by Cecilia Tan
I squirmed, wanting to escape to the ladies’ room but unwilling to make a scene. So I sat there in the dark, awash in desire, intensely aware of the scent of leather from the man beside me and wishing I could climb into his lap.
Chapter Three
Inside
MAL
I have never seen a pornographic film while in formal wear in a crowded theater, but the experience of watching Midnight was very nearly that for myriad reasons. I wondered if the director was a closet kinkster or if it was merely my reaction to the scenes, perhaps to my adolescent memories of reading the book and masturbating furiously.
At first I chided my imagination for tricking me into thinking Gwen Hamilton was also finding the film arousing. Her bosom heaved enticingly, the hint of cleavage that showed beyond the edge of her dress far more erotic to me than the projections on the screen. I warned myself that reading too much into a woman’s signals had gotten me into trouble before. But then she gripped my arm during the ravishment scene, her nails digging into me. Was it my imagination after all? Even if it was, the scene was so rapturous that the sensation of her nails against my skin transformed from pain to pleasure.
By the time the credits rolled, I was painfully hard. As such, I was not going to be very polite company. The moment the final applause died down, I stood.
“Coming to the after-party?” Axel asked.
“I think not. I’ve…had enough glitz and glamor for one evening.”
To my surprise, Gwen said quickly, “Me too. Ricki, you and Axel go on to the party. I’ll have Riggs drop Mal off and then take me home.”
“If you’re sure?” Ricki asked, glancing around at the three of us. Everyone seemed to be on the same page. “All right. See you at home.”
Hence, far sooner than I had thought possible, we were ensconced in the spacious, quiet back of the car, out of the public eye. That in itself was a relief. Gwen’s driver had engaged the privacy screen. Now I only had to keep up my manners for one.
“Ms. Hamilton, thank you for the gracious offer of a ride home. I truly appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it. I’d had about enough of the spotlight for one night. Whew.” She crossed her legs, her thighs looking creamy white in contrast to her fiery red dress. I curled my fingers against my own thigh, trying to curtail the desire to reach out for that flesh, to pull her toward me and ravish her like something from my fantasies. Or like something from last night, for that matter. I scolded myself. Down. Just because this woman is beside you doesn’t mean you can put your cock in her.
That girl from last night, though, I found myself wishing she were sitting beside me. A woman I could command to straddle me, to use her body to satisfy my needs and who would do it without hesitation. Or perhaps only enough hesitation to heighten my anticipation. She had been glorious. Perfect.
Against my better judgment, I had made up my mind to search for her. A plan was forming in my mind—the fan network? Aurora?—and I found myself unable to resist it. The warning bells were ringing in my head—but then again, I liked my music loud and chaotic.
It was making it hard to concentrate on being polite to Gwen Hamilton, however. I tried to steer the conversation to a safe topic. “You said Ariadne Wood was your favorite author when you were growing up?”
“Oh, yes. I bought every book of hers I could get.” She pressed her finely shaped hand to her cheek and I had a moment of déjà vu about last night. I was so obsessed with that Excrucia girl that the littlest things were reminding me of her.
Don’t be ridiculous. Focus. Wait until you get home and get off and then your brain will work again, you dolt. “Same here. And as I got older, I…discovered more and more of her hidden themes.”
With a sly smile, Gwen gave me a sideways look. “Sex, you mean.”
So much for finding a safe topic. “Well, yes. What else would a book that hinges on a werewolf finding his fated mate be about?”
“Oh, God, I loved that one,” she said, all slyness gone. “Nightfang. I think I read it so many times the pages fell out.”
So had I. What a curious thing to find in common with her. “Indeed. Somehow she managed a plot in which the hero must have sex with all his prospective mates without ever triggering the censors.” The indirect language and tasteful fades to black hadn’t stopped me from vividly imagining what had happened between the pages, though. In that book and in many of her others.
“I was fascinated by this film adaptation. So sensual! Was it very different from the book?” The graceful expanse of Gwen’s neck seemed to stretch out before me as she tilted her head, almost as if she were beckoning me to bite her.
She couldn’t possibly know the effect she was having on me, sending my fantasies into overdrive. I wanted to pull her head back by her hair and dapple her neck with the marks of my teeth. I wanted to bury my face between her legs and feast upon forbidden fruit.
But those things were for the groupies, the wild women, the fly-by-nights. The ones who could take it, who wouldn’t cry foul in the morning, who would worship my cock as a source of pleasure or pain, not of baby-making sperm. The women who knew what they wanted from me, a sexual conquest, an erotic adventure—not a boyfriend or a husband or social status. This is why I lived by the rules I did.
I was not going to terrorize this nice society girl with my depraved desires. I was not. I was not. I cleared my throat, trying to keep the conversation on a clean and polite path. “Hard to say.” I failed. My mouth gave me away: “Perhaps the images themselves reflect a sensuality inherent in the book, or perhaps it’s that the memories they invoked of my reading experience, but I found it highly…stimulating.”
Her cheeks were nearly as aglow as her dress, but I felt her hand on my arm. “I found it stimulating as well.”
Did she? Her hand felt as if it were burning my skin right through the sleeve of my jacket.
“Ah.” I gave her a nod of acknowledgment, at a loss for what else to say or do, other than apologize for crossing the line.
Before I could do so, however, Gwen Hamilton crossed the line herself. “I want you to know, I don’t have a chance to meet a lot of guys like you.”
“Oh? Like me in what way?”
“Um, in th-the way that I am attracted to you,” she said, stumbling over her words slightly. “I mean, I know this was just a publicity date, but I’m actually very, very attracted to you, Mal.”
She didn’t know what she was saying. Of course she didn’t, because she didn’t know the real me. She had met only the polite version of me, the public veneer that I was, even now, struggling to keep from peeling away.
I took her hand to try to reduce some of the sting, because I knew my next words were going to come across very cold. “I’m sorry to be such a disappointment, then. You are lovely, Gwen, an ideal and charming companion for an event like this, and I thank you for that. But I cannot have sex with you.”
“No?” She looked truly puzzled. “Why not?”
“For one thing, my tastes may shock you. For another, I do not invite romantic entanglements.”
Her eyes flashed in challenge. “Who said I wanted romance?”
That startled a laugh out of me. Was she for real? Or was she playing? “Oh ho, are you saying you’re only interested in a bit of casual sex? I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s rude to judge a person by appearance.” She thrust her sharp chin at me. “Why is it so hard to believe I might be as turned on as you are?”
I let go of her hand. “I am not turned on.”
“You’re so hard I can practically see the tip of your dick sticking out of your pants.”
I glanced down to see if that were true—not quite.
“Seriously, Mal Kenneally, you’re a consenting adult. I’m a consenting adult. If we’re both horny, I don’t see why we can’t do something about it.” She gave a shrug like she was being wholly reasonable.
And I admit, it did sound wholly reasonable. But like the monster
in Midnight, once the Need took hold of my brain, my ability to judge logic was severely curtailed. The beast inside me smelled prey. She was offering herself. How dare I say no…?
But, no. No. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Sex? I know what sex is, Mal.” Her eyes had an enticing depth, a playfulness and a sensuality that I wanted to plumb. “I’ve even had it before, if you’re under the misguided notion I’m some kind of virgin.”
Well, thank goodness for that…? I’d taken my cousin Camilla’s virginity a few months after I’d lost my own. At the time the forbidden fruit had been irresistible, but we’d both come to regret it and I’d avoided virgins ever since. But Gwen still truly did not know what she was asking. “I mean, you don’t know what sex with me entails. You don’t know the slightest thing about me.”
“So tell me. Enlighten me.” She bit her lip and my mouth nearly watered at the sight. “I would love to know more about you.”
I focused my mind on a bracing dose of the truth, to splash some cold reality on both of our superheated libidos. “I have boundaries. Strict rules.”
“Boundaries are good,” she agreed.
“For example, one of my rules is that I don’t do…repeat engagements.”
“Repeat engagements?”
Perhaps vulgarity was necessary for the shocking effect I hoped for. “I don’t fuck a woman twice.”
Wrong. “Who said I wanted you twice?”
“Ha. Another is that I don’t fuck bossy women.” The Need surged and I fought to keep my voice calm and dispassionate. “I fuck obedient, pliant, submissive women who have to work very hard to earn my cock.”
If I thought that little speech was going to scare her away, I was quite wrong, again. Her tongue darted against her lower lip and every instinct in me screamed that I should grab her and devour her mouth rather than allow her to speak. But I did not. “What…what would I have to do to earn it?”
“Could you be taught to obey?”
“By you, I could,” she said.
Gods and monsters. This could not be happening. “May I remind you”—and myself!—“this is not a negotiation, Ms. Hamilton. This is…me telling you the reasons why we cannot have a sexual relationship.”
“I haven’t heard anything to convince me of that yet,” she said. “I thought it was you telling me about yourself so I could make an informed decision about whether to pursue a sexual relationship with you.”
“You still haven’t heard it all!” I snapped. My emotions were definitely getting the better of me.
A reflection of my anger flared in her eyes before it settled to a simmer of concern. “I’m sorry. Go on, Mal.”
“One of my biggest rules,” I growled, trying to tamp down the turmoil roiling inside me, “is that I do not date.”
“Yet…here we are on a date?” she probed cautiously.
“I mean, I do not date women like you.”
“Like me?”
Rich, heiress, cultured, blond…I couldn’t explain any of those things without it seeming insulting. Maybe there was no way around it, though, other than to plow ahead with the truth. “Before I cut off contact with my family, they were constantly arranging dates with women like you. By which I mean moneyed heiresses and, yes, nearly always blond.”
Her voice was slinky with skepticism, her intelligence sharp even if her manner was gentle. “And you can’t date me because your family might approve of me?”
“No. That would be juvenile. It’s that my repeated negative experiences with those women taught me my needs lie elsewhere. And regardless of my reasons for erecting my boundaries, I still expect them to be respected.”
“Ah, true.” She settled back against the plush seat of the car with a sigh and I felt another surge of desire despite everything I had just said. After all, those boundaries were all to protect my heart. My cock could not care less what my heart felt or my brain thought about the situation.
And it wasn’t just my cock that wanted to plunge into her. My fingers ached to grip her flesh, to sink into her hair, to pull her nipples until she cried out. My mouth wanted to taste every inch of her pliant skin, discovering what was hidden by the fabric of her dress, leaving it marked by my teeth, my nails, by whatever implement I wished…
I needed to find the girl from last night. That was the only solution. I needed someone as an outlet for my most twisted desires. What could be more perfect than a woman with the word Excrucia tattooed alongside her most intimate place? Love Pain. Did that mean she loved pain or that love was pain?
Both, perhaps.
Gwen was talking, though. “I swore off prep school boys and fraternity brothers for much the same reasons, I guess.” She looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “Now you’re going to try to convince me you’re the ultimate prep school boy, but you’re going to fail, Mal. I know you’re not like that.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know too many of them who are rock stars, for one thing,” she pointed out. “It’s all right, Mal. If you don’t…want me, I can take it like an adult. You don’t have to invent a bunch of excuses.”
“They’re not excuses,” I heard myself say earnestly. Somehow she kept wrong-footing me with her own mix of sincerity and honesty. I wasn’t used to anyone—much less heiresses—being so open or aware. Axel had warned me the Hamiltons were different. I tamped down the temptation to find out how different. “It’s nothing personal. I’ve…found you to be a charming companion for an evening such as this, Gwen.”
She relented with another sigh. “Well, for what it’s worth, I liked going out with you, too. I predict my sister and Axel are going to try to get us together again.”
“Seems certain.”
“Are you okay with that? Because I suppose if I have to go out and be seen, I’d rather it was with you than, well, some actual grabby, selfish prep school product who thinks boobs are like the dials on his daddy’s yacht.”
She made me laugh in spite of myself and the burning need below my belly. “Likewise. It is far more pleasant to talk to you than to some model they would hire for me out of a catalog or something.”
“Good,” she said, and folded her hands above her knee, looking through the dark-tinted window away from me.
I could make out that we were on Santa Monica Boulevard and we would be at my condo soon. We lapsed into silence. Did she feel how fragile the balance was between us? Did she understand how tenuous my position could be? The need for a public image that hid the truth of my desires yet projected a dangerous sensuality to my fans was a tricky strait to navigate. As Christina would say, my image was an asset to be maintained. My publicity value was an asset to be guarded. I reminded myself being seen in public with Gwen was a tactic for doing so, and I found myself grateful that she seemed to understand this.
And gratitude was a feeling I should express when felt, or so I had learned. “Thank you,” I said quietly.
“You’re welcome, Mal,” she replied, just as quietly.
She was an intriguing woman, wasn’t she? Try as I might to encase her in my mind as nothing more than a stratagem, my curiosity was piqued.
Curiosity could be even more dangerous than flat-out lust, though. I forced myself to think about Excrucia instead. In her, had I found a woman whose interest in pain complemented my own?
I’d dabbled in the organized bondage and fetish communities in both the UK and the States, but as fame had grown, I’d pulled back from anything that could be scandalous—much as I would have relished my family’s horror had I landed in the tabloids for it. The classes and seminars on safety and technique made sense to me but also left me feeling cold and unmoved inside. No one seemed to value pain for what it was: actual pain.
I’d discovered pain as a secret friend at a childhood Christmas party, candles everywhere, tapers and tea lights. I’ve always liked candles, the flickering light making everything seem like a dream. At the dinner table I started playing with the flame of a tea
light with the tip of my finger, flicking it back and forth. Did you know you can feel a flame without getting burned? It feels like air pressure, like gossamer, like the touch of a ghost.
I began to test myself. How long could I keep my finger in the flame without it hurting? And then the test became how long could I keep my finger in the flame despite it hurting?
That was when I started to feel alive.
I didn’t discover that inflicting pain on others was just as good—better, even—until I was a teenager. I was sent to a boarding school with many longstanding traditions, most of them unacknowledged by the faculty and administration. I don’t know about the girls at the school down the road, but among the boys, hazing rituals and tests of endurance—especially those involving nudity and jeopardy to one’s genitalia—were commonplace. Points of honor were won through such activities.
Bullying was never my style. I was not interested in picking on the weak. Sadism without honor is madness. What intrigued me was the submission of willing victims. Everyone who wants pain has their reasons. Some feel pain as pleasure. Some experience emotional catharsis through it. Some test themselves and their mettle.
Some simply feel alive.
My imagination flooded with erotic images. If the redhead from last night were sitting beside me, what would I do? My fantasy reeled off as easily as a porn film. I would say to her, “If you are truly giving yourself to me, you’ll climb onto my cock right now.”
“Right now?” she would ask.
“Yes, this second. Or I’ll have the chauffeur take you to your destination and never see you again.”
Her lip would tremble slightly and then she would ask, “And if I do it? If I pass your test?”
“Then we will proceed directly to my home, where you will spend the next two weeks as my fucktoy, naked and prepared for me to take you anytime the mood strikes me.”