Wild Licks

by Cecilia Tan

  I nodded to keep her talking.

  “And he talked the talk: consent, boundaries, negotiation. It was all so thrilling and new to me that I didn’t realize he was actually terrible at those things—the mere idea of bringing them up was enough to convince me to trust him.” She nestled closer to me and I breathed in the scent of her damp hair, mixing with the hint of creosote from the breeze coming down the hills and the chlorine tang of the pool water. “What I didn’t know was that he took me being submissive as equivalent to me being a doormat. He gave me an STD, and when I went to confront him about it, I found him in the middle of a threesome with two women I didn’t even know. And when I tried to confront him about that, he tried to order me to get in bed and lick pussy until I ‘learned my place.’”

  I tightened my arm around her, disgusted by this man and wishing I could time travel back to kick down his door. “I take it you refused his order.”

  “Damn right I did. I learned right then and there that he was the worst kind of fuckhead, and it was super obvious he was preying on my fantasies, on my willingness. I was just a piece of tail he used. And it took me a while to untangle that from the fact that I liked the feeling of being used sexually. But that’s the key, right? I did figure out there was a difference between actually being used, or abused, and creating a consensual situation where that feeling could be experienced without it being the actual thing. Just like people who like to role-play and scream no no no! don’t actually want to get raped by a stranger in a dark alley.”

  I kissed her hair. “An important distinction, if you don’t actually wish to be hurt.”

  “Plus you promised not to injure me.”

  “And I broke that promise.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Not tonight it wasn’t!” I held her at arm’s length. “Did you see the marks I left on your neck?” The ones I wanted to leave so much that I had done so against all rational judgment.

  “Mal—”

  “Hear me out, Gwen. You think you can tell the difference between good and evil, that your sleazebag first lover was evil and that I am somehow good? You’re wrong. You say you become the best version of yourself when you are in scene? I don’t. The absolute worst in me comes out and I can’t stop it.”

  She was shocked into silence. “Right now you can convince yourself that you don’t mind the bruises; you can forgive the careless accident. But when the infatuation starts to fade, you’ll realize I’m right. At some point I won’t be able to stop myself from going over the line, and then you won’t have forgiveness for me anymore. It’ll be the same as it was with your first lover. You’ll be left with nothing but contempt, self-loathing, and perhaps a permanently damaged capacity for love.”

  Her eyes glistened with tears, but her voice was clear. “Speaking of self-loathing…Mal, why are you so convinced you’re going to go over the line? What line?”

  “Try to look at this from your sister’s point of view. Do you think she’d approve of the many lines we’ve transgressed? The unprotected intercourse? The fire accident? Pretending not to know each other? The fact that you won’t be able to show your neck in public for a week, maybe two?”

  She withered a little under this line of inquiry. “Ricki doesn’t need to know everything.”

  “You’ve kept secrets from her because you know perfectly well, deep down, that you were foolish and that what we did was wrong.” I stood. “You said it: two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s only a matter of time before I wrong you even more severely than I have.”

  She hugged herself and I felt ill for hurting her emotionally, but better a small hurt now than utter devastation later. “Mal, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “I like you, Gwen. You’re intelligent, clever, funny, insightful, kind, and good-hearted. You’re so beautiful that sometimes it’s painful to look at you. But my desire for you rages like a fire that can’t be contained. I…” I reached down and took her hand. “I love you too much to destroy you. I’m not as noble as you make me out to be.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” she said.

  I pulled my hand free. “You like when I play the part of the villain for you: the Linder Mage, the Dragon, the Beast. There’s a reason these characters always die in the end, Gwen. Because they’re the villains. Don’t you see it? The reason I identify with them all? I’m a villain, too. Maybe for a while it would work out, but ultimately there will come a day when it’ll be too much for you. When I’ll demand too much, go too far.” Now I was repeating myself and it was time to stop. “I should go.”

  Gwen stood up, too. “Tell me about who hurt you,” she said softly, reaching for my face. “Or who you hurt.”

  I shied back. She had struck far too close to the truth. Having so recently admitted it to Chino, I might have found it easier to talk about Risa, but no, it was as raw and sore a subject as ever. “No.”

  “Is talking about your past a hard limit?”

  “Don’t joke about that.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Then, yes. It is.” I knew I was being unfair, but monsters do not have to be fair. And it worked. She let me go that time and did not follow when I went back into the house. I found the butler, who retrieved my car and who was too impeccably trained to say anything about the fact that I drove away barefoot in a bathrobe.

  * * *

  GWEN

  Well, that didn’t go as planned, I thought as I watched him storm away. And when Mal stormed, it was like a dark cloud with lightning bolts shooting out of it followed him.

  The thing that struck me most about what he had said was the bit about how keeping things secret from Ricki proved it was wrong. The moment he said it, I had bought into it, like, Oh shit, he’s right, but after the party, when I was in the kitchen trying to figure out if we had almond milk, things didn’t seem anywhere near as dramatic.

  That was the thing, I guess. When Mal was around, everything seemed super dramatic. Passionate. Intense. But that meant nothing really made logical sense either. It was like seeing a really good movie and then on the drive home realizing there was a hole in the plot or a gap in the continuity.

  Why was I hiding everything from Ricki, anyway? I’d told Madison the whole story, after all, and she was just a close friend. But I knew Maddie wouldn’t judge. I didn’t want anyone to judge me, to criticize my choices or my mistakes, especially not my sister.

  Was I ashamed to have done some down-and-dirty things?

  I know I was supposed to be. I had even embarrassed myself a few times thinking about that beer bottle, but the feeling had faded. I didn’t really feel any shame about it anymore.

  And shame didn’t mean something was wrong or evil. How could Mal make that mistake? Obviously. Churches, politicians, homophobes, and so many others were always trying to make us feel ashamed of any sex, of any pleasure, and that was clearly not valid.

  I was too tired to make hot chocolate and just put a mug of vanilla almond milk into the microwave. While it went around and around, I thought it through. People needed sex, love, and pleasure. Some of us got that pleasure through means that seemed unusual to others, but we couldn’t let their judgment control us. That was pretty obvious.

  So how did Mal end up thinking if a person was afraid of being judged that meant they were doing wrong? I felt that fear, that under it all we were sick or twisted, broken inside. There were books and movies that made it seem that way, like people only needed kink if they were unhappy.

  But Mal is unhappy. I carried my hot mug to the kitchen table. Mal was unhappy because he was making himself unhappy. Does Mal really believe that under it all he’s, like, a serial killer or something?

  How could he not see that in the same breath he was claiming he wasn’t as noble as I thought he was, that he was leaving for my own good? Does it get more noble-hearted and self-sacrificing than that?

  I scalded my tongue a little on the almond milk and then sat there sucking air through the O of m
y lips to cool it. That was when I knew what my next step had to be.

  If I wasn’t ashamed to tell Ricki everything, it was time to bring in some help. No one knew Mal better than Axel, and maybe the two of them could help me untangle the puzzle.

  I turned on my phone to add “Enlist Ricki/Axel in Project Mal” to my to-do list and then checked my e-mail while waiting for my milk to cool enough to drink.

  There was a message to my regular e-mail account from an address I didn’t recognize, GHlover16@hotmail.com. Who uses Hotmail still? The subject line was “Gwen, please accept this sincere career advice.” If not for my name, I might have deleted it as spam.

  It wasn’t spam, but it was very weird. The attachments were all photos of me. One with Mal at the Midnight premiere. One with Dr. Torres at the Monteleone fund-raiser. One with Simon Gabriel. One kind of blurry and dim, of me talking to some random guy I didn’t even know or remember, one who must have been at the record company party.

  The e-mail read:

  Dear Gwen:

  I want you to know that you are the sweetest, loveliest person ever to come out of Hollywood and you are the best role model for our young people because of your purity and angelic nature. But I wanted to bring to your attention that in the public eye it looks like you are turning into some kind of slut. This is very bad not only for your career but also for the youth of America being seen with so many different men. Please think of the children.

  An Admirer

  My purity and angelic nature? I could feel the whip marks on my back burning. Well, I had just had the demons beaten out of me, hadn’t I? I had to laugh. People had the weirdest ideas.

  I forwarded the e-mail to Reeve with the subject line: “Should I be worried about this?”

  The last thing I needed was some weirdo on the Internet latching on to me. Well, that was why we hired security. See, Mal, I thought, I can take care of myself. I’m doing the responsible thing.

  Thinking about him now, though, in the calm and quiet, I felt tired and vulnerable. The fear that he would successfully abandon me surged up again and I clamped down on the lump in my throat. I’d never felt like this about anyone before, not Chuck, not even my high school crushes in the worst of my teen angst. Yeah, being rejected hurt, but this wasn’t that. This was like when Mal left, a piece of my soul went with him.

  Tomorrow I’d talk to Ricki and Axel and ask for help. I’d tried every way I could think of to get through to Mal, and he had shut me out again every time. Even while he was saying he loved me he was slamming the doors of his heart. I love you too much to destroy you. His words echoed in my head. I tried to only hear the first few words and I whispered them to myself: I love you too…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Backs Against the Wall

  MAL

  I wasn’t in my best emotional state when we flew to Montreal for the next recording sessions, but I’d at least assumed that throwing myself into working on the album would be my best bet to get my mind off Gwen. I suppose in some ways that was true, because there was enough drama and strife during the sessions to occupy any man’s full attention.

  Working with Larkin Johns lasted until our fifth day in Montreal, which was the day he finally turned the band against me, whereupon I bit his balding head off and threatened to mail it to Los Angeles in an international mail sack. He stormed out rather than prolong the confrontation, and confirming my worst fears, Axel and Chino immediately went after him, no doubt to placate the idiot.

  “What say we take ten, everybody?” suggested the Quebecois engineer whose name I hadn’t learned, and then he, Ford, and Samson made themselves scarce, perhaps to the cafe across the street where a gaggle of our fans had taken to gathering each day. I did not care. I went to the fire escape to cool down in the first hint of chill autumn air and look down over the shadow-filled alley between us and the next building.

  I gripped the steel railing hard enough to make my palm hurt. The injury had mostly healed but underneath some tender spots lingered.

  Things were not going well.

  Our previous studio stint, the three-week “trial run” with Johns, had been productive to a point—we’d narrowed down the prospective song list somewhat and had fully finished the recording for two more songs, bringing the total to four. It had made me optimistic that continuing with Johns was a viable option. But since we had been in Montreal, he had systematically undermined me, drawing the members of the band to his side until I stood alone in the face of withering idiocy.

  I supposed I had best call Christina, who hadn’t come to Montreal with us. Johns was probably on the phone to Marcus right now. We had the studio booked for another two weeks here. What I wanted to do most at that moment, though, was heave large objects from the fire escape. Perhaps I was still not calm enough to speak to anyone.

  I heard the sound of knuckles rapping against the metal door frame behind me and expected to see Axel standing there to confront me when I turned.

  Much to my surprise, the blond head that greeted me with a tentative smile belonged to none other than my superfan Aurora. Her blond hair was loose and her top was dangerously low cut for such chilly weather.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Axel sent me up here to talk you off the ledge.”

  “I am not on a ledge!”

  “Uh-huh,” she said with a knowing look. “What say we go back to the hotel since you’re not getting much done out on that fire escape?”

  I remembered what Chino had said, that my sex life was the whole band’s business because I was so difficult to deal with if I didn’t get off regularly. Had they really approached this woman to throw herself at me? Apparently they had.

  The moment we were alone in my hotel room, I turned and pinned her with a mere look. She had her back to the door. I hadn’t let her get more than a step or two into the room. Now was the moment when I should command her to pull that top down and expose her breasts for my admiration. Or perhaps strip down entirely before she should be allowed into my domain, my small kingdom where no woman could enter unless naked and on her knees…

  The fantasy image in my mind raged out of control. Not Aurora crawling naked into the room, but Gwen. I could see it, hear her voice, imagine the look in her eye. I banged my fist against the wall and Aurora squeaked.

  Poor scared soul. She didn’t dare move.

  I ground my erection against the corner of the wall where the bathroom jutted out. Mother of angels and devils, I was trapped in a torment from which there was no sane escape.

  “Axel put you up to this?” I heard myself ask.

  “Y-yes,” she said. “Well, he approached the group of us and asked for a volunteer. And I volunteered.”

  “Did he…did he…” I couldn’t bring myself to ask if he’d screened her the way Nick always did. I knew perfectly well he hadn’t.

  “I…I know your reputation,” she said, her voice halting. “I’m not a kid. I’ll…I’ll try anything once.”

  I want to fuck you until you bleed. I want to leave bruises like flower petals all around your nipples from my bites. I want you to scream for me to stop as much as you scream for me to take you…

  But not you.

  “No,” I whispered, my hands against the wall. “No, angel, you’re not…what I need.” Not who I need.

  I ducked into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, tore open my jeans and smacked my erection with my hand against the marble sink top. Even if I didn’t have serious doubts about Aurora’s actual willingness to have sex with me, she wasn’t the one I wanted. Even the most brazen partner wouldn’t have been able to supplant the burning image in my mind of Gwen.

  Gwen on the porch of my condo, stripping off her clothes and setting them on fire before I would allow her through the door…I let the fantasy play behind my eyelids while my fist pumped mercilessly on my dick. Naked, defenseless, crawling into my presence, ripe for debauchery.

  I
ron. I would have iron manacles made for her, brutal things that would weigh on her skin, and new chastity devices, all of which she would wear for me, bear for me, to prove her worth to me. And then, one by one, she would earn their removal by pleasing me, by pleasuring me and submitting to whatever tortures I might devise…

  I came suddenly, my heart racing and a bellow escaping my lungs as I pumped line after line of glistening seed into the bowl of the sink.

  It took some time for my breathing to slow to normal and for the flush to recede from my face. Once it had, I washed up, tucked myself away, washed my hands, and then listened at the door. Had Aurora left?

  No. She was sitting by the window with the teapot and two cups, reading a book like a civilized woman.

  “You made tea,” I said, as if stating the obvious would help it to make sense to my brain.

  “I thought it might help you calm down.” She put down her book and poured both cups. I picked mine up while she added milk and sugar to her own.

  “You look confused,” she said after taking a sip.

  “I confess that I am. I didn’t expect you to stay.”

  “Mal,” she said. “Maybe this will come as a shock to you, but some fans aren’t after sex.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “Just to help, honey. Just to help.”

  I leaned back in the chair, exhausted. “I…appreciate that. Thank you. I apologize if I was uncouth.”

  “You’ve been through a lot. Is there anything I can do?”

  It was soothing to hear a kind voice. “Yes. Please take a message back to Axel that…” That I need to be alone to cool down and get my head together. That’s what I should have said, but what came out was: “They can expect me back in the studio after the four of them come to their senses and stop listening to the poisonous drivel that Johns has been feeding them. Can you do that?”