by Selena Kitt
Reaching down, he stroked my face. “I'm afraid you have set yourself up for an impossible task, Sadie.”
I tried not to show my trepidation. I was starting to believe him. But there wasn't anything I could do about it now. I'd vowed to try my best to reach the person under the armor. I knew he was there. But he was right—knowing and feeling are two different things. If I couldn't reach his heart—and there had to be something there, otherwise he wouldn't have felt any pain at all—then I could never draw out the man I truly wanted to know.
I could never talk him out of killing himself, I realized. But earnest words are never the only thing in a woman's arsenal.
I could also be flippant.
“Don't worry about me,” I said. “You forget. I was an artist before I was a personal assistant. I'm like a world expert at banging my head against a wall.”
A half-smile graced his lips. “Is that so? I wasn't aware art was so difficult.”
“That's 'cause you're doing it wrong,” I replied. “You have to dig deep.”
“There's nowhere to dig,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Then show the world how shallow you are. You have to dig really deep to demonstrate that.”
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” I replied. “Because there is nothing harder than making a piece of art that someone can just look at and say, 'yeah, that says absolutely nothing.'”
He pursed his lips. “What about abstract art?”
“You'd better believe that says something,” I told him. “For a lot of abstract artists, it was a rebellion against fascism, or a comment on modern life. Nothing makes much sense after a war so huge it ripped everyone up and changed the entire world. There was a lot of commentary on breaking free of old strictures and shit like that that didn't make any sense in a senseless world.”
He blinked. “Oh. So you're saying that I somehow have to make art that means less than saying 'everything is meaningless?'”
The joke was on him. All art says something, even if you think it doesn't, because it's a conversation between the artist and the audience, and the only way to be utterly meaningless was to never make the attempt at all.
I wasn't about to tell him that, though. I didn't want him deciding it was impossible and offing himself right then and there. He had something to say, and I wanted him to figure out what it was. His desire to create was just a sign that he wasn't too far gone, because to speak and be heard is an affirmation, and when he understood that I knew he would see things differently.
I smiled. “You are certainly welcome to try,” I told him.
Confusion passed over his features. “All right, I know you said not everything is a challenge, but that sounds like a challenge.”
I grinned. “Fine. That was a challenge,” I said. “You think you're so great at everything? Prove it.”
He regarded me, wordless, for a few moments. “All right,” he said. “I will.” Then he reached down and took my hand, drawing me to my feet. “But now, I believe it is time for you to uphold your part of our bargain.”
I followed him to the bedroom, past a spiral staircase and down a tiny hallway. When he opened the door I had to bite my lip to keep from gasping in astonishment. He led me inside, then dropped my hand and stood back, allowing me to take it in.
I stared at the room. Sumptuous. Decadent. Delicious. Rows of windows displaying the darkness outside. A desk on one side of the room, a couch on the other. A flat-screen TV at one end.
And a four-poster bed at the other.
"I'm afraid I wasn't entirely truthful when I said I didn't make any changes to the interior of the boat," Malcolm admitted from behind me. "The bed is my own personal touch."
Really? A four-poster bed? On a yacht?
Then it hit me. Of course he'd have a four-poster bed on his yacht, I realized. The better to tie you up, my dear.
His hand alighted on my back. Hot and insistent, he guided me to the bed. "Stand here," he commanded. "I'm going to bind you."
I stiffened, and he felt it. Gently, he turned me around and put his hands on my shoulders, meeting my eyes with his. He searched my face for a moment, looking for something, and I couldn't have said if he found it or not.
"I've poured myself out to you, Sadie," he said finally. "Trust me. Give me this one last fling."
Anger boiled up in me. One last fling? He was so selfish. But if he persisted in thinking that he was going to kick the bucket, then fine. I'd give him his fling. I'd fling him so hard he'd have to stay. Or... come back. Like a boomerang.
Not the best metaphor, but it would have to do.
"All right," I said, and the smile that broke over his features was beatific.
He took his own sweet time setting things up. The ropes he used were stored in one of the dresser drawers, and I watched as he drew them out, long and sinuous. Black. Velvet. At least they weren't red.
"Take off your clothes."
Wordlessly, I did as he commanded. First my coat pooled to the floor. Then my top and my bra. My shoes next, and finally my skirt. I still wore no panties. His cum had dried, sticky, on the inside of my thighs.
"Lie down. Spread your legs and arms," he instructed. His eyes on me were hot, not detached like they'd been when he'd been taking out the length of red ribbon in his own bedroom, and I felt an answering rush of heat as I obeyed. The comforter was down, cool and soft, and I found myself hoping, vaguely, that I didn't ruin it by being messy. Stretching my arms above my head and spreading my legs out, I stared at the ceiling and waited for him to begin.
With calm, deliberate movements, Malcolm moved to the wall where he turned the lights off, throwing the room into darkness, cutting off my sense of sight. Beneath me the sea rolled and rocked, and I found I was so tired I wondered if I wasn't going to fall asleep before we actually did anything.
I needn't have worried. The sound of Malcolm's clothes rustled as he moved around the bed, a presence so potent that I would have known it anywhere, listed toward it at any time. Cotton and linen and wool scraped over my ears, and for a strange, terrifying moment it felt as though they were being dragged over my naked brain. I bit my lip as I heard him tie the first rope to the post near my right hand and waited for him to take my wrist.
He didn't.
Instead he moved, one by one, to the other posts around the bed, securing one end of the ropes to the bed posts before moving on to the next. When he finally had the fourth one in place, he took a step back.
The room was almost pitch dark. The lights of the city had completely retreated.
"Beg me to tie you up," he said.
His voice fell flat and hard into the space between us, and I swallowed with difficulty. But if this was what it took, fine.
"Please, Malcolm," I whispered. "Tie me up."
"Louder."
"Tie me up. Please."
"Louder. With feeling, Sadie."
It was almost corny... and yet it gave me a delicious thrill to hear him order me around. Usually I was the one doing the ordering.
"Please, Malcolm, tie me up. Twist me up and tie me up and fuck me, please, please--"
He snatched my wrist from the bed, and in only a few quick movements my hand was bound and he was moving on to the next one. Swiftly, with practiced hands, he bound me thoroughly, but not uncomfortably, and when at last I was fully spread and immobilized, I couldn't hide my arousal any longer. My mouth was dry as I panted in anticipation.
"I'm going to make you come, Sadie," Malcolm told me, and it was so matter-of-fact I wanted to laugh.
"Why?" I said. "I feel like I'm getting away with something, because I never get to give you--Ah!"
I shrieked at the sudden lash across my nipples. Sharp. Swift. Something that whistled through the air. A riding crop, I realized. Something for beating horses.
I should have felt insulted. But instead, I just moaned at the pain as it raced through my body, transmuting into pleasure.
"Silence," Malcolm
said. "I am going to make you come." He paused. "And," he added, and I could just see the faint smile on his face, "If you make any noise at all, except for when I ask you questions, I will delay your orgasm by one minute.":
"So I have to be silent?" I asked.
The riding crop lashed over my nipples again, and it took all I had not to squeak with pleasure. "No talking," he told me. “You have bought yourself a minute of agony.”
I bit my lip and said nothing.
He moved to the wall where something clicked open. A tiny glow illuminated his face, and he adjusted something. The heater, I realized when it kicked on and he shut it again, leaving us in blackness again.
Warm air caressed my skin, my sore nipples, my pussy so wet it was already coated with the juices of my core. I stared up into the dark and listened as Malcolm began to shuck his clothing.
I heard the fall of his blazer, the grate of his zipper, the whisper of his trousers as they slid past his hips and to the ground. He stepped out of his pants, removing his hard leather shoes as he did so, and his sigh of relief was like a fresh breeze.
When at last the bed dipped with his weight, I was hot and ready for him. The heat of his body was a balm on my own burning desire, and he laid against me, over me, every inch of his hard, naked body rubbing against mine. Where our skin met, we melded, and I lost myself. Soft lips found my ear, teased me with breath and teeth. His muscled arms, his broad chest, his trim hips and hard thighs slid against my body, a perfect male specimen. The contrast between his body and mine, a beautiful man and... well... me, made my cheeks heat in the dark in something akin to embarrassment.
I told myself it was merely a pang of regret rooted in aesthetic sensibility. In the contrast between beauty and decay, I came out on the wrong side of the equation.
Malcolm rocked his hips into me, his cock heavy and hot pressed against my belly. Then he removed himself, planting hot, damp kisses down my throat and breasts, trailing over my ribcage and stomach, until he reached my exposed pussy. Warm breath puffed over it, and my hips rocked involuntarily toward him.
He settled himself down between my legs, looping an arm casually over one splayed thigh before cupping the inside of the other in his hand and placing the pad of his thumb on my soft, slick cunt. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he began to glide his thumb against my labia and clit, and my eyes rolled back in my head in bliss.
For what seemed like forever, he slipped and slid the pad of his finger over me, exploring my folds and crevices, slowly, inexorably driving me wild. My head tossed with each ripple of pleasure that spiraled through me, and it was pain to stay silent as he sweetly coaxed ecstasy from my body.
After a while, he switched his focus and began to move with more purpose, more intent. Gently he smeared my juices over my pussy and asshole, and I quivered and ached in anticipation. When he finally slipped his pinky finger past the tight ring of muscle of my puckered entrance, I gulped and licked my lips. Then another finger—I couldn't tell which one—slid into my pussy, an easy, swift entry. His thumb alighted on my clit, and I remembered how he had stroked me to orgasm in just this way our very first time. The memory alone caused a moan to well in my chest, and I was only able to bite it back at the last second.
Gently, without hurry, he began to play with my clit, and my already sensitized flesh hummed and buzzed with delight. It was hard, so hard to remember not to groan or speak, and when his other hand alighted on my leg, smoothing its way up my thigh, over my hipbone to my ribs, I thought nothing of it other than how good and warm he felt.
“Tell me about your phoenix.”
My eyes shot open. I hadn't realized I'd closed them. Glancing down, I tried to find his eyes, but the room had become pitch black. Even so, I felt him tracing the outline of the phoenix tattoo on my side with the tip of his finger as though the room were as bright as day. How was he doing it?
The photos, I realized. My phoenix was one of the bigger ones, all gorgeous, garish colors, rainbows and flowers and fire licking up the left side of my ribcage from a pile of bones and dead wood on my hip. It was stunning. Of course he'd remembered it.
I licked my lips and he flicked his thumbnail over my clit, making my hips jump into his hand. “What... what do you want to know?” I asked.
“Did you design it?” The pad of his thumb soothed the aching nub at the apex of my pussy, and I tried not to melt into incoherence.
“Mm, yes... I... I designed all my tattoos,” I managed to get out.
“And why did you choose a phoenix?”
Really? My brain scrabbled for an answer that wasn't too pat, but in the end I had to settle. I was just too distracted. “A phoenix is a... a symbol of rebirth,” I said as his thumb began to circle faster and I felt my core begin to tighten. He really knew the perfect ways to play my body, as though I were an instrument.
“And why did you choose that particular symbol of rebirth?” he asked me casually. My orgasm built, a swell in the ocean about to become a tsunami. “Um...” I ran my tongue over my teeth as bliss buffeted my mind. “Because... because everything you were burns away, and you come out new...”
“Mmm,” he murmured. His hand slid over the place where the tattoo lay, soft and hot, and I shivered under it even as he stroked my clit harder and faster, until I was coiling up, aching and ready to come—
—and he paused.
My building orgasm faded. I couldn't help myself; I cried out with the loss.
“Another minute,” he said, and it took all my strength not to scream in frustration. When the mounting pleasure had faded, he began again, expertly plying my body, and this time the orgasm built faster and harder and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from shrieking.
Then his hand moved up to just beneath my right breast and he traced the tattoo there, and as he did, his fingers found the jagged scar hidden beneath the ink and followed it tenderly. But he didn't ask about the scar. “Tell me about your sparrow,” he said instead.
My mouth fell open. The sparrow was so small compared to my other tats that it was a wonder he remembered it at all. But then his finger ghosted over the sparrow's beak—exactly where it was—before retreating and stroking against its breast and in a sudden flash of insight I realized he had memorized every tattoo of mine.
The thought shocked me, stunned me.
“Ah... uh... a sparrow... they say the gods mark the fall of a single sparrow...” My voice was a whisper.
“I see,” he said. His thumb moved faster and faster, until I was on the brink again, and again he stopped. This time I kept my wits enough about me that I was able to stifle the moan of frustration. It died in my chest, strangled before it was born.
Malcolm waited for my quivering body to subside. “Good,” he murmured. “Well done.” His thumb resumed its pace and I thrashed and strained against my bonds as he traced his hand up to my throat and the tattoo winding over it. Words this time.
“And this one?” he asked. “What does it say? The script is so elaborate I could hardly make it out.” And his fingers trailed over the scar beneath it. The red smile I was supposed to wear down to the grave.
“It says, 'Might as well live.'” I told him, my voice so soft I could barely hear it.
He gave a low, quiet laugh. “Dorothy Parker,” he said, and with a flick of his thumbnail I was coming, hard and aching around his fingers, my body lost in ecstasy as I yanked against the ropes, but inside everything was tumbled and torn, rent asunder and filled with pain and anger.
He knew my tattoos. Every single one. I was raw and exposed. He'd seen the scars beneath them, and he knew they were important in some way. We were dancing around them, around their significance, and it frightened me. But all he did was wait for my orgasm to pass before moving on to the next. Gently he stroked each one in the dark and asked me, as he circled my clit with his thumb, what each one meant to me.
“The leaping koi fish?” His hand stroking the inside of my upper arm.
&nbs
p; Breaking free.
“The cherry tree shedding its blossoms?” My shoulder, the wafting petals spiraling across my chest.
Impermanence.
“The spider? The hand of Fatima? The vulture?”
Infinity. Protection from evil. Cleansing.
And beneath each one, he found the scar, running his hands over it as he brought me to orgasm again and again.
When at last he had received a response for each tattoo and was satisfied, he untied me and he fucked me, gently, as though I were fragile. My exhausted body wrapped around him, clung to him, and we rocked with the ocean and I came around him again and again until at last he found his release and we fell asleep on the swell and fall of the sea.
Chapter Twelve
Time at sea takes on a new meaning. The hours stretch out into days, and a single night can yawn as wide as a week. The sun comes. The sun goes. The water passes by.
We sailed south.
Malcolm and I joined together again and again, and the sea blurred the edges of our time, until it was hard for me to say if we'd been drifting on the water for a day or a hundred days. We met and coupled constantly, and when we weren't fucking Malcolm tried to capture me in art, searching for the elusive thing I carried within me that he thought would reveal the secrets of the universe to him. And when he grew frustrated, angry, enraged at his own inability to speak without words he would throw his sketch pad away, toss his canvas to the ground, squash the small clay statuette he had been fashioning and launch himself at me, wherever I happened to be, and he would force me down to the ground, up against a wall, into the strangest positions, and we would fuck again until we were sore and raw.
* * * *
“When am I going to stop falling over?”
“When you get your sea legs. You will become accustomed to the rocking of the ship soon. You will be able to walk on the deck as if it were dry land. You simply need practice.”
“Practice makes perfect, I guess.”