Coda

by CD Reiss

  “I think that’s reactionary.”

  “That’s a big word that means nothing.”

  “Don’t build us on top of what you did or didn’t do before. How’s that for a definition?”

  Who were we, standing half a room apart with our limbs crossed? How did any of this matter? How had it become important? If he wanted to pass the next ten years in a big modern house overlooking Los Angeles, who was I to say otherwise? Wasn’t that a small price to pay to be with him?

  “I want you to go to Paris,” he said. “You’ve never been.”

  “Who’s going to watch you if I go? Who will make sure you don’t forget to do what you’re supposed to?”

  “If you want children to take care of, that can be arranged.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then you don’t need to baby me.”

  And that had been that. We got a house by default. The style he wanted and the location I wanted, because on paper, it seemed like a compromise. It had been more of a treaty.

  chapter 3.

  MONICA

  I ate a lunch of chicken fingers and half a radicchio salad in the engineering room. I shot the shit with Jerry and Deshawn. We talked about promoting the sampler, getting beer thrown at me in Caracas as a sign of respect, the roaches in the hotel, the excellent food. Half an hour later, we were back to work. Executives drifted in and out to listen to me. Eddie even showed up for fifteen minutes.

  My phone was facedown on the baby grand piano; its sheen let me know when the glass lit up with a call or text. But I couldn’t take a text. We were trying to get the last two words of the song right. Forever fuck. It had to sound like a powerful curse but be muddled, and on key, and gravelly and transcendent, all at the same time. My feet hurt, and my brain and eyes were so exhausted, the foam egg-carton pattern on the walls seemed inverted.

  I couldn’t possibly take a text, even from my husband.

  Only when I was done did I check it.

  —I want to see you—

  The text had come twenty minutes earlier, while I was in the middle of recording “Forever.” The song was based on a poem I’d written while Jonathan was in the hospital, and I had been so angry, I imagined myself in an eternal, raging battle with death.

  —Where are you?—

  Ten minutes later.

  —You were supposed to be out two hours ago—

  I scrolled through Jonathan’s texts. Jerry and the sound team packed up. I was going to have to deal with my husband. I had my career, and he knew what it entailed. He didn’t have the right to harass me while I was recording.

  I took a deep breath and called him from outside. “Hi.” The parking lot behind the studio smelled like sweaty asshole and stale cigarettes.

  “You’re out?” Jonathan asked.

  “Just finished up.”

  “I have a surprise for you when you get home.”

  Home. A house on the beach that already had too many painful memories. Medications. Falls. Fights. He’d been sick and pissed. I loved him. I’d never leave him, but some days, I felt as though we were coming apart at the seams.

  “The guys are going to dinner. I’m a little hungry,” I said. The silence seemed eternal, and though I imagined him staring into space with the phone at his ear, when I heard a car door slam, I knew he hadn’t been inactive. “Jonathan, it’s—”

  “Stay there.”

  “Not tonight, I—”

  “This sounds to me like you’re telling me no.” The calm, arrogant dominance in his voice was like a slap on the ass, because I hadn’t heard it in six months. “For the sake of clarity, goddess, when it comes to me, that’s not in your vocabulary. I don’t hear it.”

  I said, “Yes, sir,” with all the sarcasm of a spoiled adolescent and immediately regretted it. Luckily, my husband had already hung up.

  chapter 4.

  JONATHAN

  This shit stopped tonight.

  I parked in the back and went into the building. A couple of doors were ajar, and I could hear the laughter and mumblings of men. I heard her three doors down, her voice humming, piano strings getting hammered one by one, slowly.

  I slipped into the engineering room and looked at her through the window.

  She sat at the keyboard, scribbling in a notebook, then considering the keys again. Her back was straight, neck as long and white as a swan’s, her ebony hair braided and twisted onto the top of her head. A goddess. She’d waited. I didn’t know what would have happened with us if she hadn’t.

  The engineering booth was empty and dark, and I watched her like a movie. I saw her bite a fingernail. Close her eyes. Tap a finger then burst out with a word in one long note. It was you. She hit three keys, then three different keys, sang the word again in a different register, and wrote it down.

  I felt as if I hadn’t seen the length of her neck in months, nor the delicacy of her wrists. I knew every inch of her skin, every curve of her body, yet that day, when she’d said no to me, I anticipated the prospect of showing her why that wouldn’t wash any longer with no little delight.

  I went back into the hall, closing the engineering room door.

  chapter 5.

  MONICA

  His scent cut through the dank musk of the studio before the sound of the door closing reached my ears.

  “Hi,” I said without looking up from my notes. “Can we go meet those guys? Jerry wants to lay out a plan for Wednesday.” His fingertips grazed the back of my neck, and I shuddered, closing my eyes halfway.

  “No,” he whispered.

  “I’ll meet you at home later if you want.”

  “Stand up.”

  I looked up. He stood over me, hand at the back of my neck, face broaching no arguments. I didn’t know what my expression said, but my mind went utterly dark for a second. I stood, reaching for my bag. He gently took it and laid it back down. I started to object but didn’t get past the first syllable before he had his fingers to my lips.

  “Unbutton your shirt,” he said.

  We gazed deeply at each other for longer than usual, and I knew even before my fingers touched my shirt that he wasn’t interested in a standard sweet encounter. He brushed his thumb over my lips, across my jaw, and lodged it under my chin, forcing me to look at the dusty fluorescent lights. I undid my buttons in a businesslike fashion while he spoke.

  “I haven’t told you this in a long time, so I want to remind you. You are mine. Any time. Any place. Without questions. You get on your knees when I say. You spread your legs when I say. You open your mouth and take whatever I put in it. Do you understand?”

  He must have felt me swallow against the heel of his hand. He was back. I didn’t know when or how, but this wasn’t the sick Jonathan who got pissed at his handful of pills. This wasn’t the guy who let me top him, or the man who made love to me fearfully and gently. That man was a good husband. He was difficult, because he felt as if his body wasn’t his own, but a good life mate by any standard.

  But for as long as I’d been married, I hadn’t felt safe. Until then, staring at the ceiling, unprepared to hear the voice of my king again. My insides vibrated like a piano string, and I shut my eyes tight against tears.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Pull your pants down.”

  I worried about the door. Was it open? And the door to the engineering room. Anyone could walk in.

  This was a simple matter of trust, which I’d forgotten how to do. Trust him. You’re safe with him.

  I opened my pants and wiggled them down. I wore lace and garters, which felt scratchy and uncomfortable under jeans, but I wore them because I’d promised I would, even if I’d promised a different man. He slipped his finger under the straps. His touch had gone electric, exactly right, like when we first met. I felt it through layers of skin and muscle, down to my bones.

  “All the way off.”

  I stepped out of my pants.

  “Why are you crying, goddess?”

  “I don’
t know.”

  “What’s your safe word?”

  I blurted a laugh to the ceiling. “Fuck. I forgot.”

  “Do you want a new one?” He slid his finger under my bra, pushing it up and releasing my breasts. My nipples were hard candies, ready for him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your choice.”

  “Invictus.”

  He pinched a nipple and pulled it to the point of delicious pain. “‘Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, for my unconquerable soul.’”

  “Jonathan…” His name was a prayer.

  “Turn around.”

  I faced the piano, putting my back to him. He slid his hands over my neck and under my shirt collar, pulling the shirt down my arms and drawing his hands over my skin.

  “I’m going to ask you something,” he said, pulling my long sleeves halfway off. He twisted the sleeves around my arms, wrapping them and tying them tightly at the elbows.

  He paused long enough for me to say, “Sir?”

  “Are you happy?” he asked.

  I heard the distinct clack of his belt buckle. I didn’t answer. He slid his belt out of his pants with a whook.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that the answer?” He gripped the back of my neck.

  “It’s confirmation that I heard you.”

  With a sharp push, he pinned my face to the shiny black piano. “Are you happy?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Sure.”

  With a thwack that was as hard as it was unexpected, he slapped my ass with his belt. I screamed.

  “Too hard?”

  “No, sir.”

  It was. A fierce burn settled where he’d hit me, and I already wanted more. I wanted him to tear me apart. In the breath’s worth of time it took for my body to register pain, I cracked. I didn’t want to go to dinner with Jerry and the guys, and I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to hurt, and hurt deeply. I wanted to feel pain, and safety, and surrender; to lose myself and my will. I’d forgotten how much I needed that, but like a woman waking from a dreamless sleep, the reality of who I was came back to me. I swore I wouldn’t say my safe word until I was near death.

  “Behave then, before I gag you.” He whacked me again and again.

  I grunted but didn’t cry out, even when he hit the sensitive area at the backs of my thighs.

  “Now”—his breath rasped with effort—“tell me, goddess, are you happy?”

  His last stroke was so hard it felt like a blowtorch on my ass. He fisted the hair on the back of my head and brought his face close to mine. “To avoid misunderstandings. Are you happily married?”

  I swallowed. He put his belt down in front of my face and squeezed my ass. The pain was overwhelming. I could barely see through it, nor could I form words past the gushing arousal between my legs.

  “Answer me,” he said. “And the truth. Are you happy?”

  His face was foggy through my tears, but his voice was clear enough to focus on.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  As much as I broke down into tears and hitched sobs, he seemed unfazed by the news, as if he’d already known. And as if he didn’t give a shit about my happiness. He brought his hand over my burning cheeks and laced a finger in the crack, down to my opening.

  I was soaked. Dripping. Gushing readiness for him. I wished he’d asked me for the truth after he’d fucked me, because how could he now? I told him I’m miserable and expected a body-ripping, passionate screw? Crazy, magical thinking.

  He slipped a finger inside me. I’d fucked him a hundred times in the past six months, but that finger cruelly jamming into me, his palm lying against my scalding ass, was the best thing I’d had in half a year.

  “Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said. “But you’re wet. And crying.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Poor goddess.” He pulled his finger out and slipped it onto the hard nodule of my clit. My eyes shut. My mouth opened. My cunt was awake with anticipation as he continued. “Even in love, you need pain.”

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  He drew his hand back and slapped my ass with full force. I bit back a cry.

  “Don’t talk,” he growled. “There’s been wholly too much talking between us, and not nearly enough.”

  I nodded.

  He folded the belt in two and said, “Open your mouth.” When I did, he put the belt in it. “Bite.”

  I bit the leather. It was still warm from hitting me. Had he ever been this cruel and hard? Had he ever been this dominant? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t think.

  Then Jonathan put his hands on my hips and let his cock touch where I was wet. I bit the belt as if I wanted to swallow it. He didn’t ask for permission to jam his dick into me in one stroke, making me grunt into the tanned skin. He didn’t ask if my happiness was required. He just fucked me. He fucked me as if I wasn’t even there, slapping himself against my burning ass cheeks, a frame of pain for the pleasure between my legs. He pulled my cheeks apart, stretching them, pain everywhere, and drove into me with everything he had, using me mercilessly. I lost myself in him, in the hurt, in the rising tide of my emotions. I’d told him I was unhappy, and the weight of the misery fell off, leaving an empty place for him to fill with his cock and his searing belt.

  I grunted with every thrust. It was coming, the rush of pleasure.

  My grunts turned to squeals, and he slowed to barely moving. “I didn’t say you could come.”

  I hadn’t had to ask permission for an orgasm in six months. I hadn’t even thought of it. He removed the belt.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I gasped. “May I come?”

  “When?”

  “Now?” I paused for a hitched breath. “And later, if it pleases you.”

  “No.” He slowed, letting me feel every inch of him. He opened my cheeks again, right where my legs met my ass.

  I was red and sore, getting his whole length. I choked out a half sob, half moan.

  “No,” he said, slapping my ass. “The answer is still no.”

  “I don’t think I can stop it.”

  He pulled out. I gasped. As much as I expected him to continue fucking me, I didn’t expect what him to quickly guide himself into my asshole and mercilessly push forward.

  “No!” I shouted.

  He yanked my head back by the hair. “What?”

  I couldn’t repeat it. Safe word or no, he’d stop, and I knew, more than anything, that I didn’t want him to stop. “Nothing. Please, go on.”

  He pushed the rest of his cock into my ass without preamble.

  My soft weeping turned into face-soaking sobs. “God, oh God, it hurts.”

  “Pain is the point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your ass is mine, whether I warn you or not. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He yanked my hair again, pulling back until I faced him. “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The first few strokes were murder. I felt torn apart, ripped from the inside. We’d done some gentle, well-lubricated anal in the past few months, but not like this. Not as a beating.

  “You’ve been a bitch, goddess. That’s over. From now on, you step when I say walk. You eat when I feed you. You come when I allow it. If I so much as look at your knees, you get on them and open your fucking mouth.”

  I grunted. He reached around me and put his palm on my throat. He pulled me back, and though I felt as though I was falling, I trusted him and put weight on my aching legs, shifting backward. He sat on the piano bench, and with my back to his front and his cock in my ass, I sat into him.

  “Spread your legs.” Not giving me a chance to obey, he yanked my legs apart, squeezing my ass cheeks together and tightening me around his cock. “All the way. I want your cunt out.”

  I bit back a cry of pain.
I spread my knees, on tiptoes to the floor, fighting for balance. My elbows were still tied behind my back, and when it looked as if I’d fall, he pulled me upright.

  “Reach back,” he said. “Spread those gorgeous cheeks apart.”

  I did, fighting the constraints of my knotted shirt, cursing the stinging skin on my ass as much as I blessed it.

  “Now come down, all the way. All the way. That’s it. Bury me in you.” He reached around me and slipped his middle finger in my cunt, gathering wetness, and dragged it to my clit. “You’re not coming until I say. You’re going to hold back by concentrating on one thing and one thing only.”

  “What, sir?” I groaned, the pleasure in my clit pushing against the pain behind it.

  “Pleasing me. So fuck. And fuck hard. Go.”

  I moved up his length and back down, his shaft sliding against my anus, friction hot against the dry muscle.

  “Faster.”

  His cock beat my insides, shredded me, while his fingers took my cunt three at a time. The heel of his hand kept a constant pressure on my clit.

  “Come on, goddess. I’m not pleased.”

  I pulled my cheeks wider and slammed down on him harder, my knees aching, my arms on fire, and my ass beyond pain. Yet the pleasure between my legs grew, pressing against the agony and winning.

  “That’s good,” he growled. “Very good.”

  “Thank you.” I gasped, relieved, relaxed now because he was content.

  I heard his breaths getting shorter. I was close, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to have what he wanted. I wanted him to be satisfied. I beat down on his cock, mindless of what I was doing to myself.

  “I’m going to come,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I squeaked, more tears streaming.

  “Come with me.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  He grunted, but it was more than a grunt. In the second before I lost myself in pleasure, I noted how vocal he was. More than ever. He released, truly, fully, losing control, pulling my hair until I thought he’d tear it out. I was washed away in the pleasure of his hand on my clit, the torture in my ass as my orgasm clenched it around his cock in an undulating rhythm. I came forever, lost in it, in him, his satisfaction, in the pain. I was gone, my identity washed away in complete submission to his pleasure and his will; without ambition or desire of my own, I was simply enslaved, caged, collared. Nothing. No one. Not a feeling of dissatisfaction in my belly, only humility and a feeling of complete, overwhelming gratitude.