Knaves

by Lawless, M. J.

  “She’s a lucky woman,” Eloise remarked. “To have such a handsome devil as you around.” She turned her head and stared brazenly at him, her blue eyes piercing, glittering, slightly hypnotising Hayden for a second so that the alcoholic haze fuming through his mind dissipated for a moment. Had he ever seen any eyes as beautiful as those? Then they mixed with Karla’s and his anger built up inside him again.

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you,” he replied sarcastically. Then he pulled his gaze away from Eloise’s and knocked back his whisky. As fire sluiced his throat again, he felt the room shift around him and he almost slid from his seat.

  The bar seemed to take it’s time coming to a standstill and, before he realised where he was, her hand was on his arm. Dumbly for a moment, he stared down at the long, pale fingers, with bright red nails that shone like poison. Whose hand was that? He wondered absent-mindedly. He didn’t remember painting his nails. Oh, yeah—Elo-whatshername. Why was she here again? Ah, yes, La Lupa—he remembered now. He smiled foolishly to himself.

  “I was a big fan of your work, you know.” His brain heard his mouth a nanosecond later and he wanted to kick himself. Hell! There was a time when he would have been fully in control of a situation like this, would have had the woman eating from the palm of his hand (or, usually, somewhere a lot more intimate), but a year with Karla had turned him into a gauche fool.

  “Was?” she repeated, her voice both amused and slightly sharp.

  “Well, you know,” he mumbled, his eyes slowly travelling up where her hips flowed to her narrow waist and back out to her extremely impressive bosom before, finally, settling on her face which was swaying aside in a somewhat unsettling manner. “A man has… commitments. In any case, I thought you said you didn’t make those kind of movies anymore.”

  Her smile became more self-assured. “I don’t, not unless Valmont wants me to. And I never understood why such… commitments would prevent you from enjoying me whenever you want. It’s such a wasteful emotion, jealousy—don’t you think?”

  “Oh, oh, I couldn’t agree more!” Hayden nodded vigorously, an act which unfortunately seemed to dislodge part of his brain. Another drink: that would settle him. As he raised his hand to call the bartender over he slid from his stool once more, this time almost tumbling completely. Before he was even aware of what had happened, Eloise had appeared next to him, one arm around his waist and supporting him.

  “Come on,” she whispered in his ear. “I think it’s time we got you back to your bed.”

  “A good idea,” mumbled Hayden, thinking to himself: Wow! She’s really quite strong!

  As they staggered—or, more precisely, Hayden staggered and Eloise held him up—towards the elevator, Hayden repeated the intensely romantic mantra “don’t be sick—don’t be sick” again and again to himself. Goddamn! He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this drunk, but as Eloise placed him against the wall of the elevator, using a hand to hold his chest still as one of her legs slid between his—in a way that didn’t seem quite as innocent an act of support as she presumably meant—he realised that not all of his body was that drunk.

  “I should… I should get some sleep,” he muttered, suddenly guilty as he thought of Karla. “But thank you, thank you so much for helping out a chap in need.”

  “My pleasure,” Eloise purred, her face a few inches away from his, looking up at him as her other hand seemed to slide down his stomach and lingered a moment too long on his crotch, an act which made her eyes light up. “You keep yourself… very fit,” she breathed, lifting her mouth to his ear. The smell of her perfume was overpowering.

  “Ugh… thanks.” Hayden’s brain was a fog of confusion now. On his right shoulder, a single angel was telling him to think of Karla, while on his left a whole troupe of little demons was jumping up and down yelling a host of unspeakable suggestions. He put up a feeble defence: “So… how did you meet Valmont?”

  For a second her smile faltered then she raised a single eyebrow. “You don’t really want to know that,” she told him. “There are only two people here now who really matter.”

  This time, when she kissed him he didn’t resist. Instead one hand slid into her dress, encountering the firm, hot resistance of those magnificent breasts as his other moved around her back, scrunching up the fabric around her taut, delicious buttock. Her mouth was hot and sensuous, her tongue a wet snake that slide and penetrated his mouth, sucking out his breath so that he could no longer think.

  Hayden didn’t even know where he was, who he was when the lift opened and he half fell into the corridor, causing an elderly couple to gasp as Eloise followed behind, holding him up by one arm. He saw her wink at them and then drag him along. “Which room?” she hissed, biting his ear to show she meant business. Bloody hell! he thought through the fug of his brain—she really is strong.

  He vaguely told her a number and she fished inside his jacket, pushing him against the wall with the other hand and holding him in place as she retrieved his card key. Her look was triumphant, vulpine, and he had the oddest sensation as he remembered from somewhere that lupa could be the female name for a wolf. Then he remembered the videos he’d seen her in and any further attempt at resistance was lost in a sudden swelling of his manhood.

  “She doesn’t understand me,” he said, self-pityingly. “Everything I’ve done, I do for her, but she doesn’t get me.” Shut up! Shut up! his brain screamed at his mouth. Listen to yourself! Instead, Eloise turned at him and regarded him strangely.

  “We never do,” she replied ambiguously.

  Now the door was open and he stumbled inside, barely able to keep his feet. With one gentle push, Eloise sent him sprawling onto the sofa and stood in front of him.

  At that precise moment, as he looked up at her, Hayden had the weirdest feeling that she appeared to be some kind of Valkyrie, with large, pointed breasts and blonde hair curled up about her head. There were two parts of him, he realised, that were not completely inebriated at that point. Hayden had never really seen the point of a conscience, but one tiny part of his brain was reminding him in increasingly truculent tones that if this wasn’t necessarily wrong, it was certainly not part of his and Karla’s plan. (His brain seemed to take insufferable pleasure in emphasising her name.)

  Unfortunately, the other part of him that didn’t seem to be experiencing any adverse side effects of all the booze was doing its damnedest to get out of his trousers. With a groan, Hayden realised that in any fight between brain and cock tonight, the latter was sure to win.

  Eloise—Lupa—seemed to realise it as well. Raising her hands to the straps of her dress, she eased them from her shoulders, letting it shimmy down her body to the floor. Jesus! Those glorious tits were defying gravity in a way Hayden had never seen in close quarters before. He knew they weren’t real—not like Karla’s breasts—but at that moment he was so filled with lust that he didn’t care.

  The rest of her body, more muscular than Karla’s but lean and taut, moved with grace, a pair of small panties covering her crotch as she spread her legs slightly and, with the grace of long experience, dropped down so that her buttocks bounced slightly on the backs of her heels. Not losing her balance at all, she reached out so that her hands made contact with Hayden’s thighs and her fingers snaked upwards, coming to the very evident bulge in his trousers and beginning to tug at the buttons that were his last line of defence.

  “We shouldn’t…” he began to say. She lifted one long finger to his lips and pouted.

  “He wants me to,” she whispered. Then she was back at work, deftly loosening his final buttons and dipping her fingers inside where they clasped around him and drew him out.

  “Merde!” she hissed as she pulled him free, and when she looked up at him this time, those expert fingers dwarfed by his thickness, her mouth formed into a leer. “He really wants me!”

  Hayden looked up at the ceiling feeling utterly helpless. She was right. That treacherous bastard really did want her. He didn
’t think that he’d had such a hard on in a long time, and swallowing back his guilt he realised that the simple wrongness of this situation was turning him on more than he cared to admit. The final moral atom inside him hoped that the sheer quantity of booze he’d drunk would stop him performing, but in the meantime those bastard devils on his left shoulder were popping champagne corks and getting ready to party.

  He felt rather than saw Eloise’s lips touch his cock and instinctively his hand lurched forward, grabbing hold of her hair—though whether to push her away or pull her onto him more deeply he couldn’t tell. She was doing some strange, rather porny things with her mouth, and when he finally looked down he groaned again and stiffened a bit more at the sight of her lips, wet with her own saliva, rubbing up and down the sides of his shaft.

  Her eyes were gloating now as she parted those red, shining lips as wide as they would go and slowly started to descend onto him. One of her hands was holding his balls tightly, her clasp ever so slightly painful but also, Hayden had to admit, extremely erotic as she used the other to masturbate the base of his erection. Her head bobbed up and down a few times, with each motion taking another fraction of an inch into her throat until, eventually, she emitted a strange gargling sound.

  Shit! Her lips were at the base of him, and those blue, damning eyes of her were regarding him wolfishly as she swallowed him whole. Hayden’s hips bucked slightly, a spasm throughout his body, and she choked slightly. Lifting her head slowly—far too slowly—he saw inch after inch of wet, saliva-coated flesh emerge from her mouth until a single strand of pearls was strung between her lips and the tip of him. Still squeezing him with one hand, she began to stroke him again with the other.

  “Damn, baby,” she purred. “You’re so fucking big! I mean, really! I’ve been with a couple of black guys who would give you a run for your money, and one Russian guy who was hung like a donkey but didn’t know how to fuck. You should be in the movies!”

  Hayden didn’t know what to say so he said nothing. Part of him had never felt so miserable in his life—unfortunately, that part was overwhelmed by the rest of his ego that was partying with the devils now, doing the double-backed boogie-woogie. He was fucked now—everything was fucked—so at least he might as well fuck.

  Eloise, understanding his silence as consent, moved closer and lowered her torso, letting go of his erection now and instead grabbing each of her nipples, swinging those large, artificial breasts into place around his cock. Hayden lay there, completely passive as she began to move her body up and down, a large meat sandwich just beneath her chin. She, in the meantime, stared at him lasciviously, her eyes shining, her lips wet as she licked them with her pink animal tongue.

  “You like that, baby?” she asked. Hayden grunted in reply. It felt fantastic and he was losing himself completely now. “You want to fuck me baby?” she asked, moving her breasts up and down more frantically now. “You want to fuck me in the ass? Oh, you’re a big boy, but I can take you. That uptight bitch ever let you fuck her in the ass?”

  He didn’t want to talk about Karla, not now. Even in the depths into which he was sinking, Hayden knew that this was wrong. He grasped her jaw in his fingers, strength suddenly returning to him, causing Eloise to gasp as her eyes flashed. He regarded her silently for a time, his eyes boring into her, seeing how she was playing him.

  And all the time he knew that his cock was so stiff that he wanted to be played.

  “Get on your knees,” he said.

  Her smile was wide and wet as she turned away from him, lifting her hands to the thong of her underwear as it crossed her buttocks.

  “That’s it, baby,” she said in a low, seductive voice. “You can fuck me any way you want.”

  Hayden froze.

  Those buttocks, which had felt so sweet in his hands beneath his dress, were not what he was expecting, and he gulped rapidly as he forced his eyes to focus. Her back, her shoulders, her thighs as well, were pale and smooth, flawless in their beauty.

  Her ass, on the other hand…

  For a few seconds he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. The skin which should have been firm and as perfect as the rest of her body was a mass of welts—long, thin lines, some white and evidently old scars, others raw and vivid, fresh blows as though delivered by a cane or whip. Looking back over her shoulder, Eloise winked at him.

  “Like I said, baby, you can do whatever you want. I really don’t mind.”

  A couple of the demons beside Hayden were whooping and hollering even more, but even amongst that crowd a number of them were scratching their heads bemusedly while the solitary angel on the other side put his face in his palm. Hayden was not averse to a little slap along with his tickle, but this time the intrinsic wrongness of what lay before him even hit his erection, which suddenly started to wilt a little. This wasn’t kinky foreplay but full on sado-masochism.

  Evidently his pause was a little too long because Eloise started to frown. “What is it, baby? Don’t you like it?”

  “I… that is… I…” Hayden fumbled for the right words. The shock of that mess on her backside was beginning to sober him up. What the hell had he been thinking?

  Pouting, her lips affecting a seductive shape but her eyes suddenly hard, Eloise turned around quickly and dropped to her knees. “I’ve been a very naughty girl, daddy, but it’s okay—”

  That was too much. Hayden moved his hands to his trousers and began to do up his buttons. “I think you better go,” he interrupted her before she could say any more.

  The hardness was clearly anger now as she looked at him. Disguising it, however, she moved her hands quickly to his, attempted to force them to one side. That wasn’t going to work now, however, and Hayden shoved her hard, not even pretending to be a gentleman any more. It did occur to him that something in Eloise might like that, but he was beyond playing games now. As she fell backwards onto her buttocks, glowering at him, he continued to button himself up.

  “What are you?” she hissed. “Some kind of fucking queer?”

  “Get out,” he said, levelly. He was still drunk, but it was a different sense of inebriation now. He had the sense that before long he would throw up, but even that would be some sort of purgative, clearing his system.

  She stared at him, gaping slightly. A rapid exchange of emotions crossed her face which then became a mask—this time placid and supplicating.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “Perhaps I was too fast. I always forget what you English guys are like. I don’t have to go. We can take it more slowly.” Cautiously, she moved one hand forward, reaching out to grab hold of his trousers again, to inveigle her way back inside them once more.

  “So this is how you spend your time alone, is it?” The voice was French, icy—and all too familiar. It’s tone froze Hayden’s heart.

  It seemed to take an age for him to turn his head, and when he did so he saw Karla standing in the entrance to their rooms. Her face was stiff, proud—and also inconsolably bitter at this sight of betrayal. Her coat was pulled tightly around her figure and she had never looked more beautiful—or more frail—to Hayden. Her dark hair, as false as Eloise’s breasts but infinitely more desirable to him now, hung like a shroud about her pale face and her eyes were bright with barely restrained tears. Her face was so stiff, but her eyes were pleading with him as he stared at her.

  “I can explain,” he yelled, his voice catching on the feebleness of his reaction. She shook her head and, before he could even rise from his seat she had turned on her heels and had gone.

  Hayden collapsed onto his seat and put both of his hands across his face, blocking out the light. What he done? How could he be so stupid?

  “Hey, baby, it’s okay.” Eloise’s voice was gentle and he felt her hand on his arm. When he pulled his own hands away from his face, his expression was a vision of fury that made her draw back, genuinely shocked.

  “Get out of here!” he snarled.

  “Hey, I don’t have to go.” Her eyes w
ere flickering from side to side, plainly afraid. “We can still fuck—”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said, get out!” He grasped her wrist and yanked her to her feet as though she were a rag doll. Her body, so desirable only minutes before, was disgusting to him now, with her fake tits and the mass of welts and bruises on her arse. Some remnant of decency held his violence in check so that he refused to hit her. In any case, the sick pervert would probably get a kick out of it.

  She stared at him in fearful defiance, probably only for seconds though it felt like an age. Then she visibly wilted. Not daring to look up at him again, when his vice-like grip finally relented she pulled away sheepishly, quickly bending down to scoop up her dress and her underwear.

  He didn’t watch her leave, but stood like a statue in the room, his brain a vortex of pain and hate and misery. He wasn’t even fully conscious of himself as he began to rage about the room, smashing lamps, shelves and ornaments as he swept about himself in futile self-loathing.

  It was only when the storm had passed and he was standing amidst a welter of detritus that he remembered Karla. Not even stopping to pick up his jacket, he ran out of the room, shouting incoherently.

  Chapter Six: Hayden

  It was past nine when Hayden returned again to the hotel. Although the midsummer night had been pleasantly warm when first he had left his room, by the early hours of morning it had become bitterly cold. He had run from hotel to hotel at first, shouting at staff, asking if anyone had seen her. Most had looked at him as though he were a madman and in two he had been accosted and thrown out by security.