He found one of the librarians who’d worked there during his tenure. They chatted a few minutes and by the end, it was nothing to ask her to open the bookcase for him. He explained he was thinking of buying a first edition of Moby Dick, that he’d seen one in an antiques store but wanted to make sure it was the real thing. She happily unlocked the case for him and left him alone with the book and a pair of cotton gloves.
Carefully he opened the book and turned to the end pages. There it was, Daniel Caldwell is a great lay.
That wasn’t all that was there, however. Under those words was written something else, also in Maggie’s handwriting.
Daniel, if you’re reading this, I’m gone. Please find love again and get married again. I can rest in peace if I know you’re happy, my love. You’re too good a lay to waste.
The words took the breath from his body. He laughed, then cried, then laughed again, all alone up in the Rare Books Room where they’d made love so many years ago on that very table. If someone saw him now, what would they think? That he just really loved the ending of Moby Dick?
Maggie must have come back at some point, gotten the book off the shelf—had she told the same lie?—and written him that note before she got too sick to go out on her own. She knew him so well, knew how nostalgic he was, how sentimental. She knew he’d come back here someday and remember that wild night he’d snuck her into this beautiful room to ravish her, surrounded by the greatest works of literature in history. Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she guessed. Maybe if he looked, he’d find this same note written all over the city, in all their old haunts.
Get married again? Too good a lay to waste? That was Maggie.
“I’ll try, my love,” he whispered to the secret words.
Daniel took a photo of the message with his phone camera and then put the book back. He didn’t erase the words. Knowing what he knew about Herman Melville, the old rascal would have appreciated his book being used to pass a lusty love note across time and from beyond the grave.
When he left the library and returned to the city, he felt like he’d been given a gift.
Energized by that gift, by that last message from Maggie, he jogged all the way home. It would be good for him to wear himself out. Sleep had been elusive since coming back to the city. Maybe if he could exhaust himself physically, he wouldn’t dream about Anya like he had last night, and the night before… As his shoes pounded the pavement, he imagined Harpring’s face under the soles. He imagined every man who would bid on Anya the night of the auction being pummeled under his feet.
Still drenched with sweat from his run, Daniel decided to take a long, hot bath to help ease the soreness from his legs before going back out again. He started running the water but had to shut it off when he heard the doorbell chime.
“Who is it?” he called out before he reached the door.
“Celine Dion.”
Daniel was so shocked at the sound of her voice that his mind went momentarily blank. He recovered his senses and swung the door open. Anya was wearing a pale pink empire-waist sundress, her hair in two small buns on each side of her head like Princess Leia.
She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m being punished.”
Daniel laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Kingsley’s punishing you?”
Anya nodded sheepishly.
“Why?”
She sighed. “I was at his house reading on the floor. On my stomach. He saw me and asked me what I was doing.”
“And you said?” Daniel asked, picturing Anya lying prone on the floor and rather enjoying the image.
“I said I was doing my impression of Paris during the Nazi Occupation.”
Daniel nearly died holding his laughter in. Anya had all the makings of a S.A.M.—a Smart-Ass Masochist. He didn’t want to encourage such terrible—if hilarious—bad behavior.
“Kingsley should be punishing you, not me.”
“He said he was too busy.”
Kingsley was never too busy to punish a beautiful girl for having a smart mouth. It was one of his favorite hobbies. That meant only one thing—Kingsley was making good on his promise to “help” Daniel. How? By playing matchmaker? Apparently so.
“What’s your punishment? Is he making you come cook lunch for me or something?”
“He said I had to do whatever you told me to do for the next two hours. Except—”
“I can’t have sex with you. Obviously.” Daniel considered his options. Anya wanted him—fact. But she didn’t want him enough to let him help her—also a fact. Maybe he could change that.
“Look, you don’t have to stay. I’ll tell Kingsley I made you mop the floors on your hands and knees. He’ll never know.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to go?”
“No, but I imagine you wouldn’t mind two hours off.”
He was baiting her, making her choose him. Cruel? A little but a little cruelty was just his style when it came to beautiful submissive women who drove him up the wall.
“It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t get punished. I have been very bad.” It looked to Daniel like she was having trouble saying that with a straight face.
“Then I suppose I should punish you. Since you know you deserve it. Come in.”
She eased across the threshold and stood in the middle of his living room, looking around without speaking. She looked nervous. Good. He was about to make her even more nervous.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he said. “I’m sorry we were interrupted two days ago.”
Her hands were clasped behind her back. She shrugged as if the whole thing were forgotten.
“Did you come last night while fantasizing about me?” he asked.
Her cheeks reddened. Had any woman ever blushed more beautifully?
“I only said that to make you kiss me,” she said. “When you’re kissing me you don’t talk so much.”
“Ah, I see.” He nodded. “Makes sense. I was thinking of you when I came last night. In case you were wondering.”
She stared at her shoes. “You did?”
“I did. Do you want me to tell you what I was fantasizing about?”
She lifted her eyes to his but quickly lowered them again. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
This made him unreasonably happy. Maybe she wanted him enough that he could convince her to let him help her.
Help her.
Fuck her.
All of the above.
“Then I suppose I better start punishing you,” he said. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Bathroom.”
“What are we doing in your bathroom?”
“I’m taking a bath. And you are going to help.”
Anya followed Daniel to his bathroom and didn’t say a single word the entire walk there. Not a word of complaint. Not a word of insult. Either she was scared or she was excited.
In the bathroom, he shut the door. “Scared?” he asked, turning the tap back on.
She lifted her chin. “Of course not.”
“Really?”
She clasped her hands nervously in front of her and rubbed an invisible speck of something off her thumb.
“I have three brothers. I changed their diapers and helped them dress for school. You don’t have anything that will surprise me, Daniel.”
Daniel grinned at her in a way he hoped made her even more nervous than she already was.
She glared at him. “Sir.”
“You’re submitting to me for the next two hours,” he reminded her. “When you submit to me, you call me, ‘sir.’ Comprenez, ma petite?”
“Your accent is terrible.”
“You forgot to call me ‘sir.’”
She was silent a moment. “I don’t want to do that again.”
“Why not?” he asked softly. “Didn’t like it?”
She didn’t say anything at first. Then, finally, “I think I liked it too much.”
“Too much?”
“It’
s not good for me to like it so much.”
No, he supposed it wasn’t. It wasn’t good for him to like her so much, either. Off-limits, he reminded himself. Well, this was going to be awkward.
“All right,” he said, shutting the water off now that the tub had filled. “Call me Daniel then.”
“Daniel,” she repeated. Somehow she managed to sound deferential just saying his name.
“Good. Now undress me.”
Anya’s eyes went wide—comically wide—but she didn’t object. Instead, she crossed the floor so slowly, so gingerly, one would have thought she’d been walking barefoot across broken glass. It took everything he had not to laugh out loud at her nervousness.
Slowly Anya reached out and laid her hands flat on his stomach. Curling her fingers, she grasped the fabric of his sweat-stained t-shirt.
“You have beautiful hands,” Daniel said, noticing for the first time her delicate fingers, so graceful and well-formed.
She shook her head. “I don’t. See?” She released his shirt and turned her hands over letting him see her palms. All over her fingertips he saw small calluses and pinpricks from her sewing needles.
Daniel took her gently by the wrists and raised her hands to chest height. “Still beautiful…but you work too hard.”
He lifted one hand to his lips and kissed the center of her palm. Anya breathed in sharply as his mouth met her skin. Under his thumb he could feel the rapid beating of her pulse.
“Now…continue.” He reluctantly released her wrists, and she once again grasped the fabric of his t-shirt.
“You’re disgusting, Daniel.” She started to pull the shirt upward. “What were you doing?”
“Running.”
“Fou. Madness.”
“Exercise.”
“Was someone chasing you?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Then yes, madness. Lift your arms, s’il vous plaît.”
Daniel didn’t move a muscle.
Anya sighed with obvious irritation. “Lift your arms…please.”
He raised his arms and let Anya pull his shirt completely off. As she took it off she turned around and held the sweaty garment out in front of her.
“What are you doing, Anya?”
“Looking for an open flame so I can burn this.”
Daniel laughed. “We’ll have a bonfire later,” he said, tossing the shirt into the corner of the steam-filled bathroom.
He stood before her shirtless. She stared at the floor. Poor girl. He really was torturing her. He’d feel bad about it if he didn’t feel so good about it.
He took her wrists in his hands again and pressed her shaking palms into the center of his chest.
For nearly a full minute Daniel said nothing, simply letting Anya’s anxiety build. He wanted her anxious, afraid. For her own good.
“Your hands are shaking. You’re white as a ghost. Think about how you feel right now. Imagine, Anya,” Daniel said in a low voice. Anya closed her eyes. “Imagine being with someone you’ve never even met before and doing this. Or worse. Any man who wins you will own you for the night. He might already have you tied to the bed at this point. He might already be inside you. Feel how afraid you are right now and multiply that by a thousand. At least a thousand.”
Anya finally looked at him, really looked at him. First at his eyes and then his lips. From his lips her eyes roamed down his neck and across his shoulders and chest, up each arm and down his stomach before grazing up his body again to look once more into his eyes.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”
“Not afraid? Really? Then why are you shaking?” he demanded. He had to get through to this girl before she made the worst mistake of her life.
“Because…” She stopped and swallowed again and stared at something over his shoulder.
Daniel lifted a hand to her face and caressed her neck under her ear. “Answer the question, Anya. Why are you shaking?”
She met his gaze. “Because…I want you.”
Daniel didn’t speak at first. He let her confession hang in the air between them.
“Say it again,” Daniel ordered.
“I want you. I can’t…since that day in the music room, I can’t stop thinking about you. I hate you so I must be crazy, too.”
“I don’t think you do hate me. I don’t think you hate me at all. I think you like me.” Daniel continued stroking her face, her neck just under her hairline and was rewarded with a shiver.
“I can’t afford to…like you.”
He gently grasped her chin and forced her face up to his. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t like me then. I’ll like you enough for the both of us.”
He brought his mouth down onto hers and waited. He didn’t have to wait long. Anya parted her lips and let her body relax into his. Tenuously at first she kissed him. And while everything in him wanted to push her against the wall, force her lips wider, and take full possession of her mouth, he held back and let her do most of the work. He cupped the back of her head and allowed himself the liberty of pushing the tip of his tongue against hers again and again.
Finally he wrenched his mouth from hers. He’d take her right on the bathroom floor if he didn’t get himself under control again. She watched him, her amber eyes wide as a frightened deer.
“No more stalling,” he said. “The water will get cold.”
He was dominating her right now, supposedly. He refused to let her see how much that kiss had affected him. He shouldn’t be doing this with her, not with his self-control so low and his need so strong. That note he’d found from Maggie had cut him open, bared his insides, left him too vulnerable to the scared kisses of beautiful young women.
Anya’s hands still shook as she knelt down on the floor in front of him. Now Daniel had to glance away. If he looked at her on her knees in front of him all hope for continued self-control would be lost. She fumbled with the laces of his running shoes. He raised one foot, then the other as she pulled them off, along with his socks. She must really be scared as she offered no commentary about burning his sweaty footwear.
As the seconds passed, Anya seemed to fall into her submissive role. She set his shoes aside neatly and tucked the laces into them. She put his socks in the far corner with his sweaty t-shirt. Daniel lost the battle of wills with himself and started watching her again. A veil seemed to fall over her eyes as the angry, scared, temperamental Anya disappeared and a new placid, contented, submissive Anya took her place. At that moment, Daniel wasn’t sure which Anya he preferred.
Submissive Anya reached up and started to pull his track pants down.
That Anya. Definitely.
She kept her eyes respectfully lowered as she brought his pants all the way down. Daniel studied her as he stepped out them.
“You’re beautiful to see. Just like this.”
She whispered something in French and Daniel cursed himself for spending the last year and a half perfecting his Spanish and Portuguese. He even knew how to ask, “Which is the safest bush for pissing on?” in Quechua. Instead he should have been learning some damn French.
“What was that?” he asked and decided to start brushing up on his French first chance he got—that day, preferably.
“Vous aussi,” she repeated. Anya looked up at him from the floor. Any remaining fear had disappeared from her gaze. Only innocent trust remained in her wide eyes. “You also.”
Daniel said nothing, only smiled. He stepped away from her and sank into the steaming bathwater. Without even waiting for his order, Anya stood up, took off her shoes and came to the bathtub. He leaned forward to make room for her to sit on the edge of the tub behind him, then leaned back, forcing Anya to spread her legs so he could settle between her knees. When she reached for the bath sponge, he turned his head and bit her lightly on the inside of her thigh. She flinched and kicked water.
“So much for submission.” Daniel grabbed a towel and wiped water off his face. “Was nice w
hile it lasted.”
“You could have warned me you were going to bite me.”
“It’s not as much fun if you know it’s coming.”
Anya huffed peevishly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying my best. I’m…nervous.”
“And I’m not making it easier on you, am I?”
“You are not. You’re very attractive and very…big. Tall.”
“I’m five-eleven. One inch shorter than Kingsley, remember?” he teased. “Although we’re fairly well-matched in one other area.”
“Is that so?” she asked. Iz zat so? Could her accent be any sexier? Daniel thought about it, decided the answer was no. “You’ve seen him naked?”
“This is Kingsley Edge we’re talking about. There are only three people in the city who haven’t seen him naked. And they’ve all been in comas since the late eighties.”
Anya laughed as she started scrubbing his shoulders with the sponge. He leaned forward again to give her access to his back.
“Monsieur is so strange to me. His French is parfait. It’s obvious he is from France. But his name isn’t French.”
“His real last name is French and it’s as long as his…it’s a big name. Boissonneault. And the ‘Kingsley’ is American because his American mother named him.”
“His mother is American? I can’t wait to mock him for that.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Why not?”
He looked up at her. “I’ll get jealous. I’m the only one I want you being mean to.”
Anya smiled down at him. Then she wrung the sponge out on his face.
Daniel tore the sponge from her hands and rubbed it on her face. Squealing, she raised her arms to block his assault as she let loose a stream of words that he felt reasonably certain constituted some of the worst insults in the French language. Finally he relented and threw the sponge on the floor all the way across the spacious bathroom.
“You’re dangerous with that thing,” he said.
The Auction (The Original Sinners Pulp Library) Page 9