by A. J. Molloy
He stands and looks at me, arms folded—defiant, but not superior. Just himself.
“Why?” I ask.
“When I grew up, X, we were genteel yet very poor, we were aristocratic but impoverished, everything was in decline, just as it had been in decline for decades, centuries even, and this house”—he gestures—“was falling apart, almost a ruin. Likewise the estate in Tyrol, the manor in England. The Roscarricks were doomed. Everything was going to be sold, the palazzo was on the market, my history was about to be auctioned. This made me furious, as only an eighteen-year-old can be furious—incandescent. I truly wanted to be a painter, an artist, an architect, but I didn’t have the luxury. So I went into business as soon as I could, because I was determined to restore our fortunes, whatever it took, to save this great old name, Roscarrick. So I did. That is what I have done. I’ve made enemies, but I’ve made many millions.”
His voice is slightly raised. “And as soon as I was able—before the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta took revenge—I got out of the import stuff and put everything into a few computers.” He points at his laptops and his expression is dismissive, even contemptuous. “Now it is easy. It is like I have built a virtually perfect machine. I merely have to tweak it, to oil the humming engine, and every day the machine churns out money.”
The silence in the room is profound. The integers glimmer in scarlet and black on the laptops.
“I’m still not taking the car, Marc. Give it to the poor?”
He laughs unexpectedly.
“Maybe one day you will take it.”
“Maybe, but probably not. I want you. Not your money.”
He advances toward me, puts a hand around my waist and kisses my neck. The trills of pleasure cascade down me like the numbers on his market screen, flashing red and pink. Oh, Marc, kiss me again.
But he pulls back and says, “Fair enough. But we really do have to buy you some clothes. Enough Zara. This time you are not allowed to refuse.”
I try to stop myself from blushing. I didn’t even realize he’d noticed what dresses I wore.
Yet my yearning for new clothes is sincere and urgent. A smart car I can do without, but if Marc wants me to go to upscale places—like Capri—then I need clothes, I do; I really need them. And that means Marc will have to provide them. Because I simply can’t afford to trawl the designer stores.
And provide these clothes is just what he does next.
For the following six hours he takes me on a tour of the most scented, gorgeous, glittering, minimalist retail spaces in Campania, the shops with the huge windows and the tiny stacks of exquisite silk and cashmere, the shops with the acres of unused space and the assistants who look like bored supermodels, the shops that I barely dare to step inside, the shops where you wincingly check a sticker to just look at the price and you think the decimal point is in the wrong place.
And the words! Oh these words: they flow around me like honey on this honeyed afternoon: Prada, Blahnik, Ferragamo, Burberry, Armani, Chanel, Galliano, Versace, Dior, YSL, McQueen, Balenciaga, Dolce e Gabbana. Words and words and words.
Gossamer ruffled 100 percent mulberry silk, delicate bias-cut mink on suede, hand-beaded new season mini-jackets, endless dresses of violet and cerise and cream and Neapolitan midnight blue, skirts and pants and miniskirts and entire armloads of diaphanous silk lingerie, high-necked velvet peplum, Sicilian orange print frocks, Lolita pink Mary Jane pumps, Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo.
There are boxes in the back and bags in the front; at one point, Marc switches credit cards and orders a second car; there are so many new clothes and shoes to transport it is embarrassing. And now the snooty girls in the lofty shops are looking at me with envious admiration, like I am the Queen-of-England-to-be; and I am horribly, hatefully, blissfully happy.
“I want you to look like you,” Marc says. “But also like you should be. The way you deserve to look.”
And then he takes my hand and he kisses my fingers, as we walk out of the final store and jump into his Mercedes. I put on my new four-hundred-dollar sunglasses and I feel essentially like a younger, happier Jackie Kennedy, as we drive in the sunshine to my apartment.
We both know what is going to happen just as soon as the car is parked. The electricity between us is like an oncoming storm, Marc has seen me in and out of clothes all day, he has seen me nude in dressing rooms, topless in front of mirrors, he has admired my ass and my breasts and the way I bend over in lingerie by La Perla, and he has lusted, he has lusted—but he has kept his hands off me. Just.
I know he can’t keep his hands off me anymore.
We open the door to my apartment and he tears into me. He flings his jacket away and grabs me, embracing me, jailing me in his arms. Our mouths meet—no, they collide. We kiss as if we haven’t kissed since the eighteenth century. His tongue fights mine; I bite his lip, quite hard. He kisses me more: his tongue inside my mouth. But I want all of him inside me.
I have brought up some of the clothes, so there are bags and dresses and tissue paper everywhere—but it doesn’t matter. Marc is lifting up my dress, revealing me. He has ripped away my bra, and now he squeezes my nipples, hard, then soft, then softer, until I want him to do it harder.
“Harder.”
He sucks on my nipple, my left nipple, as his hand goes down to my panties and tucks inside. He finds my cunt and my waiting clitoris and he strokes it deftly with his fingers, three times, no four times, five times, brilliant times, oh so cleverly, softly and soothingly, teasingly and arousingly. And the buzzing in my head is delirious. I am yearning for him. I need him. I need to see his muscles and his body, need to see him barefoot. And so I rip off his shirt until the buttons fly across the room, until he laughs, and I laugh.
And yet this is serious. As always. The sex between Marc and me is playful—and yet deadly serious, too, like something nearer to religion, sometimes. The adoration, and the reverence; with this body, I thee worship.
Leaning close, I lick his hard and sculpted body, the superb and suntanned ripples of his rib cage, tasting the clean, hard scent of his skin. Then I sink to my knees and unzip his pants. His erection is firm and thick and long. I put it in my mouth and I suck.
I suck. I suck on his lovely thickness, and I cup him there, cupping and sucking, wanting him to come, yet not wanting him to come. The floorboards are hard on my knees but I like the pain, mixed with pleasure. I feel penitent and good, kneeling naked on the floor like a novice: sucking him, and looking up at him, as his warm hands flow through my hair, stroking, then grasping, then almost tugging as I suck him too well, too sharply. Lifting my head, he says, whispering and soft, “No, X—I don’t want to come yet.”
Hoisting me to my feet, he kisses me full on the mouth. I reach my hands around his waist and return the kisses. Then we fall sideways onto the bed and he half pushes me away, then thrusts my naked legs apart. I am wet, I am very wet. And I watch. And I wait.
He is stripping naked now, and the sight is again majestic, heroic. I’m not even sure he knows it, but he really does look like a warrior, a gracious Zulu brave, the young Achilles. He is also the essence of a man aroused. Abruptly, he climbs on top of me and his hand clamps over my mouth as I say his name, as he enters me again, and again. And again.
Marcus Roscarrick is fucking me. He is fucking me like a king. Like a lord. My lord came home from the wars today, and pleasured me twice in his top boots.
Our bodies sway together, violently, passionately, like this is a street fight tinged with love. He thrusts, softly, then harder, then softly, then very hard. And now he gasps, quietly. And I know he is probably close to coming. I can tell by the rigid glee of his body, but I am way too selfish for this. I want to come first. So I grab his lean, dark hips, and I push him deeper inside me, deeper and harder between my naked and trembling thighs, my bare skin tingling.
&n
bsp; I can feel his size inside me, filling me up. His fingers are in my mouth so I suck them, tasting salt, and him, and us. He is thrusting harder, repeatedly. And he has a fierce thumb near my throat as his chest presses down on my breasts and I am half choked.
Now he pulls out, then thrusts his cock, and waits. For an agonizing second. Then he rubs his cock on my clitoris and enters me again. This is good, this is very good. He does it again, with his erection and my clitoris. The blood jumps in my heart. I am sheened with delicious sweat; I am closing my eyes as the pleasure spirals around to that place where he fucks me.
“Carissima, carissima—”
I cannot speak. I don’t need to speak. I am biting his shoulders. Biting with desire. And again he pulls his cock from my cunt and then he thrusts it back in, and each time he does this, he rubs my trembling and pulsing clit, and then he stoops and fills my mouth with his tongue and wraps me very tight in his arms, caging my slender shoulders, and this time he thrusts so deep, almost too deep, oh so deep; and then he does it once more, three sweet and glorious thrusts, and I am gasping as he embraces me. I am almost breathless, almost crushed, almost fainting, almost laughing, and at last I shout out in a kind of agonized orgasm, an orgasm so vivid and ardent and imperious it is virtually painful.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MARC ROSCARRICK HAS his own boat. Of course he does. It is a deep, dark Italian blue, and it waits glamorously at anchor in the harbor of Pozzuoli, about five miles north of Naples.
Pozzuoli is very beautiful. Many of the Neapolitan rich live here, in the jumbled white houses that crowd around the domed and ocher-tiled church on the rocky promontory. Tonight is especially sweet and pretty: the moon is an archer’s bow of silver in the sky, a million stars are hanging from heaven’s black, an invisible Christmas tree, and families of well-dressed people parade the waterfront, eating gelati and laughing and gossiping and greeting their friends.
Marc smiles, offers a hand, and I climb, a little unsteadily, onto his motorboat.
“Ready, X?”
“Ready. I guess.”
I sit in the back and Marc takes the wheel. Standing on the pier, Giuseppe unleashes the ropes and pushes us away from the jetty. The engine coughs and chirrs, and Marc deftly steers, guiding us between the launches and skiffs, the liners and the fishing smacks—and then at last Pozzuoli bids us good-bye and we are out on the open Mediterranean, which, this evening, is as dark and still as an Aztec obsidian mirror.
Calm beneath the silent storm of those glorious stars.
The sweet sea air is a balm. I sit back in my new Armani dress—my velvet color-blocked rosette Armani cocktail dress, to be precise—and admire my Jimmy Choo heels, before taking in the view. The sea, the moon, the stars, and Marc Roscarrick. And me.
“It is so still!” Marc says. “So incredibly still. The perfect night for the Mysteries.” He slows the boat until it is stationary, bobbing on the blue dark swell beneath the myriad glitter of stars. He murmurs again, “The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair, Upon the straits . . .”
I recognize the poem. I smile and say nothing. The silent wind is warm and sweet. We are afloat in the Bay of Naples. Just him and me. Just two people, a man and a woman. Two instruments in a perfect duet. The Bach adagio for double violins.
Marc starts the boat again. I regard him with some reverence. He looks so good tonight: he is wearing a divine tuxedo, studiously tailored, splendidly correct, black and white and tall and lean; he looks like a Hollywood matinee idol from a 1940s Oscar ceremony, a sober and handsome and monochrome foil to the woman he escorts.
I wonder, for a second, who designed the first tuxedo, the first dinner jacket? Did someone really think—think hard—and come up with that brilliant combination of black and white? Or maybe it just evolved over time into its present perfection: a Darwinian selection. Because a man seldom looks fitter than he does in a black-and-white tux. And Marc in a tuxedo is particularly male, absolutely virile, molto bello e scapolo.
Who were those women pictured with him in il West End di Londra?
He stares at me, I stare at him.
I say, “I feel like a nun taking the veil. Is that what I am doing, Marc?”
He smiles sadly. But he says nothing, just steers the boat onward, through the whispering waters. The Mysteries abide. The minutes pass. I am fretful and joyful. Seagulls swoop down out of the night sky, like ghosts in the dark, happy-sad phantoms, then gone, flying into darkness. I want to get there now; I want the Mysteries to start.
“How long to Capri?”
Without turning, he says, “Approximately half an hour. I could go a lot faster but you might get a little wet and ruin that dress.”
“What’s going to happen, Marc?”
“Piccolina. Why should I tell you now, if I’ve never told you before? The Mysteries are meant to be mysterious.”
I sigh, and then I shake my head. Quite firmly. “But I need to know things, if I am going to continue.”
“Okay . . . what?”
He is steering the boat and talking over his shoulder. I press on.
“You said that once a man is fully initiated, then he cannot have a relationship with a woman who is not completely initiated.”
“Yes.”
“Why only men? Doesn’t it apply to women?”
He turns. His face is somber.
“The code of honor is stricter for men.”
“Why?”
“It just is. It always has been.”
I gaze back at him.
“And what if I want to stop, Marc? What if I decide I have had enough, after the Second Mystery or the Third?”
“Then you stop. Many people do exactly that. They never go on to the Fifth.” He smiles at me. A little regretfully. “But if you stop, that affects us. As you know, I am allowed to be with you for this summer, as you go through initiation—but if you stop before the Fifth . . .”
“We can’t see each other again.”
“Yes.”
The moment darkens. Marc has his back to me again as he guides the boat under the stars, toward Capri. But I have more questions.
“So why is this Second Mystery so important?”
“This is when you will take your vows. And officially be inducted, for the summer.”
“ ‘Officially’? Who makes these rules, Marc? Who runs it all?”
“That is, I am afraid—”
“A mystery. Yes, yes.” I smile quietly, but my anxieties remain.
I think about what is to come, and I get a tiny shiver of foreboding. Until now I have been fairly sanguine about the Second Mystery; now I suddenly feel the first tingle of serious fear, or at least unpleasant apprehension. But then I remember how much, despite myself, I wholly enjoyed the spanking. Perhaps it will be thrilling? Something beyond thrilling, something boundary-breaking like the First Mystery? Something important and profound? I hope so, and yet I am also scared it will be too profound. And it will change me.
And I don’t want anything to change.
The truth is, I want everything to stay as it is: right here, right now, on a fine night in mid-June, maybe six weeks after I first saw him, with me and Marc alone on a boat beneath the shining stars of the Bay of Naples.
Here. Stop it here. Freeze frame. Cut.
“Nearly there . . .” says Marc, stretching his arm and pointing at the silhouetted island, at Capri all jagged and sprinkled with houselights.
As we near the port of the island I belatedly realize we are not alone. The closer approaches to Capri are busy with craft; I can see other boats now, small and pricey cruisers, bigger yachts, sleek and costly motorboats like ours. All closing in, all heading for Capri. It is like some wartime evacuation in reverse.
“Your fellow Dionysians,” Marc says, as
he drops a gear and slows the boat. “Gathering for the Second Mystery.”
A minute or two later our boat is moored and lashed, and we are on the jetty, being met by young men wearing dark, dark suits and earphones, and sunglasses—at nine P.M. Tourists sit at the harborside seafood restaurants and gawp in amazement at all the Mystery-goers in their finery, disembarking from their skiffs and yachts: at the men in their sharp tuxedos and the women in their fine dresses with high heels and starry jewelry. They ascend into horse-drawn traps, which are ranked and waiting.
I gaze at my fellow Dionysians, or maybe my fellow novices. There are men and women of all ages, from twenty to seventy. It is impossible to tell who is already initiated and who is undergoing initiation. I can hear snatches of several languages—lots of English, some French and Spanish, Russian, too. Chinese as well. Everyone looks rich, very, very, very rich.
And for the first time in my life I feel rich, walking past these openmouthed tourists, climbing into the little horse-drawn carriage alongside Lord Roscarrick. I actually feel a base and vulgar thrill of ostentation, of absurd superiority: yes, look at me, and just look at my man.
I despise myself for this, even as I think it, but I just can’t help enjoying the catwalk moment.
“They must think we are going to some ball,” I say, nodding at the tourists in their T-shirts. Marc nods but doesn’t answer, making me feel rather stupid.
As the horse trots on, encouraged by the delicate whips of our carriage driver, I try not to think what kind of party I am about to experience. My only choice is to live for the moment. What will happen will happen. As the horse pulls our carriage up a steep, rocky hill, I gaze across the bay at glimmering Naples: so beautiful and innocent from this distance. The feeling is mesmeric; I can hear horses behind me, horses in front, dozens of carriages transporting everyone to the site of the Second Mystery.
The carriage halts and Marc assists me down, lifting me like a child to the ground, and now I realize precisely where we are. My ancient history might be shaky, but I have done enough research to know that we are standing at the northeastern tip of Capri, where the emperor Tiberius lived in AD 30, and where he conducted his notorious debauches. The emperor was wont to lie naked in his swimming pool, where small boys were trained to dive underwater and lick and nibble at his groin. The emperor adored this aquatic pleasure; he called the boys his “minnows.”