He leans back easily, moving my hand up and down the shaft so that it grows even more. “See what you’ve done to me. Can you make a happy man very old?”
It’s more of an order than a question, yet it also sounds like a plea. There’s just him and me here. I could jump up now, simply leg it. Yeah, right. Out into the pouring rain. I could tell him to get stuffed. Yeah, and find my photographs out in the trash tomorrow morning.
“Teach me how, Gustav. I’m a quick learner.” I lick my lips to cover my naïvety, then realise how suggestive that must look. The answering gleam in his eye tells me I’m right. “Teach me how to take you to heaven and back, just like you did for me.”
It jumps in my hand. He pushes my hand off to show me. I can’t tear myself away. Why would I want to run from that? It looks like it would fit me so beautifully.
Gustav tugs the silver chain again, pulling me down again with a thump. I start by putting my hands on his thighs. Feel the tensing of muscles there. I stroke my hands up and down, up towards his groin and away. Is he afraid? And if so, why?
“Still your choice, Serena. That agreement can be ripped up at any time. And if you choose to stay here and do what I ask you, you’ll find I’ll sometimes be tough on you. That’s how I’ve been used to operate, especially with women. I think you’ll respond very well to it. I think you’ll like it. I think you want to empty your mind sometimes and let your body be ordered about by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Quite simply if you don’t start by passing this one little test for me, the deal’s off. Pleasure me now, like I’ve pleasured you, and I promise you we have some truly amazing times ahead of us.”
“OK. So quit the lecture.” I press my finger to his lips so hard it makes a dent. He tries not to smile at my cheekiness. But then something steely enters me. A new, cool certainty, that this is fine. More than fine. Being around this guy makes me constantly alert, constantly wondering what’s happening next, and he’s just shown me what a couple of swipes of his tongue can do to me. How the world can tilt in front of my eyes when he licks me. He thinks he’s in charge, and yet he’s also a slave to my new, feminine power.
Why would I run away from a master class like this? It’s only a few weeks of obedience, after all.
I’m not going to let on that I’ve never sucked a man before.
I grip his legs harder, slide my hands right up to his groin. Now it’s my turn to spread his legs a little. My face is right up against him. The heat from him pulses outwards. He smells so clean.
His glorious ready hardness springs forward in his lap. I lean forward. The soft rounded end bumps blindly against my cheek.
His hands come off my shoulders, slide under my hair. Yes. I have taught him something. If he touches my hair, I’ll do anything for him. Look at me. I’m kneeling in front of my master. My master, at least until our agreement ceases and we walk away from each other.
To help me I think about what’s happened so far. That curtailed cocktail, how I didn’t want to leave him. How I obsessed about him all through Polly’s Halloween party and couldn’t get it on with a readily available American millionaire. How I nearly ran all the way to the gallery to find him after he called me yesterday morning. How distant and scary he looked in his suit, how good and dirty it felt when he took me with his fingers, us both standing by the window overlooking the river. What he’s just done to me with his tongue. Cunnilingus. A fantastic old word I’ll never laugh at again.
The rounded end prods at the corner of my mouth as if it has a life of its own. Gustav rests his head on the back of the sofa, half closes his constantly burning eyes, and for once that’s a relief. His eyelashes leave spidery shadows on his face as it settles into something approaching peace.
I open my mouth and the most precious part of Gustav Levi slips smoothly into my mouth.
The silver chain is lying limp across the base of his stomach, catching in the triangular shock of black curling hair, like a decoration winding round a Christmas tree.
My heart is pounding. Sweat pricks under my arms. But I want to do this. And it’s not so bad, is it? Think about what he did to you, what he’ll do again if you’re a good girl. My body twitches in lazy memory. There’s still moisture slicked inside my thighs. He did that to me. I close my lips as the length of him jumps over my tongue. So long. So hard. His hands close over my ears so now I can only hear the thick pulsing of my own blood. I stretch my jaw wider.
This isn’t just for him. This is for me.
He is hard now and huge, pushing into my mouth and shoving to the back of my throat and I realise that this cool, mysterious man is about to lose control of himself at my bidding. I try not to gag, ridiculously remember Polly telling me how it was done, demonstrating on a banana when we were on the beach one day, looking really filthy as she licked this curving yellow peeled fruit and pushed it right down her throat.
Guys love you to swallow, she said, biting the banana so that it almost squealed with pain. How I giggled and spluttered. If you swallow they’ll be your slave forever.
When I next see her I’ll be able to tell her I’ve done it at last. Or are we too grown up for all those confidences now? I’ll tell her what she didn’t tell me, that it only really works if you’re falling for the guy. That’s why I couldn’t have done it for Toga Tomas. Or Jake.
I push the thick shaft back with my tongue, close my lips round it again, and start to suck it into the wetness of my mouth. As it gives a little buck, and starts to grow even more, so does the balloon of triumph inside me.
I’m getting wet all over again. Gustav’s big warm hands are jammed over my ears, but stroking and tugging at my hair at the same time. He’s stiffening and swelling as I suck. I don’t know if it’s my breath or his that is gasping and rasping with excitement now, but pride surges through me.
He thinks I’m his pet. But watch this. He’s my pet, too. His obvious, thrusting pleasure is turning me on. I can taste him. His hands tug at my head, up and down, moving my mouth up and down, he’s a little more rough now, tangling and yanking at my long hair.
My mouth loosens, lips losing their tight grip. I start to bite instead, nip the taut surface, no idea how hard to bite or how much it might hurt.
He moans, his hands growing weaker, and elation surges through me again. Here am I, Serena Folkes, just up from the country, with my lips wrapped round one of the most powerful men in the arts world. I am the one making him whimper.
He thrusts deeper into my mouth. I will myself to exercise control for a little bit longer and start to fondle underneath it, the soft balls shrinking shyly as I encircle the base with my finger and thumb. The chain is tangled up between us. He’s filling my mouth. He’s pushing at the back of my throat and now he’s forcing me down over the velvety surface.
I nip once, nip a little harder, then suck, my lips sliding up and down, and then he is jerking, pushing himself into my face, he’s jerking against the roof of my mouth, blocking my throat, his fingers are pulling at my hair, pulling me away, pushing me back, and then he’s groaning loudly and painfully, sobbing his control away. His life force is spurting and flowing. It’s hot and thick, and alien. What did Polly say to think about when you were doing this?
Imagine you’re dying of thirst in the desert. I open my throat and swallow every drop.
I kneel back at last, wipe my mouth quickly, and watch him. His eyes are closed now, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His throat bulges as he regains his breath, swallowing down the shouting excitement. His mouth slowly closes and he lies back, totally spent. I could watch him all night. The lovely man I’ve reduced to this exhausted heap.
Instinct tells me I can watch him but I can’t kiss him. Can’t do anything except rest my hands on his legs, watch the pulse in his neck judder to a calmer rhythm.
After a few moments, his eyes still closed, he packs his subsiding erection away into his jeans then lifts his
hand and finds my bracelet to unhook it from the silver chain.
“Will you leave me now? You can find your own way to bed tonight.”
I stop his hand on my wrist. “Have I done something wrong?”
“No, sweet girl. I just need some time. Please.”
I want to sit beside him on the sofa and watch the dying embers of the fire in the enormous grate. But I get up obediently and watch the silver chain fall away from me and trickle against his leg, and as I leave he waves me away as if he really is a Roman emperor. I turn abruptly and walk into the chilly hall.
How can I sleep after this? How can he dismiss me like this after I know I’ve pleased him? I stop on the landing outside a set of double doors, churning with anger. I’ve a good mind to go straight back down and tell him to act like a normal lover. At least to talk about it.
I turn to grab the banisters. I’m ready to straddle and slide down them in my fury, and then I catch sight of it. The Rossetti painting he mentioned earlier. The model, Elizabeth Siddal I’m certain, is in typical pre-Raphaelite pose, doomed woman bathed in early evening light from a window outside which a river slowly flows. Her mournful eyes are turned upwards, cheeks and jaw pointing down, a mane of tawny hair falling over a green velvet medieval gown pulled slightly off one shoulder, candles symbolically blown out around her.
I calm down, looking at that. No matter where I go, I know that every time he passes that priceless picture, he will think of me. My hand comes to rest on the doorknob of his bedroom. Is he a collector? Has he more in here? But the door is locked.
I glance down at the hall, the flickering strip of light from the sitting room. He must be sleeping now. One day he’ll take me into this bedroom, carry me over its threshold like a prize.
I run up those shadowy stairs to the little room in the attic, lit only by one lamp.
I feel light as a feather. I climb up onto the high four-poster bed and fall into the mountain of white cushions, running my hand over my lips, where I just tasted him. Down to the place where he tasted me.
Then, as the wind rattles insistently at the glass doors to try to get into my bedroom, I fall straight into a deep slumber as if tumbling off a cliff.
THE TALE OF THE ROSE
Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland. She earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin. She moved to England, and in 1997 received her Ph.D. (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Her 2010 novel, Room, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and was an international bestseller. Donoghue’s 1995 novel, Hood, won the Stonewall Book Award, and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. In Kissing the Witch, Donoghue spins new tales from the classic fairytales. It is made up of thirteen interconnected stories about power and transformation, where women – young and old – tell their own stories of love and hate, honour, revenge, passion and deception. The stories simmer with an understated but palpable eroticism.
In a whisper I asked,
Who were you
before you took to the skies?
And the bird said,
Will I tell you my own story?
It is a tale of a rose.
In this life I have nothing to do but cavort on the wind, but in my last it was my fate to be a woman.
I was beautiful, or so my father told me. My oval mirror showed me a face with nothing written on it. I had suitors aplenty but wanted none of them: their doggish devotion seemed too easily won. I had an appetite for magic, even then. I wanted something improbable and perfect as a red rose just opening.
Then in a spring storm my father’s ships were lost at sea, and my suitors wanted none of me. I looked in my mirror, and saw, not myself, but every place I’d never been.
The servants were there one day and gone the next; they seemed to melt into the countryside. Last year’s leaves and papers blew across the courtyard as we packed to go. My father lifted heavy trunks till veins embroidered his forehead. He found me a blanket to wrap my mirror in for the journey. My sisters held up their pale sleek fingers and complained to the wind. How could they be expected to toil with their hands?
I tucked up my skirts and got on with it. It gave me a strange pleasure to see what my back could bend to, my arms could bear. It was not that I was better than my sisters, only that I could see further.
Our new home was a cottage; my father showed me how to nail my mirror to the flaking wall. There were weeds and grasses but no roses. Down by the river, where I pounded my father’s shirts white on the black rocks, I found a kind of peace. My hands grew numb and my dark hair tangled in the sunshine. I was washing my old self away; by midsummer I was almost ready.
My sisters sat just outside the door, in case a prince should ride by. The warm breeze carried the occasional scornful laugh my way.
As summer was leaving with the chilly birds, my father got word that one of his ships had come safe to shore after all. His pale eyes stood out like eggs. What he wanted most, he said, was to bring us each home whatever we wanted. My sisters asked for heavy dresses, lined cloaks, fur-topped boots, anything to keep the wind out. I knew that nothing could keep the wind out, so I asked for a red rose just opening.
The first snow had fallen before my father came home, but he did have a rose for me. My sisters waited in the doorway, arms crossed. I ran to greet him, this bent bush who was my father inching across the white ground. I took the rose into my hand before he could drop it. My father fell down. The petals were scarlet behind their skin of frost.
We piled every blanket we possessed on top of him; still his tremors shook the bed. My sisters wept and cursed, but he couldn’t hear them. They cried themselves to sleep beside the fire.
That night in his delirium he raved of a blizzard and a castle, a stolen rose and a hooded beast. Then all of a sudden he was wide awake. He gripped my wrist and said, Daughter, I have sold you.
The story came wild and roundabout, in darts and flurries. I listened, fitting together the jagged pieces of my future. For a red rose and his life and a box of gold, my father had promised the beast the first thing he saw when he reached home. He had thought the first thing might be a cat. He had hoped the first thing might be a bird.
My heart pounded on the anvil of my breastbone. Father, I whispered, what does a promise mean when it is made to a monster?
He shut his trembling eyes. It’s no use, he said, his tongue dry in his mouth. The beast will find us, track us down, smell us out no matter where we run. And then water ran down his cheeks as if his eyes were dissolving. Daughter, he said in a voice like old wood breaking, can you ever forgive me?
I could only answer his question with one of my own. Putting my hand over his mouth, I whispered, Which of us would not sell all we had to stay alive?
He turned his face to the wall.
Father, I said, I will be ready to leave in the morning.
Now you may tell me that I should have felt betrayed, but I was shaking with excitement. I should have felt like a possession, but for the first time in my life I seemed to own myself. I went as a hostage, but it seemed as if I was riding into battle.
I left the rose drying against my mirror, in case I ever came home. My sisters, onion eyed, watched us leave at dawn. They couldn’t understand why my father carried no gun to kill the beast. To them a word was not something to be kept.
The castle was in the middle of a forest where the sun never shone. Every villager we stopped to ask the way spat when they heard our destination. There had been no wedding or christening in that castle for a whole generation. The young queen had been exiled, imprisoned, devoured (here the stories diverged) by a hooded beast who could be seen at sunset walking on the battlements. No one had ever seen the monster’s face and lived to describe it.
We stopped to rest when the light was thinning. My father scanned the paths through the trees, trying to reme
mber his way. His eyes swiveled like a lamb’s do when the wolves are circling. He took a deep breath and began to speak, but I said, Hush.
Night fell before we reached the castle, but the light spilling from the great doors led us through the trees. The beast was waiting at the top of the steps, back to the light, swaddled in darkness. I strained to see the contours of the mask. I imagined a different deformity for every layer of black cloth.
The voice, when it came, was not cruel but hoarse, as if it had not been much used in twenty years. The beast asked me, Do you come consenting?
I did. I was sick to my stomach, but I did.
My father’s mouth opened and shut a few times, as if he was releasing words that the cold air swallowed up. I kissed his papery cheek and watched him ride away. His face was lost in the horse’s mane.
Though I explored the castle from top to bottom over the first few days, I found no trace of the missing queen. Instead there was a door with my name on it, and the walls of my room were white satin. There were a hundred dresses cut to my shape. The great mirror showed me whatever I wanted to see. I had keys to every room in the castle except the one where the beast slept. The first book I opened said in gold letters: You are the mistress: ask for whatever you wish.
I didn’t know what to ask for. I had a room of my own, and time and treasures at my command. I had everything I could want except the key to the story.
Only at dinner was I not alone. The beast liked to watch me eat. I had never noticed myself eating before; each time I swallowed, I blushed.
At dinner on the seventh night, the beast spoke. I knocked over my glass, and red wine ran the length of the table. I don’t remember what the words were. The voice came out muffled and scratchy from behind the mask.
After a fortnight, we were talking like the wind and the roof slates, the rushes and the river, the cat and the mouse. The beast was always courteous; I wondered what scorn this courtesy veiled. The beast was always gentle; I wondered what violence hid behind this gentleness.
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