“Yes, I do,” she answered looking bewildered by the uncomfortable turn of the conversation. Alex was as glacial as an Arctic breeze.
“So, you’ll look around,” she said, speaking to them both as she pasted a surgery smile on her lips.
“Of course, and we’ll talk later,” Reggie informed her.
“We will?” Alex asked.
“Yes, we will, Alexandra,” he replied. He didn’t explain himself, though the use of her full name was some indication of his frame of mind. He never called her Alexandra unless he was thinking of her as a sexual submissive.
A few hours later, Alex took a breather from the chattering crowd and made her way downstairs to the relative quiet of Dunning’s private apartment. The night was almost at a close, just a few hangers-on remaining, and she saw no use in staying until the last guest was out the door.
Unfortunately her moment of privacy was interrupted.
“So what’s the bee in your bonnet?” Reggie addressed her in cool tones. Following her down the gallery stairs, he’d cornered her in a private hallway far removed from the guests. He fixed her with a sharp-eyed glare that matched the ones she’d sent his way all evening long. “You’re a little drunk, aren’t you?” he added.
“Oh, you’re not going to blame my mood on alcohol,” Alex said, turning to speak to him face to face.
“Then perhaps you could apologize to Linda. Your resentment of her is misplaced. I don’t think that Will would appreciate your putting off an art critic of her caliber.”
“Critic?” She was slightly worried by the information.
“Yes, she was someone Will wanted to be sure was here.”
“Oh, I see.”
“You have a problem seeing me with another woman?”
“Of course I have a problem. You’re married to Jocelyn.”
“She’ll be my ex-wife very soon,” he said. “As soon as my attorney can catch up with her.”
“No! That’s not going to happen!” Her voice rose so shrill in the hallway that Reggie pushed her into an open room and closed the door behind them.
“If I have to bare your ass and put a little civility into your behavior, I will,” he warned.
“You’re stupid and insensitive to let her go,” Alex blurted out her feelings.
“Maybe Jocelyn should have thought of being more sensitive when she decided to screw a man behind my back. That’s classic adultery in any man’s book. As far as letting her go, she left me.”
“Not because she wanted to.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I know because sometimes you behave like a boor, Reggie Harold,” she hissed. “You drove her away if anything.”
“Alex,” he looked her uncharacteristically bewildered. “How could you possibly blame my wife’s crazy state of mind on me?”
“Oh,” Alex backed off calmly, a twisted smile suddenly appearing on her face. “Did I strike a chord. You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry.”
“Because you love her and want her back. Go get her.” It seemed so simple a solution to her.
“You are an exasperating woman,” he said shaking his head and turning away. He stood for a moment with his back to her then turned around. “I have the divorce papers started, Alex. Don’t belabor this with me. This is what she wants.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s had her whole life ripped apart.”
“And she has the power to put it back together if she chooses.” He sighed. “Besides, I’ve given you much more information than you deserve. I’ve said enough about her, but you on the other hand…”
“Me what?”
“I hadn’t thought I’d have a chance to take care of this tonight, but since we’re here.”
“Take care of what?” she asked.
“A matter of your fidelity.”
“What matter is that?” So like Reggie to make her defensive in an instant.
“How quickly you forget.”
She searched her mind for lapses in memory coming up blank, which was a dangerous situation to be in with Reggie Harold.
“A month ago, the painter, Kyle Stewart.”
“How…” she stopped. “How would you know?”
“He did work for me a week later. Very talkative fellow.”
“That was just after…” She was thinking back to the wild fight she’d had with Will that day. Once her raging husband had stormed the house and walked out leaving waves of ice in his wake, she’d been peeled off the walls by a young man who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. He’d been painting the back bedroom and she’d almost forgotten he was there. He approached her as gingerly as a shy cat, asking her if she wanted all the walls changed to peach or just one.
He’d heard the entire brawl, every desperate thing she’d spit in Will’s face, and every pointed accusation he’d made in return. She didn’t remember what the fight was about three days later when Will returned, let alone now; but she did recall what happened with the painter.
“Just the one,” she’d said, replying to the young man’s question.
He should have returned to his work at that point, but he walked closer still, seeing tears forming in her eyes while she tried holding them back.
“You want to have sex?” he’d asked with such unabashed sincerity that the idea didn’t even startle her.
She remembered staring at him for the longest time. Kyle was willing to wait forever for an answer, so it seemed, considering how long they stood in the middle of her living room staring into each other’s eyes.
“Yes,” she’d whispered, her fingers flying to the buttons on her shirt, his hand pushing down his painting trousers to show his dark hairy legs and a penis bouncing half mast. She dropped to her knees knowing how much she wanted her mouth around the swelling organ. Fucking it hard with lips and hand, his groans of response warmed what had gone cold inside her. The two dropped to the couch once the erection was stiff and he rendered her helpless with his prick inside her cunt. The unseasoned, fresh pup of a man pounded her with vigor if not finesse. He had muscles to run her hands along, shoulders with sinews of a dimestore novel variety and a mouth that drove against hers, his tongue trying to go as deep as his cock. Her lips would be as sore as her cunt afterwards. When he raised her legs up over her head, the force of his erection made her gasp with pain. She liked that pain since it made her forget she was using this man to dispel the nasty attack of bitch that had come over her in the fight with Will. The fuck seemed so pure, a baptism by wildfire lust. So pure, Alex forgot about that spontaneous combustion after it was over, having been washed clean of woe. Every trace of anger had been cleansed from her soul.
“Kyle told you he fucked me?” Alex asked Reggie, in shock, wondering how something so virtuous could return to haunt her.
“He did,” Reggie replied.
Yes, it made sense. He was a dumb, innocent boy who liked to share his sexual conquests with other men. He worked for Will, of course he’d hire on with his best friend. How stupid! How utterly stupid to have such a lapse in judgment!
“You’re going to tell Will?” she asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary. You will,” Reggie replied.
“Yes, of course I will, I always do,” she murmured to herself more than to the man that faced her. “So why bring it up now?”
“Honesty precludes disaster and damages too great to overcome.”
“You’re sounding like a textbook.”
“I’m only warning you,” he said.
“Are you suggesting that my relationship with Will is in trouble?”
“I think when you screw another man in a pointless lark, it hints at something more going on in you. You’d be wise to take care of it.”
The door leading to the hall was not closed all the way. Hearing it squeaking on its hinges, the two turned to see Will standing just outside in the corridor.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Alex shou
ld be upstairs.”
“I needed breather,” she said. “Certainly, the showing’s over by now.”
Will noted the serious tone between the two, not something he hadn’t seen before. “I don’t like what I’m seeing here. You want to tell me what gives?” He looked directly at Alex.
“We can wait till tomorrow,” Alex suggested. It was late, she was tired, so was Will. She started to exit the room.
“And let this wrack my brain all night?” he returned stepping forward to stop her.
“It’s not the time,” she tried insisting. All the while, a sinking, fateful feeling gnawed at her belly.
“The party’s over, Alex. I’ve got all night.”
Just what she needed at that hour, she thought to herself. How many times would she end up in this situation, the two men that had delightfully and not so delightfully dominated her for the past seven years, staring at her waiting for her to fess up. Reggie so cool, the bastard, having started this in the first place. And Will about to get hurt again at the end of what should have been a glorious triumph. There was no way to make the best of this situation.
“Damn you, Reg,” she said, with as much defiance as she could muster.
Reggie didn’t respond, and Will stood stoically staring at her, immovable in his fixed stance. He wouldn’t move until she’d spoken, this being the kind of confrontation she’d had before. She knew the script well.
“Perhaps I should go,” Reggie said. “Your wife might be more forthcoming.”
“No, you’ll stay,” Will countered. “You might prove to be an important buffer.”
“You two need a buffer?” Reggie commented, intrigued.
“We’ve been fighting a lot,” Will said. He turned back to Alex awaiting her explanation.
“Okay, why don’t you just pin me to the wall with a knife at my neck,” she declared.
“Cut the drama, Alex,” Will snapped.
She sighed. “Okay, so I screwed the painter!”
“What?” Will looked at her confounded. “Kyle? You screwed Kyle?”
“The day you walked out after we fought.”
“You…”
“Yes, I opened my legs and let him have me. Got out all the stress. It couldn’t have been better.” She should have bit her tongue before saying that, but she was sliding fast into the inevitable and she couldn’t stop that forward motion.
Will stared at her, his face going blank, his eyes hardly focused on anything.
Spine tingling tension shot through her while she waited for his reply.
“That easy, huh,” he finally said. “What is it, you’re in cahoots with Jocelyn? You want to run off with her?”
“This has nothing to do with Jocelyn. And no I don’t want to run off with her. We just need things better between us.”
“That’s all there was to it? Screw him and let him go?”
“That’s it.”
“How many other guys you ‘open your legs’ for?”
“Just you.”
“And Kyle.”
“He was once,” she replied desperately. “Dammit, if Reggie hadn’t found out you’d never know.”
“But you would,” Will said right off.
“I’m not sure I’m even sorry it happened,” she said. “I know that doesn’t sound like me, but it came and went so fast that…” Nothing sounded right so she stopped talking.
“Oh, but I think you’ll be sorry when I’m finished with you,” Will remarked. Like he was getting a second wind on the night, almost inspired by the thought of how he’d make her suffer, his eyes lit like two bright beacons coming out of the darkness. “I haven’t blistered your ass in so long, the thought of it is feeling really good.”
Alex was certain that he was far too excited by the prospect that lay before him like candy in front of a three year old. He looked about the room deciding on his plan, then turned to Reggie.
“You can witness, and stop me if I’m going too far?” he asked him.
“Too far?” Alex whispered.
A man with a mission to perform, Will unbuckled his belt and withdrew it from his pants.
“This is about more than just one screw, isn’t it?” Alex observed, seeing how her husband’s face had clouded as if rays from a black moon shone down on it with that eerie light.
“Making too much of it? Why darling I have a hundred grievances I could punish you for. Do you want me to start naming them?”
“No, if we could just get it over with.”
“Better not look at it that way, Alex, because this one won’t be so easy.”
For a moment, she looked at Reggie who stood coolly to one side, arms crossed in front of him, smugness wreaking from his expression.
“You think I’ll rescue you from this one?” he asked.
“Oh, no. That would be pretty stupid of me.”
His smile was not completely unkind.
“What the two of you need is a little less punishment and a little more basic submission from the submissive,” Reggie observed.
“This always seems to happen when our lives gets too full,” Will ruminated. “Things get out of hand. But Alex can bare her ass and we’ll start with a clean slate once it’s over. Why don’t you do the honors?”
Though Alex wasn’t sure what Will meant by that suggestion to Reggie, Reggie did. For all the times she’d been punished by both men, however, this one would prove to be unique unto itself. Feeling Reggie’s firm hand on her arm, he led her to a padded armchair and motioned for her to kneel on its seat. He reached to the hem of her dress and pulled up the skirt. She was wearing peach colored satin panties that matched her garter belt and stockings. Those panties instantly jerked from her bottom, Alex had to scramble to disentangle them from her ankles. Once done, Reggie positioned her, draping her torso over the back of the chair again. The line of her ass with her knees drawn together created a perfect heart-shaped target, the pouch of her sex plump and pink between her cheeks. Alex wasn’t surprised, however, when Reggie pushed her knees apart so that they nestled into the tufted fabric where the chair arms met the seat. With that tender pouch more prominent and exposed in this position, it would feel the bite of Will’s belt if he made a point of striking her there. Finished getting her ready, Reg sat down in a chair at her head. Leaning forward he held her wrists in one hand, the back of her head in the other.
“Don’t struggle, or I’ll tie your legs down,” he warned.
Reggie’s words were met with a vigorous spasm that flooded her groin with a sexual charge. Would that they’d both screw her ass, she’d have been pleased. Just one touch to that sensitive pouch of sexy flesh and she might have come right there on the spot. But then terror always excited her. When the cruel designs of a dominant man had her enthralled she was fresh clay in the hands of a master. There was no finer ecstasy than that moment when her mind rushed in a bath of humiliation. Her heart pounded in anticipation of the first painful strike of leather and she knew she was being taken into that exquisite vacuum where she could flee the real world into fantasy. With two masters? The physical punch multiplied in geometric proportions.
Alex began to cry just from the way Reggie held her immobile, the way his acute manner of dominion swept her psyche. From Will, she felt his strength behind her, raw power, anger, indignation and justification pouring over her in a malevolent shower. One dominant fixed, the other fluid, she’d be suspended between their diverse uncompromising styles until the end came.
The first smack seduced her. Packing a serious punch, the sensation shot through to the tips of her fingers that Reggie held in his hand and the hair follicles he’d commandeered with the other. That sensation sent her one degree closer to the exploding point. Another strike, and the smell of leather suddenly grabbed her as fiercely as Reggie’s hands. She wiggled her ass seeking another. The third strike clipped her cunt with a blunt edge.
“Ah, nooooo,” she whimpered softly.
Will did not ease off, and she didn’t e
xpect that. He struck her hard and repeatedly. In a measured rhythm as though a drum beat the cadence of the strikes, each biting hit of the leather against her flesh caused a jerk and a shriek of pain. With more pain following so close on the tail of the strike before, there was soon no way to recuperate or enjoy the agony.
“Will, no,” she sobbed, feeling desperate.
To that cry, Reggie tightened his grip even more.
There was almost as much punishment inside Reggie’s confining grasp as there was in the blows from behind. Even though it was her husband perpetrating the most physical pain, it was Reggie’s cold judgment coming down on her that stung more fiercely, for it reminded her of how she’d disappointed him. Something in her soul was wholly embarrassed to be like this again for him—for good reason. She’d failed him as much as she’d failed her husband. In the back of her mind, she believed that she should be the perfect submissive. After all, Reggie had meticulously trained her to submit. And yet, she still thwarted her husband’s demands, ignored her true nature and sent her marriage on a rocky tail-spin. To see Reggie’s response to that, though he was far too collected and arrogant to say so, she sensed his dismay. Feeling such failure in the eyes of both men, the punishment had its point. As a submissive, this was the way she could ease her conscience and finally lighten a spirit that had become troubled in recent weeks.
As Will looked at his wife’s behind, he witnessed the wild streaks of red with increasing mirth. It was not something gleeful as much as it was satisfying. With every strike of the belt, with every cry from her mouth, with every place her roughed up skin became more raw, he felt his anger diminish with each strike. The longer the punishment went on the more cleansed he felt. For all their love, the two had been in a perpetual war with Alex’s pride and fear. As much as they played with her darker virtues, they avoided them. This constant hadn’t changed in seven years. Times like this, when he made her ass burn bright and she’d howl pitifully from the pain, he cleansed her, too, and restored order in their relationship.
“Oh, gawd please,” she sounded so woefully weary. “Please stop,” she roared even louder.
But he didn’t stop. He did slow for a while and let the heat climb deeper inside. Then he began again to take her to the point where her skin was so roughed and raw there were tiny spots where the blood surfaced to make an angry rash. At that point, Will laid on just a few more to places that made her howl loudly, like her thighs and sides. At the very last, he deliberately nicked her right down her rear cleft. She almost leapt off the chair when that cut hit, and Reggie had to subdue her. His powerful arms took charge of her flailing form until she was settled again. Calm at last, Will laid on just one last strike. It wasn’t even a ferocious one, just one that ended the scene with a tangible period.
The Alexandra Series Page 65