“Is the rope a concern now?”
“Nooo . . .”
Languid, craving the pleasure – forbidden delights. His lips curving against mine, tongue slipping between. Suckling him, an arm looped around his neck, fingers winding in the tangle of his dark hair.
“You can find this place too, anytime you wish. Squeeze your cunnie around my fingers.”
Cunnie – a startling word, naughty. I like it and think, had I the time, I might find that I am a very, very bad girl after all.
Her flesh gripped his fingers, and new pleasures bloomed.
His thumb nudged high in her cleft, burning.
“Oh, God . . . please.”
“Yes indeed, Eliza. Soon, soon.” He withdrew his fingers.
She started to pull her thighs together, but he stopped her, tightening the rope around her throat.
“Not yet.”
She shuddered and stayed spread wide.
“Do you touch yourself in the night, Lizalove? Right there?”
His hand cupped her yearning flesh again.
“Yesss.”
“What do you think of ?”
“Youuu . . .” She could not lie to him.
He removed the loop of rope from her neck. “Think of the darkness, think of the rope, think of my cock,” he said.
“Ohhh.”
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
She went straight to bed.
Losing track of time, sun and moon changing places. He has not returned. Found out? Had all he wanted? Maybe something has happened to him. I do not even know his name.
Wondrous gift. A note from him:
How can this be?
I mourn what is not yet gone!
Emptied by the future that does not hold you.
Do I risk hell for a heaven here and now?
Dare I tempt the rope?
I find you guilty of only one thing, angelic thief;
you have taken my heart, and wherever you are,
I know, there shall my heart be too.
Fear not the darkness – I am the dark,
and you are my secret, eternal.
I will set you free.
Give all to me.
Still, the Cleric does not come.
A new visitor. Why am I so afraid when they tell me? No formal visiting rooms here; Charity Ladies, physicians, clerics and visitors all came to the condemned’s cell when audience was desired.
Nothing to tidy, no mirror to check, knowing she had never been dirtier or more ashamed, she stood with her cheek pressed to the bars so she could see whom the guard led to her.
James Thomas, Lord Dover’s gardener and her erstwhile suitor.
Her knees went weak. She crumpled to the dusty floor; the only thing keeping her from falling was her grip on the metal doors.
Shouldn’t she at least be allowed a choice? She was to die. Should she not be given the right to refuse a visitor? She only wished to see the Cleric.
She closed her eyes and, only because she refused to be found by anyone groveling in the dirt, she lifted herself up and was standing when the doors opened.
“James.” She wished she had it in her to tell him to leave. Leave now and never come back, never think of her again like this. It would be easier for them both.
James
Sweet, sweet boy.
“Eliza, I came as soon as they would allow it!”
He did not offer his hand or a hug, and that was not surprising. His courtship had been most proper. It was not in his nature to be overly demonstrative. James Thomas had an innocence about him that still tugged at Eliza’s heartstrings, though she was not in love with him. On the Dover estates, their paths had crossed often. She had spent much of her time out of doors with the children, and James was always to be found rallying the score of servants who attended to Lord Dover’s expansive gardens wherever the family was in residence.
She had gently rebuffed his overtures, her heart still wounded over her father’s death and the sudden changes in her life without him, though a part of her had started to warm. James was so sweet, good and kindly. He would make someone a very fine husband, she had started to think.
“You should not have come.” She started to say more, but realized that was all there really was to say. Anything they might have had was best forgotten. He should go. She turned away from him.
“I had to come! They have not found Lady Dover’s necklace. Lord Dover says if you wish to return home, you know what to do. I guess he means tell them where you hid it, but you cannot have done what they say. Not you. You’re a good person, Eliza, I just know it.” His brown eyes softened, though worry bracketed them with a thicket of frown lines.
Lord Dover had sent him. Sent James to tell her to acquiesce to his demands. For that was what his coded message meant. Sleep with me. Be my mistress and all will be forgotten. You can come home again.
Could he really do that? she wondered. Have the Court reverse her sentence? Yes. She supposed a man as powerful as Lord Dover, who had managed to get her convicted of theft without any evidence, could do that. All she would have to do was sleep with him. Not just once, for that she may have been able to stomach, but many times, for as long as he desired her. She would have to let the old man do anything he wished with her, anything at all, or it would be back to prison.
When her father died, and Lord Dover had offered her the post as nursemaid to his brood, he had seemed so kindly, her father’s old friend, sympathetic to her loss and change of status. With nowhere else to turn, she had gratefully accepted the position. Very soon, it became apparent that the old man had motives other than kindliness. His pursuit of her had been relentless. After he’d tried to sneak into her chambers one night, despite having nowhere to go, Eliza had been on the verge of fleeing when he had sprung the theft trap, and had her arrested.
He had made her the same offer before the authorities arrived to take her away. Sleep with me. Be my mistress, and all will be forgotten.
“James, you may tell Lord Dover I did not take the necklace.” She would still rather die than be his plaything. Maybe she had gone insane after all in this place.
“Eliza! There must be a way to stop this nonsense. You cannot hang for something you did not do!” Emotion seemed to overcome him, and he reached for her hand, which she allowed him to hold for a moment before gently pulling away.
“Please, just go.”
“I wanted us to marry, you know.” His voice broke.
“James, you barely know me. You need to forget about me.”
“How can I? I love you.” He made to reach for her again, and she moved away, unable to face the pain in his gentle brown eyes.
Once she had dreamed of love, and marriage. Back then, she would have rebuffed this boy’s advances, preferring to dally with the affections of older, richer men. The daughter of a lord, she had her pick of powerful, handsome suitors, and had been sure she had plenty of time to settle on the right match.
“James, I do not love you. You are a gardener. Nothing changes that. You and I were never meant to be together. Had my circumstance been different, I would not have deigned even to speak with you.” Harsh words, meant to hurt, and not entirely true, for she had always been nice to everyone. They were words designed to send him away, to make him think of her no more.
“How can you say that? You were always so kind. So nice. I could tell you liked me too.” His look of bemused hurt almost made her stop.
“Like I told you before, you never really knew me at all. Now, go. Please. Deliver my message to Lord Dover and forget all about me.”
“Eliza!”
“Guard! He’s ready to leave.” She did not watch as he was taken away and would not have seen even had she looked. Tears flooded her vision and choked her breathing.
Though she had not loved James, in him she had glimpsed the possibility of a future, of a life without her father that, while different, would be liveable. Sending him away, she finally allowed
herself to mourn all of her losses. Her tears did not stop for days. More than once, she was tempted to give in to Lord Dover’s demands so that she might live.
And still, the Cleric did not return.
I would give him anything. My dreams are filled with images of him, naked in the darkness. He is all I have left. He is all I desire.
A pail of warm water, beside it – wrapped with care – a whole bar of jasmine-scented soap.
He’s coming.
When she woke the moon was high, and he was there. He stood near the window. Beyond him, she saw falling snowflakes.
She moved to one side of the cot, telling him in the action exactly what she wanted from him.
He was upon her before she could let out a breath. He pulled up her skirt and they crashed together. Their mouths clung, and their hands clutched. His whiskers abraded her skin. She arched into the pain of it, needing him with a violence that was frightening.
He ran his hands slowly over her body. Eliza thought he meant to be tender then, and she did not want his kindness. She wrapped her fingers around his arms, her torn nails ripping into his flesh, dragging him down to her.
He fisted his hands in her hair and yanked her into place beneath him. She spread her legs wide, welcoming him like the whore she had been called.
He devoured her mouth, leaving it only to lick his way to her nipples, biting and suckling them through the bodice of her dress until she moaned, forcing him to clasp his hand over her mouth. He undid his trousers. She felt the heat of him slide into her. There was no pain, only a sense of fullness and pleasure.
He rose over her, propping himself up upon his hands. She opened her mouth to lick a corded muscle in his arm. A droplet of sweat seeped from his skin, and she savored its salt on her tongue.
She came, in a flood – sudden, harsh and sweet – and then so did he, lifting himself out of her, stroking his cock as he knelt between her thighs, shooting his seed onto her belly.
“Lizalove.” He kissed the bruises his passion had left upon her.
“I do not even know your name.” She rubbed his release into her flesh.
“William.”
“Thank you, William.”
Another day.
“There is one more thing, Liza.”
She nodded.
I will give him anything he wishes for, and not ask a single question. I will do anything he wants; this is all I will ever have.
He wrapped his fingers around her throat, his other hand delving between her thighs.
“Hold your breath, Lizalove. Do not breathe for as long as you can, until you grow dizzy.”
William kissed her, pushing his breath into her mouth, showing her how to breathe, slowly and deeply. She took his breath into her body, holding it when he squeezed her throat.
It was difficult, not gasping for air, not panting with lust, but she looked into his eyes, and found euphoria in the control he showed her. She went with him to the place he had shown her, the peaceful meadow. His fingers worked magic, and her body opened for his bunched, fucking fingers.
Before it was over, he pushed his cock into her, choking her as he took her. He came flooding into her body just as she was overtaken by darkness.
“Breathe,” he said, giving her his own breath until hers returned to normal.
He held her. “I wish I could do more,” he said as she closed her eyes to shut out everything but him. “Just remember, there is always light, after the darkness. Always.”
And, for the first time, Eliza believed.
They came for her later, the hangman’s assistant and the warden.
They tied her hands behind her back and led her into the morning sun. Her feet made clumsy imprints in the blanket of blinding white snow. The air was crisp and cold. Eliza saw her breath – a warm fog of life she walked through before she closed her eyes.
The crowd cheered, but she was far away, at a pristine lake, with a man who loved her. Flowers bloomed all around them and she wore red ribbons in her hair.
Under the gallows, she breathed deeply, calmly until peace flooded her. She opened her eyes again when the hangman placed his hand upon her shoulder.
Eliza looked into his eyes – death’s eyes, the hangman’s eyes, William’s eyes.
“Have faith,” she heard him whisper.
Then there was only darkness.
Suite 1226
Michèle Larue
Translated by Adriana Hunter
The Cathay Pacific Boeing 727 was gliding in across blue Eastern skies towards Bangkok. Relaxing in the front row of the forward section, Veronica’s endless legs stretched out into the aisle. From time to time her eyes left her laptop and strayed to the blue curtain leading to the cockpit past the toilets and the metallic row of fridges and microwaves. She was starving. At long last a red-jacketed stewardess wheeling the meal trays down the aisle. Veronica pulled back her legs, popped up her seat and flashed a smile at her, another at the Chinese man sitting next to her and opted for the Thai curry menu.
She devoured her chicken, tapping her feet to the strains of Baxter Dury in her headphones and went back to her reading: a report on the refugee camp where she was to spend the next two months, on a mission for a Hong Kong-based NGO. Once again, her long legs stretched into the aisle. The music in her ears made the statistics scrolling down the pink screen seem a lot less boring.
As she finished reviewing the first part of the report, Veronica sensed she was being watched. The chief pilot’s tanned hand was holding back the blue curtain and his hefty body was framed in the opening. Their gazes met briefly. Heavy-set in his uniform, the man was staring at Veronica’s bare feet, plainly manicured, slender and pale in their beige sandals. The pilot’s eyes slanted towards his temples and his prominent cheekbones were like those of South American Indians. His face would have been handsome were it not for those teenage acne pockmarks, Veronica thought to herself as she resumed her reading, determined to finish in time to have two free days in Bangkok before being enrolled into camp routine. When she raised her eyes again, the curtain was back in place. She had scarcely shut down her laptop when the “fasten seat belts” sign went on.
Veronica strode through wide airport hallways and collected her backpack from the baggage carousel. The chief pilot with his tan was standing next to the glass door opening onto the metal footbridge that led to the taxi ranks. He approached her with the faintest of smiles.
“I have a company car. I can drop you off in town. Where are you staying?”
“That hotel near the bus station.”
“The Rex?”
Having leafed through a guidebook in Hong Kong, Veronica knew there were dozens of hotels in that vicinity. Tourists spent the night there before taking a bus to one of the southern beaches, Khao Lak, Phuket or Pattaya. But she didn’t know the name of a single one, she’d planned to explore the area around the station on foot and psych out a decent accommodation for her two nights in Bangkok. So she decided to bluff.
“That’s right, the Rex.”
“Me too, I can drop you there, if you like.”
She followed him to the company car and climbed on the back seat beside him. He introduced himself as Bernardo but didn’t bother to shake hands: he was from the Philippines and didn’t know a soul in Bangkok, despite his countless stopovers between Manila and the Middle East. As the car sped down the highway, his eyes dwelled on her feet.
“What’s your shoe size?”
“Seven and a half.”
“Small feet for your height. How tall are you?”
“Five feet ten.”
“No fooling, we’re exactly the same height!”
The coincidence brought smiles to their lips. This was the first Filipino Veronica had met. She sensed in Bernardo a man who’d risen out of poverty, culturally illiterate, and she took the bestseller she was reading out of her backpack to test him.
“Awesome, Douglas Kennedy’s last book. Have you read it?”
“I don
’t read much. I am a movie fan, thrillers mostly.”
In the lobby of the Rex she laid her passport on the front desk while Bernardo parleyed with the clerk in his own language, Tagalog, or was it Thai? Veronica didn’t speak either one. He turned to her.
“There’s a luxury suite on the top floor. We could share it. Separate bedrooms with a sitting room in the middle. My airline will pick up the tab.”
He took Veronica’s silence for assent, made the arrangements and handed her a key card. In the lift, Veronica suddenly felt giddy. Why had she accepted this? She was a practising psychologist, accustomed to settling other people’s conflicts and who rarely lost her composure on the job. Nor had she ever entered into an affair without weighing at length the pros and the cons. But the uniform preceding her down the corridor was reassuring: after all, Bernardo was a chief airline pilot. A man of confidence, responsible for the safety of his passengers. She’d never heard of any jet-crew member accused of rape.
Behind their crimson portières, the two bedrooms were spacious, each with its own double bed. On the coffee table in the sitting room, a boat made of coconut shells and filled with fresh mangoes, pineapples and mangosteens had pride of place. The man pointed up to the high bay window, long and narrow like a movie screen.
A tangle of electric wires was visible with thousands of starlings perched upon them.
“Those’d make a nice fricassée! Ever tasted ortolans?”
“No, never.”
“They’re delicious. Some restaurants in Manila still serve them.”
Perhaps that was meant to be tit for tat, so to speak: a plate of ortolans against Douglas Kennedy. Almost everyone has heard of Douglas Kennedy, his paperbacks are on sale in every airport, but who has any idea what ortolans taste like? Veronica’s ethnological instincts were aroused, her curiosity about this roommate became more appreciative. They retired to their respective bedrooms. Veronica heard the spattering of Bernardo’s shower. She stepped into her own bathroom and revelled in the warm jet. Then, wrapped in a bath sheet, she lay on the sofa by the boat of fruit, wondering what came next.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 38