breasts pressed into his chest.
She kissed his mouth, his lovely mouth, and the kiss was lovely and loving. He took her by the waist and lifted her off of him.
"Now me,” he said. "Drink from me.”
It was her pleasure to do it. She slid down his body and took him into her mouth, tasting herself on his shaft. She wasted no time on the usual niceties but pulled the organ down her throat and sucked hard. He arched on the floor, his hips lifting, and he exploded into her mouth. As he came she pulled the semen out of him, sucking it down her throat, every drop, emptying his body as he’d emptied hers. After it was done she lay her head on his stomach and held his cock in her hand, cradling it between her naked breasts.
"How do I free you from this place?” she whispered. The guards would find them together like this any minute. She knew they would expel her and torture him for what they’d done together.
"Open your eyes,” he said.
She did as ordered and lifted her head. They were in the bed in the back room again. The iron chain on his ankle was gone. He looked like himself again, like her Malcolm, her lover, her owner, her god.
She glanced around the room, blinking, stupefied.
"How do you do it all?” she asked. "How do you make me see what I see?”
"You see what I see,” he said.
"Is it real?”
"It’s real enough.”
"Are you the devil?” she asked, knowing that the answer—yes or no—would change nothing between them.
"Do you believe in the devil?” Malcolm asked.
"No, but Mother did. Heaven and hell and anything fantastical, she believed in it all. Beauty over truth, always.”
"Not all that is beautiful is untrue, Mona.”
Malcolm took her by the waist and pulled her to him. He laid her on her back, lifted her skirts to her stomach and put his hand into her wet sex. It sank into her to his wrist. Her body stretched to accommodate him and once it had, it closed around his hand again, enveloping him, holding him within her where he belonged. She’d made Sebastian perform this very act on her and he had done so reluctantly and been horrified by it. Not Malcolm. He looked at her with near reverence as he worked his hand carefully in deeper.
"Why did you come to me?” she asked, resting her hand on the side of his face. "Why were you waiting for me? Why me? I’m not special. I’m not…anything.”
"Long ago I made a deathbed promise. I need you to help me keep it as I’m helping you to keep yours. I promise, you will understand in time, Mona. You’ll understand it all.”
She saw the truth in his eyes. Someday she would know who he was and when she knew who he was she would finally know herself. Tonight, it didn’t matter. She knew she was his and that was enough. Mona closed her eyes and rested her head back against the pillow. Malcolm filled her so entirely there was no space left inside her for doubts or fears. He kissed the tops of her still swollen breasts, and she smiled languidly. He had drained her and the emptiness was simply another aching void for him to fill.
"You’re tired, love,” he said. "Go to sleep. It’s almost dawn.”
"If I fall asleep, you’ll leave me again.”
"I’ve never left you when you slept.”
"But when I wake you’re not here.”
"When you wake you can’t see me. But I’m here. I’m always here.”
"Make me come again and I’ll sleep.”
"You’re terribly greedy.”
"For you,” she said. "Only greedy for you.”
He kissed her lips lightly and moved his head between her legs. With his hand inside her, he only lapped lightly at her clitoris to bring her to climax. Her sex quivered around his hand, squeezing it, holding it. It was ecstasy beyond words to be filled up so completely. She never wanted to be empty again and she told him that. When his hand slipped out of her at last, he replaced it with his cock. He rode her with long, slow strokes, seemingly endless. If only they were.
"I dreamed you were dead,” she said, half-asleep and falling fast as he rocked her with his deep and gentle thrusts. "I’m afraid I’ll dream that again.”
"You won’t dream that tonight, I promise.”
"Is this all a dream? That’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
"You aren’t dreaming,” he said, and she knew that was true. She was awake and had been every time they had met. "But if it were a dream, would you want to wake up?” he asked.
A good question. A fair question. A hard question, but one she answered easily.
"Never.”
The Luncheon on the Grass
It wasn’t a dream. Mona knew that for certain. Nor was she insane. Nor had Malcolm drugged her. She didn’t know the source of Malcolm’s magic and she could not begin to guess the purpose of his tricks or the prestige, but she knew what she’d seen and felt was real, as real as anything had ever been in her life and likely ever would be.
She woke alone in the bed at the gallery. Her insides were sore from Malcolm’s hand, but her breasts felt normal. Her sleep had been dreamless. There was a lightness to her step once again, as the dark cloud over her had lifted.
The happiness didn’t fade even as the long days and lonely nights passed. She was certain she would see Malcolm again and sure enough, the day came when she found a book of paintings on her desk and Malcolm waiting for her in the back room. A few weeks passed and he came to her again. Their nights together were passionate and fulfilling but no longer terrifying. He conjured no monsters, dragged her into no hells. She sensed he’d been testing her in some way and finally she had passed. Malcolm came to her in April and twice in May. The first of June arrived and she woke up fearful. The first time he’d come to her had been in late June of last year. It was almost over, whatever this game was.
He’d made her three promises when they’d made their deal: He promised to pay her enough in art to save the gallery. He promised to tell her the provenance of the paintings.
And he promised he would leave her.
She refused to think of the final promise. Surely the terms of the agreement had changed. She’d told him she loved him, told him she wanted to have his baby, and he’d told her that he would allow that someday. She held onto those words, treasuring them like a talisman. And she needed that talisman once the banks started calling again. She had nearly a dozen valuable and important sketches and etchings she could sell once she had provenance, she assured them. All she needed now was Malcolm’s name and the story he hadn’t yet told her.
By the middle of June, the city was sweating again. Even when it rained, the sidewalks steamed in the heat. Mona rarely left the shady coolness of her gallery for her apartment. She’d never lain with Malcolm there, so it felt like a foreign country to her, whereas The Red was her home.
On a Sunday morning she woke up to a city burning in the heat and she fled straight to the gallery hours before it opened. In her office she found a book lying on her desk, marked with the red velvet ribbon. Mona laughed, her heart bubbling, when she saw the painting he had marked in the book. Manet again. How fitting to return to Manet one year after their first night together. The painting was famous, more famous even than Olympia. Known as Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe—"The Luncheon on the Grass”—it was the painting her mother jokingly called "The Other Naked Lunch.”
Two men, fully dressed, reclined on the grass, having what seemed to be an intense conversation. Sitting next to the men and staring directly at the viewer was a woman, entirely naked. The men paid no attention to her nor to the woman behind them bathing in a stream. Mona wondered if the painting was Manet’s commentary on the art establishment, more interested in talk than the world around them. The woman was nature in the raw and the men wanted nothing to do with her. It didn’t surprise her in the least that Malcolm would want to recreate such a painting and rectify what he undoubtedly considered a moral failing on the part of the men.
Curious, Mona walked to the back room door and peeked inside. Malcolm h
ad wasted no time preparing for the assignation. Instead of wooden floors, she found lush green grass under her feet. Instead of a ceiling, she saw a hazy blue sky. And instead of walls, she saw a silver stream through the trees. The day was halcyon. It looked like someone’s memory of a perfect day. She gazed around her and saw that nothing remained of the back room but the door, freestanding, like a portal to another world. Now she understood that in some mysterious way it was. Another world of Malcolm’s creation.
Somewhere close by people talked. She heard their voices, low but unmistakably male. Mona undressed, dropping her silk skirt and blouse onto the grass. She walked barefoot and naked toward the sound of the men. She spied them before they spied her, sitting beside their picnic blanket in their black suits as they exchanged friendly fire over something silly and political. Malcolm she recognized at once. The other man seemed familiar, but she knew her mind was tricking her. She’d never seen him before. She hid herself behind the tree and studied him. He had dark reddish-brown hair in a modern Brutus cut. His eyes were dark, but not black like Malcolm’s. They were midnight blue instead—she was sure of it even from a distance. Midnight blue eyes and a midnight smile as he spoke. He seemed the sort of man who made all his business deals in a bedroom, not a boardroom. He had a strong nose, strong chin, and strong jaw beneath his beard, and looked a little younger than Malcolm—thirty-five, maybe. Everything about him exuded quiet strength. He was desperately handsome, and in that alone he reminded her of Malcolm. He wore a ring on his left ring finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It looked like an antique signet ring of sorts, large, ornately engraved, and silver.
Mona stepped into the clearing where the two men sat chatting. Malcolm glanced her way and waved her over, patting the blanket at his side. She sat, slightly self-conscious of her nakedness even as she knew the other man with the signet ring was nothing more than a figment of Malcolm’s imagination. He wasn’t real any more than the little pastel nymphs or the men who’d bid on her at the slave auction. He was no more real than the Roman prison guard who’d searched her body, no more real than the priestesses who served the Minotaur.
Malcolm placed his hand on her thigh as she stretched out on the blanket.
"It’s got to go,” Malcolm was saying to the other man. "It’s outdated, outmoded. It’s a relic.”
"Of course it’s a relic,” the man with the midnight eyes said. "I’m not arguing that point.”
"What is your point?” Malcolm asked.
"My point is…people love their relics. Don’t they?” the midnight man asked, turning to Mona.
"You’re asking me?” she said.
"You run an art gallery, don’t you?” he asked.
"She does,” Malcolm said.
"Then you know better than either of us that people love relics,” the midnight man said. "What painting would sell for more money—a bad painting that’s four hundred years old, or a good painting that was finished yesterday?”
"The four-hundred-year old painting,” she said. "Almost always.”
"See?” the midnight man said. "My point is proven. The monarchy remains intact.”
"You’re trying to end the monarchy?” she asked Malcolm. "A strange quest for an Englishman.”
"He’s a strange Englishman,” the midnight man said.
"It’s a relic of a benighted age,” Malcolm said.
"So is everything valuable that you detest,” the midnight man said. "Including marriage.”
"I surrender,” Malcolm said.
Mona laughed at them. They seemed to be dear old friends, though Malcolm had yet to introduce her to his friend.
"Let’s talk of something more pleasant than my two least favorite M words,” Malcolm said. "Let us talk of my favorite M word.”
"Which is?” Mona asked.
Malcolm leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips.
"Mona,” he said.
"A much better topic of conversation indeed,” the midnight man said. Mona looked at him and found him at her other side. She stiffened when he leaned in to kiss her as well. She assumed he was there to be an audience to her and Malcolm’s lovemaking. It seemed he was to participate as well. Malcolm had never let anyone else have sex with her in these fantasies he conjured for her. Would that change today?
"Trust me, love,” Malcolm said, and it was all she needed to hear. The man with the midnight eyes smiled at her and Mona found herself returning the smile, her naked body blushing crimson. It was all a fantasy anyway, wasn’t it? He was a figment of Malcolm’s imagination, a figment who would be gone the moment she returned to the outside world.
The midnight man kissed her mouth, a kiss both tender and cruel. He held her chin in his hand so that she couldn’t move away from his lips (not that she wanted to). His tongue probed the inside of her mouth as if she were something the man had purchased sight unseen and wanted to see if he’d gotten his money’s worth. She grew warm as he kissed her, warm and then hot. He pushed her gently but forcefully onto her back and kept kissing her. As he kissed her, Malcolm fondled her. She would know his touch blindfolded in the dark. He fondled her breasts while she and the midnight man kissed deeply, his beard tickling her chin and cheeks. Malcolm rolled her nipples around his fingers until they hardened painfully, and when they were too sensitive she thought she would scream, he took one in his mouth and suckled it. She moaned into the midnight man’s mouth and he chuckled at her ardor.
"Beautiful whore,” the midnight man said. "I may have to keep you.”
He laughed again softly before kissing her again roughly. If it were possible, and she doubted it was, the man seemed even more arrogant than Malcolm. She was starting to like him. His tongue touched hers and she felt something electric pass between them. It made her heart jump and her stomach tremble. Or perhaps that was merely from Malcolm’s touch on her naked body as he trailed a hand from her breasts to her thighs and up again.
Malcolm pressed her legs apart and lay between her thighs. She tried to break the kiss when Malcolm opened her labia and licked her, but the midnight man didn’t allow it. He forced her to keep kissing him even as Malcolm lapped at her clitoris. The kiss turned into the sweetest form of torture as Malcolm played with her vagina, rubbing along the front wall and pushing his fingertips gently into her most shivering and sensitive places. To kiss and come at the same time was nearly impossible, but the two men seemed intent on forcing her to do it.
The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it while he deepened the kiss even further, delving into her mouth with his tongue as if to eat her every moan. He tasted like he’d been drinking honeyed wine and eating freshly plucked pears—an intoxicating, delicious mix, like sangria. She opened her mouth wider to him as Malcolm pried her tight pussy open with his thumb and forefinger. She moaned into her new lover’s mouth and she felt him trying not to smile.
Mona sensed Malcolm moving. She couldn’t see what he was doing as the kiss prevented her from raising her head. But she felt it, felt him put the thick tip of his cock into her. She tried lifting her hips, eager for more of him, but he held her down on the ground. He brought his mouth onto her left breast again and sucked. The midnight man kissed her along her jawline, nibbled her earlobe and finally took her right breast into his mouth. Never in her life had two different men sucked her at the same time. Her head fell back and she arched on the ground. Yes…this was it, bliss beyond words. These two hot sucking mouths and her body their property and possession. The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it. He plucked at the nipple. He tugged it and twisted it, not viciously but not gently, and the sensation pieced her chest all the way to her back. The man with the midnight eyes stared at her breast while he fondled and sucked her. He seemed to find her mesmerizing, almost as if he were as surprised to be here doing this deed as she was. Who was he? He seemed far more substantial than the shades and shadows of people Malcolm had conjured in his other fantasies. He breathed the wo
rd "lovely” before kissing her nipple again. She twined her fingers into his rust-colored hair. She found him impossibly beautiful. Malcolm had done well with this fantasy man. Perhaps Malcolm had read her mind and found her ideal lover. She wouldn’t put it past him.
She turned her head and saw Malcolm looking at her, her nipple deep in his mouth. She touched his face with her fingertips and smiled lovingly at him. He raised his head, smiled back at her, and then thrust his cock into her so hard she saw crimson stars in front of her eyes.
"Devil…” she said, and Malcolm chuckled fiendishly.
The man with the midnight eyes put his mouth at her ear. "He’s terrible, isn’t he?” he whispered. "But do you want to know something?”
"Tell me,” she said.
"I’m worse.”
She saw in his eyes he meant it, but where was the fun in taking him at his word?
"Prove it,” she said.
Those dark blue eyes of his widened in surprise and his pupils dilated with desire. "I must be dreaming,” he said.
"Why is that?” she asked.
"Because you’re my dream girl.”
He lowered his head to her mouth again before she could say another word. He groped her breast while kissing her, while Malcolm fucked her wet cunt. The organ inside her was rapture. Malcolm had her legs up on his shoulders to send the broad and firm tip sliding
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