It Stings So Sweet

by Stephanie Draven

  “We’re not like that,” I say, wishing there were words for it. “If I’d asked you to stop last night, would you have?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then it’s play. It’s a game.”

  “Games have rules,” Jonathan says.

  “Then we’ll make some.”

  He hesitates, as if tempted. “People don’t … do this, Nora.”

  “How do you know? Maybe they do. Just not, perhaps, in the middle of a party. And maybe they don’t. Maybe no one in the world plays these games. Maybe that’s why we were drawn together out of anybody else in the whole world. We’re perfect for each other.”

  “We can’t just do anything that feels right to us.”

  “Why not?” I stare at him, hard, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. “Why not, Jonathan?”

  The more we argue, the more sure of myself I become. The certainty spreads through me, limb by limb, transcendent. I know myself as I’ve never known myself before. And I can say all the things that have been caged inside my head. “Our whole marriage, I’ve done nothing but try to hold on to you, Jonathan. I’ve done so very many things I’m not proud of, not the least of which was withholding from you the truth of my own feelings. I love you.”

  His expression lightens and I see that he believes me. He reaches for my face and I let him kiss me. It feels so right that I cannot bear to deny it anymore. My palms skid down his bare chest, stopping to lace my fingers through his. And then I say the most difficult thing I’ve ever said in my life. “These hands have never hurt me. But you hurt me. You’ve hurt my heart and you’ve hurt … something deeper. Something uniquely me. And if you’re going to keep doing it, keep denying what we both want, then I want you to leave. Right now. This afternoon.”

  He draws back, obviously shaken, trying to gather his composure. Silhouetted against the fireplace with its carved rosettes, he rubs his face in thought. He’s withdrawing into himself, which only makes me feel more raw and exposed. Desperate now, I go to my knees in the pile of clothes that I’ve knocked to the floor, digging into the back of the suitcase. I don’t stop until the touch of a metal buckle bites at my fingertips and I pull out a brown leather belt.

  Stumbling over the suitcase, I get back to my feet and hold it out to him. “Use it on me.”

  He recoils. “For Christ’s sake, Nora!”

  I plead with him. “Hit me with it. Just like you did that night. I’ll make you see that you didn’t hurt our baby.”

  A wordless shake of his head.

  “What’s the matter, Jonathan? Can’t you do it unless I provoke you? Do I need to kiss someone else? Do I need to go to bed with another man this time? What is it that you need me to do to make it alright?”

  He swallows as if there is something caught in his throat that keeps him from speaking.

  “I’m strong, Jonathan,” I say, hoarsely, finding my own courage. “And you can’t break me. I thought you could. I thought you did. But you can’t.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he says, dropping his gaze. “But what you don’t seem to realize, Nora, is that you can break me.”

  His words reverberate through me. The lump that rises in my throat threatens to strangle me. It hurts, a painful throb at my center. Tears roll down my cheeks. So here it is, then. All this time, he thought he needed to protect me from his own worst instincts. Now he realizes that he needs to be protected from me.

  I am the monster.

  “Then it’s up to you, isn’t it?” I ask quietly. “My father used to say I was a spoiled and willful child. I was. Because I always knew that I didn’t belong to my father. I knew I didn’t belong to Robert Aster. I don’t belong to you, either—not unless I want to. I’m mine to give, Jonathan. And no one can decide, but you, whether or not to give yourself to me in return.”

  I twist the gold wedding band from my finger. It’s a perilous journey to the carved marble mantelpiece, where I gently set the ring down. I’m too near to him, overwhelmed by his scent and his warmth. He hasn’t changed posture. Hasn’t moved a muscle. Rigid in tormented thought.

  “But you’re going to choose me, Jonathan. You’re going to choose us. I have faith in you.”

  When I lean close to kiss him, he flinches.

  “I’m going down to breakfast,” I say, my voice as flat and emotionless as I can make it.

  “Of course,” he says, almost absently. “You must be wanting breakfast … why it’s almost afternoon …”

  “Will you join me?” It’s the only fissure I allow in my newfound self-possession.

  “I don’t know.” A mask has descended over that impossibly handsome face and I cannot read him.

  “Shall I have a tray sent up to you, then?”

  His eyes are blank. “Whatever is most convenient.”

  CHAPTER

  Six

  In the dining room, Dolly is stiff-lipped as she pours my tea. It is lukewarm. The biscuits on the sideboard are cold now, but I take three of them and smother them with butter and strawberry preserves. As I pile my plate with food, I notice that since I went upstairs to confront Jonathan, someone has set the table with the best china, as if we were expecting guests.

  Then Dolly reminds me. “Your father, ma’am. He’s expected this afternoon, remember?”

  Most of me dreads the idea of seeing him. Especially now. But some tiny, infuriated part of me eagerly readies for a fight. I’ve faced almost all my demons today—what is one more? That my father should have lied to Jonathan and made him suffer for so long … I can’t begin to guess how my father might have known the exact words to crush my husband’s spirit, but I want to make him sorry.

  I’m hungry. Hungrier than I think I’ve ever been. And while this morning, the pear tasted quite nearly like ash, now it bursts in my mouth, juicy and fresh. My taste buds are as oversensitive as the rest of me. The flake of the biscuit against my tongue melts swiftly in a pool of butter and I want more.

  More of everything.

  It’s only after I open the soft-boiled egg in its cup, scooping out the tender insides and washing them down with tea, that I begin to feel better. Jonathan won’t leave. He can’t leave. Not after everything we’ve said to each other today. If he’s the man I’ve come to love, he’ll find the strength within him to stay. To make something with me that’s new … and unbreakable.

  The pendulum sways in the grandfather clock on the far wall. I eat slower, my bites getting tinier until finally, I hear Jonathan’s footsteps on the stairs. The servants wisely scatter; Dolly disappears behind the pocket door that separates the dining room from the kitchen, and draws it shut.

  Please, God, let him choose to be himself, I pray. Let him choose me.

  So sure am I that my wish will be granted that I look up at him with a beatific smile. I want him to see me like this, sitting at his table, confident and happy. Open, body and soul, to every kind of pleasure.

  But then I see the brown leather suitcase in his hand.

  He might have had a servant carry it down for him, but the square luggage looks to weigh nothing from the way the handle settles in his calloused palm. He’s dressed now. Cuffed trousers, shirt and tie. Slim-fitting jacket, cut high at the waist. A gray fedora hat, perched upon his head at an angle that shadows his eyes.

  I set down the butter knife at the edge of my plate, letting my hands fall to my lap, where I clasp them so hard that the nails dig into my palms.

  “Is there anything else you want to say to me?” Jonathan asks.

  Lifting my chin, I fight back the tears, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Then stand up,” he says, setting the suitcase down by his ankle.

  What can he want from me? A hug good-bye? A tender kiss? I won’t begrudge him. Even if he isn’t the man that I hoped he was, I loved him. I love him still. Folding my napkin on the table, I rise to my feet.

  I wait for him to come closer, but he doesn’t.

  Instead, he removes his hat, crushing it with his
fist. “Turn around and put your hands on the table, Nora.”

  I understand each of the words but can’t decipher what they mean all run together. I stand there, stupefied, until he grabs hold of one of my wrists and spins me towards the table. His grip is like iron, merciless in its intention. He dips his head, his hot breath sweeping down the back of my neck. “Put your hands on the table, palms down.”

  Before I can think to do anything else, my fingers splay on the table, next to the silver salt and pepper shakers. Warm dappled sunlight filters through the window, making the hair on my arms look golden. He runs a warm palm down my shoulders, resting it on the small of my back. A broad arm reaches over me to deposit my wedding ring on the table in front of me, where it winks in mockery.

  My mind swirls with confusion, and I start to stand up, but he holds one hand pinned to the table. “Nora, do you have any idea how sexy you are, bent over for me?”

  I remain bent like that, paralyzed, letting him touch me. Letting him toy with the garter suspenders that hold up my stockings. Then I hear the jingling of his belt as he moves behind me. “I don’t understand, Jonathan. What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking off my belt,” he says, very calmly. “And I’m going to hit you with it.”

  A tremor goes through me, leaving my knees soft and spongy. A thousand questions fly through my mind but the only one I ask is, “Here?”

  “Right here,” he says. “Unless you’re not as brave as you claim to be.”

  He won’t find me lacking in resolve, if it’s a demonstration that he needs. Though my arms shake, I don’t move, not even when I hear the sound of the leather slipping through the loops of his trousers. He’ll fold it, I think, imagining the leather looped over his fist. He must, because his arm swings in only a tight arc, the crack of the belt on the backs of my legs more weighty than sharp. The next blow forces me to hiss with the impact, and everything on the table jiggles. Glasses and plates tinkle together, but it doesn’t stop him. He hits me with the belt again, and I glance over my shoulder at him in … what? Disbelief? Anger? Pain? Arousal? Admiration? Adoration?

  All of those things and more.

  “I’m not nearly done,” he says. “Unless you tell me to stop. Are you going to tell me to stop?”

  “No.”

  “Then this time tomorrow you won’t be able to sit down. Do you know why?”

  Truly, this time, I don’t. And I’m hypnotized by his lips, utterly captivated by whatever he might say next.

  “Because it excites me,” he says, pressing the length of his erection against my sore ass cheek. My muscles go limp with desire. He must know it, because he loops his arm around my waist to steady me against the table. “I’m not hitting you because you kissed another man. Not because you’ve done anything to anger me. I’m doing it because I want to … and because you want it, too.”

  His voice is throaty, strained with emotion, as if he needs to hear it as much as he needs to say it to me. And by god, as much as the pain bites through my skin with each blow, I don’t want him to stop. Another blow jolts me forward into the table so hard that breakfast cream sloshes out of the decanter, spilling into the saucer beneath.

  Jonathan bends over me, covering his body with mine, and I take several desperate breaths as he smoothly unzips my gown in the back, easing it over my shoulders. “Step out of it,” he says, and I let the fabric skim down my arms and over my belly. There’s something outrageously erotic about the way it slips down over my legs to puddle around my ankles on the floor. Standing in nothing but my corset and girdle, I feel exposed. It’s our dining room—not a dance floor, not a desk in someone else’s parlor, not the back of a car. And yet, I bring my hands up over my breasts, suddenly shy.

  “Do you want to go upstairs?” Jonathan asks.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “We’re not going to,” he says, staring at me, his eyes burning over the curves of my body as if he’s never seen them before. “You are a choice dish, Nora. You’re built like you were born for a burlesque house. But there’s one thing I don’t enjoy about burlesque. I don’t like being taunted with fans and peeks of flesh. I don’t want to be teased. Are you going to tease me?”

  I shake my head, lowering my hands, leaving myself open to his hot gaze.

  He rewards me with a kiss on my shoulder, then says. “Hands back on the table.”

  He waits until my palms are flat on the table to strike me again, and this time, the sugar bowl crashes to the floor. I start to protest, but whatever I’m going to say is cut off by a shriek when the belt lashes me.

  “Too much already? I haven’t even hit your bare ass.”

  He yanks at my undergarments, and the cool air is almost a respite against the burning stripes of heat he’s laid on me. Then he cracks the belt across my bottom again, so hard that he grunts with the effort. His arm swings down again, and the blow makes me keel forward. A plate crashes to the ground. “Jonathan!”

  “Had enough?” he asks, nuzzling the back of my neck.

  Though tears blind me and shrieks of pain have become tiny sobs, I shake my head.

  “These are going to leave welts,” Jonathan says, the flat of his palm pressing down warmly between my shoulder blades until I have no choice but to bend forward, my cheek on the tablecloth. “I’ve marked you.”

  I wilt against the table, grateful beyond measure. Too overcome to choose words that might express how wonderful I feel. I let my body do the talking, rubbing back against him like a cat.

  “I’m going to put down the belt,” he says. “But I’m not done hitting you.”

  He sets the belt where I can see it, coiled on the table next to my cheek. Then he presses tight up against those stripes of pain and I feel his erection throbbing against the cleft of my ass. I yelp at the drag of rough trouser fabric against my bare, sensitive skin, wanting more.

  “You’re mine,” he says, fingers pushing between my legs where I’m softest and most vulnerable. One dexterous finger swims through the damp curls of my sex and thrusts up inside me, forcing me to cry out. I’m sore from last night, swollen and tight. Still, not too tight for him to push inside.

  “Do you feel that, Nora? How wet you are? I love that you get wet so easily. The way you arch your back for me, like you’re in heat. I think I could just look at you from across a room and you’d be clenching your thighs and squirming in your chair and ready for me. Are you ever not ready to be fucked by me?”

  “No,” I groan, because everything he says is true, and on the rare occasion he’s caught me by surprise, I’m wet enough by the time he’s inside me.

  “That’s proof that you belong to me.”

  “Jonathan … I … I don’t understand. The suitcase …”

  “I’m leaving, Nora. But I’m taking you with me.”

  “I—I … but I thought …”

  “We’re going to a summer house once we get a few things straight between us.” I want to turn to look at his face. To know that he means it. But the rude thrusts of his finger inside me keep me pinned to the table. Then the pleasure and joy are so intense that I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on his voice.

  “The first thing we’re going to get straight is that I love you,” he says. “And I’ll tan your hide every day of the week if that’s what it takes for you to believe me. And I need to know that you love me, too.”

  “Oh god, I do love you, Jonathan,” I say, frantic to twist from his grasp so that I can kiss his mouth.

  But he won’t let me up. “Hands back on the table.” He waits for me to obey, then says, “The second thing we’re going to get straight is that you’re not going to kiss other men.”

  “No, I won’t, of course I won’t.”

  “You’re not going to kiss anyone, fuck anyone, dance with anyone, or even shimmy for them, Nora …”

  At this moment, Jonathan fills all my senses. I cannot even fathom a world with other men in it. “I won’t!”

  “Unless I tel
l you to.” It’s those last words that force me to glance over my shoulder at him, this time, gape-mouthed. And when I catch sight of his devastatingly handsome face, his eyes are lit with blue mischief and a tiny smile creeps into the corners of his mouth. He looks utterly devilish. “Do you understand?”

  I should be saying no, but his finger is banging into me, making me moan my consent.

  “I need you to say it, Nora. Do you understand? Unless I tell you to.”

  “Yes,” I whisper, through lips parted in ecstasy. “I won’t do any of those things … unless you tell me to.”

  “And when you put that wedding ring back on, you’re never going to take it off again.”

  “Yes, yes, Jonathan, yes,” I cry, reaching for the golden wedding band.

  He stops me. “Not yet. Because you need to know what you’re getting into. Do you remember how I made you touch yourself last night?” I nod in wordless surrender, my whole world seeming to narrow to his hand between my legs and his voice on my ear. “You’re going to do it again, Nora. You’re going to do it for me. You’re going to do it in front of a mirror. You’re going to do it anytime I want you to do it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re also going to spend more time on your knees, because I loved your mouth on my cock.”

  “Yes.” Now that I’ve started saying it, I can’t stop. “Yes, yes …”

  A second finger pushes inside, and as it sinks into my body, I sigh.

  “Christ,” Jonathan says, his breath catching. “Do that again?”

  “Do what?”

  “Sigh like you do when I’m touching you. Like you’re going to swoon away if I stop.”

  There is no difficulty, no hesitation, no artifice when I sigh again, and I’m rewarded with a third finger slipping inside me, spreading me to the point of aching. Then, all at once, he pulls those fingers out, one of them drifting between my upturned ass cheeks. The sticky feel of his finger at the puckered entrance makes me stiffen and thrash, which only makes him laugh. “Oho, have we found the one place my wife is still a virgin?”