The Red

  "I wish I could,” he said, and she believed he meant it. At least tonight he meant it.

  "But you can’t?”

  He shook his head. "But…if you want, you can keep me.”

  "What does that mean?”

  His smile turned him back into that handsome devil she knew and loved.

  "You’ll see,” he said. "Now close your eyes and keep them closed.”

  She didn’t want to obey this order; it was too enjoyable to look at him. But she couldn’t refuse him. Mona closed her eyes and relaxed into the soft sheets. She heard the brass headboard rattle as Malcolm slid his body on top of hers. She sensed movement but kept her eyes closed even as she felt him crawling up the bed, over her. First he removed her pillow and laid her flat on her back on the bed. He then lifted her arms and put them over her head. Her arms were slack, her entire body loose and yielding. He was twining the linen cravat around her wrists, securing her to the brass slats of the headboard. Never before had she engaged in bondage with a lover. She should have guessed Malcolm would be her first. She heard fabric rip as Malcolm moved off of her and to her ankles where he used the other half of the cravat to tie each of them to the slats of the footboard. Nothing about being restrained by him scared her. Quite the opposite, she felt swaddled and secure. It was restful to be tied spread-eagle to the bed. She was absolved of all responsibility, absolved of all sin. What could she do? Nothing. She could only lie there passively as he did whatever it was he wanted to do to her. And whatever he wanted to do with her was what she wanted done.

  Malcolm crawled over her again. She felt the naked tip of his cock graze her stomach. Her vagina contracted in hungry need for it. But he didn’t move down and push it inside her like she wanted. He straddled her head instead.

  "Open your eyes,” he said, and when she did it was to find him holding the dripping tip at her chin. He didn’t have to tell her to take it into her mouth. He placed his hand under the back of her head and lifted it with all the gentleness of a nurse raising the head of a sick patient to drink some water. She did it willingly, wrapping the tip with her lips and sucking. A small burst of semen shot into her mouth and she swallowed it eagerly. It was merely a taste of what was to come. He’d been erect for well over an hour now. Surely he was as ready to orgasm as she was. He slowly fucked her mouth. The only thing more erotic than the taste of him on her tongue was the feel of his leather boots against the sides of her breasts. As much as she relished his naked body, she was pleased he’d kept his clothes on, baring only the organ he needed to fuck her. He was resplendent, and she wanted to know what it was like to be ridden by a man who wore boots for the job in question. God, he had turned her into a whore, hadn’t he? A whore with no shame in her whoring, that’s what he’d made her. He’d cracked open something in her, some dormant, latent proclivity for pain and punishment and being treated like a possession. She could never go back to the way it was before. Whatever it would take to keep him in her life, she would do it. This devil, this angel, this man. She almost wanted him to make her pregnant. It would be a tie to him, a tether. She pushed the thought from her mind. These were dangerous dreams. What had he done to her?

  At this angle she couldn’t do much more than lick and suck the tip, but she gave it the full measure of her attention and adoration. She worshiped the organ in her mouth. She served it and its needs, its desires, its wants and thanked it that what it wanted tonight was her.

  Malcolm had one hand on his cock as he guided it in and out of her mouth, one hand atop the brass headboard. She loved to hear his ragged breaths. He sounded like he was close to his breaking point. She craved his semen, wanted it inside her—any hole would do. But he kept fucking her mouth, not coming, torturing himself with pleasure as much as he’d tortured her.

  Mona sucked it as deep as she could, pulling on it with her mouth, and Malcolm let out a groan of abject ecstasy.

  "Fuck…” he breathed and Mona would have smiled if her mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied.

  Malcolm slowly eased himself from her mouth and moved down her body until his knees straddled her hips.

  "Wicked girl,” he said. "You almost made me spill all over your face.”

  "Oh no,” she said. "Anything but that.”

  "You modern girls are so hard to scandalize.”

  "Is that what you’re trying to do?” she asked. "Scandalize me?”

  "Is it working?”

  "You’ve turned me into a whore and made me happy about it. Consider me thoroughly scandalized.”

  He chuckled and it was a sinister mad scientist sound. "If you think you’re scandalized now…wait until I’m done with you.”

  She said nothing to that because she never wanted him to be done with her.

  Malcolm lowered his head to her right breast and suckled lightly. She closed her eyes and rested her head back, basking in the bliss of his mouth and the pull and tug on her nipple. It sent rings of heat and pleasure radiating through her chest and stomach, making her inner muscles clench again and again. Her entire sex dampened and stirred, eager for him to enter her. He seemed in no hurry to take her, so she laid there helpless to do anything but enjoy herself. His mouth moved to her other nipple. It hardened as he lapped at it. The aching of the welts had quieted. Before they had screamed at her, but now they merely whispered reminders they were there. The wounds made her very aware of her body. Whenever Malcolm touched one of her welts or bruises, on purpose or by accident, she remembered the kiss of his crop, those words that had melted her down and recast her into a new image. She remembered his twin gifts of pain and tenderness, and she loved him for both.

  Without a word of warning, Malcolm lowered his hips and pressed every inch of him into her. She heard herself make a sound, a long low moan, as he filled her to her inmost parts. He rose up and took her breasts in his hands, and he rode her with deep strokes. She couldn’t move her legs or her arms, only her hips, which she lifted to meet his thrusts. She heard the wet sounds of their copulating and it aroused her even more. Malcolm seemed lost inside her. His hands held her breasts in a firm grip and his head was back, his lips parted, his eyes closed as he fucked her. He was a god to her now, a god of sex and sin. If he could have fucked her forever, she would let him. In hell where the sins of lust were punished, they said the lascivious damned tore each other apart with their desires, and the rent and bleeding pieces still found ways to meet and mate with each other. How was that hell, she wondered? These theologians had never met Malcolm.

  The frenzy gripped her, gripped her around the hips and waist. She needed release and it was driving her mad not to have it. Mona rocked her hips faster, lifted and lifted them.

  "Easy, love,” Malcolm said, but it was too late. She was past all reason. Wild, she bucked as best as she could beneath him with her ankles and wrists bound to the bed. She bucked and writhed, writhed and begged. But Malcolm held back, fucking her with restraint, as if striking her a hundred times with a riding crop wasn’t enough torture for her. Not near enough.

  This was the worst torture of them all. She had to come. She had to. No question, no hope, no surrender. She needed him to slam his cock into her a thousand times, but he could not be persuaded. He made her suffering even worse when he plucked at her nipples again. He pinched one, then the other, then back and forth. He was giving her gentle foreplay, when what her sex needed was brutal pounding.

  "Are you forgetting something?” he asked. That smile again, that evil devil’s grin.

  She’d forgotten to count.

  One hundred strikes. One hundred strokes. She’d forgotten she was supposed to count his thrusts the ways she’d counted the cropping.

  "One hundred,” she said when Malcolm thrust into her the very next time.

  "Now she remembers,” he said, still smiling.

  He thrust again, harder, and she contracted inside painfully.

  "Ninety-nine.”

  Malcolm pumped his hips again. These were vicious, sharp thrusts, as punis
hing as they were pleasurable. She could barely recognize her own voice as she counted them. Ninety-eight, ninety-seven…

  "By the way, darling, if you come before one hundred, you’ll see a side of me you won’t like very much.”

  Ninety-one. Ninety.

  The counting kept her from climaxing. She couldn’t do both at the same time. The pressure built. The muscles all along the backs of her thighs were so taut she thought they’d snap any moment. And still she lifted her hips into each thrust, not merely receiving his prick but grasping for it with her sex, taking it as it took her.

  Eighty-one. Eighty.

  To make it even more miserable, Malcolm continued fondling her breasts, pinching her nipples with each number she called out. Her breasts were so swollen from his attentions, they felt twice their normal size.

  Seventy-one. Seventy.

  She would have given anything to have her ankles free so she could move her legs. She wanted to spread more for him so he could pound her right into the base of her stomach. The very thought of it made her inner muscles twitch.

  Sixty-one. Sixty.

  Her throat hurt from breathing so hard. She could still taste the salt of his sperm in her mouth.

  Fifty-one. Fifty.

  Mona pulled on the bonds that held her wrists fast to the bed, anything to relieve some of the excruciating tension in her body. But nothing helped. She was wound tighter than a clock.

  Forty-one. Forty.

  Malcolm was fucking her harder now. She knew he had to be as desperate to come as she was. Her breasts bounced as he pumped into her cunt.

  Thirty-one. Thirty.

  He slapped her breasts lightly, reigniting the red pain of the welts. A sound briefly interrupted the counting, part scream and part sob.

  Twenty-one. Twenty.

  She couldn’t take anymore. It was too much. Her head swam and her eyes saw nothing even when open. Her sex throbbed and she could barely speak or breathe or move.

  Eleven. Ten.

  At last he gave her the thrusts she needed. Full body thrusts. The soft linen of his shirt grazed her nipples. The stiff shaft grazed her painfully swollen clitoris. She didn’t speak the numbers anymore, she gasped them. The bed rocked underneath her and Malcolm was all over her, sucking her and licking her and biting her and fucking and fucking and fucking her.

  Two.

  One.

  The dam burst inside her. With a cry that surely someone heard out on the streets, she came at last, heels dug into the mattress, hips off the bed, and her sex clenching and clutching wildly all around Malcolm’s cock. He was coming into her, spurts and spurts of semen glazing her inner walls. Her entire body shuddered and spasmed as she was overwhelmed with the paroxysms of her climax. It went on forever, forever, and even longer than forever…

  Then it was done.

  Malcolm lay atop her, barely moving, though she felt a few last gasps of fluid spurting inside her. She was spent. She had never been more spent. He’d taken everything out of her. She had nothing left—no mind, no will, no energy.

  "Was that enough for you?” Malcolm asked as he nuzzled her ear, kissed her neck.

  Already her sex stirred back to life at the sensual tone of his voice, the kisses, the bite of his teeth on her ear.

  "No,” she said.

  "More?”

  "More,” she begged. "More and more and more.” He started to move again, to fuck her again, to fill her again and with each stroke she said that word. More. It was her only want. Her only need.

  More.

  And more was exactly what he gave her.

  Dora and the Minotaur

  The welts took nearly a month to heal. Mona wondered if Malcolm had timed his evening with the crop to coincide with the coming of cold weather. Whatever the cause, she was glad for the chill in the air to give her a reason to keep her body well-covered as she healed from the crop and its hundred kisses.

  In the days after that night, she could barely remember the events without trembling and hiding herself in her office until she’d gotten hold of herself again. How had he done it? Trained her so quickly to crave pain? And she’d asked him permission to love him? What had possessed her to ask him about his children?

  Possessed her. That was it. She felt like he’d gotten into her soul somehow, into her mind, and had taken control of her body and her brain. The thoughts she had of him kept her up at night—sometimes weeping with shame, more often burning with longing. Not a day passed she didn’t make herself come once or twice. One day, four times when she became fixated on the specific memory of her lips on his boot buttons, how she’d worshiped him on her hands and knees, how she’d opened her holes up to him in an offering that he’d accepted with a vicious lash of his crop. No man had ever made her feel so much as Malcolm did. Pain didn’t cancel out the pleasure—it doubled it, trebled it. With other lovers she’d felt pleasure and lust. With Malcolm she felt pleasure and lust, but also pain and fear, love and hate. It was the most potent of alchemies. She would have sold herself to him every night of her life for another taste of those boot buttons.

  Mona didn’t know what to do with herself while she waited for Malcolm’s return. She tried focusing on her work. Malcolm had left her a pen and ink drawing by German-American cartoonist Lyonel Feinenger as payment for the night with the crop, and she liked it so much she knew she wouldn’t sell it to pay off her debt unless she absolutely had to. The drawing was of two ghosts carrying their own urns while a tall and skinny black cat stared wide-eyed at the pair of silly spirits.

  A handful of gallery events had generated a little income for The Red, but the debt still loomed, growing larger with interest every day. She treated it like she treated fantasies of Malcolm, chasing them from her mind whenever they reared their heads.

  Still…she thought of him.

  Mona wanted to believe Malcolm had some feelings for her. Feelings other than simple lust or desire. He never left until she fell asleep, and she often fell asleep with him inside of her, his ardor for her body far greater than her stamina. She’d asked him the night with the crop why he came to her so infrequently and he’d said their encounters were taxing, that it took him time to recover. She found that difficult to believe. A man with his libido worn out for a month or two from one night of sex? Impossible. No, he must have a wife waiting for him in England. She’d worked up the courage to ask him about his children, but she couldn’t stomach mentioning a wife. Though if his children were grown as he said, why wouldn’t he leave his wife? If he even had a wife? Was she the source of all his money? Is that why he stayed with her? Or was he divorced, and something else took him back to England for weeks on end? Grandchildren? She’d guessed his age at forty. If he were older—forty-five perhaps—it wouldn’t be unreasonable at all for him to have a grandchild or two if he had married in his early twenties and his children had too. She shouldn’t think about such things, about his home life, about what he did when he wasn’t with her. A girl could go crazy letting her mind run along that rabbit trail. Her brain felt like a horse on a carousel, always moving but going nowhere.

  October turned to November, and the orange and red leaves turned brown and then fell to the sidewalk where they made their final transformation to sooty black. The crisp air turned cold. This would be her first holiday season without her mother. Mona had friends, but she’d seen little of them since Malcolm came into her life. She cried off dinners and movies, pleading poverty and exhaustion. She didn’t want her friends asking her what was going on. In a weak moment she might tell them, and since meeting Malcolm she’d had nothing but weak moments. She tried to put herself in her friends’ shoes. What would she say if her college roommate Natasha called and said she’d sold her body to a man—a man with no last name, a man who didn’t use condoms, a man who had no qualms about fucking other women in front of her or bringing other men to their sessions to fondle and finger her? No, Mona couldn’t tell anyone. They might try to talk her out of doing it, and that was the l
ast thing she wanted. She could either see Malcolm or she could see reason, and Malcolm was a finer sight than anything as dull as reason.

  November turned to December.

  Mona’s body had healed completely, no marks left at all. It shamed her how much she missed them when they were gone. She’d started sleeping in the bed in the gallery’s back room. First she slept there only one night a week. Then two. Now she slept there almost every night, little Tou-Tou on the pillow that should have been Malcolm’s. She’d rise early, go home to shower and change clothes, and then return to the gallery. If she’d had a full bathroom at The Red, she would have lived there. In the brass bed, even alone, she felt closer to Malcolm. Even after washing and replacing the sheets, she could still smell the faint cedar and cigar smoke scent of him when she laid on the pillow at night. She hoped it would never fade. Any ideas she had about ever selling the bed disappeared. As long as she lived she would keep the bed she’d shared with Malcolm. She wanted to conceive a child in it, his child. It’s what her mother had done after all—gone to bed with a strange man she met at a party for the sole reason of having a child on her own. Maybe he would allow that as long as she promised never to trouble him for money or support. It was what her mother would have wanted Mona to do. Maybe Mona could have convinced herself to follow through on this plan and abandon her birth control except it was nearing Christmas. This was the time of year when she wished the hardest she knew who her father was and where he was. With her mother gone, she had no family at all with whom to spend the holiday. She wasn’t sure she could do that to her child. The dream would have to have to stay a dream. It wasn’t as if she had the money to raise a child on her own anyway. Admit it, she