Tantalized

by Nenia Campbell

  “I'll be next to your heart, Miss Abrahams,” he says, as he kisses down my chest. “My name will sear into your very soul, so that with every beat, you will know who it is that owns you.”

  I can feel his cock hardening against my pubic bone. I feel slightly sick. I think it might be the alcohol. But then again, it might not.

  “How are you planning on doing this?” I ask him, as he bends to kiss one of my breasts. “This doesn't seem very hygienic.”

  “I have medical-grade disinfectant,” he says. “I also own an autoclave, so don't worry about infection.”

  I make the mistake of asking what an autoclave is.

  He informs me that it is a device that uses pressurized steam to clean medical instruments by raising them to temperatures in excess of one-hundred-and-twenty degrees.

  “Why do you own an auto-whatever?”

  “Needle play can be dangerous if it isn't hygienic.”

  “Isn't needle play temporary?”

  “Usually. Not always. Are you having second thoughts? You seemed like the type who would enjoy piercings. I was surprised to find out you only had your ears done, and no tattoos, either.”

  “What kind of type is that?”

  Though I don't need to ask. The type who skips school for days on end. The type who drinks alcohol out of the bottle, without a glass. The type who seduces her professor and then doesn't bat an eyelash when he takes her to a club where the going is always rough. The type who is completely out of control.

  I don't need to fucking ask. I know the type.

  He's right; it's me.

  Delacroix pulls back from me.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  I know the word to make this stop. The one word.

  “No.” I let out my breath. “Just do it, okay?”

  Alexander kisses me on the mouth. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I will.” Then he slips on a pair of latex gloves with a snap that makes me flinch.

  “Relax,” he says again.

  He tweaks my nipple to elongate it, briskly swapping it with disinfectant that feels far too cold. Then holds it in place while he readies the needle with his other hand. I'm bracing myself, but I still scream when he pierces my flesh.

  Alexander clamps his forearm over my mouth as he forces the stud in, but he needn't have bothered. Like a wildfire, the pain burns itself out violently but quickly, leaving only a dull throb. I can't breathe, but I'm afraid to struggle while he's adjusting the stud.

  When he pulls away at last, I gasp air.

  “Do you need a gag?” he asks, somewhat callously. “Something to bite on?”

  I shake my head as I open my eyes, which are dewy with tears. Your dick, I think. “Your were fucking choking me, you son of a bitch,” I rasp.

  “I did not want my neighbors to hear.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

  “Isn't that the point?” I snap at him.

  Quietly, he says, “You know what I mean.”

  I do. The piercing catches the light from the bedside lamp, radiating sparks of fire. I arch my back, watching the reflection flare back at me.

  I can see my face, painted in red.

  Alexander follows my eyes.

  “The soreness will only last a few days. Do you like it?”

  It is far lovelier than the words marked haphazardly on my skin, with no rhyme or reason.

  With one difference.

  This is his, instead of mine.

  “It's beautiful.”

  “I'm glad. There are many kinds of play you can do with piercings. Some I think you may enjoy.”

  “I somehow missed this chapter in the BDSM handbook,” I say.

  He puts the spent needle in a baggie and gets a fresh one. “This isn't basic BDSM. They practice safe and sane play; edge play is neither. That's the thrill of it.”

  I touch the stud, and my nipple throbs a little.

  I am neither safe, nor sane.

  I guess neither is Professor Delacroix.

  “Don't touch. Let the skin heal.” He pushes my hand aside. “I'm going to do the other nipple, now, love. Try not to be too loud—I think my neighbors are home. I won't cover your mouth if you're good.”

  It's the first time he's ever called me 'love.'

  Does he actually love me? Could anyone actually love me, with me being who I am? What I am?

  I would like to think so.

  The second time hurts worse because now I know what to expect. But I manage to lower the volume, and my scream transforms into a squeaky wheeze.

  “That's my girl.”

  He adjusts the stud, wipes away the blood, and then throws the needle away in the same baggie, along with his used latex gloves.

  “There. The worst is over.”

  I want to forgive him for the pain when he kisses me, carefully avoiding my throbbing breasts as he wraps his arms around my waist and holds me tightly to him. Could he love me? I wonder.

  “You are Juliet, Beatrice, and O. Tempted, tempter, and temptress.”

  I like the idea of being part of such an unholy trinity. Maybe, rings out in response to my unasked question. It's like the keening of a sad bell. Maybe.

  “I own you now,” he tells me. “Completely. Inside and out.”

  “Do you love me, Alexander?” I ask him.

  “Take off your jeans,” he says, by way of response.

  He removes the leather collar from the nightstand and snaps it around my throat. I wear the mask, with its spray of earthy feathers, as Alexander mounts me.

  My orgasm, when it comes, seems endless. The endorphin rush is better than cocaine. I collapse against the sheets, and the mask slides off to hit the floor with a soft clatter.

  Alexander cups my breast, and lets out a soft gasp, still inside me though I can feel him softening.

  Alexander doesn't climax; he came in his pants while he was piercing me. He doesn't say as much but I can see the white stains on his jeans for what they are. Neither of us mentions it, the way we didn't mention our last time together and how awful it was.

  But I feel a twinge of nausea uncurl within my stomach. It might just be fear.

  I call the phone number listed on the school's website. It's the department phone, but nobody picks up. Damn budget cuts. Maybe this is a sign.

  To what? Leave well enough alone?

  Maybe in the beginning I told myself that I was going to maintain a distance between us, but things are different now. What we have might be shit, but it's shit that I'm invested in, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it just slip through my fingers. It's mine.

  I try his home phone several more times to no effect, and punch the 'end' button on my phone hard. He doesn't teach today, and rarely goes out. Either he's gone out, or, more likely, he's not taking my calls.

  How dare he. I could kill him for that.

  Maybe I will.

  I know where Alexander lives, though dropping by his house unexpectedly screams stalker ex. On the other hand, if he were truly concerned about that he wouldn't have given me his home address. And if it's a breach of trust to abuse that knowledge this way, he shouldn't have abused mine first.

  Before trying the door I search the outside. Alexander keeps his spare key under a stone by the porch. It's surprisingly cliché. Guess it just goes to show that no matter how special or sophisticated we think we are, we're only human in the end.

  I shake my head as I unlock the door and step inside, holding the door to make sure it doesn't make a registering sound as it swings shut to latch behind me.

  His house is quiet, except for a few soft, furtive sounds emanating from the back of the house. Where his bedroom is. Is he asleep? Sick?

  I walk into the bedroom and the have to stop, frozen, because Alexander is in the middle of fucking another woman in what I have come to gradually think of as our bed.

  She is older but beautiful—more beautiful than me. Her breasts bounce as she rides Delacroix
as if he were that man from the club who was dressed up like a pony. Delacroix always insists on being on top when he's with me. Her negligee falls demurely over their intertwined legs, shielding their shame.

  “Jessica,” Delacroix says, breathing hard, surprised but unrepentant.

  It is the first time that he has ever used my real name.

  “What the fuck is this?” For a moment, I'm too shocked to be angry, though the anger quickly comes. Boy, does it come. I scream at him. “Who the fuck is she?”

  “Oh, so this is the Jessica I've heard so much about.”

  And then I see the matching rings on their fingers and the album that lies open at their feet. I recognize those breasts, surrounded by pink and colored in red.

  Those are my breasts.

  It's an entire album full of pictures. Pictures of me.

  “You sick fuck,” I gasp. “You fucking psychopath.”

  “Calm down, Jessica.”

  “Don't you fucking tell me to calm down. Fuck you! Fuck you with bells on!”

  I snatch at the book. Both of them try to grab it, but I'm faster and more desperate. I race out of there with my catalog of shame. The thought occurs to me that Alexander might have extras, but I won't deal with that. Not now.

  I run all the way to the dorms where I lock the door behind me. I flip through the album with shaking hands. There is a picture of me with the owl mask, arching suggestively on the bed. All of me is revealed on the pages. I wince when I see my vagina, glistening like raw oyster, between my spread legs.

  I remember the girl at the bookstore telling me that Delacroix sponsored a hermetic artist of erotic photography. Nathan Shivers, I think his name was. Then I realize that the two could very well be one and the same: Nathan Shivers could be Alexander Delacroix's Clark Kent. It's too much for coincidence.

  The grim truth hits me with the force of ten cannons.

  He's going to sell this book to people.

  I'll be on people's coffee tables, in their bedrooms, their bathrooms.

  Why would he do this to me?

  Revenge for making him lose face?

  Or is he just that twisted, and I was unlucky enough to get involved with him in the first place?

  I go to my desk and grab the first pen I see. It's a purple gel pen, half-empty. I slash it over a memo pad to make sure it still works and then I scribble out a hasty note. It isn't a suicide note so much as a confession. I'm not even sure what I intend to do with it, only that it needs to be written.

  I jot down the basics, detailing the circumstances of our affair, Delacroix's nom de plume, and my unrelenting agony. I tuck the note between the pages of the book and leave the dorms. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I spy a drug store. It's just a few blocks away. A lot of the students load up on snacks here during finals.

  A tide carries me through the automatic doors. I find myself walking mechanically down the aisles. I pick up a plastic carton of gummy bears, a box of ready-to-eat chicken broth, and a bottle of aspirin for my throbbing head. I like the taste of chicken broth, always have. A lot of people don't like it because it's sick people food but there's something calming about it. Something pure.

  I guess it reminds me of being little, and feeling taken care of. Safe and domestic.

  Outside, I sit on the curb and swallow down a tablet of aspirin with some broth that I sip right out of the box. Then I remember that the adult dose for aspirin is two tablets, so I take another. And then another. And then another. Because why stop there? I keep going until both containers are empty and my stomach is as sharp as a blade. I set the book beside me on the sidewalk and wait for darkness to come.

  It doesn't take long.

  I open my eyes to four white walls. There's no stereotypical “am I dead?” moments. I've been in and out of enough hospitals to know I'm not dead. I've traded one statistic for another. Thwarted suicide attempt.

  I recognize the inoffensive artwork, the smell of antiseptic, the uncomfortable bed with paper sheets and its snot green hypoallergenic pillow. If there is a purgatory, it looks an awful lot like a doctor's office.

  I groan. My throat feels bruised and sore. My stomach isn't feeling so great, either. I may not be dead, although I strongly wish I were. The inoffensive artwork blurs before my eyes, and it's worse than vertigo because now I feel like I might throw up.

  My noises of distress attract a doctor in the process of making rounds. He has salt and pepper hair and a disapproving expression that could have been chiseled out of granite. I wonder if sanctimoniousness is a special course offered at med schools, since nobody seems to do it better than doctors.

  “That was a foolish thing you did,” he tells me. “You're lucky to be alive.”

  “Well, I feel like shit,” I snap.

  “Yes, well, having your stomach pumped will do that.”

  I'm a little awed by that. I've never had my stomach pumped before. Never had to, although I've come close a few times by overdoing it with alcohol. Especially Four Loko. Drink too much of that stuff and you'll black out, easy.

  There were some girls in Cherry Hill who were veterans of the ER. One OD'd on ecstasy at a rave and was rushed to the nearest hospital when she started showing signs of advanced hyperthermia. She had to be force-fed charcoal to neutralize the toxic effects. Her teeth were still a little black when she first got checked in and stayed like that for weeks. “It was a bad batch,” she said, shrugging.

  I remember being so jealous of her blasé, world-weary attitude.

  Taking the aspirin with food was probably a mistake.

  My piercings are on the nightstand. I suppose they had to be removed for the various procedures involved in my recuperation. I pitch them into the wastebasket with a noise of disgust. Fucking Delacroix—he's the one who got me into this mess.

  Now I'm trapped inside a hospital room while he does God-knows-what—

  I remember the book. The book! I look around wildly, searching the room. My purse is sitting on a chair nearby. My piercings were on the nightstand before I threw them out. Even the clothes I was wearing before the incident are present, neatly folded (and undoubtedly searched).

  Where is it?

  I stab the call button and the same doctor from before comes back in. His bedside manner has not improved; he still looks very annoyed with me.

  “Yes?”

  “There was a book beside me on the curb. Where I passed out.”

  “All the belongings you had on you at the time have been returned to you.”

  “But they're not,” I snap. “The book isn't here! So where the fuck is it?”

  “I hope you aren't implying that any doctor in this facility would steal from you.”

  Actually, the thought hadn't even occurred to me. But now that he's mentioned it, I guess it's as likely a scenario as any, although the thought of some whack-job in a white coat jerking off to the fetish photographs Delacroix took of me make me feel like throwing up. “I don't know,” I say, “would they? I was asleep.”

  “Unconscious,” he corrects, automatically.

  “Whatever,” I say. “Same thing.”

  I know it's not but I say it because I suspect it will annoy him. It does.

  “By the way, we notified your next of kin. Your parents are on their way.”

  “My parents?”

  This is terrible. They're going to send me back to Cherry Hill. Which is what I wanted—at least, it was in the beginning. But not now. Not while that bastard is still free. Not after he used me up and then tossed me out like yesterday's jizz-rag.

  Maybe Alexander stole the book.

  I wonder if he was the good Samaritan who called the paramedics. He could have been following me. I didn't tell him where I lived, but it's possible he was driving around looking for me. Maybe he even watched me attempt to off myself and was glad I was saving him from having to ensure my silence.

  “I want my book back,” I tell the doctor, just to make sure I cover all the bases.


  “We'll look for it,” he says in a tone that suggests he will do no such thing.

  My mother comes to sign me out of the hospital. Dad has decided to stay at home. Caught between anger and concern, he chose the more familiar venue of anger. It's just like him to sit at home and brood.

  “Oh, Jessica, why?” Mom says tearfully.

  “I told you I wasn't ready.”

  Which is the wrong thing to say, because that just makes her cry. The nurses all eye me evilly. I guess Dr. Douche has been telling tales because none of them are looking at me with much sympathy, considering I just had a vacuum shoved down my esophagus.

  I check through my wallet to make sure nothing is missing. I could have sworn I had five bucks in there, but I can't remember whether I spent it myself or not. Could my mother have taken it? The nurses?

  “What's this I hear about you asking about a book?”

  “You don't want to know,” I tell her, remembering the crying fit at the ER.

  My mom slams her foot down on the brakes. “Goddammit, Jessica!”

  “Trust me, Mom. You don't want to know. It's bad, even for me.”

  “What did you do?” she says, in a low, hollow voice I'm far too familiar with.

  I reel off the specifics. Seduced professor. Started an affair with said professor. Professor was into the whole BDSM scene. Professor took fetish photography of me. Professor published said fetish photography into a slim volume he intended to publish under his pen name. Found this out when professor was in bed with another woman, both of them poring over said slim volume as they were in the middle of—

  “That's enough,” Mom barks. Her face is equal parts white and green, like she doesn't know whether she wants to scream or vomit. Maybe both, at the same time. If she is, she really ought to stop the car.

  “I told you—,” I begin, only to have her motion me to be quiet.

  She starts driving again and doesn't stop until we reach the dorms.

  “You are a stupid, stupid, stupid girl,” she says.

  “That's not a very nice thing to say to someone who just tried to kill themselves.”

  “Suicide is one of the most selfish ways of dealing with your problems,” she snaps at me. “There are some desperately unhappy people in this world who still manage to get out of bed in the mornings. But you wallow in your problems, and when you run out of problems, you create new ones. Who do you think has to deal with the emotional fallout that results from suicide, Jessica? Your loved ones. Your friends.”