Odalisque

by Annabel Joseph

  He turned off the water and guided her into the tub, climbing in after her. Like everything in his house, the tub was oversized and overblown--and it was only the guest suite bathtub. She bobbed beside him, watching him with her expressive green eyes.

  “It’s like the grotto, isn’t it?” he said. “Just a little smaller.”

  She laughed at his joke and then picked up the soap, gesturing to ask if she could wash him. He nodded and let her lather him up, her agile fingers tracing his contours and kneading away the last of his stress about this momentous day. She was here. He’d already pretty much fucked her raw and she was still smiling at him. Hell, she was practically devouring him with her eyes, and she was being none too coy about exploring him with her fingers. Her hands slid down to his cock and intimately caressed him. He allowed himself to enjoy it for a few moments, but then he grabbed her wrist.

  “Enough. You’ve had enough for one night. We still have three hundred and sixty four days of bliss remaining.”

  He watched to see if she understood, especially as tired and spacey as she looked. He was coming to realize she didn’t pick up every word, even when she was paying close attention. A lot of the gaps must have been filled in by context and body language. Kai took her hand and pried the soap from her, put it aside and fingerspelled the word in her palm. B-L-I-S-S.

  She smiled and looked shy, and then she took his hand and kissed his palm. Bliss, fucking bliss. God, he owed Mason big time for this. Kai hauled her against him. He kissed his odalisque, tenderly at first, and then with all the intensity of his happiness. Would every day be as satisfying as this day? Constance was too good to be true, surely. Tomorrow would be a little less exciting, and the next day, maybe she wouldn’t even bother to smile.

  God, no.

  Maybe every day would get better and better. They would come to know one another--one another’s bodies and one another’s deepest wants and needs. Ah, her kisses tasted like wine and honey. He cupped her round ass in his hands and felt her fingertips curl around his neck and then up into his damp hair. He finally broke away with a sigh, and busied himself washing her in kind. It was either wash her or fuck her again, and he couldn’t do that in good conscience, not when she was barely staying awake. The hot water was relaxing them both into a coma.

  A few minutes later he had her out of the tub, toweling her off and drying her thick head of hair. How lush and dark and curly it was. For a moment he thought, our children would have beautiful hair...

  Holy shit, this is what Bastien had been trying to warn him about. Sometimes the newness and excitement of the relationship carries the risk of a romantic misunderstanding, from both sides.

  Kai took a deep breath, just stopped and held her close. He buried his face in her neck and breathed in the scent of her, soap and the lavender oil he’d added to the water. This time she was the one to pull away. He watched for her to sign something, but she turned from him instead and started opening and closing drawers and bathroom cabinets. She found a toothbrush and clutched it in front of her until he took the hint.

  “I guess I’ll--”

  She moved to see his face, and he remembered at the same time to look at her and talk. He tried again. “I guess I’ll let you settle in and get some rest. Let me know if you need anything.”

  She nodded, and, feeling awkward suddenly, he left. Well, it was her room, not his. Odalisques slept in their odellas. Masters didn’t. Kai went down the stairs and across the back hall to his own bedroom suite, bone tired now that he’d left her. He collapsed on the bed, then docked his mp3 player and brought up a Mozart sonata on his sound system. He turned it up so loud he thought the neighbors could probably hear it from a half mile away. But she wouldn’t hear it.

  After the second movement he stood and wandered back down the hall, back up the stairs to her suite of rooms. The door was open. He could see her lying on the bed, nude, one leg thrown over the comforter and her hair spread across the pillows. Her face was angelic in repose. The sound of violin and piano battered off the walls and vibrated the light fixtures, and yet she slept. Beautiful odalisque.

  The next day, she woke with her period. “How many days?” he asked her forlornly.

  “Three or four,” she signed back.

  Kai remembered all too well that her menses was one of her off-limits times. A specific clause in the contract actually forbid using medical or hormonal methods to deprive the odalisque of this natural monthly function.

  Kai had thought, what kind of sick fuck would want to do such a thing? And now he knew. A sick fuck like him. He wanted to haul her to the gynecologist for some kind of pill or procedure that would make it go away. He wanted to--oh, hell.

  Instead he smiled at her and made himself go in to work, mentally counting down the days.

  Chapter Eight: Enslaved

  After Kai set off for work, Constance slept in her cozy vermilion bed. She dreamed of burnished berries and desert windstorms. She dreamed of colorful bazaars and swimming in a warm deep ocean. She woke up around noon to the gentle whisper of heated air against her skin. She traced it to one of the furnace registers blowing right at the bed. Kai had obviously set her suite of rooms to be the warmest in the house. But even naked, she didn’t need to be that warm. She’d have to tell him to reset it.

  She got up and took a long bath in the same tub they’d bathed in the night before. Everything in the rooms he’d set aside for her was beautiful and luxe. The towels were soft and the soap had a unique, alluring scent, like lavender and sugar. Muted light filtered in through high windows. Constance could see the blue of the sky as she drifted in the water. She got brave and started pushing the buttons on the bathtub console, and enjoyed a nice bubble-jet massage. Ah, it made her want to masturbate, but she felt almost too lazy to. Almost.

  That done, she got out and inserted her menstrual cup, then headed downstairs to the kitchen. His house was like a palace to her. Maison Odalisque had been impressive, but this was even grander. What was she doing here? Constance Flynn, who had grown up in ugly, utilitarian military family housing, surrounded by garage-sale furniture?

  She crossed the sunken living room to the white baby grand piano sitting on a raised dais in the corner. Very Liberace, the white piano, she thought with a smile. But then most of Kai’s house was white, or neutral. And everything was open wide. She’d been in nightclubs that were smaller than this room, and stripped on stages that were smaller than the piano’s platform. Stripping. Now that had been a mistake. Men got unpleasant when they thought they were being ignored. She just hadn’t been able to hear them when they called out to her.

  Like her mother, Constance had made so many mistakes in her life. Maybe this was another one. But there was only one way to tell, and that was to do it. That had always been her modus operandi, but she wasn’t sure if it had served her well or made her life worse than it might have been.

  Constance sat at the piano and slid her fingers along the polished white and black keys. She lifted the piano’s lid down and then back again. He’d had it open. Did that mean he played often? Even if he did, she wouldn’t be able to hear any more than muted vibrations. She depressed the keys, one at a time for a while, and then in great groups, smashing and bashing them, knowing she was probably making an awful clamoring sound. She ran her fingers up and down, counting as she went.

  Then she felt a touch on her shoulder and screamed.

  She turned, her arms clasped to her chest, breath gasping in her throat. Kai smiled back at her, resplendent in his business suit and tie.

  “I didn’t know you played,” he signed.

  He was teasing, laughing, but she’d almost passed out. Her heartbeat finally calmed in her chest. “You scared me!” She exaggerated the sign for scared, clasping her chest again. “Don’t sneak up on me, please.”

  “I’m sorry. I would have called to let you know to expect me, but... I have to put in a phone you can use. What are they called? TDD phones?”

  “You
don’t have to,” she signed.

  “If there’s ever an emergency, you’ll need a phone.”

  “Deaf people use instant messaging now.” She had to spell out the word instant messaging twice, and once he got it, he looked sheepish. She hadn’t meant to make him feel stupid when he was trying so hard to help her. “It’s okay,” she signed. “Can you get me a smart phone?” He understood smart phone a lot quicker, before she even finished fingerspelling it. He nodded.

  “Of course. I’ll bring one home for you tonight.” He’d reverted back to speaking, which was fine, since she was getting pretty used to reading his lips. When she wasn’t distracted by their perfect shape and dark berry color.

  She gestured to his well-tailored suit. “I thought you were working today.”

  “I was, but I wanted to come home and check on you. You were so groggy and tired this morning.”

  She smiled. “I’m better now. I slept.”

  “Did you eat breakfast? Or lunch?”

  “Not yet.”

  She could tell he only caught the no in her sign, and not the yet, because he got all fretful and started pulling her into the kitchen. She’d wanted to ask him if he played the piano, but he seemed stuck in caretaking mode right now, and she found it so sweet she didn’t have the heart to distract him from it.

  He piled fruit and artisan bread and something called soysages on the counter in front of her. He explained that he didn’t eat meat, which Constance found vaguely arousing. She could take meat products or leave them, but vegetarianism just sounded so…healthful.

  She turned down the soysages and bread and had some cereal instead. He made his own sandwich of cheese and sprouts and slices of red and yellow peppers and started to eat it, standing across the counter from her.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” she signed.

  “I have to run. I have a lot of work stuff on my mind. But when I get home later I’ll make dinner for you, and we can get to know each other a little more. Is that okay?”

  Constance was confused. “Is what okay?”

  “If we get to know each other.”

  Constance watched as he flicked a stray bean sprout off the front of his shirt. “Why would that not be okay?” she signed, puzzled.

  “Bastien said we should guard against forming an emotional attachment.”

  Constance gazed at him, at his lips and broad shoulders and amber eyes. “Bastien means not falling in love,” she signed slowly. “But we can talk and get to know each other.” She thought a moment. “It’s not as fun to fuck a stranger.” She used the more obscene sign for fuck and noticed by his smile that he knew it.

  “Sometimes it’s exciting to fuck a stranger,” he said.

  Now she smiled and gave him a lascivious once-over from head to toe. “We can do what pleases you. Always.”

  He lifted one eyebrow as he took the last bite of his sandwich. “It might be wiser not to make such open-ended offers to perverse gentlemen like myself.”

  Constance made no answer, only stared at him. She was the one naked and exposed to his gaze, and yet she was the one molesting him with her eyes. He came around the counter and clasped her close, cupping her ass cheeks, which were still faintly bruised from the night before. Then he tilted her head up and gave her a look that made her very sorry she had her period at the moment.

  “I’ll try to be home early,” he said.

  *** *** ***

  Constance wrote a little and then slept again. She didn’t dream. Her mind was quiet for the first time in a long time. She felt an unfamiliar sense of comfort and peace in her new situation. Either that, or Kai was having airborne sedatives piped into her odella along with the breezes of warm air from the furnace vents.

  It was nearly March. Soon, she would be able to open the large picture window on the far wall and feel spring breezes against her skin. She might even ask Kai if he would help her move the bed over there. Why wouldn’t he? He was a wonderful owner. He seemed to want to do whatever would most make her happy.

  Constance woke with her notebook still open on her bed. God forbid he would come in and start reading her stuff. He would laugh his ass off. She never showed it to anyone, as much as she felt compelled to continue writing. Why did she bother?

  Well, why not? She could do as she liked with her life now. That was the whole point of becoming an odalisque. Well, aside from the endless sexual ecstasy. Just as she was daydreaming about such ecstasy, her owner stuck his head in the door. She smiled at him and pushed her notebook under her pillow.

  Wow. There was something about a hot man in a business suit. She sat up a little straighter. Her hands formed the signs that were like second nature to her. “May I serve you?”

  He looked confused. “I thought you were off limits right now?”

  “I can’t receive. But...I can give.”

  His mouth fell open a little. “Oh, wow. Really? I thought I was in for a three-day dry spell.” He was already moving toward her, his hands at the fastenings of his pants.

  She looked up at him, laughing. “Three days is not exactly a dry spell,” she signed.

  He gazed back at her with a rakish smile. “And oral sex is not exactly giving. There’s some receiving involved too.” He made an obscene gesture, one long, bronze finger poking through the circle of his opposite hand. “Is this an official sign for anything?”

  Constance was overcome by a fit of giggles that transformed into full-out laughing at the look of mock disappointment on his face. His expression changed then, and he leaned down to kiss her. He pulled away and ran gentle fingertips down one cheek. “Constance. I wish you could hear what you sound like when you laugh. Or can you? Can you hear it? Inside your head?”

  It was a stupid question, but he didn’t know. “I can’t hear things like you hear them. I pretty much can’t hear anything.” She exaggerated the sign for anything into a sweeping dismissal, feeling peevish all of a sudden.

  He was still looking at her with that awful, sympathetic look. “Your laugh sounds so pretty. Like bells.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what bells sound like.” She dropped her hands to her lap. She was tired of signing. Tired of trying to communicate with him while he watched her with patient forbearance. She reached for his fly and signed again, “May I serve you?”

  For a moment he continued to stroke her face, then ran his hand up to touch her hair. She looked back at him, hoping he wouldn’t say anything else. Please, please, just let me do what I’m here for. Finally he drew her forward, down to her knees. He unbuttoned his shirt as she freed his half-rigid cock from the front of his boxers.

  Constance sat back on her knees for a second, taking him in. His cock was thick--even at half mast--and vein-y. The head jutted out toward her, part of a growing, pulsing sculpture. Soon enough she would internalize everything about the shape and scent of him. She would memorize every ridge and vein she explored with her tongue. She would learn which spots made him groan and which movements made him buck in her mouth.

  His open shirttails rested against his hips, framing the view, and his hands hung open at each side. His hands, my God. She wanted to kiss them. She wanted to nibble and suck his long, curved fingers as much as his cock. His stance was dominant enough to bring an ache to life between her legs. It was as if time stood still, and she watched herself in this tableau from somewhere across the room, kneeling before him in all his masculine glory. Her subservience flooded her psyche like a drug.

  You are a sick, sick puppy, Constance.

  She reached out to touch him, to feel the velvet texture of his skin, the heat of his arousal. She brought his cock to her lips and set about memorizing the things he liked best. She hadn’t had him this way since the very first evening she’d met him, when Bastien had brought him to her room under the eaves, and she had looked up to see an Indian god. Tall, formidable, and effortlessly sensual, even when he was serious and reserved.

  Constance looked up at him now as she slid her tong
ue from the base to the tip of his cock. He stared back down at her, her immovable Master, and thought about...what? How she felt? How she looked? How she gazed at him like a wanton slut? She moaned softly and he seemed to jump against her mouth. He was fully hard now, hard like stone, like marble.

  She teased him for a long while, tracing, sucking, caressing him with her tongue. He stood still, hands open, shirt drawn apart. She reached up to place her palm against his hard, flat abs, against his waist, pulling him closer. She fought not to gag as she drew him all the way deep in her throat. His living flesh stole her breath. This was the epitome of submission and while it made her feel vulnerable, it also made her feel powerful. She reached down to finger herself, helpless to control the impulse. She was drooling all over him, giving a sloppy, reckless blowjob. She would definitely have his boxers wet, but she didn’t think he’d care.

  Then some resonance changed, and his body tensed under her fingers. She knew he was reaching the height of his arc. She hoped he would climax in her mouth. She wanted to taste him and savor him, and get to know the flavor of him. When she’d gone down on him at the Maison, he’d been wearing a condom, and she’d been left with nothing but the bitterness of latex in her mouth. Oh, Kai. Kai... She gazed up at him just a moment. He gritted his teeth and stared back at her from under sultry lids. Constance increased the pace and pressure of the blowjob, and his hands moved from his sides, coming to rest on her head.

  Kai didn’t grab her. She probably would have been alarmed if he’d grabbed her and jammed his cock deep. No, she only felt his fingers tangling in her curls and clenching slightly. Soon after, with a buck of his hips, he spurted cum into her throat, onto her tongue. She tasted the sweet salty essence of him and loved it from the start.