The Virgin

by Tiffany Reisz

  or two...or ten?”

  “You want me to give you points for losing your virginity?”

  “No, I want you to give me points for having my first kiss and losing my virginity all in one night. And extra points for not screaming.”

  Elle laughed. “You have a one-track mind.”

  “I should get points for that, too.”

  “Okay. Three points for the first kiss. Five points for not being a virgin anymore. And a bonus two points for not screaming when I broke your hymen with my hand.”

  “Nine plus three plus five plus two is...nineteen. I’m only six points away from getting the truth out of you. So close. Let’s have sex again so I can win more points.”

  “You already know most of it.”

  “But not all, right?”

  “No,” Elle admitted. Not all.

  “So is that a yes for more sex?”

  “You need to recover. You’re bleeding a little.”

  “I know,” Kyrie said, sighing. She closed her eyes and the smile on her face faded.

  “Are you okay?” Elle asked, pulling Kyrie’s nightgown back up to cover her breasts. She’d be cold any second now as her temperature plummeted. “You don’t have to answer until you’re ready. And when you’re ready there’s no right answer. If you’re not okay, you can tell me that, too. I’ve had ‘not okay’ sex, too. We can talk about it.”

  Kyrie still didn’t speak. Not a word.

  “Kyrie?” Elle prompted. “Are you okay?”

  Kyrie rolled onto her side and stretched an arm over Elle’s chest and threw her leg over Elle’s leg. Elle gathered Kyrie’s small shivering self close to her and kissed her on the forehead. She felt a wave of happiness flow through her and a surge of possessiveness. Hers. All hers.

  “Elle,” she began, “what you just did to me?”

  “What?” Elle asked, bracing herself.

  “Do it again.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  23

  Haiti

  THE SUN HAD set by the time they made it back to his beach hut. The moon was on the water. The stars had woken up and come out to watch them. And the instant they were inside his beach hut, Kingsley grabbed Juliette by the arm and pulled her hard against him.

  She went limp in his arms, resting her weight against him in an act of total surrender.

  He kissed her deeply and she wound her arms around his neck. Her height brought her body into perfect alignment with his. She had substance to her, warm flesh and lean muscle, rounded hips and full breasts. He felt her strength even in her surrender and he adored her for giving it up for him, if only for the night.

  “You want me to beat you?” he asked her, sliding his hand down her hair and pressing his palm against the small of her back.

  “Please,” she said. S’il vous plaît. “I’ve dreamed of you doing that to me.”

  “Has he beaten you?” Kingsley asked when he pulled back from the drugging kiss.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it his doing? Or yours?”

  “Mine,” she said. “I asked him to hurt me.”

  “Why? Did you have those fantasies?”

  “Sometimes.” Juliette sighed heavily. “But the truth? By the time I was twenty, I had been his lover for six years. I was tired of him, bored. My love for him was fading. It was hard to pretend, especially since his interest in me had only grown in that time. I’m the center of his life now and he...” Her voice trailed off. “I used to love him and hate him in equal measure. Now...now the scales have tipped.”

  “So you asked him to hurt you.”

  “I did. A few years ago. I needed something, anything to make me look forward to going back to his bed every night.”

  “Did it?”

  She nodded. “It did. It does. I didn’t want him anymore, but I wanted it, wanted what he gave me at night—pain and fear and power. I wanted that even if I didn’t want him.”

  “Did he like it as much as you did?”

  “He didn’t want to hurt me at first. I had to beg him to do it.”

  “Why didn’t he want it if you did?”

  Juliette shrugged. “He’s white. I’m black. He’s French. I’m Haitian.”

  “And that’s what pricked his conscience? Skin color and French colonialism? Not that you were fourteen and bargaining for your mother’s life when he took you the first time?”

  “Don’t judge him,” Juliette said, pointing a finger at the center of his chest. “You didn’t see me when I was fourteen. I would have fucked me, too. And so would you.”

  “I have a conscience,” Kingsley said.

  “Is that what you call yours?” she said with a wicked grin.

  “You do want me to beat the hell out of you, don’t you?”

  “Bien sûr,” she said with a wide smile.

  “Is there anything you don’t like, don’t want?” he asked. “Any limits?”

  “He’ll be back in a week. I need to be healed by then. That’s all. He and I, we’ve done everything.”

  “Does he rape you?”

  “When I want him to. He hates it but it’s my favorite. If I make him angry, he’ll do it, and then he hates us both afterward. I like making him hate himself.” She smiled, and Kingsley caught a glimpse of the darkness in her, the mirror image of the darkness in him.

  “Do you wear a collar with him?”

  “No. He gives me jewelry and expensive clothes. That’s how he shows he owns me. I’d rather have the collar. At least that would be something private.”

  “I’ve never collared anyone. Collars are for dogs.”

  “You collar a dog so if it gets lost it can be returned home to its rightful owner again. The collar isn’t for the dog. It’s for the owner.”

  Kingsley looked at her and found himself unable to speak for a moment. Finally he managed to get a few words out.

  “I want to own you,” Kingsley said.

  Juliette only laughed and shook her head. “Stand in line.”

  Kingsley pulled her to him and kissed her.

  Juliette had dreamed of him hurting her, she’d said. And Kingsley had fantasized about hurting Juliette since their first night together. Giving and receiving pain was the most intimate act two people could share with each other. More intimate even than sex, which required so little courage. It was a biological itch and that was all. But pain was life and trust and everything he needed from Juliette, everything he needed to give her.

  But he hadn’t planned for this night, merely fantasized about it. And he had nothing with him—no floggers, no canes, no whips, no chains. That hadn’t stopped Søren when they were boys back in high school. But that was Søren and Søren could beat Kingsley breathless using nothing but...

  Of course.

  Kingsley unbuckled his belt and pulled it out of the loops of his khaki trousers. He’d lost weight while living on the beach, weight he hadn’t needed to lose. A month ago he’d dug a belt out of his bag, the one he’d packed in the leather duffel he’d kept in that locker, the bag that contained anything he would need to run for his life if the time came. And the bag that contained the last and only objects that mattered to him. The belt was in that bag.

  Juliette took a nervous step back toward the bed.

  “Do you know what this is?” Kingsley asked.

  “Your belt,” she said.

  “It is mine, and it isn’t.” He held it up. The black leather was scuffed and faded, but otherwise it was in pristine condition. It was high quality and had no doubt been expensive when purchased over twenty-five years ago.

  “This belt,” he continued, “belonged to the first person who ever beat me. He was a boy at my high school, and I loved him. I loved him so much I gave him my body in every way possible. And this was the belt he used when he beat me. His belt. I’ve kept it all this time.”

  “It’s special to you,” Juliette said, eyeing the black leather.

  “He is special to me. Was special...”

&nb
sp; “Is,” she said. “If he wasn’t still important to you, you wouldn’t be telling me about him.”

  Kingsley nodded. “He is special to me. Then and now and always. So special I’ve never beaten anyone with this belt. I kept it hidden away like treasure. Hidden away with all my memories of him and what he did to me.”

  “You loved him?”

  “I did. And I do. Although I wish I didn’t sometimes. It’s been a knife in me for twenty-three years.”

  Juliette nodded. “I know that kind of love. A love like a knife,” Juliette said. “But the knife is what carves us into who we are. Don’t repent of the knife.”

  “The knife brought me here,” he said. “I repent of nothing. Not even making love to you again when I know you’ll leave me.”

  “Not by choice,” she said. “I promise, not by choice.”

  “If you could choose—”

  “Don’t ask me to choose when I can’t. Just...”

  “What?”

  “Just hurt me tonight until I forget who I belong to. Hurt me until I forget who I am.”

  Kingsley cupped the back of her neck, kissed her throat. Into her ear he whispered, “I’ll make you forget.”

  He untied the back of her dress and pulled it down and off her body. Would he ever get enough of her body? It seemed impossible. The well of his desire was bottomless and he dived into it headfirst.

  He kissed her again, held her breasts in his hands, gripped her hips and pulled her hard against his erection. Then, without warning her, he turned her back to him and shoved her against the rough wooden wall.

  She held still, said nothing. Waited with her eyes closed and her head bowed.

  He struck her hard between the shoulder blades and harder still a few inches lower. She didn’t cry out even when welts appeared on her skin, and he aimed for them. The only sound she made were a few quiet gasps that pleased him more than any scream he’d ever wrung from the lips of a weaker woman. A whip or a flogger made the work easy for him. With a belt he had to throw hard, strike hard, concentrate his energy and his strength. It was as much work for him to hurt her as it was for her to take it. After two or maybe three dozen vicious strikes up and down the entire back of her body, he stopped with as little warning as he’d started.

  Juliette remained standing with her eyes closed, panting. He was hard already, eager to have her. Too eager. Dangerously eager. If he took her right now he’d no doubt hurt her with his ardor.

  Then again, she’d admitted she liked rough sex. If rough sex was what she wanted, he was more than capable of giving it to her tonight.

  Kingsley dropped the belt on the floor and stepped behind Juliette. He pressed his naked chest against the scores of raw welts on her burning back. Then, finally, she cried out in real pain. Sweat and heat against battered flesh...sensual salt rubbed into sublime wounds.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” Kingsley whispered in her ear as he opened his pants and let his cock rub against her naked bottom. He let her feel it, let her feel the length and the width and the hardness against her like a threat. Behind her with his back still pressed to her, he rolled on a condom. “And you have one job to do while I’m fucking you.”

  “What is my order?”

  “Try to stop me.”

  Kingsley grabbed the back of her neck with his left hand. With his right arm he wrapped it around her waist and dragged her toward the bed. Juliette dug in her heels and pushed back against him. She was strong but he was stronger. His fingers dug into her soft skin. No matter how she twisted and turned in his arms, she couldn’t get away. He threw her onto the bed and she landed on her back. Before he could get on top of her she had hands up and she pushed hard against his chest.

  Blood surged in his veins as he caught her wrists in an iron grasp and forced them down onto either side of her head. She gave a cry of rage and he’d never heard a sound so electrifying. She tried to kick at him but he’d already got a knee between her thighs and was forcing them open. He pressed his full weight onto her, onto her wrists and her thighs. With a burst of sudden strength she jerked under him, nearly succeeding in throwing him off her. But he tightened his grip to the point of pain and beyond.

  At last her will to fight back was broken. She went slack underneath him, surrendering. He pulled her wrists together and trapped them in one hand above her head. With his free hand he claimed her body, squeezing her breasts, pinching her nipples, thrusting his fingers inside her wet body until she groaned with unwanted ecstasy. He caught a nipple between his lips and pulled it deep into his mouth. The struggle had made him wild with desire. He shoved his cock inside her and Juliette arched underneath him so hard her back bowed. All around his thrusting length, her vagina pulsed wildly with her orgasm. He kept thrusting, harder and harder, slamming into her with all his might. Sex became fucking became rutting became something else he didn’t know because he was too lost in the unbearable pounding pleasure of it.

  This woman...this incredible woman...Kingsley couldn’t get enough of her, using her, ramming into her until every thrust hurt him as much as it hurt her. And yet the pain was as sweet as white wine and it drugged him like no intoxicant he’d ever taken. And he forgot...everything. Inside her body he forgot his anger at Søren, his anger at himself, the women he’d lost—Marie-Laure, Sam, Charlie, Elle... He forgot everything and everyone but Juliette, whoever she was. He didn’t care. She was his. Right now, this moment, she was his. His property, his body, his lover, his treasure.

  He’d come to Haiti to drink, to sleep, to forget everything that had happened. By accident he’d stumbled into a dragon’s treasure room and found a jewel, rare and priceless. He held a fortune in his hands. Endless wealth. If only he could claim and keep it, he’d be the richest man in the world. How could he walk away from such a treasure? No man could. It would be like walking away from a pile of diamonds, a chest of gold. He’d no more leave Juliette in Haiti than he’d leave an emerald on the ground, a pearl on the beach.

  “My Jules...” he whispered into her ear when he came inside her, his semen pouring out of him in aching bursts. “My jewel.”

  A second climax overtook her and she writhed and shivered underneath him.

  “Listen to me,” he said between kisses. She was still trapped by his arms and his knees. But the struggle was over and their bodies were still joined. “You belong in my kingdom. You always have. But you were lost to us, and now I’ve found you again. Your king has found you and I will bring you home where you belong.”

  “Mon roi,” she said in her exhaustion as she went limp against the sweating sheets. My king. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Don’t say it.”

  He felt her laugh more than heard it. “You don’t know what it is,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You know I’m in love with you?” she asked.

  “Oui. But don’t say it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t have you. I can’t keep you. You aren’t mine.”

  “Then I don’t love you,” she said, tracing the old and faded scar on his chest with her fingertips. “I don’t love you with all my heart and with every inch of my body. I don’t love you now and always.”

  “I will never love you, either,” Kingsley said, closing his eyes.

  “I don’t know about your priest, but my priest says it’s a sin to lie,” Juliette said, looking down on him. He rested his hand against the side of her face. “The Devil is a murderer and the Father of Lies. When we lie we are like the Devil, killing the truth.”

  “God will absolve us,” Kingsley said. “He knows our lying isn’t murder.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Self-defense.”