by Reiss, CD
He undid his pants, removing that spectacular, powerful cock. I put my ass up, and he slapped it again.
“Thank you,” I gasped.
He got a finger around the ring and pulled with just enough pressure to make me feel him. I must have stiffened.
“After opening day, I won’t be so gentle with the ring. Now, open up for me.”
He spanked me again, letting the ring go. I grabbed my ass cheeks and pulled them apart. He guided himself into my soaked pussy then slammed forward. I grunted.
“Hush,” he said. “Not a sound out of you. Just take it like a good girl.”
He got the rest of the way in, and my mouth opened, but nothing came out. I became nothing but a vessel for his pleasure. He moved me where he wanted me, pounding me, and I was slick and receptive.
“Look, Monica.” He pulled my hair and jerked me to nearly standing. “Look at yourself.” His hand went around my hips, and he wedged his fingers between my legs. “I put that collar on you. You’re my property.”
As he uttered it, I lost myself. Keeping my eyes open became difficult. His cock battered me, his eyes soothed me, and his collar debased me into a space so submissive, I couldn’t remember my name.
“You ready to come, Monica?” he growled.
I made a little noise. My mouth was open. My eyes half closed.
“Fuck. You are so hot. Come with me. Give it to me.” He slammed me. “Give me everything.”
With his permission, I exploded into a soundless howl. Thighs tightening, fingers curling. He gripped my ass so tight it hurt, prolonging the orgasm with the pain, intensifying it. He thrust into me so hard I thought I’d break and all my pleasure would spill out.
He growled as if he were trying to wedge his whole body into mine. He was coming, and hard. A sound came from me as if pushed out, because I was flooded with a new warmth, a second-tier climax that burst from the inside. Soul to skin and back again.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, because it wasn’t stopping. “Oh god, oh god, oh god. I’m still… I’m still…”
And tears, and blackness, and the places where I was sore. After three thrusts that jerked upward as if he was making a point, he stopped. In the mirror, I saw him panting, my collar, my submission leaking away, and regular life coming back to replace it.
Jonathan ran his hands down my back then back up, gently turning me to face him. He looked barely conscious himself.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re a goddess.”
He said it without irony or condescension. As if he was stating a fact.
“The collar,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Bedroom only?”
“To start.”
Outside, the band stopped.
We reacted immediately. He got his dick in his pants, and I dropped my skirt and got my shirt arranged. He gathered the fork, the bag, whatever. Against the clatter of a pre-encore band coming down the hall, Jonathan unlocked the door. I thought nothing of it, because it should be unlocked before they got their hands on the knob.
But when it opened and the guys were right there, I realized why Darren raised his eyebrow before he said hello.
I still had the collar on.
Chapter 13
JONATHAN
They say men and women don’t communicate about their problems because women just want to feel and men just want to fix.
I’d never given that much thought.
But I wanted to fix Monica’s problem with her voice, and she just wanted to go through the wringer. I was suggesting she submit her problems with her art not necessarily to me, but just in general. Overall. To do the job without worrying about what other people thought about it. She could give up this idea she was a fraud if she blocked out everyone but me, the one person who loved her whether she sang on key or not.
That made perfect sense in my head.
Also, that collar.
It elongated her neck, made her submission into an aesthetic. She became a work of art. My work of art. The sight of it put gravity-strength pressure on my balls, and when I pulled on that ring, I nearly came from seeing it in the mirror.
But when her friends entered the room, she put her hand on her throat as if that would hide it. If they knew we had been fucking, she wouldn’t care. But the submission thing? That bothered her. And being collared in public was always a sticking point.
I wanted to rip the thing off before we left the dressing room, but it had a lock, and ripping something off her in front of everyone would have been quite a spectacle.
“Hi,” she said, hand to throat.
They didn’t even look at her. Darren murmured something. Harry said hello but was focused on getting his bass into the bag. The drummer punched my arm, and the other guy glanced at her and thanked her for opening the set.
The girl singer looked me up and down in the way women sometimes do, but their chatter was about the set, the songs, a patois of terms I didn’t understand but knew had nothing to do with Monica’s neckwear. She turned to me, smiled, and held out her hand.
I snapped up her bag, grabbed her hand, and walked out.
Chapter 14
MONICA
I was bone tired. The drive home was gentle and almost meditative. I’d held his hand, feeling the soreness between my legs like a reminder of all the good in my life.
We didn’t talk about my horrid performance. We didn’t talk about the collar. We just sat in peace, and it was perfect.
In front of the bathroom mirror, naked from the waist up, I looked at my collar. It was nice, as collars went. Didn’t look doggish. Didn’t look slavish. It looked like a really nice piece of jewelry with a lock on the front. The ring in the back was a giveaway though. But the chain mail made it conform to my movements and even, dare I think it, made it comfortable.
“Jonathan?” I called. I could hear him puttering around the bedroom.
“Yeah?”
“Where’s the key to this thing?”
“In the box it came in.”
“Which is where?”
I didn’t even finish the sentence before he was in the bathroom, holding out a black jewelry box. I opened it.
My tuning fork was inside. That wasn’t right. I put it on the counter and lifted the velvet panel that the fork rested on. No key hid in the bottom of the box.
“Shit,” I said.
“Where was the tuning fork supposed to go?” he asked.
“A little black box. Okay, they got switched. It’s around. Let me check my bag.”
My phone dinged just as I got there. It was Darren.
—You left a black box with a key
in the dressing room. I got it but
we’re on the flight to Nashville—
I showed Jonathan the phone. “You put the tuning fork away.”
“No, you put it in the box.”
“And you put the box in your pocket.”
“Thinking it was the box with the key.”
“And I was responsible for the tuning fork. Goddamnit! I’m so stupid,” I said.
“I can have it sawed off your neck.”
“Go to hell, Drazen.”
He put his hands up as if he was dealing with a crazy person. “I’ll have someone fly to Nashville to get the key. I can’t have it here by morning, but I can have it off you before Dodger Stadium.”
“I’m so mad.”
“I know.”
“Just free-floating mad.”
“I don’t want to deflect but—”
“But what?”
“Between your anger, the no-shirt thing, and the collar? You have never looked so fuckable.”
My shoulders drooped, and the rage fell right out of me. I held my arms up, and he wrapped himself around me and just hugged me for all it was worth.
Chapter 15
MONICA
Jonathan’s gaze was a continuous companion. He owned me with it. He called his pilot to go to Nashville with his eyes on me. He undressed
me slowly by the brightest lamp and made love to me so tenderly it hurt. He touched my neck all the time, drawing his fingers over the bumps in the collar and his thumb over the lock. The next morning, his gaze peeled me open from across the room, and he watched me go out the door as if in a state of utter gratification.
I worried on the way to Mrs. Yuan’s that everyone was looking at me with hunger. I felt undressed.
She had a pink hibiscus in her hair. I’d seen them growing outside, and I resisted the urge to touch it to see if it was real.
“Is that going to constrict you?” was the first thing she asked. Not a surprise.
“I don’t think so.”
She turned to Sherri. “Was she wearing it last night?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well,” she said, turning back to me, “from what I understand, we have nowhere to go but up.”
My face got hot. Sherri wouldn’t look at me even when my eyes burned holes into her.
“It was pretty bad,” I said.
“Good,” she said, surprising me. “I’d hate for you to peak too soon. And it’s out of your system. You survived it. Nothing can hurt you now.”
I felt inexplicably relieved, as if she’d given me some sort of indefinable permission I’d been unable to give myself. Not permission to succeed or fail. Permission to just do the thing without calling it a name.
She removed her fork from the box. “Let’s start with some scales. Then work on our transition to banner.”
I tilted my head right then left, feeling the collar bend with me.
“You will be good,” she said.
I lowered my lids, as if I had to see her through a narrower opening. Had she said something nice? “I’m still not Whitney Houston.”
“No, you are not Whitney Houston. You’ll do it without changing the phrasing.”
She tapped her fork before I could absorb what she’d said, and I hit the note, working back and forth as we’d done for two weeks.
The rehearsal was light and more positive than usual. Mrs. Yuan had more exhortations up her sleeve than I’d given her credit for, and she didn’t look at the collar once more. But she and Sherri were the only ones to see me, and I’d made plans to be in public that afternoon to get my mind off the evening.
Once in the car, I checked my texts.
Yvonne:
—I’ll be at Earth in twenty—
Jonathan:
—Having coordination issues
in Nashville. They’ll get it here
before you sing. Or I’ll get a
locksmith to break it.—
Well, no. The collar jammed my uncomfortable places, but I had to admit it was nice. I liked it, and I didn’t want it broken. He said he’d buy me another, but I didn’t want another one. This was the one he’d gotten me, it was the one I wanted, and I wanted it exactly the way he got it.
Whole and with a key.
—I don’t think I can make Earth today—
—Bullshit - you show up.
Today it’s my problems—
—What happened???—
—Men are shit—
I touched the collar. I hadn’t been out in public with it. Not really.
Sometimes I was left alone and treated like any other Angeleno, and sometimes the paparazzi showed up. I never knew when I was watched and when I wasn’t. I took a deep breath. It was too hot for a scarf or turtleneck. Even if I ran out and got a lightweight neck wrap, covering my collar with it would only announce that I was ashamed. The only thing worse than wearing it in public was broadcasting shame over it.
Fuck it. Yvonne needed me.
Chapter 16
MONICA
—Lil’s driving me to Santa Monica
at five. Picking the key up myself –
but it’s going to be close. I’m sorry—
Santa Monica Airport to Echo Park on a game night, at rush hour, on a Friday, during the school year. Game time was seven. Close didn’t begin to cut it.
I’d heard Yvonne out and tried to soothe her. Cursed every penis-owning human in the universe while simultaneously exonerating Jonathan in my head. I hated seeing her in pain and didn’t even know what to promise her except my devotion.
On the way out of Earth, I ran into a herd of paparazzi, and what the waiters didn’t notice and the patrons ignored, the paps caught immediately.
What’s on your neck, Monica?
Is that a lock?
Moooniiiiiicaaaaaa
Turn so we can see it!
I smiled and waved, trying to keep the pounding of my heart out of my expression. But one girl pap with rings up and down her fingers leaned over my car and got an angle no one else had. The shutter slapped over and over.
Fuck it.
I moved my hair so she got a clear shot of it. Print that, bitch.
She moved her camera so I could see her face. “Thank you!” And she disappeared into the crowd.
I got in the car before any of the rest of them could get a clear shot. Because, fuck it. That shot should be worth real money to someone.
The stadium was a short hop away, at least by Friday traffic standards.
But I checked my phone when I parked by the players’ entrance, and my collar was all over the gossip pages. How did I feel, seeing what everyone else was seeing? Me pulling my hair away to show off a chain mail locked collar?
I felt like his.
It was as if he was standing beside me next to the Jag, holding my hand to make sure nothing bad happened. It was a buffer between the world and me, a shield against people’s eyes and intentions. It attracted stares, yes. But in a way, it warded them off. Drained them of their power. Protected me from anything I didn’t embrace.
Did it only work in photos? Or—if I changed my attitude—would it work in person?
Only one way to tell.
I twisted up my hair, checking in the rearview for strays, and sang of the braaaavvveeeeee into the mirror.
Sounded good. I was ready to go.
Chapter 17
MONICA
Another day. Another dressing room. I worked on my intervals and scales, tuning my voice to a vibrating fork, and checked myself in the mirror. I felt ready. My dress came just below the knee and two inches above the cleavage line, sleeves covering me tight to the elbow. The beads looked dull and lifeless in the flat light of the cinderblock room, but would flash in the stadium lights.
And the collar, well…the collar was another thing entirely.
It made me look like I’d been captured in the wild and brought to heel, and behind a closed door, alone, I liked the idea that I was an animal that needed taming.
Jonathan texted.
—We’re on the 110. I’m getting
out and running—
—NO! not safe!—
A knock came at the door. I checked my watch. It was go time.
—Freeway’s a parking lot. It’s safer
than crossing Sunset with the light—
—Please please please be careful—
He didn’t answer. Someone knocked again and said. “Two minutes.” Gary. The pregame coordinator.
“I got this,” I said, smoothing my skirt. “I got this.”
* * *
Last year’s Cy Young Award winner stared, absently tossing the ball up and catching it. I felt as if I didn’t need a key at that point, because people’s eyes were burning a hole in the collar already. Since Jonathan had texted that he was running into traffic to deliver the key, I’d met eight players I admired, including one whose batting stance I wanted to correct every time I watched him at the plate, and the manager, who I wanted to slap over the previous year’s play-offs.
“My wife is a huge fan,” the pitcher said. “If you sign this, we can trade.”
Perfect little athlete smile as he handed me the ball. We were in the cinderblock hallway leading out onto the field. Jonathan hadn’t texted since he told me he was running across the 110 with the key to my
collar. If he was a grease spot, I would kill him.
The pitcher was looking at my tits. I took the ball, and I gave him the one I’d passed around.
“You gonna pick off Fredricks tonight?” I asked while I wrote my name in Sharpie on the curved surface.
“That’s the plan.”
“You’ve got the best pickoff move in the league,” I said, handing it back. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
He handed me my ball back and looked me in the eye. “Thanks. That’s a nice vote of confidence.”
“Go get ’em, killer.”
Gary, the coordinator of the pregame activities, handed me a mic. “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
The umps and managers stood on the mound, talking about I didn’t even know what. After they broke and went to their places, the color guard would come out, and that was my cue to go in and sing.
“Wait!” came a breathless voice.
“Jonathan!”
He was huffing and panting down the hall in his dress shoes.
“Are you all right? Your heart!”
He waved away all my concerns. “Please. Easy run.” He held up the key, still panting. “But I got here in time.”
He was so perfect, chest heaving, broad shoulders back, jaw straight and sharp as he smiled. His green eyes shone with clarity and strength. My gorgeous man, by my side always. We were surrounded by people and not one of them could touch us.