by JR King
I took a hold of her throat, her warm breath tingling on my skin. “I’m in charge here, Ariel,” I murmured coolly against her cheek.
“Be nice. Please, Eric?” How erotic her accommodating embrace and low purr were.
I clamped my hand over her mouth. “I could gag you and take what I want.” I stared into her teary, doe-like eyes as she fought to refuel her breath intake. When her head swayed to the side, I stopped and swiped the few tendrils of hair from her forehead, pressing my nose to her mane. “But I won’t.” Maybe she didn’t have enough breath to speak, because she gave me a soft, strangled gasp. “Why are you holding back, Elena?” My fingertips danced lightly over her cheek.
“The birth control implant isn’t infallible.” Her lips trembled and she pointedly refused to look me in the eyes. “When we went over each other’s health file, I forgot to tell you that I still bleed sometimes.”
“Ah. One of us keeps bleeding.”
“Hey, how’s the arm?”
“I’m fine, babe. ‘Twill result in a nice scar. I’m praying for a mark of Cain lookalike.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re so not sorry.” I chuckled meaningfully at the lofty use of so.
“Does it hurt?”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I’m totally fine with it. Everything’s cool and everything works from head to toe. Muscle between my legs, especially.”
“Fiend.” She desperately clawed at my fingers, her face turning red. “I do want you.”
“Our timing is never right, huh?”
She clapped her hands profusely and giggled, “Ooh, the universe is conspiring against us!”
I really love her, I admitted to myself. I loved her like I was incapable of loving another girl.
Getting up, I lifted her in my arms. She tucked her head in the crook of my shoulder, slipping one hand around it and another around my bicep. In a flash I carried her through the hallway. Even snuggled in my embrace, I could see she was filled with demonstrable apprehension. Going about my agile stride, my breath dampened the skin of her forehead. “Are you okay, Elena? You’re okay…you are,” I whispered.
“I’m okay,” she agreed.
“Garfield, The Muppets, Looney Tunes, Sesame Street, Scooby-Doo, or Spongebob Squarepants band-aid?”
I learned she had one thing in common with Carina.
Elena Anderson
The Awful Sunday
I woke up to a sound that froze me to the bone. I could hear the fabric of clothes swishing, and a man’s heavy, steady breath. It was him, he was watching me sleep, I suspected. Trying to hide from his gaze, I shoved the blanket over my head and dozed off again.
“Still away with the fairies?” My dream bent when Alexander’s tone bore down on me. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. Rise and shine. Open your eyes,” his authoritarian drawl slowly tumbled into my ears.
From behind my eyelids, I saw him hunching over me, smiling beatifically, a salacious look in his eyes.
He watched me bathe. He stood—motionless, wordless—against the counter, his arms crossed and his eyes hooded. The steam from the gigantic Jacuzzi misted the bathroom, yet his body still looked imposing through the fog. One could easily assume he was aloof, disinterested in me as he consulted his iPhone, but I knew he was absorbing every move I made.
So, I teased him. Played with my nipples and neck, and at times, I reached for the pinkish washcloth and made it disappear below the frothy water. I tensed momentarily as I let the cloth travel over my stomach and between my legs with intent, wet cotton gliding over my skin. Enveloped in the water and exposed to the daylight, the scene took on a dream-like, surreal character, arousing me. Moaning, I let him imagine what I was doing to myself, to affect his self-control and test his testiness.
Once my fingertips started massaging my collarbone, his eyes narrowed. It was almost as if I could hear the cracking of ice underneath my skates when a soft squeal escaped me.
“I think you’re clean enough now,” he sighed, tossing a towel to the side of the Jacuzzi.
My lips twitched. I almost smiled. “Just a little longer.” I lunged to the edge closest to him and rested my chin on entwined fingers that hugged the rim, my hair floating around me. “Please?”
He dropped his head back and gave me a gutted sigh. “Out. Out. Now.”
I shook my head, the pace slow and my expression sad. Manipulation is a fact of a woman’s existence. This particular headshake was rising in the ranking, it always got me my way. The trick was not to go overboard with each snapping of the neck, or it wouldn’t look believable.
The effort didn’t pass muster. His expression turned from standoffish to thunderous. “To play with your damn nipples? Nah, get out.”
Going against his orders, I soaped my hands and gently glided them over my chest.
A sharp tug on my hair snapped my neck backward. My hands, slippery from the froth and water, scrabbled and grasped the edge of the tub, slipping a little. “If you still aren’t clean, perhaps I should wash you?” I stayed still, unresisting, and my eyes drifted closed as he began to rinse my breasts with handfuls of water. Lifting my hair, he also washed my back with long, lazy strokes.
“Get out, Elena. Don’t make me tell you again.”
I’d daydreamed long enough. I scrambled to my feet in a wave of soapy bathwater, making water splash over the edge and pool on the floor close to his bare feet. Wringing out my long hair, I climbed out of the tub and wrapped myself in a towel.
“Dry your hair,” he ordered, stalking off.
Something was off about him. My hands scurried to pull up my panties and toss on a bathrobe. When he came back in the room, he stole a pause to watch me untangle the knots in my hair. A peculiar tension crackled between us, nothing new. Just his eyes assessing my body excited me. He traced my curves with stone-cold grey eyes, and yet waves of arousal liquefied certain nerve endings of my body.
“Get dressed and meet me downstairs.”
Getting decked for Sunday breakfast evoked venerated childhood memories. I inspected my appearance one last time in the beveled mirror. No Mass, since I was supposed to be in California, so I re-applied some gloss and freed my layered hair from the ponytail. Unethically I pictured undoing Alexander’s clerical collar…rubbing his cock through his cassock…
Stop horsing around, I scolded myself. I pinched my cheeks for color and shook my hair out. I was grinning so wide my cheeks hurt. Lastly, I selected a printed scarf, cobbled together a rosette around my neck and sauntered out of my bedroom.
A door opened and closed somewhere in the hallway, followed immediately by the squeaking of a cart being rolled. A twinge of sadness coursed through me at the idea of grandpa making me my favorite omelet. Blotting out the memory, I kept walking.
As I entered the cavernous breakfast sunroom, what I noticed first was the dining table the size of a tennis court before noticing the man seated at the head. Alexander didn’t react when I walked in. The conservatory style of the room wasn’t overly dramatic. Dark floor molding contrasted against the white wall-to-wall windows, an elegant chandelier hanging above the table that was set with what appeared to be Pillivuyt tableware. From soup to nuts, this is how tight-ass one-percenters lived.
“Good morning, Elena.”
“Good morning, Alex.” I waited for my heart to stop thudding. I wanted him, badly. On this table, on the floor, it didn’t matter where.
Still not looking at me, he waved imperiously at the chair to his right. “Please have a seat. Hot or cold plate?”
“I don’t mind which.”
I meekly sat down beside him, looking down at the bewildering variety of pastries and fruit. Jillian brought me an extravagant continental breakfast tray. I thanked her and she smiled at me. This housekeeper—and cook—had unusual looks. She wasn’t your typical cackling old woman with grey hair and exceedingly plump features. The woman before me couldn’t have been more than fifty, with perfect plump features. Toda
y, her long blonde hair was fastened in a long silky spill down her back, and she wore a white ensemble. Her gestures, like when she extended her hand in an eloquent loop, kept prompting me to wonder if it was trained behavior or a personal trait.
Rude. Alexander didn’t analyze me, or spoke to me. Cautiously crumbling a tollhouse cookie, he dunked small bits of it in his coffee and hardly paid attention to me.
My fingers curled tightly around the handle of the beaker. Blowing on my espresso to cool it, I caught wind of my breath. It smelled tetchy. I fought the urge to go throw my coffee in his face by closing my eyes for a few seconds.
Why was I being ignored?
Not wanting to outstay the breakfast, I sipped my double espresso so fast that I could feel my pulse rise with each swallow. The strength of the roasted beans was stronger than what I was used to. I drank the bitter liquid in small gulps, my fingers strangling the espresso cup. Just like the cup, I was a collectible, wasn’t I? I hated the way I felt in his proximity: needy and horny. Every cell in my body hummed with his presence, and I knew my cheeks were burning.
I’ll get my own back on him, no sex, I kept telling myself. I cupped my beaker in two hands for some warmth.
Our hot dishes got delivered.
Red spirals and squiggles of dark colored sauce artfully decorated the edge of the plate. It wasn’t until I tucked into my egg white omelet with trumpet mushrooms and spinach that he paid attention to me.
“Is it to your liking?” he inquired, gesturing with an almost casual movement of his hand. “Just as good as he makes it?”
I nearly choked on my food. “You haven’t!” Realizing I was shouting, I lowered my voice and hissed at him. “Please tell me you haven’t, Alex.”
“You’d rather I lie? That can be arranged,” he told me in a mockingly subdued voice.
“Did you bug the entire house?” I asked this with no little disgust, my mouth still full. I couldn’t swallow. Not open mouth, insert foot; he was willfully trying to pick a fight with me.
He lowered his iPad and I watched his eyes blinker. “Only the foyer and your room, Elena. I pay people a lot of money to find out things,” he stated, which also sounded like a scolding. He poured himself more freshly squeezed orange juice from a carafe, now keeping an eye on me.
Even though his disregard for privacy infuriated me, I sagged as relief spread through me at the mention of no cameras in the rest of the house. I swallowed and took another bite. “Do people always do as you command?”
“People who are smart—yes.” I wilted under his patronizing gaze.
I breathed an audible sigh of indignation.
“Are you uneducated on table manners or horribly short of them?”
My chewing stopped mid-mastication. Feeling sick to my stomach, like a barbed fork was jammed in its pit, I dropped my fork and got up. “If you’ll excuse me—,” I stopped mid-sentence, too.
All at once his voice changed, the lilting accent remained but his tone was commanding and sonorous. “I don’t. Sit down and finish your food.”
“I’m not hungry,” I bit out.
“I’m not going to repeat myself, Elena. No eating disorders, that’s another rule I have.”
The whoosh of a furious pulse thundered in my ears. “I don’t have an eating disorder! I have an Ivy-league degree!”
A high and rather unnatural laugh burst from his tightened lips. “And I’m not a sadist who ranks high in a monied class.” I blanched under his ferocious look, the warning in his voice sending a shiver down my spine. “Finish your breakfast.”
“Yes, daddy.” I smiled when he unattractively choked on his coffee.
I picked through my food, much in the same way Alexander was, thinking. The sound of our forks and knifes clanging against our dishes were the only noise in the room. He’s right, I acknowledged. I had to rid myself of the eating disorder. I just hated him for being right.
Tentatively I helped myself to a piece of bacon. It was perfect, crunchy without being burnt and excessively salty.
“Could you please pass me the salt, Ariel?” Alexander covered my hand on the table and I snatched it back.
I was enjoying my bacon. Having caught a glimpse of his expression, my attention was now fixed on him. He was watching me carefully, studying me as I ate.
I cut my omelet and delicately pushed it up the curved tines of the silver fork before placing the bit on my tongue. Darting out my tongue to swab the food traces from my lips, I tried hard to ignore Alexander’s surreptitious lick of his own lips.
Tracing a broken heart with the sauce on my plate, I pushed on and finished my food. I put down my knife and fork, folded my arms. I wanted to leave the room, to be away from him and feel a sense of security. I knew what was coming; he took me to the bloody chamber.
“Your sole responsibility in here is pleasing me.” He caressed my cheek and pushed his thumb between my lips, appearing to be fascinated by the way my lips parted. “You should be available to me whenever, and however I demand.”
“I don’t want to do this.” I really didn’t, there was too much going on in my head. The spying. The eating disorder. The isolation.
Impatience lining his face, he said, “You will perform sexual duties every weekend, however I want, and wherever I want. I want to fuck now. I’m a busy man, the time I make for you is a privilege. Treat it as such, Elena, and act accordingly.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You fucking bastard, you’re sick!” My fists instinctively curled up into hate-filled balls and, in a spurt of mutinous anger, I flung my hands at him.
Then he was shouting. “Do! As! I! Say!”
I fought off the signs off rebellion. “Please, you promised—,”
“Enough.” I didn’t have time to formulate a response. He walked away and pulled me along, advancing toward my suite. I was continuously clawing at him. “Happy now?” he barked in sick arrogance. He pinned me with a hard look before he turned to leave. His hand on the knob, he spun around, making me shiver under the coldness of his gaze. “Enjoy the isolation.”
I paled and he looked pleased. “Please don’t, Alex. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to please you, I swear.”
An undecided expression fell across his face, and his eyes narrowed as he studied mine. He walked back to me, like a panther on the prowl, anger screwing up his face. I trembled before him. He clasped my arms, perhaps to stop their shaking or to hurt me. I felt as brittle as a dry leaf at the end of autumn that was about to fracture into a thousand pieces. “You, Ms. Anderson, are quite mercurial,” he hissed, eyeing me through his long eyelashes. He simply stood there, tisking at me, like a god performing a miracle by granting a sinner another chance.
“It’s the claustrophobia, I hate being locked up. Please let me out of this room?”
Best I was aware of, his anger was no longer there, but in its place was something I couldn’t describe. I preferred his anger to this analytic contemplation. He lifted a finger and caressed my cheek. I flinched. It was an involuntary reaction, and I was glad he considered it as such. I could smell the mysterious cologne emanating from him, but his skin smelled even better, like rain and lemon mint. I mentally slapped myself for having the slightest attraction to him, then furrowed my brow as he let go of me.
I swallowed thickly. “Why are you like this? What has happened, Alex?”
“What’s happened is that you’re writing page-long emails to your ex, someone you fucked on your first date. Mitchell used you, he doesn’t give a fuck about you, but I—stupidly—do. Let me make it clear to you. I’m tired of getting blue-balled. She was right, I put you too high on the pedestal.”
My mouth fell open. I wanted to close my eyes, but feeling a prick of foreboding, I opened them wide instead, forcing myself to watch him. The sexual attraction, and in spite of it, didn’t change anything. Didn’t justify any of this.
The fury in his eyes found its mark, scorching the skin it touched. “You have nothing to say for yoursel
f?” he carried on, sounding friendly in a scary way, as though he was about a to dismantle the wings of a butterfly.
“Three paragraphs is hardly a page. Mitchell sent me best wishes for the new year and gave me the good news, it’s customary to respond. For Chrissake, you shouldn’t even be privy to reading my emails!” I drew in a staggering breath and held it in my chest. A single tear lost its grip on my eyelash, then another one, and then the floodgates opened.
“Crying won’t do you any good.” I saw the sardonic glint in his pitiless eyes.
“Stop it, just stop it,” I cried, out of breath. I plucked at his vest tail. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“And what have you done to overturn your punishment and deserve such a reward?” He pulled his vest out of my fingers while patting me condescendingly on the head.
I tried brokering a deal with, “I won’t email Mitchell again.”
A muscle jerked in his cheek as his face inched closer. “I won’t lock the door. Make sure we don’t run into each other. You haven’t deserved my company.”
“You’re a horrible, despicable man!”
“Don’t take a tone with me.” He reached for my hand. I mechanically pulled away, but his grip was like iron.
“I’ll take a tone with you whenever I wish it! It’s all I have left, isn’t it? My voice? You’ve hijacked my identity and stolen my life!”
He drew my hand to his and crushed it between his hands until my knuckles turned white. “Stop, Elena. You’ve taken plenty from me.”
“You are heartless. An animal that should be locked behind bars.”
He took a step back. “We’ve had this discussion. Close your mouth. Or else I’ll put it to better use.”
“Rapist.” I gnawed on my lower lip to cover the misnomic label.
“Is that what you really think of me? To what extent do you think I’m a rapist?” My mouth went dry, glued silent. His shoulders had dropped so much, at first I thought he looked defeated. Looking into his eyes as he raised them to mine, I saw something else. I couldn’t say. The grayness in his eyes glazed, and his lips pressed so thinly together that lines grooved on each side. “Answer me, goddammit!”
