by Eden Myles
“There’s my good boy.”
After he left me to join Malcolm for the grand tour, I stood there, watching all the beautiful, high society people stalking about and wondered what I was doing here. I caught snatches of conversation—people discussing the health of their stock portfolios, or talking about movies and calling them films. I turned my attention on the elegant and rather explicit photography on the walls and tried not to be too obvious about my hickabilly status. I was just wondering about the possibility of slipping out a back door when a couple of exquisite women descended upon me and boldly hooked their arms through mine, making me feel like a sacrifice in a King Kong movie.
“Oh, Malcolm told me about him. He’s just lovely!” the one woman with long brunette hair cooed.
“He has beautiful eyes,” said one of the most beautiful black women I had ever seen as she grinned at me.
They introduced themselves as Evelyn and Rachaela. I didn’t know how to respond as they dragged me along the floor to the wet bar where a tall, rangy blond man in a snug tuxedo was serving the girls’ drinks.
“Ah, there’s our fresh meat,” said the tall man with a slightly lilting and vaguely sinister Cockney accent. He offered me a leering smile and a drink.
“Don’t, Devon, you’ll scare him!” Evelyn said, hanging onto me as if I might bolt otherwise.
“I don’t think he scares so easy. Do you scare easy, ginger?” the blond Englishman asked as I took the bubbly (but unfortunately very non-alcoholic) soda water from him.
“No,” I said with more bravado than I felt. I might have gotten angry at his teasing, but he was pretty hot, and I thought maybe I’d seen him in a commercial or a magazine ad. I took a sip and started as the bubbles went up my nose. After I’d blinked the tears out of my eyes, I said, “I’m Daniel.”
“He’s as cute as Devon,” Rachaela said, petting my forearm.
“No,” Evelyn protested. “He’s cuter than Devon!”
“That’s not even possible,” Devon sniffed with insult, and the two girls laughed good-naturedly.
The girls and Devon were really nice, and we talked and learned more about one another over the next half hour. Rachaela was a publisher, in addition to being a courtesan, but Evelyn was a lot like me, just a college girl, though she was married to one of the most powerful men in New York. Eventually, though, Devon walked me a few paces away, toward a gorgeous white grand piano set off in one corner. He set his drink down atop it and said, “You belong to Alexei, don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t know if I would say belong, exactly…”
“Daniel,” he said patiently. “You’re his courtier. He is your gentleman?”
“Yes.”
“What do you know about Alexei?”
“Enough.”
“Do you know about his wife dying?”
“He told me.” I set my drink down as well. “Look, what are you saying, exactly?”
Devon looked pensive. “Nothing, really. I’m just concerned about him, is all.”
“Why?”
“Daniel,” he said, and put a hand on my shoulder in a brotherly way. “I just want you to be careful with him. Elizabeth was a wonderful woman. He took her death very hard, and some believe he has never really recovered. He’s much more fragile than he seems…”
“No, he’s strong,” I protested. “He’s much stronger than he looks, and he doesn’t like being treated like an invalid. Look…” But before I could argue further, I heard soft waltz music start up and the lights in the room dim a little.
The groups of people began breaking up, and I watched the gentleman and their courtesans pairing up on the dance floor. A very tall gentleman with glasses took Evelyn into his arms, while another, blond gentleman with a cane embraced Rachaela. I watched the two girls follow the leads of their gentlemen across the dance floor, but I stayed by the piano, not sure what was happening or what I was supposed to do. A few moments later, Mr. Karenina found his way over to me, feeling along the edge of the piano, and said, “Daniel. Would you like to dance?”
I watched the couples waltzing across the floor to the music, graceful and almost geometric, almost like they had been choreographed to move all the same way, and felt a spike of fear. I’d never been much good at the raves and mixers that Sheri always dragged me off to. I usually wound up wallflowering in a corner somewhere. And this…well, I was totally out of my element, whatever that was. “I’d rather not.”
“Why is that?” He sounded disappointed.
I turned to my gentleman and told the truth. “I don’t know how to ballroom dance.”
“Let me show you, then. I suspect you’ll be an apt pupil.”
“You can dance?”
Mr. Karenina gave me a droll look. “I’m blind, Daniel, not crippled.”
“Y-yeah, of course,” I said, and turned to take his hands.
He led me out onto the dance floor amidst the other members of the Dollhouse. I stood there like a big knucklehead while he positioned my body correctly. He took my one hand in his and set his other hand on my waist. He told me to put my free hand on his shoulder. “Watch my feet,” he told me, his voice low and rumbling, and I looked down and tried to follow his steps with my own. It was much harder than it seemed, and as we began to move in and out of the shadows to the beat of the music, I noticed I was perpetually one step behind him—that is, when I didn’t accidently trample on his toes.
“I’m not very good at this,” I admitted.
“Like anything, it takes time, patience, and work, Daniel,” he said, sliding his hand down my back and guiding me along with just the touch of his hand. I liked the feeling of his warmth soaking through my clothes, and he moved so gracefully, like he’d been born dancing, whereas I felt like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, flopping artlessly all over the place.
“Is the Dollhouse everything you expected?” he asked after some time.
“The girls are really nice,” I admitted. “But I didn’t know it was a ballroom dancing club.”
“It’s not a ballroom dancing club,” he chuckled, the intimate sound of his voice raising the little hairs along the back of my neck. “The board wanted to do something nice to welcome me back. It’s been two years.”
“What does everyone do here, then?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Shall I show you, Daniel?”
“Please.”
He stopped to orient himself in the room. He had an uncannily ability to do that, what I had come to think of as his personal echolocation. Satisfied he knew where we were, he waltzed me off the floor and toward the piano. We slowed as we approached it, and when we finally stopped, he pushed me up against the side of it, very aggressively, pressed his body against mine, and yanked my chin up to kiss me.
It was a warm, wet kiss, and I always liked those, but I still squirmed uncomfortably. I’d never been very big on public displays of affection. Growing up, my mom and dad never so much as held hands in church, thinking that was too intimate a gesture. They certainly never kissed in public. But now Mr. Karenina cupped the back of my head to keep me in place while his teeth first nipped at my lips and then his tongue invaded my mouth. Our teeth clinked together in our haste and he moved his arms down my back to cradle my ass and hold me against him, against the growing erection in his trousers. He fucked his tongue into my mouth, and in seconds it was like we were trying to eat each other, to crawl into each other’s mouths.
I hadn’t realized how long two weeks without him had felt until that moment.
His hands traveled over the front of me, leaving great swaths of warmth in their wake. He attacked the buttons of my shirt under my blazer, but couldn’t work them fast enough for his liking, so he just ripped the shirt open, my buttons pinging all over the place. His hands moved over my exposed pecs, circled my nipples, and then squeezed my muscles until I groaned into his mouth. He splayed his hand possessively over my chest, over the soft, spare dark hair there.
“You’re a ver
y good student, Daniel,” he said, but I barely heard him as he moved his hands lower, over my abs, so all my muscles constricted under his touch. His fingers traced the soft hair above my belly button, then moved lower. I whimpered against his mouth as his hands worked on my jeans, undoing them and peeling them and my briefs down over my hips. The sudden coolness of the room awakened me to what was happening and I started to close my legs, but he slid his knee between them, then shoved my jeans and briefs to my knees. He rubbed the coarseness of his trousers against my growing erection while his tongue traced the side of my jaw to my ear, slid briefly into the canal, and then moved downward to lick and kiss at the flitting pulse in the side of my neck.
He breathed roughly against me, the coarseness of his cheek sending a delicious shiver over my oversensitive skin. He held me against the piano and dry humped me a few times before his hand slid between my legs to test the hardness of my cock. I gasped at his touch, at the way he seemed to weigh my balls in his hand. He squeezed them before tracing my crack to my ass and inserting a finger, my hips bucking compulsively against his invasion. As he touched and teased me, he lavished his attention on my nipples, taking them one at a time into his mouth and licking and biting them, tenting the oversensitive nubs until I grunted at the near-pain.
He finally stopped finger fucking me and slid both hands around my bare hips and lifted me easily so I was sitting on the edge of the piano, looking down at him. He finished sliding my jeans, underwear and shoes off, then stood up to push my shirt and blazer off my shoulders so they fell in a pile atop the piano. Sitting there, naked and shivering on the edge of the piano, he looked at me in that way he had, that way that went beyond mere sight, and there was such raw emotion in his dead and useless eyes that for a moment my breath caught in my throat.
I thought of the term the face of love, but then immediately dismissed it. It would be so easy to forget that this, too, was play. But play wasn’t real. This wasn’t real.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said to me, running his fingers over my face and, briefly, into my mouth. I sucked on his fingers as his voice came low and gruff so I knew that only I could hear it. “You’re like some angel in the dark, Daniel.” He cupped my face and kissed me, and it was such a strangely bittersweet kiss. He sighed into my mouth, but the sound was closer to a desperate sob, and I thought about what Devon had said about Mr. Karenina being more fragile than he seemed.
He pushed my legs wide open so he could fit himself between my knees. My cock, already engorged, twitched and hardened further at the proximity of my gentleman’s presence, and I could feel the familiar ache of my balls slowly drawing upward against my body in preparation for what was to come. He kissed me until my mouth was numb with his kisses, then he lowered his mouth and snagged my throat in his teeth, hard. He sucked desperately on my Adam’s apple until I nearly cried out at the sensation, his teeth holding me there. Then he lowered his head to lick and bite as he moved lower over my chest and belly. He lapped at my navel, then moved lower, kissing my lower stomach until he reached the base of my cock. I grunted and held his head and arched upward compulsively. He finally gripped my cock, squeezing lightly until pearls of pre-cum formed. He licked them away, then blew gently upon the wetness of my cockhead until I trembled for him.
“Oh fuck me, yes,” I said, barely aware of what was coming out of my mouth.
His head nudged between my legs and I leaned back against the piano to give him better access. He boldly licked and sucked my balls deep into his mouth, the roughness of his tongue scraping across the thin, jumpy skin there. I moaned and thrust upward against him, my body giving itself to him. I was vaguely aware that the music had stopped, that people were surrounding the piano, watching us with great, avid interest, but at the moment I just didn’t care. Nothing existed except Mr. Karenina and his beautiful, learned mouth, the careful attention he was showing every part of me. He licked and nipped at the underside of my cock. His tongue traced down over my crack to my ass, and there he found me, quivering and ready for him. I cried out as he licked me, probing into me with the tip of his tongue, and I would have come had he not had my cock in his hand, controlling my rhythm.
He hooked one of my legs over his shoulder and bent his head to lick and bite at my opening, his tongue moving in and out of my tight hole until my hips rocked against the top of the piano, begging him for more, for everything. While he licked me, he stroked and teased my cock until it pulsed and I found myself thrusting frantically against him. Once my ass was wet enough, he pushed two, then three fingers deep inside of me. I thrashed as the fierce pressure built inside, and it was only Mr. Karenina’s powerful grip on my cock that kept me atop the piano as he pleasured and tortured me. He stopped to undo himself, and I felt a flash of panic when I realized how every person in the room was going to bear witness to our lusty rutting.
I groaned and tried to wriggle backward on the sleek surface of the piano, but Mr. Karenina pinned me atop it, spread my legs with both hands and positioning his enormous cockhead between my legs, ready to impale me. I started saying, “No…” but he kissed me, leaned into me, holding me down, and then started nudging his way into my ass regardless of my protests. I cried out as his cock impaled me, slowly and steadily, and then it was too late, and I felt my ass constrict around the hardness of his girth, and my body, betraying me, tried to hold him deep inside me. His hands gripped my hips to keep me in place while he fucked me hard and fast atop the piano. His balls slammed into my ass with each impact, and I grunted and my entire body convulsed around him.
“Look at me, Daniel,” he commanded, his voice edged with steel. “Look at us.” And I lifted my head and watched him move in and out of my body. The erotic sight of his cock thrusting in and out of my hole, claiming me, making me his, almost brought me right then and there.
I shivered and threw my head back, but he slid his hand around my cock once more, controlling my orgasm, slowing it down, while his other dug into my hip, controlling the rest of my body. His fucking increased and he bucked sharply inside me, his frantic lust becoming so wild he covered my body with his, holding me down while simultaneously dragging my hips up with each bruising impact, his breath growling softly against my throat. I closed my eyes and reveled in the torturous pleasure as it built and built. With my eyes closed, I thought how he was like some great and powerful beast mating with me, subjugating me to its hungers, swallowing me whole, no escape. The thought made me cry out with surprised pleasure. My body took him and took him until I screamed from the raw, savage pleasure of his ass fucking.
Our two bodies writhed and thrashed until I thought I would at last split apart under the pressure of my unreleased orgasm. “Come with me now, Daniel,” he growled against the supersensitive skin of my throat, and I finally gave one long twitch and came into his hand while he let himself go. I felt him spurt hot and almost painfully deep inside my body. He came, and that triggered me to come again. He cried out in pure pleasure as the convulsions of my body worked to milk him of every last drop.
Finally, he collapsed atop me, pinning me under his weight. He kissed my throat and said, “Good boy, Daniel. Welcome to the Dollhouse.”
***
“Hey, Daniel, can I talk to you, man?”
I was sitting in the library, doing some research on currencies in ancient Constantinople for a paper I had due, when Simon came up to me.
I glanced aside and was a little surprised to find him standing there. I think maybe I’d talked to him face to face only once, and that was earlier in the year when he’d caught me in the student café and asked me if he could email me this paper he needed edited. After that, we’d just spoken by email, and always just about his papers. I was a little surprised to see him in the library.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual, the way I did by email. “What’s up?”
Simon sat down at the table beside me. He was a big guy, about six-two, a little shorter than Mr. Karenina, but he made up for it w
ith a lot of football muscle. I looked over his sandy-haired, All-American good looks and felt my pulse jump a little in my throat. He was so casually handsome, like someone you’d find comfortable talking to anywhere, the kind of guy who would help you fix your car, or stop to help a turtle cross the road. He was also probably the kind of guy who wanted a family someday, a house in the ‘burgs, kids, a dog. I realized then that I was talking to the guy I’d wanted to talk to all year—the man, literally, of my dreams—and I didn’t even know what to say.
“Do you do tutoring?” Simon asked, watching me with his bright, chocolate-brown eyes. He had beautiful eyes, and they were the first thing you noticed about his face. The second thing was his chiseled good looks and the dimple in his chin.
“Well, not really,” I stammered. “I mean, I’ve never done it before…”
“But you could, right? I mean, you’re a smart guy.”
I smiled, maybe a little crookedly. “I hope so.”
“‘Cause I need like massive help in economics. I’m fucking up my class big time…got a D on my last midterm. If I get another D, I’ll be in serious danger of losing my scholarship.” He looked at me, grimly, begging me silently with his eyes. “How much would you charge?”
I really didn’t need the money, considering the outrageous sum Mr. Karenina was paying me to be his courtier, but I suddenly felt sorry for Simon. I didn’t want him to lose his scholarship. Unlike the other guys I knew here, he wasn’t loaded. If he lost his scholarship, he’d be out. I threw out what I thought was a reasonable rate and he snatched it right up. “When could we start? Can we do a session this Saturday before I have practice?”
I squirmed a little in my seat. I was actually open this Saturday. Mr. Karenina had called me last night to tell me Kate had had an accident while on the set of the new X-Files series she was filming. She had done one of her own stunts and had broken her wrist in two places. It wasn’t a bad break, but the producer of the show had insisted she take a couple weeks off before they resumed filming. Mr. Karenina said Kate was flying back to New York so she could spend her recovery time with him. He didn’t say as much, but I got the impression that he was looking forward to doting over his daughter, so I had begged off his weekend, citing some important exams I had coming up.
