by Gabi Moore
“Open your legs,” he said, and all at once he was upright, on his knees and peering down at me with a dark hunger in his eyes. I flopped over onto my back and let my legs fall open for him. The exposure sent a dirty thrill right through me. I turned my head into the nest of still damp hair on the pillow and played coy for a little as he eyed me dangerously, cock bouncing hard just above the pale skin of my thighs.
“I’m a virtuous woman, my lord…” I said meekly.
I had no idea where the fuck that had come from, but when I said, I meant it. And he looked at me as though he weren’t pretending either. I was the hapless girl, Boulotte, and yes, he was dark, menacing, dangerously sexy Bluebeard.
He wrapped both hands around my thighs and pulled me roughly towards him, lifting my hips off the bed. I arched up in anticipation.
“You were a virtuous woman, my dear…” he said, and pressed an urgent thumb against my clit.
I moaned.
None of this was in the script, anyway. We were just making it up. Could we really do anything we wanted?
He grabbed his shaft and teased the entrance to my body, making me ache for him. His hands were rough and insistent on my legs, and when he wedged his swollen tip into me, I felt little waves of pleasure bursting and popping all through me, as my body opened to take him. In another inch he slid, and then another, taking his sweet, delicious time about it, setting me on fire somewhere deep inside me.
I looked up at him and gasped. He was no longer Adam. Not really. He was … someone else. As his hips settled into that ancient, dominating rhythm inside me, his expert fingers still on my clit, I watched his entire body clench and tighten into something different, something …scary. With each thrust into me he drove in deeper, and deeper still, till his full length had loosened my trembling body completely, and we were knotted together in one hot, tight spot.
“Wider,” he growled, and pulled my knees up. I groaned as he sunk into new depths inside me.
“Oh fuck,” I whimpered. Something flickered over his face, and he froze.
“What filth is this on my lady’s lips? Do I need remind her again of her new station, of her duties as my wife?
His voice wasn’t his own. God he was a good actor. All that power and mischief I had seen in his eyes the first time I had met him… that brutal, wild spirit of raw energy in him that had made me blush and turn away before – well, now I stared straight at it, full on, the entire length of his cock buried in me and nowhere to go but deeper.
“My lord, did you not hear me? I shall speak again: fuck,” I said, but this time I said the word slowly and deliberately, biting down on my lower lip as I relished each and every syllable. He looked at me with lightning in his eyes. I could almost hear the breath rushing in and out of his broad chest. Without tearing his gaze from mine, he pulled back his hips and threw them back into me, driving his dick even deeper into me, shooting electricity through my whole body. I saw stars.
“I said, fuck, my lord…” I whispered, quiet but defiant as my eyes met his again.
Again came his powerful hips, pounding down hard into mine and flooding my poor body with the most intense waves of ecstasy. I was soon close to coming …but I wasn’t done just yet.
“You defy me, then?” he said darkly, his voice hard and rough as gravel.
“Yes, I defy you, husband,” I said, bright and clear, and braced for another violent thrust, and another, and another. I bit down on my own lip to stop from squealing. He was so incredibly deep. His hands gripping tightly round my hipbones, I was utterly his …but I wasn’t going to surrender without a bit of a fight. His lips curled a little as I watched him struggle with the waves of pleasure beating through his own hard body, and I realized with delight that he was just as close as I was.
“Fuck,” I said again, this time taunting, teasing, daring him to do his worst.
To my surprise he flopped down onto me, his eyebrows in a tormented kink on his gorgeous face. He kissed me. Kissed away the ‘filth’.
I giggled. He kissed me again. I could feel him hardening inside me, inching closer to the edge. Gone was the sexy rage and power. Now, I felt the full weight of him as he perched above me, moments from orgasm. We both froze together, bodies twitching and breathing hard. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine. They were so bright, those black eyes of his. I smiled and squeezed.
“Oh fuck,” he said, and instantly his body was spasming and bucking on top of mine. It was almost too wonderful to watch. And I felt it – I felt him shooting wads of hot cum into my body, and the thought alone, the thought of him giving it to me so deep inside…
The cry in my throat caught and came out mangled. Around his gorgeous pulsing body, my own body reached a sweet, hot spot of bliss and then exploded, melting me with it and sending great heaving waves of bliss all through me. We held one another as we came, riding out the pleasure, one jagged breath at a time. Then he collapsed onto me, slick with sweat and raining down a torrent of kisses on my neck and shoulders. My body twitched and shuddered around him, but then gradually went quiet.
He buried his head in the crook of my neck. I wrapped exhausted hands round his back and clasped my fingers there, trying to anchor myself again, to come back to terra firma. Our hearts banged against one another in our chests, pressed up close. But soon, they went quiet too.
In my mind, a great red velvet curtain closed, and I heard the distant sound of applause.
Chapter 10
Piece by piece, it was coming together. With each chunk of shaped chipboard, each lick of paint, Bluebeard’s sinister castle was coming alive on the stage.
I had envisioned a massive DIY project – something that would have me donning dungarees and chopping and hammering the nitty gritty with woodworking tools, and hot glue, and a nailgun. But it was nothing like that. Instead, it felt more like …alchemy.
The elements were all unremarkable. The building blocks were ordinary and came from bulk discount hardware stores. The design elements were standard. But something …something was different about Bluebeard’s castle. It was so much more than the sum of its parts. The stage emerged before my eyes like something that existed already, and was merely being resurrected, like a strange beast hauled in parts from somewhere underground and pieced together on the topside world.
It felt magical.
Maybe a little dangerous.
One month had passed since I had stood blubbering in Tamara’s office, trying desperately to look as though I hadn’t spent the night curled in Adam’s arms, a head full of forbidden thoughts. One month since he had touched me. And looked hard into my eyes. And made me feel things I thought I had taught myself not to feel anymore.
But one month was more than enough time. As the stage came to life in front of me, I felt different too. The rest of the team had noticed. Tamara had noticed. And now I was coming to rehearsals more often, joining in on discussions that a set designer typically wouldn’t join in on. They were asking my opinion, asking questions. And, bizarrely, I was answering them.
We were rehearsing an early scene, the part where Bluebeard woos and seduces the young female lead, overriding her good sense and courting her to a doomed marriage. The setting was to be a forest. Bluebeard, groomed crisp like a gentleman aristocrat, takes the girl out in a gilded carriage and overwhelms her, and though her intuition warns her against him, she succumbs to his charms and agrees to marry him. The scene was meant to be a perfect balance between charming and creepy, joyful and yet foreboding. The trees in the forest were meant to stand aside in quiet celebration …although some trees were dark and ominous. I had painted each dark leaf, each sinister looking branch. I had to admit, it looked good. I was proud of myself.
“So this isn’t like a ballet, yeah? said Tamara. “You’re not prancing in as this pretty pair, you know what I mean?”
She was in her favorite place, center front in the audience, script in hand and her favorite bitchy expression as she looked at the scene unfoldin
g on the stage in front of her. It was late, but we were on a role today. Everyone wanted to get it right.
“Should he not follow her, perhaps? I said. “A little stalker-ish maybe?”
Tamara thought about this and then waved her hands at Adam and the lead actress, Belinda, to get them to try again. They walked off and entered stage left again, but this time, Belinda wandered on, a perfect babe in the woods, looking sweetly at the Perspex flowers on the stage and doing a good job of looking like red riding hood in the forest before the wolf spies her. Adam – Bluebeard – paced slowly behind her, hands behind his back like a general, watching her intently, the eyes of a hunter.
“Nice… yes that works nicely,” Tamara said as she watched. Belinda launched into her lines – lines I had heard so many times I nearly knew them by heart – but I couldn’t pay attention.
All I could think about was the naughty ache I felt in my body. The incessant heat between my legs. It was ridiculous, but just the sight of him was torture.
He was wearing a tastefully holey green sweater and plain trousers, and bare feet (typical Adam) …but I knew what was underneath.
He was saying his lines perfectly, with emotion, delivering them flawlessly and with that energy I had grown to admire so much ...but I knew what else those lips could so. His hands were expressive and moved artfully as he paced the stage and carried along the story in the way that only he knew how. But I knew about those hands. Those fingers. I knew the other, secret things they were capable of…
“And scene!” said Tamara, and clapped her hands together. Her eyes were sparkling.
Belinda bounded off stage and came down to chat with us as the crew whisked the wheeled trees off the stage and lifted the gauzy backdrop. And voila, the scene was done and the magical forest was removed.
Belinda was beautiful. A classic actress. Ingrid Bergman, but with highlights and freckles. A smile broad as the Cheshire cat’s and a lithe figure that I envied.
“I have such a good feeling about this!” she said and plonked down on the seat beside Tamara and I as the stage crew conjured up the next scene, the wedding scene.
But even though my eyes were downcast, I felt him. Felt him watching me, sidling over to where we sat, taking his time with his strong, muscular body as he stepped off the stage like a god descending Olympus or something. He gave me goosebumps. I folded and unfolded the worn edge of the script in my hands, avoiding looking up at him.
“The wedding scene is going to be a challenge,” I said to Tamara.
We were planning something radical. The aisle would unfold down into the audience. Actors seated amongst the rows would spring up and participate. Confetti …in the shape of tiny skulls. A peachy glow from above on track lighting that would cost us a fortune and would be a complete first for the college.
“Sure, but you’ve got it sorted,” said Tamara quietly.
I looked up to see Adam smiling at me, a faint film of stage-sweat on his brow.
I smiled back.
It felt gloriously naughty to smile at him, after all the things he had done to me that night. Done to this same body, that I had cleaned and dressed and brought out into the world as though nothing had happened at all. One look into his face and I felt a wild little thrill: we would do it again. Wordlessly, I could see it in his eyes. Sense it, as though his body was communicating directly with mine. I wanted to fuck him. Again.
“Some water, my Lord?” I asked wryly and held out a bottle of water for him. Without breaking eye contact, he took it from me, threw back a long swig and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
God, he was handsome.
I managed to tear my eyes away and saw Belinda packing her backpack and putting on her coat. It was late. We’d have to pick up everything tomorrow morning.
“Nyx, you haven’t forgotten about this Friday?” Tamara asked.
“Nope, I’ll be there.”
She was having laser eye surgery on Thursday and needed me to drive her to Cambridge on Friday to chat to our lighting guy and pick up a few things. Tamara was a total hard arse. A total slave driver. But to my astonishment, I was somehow in her inner circle now. I wasn’t going to argue with her. In this industry, it’s all about relationships, and if she wanted to single me out and give me a chance for extra responsibility, I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with her.
“Great,” she said and snapped closed her script.
Out the corner of my eye I saw Adam putting on his coat as well. I waved goodbye to some staff that were already heading out the main door. Maybe he would bend me over the couch and fuck me from behind. I packed the script into my satchel and stood to leave. It had been a good rehearsal. Maybe he’d yank back my head back with one hand and hold closed my mouth with his other hand, making me scream in pleasure and then laughing and whispering shhhhh in my ear as I couldn’t handle what he was doing to me anymore…
“Cheers, Nyx” Belinda said.
I said goodbye to everyone and watched them float off, one by one, the stage lights shutting off and the set going to sleep for the night. I said nothing to him. He folded up his collar against the cold and we walked out together in silence. We walked slowly towards his room, nothing but the sound of our feet on the tarmac and the roaring of the thoughts whirring in my head.
“I’m going to put you on the kitchen table,” he said at last, voice hushed.
“Oh?”
“Yes. And I’m going to spread your pretty little legs, and put my tongue inside you, and you’re going to come in my mouth.”
The night was quiet and strangely cool, for this time of year. I looked up at the curling arms of the trees above us. The leaves were green-black, eerie in the lamplight. I felt a delicious kick in my stomach.
“OK,” I said, and we walked on.
Chapter 11
I closed the door behind us and he disappeared off to the bathroom.
I checked my phone. Three missed calls from aunt Lila. I searched my mind. Having decided there was nothing that she could legitimately be calling me about – especially not three times one after the other – I turned the sound off and stuffed my phone back in my handbag. It could wait. I was nearly 21 years old, an adult and busy living my life. Just because she was paying for college, it didn’t mean she could nag me outside of college, did it?
I hung up my coat and flopped down onto Adam’s couch, trying to arrange my nervous limbs so I’d look perfectly casual when he came back from the bathroom. I tried to find that normal, nothing-to-see-here-folks-just-a-perfectly-ordinary-almost-21-year-old pose. I crossed my legs and spread my arms out. That would have to do the trick.
He came out and smiled down at me.
“You look like you need a drink,” he said.
I laughed as he went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of gin and some flat soda water in a plastic 2-liter bottle, then poured us some hasty drinks in mismatched glasses. I was charmed. Sure, things were moving fast, but he was right …so what if they were? Adam had a sneaky way of just smiling, lifting his eyebrows and saying nothing …and somehow you always found yourself agreeing with whatever naughty thing he proposed. It’s not that he was pushy, probably. Just that he had an uncanny knack for knowing when people wanted to be convinced…
I took a sip of my drink. He pulled a thin white joint from his pocket and held it up to me.
“What, now?” I asked, giggling.
“No, I’m just showing it to you, doofus. I just like having things like this around so we can, you know, look at them” he said, laughing. I playfully punched his knee, and he lit it up. I took a sip of my drink.
“I don’t know, Adam…” I said. He raised his eyebrows at me and said nothing.
In a way, it’s easy for a goodie-two-shoes kind of person to turn down some ill-advised indulgence. After all, it makes sense, for them. But I wasn’t a goodie-two-shoes. I was a lost lamb, a recovering bad girl, a slag. I had made enough poor decisions to last me a lifetime. It’s not th
at I said no because I thought these things were bad. It was hard to explain to people… I actually turned them down because I thought they were so, so good.
“OK, just a little,” I said, my smile fading.
He frowned.
“Nyx, you don’t have to. Really,” he said. One look at my expression and he set the joint aside. “Hey, what’s up? Are you OK?”
“It’s just …it’s hard to explain. I think I’m almost …I’m almost scared to let go, you know? To enjoy myself. If I do, it’s like something bad will happen. Does that make any sense?” I said, hating how vulnerable I must have sounded to him.
“Perfect sense,” he said immediately. “Let’s leave it, then.”
“No I want to, but…”
He gave me a long look.
“Nothing bad’s going to happen to me, right? I’m not asking for trouble? I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. Is this normal? Am I going to get punished somehow for any of this?”
His frown deepened.
“Nyx, woah… what are you talking about? Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, of course not. Do you wanna talk about something?”
His hand was on my knee. No, I didn’t want to talk about anything. I wanted him to put me on the kitchen counter, like he had said he would, and do dirty things to me. I leaned forward quickly and gave him a long, deep kiss. Before he could say anything, I reached over his shoulder and grabbed the joint again, lit it up and took one long, slow drag on it, then held it out to him as I exhaled a white plume to the side.
“Every time I enjoy myself,” I said, feeling the smoke push into the tissues of my lungs, relaxing me, soothing out the jagged edges of my thoughts, “every time I do something I really want to … I get punished for it. Something bad happens to me.”
I had never ever told anyone this. Not aunt Lila. Not even my therapist. But as the hot smoke rushed out of my lips I realized how simple and perfectly true it was. I was superstitious, I guess. I couldn’t be 100% sure that life wasn’t punishing me somehow for my indiscretions, but why risk it, right? Why even tempt fate and ‘misbehave’ again?
