by JR King
“The passports are being stamped as we speak. May I offer a beverage and canapés while we prepare to takeoff?”
“Double Lagavulin, and the lady will have a glass of the finest medicinal brandy with fresh cherries.”
“I could really get used to getting pampered,” I quipped when Jackson left. “I wonder what type of canapés they have. I’m hungry.”
“What did you have for lunch?”
“Quinoa salad and fruit. I was good. Really good.”
“That’s my girl.”
“You know, Emirates offers a Bulgari amenity bag to females in—,”
“Got your amenity bag right here.” He—shamelessly—patted his crotch. “So listen, as soon as the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt sign, I’m going to rip those stockings to shreds and fuck you silly.” His soft look heated me from the inside out, and from my vantage point I could see the hallway of doors at the back of the plane.
“Isn’t there some FAA regulation about fooling around in airplane lavatories?”
“Why use a lavatory when I have an office and a bedroom at hand? And in case you have a lavatory fetish, you should know that there are no regulations against sexual activity on a privately owned and operated aircraft, as long as the bang-session doesn’t distract the pilot from his duties.”
In my book, this aircraft was meant to pander to the enablement of all things excessive. I suspected there were two lavatories, an office, and one bedroom. “On another thought, I couldn’t possibly get used to this. I’ll probably need a buzz to get me through this. Let’s hope they have enough brandy,” I muttered.
Jackson was back. “Here you go. Courvoisier.” He handed me a snifter, half-full and surprisingly heavy, and placed a salver of cherries before me. “Try it and see if it’s to your liking.”
I did as I was told, and wasn’t surprised to find out that the brandy was sumptuous—caramelized, heavy, fragrant—which was just what I needed to calm my nerves. “It’s lovely,” I stated, putting the glass down on the table.
“Mediterranean canapés and pea and mint bruschetta,” he announced.
“What are you thinking about?” Alexander demanded when we were alone again. He was lounging comfortably on the seat opposite mine, his tumbler in one hand as he rested on an elbow. The two ice cubes in his glass glittered like diamonds in weak tea.
“Er…do you think about, you know, I mean…are you happy with our sex life?” As far as segues go, this was the worst one, so rustily. Smooth, Elena, real smooth. I shouldn’t have broached the subject. What would be next? Rejection?
Alexander looked surprised for a moment, almost as surprised as I was at myself to have said that out loud, but then he laughed a low, throaty laugh. “You shouldn’t worry about my entrenched propensity for unorthodox lovemaking.”
“You’re too addicted to rough sex,” I exclaimed indignantly.
“Addicted to you, Elena, I couldn’t possibly abnegate. Tell me, what’s a man to do when he owns a girl like you? Play chess and read books? What’s so wrong with liking rough sex?”
My head jerked back at hearing that. This sounded too ominous and I wasn’t a fan at all. “I don’t want to squabble. You’re an absolute freak of nature in bed, and that’s that.”
We buckled in as the plane started taxiing down the runway. I wanted to say something witty about vanilla sex, but decided against it. I said the other thing on my mind, brought forward by the mischief I was feeling. “I’ve never done something adventurous. Never had a threesome.” His eyes widened more than ever, and I tried to hide my blushing in my drink, taking a long gulp. “Curious how—,”
Studying me like I were a science experiment, “You don’t know what you’re saying, baby,” he cut off what I was sure would have been a naughty suggestion.
The plane leveled out and the captain made the dreaded announcement. With what sounded to me like an impatient sigh, Alexander shot to his feet and took a few steps until he stood beside me, his hands loosely on his hips. “I need to make a call.”
“Don’t let my presence be in your way.”
He started moving around the cabin, ticking and talking on his iPhone. Thankfully, an ongoing merger put a damper on the other plan. “Ten mil is mere pittance, won’t tighten the belt. He’s a cantankerous old man, filibustering, but he has good ethos, Meredith. Batten down the hatches. Let’s be hands-off about the merger, but assuming the outcome, do you consider the effort perilous?” His eyes filled with disappointment as he carefully listened to her answer before saying, “That makes the old man look vulnerable.”
Feeling like a third wheel, I decided to go check out the rest of the plane. I hadn’t expected Alexander to follow behind. His fingers went to the buttons of his shirt collar, but even as he started undoing them, his strained trousers making no bones of what he wanted, my gaze was riveted on the knife in his right hand.
“Take your shoes off, pet.”
Alexander Turner
The Romantic Challenge
Boston weather in June was beautiful, but the moment July arrived it became unbearable. The pavement radiated heat, transforming the city into a sauna. Hot, humid, wood-fired barbecues relentlessly polluted. Imagine the entropy if municipal workers went on a garbage strike now, the city would smell like a giant pile of crap baking in a brick oven. Looking at the maze of high-rises from my office no longer appealed to me, this was when I worked from Weston and took advantage of the lake behind the house.
As days went by, Elena was growing angsty. I felt it. She felt it.
Ever been up shit creek without a paddle? Made a monkey out of yourself while trying to look cool?
Check this out.
I’d sworn to never take a one-month vacation.
You know what they say about never, don’t you?
Taking it with Elena hit me like a bat to the back of my head.
To change the scenery, here I sat, sharing an apéritif with her in a jet. I was both amused and thoroughly depressed by her forwardness about threesomes, so I called work. First and foremost, I wasn’t a sharer—Tony and Aidan being exceptions. I know that fucking and love are two different things; sex is always looming in the picture like a shadow, love its undertow. Love’s an ideal locked up in a jar, setting an obsession on a pedestal so you can pertain to your own world in which you put someone else’s happiness first. Fucking is about lust and pleasure, surrendering to carnal urges and embracing your most wanton desires, and opening yourself to the possibility of experience. Fifteen years back, if you would have told me that I’d be head over heels in love, I would have smiled politely and called you crazy. On the long run, speaking in the Aristotelian sense, Elena would have to expand her horizons to keep me entertained. So, though threesomes were on the menu, I wasn’t hungry.
Now, where were we? Oh, yes, I’d made a phone call. To my ears, Meredith maundered on and on about how glad she was I’d decided to take a vacation. In response, I acted as if she and I were having a conversation about a merger.
“Filling my head with whoppers? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, have you never taken a vacation with some floozy? How, pray tell, is it a sign of weakness if Elena finds out that Michael is your back-up and I’m the dotted line?”
“That makes the old man look vulnerable,” I answered calmly, careful not to react in a compromising way.
“Pull your head out of your ass. To be indescribably vulnerable is nothing more than to be human.”
Appreciating her tiny slip of a dress, I watched Elena hop off her seat and smile as she gracefully walked away before huffing out a breath. “I’m not used to not work, Meredith! Prolonged business trips are all I know. Not this shit-pit! What am I supposed to do in my free time? Sex doesn’t count, and don’t tell me to get away from it all and go back to frigging nature by renting a cozy cabin in the woods of Montana.”
“You have a nest egg, you lucky duck. Expensive hobbies and eccentric habits, like playing roque and getting your hands on really nasty s
ex toys that are banned in the US of sweet A. TTYL.”
I must admit that I’d doubted Elena’s ability to follow my food and gym regime, but she trimly proved me wrong. I was stoked about flying with her, as you can imagine, it was time for her induction into the Mile-High club. Besides, before deplaning I needed to quash my sadistic want. My energy was plummeting; the surge that’d been propelling me for nearly a week was gone.
Blankly, I fingered one of my black onyx barrel cufflinks set with cluster diamonds for a short while. A familiar surge of sharp-edged, relentless elation swept over my body, setting the mood. My heart pounded against my ribcage as I reached for the knife in my briefcase. It sounds sketchy, I know, but believe me, no skin-cutting. Loopholes, all the way, the blade was essential for mindfuckery.
I joined Elena in the bedroom and unbuttoned my collar. She wore a burgundy bubble minidress by Donna Karan, and her wine colored Louboutin Mary Janes were much too high for any level of inebriation. “Take your shoes off, pet.” She stared at me as though she couldn’t process my words, so I injected a level of menace into the next phrase. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
From under her mascaraed eyelashes, she kept staring at the knife as she followed the order. “Where’s Jackson?”
I waited for the second thud of her shoe as it hit the floor. “I told him to take a hike. Knife or belt?” I stared at her silently, her dark eyebrows furrowed as she considered my offer. Seeing despair surface in her eyes, I offered her the briefest of smiles. “No pain, no gain.”
Aside from a disdainful sniff, she gave me no response. I forcefully grabbed her wrist and pitched her onto the bed, then threw the knife on it. She cowered under my glare. One hand held her down, the other one undid my belt. Whenever I was feeling sadistic, I was blustery to the point of being obnoxious. “Choose, Elena.” I ordered in a firm tone, but gentler this time.
“No.” Fury flashed briefly in her eyes.
I drew my hand to her throat. I held her like that, wrapped my hand around her neck and began to squeeze. “Either you’ll choose one willingly,” I started angrily, “Or I’ll use both.” My hand came down on her ass with so much force it made my own palm throb.
“That’s unfair,” she roared, a death-ray glare sparking in her eyes.
My knuckles clenched tighter. “Wrong answer!” The next blow I delivered was harder, louder. My hand stole underneath her skirt to cup her ass. “Last chance.”
She bucked against me at the sting. “The belt, Alex.”
I softened my sinister features. “The knife would have been the smarter choice, pet,” I confessed spitefully, mischief sparkling in my eyes. “I was only going to cut off your dress.”
Eyes ever intent, her gaze narrowed and she directed it pointedly away from me. “Maybe I enjoy the pain a little.”
I undressed her. “Well, I won’t disappoint you.” Gripping the buckle tightly, I let fly a lash across her back. She yelped softly, gifting me that welcome sound of pain laced with a tropical storm of emotions falling from luscious lips while staying as still as possible. The next lash was more pronounced as I put real force in it. She bit the pillow to prevent herself from screaming out loud. I stopped using my force, and rained lashes down in a torrent of amateurish strikes, each hitting a different part of her back. “Enough?” I let fly another stroke of the belt, and another until I developed a small abstract pattern that ran from her ass to her upper back, up one side then down the other. The whole of her back was hardly leather-kissed, but I was satisfied. Six welts were more than I could see on her.
“Safeword. If. You Must.” I accentuated each word with a powerful whiplash across her spine. The smell of leather wafted through the air as I drew my arm back to drop the belt. “There.” I tweaked her nipples to heighten the sensation. She was all big eyes with a puckered brow, as if worried I was disappointed in her.
We were quiet for a long time. I listened to the sounds of the plane and watched the last of sunrays dance across the ceiling. I closed my eyes, trying to relive the sensations my body had just felt, completion lingering in each cell. Thirty minutes later, I shut the blinds and turned down the lights. Elena was watching George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon fool around at De Dampkring. I watched, waited for the end credits to roll down, then put on the last episode of Game of Thrones. With head down and messy ponytail framed like a curtain over my chest, it wasn’t until she turned to me that I realized she was awake.
“I want to please you. Like…Carina…like the others.” I caught the hint of distress in her voice.
I took her hand and carried it up to my heart. “You please me, Elena. More than those girls ever could.”
Her gaze softened and she let her hand rest. Her lush lips turned up into a grateful smile. “Don’t leave me.”
“I will never leave you,” I promised. “Stop doubting me,” I admonished softly. “Doubting us.”
An odd smile tugged at her lips. “It’s just…it’s like a dream come true. Do you know how that feels like?”
Through clouded eyes, I stared solemnly at her. “When I saw you,” I brushed a few stray strands of hair from her face and gazed into her glowing eyes, “I fell in love. You were too young, Elena. My father and Jerry set rules for me.”
“You mean the rules your father had set for you. He was gone by that time.”
Because gaslighting was an apt solution, I didn’t correct her. If she ever found out my father was alive and kept hers captive, she’d probably want to wipe out the entire Turner bloodline. “I say you enjoyed the strapping. Let’s put that to the test.” I admired the trail of goosebumps my fingertips left in the wake of caresses. Dipping my head down, I traced the curve of her neck with the tip of my tongue. I wormed my fingers between her inner legs and pulled them aside. She moaned pleasurably when I found the source of the heat between her legs, and pushed two fingers inside her. “Liar.” Each stroke I made was soft but sure. I felt a warm puddle forming in the palm of my hand.
“It isn’t the strapping—,”
My lips slammed down on hers to silence the protests with a hard kiss. My exploits verged on violent. I nipped her tongue, moving my concentrations to her lower lip to suckle it. I briefly tore my mouth from hers to say, “You didn’t enjoy getting strapped?” Before she could make a reply, my lips took hers by storm again.
“Make me feel good, Alex,” she half-moaned, half-cried.
I moved downward. When I tasted the wet slit between her parted legs, we sighed in unison then laughed giddily at the mutuality. With one hand in my hair and the other one clawing at my shoulder, her body bucked against the talented tongue between her legs. I didn’t make her wait nor did I enter the promised land gently and gradually—moving my hips fraction by fraction like an octogenarian. I fluidly thrust upward and in, head thrown back as the oiled silk of her body sheathed me.
“Alexander,” she said in an unsteady voice.
“Do you feel how perfect you fit around me?” I grumbled into her neck. “You feel so fucking good. I won’t be long, baby. I love this too much.” Every beat of my heart pumped more than just blood. I kept my hands on her ass and she locked her legs about my hips, holding me deep inside while pleasure rippled through her. My palm muffled her soft scream as she came. I, in turn, came so hard my teeth snapped together. I held her back on my shaft, and my cock unloaded, fervently, with no accountability for her or her stockings.
“That will do, for now.” After one last shove to the hilt, I pulled my length out. My mouth was above her ear as I continued. “Now, are you going to be good and stay put? Keep your prurient thoughts in check. At the rate you’re fantasizing, I might suffer a cardiac arrest.” Naked, sore in my bed, she was in no position to argue.
“No threesomes,” she smiled, conceding.
We stole away in the lavatory to neaten ourselves up. I used soaped wet wipes to tenderly cleanse between her legs, and then paid the same attention to my cock. The strokes on my flesh were a lot harsher
. Because I’d lowered my trousers further enough, the front hadn’t soaked any fluids up.
“You ruined them,” Elena sighed, removing her stockings.
Watching my come glisten on her upper thigh, I ran cold faucet water on my hands and half dried them before brushing the cool fingertips up and down her cheeks. Tracing the whorls of her ear, I tugged at the diamond stud piercing her earlobe. “I’ll buy you new ones.”
She shook her head as if a flesh fly were trapped in her luxuriant tresses. “I’ll buy them myself.”
I took her by the hand, threading my fingers through hers. They felt small and precious in my large hands. She jogged my arm, clasping it tighter. In loping stride, we went back to the seating area. I gently removed her hair tie, sighing at the sight of her hair tumbling down her back like a silken waterfall. “How sore are you? I’ll make it up to you.” I brought to light a visit to Japan, hoping the revelation would help shore her up.
“We’re going to Japan?” she shouted at the top of her voice. Her tone escalated with excitement. The additional smile came slowly, but when it crept up her face, her eyes glowed. “The real, real Japan?”
I did my best to keep a straight face, but my own smile defeated me. “Is there another one?” Large blue eyes beamed at me. “But first, we’re going to another one of my favorite places. Wanna guess?”
She shrugged involuntarily, stalking to and fro. “We’ve taken off for parts unknown. I’m going to Japan.” From the way it looked, she seemed lost in her thoughts, like some Trekkie fanatic debating the merits of unwrapping a collectible. I could simply breeze past her and she wouldn’t be the wiser.
I dismantled my selfishness and walked up to her. “Someone is excited.”
“Hunger.” She looked at me curiously. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
The jaws of the hallway door opened, spewing out her request. “Serrano ham-wrapped melon.” Jackson stepped gingerly into the cabin.
“Smashing,” Elena perked up, her eyes crinkling at the corners, “you’re a lifesaver!” Her voice sounded thin and almost alien to my ears. She moved in and gave him a comradely pat on the arm.
