“How would you know if I didn't shower? I could just not tell you.”
“I'd know,” he says.
His cock slides into my cleavage, squeezed by the weight and pressure of my breasts. As he thrusts, my blouse gets untied and Delacroix groans when he sees my swollen nipples. “Did I hurt you?”
“What do you think?”
“I like the way you look with my mark on you. You are like a sweet, ripe fruit, untouched but for a single bite.” His eyes reluctantly go to my face again. “Perhaps it was a bit much—at least for the first time.”
“I'll heal.”
“I think I want to come on your ass,” he says. “Turn over. And lift your skirt. Did I stutter, Miss Abrahams?” he says, when I don't move. “Quickly, now.”
Hot stickiness splatters my backside. When I lower my skirt it plasters against the cum, making the fabric stick. It's disgusting. It's a rush. I've never felt so used.
And even though it's ridiculous, I believe him. He would know. He can read me like a book. Nobody has ever been able to do that with me; they take one look at my cover, then set me down and back away. Delacroix revels in me. Nothing about me scares him, because he's always able to match it. We're two peas in a fucked-up pod.
He takes a half melted ice cube and runs the dripping piece around my breasts. The coldness burns at first, but the throbbing dies down as the skin grows numb. I pant a little when his warm bristled mouth covers the chilled skin, and he slides his cold hand between my legs to pleasure me.
“Don't scream,” he says, “or I'll bite you.”
“Yes, Alexander,” I choke. “What if I don't scream?”
He kisses my other breast, and a second finger slides in to join the first. “You like old-fashioned clothing, don't you? I'll purchase something vintage, something sexy and unique, for you to parade yourself around in.”
Delacroix drops to his knees and bends me backward against the mattress. With his cold hands and colder fingers, he brings me to climax but I don't scream. I bite my knuckle until the skin tears and I can taste my own blood in my mouth, but I don't make a sound. He's aroused, but not erect, and there is no urgency to his movements as he gradually slows.
“What's your size and your favorite color?”
I tell him both, rounding down. I think he knows that I'm lying though, and that he's amused I'd bother.
There is an email from a do-not-respond address from the school informing me that I am in danger of being kicked out if I do not improve my grades. I have a 1.8 GPA and am in poor academic standing. One of my professors—Rojas—has sent me a personal email suggesting that if I am not serious about the class I might consider giving someone on the waitlist a chance, as he has noticed I rarely, if ever, attend lectures.
The more diplomatic Fineman has suggested I avail myself of some of the extra credit opportunities he has made available, along with a link to the section of his website that has the various resources listed and categorized.
My parents must have received identical copies of these emails. My cell phone shows that I have nineteen missed calls, one from Fielder's administrative department and the rest from my mother and father. I haven't thought of them much at all these last few weeks. Having wild, kinky sex with Alexander Delacroix has eclipsed the vast majority of my concerns and worries, but now they are springing to light once more.
I chew on a hangnail. The skin splits. A bubble of blood bursts in my mouth.
Mom and Dad won't give up until they reach me, but that's a problem easily resolved. I just won't pick up my phone. It's unlikely that they'll drive all the way down here to yell at me in person. Not when the whole point of this exercise was to ensure that they wouldn't be forced to have me around in the first place.
I delete all the calls and all the emails. It leaves me with a feeling of peace.
I even manage to make it into the dining commons without being hindered by feelings of nausea. I'm starving for once, actually, and there's no shortage of food. A dessert bar, several fountain drink stations, four different kinds of pizza, pasta, hamburgers, a salad bar, cold cuts, even American-style Chinese.
I help myself to pepperoni and because I'm feeling daring, some Philly cheese steak pizza too, with a slice of cream-cheese spread fruity dessert pizza. I prep a tuna sandwich with all the fixings, grab two containers of Jell-O, and then, because I deserve it, a big slice of chocolate cake with a dollop of whipped cream on top.
The whipped cream makes me think of sex, which makes me think of Delacroix.
I wonder how he'd react if I brought a spray can of the stuff to his house and asked him to lick it all off my body prior to his usual brand of rough love.
Just the thought gets me all hot, though my appetite has since fled.
I eat mechanically, shoveling it in without tasting. There's no way I should be able to eat everything, but I do. The scraping of my fork on an empty plate is a discordant bell jarring me awake. Somehow the dining commons went from full to empty.
My stomach gurgles and saliva floods my mouth. I run to the bathroom and just barely make it before the vomit rushes out. It fills the bowl, spattering the floor, the lid. There are flecks of it clinging to the strands of hair around my face and just the taste it leaves in my mouth leaves me feeling nauseous all over again. I gag, and a bit of bright green stomach acid splashes into the heart of the foul slime.
As I clean myself up, I look at my reflection. I don't recognize the girl in the mirror, who is all skin and bones beneath the cancer-gray t-shirt. She looks back at me with bottomless eyes. They look like sinkholes set in the gaunt framing of her face. She seems familiar, but maybe she just has one of her faces. She certainly couldn't be me.
“You were sick?”
Delacroix is in the process of binding my body with rope but at my words he pauses and looks up. The ropes cut around my wrists, binding them over my head, looping under my arms to constrict my ribs twice, so my breasts are bulging out between them.
“Yes. I can't eat. Food makes me sick.”
“But you aren't actually ill.”
“No.”
He continues knotting. More rope runs down my midriff, on either side of my navel, curving into my thighs to cup my crotch like a G-string.
“Thanks for your concern,” I say sarcastically.
We've already fucked twice—once with his cock, and one with a dildo made from a red jelly-like substance that has tacky glitter suspended inside it. It had various notches and protrusions designed to give even more intense pleasure, including one for clitoral stimulation. When he turned on the switch to trigger the vibrations I thought I might die.
“Would you like some water?”
I nod my head gratefully.
“Ask me then,” he says graciously.
“May I have some water, please, Alexander?”
“Of course,” he says, and I hear the faucet run. He comes back with a full glass, which he tips into my mouth a swallow at a time. As I drink, he says, “I'm going to fuck that tight little ass of yours. I want to feel it pucker and clench around my cock.”
I swallow hard, and nearly choke. “Are you sure I'm ready?”
“You are as ready as you'll ever be. Would you like to use the clamps?”
I love it when he plays with my breasts. “If that's what you want,” I say.
“I want your nipples sore,” he tells me. “So I've increased the weights.” The lack of circulation around my breasts has made them even more sensitive and I let out a breathy cry as he affixes the clamps to my nipples. “A bit of pain is natural, but if it becomes more than what you can tolerate the safe word is waterlily. Otherwise, I won't stop. Not even if you scream—and I do hope you scream.”
He slides on one of the condoms and slathers it in clear jelly. With his hand, which is still a little cold and sticky from the lubricant, I feel him spread my ass cheeks to reveal my anus. The head of his cock circles the hole.
Delacroix bites and nuzzles the side of my throat, sliding t
he head of his cock inside. I gasp and clench, pushing back reflexively. The feeling is indescribable, base. Elimination and fornication combined.
“Oh yes,” he growls, “you fit me like a glove. Take me, Miss Abrahams. Take it all.” And he smacks my ass hard, still inside me, and I moan against the wall.
He pushes in, inch by inch, and my cries become screams. True to his promise, he doesn't stop. My screams seem to spur him on. When he starts thrusting, I use the safe word. Nearly scream it in my desperation. I sob in relief when he pulls out his cock.
Because for one terrifying instant, I was afraid that he wasn't going to stop.
The girl in the campus bookstore was right about one thing. Delacroix does sponsor an artist of erotic photography. He has several volumes of the books in his study, nestled beside hardcover editions of all the books he teaches in class, and various other erotic literature.
We flip through the books together, the light catching on the glossy paper. All of them are nudes, with the focus on the dips and divots, the curves and inclines, of the human form, male and female. Lots of genitals, covered by scraps of cloth and in various stages of arousal. Some pierced, some shaved, others not.
The full body shots are interesting, I think. Especially when paired with shots taken of individual parts of the body. Sometimes the face doesn't seem to match, and then it's interesting to think about why that is, and whether expectations play a role.
There is an entire volume devoted to breasts. Nipples pressed against glass panes, covered by sheer fabrics, or peeking through lingerie or carefully arranged flower petals. Delacroix shrugs when I ask if he's a tit man. “I find it extraordinary how integral nipples are to a woman's sexual pleasure.”
He flips through the section on tit torture, and a few close-ups of a man fucking a woman's breasts with his cock. “And also how integral breasts are to a man's,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “As I said in the club, it seems very Freudian.”
I tell him I'd rather look at the book of cocks, just to make him mad. He looks irate, but hands it over and does not get up as I look through it. There is a vaguely smug expression on his face as he sits through the proceedings. Perhaps because none of the penises pictured are quite as large as his.
I had hoped that if I kept him occupied, Delacroix would forget his demand that I keep up with the reading. I can barely manage to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone crack open a book.
No dice. Not only does he remember, he also punishes me if I forget. Lately, he has even started adding some supplemental readings to the list.
For example, he has forced me to read 120 Days of Sodom in addition to Justine. He says that it is a short piece, with only the first chapter actually written in the style of a novel. All the others are outlines, with footnotes de Sade wrote in the margins instructing himself on how to finish the novel.
I read the books, or try to, and quickly find myself growing disgusted, not only with de Sade's flowery writing style but also with the horrors he writes about in the name of sexual fantasy. Not only does he seem to have a fetish for scat—something I've always found gross—he also enjoys brutal acts of physical violence and torture, including the rape of children, genital mutilation, and disemboweling.
“This is not erotica.”
“Oh?” Delacroix says.
“It's torture porn.”
“There are many who would agree with you.”
“But what do you think? You don't get off on this.”
“I appreciate his merits as a writer,” Delacroix says. “He makes many interesting points on what it means, truly means, to possess a human being.”
Maybe Delacroix feels like he has to defend de Sade's place in his curriculum, but I feel like a stronger disclaimer would have been more comforting. I've started to suspect that Delacroix might be what psychiatrists would call a “sick fuck” in layman's terms.
“Don't worry,” he says, a tad mockingly. “I'm not going to make you eat shit or set fire to your intestines.”
“That's disgusting,” I snap at him.
“Read Venus in Furs,” he suggests. “I rather suggest it'll be more to your liking. You remind me of the main character in many ways, Miss Abrahams. You aren't quite sure what you want. Only that you do. Want, that is.”
Venus in Furs is more palatable—and short. It's the only book he assigned that I actually read all the way through. The main character is whiny, though; it's hard to sympathize with his plight.
“Although I do think it's interesting how power corrupts the girl he's in love with,” I tell Delacroix, when he asks. “She starts out shy and awkward and is always asking him if he wants her to stop, but by the end I think she enjoys the role.”
“It sounds like the book resonated with you.”
When he says it like that, I suppose it has. Though what that says about me, I don't like to imagine.
PART III
By this point I have pretty much stopped attending classes. There is no benefit to me. Not anymore. I have also stopped reading the books that Delacroix assigned to me as one of the conditions of our relationship. They are too dark, too boring, too reminiscent of my own fucked-up life.
Sometimes, ever the teacher, Delacroix will quiz me, ask me which book I like best and why, or whether I found any quotes that leaped out at me to strike my fancy, so I have learned to stay brushed up. Every week I read the Cliff Notes for the books, look up quotes, which I then immediately forget.
It annoys me, how pleased he is when I trot out these facts like a cheap parlor trick. I get the feeling that I'm nothing more than a project to him. Like he thinks I'm his own Pygmalion. That's another book I haven't read, by the way, but I've seen My Fair Lady, with Audrey Hepburn. I know how it works.
At the beginning of our next meeting, Delacroix seems to be feeling particularly chatty. He's wearing a wool sweater and glasses—I've never seen him wear glasses before, they make him look ten years older—and asking me about Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and whether I've ever done anything sexual on a bet.
This relationship, I think sourly.
Except that was a bet to myself, and I am still not quite sure whether it's one that I have won or lost. I'm tempted to discard him, but he keeps me on edge and that's more than most men are capable of doing to me these days. At least he makes me feel something.
I tell him about the boys I slept with, only to throw them away later on just to prove to myself that I could, or to see what they'd give me to persuade me to stay.
“How cruel,” he says, with obvious distaste.
I shrug my shoulders. “Takes one to know one.”
“How true.” Delacroix walks to the bed, where there is a mess of pink, candy-hued fabric. “Put this on, if you please, and we can get started.”
“For me?” It is a corset. I remember him promising me vintage lingerie, though I figured that was just him talking big.
“If it fits.”
“Let's see.” I strip off my clothes, kicking them to the side. There are panties, also pink. A ruffled, crotchless G-string. I pull them on first before sliding the corset over my head.
At first I think I have put it on backwards—the fucking thing has more laces than a high-top sneaker—but then I realize that the bodice has intentionally been scooped out in front, to leave the wearer's breasts uncovered.
The hard structure of the corset digs into the underside of my breasts rather painfully, forcing them into an unnaturally full and perky shape. I cup them, feeling their weight and fullness in my hands, as Delacroix laces up the back. He is standing so closely behind me that I can feel his warmth on my bare skin, and our eyes meet in the mirror, though they drop briefly to my hands.
“I like watching you touch yourself, Miss Abrahams.”
I let my thumbs slide over the nipples, watching his face carefully. “Like this?”
His tongue creeps out, wetting his lips. “Just like that.”
I take a step back so that his cock is p
ressing against my ass. Mm. He has such a nice dick. For that reason alone, it would be a shame to end this.
Delacroix grabs my waist, then changes his mind and squeezes my breasts instead. I put my hands over his and tease my nipples out, until they are fully erect.
His hands are hot, burning my skin. I feel him jerk against my backside as I tilt my head up to look at his face. “Do you want to touch me now?”
I pluck at his fingers, bringing them closer to my goal. Little bumps erupt around my dimpling aureola as the rough pads of his fingers make contact.
“Do you want to use your mouth?”
Delacroix shudders. “You shouldn't tease me, Miss Abrahams.” His voice is a reprimand; it is the kind that promises imminent punishment. “When you behave this way, it drives me mad with the desire to bring you to heel.”
“Then do it.” I rub my ass against his erection, and he shudders again. Growling, he lowers his hand from my body and grabs one of the ties from his dresser. As he controls his breathing, he pulls it taut between his hands, looping the ends around his knuckles. “Put those wanton arms behind your back.”
“How can arms be wanton?”
“Don't talk, Miss Abrahams.”
Okay, then. I cross my wrists behind me and he binds them, roughly, with his tie, pulling tight. Not bothering to be gentle. I must flinch because he says, “Pull your hands apart. Just a little. I want some slack in the knot.”
The room swirls around me. I can't remember if I ate this morning. Did I eat anything? Delacroix walks back in front of me, and as he leans in the scratch of his wool sweater against my nipples makes my thoughts shiver away. His hands squeeze my butt cheeks as he looks down at me. “Tell me, what are you thinking?”
“I—can't remember when I last ate.”
“Are you hungry, Miss Abrahams?” he asks me.
Not so hungry that I don't recognize an opening when I'm given one. “Hungry for you, Alexander.”
He grins, pleased. “Are you? Well, I am pleased you have brought your appetite along with you. I intent to give you much…” Delacroix pauses, brushing his lips along my cheekbone. “Food for thought.” His mouth seals against my ear so I feel the damp heat of his words like a brand. “Have I ever told you how much I love your breasts?”
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