by Selena Kitt
Stop playing with me, I wanted to say. Stop running hot and cold, you enormous fuckstick tease.
Even I knew that saying something like that was probably beyond the pale, so I bit my lips together and waited for him to tell me why he didn't want to fuck me.
“I don't know,” he said again. He drew back, his shoulders straightening, his face smoothing. He seemed puzzled, and then a strange look passed over his face. It was almost... sad. “You do things to me, Sadie,” he said at last. “I don't know if I'm comfortable with them.”
I knew what he meant, but I said it anyway. “I don't do anything to you,” I replied. “That's the point. When am I going to get to make you happy?”
His brow smoothed, and a small smile tugged at his lips. “You do make me happy,” he said, and then the smile faded, replaced by shock. “You do make me happy.”
“Well don't sound so surprised by it,” I said crankily. “You're going to give me a complex.” I tossed my hair and looked out the window, meaning to stare out at the cold February day in a huff to let him know I was really totally mad at him, okay?
His hand on one of mine, warm and uninvited, shattered that resolution. Before I could stop myself, I was gazing at him from the corner of my eye.
“Sadie,” he said. “I want to fuck you. I want to fold you up and fuck you until you scream. But I won't yet. I don't want to ruin it.”
His words made me dizzy. “Ruin what?”
“My masterpiece,” he said. “You will see what I have in mind when we get to Dubrovnik. It will be perfect. And I will give you everything you want when we get there. Until then...”
He trailed off and drew my hand down into his lap, mere inches from his straining erection, but he kept his hands between my fingers and his cock. Gently, insistently, he stroked the back of my hand with his thumb, reminding me of how he had plunged into my core with that very thumb during our photo session. “Until then what?” I asked finally.
“Until then, I want to keep you coming.”
I wavered. Just accept it, I thought. When are you going to find another guy who just wants to give and give?
“Fine,” I said. “I grudgingly accept.”
His eyes met mine. “I don't want you to accept,” he said. “I want you to submit.”
I swallowed. Submitting. The idea was strange, foreign to me. I didn't lie down and die for anyone. I didn't lie down and take it.
And yet there was a trembling note of need in his voice. Vulnerability. He needed me to submit. I didn't need to be his puppet, his plaything, his far-off muse come to earth to inspire him. He needed. it. I wanted it.
“All right,” I said.
He ran his fingers over my cheek, sending shivers down my spine. “You will be the most brilliant thing I have ever done,” he said as we pulled up to the airport. “You will see.”
* * * *
He had a private jet, of course. And the moment we took off, he had me standing in the middle of the floor, taking my ruined, paint-stained clothes off. Smears of color covered my skin, making me look like I'd rolled in a Jackson Pollack painting. Malcolm sat in one of the leather-bound swiveling chairs, watching me. “You are startling,” he said when I finally stood before him, completely nude except for his own markings.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don't speak.”
I licked my lips.
“Lie down on the floor,” he commanded.
I glanced down dubiously at the fine carpet. Wouldn't the paint ruin it? But hey, I wasn't a freaking billionaire, what did I care? I did as he bade, stretching out, my arms above my head, my toes pointed towards him.
“Open your legs,” he said. Then he reached down and opened a bag I hadn't seen there, withdrawing a familiar-looking tin. A box full of charcoal sticks.
“Where'd you get that?” I said.
“What did I say about speaking?” he asked me.
I clammed up.
“Spread your legs,” he commanded again.
God. I'd never known how much I liked to hear a man talk dirty to me. My breathing picked up as I let my thighs fall open, exposing my inner flesh to his gaze.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Like that.” And he left his chair and knelt down between my legs as he opened the tin of charcoal.
I wanted to ask what he was going to do. I didn't think he'd be so amateur as to stick charcoal inside me, but you never knew with some people.
He didn't though. Instead, he took one stick of charcoal out and held it lightly, poised to draw on my skin. Tilting his head to one side, he took me in.
“You aren't finished yet,” he said, more to himself than to me. “But how will I know when enough is enough?”
I could have told him that sometimes you never do, but then he lowered the charcoal to my belly and began to write. Not draw. Write.
The tip of the stick tickled me, and it was all I could do to stifle my giggles as he dragged it over my stomach, dipping it inside my navel, letting it wander and swirl around my hip. Swift cursive letters flowed into each other as he scrawled something across my flesh, branding me with who knew what. Then his other hand alighted on my pussy and without preamble he pushed his way inside. I was slick and wet and ready, but it still surprised me, and I gasped.
“Don't move,” he said. “You will make the letters all wobbly.”
Curling his finger inside me, he ran the pad over the sweet, aching spot at the top of my tight passage that I knew could make me come. Technically. I technically knew that. I'd never had an orgasm from that before. I wanted to see if he knew how to do it.
“'I have gone out,'” he said suddenly, his voice rich and dark as he rubbed his finger in circles over my g-spot, making my toes curl and my back arch. “'A possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night.'”
Something began to build deep in my belly. A heaviness that I had never felt before. It was almost uncomfortable, a dark, lurking experience, waiting to be released, and I couldn't stop it. The circling of his finger inside me was relentless. I quivered and quaked around it, knowing that he could give me things I'd never known.
The charcoal continued down my thigh. “'Dreaming evil,'” he murmured slowly, and I realized he was writing the words on me. I could barely concentrate on his voice. The thunder of blood in my ears was almost too much for me to bear. It was a poem I had never heard before, but it sent the hairs on the back of my neck on end even as my body twisted and thrashed, out of my control. The terrifying feeling in my belly mounted, growing larger and larger. I didn't know how much more I could take.
“Malcolm,” I pleaded, my voice shuddering in my chest. My arms had come down, of their own volition, and crossed over my breasts. I cupped them in my hands, rubbing my palms absently over my nipples as my lower lip found its way between my teeth.
His hand stilled and I cried out, bereft. “No speaking,” he commanded. His dark cherry wood eyes had fixated on the flesh of my inner thigh and the tip of his charcoal stick poised there. I bit down hard on my lip and waited, trembling, for his indulgence. The hum of the plane was all around us, under my back, in my bones. At some point we had broken above the clouds and sunlight poured in through the windows, spilling across the cream and gold and mahogany interior. Warm light touched my shoulder, and I realized that I had finally escaped the cold. I was surprised my skin wasn't incandescent with the fire Malcolm stoked in me.
At last he began to write again, and his finger picked up its magical rhythm. “'I have gone out,” he repeated, his eyes wandering over my nude body, marked and branded as his own, “'a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night. Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses...'” My release began to coil within me again, hard and tight, and I struggled to hold my body still, the way he had asked me to. The charcoal left off suddenly, then alighted on my elbow where it lay against my ribcage as I cupped my breasts in the palms of my hands. “'Light by light,'” he whispered, and another finger slipped inside
me, “'lonely thing... twelve-fingered...'” A third inside, and then he picked up the pace, slamming his fingertips into the soft yielding mound inside me, and I tried not to cry with the unbearable delight of it.
He crawled over my body, let the charcoal reach my forehead. “'Out of mind,'” he murmured. Then he dropped the charcoal stick on the carpet by my head and moved his newly freed hand down to my pelvis. There he laid a heavy palm across me and began to work my tight cunt as vigorously as if he were feeling the same mounting pleasure and needed it just as badly as I did. Faster and faster he went, and my body left me behind in the dust. My brain became blank as every muscle within me tightened and coiled around his fingers, a dark wave swelling up inside me, threatening to take me over, wash over me and drag me out to sea.
“Come, Sadie,” he whispered fiercely then. “Come for me.”
I broke.
The black wave of pleasure crashed into me, bowling me over, sweeping me under. I became lost inside it as it filled me up. I shrieked, terrified, transformed, just a blaze of light and heat on the floor of his private jet. The staff may have heard me. I couldn't say. Everything melted away and I writhed and thrashed, my body jumping and leaping on the carpet as though I had been struck by lightning.
It felt as though I had.
The sensation drew out, longer and longer as he pounded his fingers inside me, holding me down by my hips until at last I began to cry from the intensity, the incredible, wonderful, mind-altering force of it.
At last he stopped plumbing me, and I sank down to the carpet, my body slick with sweat. I gasped staring at the ceiling of the plane while the hum of the engines filled my head.
Malcolm let his fingers slip from my tight passage and moved up, covering my body with his own. Hiking my legs around his waist, he cradled me against him as I panted, exhausted and fulfilled. His lips brushed over my ear.
“'I have gone out,'” he said, voice low and rough with arousal, “'a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night. Dreaming evil, I have donned my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind...'”
Pulling back, his eyes drifted up to my own, and he held me with his gaze. “'A woman like that is not a woman, quite,'” he murmured. “'I have been her kind.'”
I bit my lip and tried to catch my breath. “What... what was that?”
“Anne Sexton,” he said. He watched me, his eyes burning with desire. “After I bought you at the auction, I thought I might become a poet as well.” He smiled as though this were a far sillier notion than becoming a tortured artist. “I was very drunk at the time. Poets are notoriously drunk, you see, and I thought it would be perfect. I have never written poetry before, though, so I went looking for a poem or two to describe you. I found that one.”
Releasing the hold of his hand on my shoulder, he moved it down again, between our bodies and then ran his fingers over my slit, sending another shudder of bone-shattering pleasure rocking through me.
“A twelve-fingered witch?” I said, grasping at rationality.
“A singular woman, unbound by society,” he corrected me. “You exist outside of all things.”
For some reason, tears stung my eyes. I felt that way sometimes. Often. I felt that way often. How did he know?
“Or perhaps,” he said, his smile growing, “I just felt as though you had laid a spell on me.”
I rolled my eyes and he laughed. The bulge of his cock, covered in rough denim, rocked against my slick entrance as he did so, and I realized that perhaps he understood me better than I'd ever thought. He'd struck at the heart of me with his poem, revealed sides of me I hadn't known existed with his art. Cradled against him, I felt strangely small and vulnerable.
Lowering his head, he captured my lips in a slow, sensuous kiss, his tongue reminding me that it loved to give me pleasure as well. I returned the kiss, hard and insistent, as though I wanted to fight him, and it made him laugh. One hand tangled in my hair as he slipped his other arm beneath me and scooped me up, rocking back onto his heels and holding me around him. Too spent by the orgasm he had given me, I collapsed against him, my arms moving around his shoulders, limp and weak.
For a long while, he kissed me, and I let him, too tired to do anything but let him. He could have done anything he wanted with me—dressed me up in a clown wig and a tutu for all I cared—and I couldn't have put up a fight. In my brain, the realization that I had put myself completely at his mercy without ever feeling the bite of a rope against my skin was, intellectually, a bit jarring, but I felt no emotions about it at all. So what? If he did crazy things like that to me, I really had no objection.
After a bit he pulled away. “You seem tired,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps you would like to take a nap before we get to Croatia?”
“Oh,” I said, “I hate sleeping on planes. It's always so uncomfortable.” Well, except for that one time to Barbados with Felicia. First class. My god. The seats. I'd been a class traitor and I hadn't been able to care, what with the champagne and the seats that sort of became beds. It had been crazy. Also? Fucking steak for dinner. That had been a good time.
But Malcolm was smiling, his dark brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “Oh?” he said. “But you have never slept on my plane before.” Gently he set me down and stood up, helping me to my shaking feet. His clothes were streaked with paint and charcoal, and so was I.
We're rubbing off on each other, I thought, and giggled.
Placing a warm arm around my shoulders, he guided me to the back of the plane, where a wood paneled wall stood. An unobtrusive door was set into it, and he opened it to reveal...
...a bedroom.
Oh my.
“This is decadent,” I said.
“Not even the best part,” he told me. “See that?” He pointed to a door set into the back of the bedroom. “Through there is a shower. Hot water. Massage head. Would you like to try it?”
I looked down at myself, covered in paint and charcoal. “Don't you want to take a picture of your masterpiece?” I asked.
I felt the surprise radiate from him. “This?” he said. “This isn't my masterpiece. A thumbnail sketch, at best.”
Jesus, I thought. The masterpiece might very well give me a heart attack if this had been a thumbnail sketch. I took a deep breath and moved away from him. He let his hand fall from my shoulder. “Yeah,” I said. “Then a shower would be great.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I'll leave you to it, if you don't mind. You have given me some lovely ideas and I'd like to write them down before we land.”
I nodded, and he reached out, capturing my hand. Pressing a kiss to the back, he bowed to me before backing out of the bedroom, a smile on his face.
As soon as the door clicked closed I wanted to collapse, but I was afraid of getting his jet any more dirty than I'd already made it, even though he clearly didn't care about its interior. Stumbling to the door in the back, I let myself into the bathroom.
And it was a bathroom. Utterly decadent. I felt like a jerk just standing in it, but I wasn't about to let a good hot shower go to waste. I turned the water on and stepped inside.
For a long while I stood in the hot spray, watching the water run black and brilliant as the pigments on my skin washed down the drain, until finally it ran clear. Only then did I use the luxurious soap and wash myself. By the time I was done the water was running cold, and I shivered as I stepped out and wrapped myself in a large, fluffy towel that had been sitting on a heated towel rack. I took the opportunity to relieve myself before stepping into the bedroom.
Someone—Malcolm perhaps, but probably a private and discreet in-flight steward—had drawn the shades down on the windows, making it lovely and dim inside the bedroom. The bed stood against one side of the plane, up against the windows, and for a weird moment the thought of sleeping next to a line of windows thirty thousand feet in the air gave me a little thrill of fear, and I realized that if I slept here, I wouldn't have my gun wi
th me.
It'd been years since I'd slept without my gun by my bedside. I always had it. I never stayed over at men's houses. I had to have my gun.
I hadn't thought this through very well...
On the other hand, I didn't think Malcolm was the sort to assault me while I was asleep, seeing as how I was quite willing while I was awake. And it wasn't like someone could just break into a plane, thanks to the aforementioned thirty thousand feet of air between me and the ground. I should be safe.
I didn't really expect to sleep, though. I felt naked. Far more naked than actually being naked felt, which I didn't care about.
I bit my lip, then decided that since I had no idea what was in store for me, I'd better at least try to get some shut eye. Shedding the towel to the floor, because I'm classy like that, I slid under the soft white down comforter and thousand thread-count sheets. The bed was surprisingly warm, and I wrapped myself up in it.
I must have been more tired than I thought, because the moment my head hit the pillow, I passed out.
It was the best sleep I'd ever had.
* * * *
I really had been more tired than I'd thought, because I slept until we landed in Croatia early in the morning the next day. I'd forgotten that we were passing into a whole new time zone. When I opened my eyes, I was reaching for my bedside table as I always did before I realized it was Tuesday, and I was nowhere near New York City.
The thought shocked me and I sat up.
“Oh, you're awake.”
I turned my head to see Malcolm sitting in a buttery leather chair at the other side of the plane, drawing in a sketchbook. Had he been drawing me while I slept? The thought should have creeped me out a bit, but instead I just felt a burning curiosity to see his sketch. I kept my tongue, though. I hated it when people asked to see my rough work. Or loved it. I could never tell. But I didn't want to know if he was good or bad at it. It would ruin the illusion he had built up around himself, a brilliant man capable of anything.
I wanted to believe in that. I'd been disappointed in too many men before. I wanted to live the fantasy just a few days longer.