Good In Bed

by Bromberg, K

  And if it was nothing, then fuck her.

  Unless that was her strategy?

  To float facedown in the swimming pool so I’d try to resuscitate her? So I’d nearly dive in to my death before realizing the lights were out? So I’d panic in the ten seconds it took to find the circuit breakers, then in the next minute when I didn’t know if the electrical current had killed her or rendered her unconscious enough to drown her?

  Was she laughing at the kisses I thought would save her? Or the wet pajama pants sticking to my balls while I held her?

  Did none of that prove I loved her?

  Did this mean I was supposed to prove something?

  Was she waiting for me to act? Put my open mouth on hers to breathe in life that was gone?

  Take the chance that this time it was different?

  The panic grew from the same place as my denials, my lust for penance, and my hopes. The only thing that would quiet it was seeing her. Talking to her. Asking what the fuck she was thinking by not talking to me.

  The stoplight turned green, and I had no clear recollection of deciding to get in my car.

  A horn honked behind me. I passed through the intersection.

  No, I remembered. It was fine. I was fine.

  Her block was so quiet an ambulance was audible from half a mile away. Her car was in the driveway, and on the second floor, a light was on.

  She was home. Good. All I had to do was get out and demand answers. But knowing she was all right, alive, and just angry at me had quelled the visions of that morning when I found Samantha. They hadn’t been that insistent in a long time, and never had they been so real.

  I was losing my mind.

  The upstairs light went out, and another window on the side of the house lit up.

  Boundaries were important to her. Maybe I needed to draw some.

  —Don’t answer this now—

  —If I don’t hear from you in three

  hours, I’ll assume it’s off—

  I put the phone down and drove home.

  Chapter 28

  OLIVIA

  My plan to call Byron and talk honestly went right out the window. So mature of me. Straight-Shootin’ Monroe tripped on her spurs and wound up all akimbo in the center of town.

  Over the next three hours, I went from mad he didn’t tell me what he’d done, to vengeful, all the way to grief-stricken over the pregnancy that wasn’t, and back again multiple times a minute.

  I tried to tell myself everything was fine, but I wasn’t used to being outmaneuvered so succinctly. I felt like a different person. Every time one of my coworkers looked at me, I was sure they saw someone different than they had before Byron. I didn’t assume they pitied me. Nor did I think they’d succumbed to schadenfreude. But I’d gone from royalty to commoner in a snap of Byron Crowne’s fingers, changing all my good work to hollow gestures.

  I couldn’t sleep, thinking about how I’d submitted to him. How he’d dominated me in ways I hadn’t seen coming. I could barely eat, knowing I’d let him own me, how much I’d wanted to give myself to him, and how much I wanted to do it again.

  Every day, a sticky bitterness grew in my chest, transformed from disappointment in myself to anger at him to something cold and brittle I couldn’t define or ignore.

  Home alone, I’d stepped into sweats and socks as if it wasn’t now or never. He’d drawn the line at three hours, and as little as I thought of him, I couldn’t ignore the fairness of the timeline.

  The sun was going to set soon.

  Tick tock. Time was doing its thing with or without me.

  I texted him.

  —I’m here—

  No dots. No answer. I threw the phone on the couch and went to the kitchen for water, drank it, rinsed the glass, and came back to a screen full of nothing.

  My house was too quiet. Too small and empty. The world outside seemed intent on driving me out and right to the source of my frustration. The apartment building to the north was gearing up for a party. A car alarm from the building’s lot to the south made me jump out of my skin. It was as if the ground under me had shifted and I couldn’t get my balance back.

  Then he texted.

  —I’m home waiting for you—

  I tapped out a strict aphorism of disgust, then a missive about emotional treachery.

  Then I erased it.

  Then I checked myself in the mirror, put on my shoes, and got in my car with a sense of relief that even though I didn’t know what I was doing, I would by morning.

  * * *

  On the way to Byron’s house, one thing became clear.

  This was a mistake. A life-fucking, humiliating, regret-inducing mistake.

  And I knew another thing too.

  I couldn’t wait to make it. I’d wanted this fuckup for days.

  With the top down and fully visible to every security camera, I drove up to the gate of Byron Crowne’s estate, ready to lash into him. I buzzed the keypad and looked right into the camera, daring the person on the other end to recognize me. My tight-lipped face showed up on the little screen, no less cold for the warm light of sunset.

  Nothing happened.

  I buzzed again, and before I had my finger off the button, the gate clacked and rumbled open. At the end of a long, tree-lined driveway was a one-story ranch with windows for walls. I could see through the front to the back, where a patio overlooked the valley.

  He stood just outside the front door with his hands in his pockets as though he owned the world and had plans for the universe.

  The gate clapped shut behind me. No backing out now.

  I took my sweet time on the full length of the driveway so he could fucking wait for me to get there. When I stopped the car, he didn’t move, and I didn’t rush to turn off the engine. Tugging the emergency brake. Checking my lipstick. Picking up my bag. Getting out. Walking up to him until I could smell his cologne.

  His house, as I could see through the window behind him, was spotless and impeccably modern. The piano had pictures standing on the cover like rectangular soldiers. The concrete-floored front patio roof was held by white plaster pillars. The burgundy couch was indented where a man would sit as a habit, and the table in front of it was worn where he’d put his feet up.

  “Welcome,” Byron said, green eyes blazing in the setting sun.

  “You won.”

  “I did?”

  Was he being serious? Did he think I didn’t know?

  “I recused myself, thanks to you. The fight goes on, but you beat me.” I clapped once, then again, slowly applauding his tactical mastery. I continued as he took a step closer.

  “That’s enough,” he said. Sex dripped off him. He stank of orgasms and risk.

  Clap. “Not until I get an encore.” Clap. “Again.” Clap. “Beat me again.” Clap. “Show me what a man you are.” Clap.

  He took my wrists so quickly I gasped, and a wave of arousal I didn’t have time to resist shot down my spine.

  “You want to play,” he hissed. “But you don’t know how to lose.”

  “You don’t know how to win.”

  “Obviously I do.”

  I shoved him away with all my strength, and though he let go, he stayed close enough to stick his fucking finger in my face.

  “If you’d picked up the goddamn phone, you’d know it wasn’t me. It was Logan. He disclosed to protect both of us. But you shut me out. You. Shut. Me. Out.”

  I slapped his accusing finger away. “Take a fucking hint, Byron.”

  “You’re here. In front of my house. Is that a hint?”

  His face was like a movie screen replaying every moment of our nights together. Every slap on my ass and every tug on my hair. He was remembering the moments he’d owned me and comparing them to the tricked and disgraced woman standing in front of him.

  “Yeah. What are you going to do about it?

  “You have five seconds to turn your ass around and get back in that car.”

  This fucker was the
worst human being I had ever met, and though my mind was defiant, my body was turning white-hot and pliable under his gaze. “Or what?”

  “Or you’re getting what you came here for.”

  “Which is?”

  “Five.”

  “Oh, you mean you think we’re going to fuck?”

  “I’m going to punish you.”

  He saw it. He saw it all. He read my horror and my arousal. My dare and my fear. It all said yes. I was a Rosetta stone of emotional languages.

  “What?” I tried to confirm, but he’d said all he was going to.

  “Four.”

  “You’re full of it.” I crossed my arms.

  His pecs were twitching, and his neck was tight. He was a coil of pent-up rage twisted around a shaft of potential ecstasy. He was angry bones and hungry flesh. “Three. Drive away, Olivia.”

  He was all those things, and I was the uncomfortable, twisting hand that tightened the coil. I was the constricting tendons pulling anger and lust together. I didn’t wonder why I wanted him or whether it was good for me. I just did.

  “Make me.”

  “Two.”

  “Do it.” My lips moved, but my voice failed.

  “If I say one, I’m taking that as a yes.”

  We stared each other down. I’d come to tell him I knew he’d betrayed me, and his actions were over the line. I never wanted to see him again. He was wrong for me. Wrong in spirit and mind. He was everything I hated. I was going to say all those things and yet…

  “Did you forget how to count?” I challenged him.

  …yet, not yet.

  “Don’t test me.”

  “Say. One.” I swallowed. “Lord. Byron.”

  My hips were made of raw, molten heat. When his lips moved, my knees went weak with anticipation.

  “One.”

  I didn’t make a move toward the car. If the top had been down and the skies opened to buckets of rain, I wouldn’t have even looked at it.

  He took me by the throat and pushed me against the pillar that supported the roof over the patio, holding me in place without cutting off air. Like a rattlesnake striking, he kissed me with raw savagery. Not a kiss of tenderness or even passion, but ownership, running along the deepest places of a mouth that was his property, corner to corner, crevice to crevice. He was tasting what was his, and I gave myself fully because the gentleman was the source of my doubts but the animal was the supplier of my lust. Between them, I was pulled apart. Exposed as human, failing, broken, and weak, I let him do what he wanted with what he found. His tongue stole my regrets and dealt them back to my desire at a profit.

  “You should have withdrawn weeks ago,” he said through his teeth, yanking my pants down with his free hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you?” My pants were halfway down my thighs when he pulled my shirt and bra up to expose my pebble-hard nipples.

  “I’m bad.” The words dropped out of me, carrying armloads of anxiety. “So bad.”

  At the setting of the sun, the lights flicked on.

  “Why didn’t you?” He tightened his grip on my neck ever so slightly, and though I wanted him to hurt me with that hand, I needed to tell him.

  “I was ashamed.”

  “Of fucking someone you were suing?”

  Unable to lie and unable to speak the truth, I shook my head as much as I could in his grip.

  “Ashamed of what, Beauty?” he asked through his teeth, making a curse of his nickname.

  “Of you.”

  His face softened into tenderness. I wasn’t ready for that. It wasn’t what he’d promised.

  I clamped my jaw and pushed him.

  His expression went hard again, but with a devilish approval. He yanked me forward and turned me to bend me over the railing around the patio with my ass up and my breasts hanging on the other side. I looked over my shoulder to see him towering above me, running a hand over my body with dominant satisfaction. Seeing me watching, he grabbed a handful of my hair and made me face forward.

  Front yard. His hand on my back. Rosebushes. Between my thighs. Darkening sky.

  He slapped my ass so hard it burned. My legs kicked in the confines of the half-down pants, and my hands clutched the rail.

  “Fuck you,” I gasped.

  He pulled my hair back and leaned down to growl close to my face. “Shut up and take it.”

  He hit me again, then on the other cheek again and again before sliding his hand between, and I squeaked when I nearly came.

  “Little wet here.”

  “So?”

  He chuckled and pulled my pants all the way down, then took them off with my shoes. When he stood, he kicked my legs open. “You want another chance to leave? Walk back to your car and drive home?”

  “Why? Is that all you have?”

  “No.” When he stroked my bottom, it hurt like hell and flooded my body with heaven. “We’re not done. On the couch.”

  By my hair, he threw me onto my back and bent my legs to either side.

  He slapped the backs and insides of my thighs over and over, punctuating every few with probing fingers that made me bend my pussy into him before he started again. The sting was maddening, and the humiliation was infuriating as I took the gradually more painful blows.

  I was beyond words. In tears. Aroused beyond measure. Just a fleshy mass of obedience, looking up at the painted wood slats of his patio roof.

  “Relax,” he said, stroking inside my thighs… and I did.

  I let it all go. The stress. The grudges. The fight. Whatever it was, I tucked it into bed, turned out the light, and closed the door.

  I relaxed.

  He slapped my pussy twice, so fast it created a single sky-breaking orgasm. Pleasure transformed from the pain, and I went outside myself. I’d given it all up. My very self.

  “Beautywalker?” he said from another galaxy.

  “Lord Byron.” My lips were spitty, and my tongue was thick.

  A moth bounced against the light for the temporary satisfaction of feeling its heat.

  My hands went for his waist, curling into the space between his pants and his skin, and pushed down.

  “Give me this,” I said, reaching down to the damp heat of his cock.

  “You sure? It’s been a lot.”

  He’d won, and it made me want him more. I wanted to rip the price tag off myself and give my body for free, without reservation, in a state of utter submission, as if I had no needs or desires outside his. As if I was a toy he owned.

  “I’ll beg,” I said.

  He didn’t make me beg. He didn’t make me do anything. I was in a state of looseness, emptiness, and yet somehow unsatisfied. When he kneeled between my legs and put my hand on his cock so I could feel how bare it was, the dissatisfaction became a need with a name. When he slowly entered me, I said that name.

  “Lord Byron.”

  He filled me, and I understood the inadequacy of the orgasm I’d had seconds ago. It had been an overture. A store sample in a little paper cup. A movie trailer that seemed to tell the whole story but didn’t come close to the depth of the film.

  I lost myself in the swirl of him, lifted into the mindless heights of ecstasy.

  “Say my name,” he growled.

  “Byron. Lord Byron. My Lord.”

  “Fuck. Yes.”

  “My…” Words left me.

  “This is… mine.” He jammed himself deep, shuddering inside me.

  We lay panting together as I became slowly more aware of my senses. The crickets. The breeze. A rustle in the rosebushes. The moth’s slap-slap as it chased a frustrating, inborn desire that would be thwarted until it burned alive. I opened my eyes to watch it chase the uncatchable.

  There were two moths now.

  At least they had company.

  Chapter 29

  BYRON

  Behind a hedge, set back two hundred feet, with the staff gone for the night, I’d forgotten we were outside until the breeze cooled
the sweat on my back everywhere except where she’d scratched me.

  When I picked up my head, she was watching the moths batter themselves against the porch light.

  “I need to get you inside.” I pulled myself off her, but she didn’t move. Her limbs were flaccid, and I could feel the effort it took her to keep her eyes open.

  “Were you always like that?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  The bump in her throat moved as she swallowed, then she smiled a little as if she’d told herself a good joke. “Lord of precise pain.”

  “No.” I sat up and thought better of my answer. “Yes, but no.”

  “Explain.” Her request was no more than a breath of submission.

  “Let me get you inside first.” I wedged my arms under her and lifted her.

  When she rested her head on my shoulder, I wasn’t her conqueror. I wasn’t victorious. Her surrender wasn’t the prize for a game well played.

  She was heavy. Not her body, which was but wasn’t.

  The gift she’d given me didn’t shine like a trophy. I didn’t feel like a better, bigger man when she let me possess her. I was insignificant against the weight of it. I was a man on a string, and she was a pin I’d tied myself to. I’d fight it. That I knew. I could circle and circle, but she’d be the center point until she set me loose and I spun away into nothingness.

  I laid her on my bed and turned on the lamp.

  “My clothes are outside,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I sat on the edge of the mattress. “Turn over so I can see what I did here.”

  With a sigh, she rolled over. I put a pillow under her belly and inspected the bright pink of her ass.

  “How does it feel?” I asked.

  “Burns.” She hugged a pillow under her cheek, her gaze glinting through a fall of hair.

  “Have you been spanked like that before?” I pushed her hair away from her eyes.

  “Someone tried once.”

  “Did he live?” My hand ran over the length of her back. I couldn’t stop touching her.