his clothing at arms length.
"Bet you've had these on for several days. This what you were wearing when you found your father?"
"Yeah." His voice sounded defeated and tired.
"I'll burn them." She started for the doorway then stopped. "You're dismissed."
Wil looked down at the collar he still held in his hands.
"After the shower you can put it on. I don't want the leather getting ruined."
He moved past her. As he walked, she took in the colors covering his legs. The Grim Reaper flexed on the back of his right leg, wielding his scythe over his head and just under the curve of Wil's right buttock. Tombstones covered the back of the other leg. Skeletal limbs were scattered among the tombstones.
She didn't have to show him the way to the basement. He homed in on the dungeon, or perhaps she had said something previously about where the dungeon was located. She couldn't remember, and it didn't matter.
"Remorse is no index of criminality; it merely denotes an easily subjugated spirit; let some absurd command be given you, which forbids you to leave this room, and you'll not depart without guilty feelings however certain it is your departure will cause no one any harm."
Justine
Marquis de Sade
Chapter 40
Wil touched his father's hand. Milky white, he thought. The ragged nails had been trimmed by a nurse. The misshapen knuckles no longer gave his father pain. The age spots appeared to be more prominent against the flaccid flesh. Wil slid his own palm under his father's. Slowly Wil's fingers closed around his father's hand, but as when he was a child, there was no response. He felt the weight of the hand and tried to lift it, but it seemed to be made of a heavy material that looked like flesh, only looked like flesh.
"Dad, I'm going to be taking you home soon. The doctor said he could do no more for you. Hell, I don't know what I can even do. Nothing, I guess, but bathe and feed you. And maybe pray, if I can remember any prayers. What should I be praying for, Dad? Your recovery? Or for you to die a peaceful death?"
He waited for tears to shine his eyes, but nothing blurred the vision of his father lying against white sheets, tubes keeping the old man alive. The hospital bed seemed too narrow for his father's bulk. Too confining. Too unreal.
"Hey, when I get you home I'll slip an old T-shirt and boxers on you. Get rid of this piece of cloth that passes as a nightgown. Besides, you're too macho for a gown."
The nurse's call button dangled uselessly from the headboard.
"The nurses don't know how lucky they are that you can't use that button. You'd really be living it up bullying around the staff."
Wil smiled, but didn't feel any emotion. He used his thumb to rub the back of his father's hand, attempting to bring back life.
He knelt down beside his father's bed and kissed the old man's hand. The smell of antiseptics overpowered Wil's breath. His stomach roiled, and his own hands began to shake.
"Don't know if I'll be able to duplicate all this clean stuff. Home might smell more like... a sewer. I think I finally fixed that toilet. I've been flushing and the water hasn't spilled over. Still think you could use a new septic tank, except that you're so damned cheap you'd rather live with the stink rather than part with a cent."
An empty bed lay stripped down next to his father's bed. A boy had been bunking there, or at least he had looked like a boy. Yet Wil and the boy had been the same age. Born two months apart, they had been able to communicate and share jokes. The kid had kept talking about going home, had kept apologizing for Keith's condition, even though he had had nothing to do with the accident. The kid had never been farther than fifty miles outside his town until he had the stroke. They had rushed him to the nearest hospital, one hundred and five and a half miles from home. He had to learn to walk all over again. Had to work on the slight slur that had marred his speech. His intent to overcome the remnants of his stroke had camouflaged the boy's fear. However, when the boy had died, fear and surprise distorted the expression on his face. Briefly Wil had caught a glance of the chiseled dead face. A second stroke had taken away the boy's second chance.
Wil wanted
to start all over. His father wouldn't let him. Marie wouldn't let him. He couldn't allow himself to forgive his own indiscretions. His own warped and depraved pleasures eased the pain. Made him forget. Made him purge himself of the guilt.
"I'm so sorry, Wil."
He turned to the door and saw Marie standing with the door open, the knob still in her hand. Gently she closed the door and slowly walked to the bed.
"Can he hear anything?"
Wil shook his head. Why had she come? he wondered. Out of hate, spite, or curiosity?
"Get up off your knees, Wil."
He found himself obeying.
She stood on the opposite side of the bed, facing Wil.
"You look like shit."
Wil sought escape by looking down at his father.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Not you, idiot. I'm talking to your dad. Think they could close his mouth? He looks a bit demented with his lips parted like that."
"He's a vegetable."
"Keith has always been an old turnip."
Shut up! Get out! Stay away from me!
"Where are you placing him?"
"In his old bedroom, of course."
"You're taking him home?"
Wil nodded.
"Why?"
"I'm going to take care of him myself."
"Too late. May as well pass him on to a health care provider. Or is the cost a problem?"
"I want to take care of him."
"I can set up a trust fund for him. We'll find an exceptionally good nursing home and move on with our lives together."
"No!"
He faced her steady glare. She softened and turned back to look at Keith.
"I'm sure Dad would feel better in a home." Her hand reached out and stroked Keith's gray hair. "He hated you, Wil, and from what I have observed, the feeling seemed mutual."
"Not true," Wil mechanically replied.
"Stop this stupid denial." She leaned over Keith and blew a few fine hairs off his forehead. "You don't want to see your son come home with the welts from my whips, the bites from my teeth, and the slashes from my canes. Do you?"
Wil watched his father's body twitch and shake. Immediately he ran from the room, calling for a doctor.
When he returned to the room, he saw Marie bending over his father, whispering and licking his ear. Wil reached out to grab her shoulders, but his hands were scorched by her icy skin.
"Seizure!" he heard from behind him. People pushed and shoved until he found himself in the hallway, watching Marie heading for the elevator bank. Her mauve dress fluttered around her calves. Her high heels tapped out the retreat.
A nurse's hand pulled him back toward his father's room.
"Your father has had a seizure. The doctor isn't sure what brought it on, but given your father's unstable condition, it's unlikely that he'll be able to go home with you for a while. Have you thought about a nursing home? They could give your father twenty-four-hour-a-day care. It will be impossible for you to do the same."
"He's coming home."
"Not a very wise choice, but it's certainly your decision."
The nurse took the same path as Marie and ended up getting on the same elevator. They smiled at each other. Neither spoke.
"Damn you!" he shouted as the elevator doors shut.
Chapter 41
"Remember when we were translating Venus in Furs?"
Sade nodded while removing his banded-collar navy linen shirt. He had removed the black sheets from the windows of the cabin tonight. Instead of illumination by candlelight, the moon would spray ghostly shadows on the two lovers.
"I got a book of my own." Her hand dipped into her red canvas bag and pulled out a thick newspaper. Playing magician, she slid a blue-colored, large-format paperback from within the pages. Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns, shouted the title in white letters. Cecelia giggled.
"I've been studying this book," she said ominously.
"And?" The child learned faster than he had thought she would.
"And I have a special surprise for you."
"Will it hurt?"
Cecelia nodded sagely.
Sade tossed his shirt to the floor and quickly undid his black leather jeans. He carefully shed his outer layer of animal skin, paring down to his own white flesh. Alerted, his cock stretched forward and out toward the scantily clad teen. Her skimpy white shorts and halter top barely covered her loins and the tips of her breasts.
Cecelia tucked the book under one arm and again reached into her canvas bag. This time she pulled out a new clothesline still wrapped and sealed.
"I shall demand your full cooperation, sir."
"Or..."
Confused, she hesitated. Suddenly she exchanged the position of the book for the rope. Quickly her fingers brushed across the multiple Post-its indexing the book.
"Why don't I stand in front of this coat hook," Sade suggested.
"Yes, that's a good idea."
She placed the canvas bag, book and newspaper on the floor and began to undo the cellophane binding the rope. Unfortunately she broke a fingernail and stopped to suck on the injured finger.
"Let me do that for you, ma chère."
The wrap disappeared in a flash.
"Now raise your wrists up to the hook," she demanded.
Sade followed her order.
Clumsily Cecelia wrapped the smooth rope around his wrists and around the hook. One burst of energy and Sade could easily break free, but he wanted to play the game to the conclusion.
"Mais, vos clothes, ma chère."
She stood tall and did an abbreviated striptease, giggling and blushing thorough it all.
The baby fat on her ass shimmied as she walked back to the canvass bag.
"I'm going to brand you mine," she said while dipping into her bag one more time. "I'm going to heat up the Hibatchi and stamp my initials across your rump." And from the bag she pulled a branding iron that displayed her initials across the tip.
Quelle merveilleuse surprise! The girl showed herself to be quite willing to seek out the tools necessary to enhance their relationship. He wondered how embarrassed she had been while purchasing these sensuelles goodies.
She placed the Hibatchi near Sade and started the fire.
"Now for the blindfold," she announced.
Again the canvas bag and yet another toy for their amusement. She fingered the black blindfold lined with a furry, cream material, attempting to tease and worry her victim.
Sade allowed her to slip the blindfold over his eyes; however, he did not tell her that he could still peek out from the bottom of the blindfold. No, he wanted to observe his mignon as she attempted to bring pleasure to her lover.
Cecelia rubbed her body against his. Her nipples were hard, but the skin felt smooth and soft. She spread her legs so that she could rub her mound against his thigh.
Wet! A perfect beginning, he thought.
"You'll be all mine forever," she whispered.
"Oui, vraiment!"
"Huh?"
"True! We will be together for eternity." He smiled, thinking what a treasure he had found in the petite coquine.
Her fingers brushed a few gray strands of hair off his forehead. Her lips came nearer to his, and he could feel her breath tickle the fine hairs inside his nostril. Finally she placed a kiss on his lips and forced them apart with her tongue, searching his mouth for the taste of wet pleasure.
Sade's cock ached, but he would wait for her lead. Her hard nipples stabbing into his chest abraded his white flesh. Her long legs meshed with his as her hand found his cock and she began to draw her fingers in an up-and-down motion. Something cold and metallic scraped the ridge of his organ. He remembered the silver and onyx ring that she always wore.
She pulled away and shouted, "Enough"
Hardly.
"I am now going to brand you with my initials."
Sade watched her jerk the branding iron in and out of the Hibatchi's heat,
purposefully causing the loud crash of coal against metal.
She stopped, placed the iron on the floor, and slowly tiptoed across the room. He could not see her open the door; however, a slight squeak gave away her location.
What marvel could she be hiding outside the cabin?
Her toes daintily returned to his view.
A Pepsi? And a hamburger patty? Did she plan on stopping for a snack? Sade's sense of the erotic would be badly ruffled. La fille would need true punishment.
"Now I'm going to mark your white flesh and bathe in your pain," she said.
Her lines would get better with practice, he assured himself.
Cecelia lifted the branding iron and made a plentiful amount of noise hitting it against the Hibatchi. Quietly she put the iron back on the wooden floor, lifted the hamburger patty and Pepsi. In two swift movements she flipped the burger onto the Hibatchi grill and slammed the frozen can of soda against his left buttocks. The sizzle and smell of burning meat.
No doubt she wanted him to believe that the burn from the icy can of soda actually was the branding iron.
Dramatically he sucked in air. His body shivered, and he heard her giggle.
When she removed the blindfold she held the can of soda in front of his eyes.
"It was only a frozen can of soda, silly. You think I would consider marring such white, beautiful flesh? I read that it's the fantasy that really counts. I got the idea from the book."
She tried to untie his wrists, but only seemed to manage to tighten the knots. Sade snapped apart the rope, freeing both his hands.
If her wide blue eyes were any indication, she seemed impressed by the feat.
"You could have freed yourself anytime, but you trusted me."
"Oui. Just as you should trust me, ma chère. It is now my turn."
"Nothing is as persuasive as the eloquence of lovers; theirs is a logic of the heart that the mind's logic can never equal."
Ernestine
by the
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