by Gabi Moore
I laughed.
“That was also quicker than I was expecting. I’m always surprised how fast guys can do that.”
“Really? Man, you have no idea.”
I couldn’t help but laugh again.
“Dude, that was like, a minute, tops.”
“I could do 30 seconds probably,” he said. I loved that boyish cockiness. I loved the spirit of competition. We walked the perimeter of the rooftop and I took another drag from him in silence.
“Hmm, that’s not a usual kind of thing to do with a girl you’ve just met in a club, you know.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think there are many girls out there who are into that, honestly.”
“Really? Man, you have no idea,” I said and gave him a naughty smile.
We reached the opposite wall and I propped myself up on my elbows, noticing how my feet were beginning to hurt in my heels. I let my flat-ironed hair float in the breeze and took a moment to appreciate the set we’d chosen this time.
His cheap cologne didn’t smell quite so offensive anymore. We both watched as a rowdy group came up the iron staircase and began chattering and drinking a few feet from us.
“You wanna get out of here?” he said. He extended his hand to take mine and guided me through the crowd and back into the party so we could leave. There was a pleasing, sort of big-brother calmness in his voice. He played the part well – goofy and irresponsible one moment, but perfectly ready to step in and steer the evening when it needed steering. We weren’t ever supposed to break out of character, but I didn’t mind a little of Dean’s charm breaking through here and there, and liked the contrast.
We finally made our way out into the open street, where party goers were wandering and loitering, and the general sounds of mischief filled the air.
“Where to now, Madame?”
“Let’s go get waffles. God, I’m craving them like you wouldn’t believe.”
Chapter 15 - Dean
Myth: Kinky sex is all about fantasy and escapism.
Fact: Kinky sex brings you more deeply into the real than anything else.
This is not where the story really ends, dear reader, but it’s where we drop you off and say our goodbyes. We’ve come a long way, you, me and Nora. Many stories. Some of them sweeter than others, for sure.
Do you want to know what becomes of Nora and I? Does she get restless and cheat on me and leave me heartbroken? Do we finally run out of steam and become the boring, cynical parents with nothing in common anymore? Maybe you’re wondering if we became more extravagant with time, making our fantasies and ‘trips’ ever more elaborate.
Well, in a way, all of these things happen.
Nora had been telling me for months that she knew that the two of us were destined for something else. That she loved me enough for twenty thousand lifetimes. That she didn’t care what we did, as long as we did it together. And you know, when I trusted her and finally let go, I began to see what she meant.
One month on, one week off. Never the same moment twice. Never the same bodies, never the same smiles, or the same touches. Perhaps it will sound strange to you, but it was only on this endless carousel of novelty that I could start to finally see Nora’s solid, stable form. The media still occasionally brought it up here and there. One of the most famous women in America was an ex-dominatrix with a sordid, checkered past – how tacky!
But they only saw the tip of the iceberg I was beginning to understand she was. One month we were ‘normal’. She worked, I worked, we cared for our daughter and had dinner parties and took trips to the museum with Angelica and Maeve. And then for one week, Nora and I got to play. Alone. In whatever world we wanted to create for one another. She could be the clueless virgin, or the lonely single mom, or the naughty nun, or the free love hippy in a tent in the 60s. I could be a pervy school principle or a Bond villain or a pro athlete or an escaped circus performer from Russia who’s roaming the country using old gypsy magic and hypnosis to corrupt the womenfolk. You get the picture.
Nothing was off limits.
Nothing.
If she wanted to be dominating, then I was happy to submit. If she needed to submit, I easily took on the role of dominating her. We had played the same kinky game over and over until the natural conclusion was to begin toying with the game itself. It was a competition: who could come up with the best scenario, the most titillating script, the most realistic costumes? How deep into each roleplay could we go? So far that we both started to believe that it was real?
Yes.
Many times.
We got married and divorced countless times. Sometimes we had children, sometimes not. Mistress Morgan made an appearance once or twice, but there was so, so much more to work with these days. One trip, one I won’t tell you about in too much detail out of respect for her, involved a sinking car in a flood, a gun, and a promise. We haven’t spoken much about the things we did on that trip, but I suspect that when she’s ready, Nora will hand me another script and tell me precisely what she needs. And I’ll be there, 100% committed to bringing it to life for her.
“Binky no!” came the small voice.
Little Matilda, unlike her mother, wasn’t much of a talker. She had delicate fingers, though, and a slender frame, and I liked to tell myself that one day she’d be a dancer or a gymnast.
“What’s Binky doing now?” I said, and opened the doll house to peer inside.
“Binky’s being naughty again?” said Nora, who was sitting on the rug with us and helping Matilda and I play out the never-ending drama of Binky, Barbie and the plastic crocodile.
“Yes,” said Matilda and reached into the plastic living room to prop Binky up. Afternoons like this, with just Nora and Matilda and I, were like solid gold to me. “Crocodile’s gonna eat him!” she said.
“What! Again?” said Nora, who nevertheless found the crocodile, opened the dollhouse door with its snout and pretended to march it through the rooms, looking for Binky, naturally.
“I think it’s time Binky and crocodile made friends, actually,” I said as I looked on. But Matilda was already in the throes of making poor Binky and crocodile thrash it out in kitchen, knocking over the little pink chairs.
“Binky’s dead now,” she said, and plopped him down so his little teddy bear eyes stared straight up.
“Oh my. That’s so sad. Sorry Binky,” Nora said, and cast me an amused look.
I reached for her hand and pulled her closer in to me. I loved it when she curled up in my arms like this, big spoon and little spoon. I watched her as she watched Matilda, and we passed a few moments like these, my arms held firmly round that perfect waist of hers, my face nestled into her sweet-smelling neck.
We had just returned from Hawaii and, as was usually the case, Nora was calm and blissed out from our most recent game. With her leaning back against me, she idly stroked my forearms. Her bare toes buried into the carpet. It was late afternoon.
“Have you thought about what you want to wear to the party?” she said at last.
Ah. The anniversary celebration we were throwing.
“Uh… clothes?”
She playfully took a bite out of my forearm.
“Be serious. And you should write a speech. Nothing huge, just a few words or something, just in case.”
“A speech? You write it for me,” I said, and picked up the plastic crocodile.
“Dummy, that’s not how it works. Just say something sweet.”
“Like how we met?”
“No, leave all of that out.”
“Ok. Shall I tell them what you did recently on our little Kauai holiday?”
“Not if you value your life,” she said playfully. “Say something about marriage. Your mom will be there. My family will be there. They’re putting so much effort into the party, I think we owe it to them to act normal for just a day. …”
“Normal? Pffft. A kink too far, my dear.”
It appeared that Binky was alive and well agai
n and heading back into the same bedroom where he was likely to encounter his nemesis the plastic crocodile, again. Maybe little Matilda was more like her mom than I gave her credit for.
“Say how you absolutely adore me and couldn’t live without me, and what you’ve learnt in the, oh, five or so years we’ve known each other.”
“What! It’s only been five years? Feels like at least four hundred,” I said, and she was swift with another bite to my arm.
“Pipe down,” she said when I protested.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said and gave her a wink. I knew she hated it when I called her that, but I couldn’t resist. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell them all the secret to a long, happy relationship.”
“Excellent. What will you say?”
I thought for a moment.
“That a happy relationship is not one thing… but many.”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Is that so, oh wise one?”
I smiled.
It was so. I had never had to doubt or renew or strengthen or reconsider my commitment to Nora because it was constantly being refreshed, constantly being made new again. I never grew tired of Nora because I never quite got done getting to know her. It was the eternal honeymoon period everyone told us would soon be over, even though we always felt like we were at the beginning again.
Matilda got up and raced to the kitchen, muttering to herself, and Nora and I were left alone on the rug, folded in one another’s arms.
“Being serious though… do you really care about this anniversary party? You really want a speech?”
“Not in the least,” she said breezily. “But you can play the part for a few hours, just for the family. It’s been a while since we all were together like that.”
I nodded and squeezed her closer.
‘Ok. I’ll come up with something.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to give me a kiss?” I said and peered over her shoulder. Her neck smelt like cotton on a washing line on a sunny day, and happiness. She twisted round and reached up to plant her careful, sweet lips onto mine, and we lingered there for a moment in the silence.
All love stories are the same. All people in love are the same. Stories begin and sadly, they end, but what I had in Nora was not just a fleeting love story or a momentary lover to do it with. Nora was an eternal companion to come with me through those stories, no matter where they took us. Right through to the end and back again, because we weren’t afraid, and because we loved each other, so what did it matter if one of us was the bad guy one day, and the good guy the next?
No, we weren’t ‘normal’. But when I held her in my arms like this, nothing but a sweet kiss and deep, unspoken knowing between us, I thought of how normal was just one of the many dates I’d take her on, just one of the ways of living and loving that we could shake off the next morning, as easily as you shake off a wig or peel off a pair of stockings.
The path Nora and I had travelled had been filled with distress. There were days when I was sure we couldn’t survive as a couple, where I couldn’t believe that the person I loved could cause me so much pain. But how else do you learn to shrug pain off except to go dead through the center of it? Because everything awful that can happen to threaten the love between two people – well, those are all just stories, too. Who was Nora? I don’t know. A woman unafraid to abandon herself, to be somebody different.
I pulled back from our kiss and stroked away the hair from her face. Today, her hair was fiery red and long enough to tumble down over her shoulders. Tomorrow it might be a different color. And a few months later, she’d likely change it again. Much, much later, it would be grey. Nora would make a brilliant grandmother, and I knew she’d age not only with grace but with heaping doses of sass as well. I wasn’t one bit afraid of the adventures we’d go on together in the next life, if there was one. What was one more trip? Any backdrop is as good as the other, if you have someone to look back at you the way she was looking back at me now.
I’m surprised as anyone that I turned out to be a big, sappy romantic, believe me. But don’t judge me too harshly – you too might one day wake up and wonder when the story of your life suddenly changed forever. I promise you, it can happen. All these thoughts whizzed through my mind as we exchanged a simple smile for just a simple moment.
“I love you, Nora.”
“I love you too,” she said and nuzzled back into my arms.
“You’re my whole world.”
She shot a look up at me.
“That’s what I’ll say at the party,” I added, and I could feel her giggling in my arms.
- THE END -
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Dark Desires
Blurb
I can see right through her good girl charade.
I’m an actor, after all.
I do what I want, and I don’t do anything unless it excites me.
And she excites me…
There’s something dark about her. Something magical, chaotic and beautiful.
I could stay away.
I should stay away.
But I won’t…
Prologue
All around me, the lights dimmed and flickered out. I was in the dark belly of the castle, sealed in the bedchamber of the beast, kneeling on an immense four-poster bed, in a long white heirloom night dress… and now, the time had come.
He had admired my skill on the piano, and my long slender neck. He had given me rubies and diamond choker necklaces to wear when I danced for him. I had made such a pretty bride. They all said so. I had danced so sweetly and smiled and nodded and charmed the family that had travelled for miles to see me. I had held their heavy gifts in my hands and eaten petit fours and… and now, the time had finally come.
I would consummate my marriage and become lady of this great manor. This part would hurt, that much I knew, but I tried not to think about it too much. These were ugly things. But necessary things.
My husband of one day stood before me, undershirt rolled up at the sleeves to reveal thick, hairy forearms. In this light, you could barely tell that his beard was ever so slightly blue. Indigo colored. Like it had been dipped in ink. The kind of blue that could be rounded down to black if you weren’t paying too much attention.
I hadn’t been paying much attention.
The look in his eyes frightened me. But the chamber was so beautiful. And my nightgown was antique, and the fine lace so exquisite. So I lay back and spread my legs when he told me to. I turned my head to the side and tried not to let him see the tear roll from my eye.
He flung off his heavy trousers and stood before me, each thigh a tree trunk. His lips curled into a cruel smile as he looked at my bare, white thighs under the thin night dress. The bed dipped and creaked under his weight as he climbed onto me, caged me in with a rough arm on either side of my neck. He was like an animal. The kind of animal that bends and hulks over its kill, sinking its teeth into the flesh it fought for, fair and square.
He pulled the night dress up and bunched it around my neck. His cock, a dangerous shade of red, and thick, thumped heavy onto my bare belly, and without any finesse he stuffed it inside me, guiding the heft of it in deep with a brutal flick of his strong, punishing hips.
I yelped.
His lips curled again as he peered down at me.
The room around me disappeared into blackness.
Once a great castle, the interior walls of this place had long since crumbled. The floor had lost its gleam, and it no longer had the shine it undoubtedly did so many lifetimes ago, when my husband’s ancestors had conceived and birthed long, zigzagging lines of their aristocratic progeny, right here on
this very bed. The Persian carpets had been here for centuries, their pile ground flat and their bright colors blurred into dreams now and only the distant memory of glory. The silver candle holders still had a little sadness in them, too, evidence from when they were looted from ancient churches, long ago in a time well before anyone even cared to remember any more.
I was alone in this great room with only the obscene sound of air rushing into and out of his body. I tried not to think about it. I was a virtuous woman. I focused on the tiny carved cherub on the cupboard handle of the dresser. On the little folded cleft made by the crinkle of the sheet right beside my head. On the oval freckle on his meaty bicep. He shivered and growled, and exploded wet inside me. I squeezed my eyes shut as he pulled out and rolled over beside me, the mattress groaning. It stung.
The light around me changed to a brilliant red. Like thrumming, transparent paint. It dripped down over me and my white nightdress, turning everything scarlet. Eerie music played, louder and louder. I gazed out into the darkness and staring back at me were the wet eyes of dozens of expectant faces, watching closely.
The time had come.
I had been wed to the beast.
I looked down at my stained nightdress and touched it with a shaking hand. My husband, now sated and bored, swiftly fell asleep beside me. On a picnic once he had given me a tiny porcelain tortoise, and told me I could have a fine white pony to ride, and furs, and tiny china cups painted with orchids, and whatever I wanted.
I clamped shut my legs to dull the ache there, and hung my head.
Chapter 1
September 14, 2013
“Oh my god, you’re such a slag,” she said, and laughed. “It looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.”
I looked down at the dried white splatters on the front of my red velvet skirt. Though my head was fuzzy and the light in the room was dark, I could see it too. It did look like a painting.
