by Eden Myles
And so I would tonight. I ran my fingernails lightly over his chest and around his pierced nipples. “Do we have canes?” I asked against his mouth.
“Yes,” he said. “I have many canes.” He looked uncomfortable. “Rachaela, I really must protest this…”
“Wolf,” I glared down at him sternly. “What do we say?”
Slowly, he grinned at me. Wolfishly. “Please, ma’am. More.”
The End
***
Bonus Story
NAMIBIA, SIX MONTHS LATER
The young man standing by the baby grand piano in the conservatory of the Beck Estate was as tall and blond as Wolf himself. He wore a smart suit of white linen, and though he was very well groomed, and so stiff and proper he looked like someone had starched him inside his own clothes, a sheath of too long, pale hair kept falling across his eyes, which he nervously kept pushing away. He was the type of boy who was destined to grow very large and broad in the chest, the end result of all those Nordic genes hard at work, though his eyes were an unusually dark brown color. But then, Wolf had said that Anna’s eyes were dark.
“Rainer?” I said as I carried a tumbler of scotch over to him. My heels clicked against the hardwood floor, except where I encountered the animal skin rugs. I lifted my African caftan as I walked, the way the dressmaker had shown me when Wolf had taken me shopping down in the village. The top layer was red silk damask overlaying several long, colorful underskirts, very complicated, so the whole thing made me look like I was floating rather than simply walking. It also made me feel like a royal princess going off to the ball instead of a simple, informal, evening get-together.
Rainer, who had been studying a mounted desert lion with great fascination, quickly turned around, giving me those shy, nervous eyes of his. The color was different from Wolf’s, but I thought I spied something maybe just a little bit wild in them, a little bit…well, Wolf-ish.
“Drink?” I said, offering it to him. I couldn’t remember the German word.
He nodded with appreciation. “Drink, yes,” he answered haltingly. When he’d first arrived at the estate yesterday, his handlers had mentioned that Rainer spoke only a little broken English, though he understood it fairly well. Still, I was told to use small phrases where possible. He took a sip of scotch, a little too fast, because he spilled a few drops over the front of his shirt. He immediately blushed and quickly removed the handkerchief he kept up his sleeve European-style to dab at his cravat. “Es tu mir leid,” he said with a sharp nod of contrition. And then he added in English, “Sorry.”
“That’s quite all right,” I said and smiled.
As he dabbed at the front of his shirt, his hand got tangled in the baron medal envony he wore and he accidently ripped it from around his neck. The medal skittered across the floor to land half under a divan. Looking mortified, Rainer chased it down and picked it up. I moved forward to take him by the arm and lead him to one of the woven wicker settees under the giant bamboo window that faced north over Wolf’s vast estate. Rainer sat down a little like he might fall down. I’d never seen anyone so nervous in my life.
Rainer looked up at me and said, “Danke schon. Erm…you are…” he sought the right word in his rather limited vocabulary as he stared at the diamond on my ring finger, “…Papa’s wife, yes?”
“I’m his partner,” I corrected him. And then I explained better, “His business partner…and his life partner.” That last bit hadn’t translated very well. “Girlfriend,” I said, and then showed him by linking my two pinky fingers together, hoping he would understand.
Rainer nodded. “Exclusive,” he said, which was apparently the modern term all over the world for almost-fiances. Rainer would understand that, if nothing else.
Wolf and I had discussed marriage quite frequently over the past six months, but strangely enough, I felt no burning desire to make things legal—though, of course, I loved my gentleman with all my heart. I guess part of it was the fact that I didn’t want Wolf to think I was another Anna, that I was in this for his money. Ironically enough, the marriage thing was now a point of contention between us—something I wouldn’t have expected from a man who claimed he didn’t believe in committed relationships. Wolf insisted that if I ever turned up pregnant, he would marry me, even if he had to drag me in chains down the altar, which, probably, he would. Then he’d insisted I wear his engagement ring. He asked first as my life partner, and then, when he saw how reluctant I was, as my gentleman. It was a very fine Namibian diamond, very pretty, but Wolf had nothing to prove to me or anyone else. I was his, now and forever. I didn’t need a pretty ring to prove that.
Eventually all this had led to a massive fight wherein I tried to explain to him that I was an independent woman, that he never had to worry about doing the right thing by me like it was 1873. I took contraceptives like a reasonable adult, and failing that, I was more than capable of raising Asia and any other child we might have. I had money. I had the magazine, which was seeing something of a revival of late. But Wolf, always the stubborn hothead, had blown up at me, muttered out a dozen violent German curse words, and slammed the door of our bedroom hard enough to rattle the pictures off the walls.
Later that night, I found him standing on the farthest outskirts of the estate where it bordered the Namib desert. I’d toured the desert already by daylight, but my moonlight it was simply breathtaking, like a shimmering sea of blue sand. I shivered in the cold, drawing the blanket I’d brought with me closer about my shoulders. I stood by Wolf’s side and looked out over the land he loved so much, the land that was in his blood and his bones, the land he was slowly bringing back to life, and listened to a particular clicking noise ringing out, like sticks being struck together. When I finally asked him about it, he said, “You’re hearing the grains of sand falling against each other. I used to leave my windows open in my bedroom at night, even with the cold, just so I could listen to that sound as I drifted off to sleep.”
Together, we listened to the clicking of the sand. Eventually I put my hand on his arm and said, “If you want me to marry you, Wolf, I will. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do, sir. I always do, don’t I?”
“I don’t want you to marry me, mein liebeling,” he confessed, drawing me close against the warmth of his body. “I just want you to never leave me.”
Emboldened by his statement, I shrugged out of the blanket so I was standing there in just my long, shivery nightgown. Then I lay down in the sand on my back and squirmed a little just to feel the course pliancy of it against my skin. The moon hung metallically above the desert, casting a light so bright it made me squint. It felt so good to lay there, to feel the wind and sand passing over me, to feel that old wolf moon kiss me. I started wondering if Africa was getting into me, the way it had long ago gotten into Wolf.
He watched me writhe in the sand for a bit before he slipped out of his jacket, lay down beside me, palmed my cheek, and kissed me. His mouth was hot and hungry. The make-up sex that night was amazing and mind-blowing. He let me ride him as hard as I wanted to, and he kept thrusting up and up into all my soreness, all the emptiness in my body, until he filled me to overflowing. Then he held me down in the sand and kissed me and rutted with me again like some wild animal in heat. I finally agreed to wear his ring, though I told him directly that we weren’t getting married—at least, not right now.
The following morning, my birth control pills vanished on me. More of Wolf’s games. I swore I had to watch him every minute! Wolf would do anything to get what he wanted.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the same was true of Rainer—if, under all that shyness, he had that same deep, instinctual ambition to succeed like Wolf, if he would turn out to be a terror just like his father, ravishing fair maidens everywhere. It was enough to make me want to hide Asia away forever.
I’d heard through his handlers that, like Wolf, Rainer had an eidetic memory, but his mother
had blocked any attempts on his part to learn English, like some desperate last barrier between him and his father. I couldn’t understand why a woman would be so hell-bent on separating a father from his son—but then, maybe I could. Rainer was Anna’s weapon, the one thing she had that she could use to hurt Wolf. But I’d also learned that Rainer wanted to learn English, that he had even defied his mother’s wishes to be here, and that told me something about him.
“Let me go check to see where Wolf’s gotten himself off to,” I told Rainer and then stalked off into the hallway that connected to the foyer.
My dad was waiting for me there and he said, “Looks like your man is hiding, baby girl.”
“Jesus,” I began, but then noticed that Wolf was descending the stairs, Asia clinging to his hand as if it were my daughter who had ousted him from our quarters. And probably she had. While I couldn’t seem to budge Wolf on some issues, Asia could get him to do anything she wanted.
Wolf was dressed very formerly in his tuxedo. Normally, I loved seeing him so dapper when we visited the Dollhouse back in New York, but right now he looked like he was about to attend a funeral—or maybe an execution, his own. Dressed in a caftan of blue, her hair in cornrows, Asia shone like a light beside him, looking remarkably sophisticated as she walked him down the steps.
Ever since the kidnapping, something rather amazing had happened to my daughter. For a while, she’d been nervous and out of sorts. She couldn’t even sleep alone without nightmares waking her in the middle of the night, and she’d spent almost every night snuggled against me in bed. When Wolf visited for Southern Sunday, she attached herself to him like a barnacle. After all, Wolf was her hero, the man who had saved her life. I had seriously begun worrying that she’d been psychologically damaged for life by the incident, but then one morning at breakfast she announced that she was going to be an architect and build houses in Namibia when she grew up. She sounded very determined to do that, very much an adult, and after that, she’d begun sleeping in her own bed again. Wolf had suggested we spend a few months at his estate, a way for my daughter and I to bond while Asia experienced the wonders of Africa, and I knew the arrangement would please not only Asia, but my father, who’d longed to see his ancient homeland for so long.
I marched up to Wolf and said, “Are you going in there or are you going to stay up in our rooms and hide out the whole evening?”
Wolf looked insulted that I was using my Mom voice on him. “I’m not hiding,” he insisted, though his normally gruff voice was tempered with something like fear.
“He’s hiding,” Asia informed me with a nod. “And he’s changed his suit three times, Mom.”
“I’m not hiding, ducky,” he told Asia.
“Wolf,” I said, and leaned up to palm his cheek so he looked at me, only me. “Go talk to him. It’s Rainer. Your son. You may never have the opportunity again.”
He pressed his lips together. His eyes were very serious, like a soldier standing before the firing line. “I don’t know him, Rachaela. He’s not the boy I knew.”
“Then get to know the man he’s becoming.”
“Anna’s probably turned me into a villain in his eyes.”
I thought about that, then nodded. “Rainer’s a smart boy, Wolf. I think he can make up his own mind.”
Wolf thought about that, but didn’t make a move until Asia smiled up at him. Then he pulled himself together and marched out to the conservatory. Asia and I stayed in the hall with my dad to watch their reunion from afar.
Rainer turned his head when Wolf entered the room, and a pale sweat seemed to break out over the boy’s face. Wolf clutched his walking stick in a death grip and said something in German, very formal, like a greeting. Rainer answered him in kind as he stood up and made a little bow. It was all very Eighteenth Century-ish. The two men shortened the space between them until they’d reached the center of the room. Then they just looked at each other a long moment, like gunfighters in an old western movie. I knew Rainer hadn’t seen his father since he was eight years old. Wolf had lived ten years without knowing his son, knowing what kind of a man he was becoming.
I saw all that deeply buried pain in Wolf’s eyes, that vulnerability he almost never showed anyone. Finally, he said, “Mein liebes Kind. Mein Sohn.”
My dear child. My son. I knew those phrases.
The emotion broke out over Rainer’s face like water from a broken dam. He said, “Papa,” very clearly and in a trembling voice, and Wolf took the boy in his arms, held him tight against his suit, clutched the back of his head, and kissed the side of his neck. Rainer started to weep. Wolf said something soft and soothing in German as Rainer trembled and clutched his father tight.
And I thought then, Yes, everything will be all right now. Everything will be just fine.
About the Author
Eden Myles lives in the rural northeast with her family and two demanding cats. Like Rachaela, she is sometimes a publisher. To see all of her titles, visit http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com.
Also Available from Eden Myles:
Indecent Proposal
Dreams in Black & White
Playing House
Freeze Frame
The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn
The Rules of Engagement
Big, Bad Wolf
The War of the Roses
Beauty and the Beast