by Eden Myles
Towards the end of our marriage, Jerrel and I had tried experimenting with different techniques to help liven up our waning sex life. Hardcore porn. Dirty sex talk. He’d even bought a pair of silly, bright pink, fur-lined handcuffs, though we’d never got around to using them on me. The porn left me rolling my eyes with its lame sauce dialog. The sex talk left us giggling together. But Wolf didn’t giggle. Wolf was pretty much the antithesis of all things giggly. He liked sex talk, liked using it on me, but with him it wasn’t fantasy; it was all about exploration and possibilities. He could get almost scatalogically perverse at times. I palmed his cheek as he kissed me, enjoying the scratch of his beard against the palm of my hand. “Malcolm says you’re always on the prowl, sir. He says everyone is afraid of the big, bad wolf.”
Wolf faintly growled against my throat. He liked it when I called him that, liked it when I teased him, provoked him. He stood up with me pressed against him, his hands all over me, hot and very insistent, then turned me so my belly was pushed up against the edge of my desk. He kicked the chair away and bent me over the desk. He pushed my business skirt up and out of his way and fingered the wetness between my legs, very rough, but not too deep. I wriggled against him. I wanted him deeper. Today, I wanted him as deep as I could get him.
He leaned against my back to hold me still while he faithfully worked a condom on. I struggled, and he warned me to stop it, to be still. I just struggled harder. He slapped my ass, hard. I cried out and told him No while he rubbed at the heat he had created. We had developed a series of safe words of ascending emergency so I could stop him when I’d reached my limits, when I’d had enough of him. That was good, because it left me with the option to struggle, to scream, if I wanted to. Wolf liked it when I struggled and screamed. I had only stopped play once, and that was when he’d tried to penetrate my other opening. Maybe he’d been too big, or maybe he’d just gone too fast for me, but I hadn’t liked the feel of him there, the tremendous pressure. He said I would get used to it, given time. He promised to go slow, to teach me.
He rubbed his partially engorged cock against my wetness. He thrust into me a few times while I groaned and scratched at the top of the desk at the feel of him, the depth he always managed to achieve. But before we could develop a rhythm together, he pulled out and probed me in the other place, testing my readiness. He was wet and slippery. He pushed a little ways inside me. I whimpered and tried to draw back, but there was nowhere to go, no way I could escape his penetration. He groaned, licked the nape of my neck, then bit me. I cried out as he shoved himself further inside. He was huge and hard again, and his bite fucking hurt. I would have screamed had he not reached around and shoved his fingers deep into my mouth. He growled out some words as he moved around inside me, forcing me to adjust to the pressure there. He removed his fingers and waited to see if I would use one of the safe words. I thought about it, then decided to see if I could take him. I knew that Jasmine was taking him there. He’d said as much.
Wolf groaned with satisfaction. “My good little courtesan. Let me claim that tight little ass of yours,” he said and thrust into me a few times before pulling out very carefully. He removed the condom and came against my lower back and ass, less like he’d meant to make love to me and more like he was scent marking his personal property. I felt the warmth of him dripping down between my buttocks and around my sore little hole.
I squirmed against him, rubbing his release against myself and him, so we both smelled like him, like sex. “I’d like to see those medical records,” I told him, blushing furiously at the very words. “And Jasmine’s. If we’re all okay, all three of us, could we be monogamous among ourselves? Could we…do more?” I didn’t know the right word for what we had. I didn’t even know if I could ask this of him.
Wolf’s teeth scraped along the back of my neck as he released me. He licked the little mark he had left, gently, almost lovingly, as his hands stroked and caressed my breasts. “You want me to come inside you, Rachaela? Really come?”
“Yes, sir.” And then I added, “I take birth control pills. I’m responsible too. But I need to be able to trust you.”
“You want the arrangement to end with the three of us,” he guessed. “No other potential courtesans.”
“Yes. If you can give me that, then we can do whatever you want.”
He made a grunting sound of approval. “I’ll arrange it.” He went to one knee and licked me tenderly, the sensation making me wriggle and groan. I pushed my ass against him and his tongue went partly into me, soothing the pain he had caused me. Then he stood back up and lowered my skirt so it was faintly damp and stuck to my ass in places, but still conservative.
Finally, we were done.
“You can go home now, Little Red Riding Hood,” he said. And he slapped my ass and walked away.
***
My hand accidently brushed the top of the stove as I maneuvered the cornbread out of the oven with a bunched up tea towel. I yelped and nearly dropped the whole Pyrex dish onto the floor. I swore violent and smacked the dish down atop the stove, kicking the door closed.
Asia padded into the kitchen to retrieve the pitcher of ice tea on the counter. “You all right, Mom?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine. Burned myself.”
“Put some ice on that before it blisters,” she said and took the pitcher out into the dining room. I could hear my dad muttering something, and Asia muttering back, probably about me being a total klutz in the kitchen.
Honestly, I’d never really been Susie Homemaker, even before Asia, but dinner in my parents’ house had always been something special on Sundays, particularly when my mom was alive. I’d tried to keep up the tradition. When I lived with Jerrel, my dad would come over mostly every Sunday to read the Times in the living room, watch a baseball game on TV with Jerrel, or play checkers with Asia. I never minded making dinner because it gave Asia time to spend with her grandfather. Jerrel might be out of my life these days, but I still liked making dinner for my dad, a retired beat cop who lived off his pension down in Brooklyn. Dad was getting up there in age now, and I really wanted him to sell the house and move in with me and Asia—the neighborhood was far safer—but he wouldn’t hear of it. He and mom had lived in that house down on Lafayette Street for over forty years. I knew he would die in it someday, surrounded by all of Mom’s things.
I looked over at my bounty—the buttermilk-battered fried chicken and collard greens, the corn bread and calico baked bean casserole. During the week, Asia and I ate a lot of pizza, Chinese takeout and Lean Cuisine, but on the weekends I liked to make the food my dad had grown up on. Asia liked to call it our Southern Sunday.
I was digging some ice out of the freezer for my hand when I heard the door buzzer go off, and Asia speaking to the lobby concierge about a visitor. About five minutes later, Asia wandered back in. She looked impressed, which Asia never did anymore. “Your partner’s here, Mom.”
“What?”
“The one with the funny name.”
“Wolf?”
She mouthed, He’s hot, rolled her eyes, and then pantomimed toward the dining room.
Oh God, no, please tell me Wolf did not invade the sanctity of my own home! Clutching the ice to my hand, I hurried out to the living room and found to my extreme horror that Wolfgang Beck was sitting at my dining room table, dressed in one of his “weekend suits,” which were just a little less formal than the clothes he normally wore to work. Instead of a tie, he wore a cravat, of all things. He was talking to my dad. My entire world teetered over a fiery abyss of destruction for a moment.
I stopped and just watched my family talking to my partner and gentleman—my lover, the man who had, in the course of the past two weeks of my conditioning, made himself intimate with every part of me, who had come in every orifice of my body. Wolf was explaining the concept of his seed villages to my dad. Dad and Asia listened with rapt attention—Asia, more than I was comfortable with. When Dad spotted me, he looked up with a wide, wrinkl
y grin. “Baby girl, you should have told me your partner was so interesting. Do you know he’s developing the Namib desert?”
Of course my dad would approve of Wolf’s endeavors. Who would not? Wolf was developing one of the poorest and most arid regions on earth and turning it into a port of trade, utilizing a form of irrigation system that he himself had created and patented. His work would bring incredible commerce to a formerly unusable tract of land. And my dad had always had a deep and abiding interest in Africa. He always said his one regret was not taking me and my mom there while she was still alive.
“Wolf, what are you doing here?” I said. I realized I sounded more accusatory than I wanted to.
He immediately stood up, and I saw he was clutching a portfolio in the hand not holding his trusty walking stick. “That photographer we were talking about—the one from Nigeria?—he sent me his work. I was passing through the neighborhood, so I thought you might like to take a look.”
Asia, sitting at the table and staring up at Wolf as if she were looking on some dazzling, ancient god, said, “You have a funny accent.”
Wolf glanced down at the girl, not offended. “I don’t have an accent, ducky. You do.”
“No, I don’t,” she said defensively.
“You just jive in one big group, putting each other on, trying to top the last line,” Wolf said, doing an impressive job of sounding not white, not German or British, and about thirty years behind the times.
Asia giggled.
I interrupted. “I’d like to speak to you alone, please?” I said and motioned for Wolf to follow me into the kitchen.
“It smells like heaven in there,” he said when we were alone together. He went to explore what was cooking in my pots, then jumped up onto the edge of my counters and glanced around my industrial-sized kitchen as if he owned the place.
I offered him a stern look and pressed the ice to my burn. “Do you even know what a chair is?”
“Chairs are boring and unimaginative.”
“Wolf…”
“Yes, my courtesan…”
“Don’t call me that, especially here. What are you doing here, anyway?”
He smirked. “I told you. I thought you might like to see the portfolio before Monday. Our photographer is quite the auteur so I suggest not letting your daughter get into it.”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my daughter.”
“Fine. Then let her see it.” He dropped it to the countertop.
I sighed in exasperation.
Wolf maintained his smirk. “You’re right. I do have ulterior motives. I’m flying out to Botswana tonight. I’ll be gone all week, at least until Friday.”
“What’s in Botswana?”
“One of my aqueducts collapsed. Some of my men were hurt.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just said, “Oh, God. How badly are they hurt?”
Wolf looked at me, all his usual good humor gone—or, at least, on hiatus. “There are a few in critical condition. I need to see after them. I may need to fly them back to the States for proper medical treatment. You understand.”
“Yes.” I sucked in a quick breath. “Your men…you care about them, don’t you?”
Now he looked insulted, the way he could sometimes when I said something very stupid. “Why would I not? They are my people, Rachaela.”
“I understand,” I said, hoping to calm him.
He looked at me gravely. “I wanted to see you before I left.” He slid down to the floor, crossed the room to me. He gathered my messy chignon of hair in his big hand. He leaned down and kissed me. It was a slow, very soft kiss. His tongue darted briefly into my mouth, over my teeth. I slid my arms under his suit jacket, against his chest. His nipples were pierced with tiny barbells. It had taken me a little while to get used to that. His free hand went around me and he rubbed his walking stick against the crack of my ass as he kissed me.
I felt something shift inside me, something that I knew was lust—there was an endless stream of lust when Wolf was around me—but I also felt something else that felt frighteningly like my heart was breaking. Wolf was going away. Only a week, so why did it leave me feeling so bereft? He let me go but took the ice from me, rubbing it gently against my burned hand. He made slow circles. “I’ll be back on Friday. And you need to look after that burn, meanwhile.”
“I’ll look after it.” Jesus, why were my eyes burning?
“Do take a look at that portfolio,” he said…and then he dropped the ice down the front of my blouse, making me jump. He said, “You’re up to nine punishments, by the way.”
“I hate you, Wolf,” I told him.
“Ten.” He kissed me quickly and deeply before I could dig the ice cube out of my cleavage, then turned and stalked from the kitchen.
I waited a few seconds, waited for my heart to slow in its insistent and stupid knocking, waited until the flush was out of my face and my eyes were dry. I heard the door of the apartment close—not a slam, but Wolf was in an obvious hurry to get to his wounded men.
I glanced at the portfolio. I flipped it open, wondering how extreme it really was. I was a little surprised to find it had medical reports stuffed into it, from both Wolf and Jasmine. I glanced over them quickly, noting that they were both in excellent health. Then I saw a crème paper with a note written in Wolf’s careful, almost monkish script. He was inviting me to spend this coming weekend with him at the Dollhouse, with me as his courtesan. Jasmine would be with us. He said he’d be using the opportunity to make his final decision. So I would finally be seeing the inside of the mysterious Dollhouse—if I went, of course.
A pair of handcuffs were tucked into the portfolio, not the fur-lined kind, either, which only made my heart leap up into my throat. I snatched up the whole portfolio and took it down the hall to my home office where I locked it away in my wall safe where I kept the material for the magazine that I didn’t want Asia to find. Then, heart still knocking in my chest, my lips still tingling from Wolf’s kiss, I went back out into the dining room to join my family for Sunday dinner. I could hear the two rascals whispering their conspiracy theories even from all the way down the hall.
While I served the bean casserole, my dad said, “I like him, Rachaela. Any chance you two have something going?” He raised his eyebrows at that. He must have sensed something between us. Of course, my dad had married my mom, a white girl, so it didn’t bother him at all that my possible romantic interest was a white man. The fact that he was a white man from Africa who was deeply concerned about his people had only sweetened the deal, as far as my dad was concerned.
“I don’t like him, Mother,” Asia stated emphatically, poking at her beans with a fork. “He’s old and stuffy.”
***
BOOK 3: THE WAR OF THE ROSES
The black T-shirt had the silhouette of an exotic dancer bending over on it and words beneath it in bright, glittering silver that read: IF YOU’RE GOING TO RIDE MY ASS AT LEAST PULL MY HAIR. If this were any other circumstance, I might have found it clever and maybe even a little bit funny. But the T-shirt was on my thirteen-year-old daughter Asia, stretched too tightly over her almost negligible breasts, and there was no way in hell she was leaving the house with it on.
“You are such a fucking hag!” she screamed at me as we squared off in the middle of the kitchen. “Maybe if you got laid once in a while you wouldn’t have that stick up your ass!”
I leaned against the closed refrigerator door and crossed my arms, one hand wrapped around a bottle of Avian. I gave Asia steady eyes. Two weeks ago, her outburst would have been contagious, and we both would have wound up screaming at each other before she stomped off to sulk and I went to take an extra dose of Zoloft. But I had learned something in the last couple of weeks, something very important, something that kept me calm even in these situations.
I wasn’t Asia’s best friend, her confidante, her giggly girlfriend. I couldn’t be Asia’s best friend—at least, not right now. Maybe in a year or tw
o, maybe even sooner than that. But not now. Right now, Asia didn’t need a best friend. She needed a mother. I pursed my lips and said in a low, steady voice, “If you don’t change, you can’t go with Daddy this week.”
“Well, fuck!”
“You’re already two down, kiddo,” I told her, unscrewing the bottle and taking a drink. “That’s two hours that’s been cut into your curfew so far. So now you need to be back home at eight o’clock instead of ten.” I gave her mom eyes. “Do you want to keep going?”
Asia glared at me but shut up.
“Very wise.” I took another sip of water. “Upstairs. Now. Your dad’s going to be here any minute.”
While Asia stomped upstairs changing, I went out into the hallway to make certain she had packed everything. She had her rolling luggage all set up, plus her favorite heavy plastic shoulder bag with Raven Symone all over it. I was surprised she was taking it; I would have thought she’d outgrown Raven by now and moved onto gangbanga rap. When I checked inside, just to make certain that she wasn’t carrying any party favors in the form of drugs or condoms, courtesy of her boyfriend, I found even more clothes—a lot of sparkly little bits that didn’t exactly look appropriate for a week in the Hamptons, but I decided I didn’t want to ride Asia too hard. She was changing out of that T-shirt. It was a minor victory.
When Jerrel had first proposed that Asia spend a week with him, I’d initially balked. But then I reconsidered. After all, Jerrel wanted to spend two weeks out of a month with his daughter—and I knew damned well he was doing it just to spite me. So why not let him have his week? I knew Jerrel. I knew that after a few days of being locked in with Asia kicking around, being bored all the time, acting out, and interfering with his barely legal harem of girls, he’d reconsider those divorce demands of his. The thing about Jerrel was, he was basically a child. You had to treat him as such.
The doorman buzzed up and I went to let Jerrel in the apartment. He looked very fit in his white sports suit and black knit shirt. He’d shaved his head and propped a pair of Ray Bans on top of his forehead. He looked very much the playa. “Hey, Rache,” he said when he stepped into the foyer. Jerrel had a deep, booming voice I’d once thought of as very romantic and James Earl Jones-esque.