Perhaps I was a tad on the overemotional side, maybe a little idealistic, but my only true flaw was nosiness. So, instead of dealing with the dishes, I went on a sightseeing tour of Sebastian’s massive domain. I would have asked permission, but he and Jean were busy being exceedingly gooey with each other.
It was a complicated house with passages in weird places, tiny narrow staircases leading to small and seemingly unused corridors. Everything creaked and felt slightly haunted, as if you might look in a room and see nothing, only to catch the glimpse of a shadowy figure when you looked again.
Finally, I found a room on the second floor. A kind of library, walls covered in books and a huge reading table. Someone had taken it over as a work area and there were dozens of plaster masks laid out on it in varying stages of adornment. Not Venetian masks – decorated with feathers or sequins—these were more ornate and layered. Each one had tiny cavorting figures, or emergent buds and leaves, or things that looked like a clutch of fish eggs, sprouting from the forehead, cheeks, lips, temples. They were extraordinary. But stranger still, I realized they were all Sebastian.
One, in particular, stood out. The decorations around the face were definitely rococo. Tiny figures of eighteenth-century ladies in French court attire draped themselves over the contours of the sides of the face. Each of their tiny faces was unique – some of them masked, some with flirtatious beauty marks. Each costume was also unique, and painstakingly detailed. The mask was finished, I guessed. It was gorgeously painted in opalescent pinks, mauves and aquas – billowing furbelows picked out in a dark gold. I couldn’t believe Sebastian would actually produce anything with so many colours in it. Leaning in to get a closer look at the intricate texture of the of the tiny figures’ skirts, I noticed that beneath each the genders of the figures differed. There were a number of hermaphrodites too.
‘You’ve discovered my secret.’
I jumped as though I’d been bitten. ‘Holy shit, you scared me!’ I’d sauntered through the house to the constant sound of wooden floorboards creaking and door hinges whining. I couldn’t believe anyone could have come into the room so quietly. The fright had left me with my heart pounding, dry-mouthed, and an awkward feeling that I’d been trespassing. I covered.
‘Who does these? They’re amazing! The colours are – wow – I don’t know how they got the colours like this. And the detail! It’s so detailed. Just amazing and a little risqué, too. Who’s making them? I thought you said you lived alone. I love this one, with all the French Louis Quatorze decoration – it’s very intricate . . .’
‘It’s Quinze actually,’ said Sebastian, dryly.
‘Oh, sorry – Quinze, then.’ It wasn’t like there was that much difference, I thought, huffily. The residual fear made me defensive. ‘So who creates them?’
‘I do.’ He walked over to the worktable where they sat in neat rows. ‘Don’t look so surprised. It’s insulting. I said I didn’t work for a living, I didn’t say I did nothing.’
‘You did actually . . .’
Sebastian waved his hand as if dismissing the inconsistency. ‘Oh, well, whatever.’ He wrapped his arms around my waist and pushed himself against me, which forced me to look up, way up. ‘And anyway, haven’t you ever read the story of Bluebeard, Shirakins? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to go snooping around the castle?’ It was overdramatically delivered, but I blushed anyway. He got the response he was looking for.
Staring intently at his shirt button, I said: ‘Well, you guys were busy, and I was bored. I didn’t think you’d mind.’ The fact that he was taking pleasure in my embarrassment didn’t escape me – I just didn’t know what to do about it.
‘Anything could happen – absolutely anything.’ he said in a whispered voice. ‘It’s not safe for a little girl to be wandering around here. You might get lost and never be found. Or you could meet someone with nefarious intentions, someone who might take advantage of your size and sensibilities.’ He was overemphasizing every single consonant, especially the ones that made him sound like a snake.
I attempted a diversion. ‘Where’s Jean?’
His slender fingers crept under the back of the baggy sweater I’d borrowed and was wearing as a dress, and then he tucked them down the back of my panties. ‘I could eat you all up. Would you like that?’
Even before I had formally met Sebastian through Jean, I’d had a sense that he was manipulative. Despite the evidence of the previous twenty-four hours, my instincts told me that, if I let him get me all hot and bothered, he was very likely to just back off and laugh at my predicament.
On the other hand, if I refused to play along, I suspected he would accuse me of being a spoilsport. I had no real evidence for my suspicions – just a gut thing. There was only one way to win at this and it was to beat him at his own game.
I looked up at him from under my lashes and affected my very best Little Red Riding Hood voice. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t like that one little bit, Mister Sebastian. I might get stuck halfway down your throat and choke you like a chicken bone.’ Then, for good effect, I wriggled against him. It gratified me no end to see his gaze shift in discomfort.
He responded. Not with witty repartee, but with brute strength. He hauled me up and plopped me down on the tabletop, spreading my legs with his hips. The masks rattled and jiggled.
‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘You don’t want to break anything.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea? I want to break lots of things,’ he growled. Hands slid possessively along the outside of my bare thighs.
‘What a nasty destructive streak you have. Now why might that be? Don’t you know you catch more flies with sugar?’
‘I’ve heard that,’ he said, rocking his hips against me, moving his hands up under the sweater to cup my breasts. ‘But they don’t struggle and scream with that approach. Where’s the joy in that?’ He had my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Slowly he increased the pressure on them till I felt my eyes start to water. It was time to rethink my strategy.
‘So that’s what you’re after, is it?’ I was trying desperately to keep the pain out of my voice. I wrapped my legs around his hips and locked them at the ankles. ‘Well, then we find ourselves at something of an impasse, don’t we? Since I want the same thing from you.’
Sebastian was wearing a loose pair of sweats, the kind that tie up in front. I pulled the knot loose, squirmed my hand down the front and grasped his cock. He made a satisfying little ‘eep’. I smiled up at him serenely, but my grip was vice-like.
He was hard and getting harder by the second. It actually made me loose my hold a little. Bastard, I thought. My nipples were throbbing now and I wasn’t sure how long I could last before I cried uncle. It was an odd time to be thanking my Tai Chi master, but I suddenly remembered the whole thing about bending like a reed in the wind. I let go of my death grip and started to gently stroke his cock.
‘Damn,’ he said, easing off on my nipples. ‘You are good at this game!’
I found the spot right under the head of his cock and rubbed it with my thumb. ‘Now, what were you saying about breaking things?’
‘I’m genuinely surprised. You little minx! I wouldn’t have guessed you had it in you, Shirakins.’ He bent down and kissed me quickly on the lips. ‘I do so like you – much more than I thought I would.’
CHAPTER SEVEN:
SENSITIVITIES
I had expected the confrontation to end in sex on a table. But no. Sebastian, being Sebastian and more of an enigma with every passing hour, gave me a tour of the masks lying on the table, explaining each one in turn. The secret to the paint’s opalescence, he revealed, was nail polish. He had the largest collection of it I’ve ever seen.
I learned two things about Sebastian that morning. One was that he had definite artistic aspirations. In fact, he asked me, almost shyly, if he could have a go at designing a stage set for my band. I said that, democracies being what they were, I’d have to ask the rest of the members.
&nbs
p; The second thing I learned was more complicated: he seemed to be about as uninhibited about sex as anyone could be, and he was better than most men I’d met about discussing his emotions, too. However, what he was almost pathologically averse to was any combination of the two.
I wondered whether that could explain his peculiarly cold behaviour the night before. He hadn’t comforted Jean in the throes of his identity crisis. He’d used sex as a tool to calm him down. Then later, when he had listened to Jean and I fuck, being all emotional and gooey, he wouldn’t join us. He wouldn’t even let us touch him.
‘How come you just suddenly went all cold and fraternal?’ No one could ever accuse me of not getting straight to the point.
Sebastian looked surprised. ‘I’m not being cold, am I?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Am I? Maybe I am.’ He smirked. ‘I could ravish you on the carpet if you’d like.’
I would have liked that, but I was more interested in the switch. ‘Don’t avoid the issue. You just did the most amazing little flip-flop. I’m interested in why.’
He gave me a weary look. ‘What is it with you and Jean? This overwhelming need to dissect everything. Why does everything have to be analysed to death?’
‘Again, I say avoidance! Address the issue, please!’ I let the mock-seriousness ring in my voice.
Sebastian grabbed me by the waist, hoisting me up until we were eye to eye and my feet were dangling some distance from the floor. But I was determined not to be cowed by physical intimidation. Resolved to have my answer, I stared him down.
‘Miss Shira, didn’t your mother ever teach you not to tease lions in their dens?’
I didn’t twitch. ‘No.’
He didn’t let me go. Instead, he just carried me effortlessly over to a sofa that sat beneath a window and fell onto it, using me for a soft landing. It knocked the wind out of me.
‘Ow! You asshole, that hurt!’
‘I think I gave you more than adequate warning that you were making me uncomfortable. Now, I have no remorse.’ He grinned down at me.
‘Could you at least shift a little? I can hardly breathe.’
He eased some of his weight off me – not very much. ‘For someone who is seemingly such a good observer of human nature, you don’t see very much, do you, Shira?’
‘Sorry?’ Now I was truly confused.
‘You think it’s Jean who doesn’t like girls because he doesn’t fuck them. Jean loves women; he adores you. This whole arrangement was his idea, you know. Did he tell you that?’
‘No,’ I squeaked. I was still having trouble breathing. ‘But I kind of guessed it.’
‘Now . . . I don’t much like women, generally speaking. Oh, I’ll happily fuck them. I actually love fucking them. But I’ve never felt much of an affinity for them on a personal basis. Most of them are bitches.’
As praiseworthy as the blunt honesty was, I couldn’t help reacting badly to such a blatant admission of misogyny. It made me yearn to knee him hard in the groin and get the fuck out of his house. I would have probably done it had I been able to move my legs.
‘Then why did you agree to the arrangement at all?’ I heard my own voice edged in ice.
‘Because I’m very fond of Jean and I wanted to give him what he desired. Also because you are attractive: fuckable, I believe was the word I used in the bathtub. I wasn’t lying, you know. But more than anything, you don’t get up my nose like a lot of women do. You aren’t clingy; you don’t smother. You’re easy to tolerate. I actually admired your leaving in the morning the way you did. It made me think quite differently about you.’
During the short monologue, Sebastian developed something of an erection. It was digging painfully into my thigh. Somehow, I just couldn’t take it as a compliment. I was at a loss for words, so I kept my mouth shut. Anyway, it turned out that Sebastian wasn’t nearly finished.
‘So imagine my surprise, Shira, when I find that, upon getting to know you a little better, I rather like you. In fact, I like you a lot. I have definite feelings of affection for you. I’m not going to use “love” because that would be ridiculous. Not to mention that the word is so cliché it makes me want to gag but, as I said before, I do like you very much. Put yourself in my position.’
‘I wish I could, but you have about 50 pounds on me.’
He ignored the attempt at humour and continued his diatribe. ‘My position is that, after having exposed my feelings to you, you don’t reciprocate them, it seems. And, I’ll be honest, that hurts.’
‘What?’ I demanded, laughing to cover the confusion. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? When did you expose your feelings to me? When?’
‘While you were sitting on the table over there. When I told you I liked you, you just ignored it. You gave me absolutely no comfort at all.’
Stunned was just too mild a word. I was utterly shocked. ‘You call that exposing your feelings? I thought you were making a little Sebastian-like, off-handed . . . Well, I don’t even know what to call it. Anyway, you can’t expect someone to gush all over you right after you’ve been playing serious head games with them!’
Now I was angry. I got my elbows underneath me and pushed myself up a little, till our noses were practically rubbing. ‘Let me be clear with you, Sebastian. I have time for you because Jean adores you. And I love Jean. But I’m not a self-destructive person. I knew – call it intuition – but I knew you didn’t like women. I can just see you wooing some poor stupid girl into some comatose state of adoration, and then taking a lot of pleasure in absolutely destroying her. I’ve heard the rumours about you. And now that I know you a little, I’m pretty sure they’re true. If I were to let myself have even the smallest affection for you, I think you’d relish the chance to hurt me.’
He looked bitten, and backed away. ‘Why do you think I’d hurt you, Shira?’ His eyes were dark and impossible to read.
‘I just do. You scare me, Sebastian. You’re so good-looking, and so clever, and so damn charming. Hell, you’re even sporting a monster dick – not that I go for that sort of thing, but a lot of women do. Sebastian, if someone had to design a deathtrap for stupid women, you’d be it.’
His eyebrows rose, and he smiled. ‘Why . . . thank you.’
‘It’s not a compliment. I’m just being honest.’
‘Yes, you are. Very honest,’ Sebastian said, his voice quite small. ‘That’s why I like you.’
‘Yeah. I like you too. It frightens the shit out of me. I’m not the one who fucks people they don’t like!’ I moved my elbows and let my head fall back onto the seat of the sofa. ‘Now, get off me.’
He attacked my mouth. It wasn’t a kiss – that didn’t really describe it. He began to eat me alive, sucking at my lips until they hurt, and switching to my tongue. Then he settled down to a slow, sensual grind that involved sliding his tongue in and out of my mouth as if he were fucking it. Meanwhile he was trying to pull his shirt off without breaking contact with my face and pushing the sweater I was wearing up around my neck. Having achieved the right amount of skin contact, he sighed and broke the kiss.
‘Would it help if I promised I’d never hurt you?’
‘No.’
All the adrenalin was ebbing away, leaving me in a state of extreme arousal. I did spare a thought for the fact that I was committing an act of extreme betrayal to my sex by harbouring attraction for a self-confessed misogynist. I did this while being carried shirtless, up the stairs, kissing all the way. It’s not often I’m glad I was born so tiny, but just then it seemed very convenient.
Jean was emerging from Sebastian’s bathroom, all pink and adorably moist from his bath. ‘What’s up, guys?’
‘Shira and I have just had a meeting of the minds and now I’m going to tease her until she begs for mercy,’ said Sebastian, tossing me down onto the bed and crawling on top of me. ‘Then, I’m going to fuck her senseless.’
Jean gave a very Jean-like giggle. ‘Is this a number one, or can I watch?’
Sebastian loo
ked at me questioningly.
I shrugged. ‘I’m fine either way, it’s up to you.’
‘I’ll be quiet as a mouse,’ interjected Jean.
‘Okay, but no interfering,’ said Sebastian. ‘Agreed?’
Jean made a little ‘zipping up my mouth’ sign and settled himself on the pile of coats on the sofa, waiting to be entertained.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
DRIVING WITHOUT A LICENCE
Once suitably affirmed, I’m generally an enthusiastic lover, but with all the sensitivities flying around like wounded moths, I thought it might be wise to underplay my part. When in doubt, revert to cliché: that’s my motto. Consequently, I did just lie there and watch Sebastian crawl up my body on his hands, dragging the rest of himself behind like a sun-basking lizard. As much as I wanted to jump him, I restrained myself.
‘You make me want to do such bad things to you,’ said Sebastian in a nasty little boy’s voice. He arrived at up at my face and was looking down at me.
‘What kind of bad things?’
‘I’m not sure they have names,’ he whispered, sliding off me and flipping me over onto my stomach. It was Sebastian’s habit, I noticed, to treat other people’s bodies like inanimate objects. I felt him straddle my back and waited to have the breath squeezed out of me again, but it didn’t happen.
Soft wisps of hair and the tip of a very hot tongue drew wet, invisible lines across my back. They made lazy curlicue patterns in my skin, while he slowly drew his fingertips down the sides of my body. It was a pleasant sensation at first, until gradually I began to want to crawl out of my skin. The tongue grew less delicate, sliding in long, wet corridors over the length and breadth of my back. He moved like a storm front over erogenous zones I didn’t even know I possessed.
Beautiful Losers (Modern Erotic Classics) Page 7