Glass Cage

by Francesca Baez

  * * *

  I’ve been to Paris before. Once for my eighteenth birthday, with Max. Once two years later, on a booze tour across Europe with a group of girlfriends I never saw again. Both were magical, beautiful visits, but being here with Javier is downright surreal. He’s not particularly intrigued by the tourist attractions, and I’ve done them all, so instead of waiting out long lines we spend our limited time making the most of our honeymoon suite accommodations. It’s for the best. The thought of being trapped in the most romantic city on Earth with a man who not only can I never love, but also stole all future love from me, is upsetting enough without the constant reminders. And if it’s wasteful to shut the curtains to the gorgeous view of the Eiffel Tower from our suite, well, then so be it.

  When I was here with Max, we took a stroll across the Pont des Arts, bottles of red wine in hand. We did it to make fun of all the hapless couples who had secured their so-called “love locks” there, taking guesses at how many of these couples had since fallen well out of love, despite their gaudy display of affection. Max pointed to the loaded fencing, already beginning to bend under the weight of all the romance, and said, this is what love does to you. It weighs you down, locks you down, each day with new burdens: monogamy, marriage, children. It piles onto you until you break under the pressure. Always a ray of sunshine, my brother.

  I laughed with him, but in truth, a soft spot deep inside me had always wanted to come back and add my own love lock, and throw the key into the Seine with confidence. I never thought that when I finally returned, married and all, the lock would be securing the chain around my neck, and the key would be tightly fisted in my husband’s hand. Max was right. Sooner or later, love will only break you.

  “We’re going out today,” Javier announces, rousing my attention from the mug of café au lait I’ve been absently stirring. He emerges from the bedroom portion of our suite, looking freshly showered, still buttoning a shirt up over his defined torso. I look away chastely, as if I didn’t spend the night curled up against those abs, as has become habit even though we haven’t been intimate since the blowjob in the laundry room—if you can even call that intimacy.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, crumbling some bread onto the plate to keep my nervous hands occupied. “I already made a reservation at the spa for this afternoon.”

  “And I canceled it,” my husband says, taking the seat across from me. “We already did the couples massage yesterday. Why you wanted to pay other people to touch our naked bodies even once is beyond me. Come on, Selina. We didn’t fly halfway across the world just to spend the whole weekend in bed—not that that’s a chore.”

  I blush at the innuendo, although he doesn’t press the point. I know that he’s anxious to get me naked again. I can feel his erection every night, pressing against my ass. A man like him will lose patience sooner rather than later.

  “I got the concierge to arrange a trip to Versailles for us today,” Javier says, sounding incredibly proud. “I want to see my princesa in a real, honest-to-god castle. We’re leaving in an hour.”

  “In an hour?” I repeat with a scoff, gesturing up at my naked face. “I won’t even be halfway done getting ready by then.”

  “Then just go like this,” he says, reaching across the table and brushing a loose curl out of my face. I freeze, worried for a moment that he’s going to try and kiss me, or tell me I look beautiful just the way I am, or some other horrifyingly sweet gesture. He doesn’t. He just grabs the coffee pot and pours himself a mug. “I don’t give a shit, just be ready in an hour. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in Paris, so maybe stop acting like this is some new form of torture I’ve devised just for you.”

  He’s right, and he’s wrong. I expected this trip to be a nightmare, when he told me about it just a few days before we left. It never occurred to me that he would start acting almost nice, almost normal, as soon as we left the constraints of our usual lifestyle. It is a new form of torture, discovering that my monster of a husband just might be human after all. Pure psychological torture, tearing my mind to shreds as my heart finds new ways to hate itself.

  The town car the hotel arranged drops us off in front of the palace’s golden gates. There aren’t many other tourists here, scared off by the December gloom. I wrap my hands around the cold, gold bars of the gate to steady myself, bare legs shivering in my stilettos. Looming up ahead, the palace itself looks just as glamorous and stunning as always, dark roofs standing bold against the gray skies, gilded ornaments shining brightly still. The usually green and vibrant gardens and lawns are all dead, though, dull and pale. It seems fitting for this to be the view that greets me today. A facade of luxury and promise, surrounded by rocky, unforgiving desert.

  “Come on,” Javier says, losing patience with me and pushing the gate open. “Let’s get inside, it’s cold out here.”

  I trail Javier around the palace, barely seeing the opulence that surrounds us, the golden walls looming tighter around every corner. I’m Alice in Wonderland, and I’m so big these walls will crush me, so small my husband might step on me. I’m never getting out of this rabbit hole alive.

  “Here is what most young women want to see: Marie Antoinette’s bedroom,” our tour guide chirps in lightly accented English, giving me a pointed grin. I smile back flatly. “Every morning, she would wake already surrounded by her ladies in waiting, then bathe and dress as even more attendants filled the room. The royal life in those days came with many privileges, but privacy was not—please don’t touch that, mademoiselle.”

  I startle when Javier takes my elbow, pulling me back. I’d closed the small distance between us and the narrow, canopied bed, my hands now resting on the ornate railing that cuts it off from the rest of the room. It’s just the three of us in here, but I feel the crowd, feel the suffocating weight of a dozen eyes on the naked queen, inspecting her, studying her, judging her as she goes through the most basic of human functions. Waiting for her to fall. Waiting to feast on her when she inevitably did just that.

  “That’s horrible,” I say after a moment, my voice coming out in a croak.

  “Um, it’s certainly not something that makes sense to us now, no,” the tour guide says, glancing at Javier nervously. I’m still standing too close to the railing, Javier right beside me now, but my husband is not easy to make demands of.

  “Her position was a prison,” I say, mostly to myself, forcing my legs to take a step back. The guide relaxes visibly. “A beautiful prison.”

  “I’m sorry, my wife hasn’t had lunch yet,” Vega says, uncharacteristically apologetic. “Low blood sugar. Can you take us back to the café downstairs? We’ll finish the tour later.”

  I let them lead me away, out of the cage of a bedroom, with its heavy chandeliers and gilded walls. Maybe Javier is right, maybe I do have low blood sugar, because I feel dangerously lightheaded, the hallways spinning around me.

  The only way this princess escaped her golden cage was through death.

  I have to get out of mine before that becomes my only option.

  * * *

  If I’m going to run, it has to be tonight. Everything will be harder when we get back to Atlanta—impossible. I have to run tonight, while Javier is asleep. The only problem? He’s still wide awake, and even when he does fall asleep, he’ll do so with his arms locked around me, like he always does. Thus, the only solution is to approach this like any true femme fatale would: I have to fuck him into a deep, deep sleep. It’s such an insane plan, it makes me want to laugh. Looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, wearing the strappy lace nightmare that Isla gifted me at my bridal shower, makes me actually giggle aloud. I don’t know why the hell I even packed this, but it better pay off.

  “You alright in there?” Javier asks from the other side of the door.

  “Yeah, one sec.”

  I’ve never initiated sex with my husband before. At least, not without the impetus of hysteria or rage to soften the blow. Without the hazy veneer o
f mania, I feel naked. Well, more naked than I already am.

  Grow a pair, I tell the shy reflection that’s staring back at me. The only way out is through. The only way to escape the man I’m shackled to, is to fuck the shit out of the man I’m dangerously close to falling for. I no longer know which facet of my husband I’m most eager to escape, or which one is most likely to destroy me.

  I force one foot in front of the other and push the door open. Javier doesn’t notice me at first, sitting at the table with his laptop open, and when he sees me, he does a literal double take.

  “Selina,” he says, and it occurs to me that he never really calls me by my name, not like that.

  I don’t know what to say back, so I say nothing, closing the distance between us until I’m just standing in front of him, tied up in all this lace, feeling more exposed than I ever have. He still looks a little bit taken aback, which is fair, but there’s something hot and dangerous burning in his eyes now, too. Good. I try to remind myself that this is what I want, even as my stomach twists nervously at the sight. Even as the thin layer of fabric between my thighs dampens.

  My husband, my captor, my warden reaches up and takes my hand, calming its tremors. He kisses my knuckles gently at first, just a soft brush of the lips, then he pulls my middle finger into his mouth and suckles it. I whimper at the sensation, and he sucks harder. Fuck. How can attention paid to a single digit light my whole body on fire? I feel every hair on end, my flesh goosepimpling in anticipation. He releases my hand and pulls me down onto his lap, the soft brush of his palm along my bare side making my nipples pebble. I straddle his left thigh, blushing at the knowledge that he must be able to feel my wetness even through his jeans. My body doesn’t understand what this man means to me, the infinite dark complexities of our relationship. It only remembers the pleasures it’s endured at his hand.

  “Did you put this on for me?” Javier asks, tugging at the lace ties on my waist, brushing his lips along the bare top of my breasts. I nod minutely, shivering a little at his touch. “Do you want me to take it all off, princesa?” I nod again, perhaps a little too eagerly. His lips move closer to my clavicle, moving up my throat, sucking gently on all my tender spots and making me fight a moan. His hands move to my ass, squeezing my cheeks harshly, my moan turning now to a gasp, though not one of displeasure. “Do you want me to rip it off of you?”

  Fuck, I do. I really do.

  Somehow, knowing that I’m not just doing this because I’m weak, a slave to my wanton desires, makes it easy to play along. Feeling like I have an ulterior motive to letting this man rip my panties off doesn’t make me hate myself when I hoarsely murmur, “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” Javier says, running his lips down my arm, trailing his hands up my thighs. We’ve never been together like this before, slow and teasing. My skin burns everywhere he touches me, my insides buzzing with anticipation. “Tell me what you want from me, princesa.”

  “I want—” my voice cracks, and I lick my lips, swallow hard, not missing the way his eyes follow the movement of my tongue, the workings of my throat. “I want you to fuck me… Vega.”

  His moniker comes out of my mouth a moment too late, like an afterthought. I’m humping my husband’s leg like my life depends on it and I can’t even make myself use his first name.

  “No, what’s my name?” he asks, gripping my hips, holding me down while he grinds his thigh against my center. My nails dig into his shoulder and I bite my lip to keep from crying out. The friction of his jeans against my tender folds is too rough, even through the lace of my panties. It hurts, and I can’t stand how good that hurt feels. “Call me by my name, Selina.”

  I love it when he says my name like that. Low, gruff, impatient. Like he’s going to bend me over his knee and spank me. Fuck, is he going to bend me over his knee and spank me? A girl can dream…

  “Javier,” I gasp, as he pinches a nipple through the thin fabric of my sorry excuse for a bra. “I— I want you to fuck me, Javier.”

  “I thought you hated me,” he says, his lips twisting up into a self-satisfied smirk as he releases my hips and grasps my knees, forcing my thighs wide.

  “I do,” I say, unnecessarily, because apparently even with my cunt on full display I feel the need to mouth off.

  “I can tell,” Javier says, pushing a finger past the lace crotch of my panties and into my inner channel. It’s nothing, just one finger, but I’m so hungry for his touch that my back arches and my toes curl at the simple intrusion. “Pretty fucking wet for a girl who hates me so much.”

  “Pretty fucking antagonistic for a guy with a hot, naked girl in his lap,” I bite back, then bite down on my lip when he pushes two more fingers into me. His other hand roughly grabs a handful of my ass cheek, and I can’t help but cry out, my own hands fisting around the worn fabric of his t-shirt.

  Thankfully, Javier decides we’ve had enough of both the chit chat and the foreplay. I don’t know how much more of either I could have taken. I yelp in surprise as he lifts me up onto his hips, and I wrap my legs around his waist for support as he carries me to the bed, depositing me onto the mattress without much fanfare. I scramble onto my elbows as he pulls his t-shirt up and over his head, and I find myself swallowing hard at the figure before me. I’ve been with fit guys before, but the kind of muscles developed in a gym, at the hand of an overpaid personal trainer, can’t compare to the deadly arms and sinewy torso looming over me. There’s something erotic about Javier’s roughness, something bizarrely thrilling about knowing that the hands gently tugging the bra straps down my arms could just as easily snap my bones. He’s real, this man. Real and violent and… fully erect.

  “Oh my god.”

  The words slip out of my mouth unbehest as his jeans pool around his ankles, his cock eagerly springing free. Maybe it’s something about the Paris lights bleeding in through the window, or maybe I’m just getting way too into my role of the femme fatale, but damn, that’s one pretty penis. A golden shade of honey, tinged with just a blush of pink, ramrod straight and pointed directly at me. Fuck, I want to touch it. I’m already crawling to the edge of the bed, my hand reaching for him, my tongue ready to lap up the pearl of precum forming at his very tip.

  “Get back on the bed, princesa,” Javier orders, catching my wrist halfway. “The only thing that’s touching my cock now is that tight rich girl pussy.”

  I hate how much his dirty, demeaning words turn me on. I lean back on the bed and let him crawl onto me, caging me in with a knee on either side of my hips, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand while the other teases down my side, tugs at the waistband of my panties. My breathing is coming fast now, making my chest heave, pushing my bare breasts up against his chest. The friction makes my already hardened nipples ache.

  “I want you inside me,” I breathe, no more teasing in my voice, no more taunting. I am no longer a woman, I am simply need, unfettered and undeniable need.

  My companion is only too eager to oblige, tearing the panties off as promised and thrusting into me. He isn’t slow or gentle about it, which is fair—I did pretty much demand his immediate intrusion. Still, I can’t help but cry out as he buries himself to the hilt in one quick movement, sending my back arching off the bed in a response to both the pain and the pleasure. I was dripping wet, sure, but he’s not exactly average in size. My inner walls clench against him, struggling to fight the invasion, and my cervix throbs as his thick head presses against it. It’s too much and still not enough. I want everything he has to give me and more.

  He withdraws slowly, making me pant with every inch, then pushes back in.

  Oh. My. God.

  My pussy flutters around him, sucking him in deeper even as it screams in revolt. I have to take this, I remind myself. But even if I didn’t, my body craves his abuse. I want him harder, deeper, rougher. I want everything I tell myself is bad about him. I want him to plant every red flag into my lustful body, claiming me once and for all.

  “Harder,” i
s all I say aloud, meeting his eyes with new challenge. “Fuck me like you mean it.”

  And hey, nothing gets guys going like challenging their masculinity. He swears in Spanish and pulls all the way out, then flips me onto my stomach. I cry out in surprise as he tugs my hips up, my heart pounding faster as his wet head teases my ass. But no, he lines himself up with my cunt and pushes back in, slow enough for me to feel every inch as he enters me deeper than ever before.

  “Is this what you want, princesa?” my husband growls, pulling out and pushing right back in again, faster this time, impossibly deeper. My body squirms under the assault, but he wraps an arm around my waist, locking me into place. “You want me to fuck you like none of your rich boys ever have before? You want me to fuck you the way you deserve, the way you’ve always been afraid to ask for? I’ve been patient, princesita, I’ve waited for months. Do you want me to give you everything I’ve been holding back for you?”

  I don’t say anything, just fist the white duvet for support as he thrusts roughly into me again. It seems unfair to demand an answer from me, to force me to say the terrible truths I’ve been swallowing back. But Javier slows his strokes, pulling me back from a cliff’s edge.

  “Tell me, Selina,” he says. “Tell me or I’ll stop.”

  “That’s what I want,” I exhale, trying to soothe my shame with the reminder that I have to do this, that this is all a ruse so I can flee this man. It’s harder to remember that, let alone believe it, with every minute movement of his cock in my starved cunt. “What more do you want me to say? I want—”

  I guess that did the trick, because he begins fucking me in earnest again then, taking me so violently I feel it in my bones. My nails scratch madly at the sheets, trying to find something solid to hold on to, and my mouth opens in a wordless howl. The first orgasm hits me hard and fast, catching me nearly by surprise. If Javier wasn’t holding me firmly in place, my legs would have easily given out beneath me, turning absolutely gelatinous as pure pleasure floods through my veins.