Lady in Red

by E V King

  A consideration just popped into my head upon divulging my divergent ways. If this was revealed—how natural I truly was—would he still come circling back? I was taking this very risk now, trusting it to these pages, detailing the scrumptious, wild ordeals we lived through or considered, how we got there, and how we got here. They also detailed how I felt like more than just his subservient whore, how much I cared—the poetry in extrapolating passion beyond the limits of madness—and how we belonged together, someplace free from the physical boundaries of space and time. Wouldn’t he just turn around, completely appalled, and run the other way, if he saw me more clearly? Or, quite honestly, how fast might he take to it? He always said he wouldn’t, that I was marvelous; but at the time he was unenlightened. He expressed his curiosity about my soaring imagination. Would his curiosity remain after he explored, heard, and read the dusky burrows of my foolish mind? Once I would offer up this scandalous idea, assuming I would ever follow through on it, and knowing myself to never be just quite happy enough, never just quite to my standards, if that was even an appropriate word for anything that concerned me anymore—would he bolt? Would he disappear from my world with the same kind of ludicrous bounce as he jumped into it? It must be perturbing to read a desire directed straight at oneself, the desire to be surrendered upon, the desire to witness some subservient someone thrown to the dogs, solely to prove a point. It was the type of yearning to be fulfilled exclusively mentally. Would he still look at me with that familiar, illustrious mix of lust and admiration? Milo said we lifted each other equally, to similar levels of dopamine highs and corresponding plains, and that we were equals. Would it be proven true? He had so much still to discover about me, and he wanted not a single thing more; at least that was what he said. Did we complement one another? Was my madness also his? Would we become friends or lovers at best?

  “Hmm, sweetie. Our chemistry remains…”

  “And grows.”

  What a sweetheart he is. He couldn’t be further off the case, although he means well. Chemistry is too banal. Dopamine. Adrenalin. Endorphin. Phenylethylamin. The love peptides. Surely we were more than chemicals and formulas. The same way we humans were more than a fleshy sack of bones and arteries and intestines. E and M equal reaction X? Don’t think so. In an imaginary text, I write “No darling. That is not us at all.” I feel soul when we get together, the same way I can taste sex in music. See the bodies in the bass. Savor the passion in the notes. Float on ecstasy in harmony. Loving. Sometimes wild. Tender. Or raw. What grace to feel everything very deeply in an increasingly callous, petrified, steel-coated world, and sense soul everywhere, hiding beneath it all. The words. The colors. The lines. See it, taste it, feel it—and if you can’t, it’s about time you learn to try. Most people miss out, hastily passing beauty by. They hurry past all vitality, never knowing any better. Milo was right in one way though—that we had changed. We got worse over the years, if you can call it that. From another vantage point, one might say we got better, more intense. Matured along the way was a better way of describing it. Essentially, we were still the same people, just improved, less ignorant. He thought it was merely passion, but the fervor, the fierceness of it all, made me suspect something more was creeping in. When we embarked on our adventures, our angels of darkness were the ones that came out and danced under the stars. Their delight resulted in the passion he talked so fondly about, and our farewells made them rampage. They were the ones making the missing, the absence, the distance, hardly bearable; they were the ones running amok in our hearts, just because they wanted to waltz on our souls together once again.

  However, maybe there was only one way for me to know for sure; put my “supposed” feelings to the test, going to the mattresses, quite literally, climbing into bed with another. That would be the only way for me to verify if Milo being Milo was what really enthralled me; or if it was just me, missing this unbound aspect of myself so much, as I got increasingly lost in the elaborate ruse of the dutiful suburban wife, that I wanted to escape it regardless of how. But although I entertained this idea, it didn’t seem justified; natural instincts are, by their mere existence alone, incontrovertibly trustworthy.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was staring out of the darkened window, too far off in the musings of that mental maze of mine to notice I was looking at nothing at all. There was no reason to anyway, nipping at my glass while the morning desperation was already slowly climbing my heels. Soon I was to wake up in a world void of dreams, left merely with the fine traces of the divine, savoring this rediscovered demon from my past. The bittersweet, dried-out feeling of hope twisted into my unruly soon-to-be-sexed-up hair, the only tangible glimpse of memory and elation of a recently stolen dream.

  “What are you staring at?” Milo spoke as he came from the tiny bathroom of the hotel room.

  “Nothing, really. But I have something for you to look at,” I said as I walked slowly in his direction.

  Meanwhile, he went to sit down on the bed, drinking his champagne. I stopped at the end of the bed, undoing my polka-dot top, one by one carefully snapping the buttons from their holes. The fabric, gradually falling further open, revealed a network of the finest black lace running across my chest, stretching out under and over my belly button. He swallowed, and this must have been the most silent Milo I had ever seen. His eyes opened wider as I unzipped my skirt, let it fall to the floor, and then stepped out of it, keeping on my sky-high velvet heels. His chuckle drifted toward me as I crawled onto the bed, wide legged, to straddle him.

  “Look at you,” he sniggered, “oh, you little harlot.” His eyes sparkled as I gathered my hair in one hand to flip it all on one side and offer him my neck. His hands enveloped my hips, his fingers squeezing my flesh.

  “Do you like it, darling?” I whispered in his ear as he gnawed away at my throat. It took him only a second in between bites to respond.

  “Hmm…you are my little bitch, aren’t you? How could I ever not like all of this?”

  He grabbed me, threw me on my back to climb on top of me and smacked me. Finally, there was that tingling feeling, bursting up in my cheeks again. Again. Harder. His nails dug into the skin between my collarbones and then scratched farther down, along my stomach, halting just before reaching the delicate strings of my panties. He got up, took off his shirt, and rashly threw it aside, where it landed next to the wastepaper basket. I pushed myself up a little to watch him undress as he unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. Milo bent over to pick them up and walked to the desk. Quietly, I observed his back as he drew his belt from his pants and dropped the latter on the glass top of the writing table. Ruggedly he returned and, with a tug of my legs, forced me to fall flat on my back again.

  “Glad you’re back with me, you whore.”

  The belt was still in his right hand as he rolled half of it around his fist. The first whip of it unleashed my lust completely. It is hard to describe how perfectly this strike fed my arousal. One-handedly he pulled the black lace over my legs before spreading them to take another swing at the core of my desire, already soaking in anticipation. Delight shot right up to my brain and scalded me instantly.

  “Don’t stop,” I wailed. Upon hearing this, he tossed the belt across the room and climbed on top of me, smothering my face with his hand, pinching my chin in his palm, forcing his thumb inside my mouth and keeping me locked in place to stare him in the eyes.

  “You don’t decide anything in here. I want to use you.” His hand kept me in place for a little while longer.

  “Don’t you dare move.”

  Secretly I wanted to, fully knowing more pleasant torture would ensue, but I didn’t. Milo came back and slid the belt under my chest, tightening it to immobilize my arms. He pinned my face down again and spat on my mouth and his hand before smothering me. I tried to lick up the saliva from between his suffocating fingers and take up as much of him as I could. He slapped me once more.

&nb
sp; “Tell me you’re my whore. That you like it.”

  I moaned and, just as I uttered, “I love being your whore,” he entered me crudely.

  Recklessly, in hunger for the pain, my tongue scraped the stubbles on his face. He responded by violently flipping me over, screwing me further into dank submission from behind. His hands pulled on my hair to turn my head, and I was then able to witness how he ravished me. My moans of ecstasy flooded the room. The uncanny sensation of being defenselessly subjected to his tastes titillated every single one of my nerves. Milo raised his upper body, and as he sat on the backs of my thighs, one of his rugged hands jammed my face into the striped cotton hotel sheets. He got up and turned me over.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, sweet voiced.

  I was still glowing in luscious exaltation and simply nodded back at him. He unhooked the clasp and loosened it, but only slightly. His paws pushed the brown leather belt up to my neck, where he yanked it taut again. With a tug on my leash, he drew me up as he mounted me again, until my face was right in front of his, hanging slightly back, feeling the ends of my hair stroke my back.

  “You must trust me a whole lot,” he whispered, clearly excited. “You are the best slut I know.”

  It didn’t take him long to continue his quest before concluding, me scraping the pearls he gifted me off my breasts, a last chance for now to consume his essence.

  We were winding down in each other’s arms, listening to one of those heartbreaking soft-rock songs, while Milo’s tenor voice hummed along. He reached for his phone on the nightstand and unblocked the screen.

  “Sit up, sweetie, I want a picture of us,” he said as his arm pulled me closer. He stretched out his arm and pushed the shutter button on the screen.

  “We look good together, don’t you think?”

  I was still a bit dazzled by his wish. In the past, I had avoided the mere possibility of pictures together; to protect him from rumors and myself from scrutiny by classmates. Now, the thought of it had crossed my mind but, considering the forbidden nature of our allegiance, it seemed taboo at best. But apparently, it wasn’t. He just did it. To me, it was a remarkable course of action, and I just sat there, in a state of complete stupefaction, with his arm around me, watching as he sent the image to the colleague who had agreed to bunk with some others so that Milo and I would have a room to ourselves. It was his way of thanking the man. Not soon after, a reply popped up on the screen.

  James: Apparently you don’t have to be handsome to be a lucky bastard.;-)

  Milo smirked and showed me the text. I grinned at this disguised compliment.

  “He’s funny, but clearly a bit of an idiot too…” I commented.

  “Why would you say that, sweetie?” Milo put his phone aside and folded me back into his embrace.

  “Because, darling, you’re both lucky and handsome,” I said smiling.

  He blushed slightly, brushed a strand of my golden hair behind my ear with his fingertips, and gently kissed me. With my skin still buzzing from his touch, I found it hard to imagine a time I had felt this much at ease. In his presence, there was no need to lie, put up fronts, or pretend to be only half of what I was. His buzzing phone suddenly interrupted my string of thought.

  “Sorry, that’s her,” he said as he picked up.

  I heard him asking about her day, their kid, and all the other daily events that drag all of us down to earth. Milo explained he was tired and wanted to rest up, while his left hand was already sliding down my chest and crawled slowly between my thighs. His eyes skimmed every movement his fingers made, and I smothered myself in my pillow to make sure she wouldn’t hear a thing. He tapped the red button on his screen, and even while he was putting his phone back on the nightstand, his gaze never left me.

  “Hmm…honey, get back over here…”

  The next day, I had only one regret: calling him an idiot. He was anything but that, but Milo had been greedy to take me up on my word. In fact, though, it had just been my way of saying, “I love you.” I was sitting alone at my desk, sinking into a black leather chair that had seen better days, and sucking on my cigarette. The dark brown gold in the cup nearby steamed invitingly in my direction. I slurped my coffee, and its hot caresses to my insides made me drift off into the recent past…

  He had doubted my intentions. It was something along the lines of “I don’t understand what you are doing here.” What was I supposed to say? I simply spoke the truth, in that moment, that just for once he was an idiot to even be entertaining that thought. In many ways he was the purest person I had ever met. He was flawed, of course. He wasn’t the most honest person. I had no need for his petty, caring lies, but I didn’t care if he blurted them out anyway. That wasn’t the point. What I feel to know was completely separate from all other registered facts. So I let the little lies pass by and embraced their existence willingly, as if they were a stroke of his mercy.

  But, getting back to my point, he was not idiotic or stupid at all. He just was unknowingly pure in seeing the point of things, though he doubted his instincts too much for my tastes. There is nothing as important as seeing what actually matters. He was pure, as I said, and deliciously unaware of it. And I loved him for it. He might have taken it the easy way—as an insult, which out of context it might have been—my calling him an idiot. I regretted my deplorable choice of words, and not thinking that it might have the capacity to convey exactly the opposite of my intent. As much as my words had been charged with the wrong meaning, ten—no, a hundred, a thousand—times I wanted to steer them in the right direction, making sure he understood. So next time, I would apologize. Those words had only been a condensation of a certain independence on my part. I was a weird one. I wanted to say, “I love you so,” but my brain kicked in and made me say that he was an idiot. Only his words were downright idiotic—the naïve aspect of them—thinking it was simple luck that had brought me there, lying next to him. We do not control much, of course, although I firmly believe that luck is in our hands, that we give it at least a little human nudge now and then. So I had sat there, exactly there, with my hand folded to mold his jaw, looking in those blue pools of his, saying he was an idiot to think only he was lucky, an idiot to be nervous, and regretting those unnecessary, harsh words almost immediately. I was longing for more Milo—whatever he had to offer—as long as he decided to honor me with his time; just that, exactly, because it was the only place in the world I truly wanted to be. It was an effort in which I never detected effort, merely a new experience bestowed upon me by his kindness. The craving was and is always stronger than my regret, making me kiss all my words’ venom out of his eyes. That is what I had done yesterday. And I was glad I had.

  It had been a horrible getaway anew. Never underestimate the walk of shame. That was the life lesson forced upon me yet again; with that kind little gesture. With it, Milo had sealed my fate again, and the sheets had started to feel oppressive. Complete desperation. The last bit of my insecurities stuck. Options, alternatives, possibilities; they all were things of the past now. That simple gesture had somehow obstructed all gates and doors. From now on, I was his. This tramp caught in his sheets, sleeping at the gates to his soul. They probably wouldn’t open now, most probably not. Every certainty carries a certain improbability along with it. I was prepared for it, that improbability, just because of that tender stroking. This reality would ensure no sleep for me tonight, a situation from which I wanted to flee immediately. How was this even possible? How did I get here? I knew, yet I didn’t. My fear-ridden certainty had choked me with layers of cotton, and I had turned to my side, to watch him dream ever so calmly, wondering how he hadn’t noticed. That suffocation, I mean. Or had it been enough for him to pet me into shutting down, not even perceiving its effect?

  My eyes had searched for the hands of the clock, and technically speaking, I had some time left. But every ticking minute had only heightened my upheaval. The thou
ght had been that I would never want to leave, or at least that it would feel like my feet had turned to concrete. No, I had had to go, right then; even if there had been some time left, I had to force myself to go before I would be incapable of leaving at all. A lonely tear had escaped my eye at that moment, convincing me that waiting any longer to take my leave would prove to be a big mistake. If I hadn’t, I would’ve cried, turned theatrical, and opened the floodgates to drama. If I bolted while he still slept, which I had done, I could prevent this from transpiring; I never wanted to be that kind of woman, sniffing at good-byes, even though I often felt every urge to. My throat had clinched up, but I had decided against his pity. That compassion, coming from him, would have bordered on mortal combat. No looks of compassion. None at all. Anything that made this good-bye easier…What a word at this particular moment; it had been insufferable to give Milo back to a world in which we did not exist. Far beyond the boundaries of my agony, I had walked into this realm of stupefaction until I had finally fallen onto a dreamless earth, accompanied merely by frugal memories.

  This time I was so sure. This would not stop anymore. In reality, it just might. But inside of me, it would never. It was out of my control. It had been this way for years on end, and it would continue, travel with me indefinitely. I was irrevocably lost. So I had to get out, then, before the remnants of whatever courage I had left sunk into my stilettos, no longer being able to move an inch without crying my eyes out; happily, for being granted this splendor, and sadly, because I had squandered it when I stood a chance.

  Eagerly, I soothed my nerves with another gulp of caffeine and a hit of nicotine. Every meeting could be our last, the two of us together for a final time. I felt I should constantly keep this in mind; that that’s how I want to live my days now—ready this time around, ready for our earthly ending. Not like before. Not as reckless. Not without appreciation. Not so long ago, I had been filled with regret: regret of words unspoken, haunting me relentlessly; regret of effort unpaid; regret he would live never knowing he was loved this way; and, most of all, regretting my silence.