by Olivia Myers
“Stephen,” she whispered.
“Don’t you say a word,” his sharp voice commanded. Jane’s mouth closed instantly. His voice was sinister, cruel. “Don’t look at me. Shut your eyes.”
Obediently, she obeyed.
“Touch yourself.”
Lifted by some power beyond her own will, Jane’s thin, delicate arm was raised from its side and placed on her breast. She began to rub. Her skin was cool from having been long exposed to the bare air, and she wanted to warm the area, to restore some life.
“Harder,” Stephen’s voice bit into the silence.
Jane rubbed harder. She covered the satin cup of her bra with her hand and squeezed and rubbed the breast. She felt her nipple through her bra, erect from the cold.
“Rub with both hands.”
The second hand rose from Jane’s side and fell on the other breast, where it commenced rubbing and squeezing and pinching. Her flesh was tender but it only made her rub harder, and harder yet, until the skin was scorching, hot. Yet she continued to rub. Her mouth opened to let out a cry of pain.
“None of that,” Stephen’s voice warned. Jane’s eyes were closed but she could feel his presence, closer than before.
“I am going to take off your panties,” he said steadily. “You are to continue touching yourself. If you stop, you will be punished. Do you understand?”
Jane nodded and let out a slight whimper. She felt his muscular, cold hands on her thighs, felt them as they slipped the lace panties off like a ring from a finger. She was exposed. The chill of the room on her vagina made her tremble. Instinctively her knees began to close.
A sharp, stinging slap on her cheek made Jane whimper. “None of that,” Stephen commanded, level but stern. “Open your knees, or you will be punished.”
Obediently, Jane’s knees opened. She whimpered, softer than the first time, when she felt the cool air on her. Then, her right hand was lifted delicately from her breast. It went limp. “Spread your fingers.”
She moaned as Stephen placed the fingers in his mouth, forcing them down his throat until they were generously wet.
“You are to touch yourself,” he whispered. “Is that clear?”
Jane nodded silently. Her hand, moist and warm from Stephen’s mouth, crept down to her vagina and touched the delicate, wet folds. They were like a woman’s lips, soft and plush, and they parted easily as Jane inserted a finger into herself. Her whole body seemed to lighten as she pressed her finger deeper inside her vagina. A whisper of a moan escaped her lips.
“Stephen,” she said, voice trembling. “Stephen, please.”
“Do not speak,” he said. “Keep your mouth closed.”
“Please, please, Stephen.” She inserted her finger as far inside her vagina as it would go, until it was rubbing inside her, sending through her a spasm of pleasure. “I can’t go any further.”
She felt her hand lifted away from her vagina, only to be replaced by Stephen’s fully erect penis. It was a geyser inside her, a moving stream of warmth and power. She felt herself filled and lifted. She bit her tongue until there was blood, trying to keep from crying out as Stephen worked himself deeper and deeper inside her. Then he slid out, letting the tip of his penis nuzzle against the wet, hot folds of her vagina, and he buried her mouth in his kiss, working his greedy, harsh tongue down into her throat. Jane welcomed the kiss like butter melting in her mouth. She opened her mouth and cried out loud and wrapped her legs around Stephen’s thighs as he pumped himself into her, working his manhood deeper and deeper inside her, filling her with a warm, incredible lightness of being.
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
For the first time in too many years to count, Jane woke up in the morning feeling happy. Not just happy. Fresh, renewed, full of energy. It couldn’t have been later than six in the morning—the sun was nothing more than a pale, delicate gleam outside—but Jane did not want to miss a moment of its beauty.
A nightingale sounded its plaintive song from the willow outside Jane’s window. Jane closed her eyes, letting herself bask. No, it had been years since she’d experienced anything like this.
Stephen was fast asleep next to her, gently snoring. It was a beautiful sight, Jane thought. Everything was beautiful, and she didn’t want to disturb any of it. She felt as though she were living in the world of John Keats, the deathless world of poetry, where all of life is just one extended heartbeat, and there is no measurement; there is only feeling.
These thoughts in mind, she lifted herself out of bed and tidied her hair. She put on the skirt and the tights she’d worn the night before—why not look her best?—and clipped on her black bra. It’d be nice to take a walk, she thought. Or get some coffee from the diner. It was less than a block away, and she didn’t want to drink the watery coffee that she usually made in the mornings.
Stephen’s wallet sat on the bedside table. It was a thick, leather bag of a wallet—big enough for storing incriminating evidence. Well, she thought, if she was hosting the award-winning literary doctor, the least he could do was buy them both coffee.
Jane unbuckled the sizeable wallet and flipped through the currency. Mostly Euros and Swiss Francs, but she managed to extract a few dollars. She absentmindedly flipped through the sheaths of business cards and contact numbers. The people a man like this would know! She couldn’t even begin to imagine—the most famous doctors, the most famous writers, who wouldn’t he know?
Suddenly, her mouth went dry. She nearly dropped the wallet. She held a picture pinched between her fingers, of a beautiful girl with hair not unlike Jane’s, with a wide, warm smile and a keen, intelligent face. A lot like Jane. Or, as a matter of fact, nearly identical to Jane, except for the first name, signed in cursive on the bottom of the photograph: “With love, Christine.”
Jane zipped the wallet closed, and set it gently back on the table. She turned and looked at the man sleeping gently in the large bed. Could this man, her former lover—her current lover—really be her daughter’s fiancée?
“Stephen,” said Jane firmly. The man stirred. “Stephen,” she said again as he awoke, “Stephen, I need to ask you something important.”
The older man sat up in bed and blinked at her with his large, beautiful eyes.
“Miss Jane Eyre,” he said sleepily, “you are a miracle for tired eyes.”
“Stephen,” she approached him. “Stephen, my dear. Would you like me to get us some coffee?”
THE END
Bound to be Desired
The afternoon sunlight blazed through the huge windows looking out on the Parisian skyline. As she moved about someone else’s apartment, Christine O’Darragh thought the view was like something in a snow globe. No one could deny how beautiful it was. And the loft houses around it had to be centuries old, older than the revolution. The plaster was so chipped that it bore the red brick of the building underneath like an indecent burn mark on an otherwise perfectly sculpted body.
Most people found the area around Rue de la Sainte-Ursule pretty. Christine thought about her mother, a poetry professor back in America. Without a doubt her mother would see the ugly loft houses as romantic. She would probably look at them and imagine the starving writers who lived inside and tapped away on their old typewriters, hoping against hope for the fabulous luck that would lift them out of their poverty. It was romantic, thought Christine. Romantic for everyone else but her.
To Christine it was indeed a snow globe world. It was fake, warped, and cheap, and useless when it came right down to it. She thought about the loft houses, their romantic image. Christine knew the truth. No starving artists lived there, no writers. This was one of the most fashionable districts in all of Paris, and one of the most expensive. The chipped paint was decoration. The only people who lived there were the fabulously, monstrously wealthy. They were the people who had twenty houses around the world, but couldn’t call any one of them a home.
Christine knew all about these kinds of people. They were her clients. And, besides th
at, Stephen Thomas, her fiancé or, rather, ex-fiancé, had been one of them.
Christine was a studio designer, and if her credentials and her clients were to be believed, she was one of the youngest and most successful in Paris. La Nouvelle Monde—the company Christine worked for—worshipped her as a protégé of French interior fashion. She was paid a fortune, given a fabulous apartment within walking distance of where she worked, and had been guaranteed a partnership within the next three years.
Christine passed across the hardwood floors of the spacious living room and into a quiet corner of the apartment, bathed in sunlight. There was a visible skyline but it was not the postcard, snow-globe stuff that she detested. This view was more like it—the alleys of Paris, the forgotten segments. Ugly and congested, but authentic.
Alexander trailed behind Christine, his hands crossed politely behind his back. He had been Christine’s client for a little over a month now, and during that time he’d watched over her like a hawk as she renovated his spacious apartment. Christine hadn’t the slightest idea what he did for a living, nor did she particularly care. With his stellar body and his inhumanly good looks, he could have been anything in the world.
I might be renovating the apartment of a famous French actor, Christine thought to herself, and I wouldn’t have any idea.
Not too long ago, Christine would have tried to find out more about the man she was working with. She used to love mysteries, loved solving the unknown and learning something new.
Ever since she had learned about her fiancé’s infidelity, Christine had changed. She now detested the word mystery. Solving mysteries had been monopolized by the image of a condom in a back pocket; of stuttered, half-assed excuses; of hands thrown into the air with the words Do as you like. Yes, Christine was done with mysteries, as she was done with romance, as she was done with the postcard perfect world in which she had been living. All that was left for her now was reality, gritty and bitter reality, and because it left nothing hidden in the darkness, she had learned maybe not to love it, but to trust in it.
“The reading room is fine,” Alexander said to her in French.
This room had been one of the points in designing the apartment renovations that had given Christine the most trouble. She wanted the light to come in gently through the spacious windows, but she didn’t want the room to be overwhelmed. She wanted to keep a bit of shadow. She’d solved this problem by putting up drapes and covering the upper half of the windows. This way, the morning sun was blocked and only the evening light could shine through.
But the drapes had also posed a problem. She didn’t want anything frou-frou: that certainly wasn’t Alexander’s style. And only after weeks of searching did she manage to find a drape that she liked. A thick, rough, maroon-colored fabric: dark and textured like spilled blood. It matched Alexander perfectly.
Alexander made Christine edgy, although everything about him was gentlemanly. Each time they met she always noted how dapper he looked, as if he’d been dressed for a photo shoot: plain white dress-shirt with a thin tie slicing his body in two halves, which his impeccable, Italian coat then drew back together. His hair was slightly longer than most men’s, and he wore it parted and generously covered with gel, so that its exterior shone like steel.
What made Christine nervous was his face. It was a perfectly handsome face, clean-shaven, even rather pleasant to look at, but there was something distinctively cruel about it. His lips were too thin and when they grinned they sliced Christine like a paper cut. In those lips she could read his arrogance, an awareness of his own power. It both thrilled and scared Christine to be too close to the man.
“Show me the bedroom,” said Alexander.
With her clipboard pressed tightly to her breasts, Christine led Alexander to an adjoining room. She made a “voila” gesture with her hand as she revealed an enormous, four poster bed. A curtain was bunched up at the top of the bed, waiting to be let down. It was the most ridiculous bed Christine had ever seen. A regal monstrosity, like something from the time of King Louis.
But Alexander had insisted on everything: the size, the four posts and especially the curtain. He did not like being exposed to the dark, he’d said to her. He was afraid of it. Christine had no idea how to take that statement.
This was the first time Alexander had seen his new bed. He screwed up his thin mouth, twisting it this way and that. Christine found it impossible to read the expression. Alexander kept his real emotions camouflaged so that Christine was constantly thrown into a state of confusion, not knowing if he liked something or detested it.
“It looks fine,” he said at last. Christine felt a great weight fall off her. “It looks fine,” Alexander repeated, his voice low, mocking, and icy, “but I am not going to be looking at my bed, am I?”
Christine didn’t know if he had really asked the question, or if he was simply talking to fill the cavernous room. She was rooted in place, afraid to speak, yet afraid of the idea that he might be waiting on her to break the silence.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to decide. Alexander’s voice cut through the silence again, as penetrating as an ice pick. “Close the door, please.”
His please made Christine shiver but she did as she’d been bidden. In her experience with Alexander, he had always been conspicuously polite. Polite, but direct. Alexander never requested: his default was demand.
“I do not like open spaces,” he said to her, still in French. “You understand?”
“I understand,” Christine answered in French, and felt the words pass from her like a ghost.
“Please,” Alexander said again. “Lie on this bed. Tell me if it is comfortable. Do this now.”
Christine obeyed. She didn’t have a choice. When Alexander spoke to her the way he was speaking now, there was something hypnotic about it. There was a power that made Christine’s body obey the words of this man, and not the words of her own will. Not the warning that flashed in the back of her mind, the warning that she had learned to ignore in the past few weeks.
She set the clipboard down gingerly on the bedside table and lay down on the bed. Her ample breasts rose and fell softly with the quick, heavy breaths she was taking. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself.
“Well?”
“I am comfortable,” Christine whispered. The sounds of drawers opening and closing infiltrated the naked silence. Christine tightened her eyes and winced with each new jarring sound. She knew what was coming. Ever since Stephen had moved out, she lived for this.
“You are not telling me the truth,” came Alexander’s voice. “You are not comfortable, Christine.”
Her name in Alexander’s voice filled Christine with a terrible, painful thrill. It was like a bad word, coming from him.
“You need my help to be comfortable,” he said. “You have too many worries, Christine.”
“I have too many worries,” Christine responded with a whimper. She knew what was expected of her. Alexander had been thorough in her teaching, the first time he had used her. That was what he said: used. For Alexander, there was no such thing as making love. There was only using.
“You need me,” said Alexander. The voice was frighteningly close. The sound stung Christine’s ear like a wasp. “Say it.”
“I need you, Alexander.”
No sooner had the words passed her lips than Christine felt a rough pressure turn her body over and force her legs apart. A man’s hand, a hand as big as Christine’s face, grabbed her ankle and expertly slipped a leather thong around it, then moved on to the second ankle. She knew better than to open her eyes for this part. Alexander never let her watch him work. She’d made the mistake once before. Never would she make it again.
Alexander moved on to her hands and fastened these to the posts above Christine’s head. The knots were tight and Christine whimpered as she felt the harsh rope dig into her flesh.
“You are too delicate.” Alexander’s voice was as close to her now as the vein in her neck. She
felt the weight of the giant man on top of her, his chest pressed against the thin cloth of her white top. His enormous penis pressed against Christine’s thigh. He was completely naked, and she still fully clothed. But she was not allowed to open her eyes. This was forbidden. This was what Alexander demanded.
“How delicate are you, Christine?”
“I am nothing, Master,” Christine whispered, her voice seized with trembling.
“I am going to take off your blouse, Christine. And then I am going to take off your skirt. If you move one muscle—if I see even the twitch of your eyelid—I will stop immediately and you will never see me again.”
“Yes, Master.”
Christine froze the instant Alexander laid his hands on her. He bunched Christine’s thin white top in both hands and lifted it up her body until it was stretched above her head. She was not wearing a bra—Alexander had demanded that she never wear an undergarment in his apartment after their first meeting—and the cool air made her skin prickle. But she dared not move.
Alexander’s hands slid down her body until they were resting on her thighs. They unclipped the thin, leather belt of her skirt with expert speed and tossed the object aside. Then he seized her skirt and tugged it down past her thighs. Functioning on instinct, Christine wiggled the lower half of her body to make removing the garment easier.
“Don’t!” The fury of Alexander’s voice struck Christine like a bullet. A moment later and she felt Alexander’s hand as it collided with the cheek of her buttocks. The blow was as hot as lightning. Christine felt her eyes fill with tears as the fire roared through her, and she bit her lip until she tasted blood.
“You were to remain still,” Alexander said. “You have disobeyed me.”
“Master,” Christine choked. “Please, Master.”
“You will not be punished today.”
“Master,” Christine had to fight to suppress a sob. “Please, Master. Please, I will take anything from you.”
“You will have no punishment today.”