by P. J. Fox
Unless, of course, the gauntlet was that ship’s chosen method of execution.
“For the subaltern, perhaps.”
“Running the gauntlet,” he replied smoothly, “was considered far less of a dishonor than being beaten. That was a passive punishment, leaving one open to both ridicule and an acknowledgment of one’s own helplessness. Whereas with the gauntlet, one could stand upright and among soldiers.” His brief, humorless smile was a flash of very white teeth.
“Take it like a man.”
“Indeed.”
“Why didn’t you enlist?” Belle asked.
“That would have given my father entirely too much pleasure.”
“You hate him.”
“Not enough to fall on the altar of ruining my own life just to spite him. Instead I left home.”
“And came here.”
“Eventually.”
The silence returned for a few minutes. And then, “is that what you want to do?” Belle’s tone was studiedly casual. “Beat me with a cat o’ nine tails? Make me scream? Perhaps,” she added, “while others watched? Or at least heard, from a distance, how I’d been reduced? To have the world know that I was so desperate for release that I’d share my humiliation with them? With anybody who happened to come along?”
“Stop,” he said.
“You don’t really want me to stop.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’ll tell you what I do and do not want.” There was a faint roughness to his tone. His knuckles were briefly white on the steering wheel. And then, as though nothing had happened, he answered her question. “I do enjoy canes, and paddles, but the specific implement isn’t the point. Rather, the point is that I’m inflicting pain, because I enjoy inflicting pain.
“Moreover,” he added, “I enjoy the idea that the woman in question is submitting from a desire to please me. That the only pleasure she receives from the act is her knowledge of my pleasure. Her…commitment to my pleasure.”
“So you don’t want her to crave the act itself?”
“Ironically, sadists and masochists aren’t a terribly good fit.”
“Which makes sense.” And it did, at least to Belle. “If you get your jollies from making others miserable, then you wouldn’t want somebody who actually enjoyed having hot wax dripped on their girly bits—or boyish bits, for that matter. That would kind of defeat the purpose.”
“Crudely stated, but apt.” Still, he sounded pleased that she understood.
“What I don’t understand,” she said, half teasingly, “is what’s in it for the one being tortured.” She slid an idle finger up over her knee. “Although I suppose there must be some pleasure in activities, which help one to focus on being controlled…owned by the other person. Of being forced to consider their pleasure, wholly and completely.”
He said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.
“Training a woman to be your perfect sensual partner,” Belle mused, as though to herself. “Whether she wills it or no….”
Ash turned the wheel, hard, and the car jumped off the road. Luckily, there was somewhere to go: between the edge of the tarmac and the sloping mountain was a shallow sort of ditch lined with crushed peastone. What in wetter seasons must serve as some sort of culvert.
He thrust the shift knob forward. That simple touch was almost violent.
“Here,” he said.
FORTY-FIVE
She affected not to understand what he meant, merely waiting in her seat as if for further instruction. She continued to trail her finger up and down over her knee, then up her thigh an inch or so. She let her gaze drop.
“Now.”
Their eyes met.
She unbuckled her seatbelt. Her movements were hesitant. Now that the moment had come, she was afraid. She wondered, briefly, what she’d unleashed. Something, she knew, that she couldn’t contain. She swallowed. Although he hadn’t spoken again, every line of his body radiated impatience. Placing her hand carefully on the center console, she pivoted around so she was facing him. She wasn’t sure where to put her legs, or her arms and she wavered, uncertain, but then the issue was decided for her as in a single swift movement he reached up and pulled her down on top of him.
Then his hand was in her hair, destroying the last remnants of her bun as his fingers dug into her scalp. His other hand held her in place. She was forced to straddle him, his hardness an assault against her thin panties. Her skirt was forced up almost around her waist.
His mouth still tasted like gin, a bit. He smelled expensive. Exotic. Like he always did. Only now, with a hint of the outdoors.
She pulled back slightly. “Someone might see,” she said.
“Then let them see.” His tone brooked no argument. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Was it? She didn’t know. But then the question was moot, as she was kissing him again. His mouth never left hers as he guided her hand down. She knew what he wanted and obeyed without question, unbuckling his belt and freeing him. He ran his hand over her smooth flank and let it rest there, casually possessive, not letting her wiggle away from him. She felt his other hand under her blouse, his fingers toying with her nipple. Which, she realized with some shock, was as hard as a rock.
Her hands on his shoulders for balance, she rubbed herself back and forth against him. And then, on impulse, she bit his lip. He bit her back. Hard. She tasted the sharp, not wholly unpleasant tang of blood as it mixed with the taste of gin and the taste that was just him.
She didn’t like being bitten, but she didn’t pull back. Instead she opened her mouth to his as she slid a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair. His hand slid down from the small of her back, around her hip, and then his well-manicured fingers were pulling her panties to the side and parting her. Exploring her. She arched her back, overwhelmed with the sensation. She was wet. As hot and wet as she’d ever been. She felt like she was burning up from the inside out.
She matched his urgency as she maneuvered herself into place and slid down onto him, desperate for the contact. To be filled, and filled, until she burst. When she felt him inside her, she almost cried out. The little wisp of silk was no impediment.
He thrust upward, using the steering wheel to pull himself forward. She in turn ground her hips against him, the friction sending her into a frenzied ecstasy. When he told her to take her shirt off, she did. And then her bra. And then one hard, aching nub of nipple was in his mouth.
Anyone who came along at that precise moment would be treated to quite a spectacle. She was impaled on him, legs spread, hips thrust forward of necessity as the car was so small. Their tryst was only made possible by the fact that she was so small, herself.
Her back arched, thrusting her breast into his mouth.
She was obscene.
And she loved it.
She loved having the power to arouse, to excite. She’d never felt so in control of herself. So desired. She could see the effect she was having on Ash and so could everyone else. Anyone who came upon them at this moment would know that she was a goddess.
Having the fact of their mutual arousal on display like this was intoxicating. For a few brief moments she was seeing herself through the world’s eyes, and she was fabulous. Not the plain, mousy girl she saw when she looked in the mirror, the one who’d been asking herself every morning what she was doing with her life for longer than she cared to remember, but a hot and sweaty woman in the throes of passion who just didn’t give a damn. A woman who was liberated.
She cried her release and slumped against him. A minute later, his hand dropped from the steering wheel. Neither of them said anything for a long time. And then she surprised herself by giggling.
“What?” he asked.
“I want to do this again.”
“Then,” he replied seriously, “I shall take you out every Tuesday.”
She smiled slightly into his collar before attempting to disengage herself. He, of course, looked perfec
t. He always did. Even his slightly disheveled hair only added to his charisma. She, on the other hand, was a mess. There were stains in places there shouldn’t be stains, and her skirt was ripped. She didn’t remember that happening.
“I look awful!”
Ash flashed one of his brief smiles. “You look like a woman who just underwent a bout of extremely satisfying sex.”
“Which is exactly my point!” She stared at him, frankly dismayed. “Everyone at the house will see! And know!”
“Darling, they already know.”
“What?”
“Well you don’t imagine that they’re under the impression you came here as my chess tutor, do you? That I installed you in my bedroom so—what? We could practice more often?”
He sounded so smug. She sniffed. “I happen to be excellent at chess.”
He put the car in gear. “Besides, you didn’t mind a moment ago.”
“That was different.”
“Was it?” His tone was faintly teasing.
It was, which he well knew. It was one thing to be sex incarnate in the heat of the moment, and quite another to confront the housekeeper about the state of her underwear. She’d be lucky if she made it inside and upstairs before exposing herself all over again. Ash had zipped himself up, fastened his belt buckle and now looked completely normal. She, meanwhile, was discovering that her bra and her panties—and most likely her skirt—were a total loss. Which was unfortunate; she had, in retrospect, rather liked this outfit.
FORTY-SIX
“Chess tutor my auntie.”
“What?” Luna turned, surprised.
Belle shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Oh.”
She and her little chaperone were taking a walk outside. Belle had come home an hour ago, the erstwhile goddess too embarrassed to exit the car. She finally had, only because Ash had pointed out that eventually someone would come along to return the car to the garage. And so she’d run up the steps, red-faced, while Ash laughed.
After walking her back to their room, he’d pointed out that someone in this house had to earn a living and vanished in the direction of his office. She’d stripped down and jumped into the shower, emerging ten minutes later to find Luna sitting on the edge of her bed.
Luna, as always, had looked confused.
Belle tied her hair up in a haphazard bun, spikes of still-wet hair sticking everywhere, and dressed quickly in a shirt and jeans. She’d never been much of a menswear enthusiast but, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she had to admit that the look suited her. Being so thin to begin with, she’d been worried that a shirt like the one she wore now would completely hide any evidence that she was a girl. But, she’d been pleased to see, the exact opposite was true.
Her jeans, too, weren’t the sort she would have picked out for herself in her former life. They weren’t what her mother dismissively referred to as painted on, but they were the next best thing. She thought of her mother briefly, felt a range of emotions for which she had no context, and determinedly thought of something else.
She’d wondered before, of course, what her family was doing. Where they were. If they knew she was missing. In her darker moments, if they cared. When she pictured them, there were things she wanted to picture them doing—and then there were the things that, she knew, they were actually doing.
Her father would be glued to a bar stool. There was no need to sugarcoat things; Owen Wainwright was a drunk. Not a glamorous roué, like Coleridge. Not the last of a dying breed, drowning his sorrows as the shopping malls went up around him. A drunk, who’d checked out of his own life because he didn’t have the courage of his convictions. Not to work hard at what he really wanted to do, not to be who he really wanted to be. Not to stand his ground. About anything.
She hadn’t realized, until she’d had time to think—and she’d had a lot of time to think these past few weeks—how much she resented her father. How much she blamed her father, rightly or wrongly, for her mother’s issues. How much she blamed him for abandoning her, Belle, with a woman who wasn’t completely fit to be a parent.
Owen was weak. So was Belle’s mother. Belle had always been afraid to push the envelope around her parents, to expect too much of them as parents or as human beings, for fear that she’d break them.
Was that the appeal of Ash? Why Belle was so drawn to him, even as she hated him?
Ash was not weak.
There was nothing she could do, no screed on his faults that she could issue, which would cause him to melt into a sobbing puddle on the floor. As her father had, so many times. Face down on piss-smelling linoleum that stuck to her feet, wailing on about how he was a failure and a wreck of a man who’d let her down. Her father had let her down, but she always felt guilty for thinking so.
Ash, meanwhile, was unmoved by even the most violent displays.
And yet…at the same time, he listened to her. He didn’t use her censure as an opportunity to declaim on the subject of his own self-hatred. He didn’t act as though who she was had any effect on him at all; as though she needed to have these thoughts, or those, for him to feel satisfied with himself. Rather, he—maddeningly, considering the situation—lectured her on the importance of finally choosing a life direction.
As though she could!
It was on that uncomfortable note that Belle, having finally located a pair of flats, announced that she was going for a walk.
Luna, predictably, had announced that she was coming, too.
Belle wondered if Luna had to go along on these jaunts, by some secret order of which she was not aware, or if the other girl was merely that bored. She thought again of Ash’s casual admission that he’d used Luna for information. The idea of being spied on rankled. He couldn’t simply ask her, himself? But she thought, too, of his assertion that she wouldn’t tell him the truth. And felt uncomfortable, because—as loath as she was to admit this—he had a point. It wasn’t simply that she hated him, either; she wasn’t in the habit of sharing her true feelings. With anybody. There had been too many misfires, over the years.
Mainly with her parents.
She was still feeling grumbly when they got outside, hence her remark to Luna.
But then she stepped out from underneath the eaves and the sun struck her and her bad mood evaporated. She’d never, she thought, studying the world around her, been in such a glorious place. She was inside a fairytale. There was no other way to put it. No way to translate the sheer, overwhelming beauty of this place into words. Even in her own mind. She was simply struck. And struck again, with every new breath.
The air was crisp and dry and, even though it was still warm, she knew somehow that it wouldn’t be for much longer. By tonight, the last vestiges of summer would be gone. It wasn’t the almost too-bright sunshine that told her this, or the faint tang of burning leaves that scented the air, but some sixth sense borrowed from her ancestors.
She took the steps down from the colonnade two at a time, determined to make the most of the remaining afternoon. An hour or two, that was all. And then real life would resume.
“Where are we going?”
“To the brook!”
“But—you’ll get wet!”
Belle turned, shading her eyes with her hand. “So?”
Luna was still on the last step. She was dressed similarly to Belle, not at all the sort of person one would expect to find filling a post as a modern-day Cogsworth. And a human—and female—one at that. But as strange as she found her own situation, and Luna’s, at that point Belle simply didn’t care. She had something on her agenda, for once, other than navel gazing and she wasn’t going to let Luna hold her back.
Luna shrugged. “It’s—ladies don’t get wet.”
“Then stay here!”
“No!” Luna jumped down and darted across the lawn. “That’s no fun.”
“You’re just worried that you’ll get in trouble for losing me.” But the words were spoken without rancor.
“
I have a job to do!” Luna replied.
The two women disappeared, side by side, into the woods.
Belle had run through this section before, and had a clear idea of where she was going. Although Luna shot her more than one glance, plainly dubious. Back when the castle had been built, this park—because forests, for the nobility, were inexplicably called parks—had served as the resident lord’s private game preserve. Poaching carried stiff penalties, up to and including death. Still, the crime was common because starvation did funny things to people. For the lord, enforcing his rights was a matter of principle; for his subjects, it mean the difference between life and death.
Ash was, she supposed, a benevolent enough lord. Still, she didn’t imagine he’d take kindly to finding a man from the village at his dinner table. Or enjoying one of his—reportedly—many women. Women he surely hadn’t had time to visit, at least in the last few weeks. Belle wondered, as she picked her way through the undergrowth, if they missed him. And wondered, too, why she didn’t find the idea as upsetting as she should have.
“What are you thinking?” Luna asked.
“That at home, in Maine, this was apple picking weather.”
Belle’s childhood memories of fall involved air with just the faintest frigid touch, redolent with the smell of apples. Some still waiting on the trees, others crushed beneath her feet and rotting into cider. The twin smells of cut hay and manure. The hope that lay in the knowledge that the school year was still new.
She’d picked apples with her father, before he’d become too much of a drunk. And then, later, she’d had a weekend job at a farm stand. Farm stands in Maine were serious business, especially during fair season. That many were as large and well built as the average supermarket suggested to no tourist that these pies weren’t all made in some grandmother’s kitchen and the fruit grown in her backyard.