by Eden Myles
“What are you doing?” I screamed as the car tore on. I scrambled to grip the hand braces in the roof of the car. I swore to God that Wolf had stomped the accelerator flat, and if we went any faster, we were going to go back in time.
“That silver Jetta we just passed had a pack like that on the back dashboard.”
“How could you possibly remember something like that…?” I started asking, and then kicked myself. Eidetic memory, of course. Wolf had probably spotted the bag on the sideboard when he left the apartment that last day we were together.
With a gut-wrenching jerk, we swerved around the slow-going SUV in front of us, came almost nose-nose with a semi in the opposite lane, and then jerked back into the right lane as he passed illegally. I scrunched back in the bucket seat, trying to brace myself, trying to ignore the invisible eggbeater turning my stomach into mush.
The Jetta lay ahead of us, maybe a half mile off.
Wolf kept the accelerator glued to the floor and jerked the stick shift into a higher gear. The tires slipped for one second and I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as I expected us to veer off the shoulder and smash into the guardrail, which would likely slingshot our little roadster right into the opposite lane—and probably into the grill of another semi.
Wolf swore violently and ground the gears so the car skidded, then righted itself in the middle of the highway. Jesus, I thought, we were going to fucking die. And yet, somehow, miraculously, he got the car back under control and we started to overtake the Jetta. It was a Jetta, after all, and there was no way in hell a Jetta was going to outrun Wolf’s Porsche. As we hugged the Jetta’s ass, I spotted the pack.
Wolf’s face was lean and fierce as he leaned on the horn.“Gottverdammt!” he said when the car just accelerated, and I didn’t need Babelfish for that one. Again he jerked the car, this time into the opposite lane where there was, thankfully at the moment, no traffic.
The roadster zipped up alongside the Jetta and I got my first good look at the driver, a thirty-some-odd-year-old burnout with a prison tattoo on his cheek. He looked rough. When he turned to glare at me, I jerked at the sight of those burned-out, dead eyes, like the eyes of some game animal that belonged on the wall of a study.
“Get over!” Wolf shouted at the driver.
The driver just flipped us the bird.
Wolf snorted. “Get in my lap, Rachaela.”
I looked at Wolf. “Are you insane?”
“I’m running him off the road, Rachaela. Get in my lap!”
I scrambled across the seat and started wriggling sidesaddle into Wolf’s lap, no small feat, as there wasn’t a lot of room between him and the steering wheel. He was a big enough guy, and he filled his side of the car so I was pressed against the steeling wheel and had to wrap my arms around Wolf’s neck.
“Hold on tight,” he told me, pinning the Jetta with hunter’s eyes.
“Oh Jesus,” I said and pressed my face into the sweating hollow of Wolf’s throat.
Wolf jerked the Porsche into the Jetta. We were both going at least eighty miles an hour, and the impact rattled my teeth in my head as the passenger side door of our car was crumpled and rearranged as it attempted to wed itself to the other car. Metal screeked as Wolf jerked the car back and we slid in smoothly behind the Jetta once more as an SUV barreled past us in the opposite lane, spewing snow against our windows.
“Are you all right?” Wolf asked in an alarmingly controlled voice.
“Yes. But I think you just totaled your Porsche.”
“I’ll buy another Porsche.” He jerked the car back into the opposite lane as he steered it into the Jetta once more. The collision jarred us both, hard. Wolf grunted, one hand on the steering wheel, the other wrapped protectively around me. The Jetta slid right, then slid more, pushed right up against the guardrail by the Porsche. The Porsche wasn’t much force to be reckoned with, but neither was the Jetta, and I think the Jetta had finally hit a patch of black ice. The scream of metal made my ears ring and I swore I saw a shower of sparks as the Porsche propelled the Jetta along a few hundred more feet, our doors more or less welded together, until the momentum and ice ran out and we skidded to a halt on the shoulder. Another car clipped the back of the Porsche in passing, which kicked us forward another hundred feet. And then it was all over, and Wolf and I sat in silence in the car, breathing rough and heavy and clutching each other, while great plumes of smoke poured from both of the cars.
The driver’s side of the Jetta was fucked as all hell, but I saw the passenger side open and the burnout tumble out, dressed in a ratty army surplus jacket. “He’s getting away,” I said.
“Blood hell, he is not,” Wolf said, and shifted me off his lap so he could kick his door open and jump from the car, gripping his walking stick in one hand. He was faster than I’d ever have guessed, and I couldn’t help but think about Devon’s story of the purse-snatcher as Wolf easily caught up with the man. I was out of the car when Wolf used his stick to knock the legs out from under the retreating man.
The man twisted around on the ice and I saw him reach for something in the small of his back. “Wolf!” I screamed, knowing precisely what I was going to see. My heart was in my throat and trying to crawl into my mouth as I stumbled after them across the slick ice.
The man swung a handgun around, but before he could take aim at Wolf, Wolf kicked at his hand with a satisfying crack, and the gun went flying over the guardrail and into a bank of snow. Wolf glared at the man, picked his stick up off the asphalt, brought the stick up high, and then down, hard. The crack echoed solidly across the highway, followed by a two more impacts that I felt all the way down to my bones. The man slumped down onto the wet asphalt. Wolf hesitated, and I saw something flash across his face, something as close to bloodlust as I had ever seen on a human being, and I realized then how much he cared about Asia. And how much he loved me. Then he laid into the man, kicking him like a bag of flour, once, twice, five times in all. Finally, he turned and said “Rachaela! Check the trunk!”
But I was already headed for the Jetta. I saw the pack clearly through the back windshield, and something about that galvanized me, making me forget about all the aches I’d received in the collision. I knew it was Asia’s pack, just like I knew she was here. I ran around the Jetta to the passenger side and slid across the seat. The whole car stank of cigarettes and soured milk, and there were naked girls pasted to the car’s visor. I snapped the trunk release, then backed out of the car and skidded across the ice to the trunk. The trunk wouldn’t open right, but I wrenched it up anyway.
The inside was an oily stinking heap, with a body wrapped in what seemed to be multiple black trashcan liners. I felt the immediate need to vomit all over myself. I wondered if I could do this, and then I knew I could as something overrode my fear, replacing it with rage. I clawed at the body, ripping at the shiny black material with my fingernails until it peeled away.
Asia had been gagged and hog-tied with dirty orange hemp. Her eyes bulged and her entire body shook with terror until she saw it was me. She smelled like her perfume, and urine, and the most primal of fear. “Wolf!” I screamed. “Wolf, I need a knife!”
Wolf appeared at my side, armed with a box cutter I had a feeling he’d gotten off the burnout. “Let me. You’re going to hurt her, Rachaela. You’re shaking too much.”
I held Asia up, cradling her in my arms while Wolf sliced away the hemp, being careful not to cut her by accident. The moment she was free, Asia burst into hysterical sobs and clung to me, her fingers digging painfully into my shoulders.
“Oh God…” I said. It was all I could manage.
Asia cried herself into hiccups before turning her head and looking up at me, tears and snot pouring down her face. “You and Daddy aren’t ever getting back together, are you?” she said.
I held my baby and rocked and shushed her in my arms until the police finally arrived ten
minutes later.
***
The man who’d kidnapped Asia was named Alejandro Rosario and he was wanted in three states for possession, armed robbery and at least two counts of murder. He had been on the run when he’d come across Asia, walking alone on the side of the highway, and had offered her a ride. He’d hoped to use her as a hostage as he worked his way toward the Mexican border. He was admitted to Beth Israel with a concussion, six broken ribs, a broken wrist, and a punctured lung. For a while, his life hung by a thread, but then he pulled through and the state police and FBI picked him up. He wanted to press assault and battery charges against Wolfgang Beck, but Wolf visited him in the hospital, bent over his bed, whispered a few words in his ear, and Mr. Rosario suddenly lost all interest.
***
Wolf led me into the room, but kept his hands over my eyes.
I said, “This is really very silly.”
“Rachaela.”
“This is really very silly, sir.”
He slid his hands down my face and rested them on my shoulders. I opened my eyes and looked on the playroom that Wolf had installed in his Upper West Side penthouse apartment. I was more than mildly impressed. It looked like a very clever reproduction of the Wedding Suite at the Dollhouse, even down to the carpet, drapes and veils wound around the massive, four-poster bed, except that instead of white, everything in the room was a uniform crimson red, the color of blood and roses. In fact, roses were everywhere, bunched together in massive vases, twined in the veils and strung on wires across the walls. All the roses were a deep, velvety red. Except for the purple orchid growing on the bedside table. I moved across the room in my purple satin slip dress and black heels, looking at everything, watching to touch it all. I sat down on the foot of the bed, leaned back on the red velvet spread, and looked up at the giant, wrought iron human mobile hanging directly above it. Wolf had been very thorough in the care he had taken with the details of the room.
“Now we’re like Evelyn and Ian,” I said.
“I disagree,” Wolf answered as he moved to sit on the bed beside me. “Evelyn and Ian are pregnant.”
“True.”
He watched me, his hand resting on his thigh. It drew my eye to his suddenly rather tight-fitting trousers. He said, surprising me, “Would you like to be pregnant again someday, Rachaela?”
“I don’t know.” I stretched out on the bed, moving like a lazy cat. The purple silk on me shimmered. I could tell because directly above the mobile, the ceiling was covered in mirrors, something that the Dollhouse playroom hadn’t had, but we did. I watched Wolf in the mirrors. I noticed the more I writhed, the tighter Wolf’s pants became. “Maybe one day, when I find the right man. The right gentleman.”
“I wouldn’t approve of you looking for another gentleman,” Wolf said teasingly. He’d meant it as a kind of half-joke, I knew, but I could tell he was dead serious.
I ran my hands absently down the sides of my body. “In that case, you’re stuck with the dubious task of making us pregnant one day.”
“I wouldn’t mind, you know,” he said, and that stopped me writhing. I turned my head and looked at him from under my lashes, crawling over the foot of the bed, that dangerous gleam in his eye. When he reached me, he captured my wrists in one hand and pressed them down against the bedclothes over my head. “Holding you hostage here for days on end. No pills. No protection. Fucking your brains out until you’re full of me.”
I shivered at his words. It was a Friday evening and Asia was staying with her grandfather for the weekend. That meant I was trapped here with Wolf for two whole days…and two whole nights. I had a funny feeling I wouldn’t be seeing the light of day until Monday, the way he was looking at me. “You know, the beast did that in the fairy tale,” I told him, twisting my wrists to try and free them. I couldn’t. “He held the beauty hostage.”
“And fucked her brains out.”
“I don’t think he fucked her brains out, Wolf, no.”
“But he wanted do.”
He let me go and I scrambled backward, but the bed was unbelievably soft and almost seemed to mold to my body so trying to move very fast was virtually impossible. That was something else I was sure Wolf had engineered—like the mirrors, and the cuffs built into the headboard that I had spotted in the mirrors. Wolf had thought of everything. He closed the last few inches between us and snatched at my gown. It tore while he yanked me toward him.
I squealed. “The beast was really a prince,” I said as my heart started jogging up into my throat.
“I’m not a prince,” Wolf told me as he mounted the front of my body. “I’m just a beast.” And then, with both hands, he tore my dress soundly up the middle, this vintage looking, five-thousand-dollar dress he had bought me. The coolness of the room touched my bare skin and I shivered. He lowered his head and scented the front of my body. His breath blew against my wet, exposed cunt.
I squirmed away. Wolf pursued me until I’d reached the huge mound of pillows at the head of the bed and had nowhere else to go. He knelt there and said, “Bend your knees.”
Propping myself up against the pillows, I bent my knees, keeping my legs firmly together and against the rest of my body. He looked pleased and laid his hands on the top of my hose, tracing their silken length to my ankles. Gripping my ankles, he spread my legs wide, very wide, indecently so, until I could feel the tension in my legs.
He leaned back from me, still kneeling, and just looked down at me. “Sweet Christ, you’re beautiful,” he said, his voice a hoarse growl. “You have such a lovely cunt, Rachaela, like a wet orchid. I love your cunt and your beautiful ass. Every part of you is like some dream come true.”
“Your dream?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered with absolute certainty and seriousness. “I’ve waited a very long time for you, my courtesan. I’ve waited too long.” He trailed his fingers along the inside of my thighs. He pressed his fingers against my clit so I jumped. He slid his hands under my ass. He lay down on the bed, cupping me. He lowered his head and licked gently at the front of me. The touch of his tongue there was like a hot little flame brushing against all my oversensitive flesh. I jumped and bucked, my body automatically reacting to his tongue as if it were programmed to respond only to him, and only in a precise way.
He varied his licks, light, almost non-touches, followed by deep, ardent thrusts of his tongue that sent shivers up my body. When Jerrel had gone down on me, which wasn’t often, he’d slobbered like a dog, going too fast and too hard, as if he were trying to get me to finish quickly so he could take his own pleasure. I realized that Wolf’s pleasure was my pleasure. But I didn’t have to worry about Jerrel anymore, I realized; the incident with the kidnapping had scared the shit out him, and the day after, he’d cut off all communication with me and Asia. Asia was sad about that at first, of course, but then she started working through the rejection. She was my daughter, after all. And I was strong.
Finally, Wolf kissed me between the legs. He took as much of me in his mouth as he could and sucked, applying the smallest bit of teeth. I rocked my hips against him and felt the shivering wave of my orgasm break over me. After I’d recovered, I leaned up and tore at Wolf’s clothing just so I could feel the sleekness of that beautiful body against me with no clothing between us. He let me work over him, over those frustratingly proper layers of clothing. After I’d gotten him out of his trousers, I took his cock in my hands, feeling it grow and grow, both hard and incredibly soft at the same time.
He dragged my legs up over his shoulders and pushed the hardness of that cock into me. His lovemaking was uncharacteristically soft and gentle tonight. He rocked me gently as he thrust and thrust up into the wet, pulsing heat of my body. He thrust his tongue into my mouth, filling me in both places at once, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was truly part of someone. I thought of the connection that my mother and father had had, a love
that had lasted till death did them part, and I thought about what Evelyn and Ian had, and Devon and Malcolm, and I wondered if that love could be ours as well.
“I love you, Rachaela,” Wolf growled against my mouth as he lunged inside me and came at last. He continued to thrust a little, driving his seed deep inside me. “I want you to stay with me, be with me. Be my partner…”
“Life partner?” I asked.
“Yes.” He buried his face in my hair and said, “Gentleman and courtesans mate for life, didn’t you know? Like hawks and wolves.”
“What about Jasmine?”
He groaned as he held himself inside me. “I have a confession about that,” he said, looking concerned.
“Yes?” I asked, running my hands through his hair and freeing him from his ponytail so I could feel the warm weight of all that Nordic blond hair in my hands.
“I…well, the fact of the matter is…I borrowed Jasmine, one might say. From another gentleman. She’s not really my courtesan.”
“Borrowed her?”
He averted his gaze as he withdrew slowly from me, as if I might bite him. “I could think of no other way to make you jealous, pet.”
I sat up. “You wanted me jealous?”
“No,” he said, pushing me back into the pillows and looked down on me so fiercely, so demandingly. “I wanted you mine. But I wanted you to come to me of your own free will.”
“So you lied to me. Tricked me.”
I should have known better than to trust Wolfgang Beck! I should have known he’d do anything to get what he wanted. I rolled him over so he was on his back. I arched over him and held him down. I gave him my dangerous eyes and said, “I think that deserves ten punishments, Wolf. Don’t you?” And reaching for the manacles attached to the bed frame, I slipped them around his wrists. He didn’t exactly fight me, though he did try to look suitably afraid. Then I leaned down and kissed him, hard. I kissed him until he groaned into my mouth at the bite of my kiss. I kissed him until he clutched the manacles in his frantic need to grab at me, but he was in the unique position of not being able to touch me, though I could touch him all I wanted.