by Roxy Harte
“Now that doesn’t sound like you are sorry.” I yank his hair, making him roll his eyes up at me. “Tell me you missed me.”
“I missed you, Mistress.”
“Make me believe it when you say it.”
He repeats his answer, with more urgency, “I missed you, Mistress.”
“I’m not convinced.” I shove a gag in his mouth before he can reply, and then I take my time decorating him with clothespins, a long, pinching row that travels down both sides of his body from just under his armpits to just above his knees. Each of the clips are linked together with a narrow cord. I step back to look at my handiwork before I step around him to gaze into his eyes. “What do you think? Nice?”
He nods, bobbing his head rapidly. Drool drips from the gag in his mouth.
“Maybe just a few more,” I say, running a few along the edge of his balls. I pull his penis, stroking him to get him hard. Leaning over him, I whisper, “I’m going to fuck you now.”
I grab a bottle of nearby lube and cover his ass, pushing some of the cool liquid inside of him. He’ll feel the wetness, the intrusion of it cooling his ass as I step into my strap-on harness. He watches and I can tell his anticipation is high. Moving behind him, I slide my strapped-on dildo into his lubed ass. I grip his hips, pulling his ass back as I thrust forward. He moans.
I feel powerful as I plunge in fast and deep.
I imagine this is how men feel, strong, commanding, in control. What does this make him feel, other than the obvious pleasure? Does he feel weaker?
“I want to fuck you hard.”
His face and hands still trapped in their wood bonds, his mouth gagged, he has no option but to comply. I fuck him. He breathes hard. I gauge the closeness of his orgasm by his breath. At the last possible moment before he comes, I release the gag and it pops out of his mouth. As he starts to ejaculate, I pull the zip cord, popping each of the clothespins off in quick succession.
A while later, I am back sitting on my throne and he is sitting cross-legged at my feet. “Permission to speak?”
My boots are off and he is massaging my feet. For all intents and purposes, the scene is over and we are just warming down before the drive back to my place. Besides, he gives an outrageous foot massage, and after a few hours in six-inch heels, I’m in no hurry to rush away from his pleasurable hands. I grant his request to speak freely.
“So, who is he?”
Damn, he has the memory of an elephant.
“Just a man I met.”
“When?”
“Last Friday.”
He sits up straighter, his face growing dark though he still manages to rub my toes. “Last Friday? Meaning you went to London with a total stranger?”
“Ouch!” I pull my foot out of his grip. “I gave you permission to speak, not break bones. Damn, Adrian.”
“Are you insane?”
I ignore the question, assuming it is rhetorical.
He rises to a squat, his hands on my thighs. I look at his face, making eye contact and immediately wishing I hadn’t. “Thank God you lived to tell about it. Do you know how many psychopaths live on this planet?”
“I know,” I answer, trying to escape his censuring gaze and failing. “Bishop isn’t a psycho anything. He’s a businessman, a very vanilla business man.”
I wonder why I am defending Bishop. I haven’t heard from him for days.
“Oh, aye, those are the worst kind! Wine you and dine you, stalk you, next thing you know you’re cut to bits and buried in the freak’s backyard.”
I roll my eyes.
“I don’t want you to see him again,” Adrian demands. He grips my thigh hard, pinching, hurting. “Promise me that you won’t see him again!”
I shake my head. Maybe I’m only being stubborn, but the thought of never seeing Bishop again hurts too much. “I won’t do that.”
“Then we have a problem.”
“I guess we do,” I agree with him.
Chapter 26
Adrian
My head is still reeling when we get to her house. What argument can I use to make Bianca see sanity? “How do you know this guy isn’t a crackpot?”
“How did I know you weren’t a psycho the first time I had sex with you?” She unlocks the door and enters, turning on lights as she walks through. “Want wine?”
Boxes are stacked on either side of the front door. I don’t have to ask if it’s Jameson’s stuff. She really needs to get it out of her house though, just the sight of them is depressing as hell and I didn’t even like the guy. “When’s he getting his shit?”
She pokes her head out of the kitchen. In one hand she has a glass of water, in the other a bottle of aspirin. I know exactly how she feels. She pops the top of the bottle and shakes several pills onto her tongue before offering me the bottle. I take it and swallow three dry. “My head’s pounding too hard for wine.”
“Mine too.” After she gulps the entire contents of the water glass, she says tiredly, “Hell if I know. We’re not speaking right now.”
“Seriously? You’re that mad at him?”
“Me? Right.” She laughs, but there is no humor in it. “I’m sure Emma forbade him from talking to me.”
She starts up the stairs. Following her, I rub her shoulders and realize for the first time how really tense she is. When I reach her bedroom, I understand why. More boxes. The serenity of a once peaceful room has been destroyed by Jameson’s boxes.
“Did you box his stuff up?”
“No, he did,” she answers.
“Let’s get a hotel,” I suggest. “Tomorrow I’ll bring the truck and get this crap out of your way.”
She looks at me with gratitude in her eyes even though her mouth is denying me, saying it isn’t my responsibility. I silence her with a kiss and then pull her by the hand back outside. She hates my Harley but doesn’t protest when I climb on and hand her a helmet. She just puts it on and climbs on behind me. “You better not kill us both on this thing.”
Revving the engine, I laugh, laughing harder when I peel out and she clings on to me for dear life. Despite urban legend, motorcycles do not make all women horny. I know this because Bianca doesn’t jump my bones as soon as we’re settled into a room. Instead, she lies down on top of the perfectly made bed without even taking off her clothes and immediately falls asleep. She isn’t faking, and I’m left annoyed. I slap her rump as I climb over her to the other side of the bed.
She manages a mumbled, “Jet lag. Sorry. Make it up to you in the morning.”
I smile and throw an arm over her. Sleep is actually just what I need as well.
Thunder wakes me. It is pouring outside. Rolling over, I see she is awake too. She tells me, “I could lie here all day.”
“You could get your wish. I’m in no hurry to take the bike out in this.”
“Wimp,” she teases, rolling to face me.
“Wimp, is it?” I ask, trying to sound outraged but end up laughing.
“I’m glad we came to a hotel,” she says.
“Yeah?” I ask, unhooking the front clasps holding together the leather bustier she fell asleep in.
She nods, stilling my hands. “This is nice. We haven’t had many times when we’ve woken up together.”
She’s right. She usually wakes up to Jameson and I wake up either alone, with Toby, or with a total stranger…but hardly ever with her. She kisses me and it feels strange, almost unbearable. Scenes with Bianca are great but this…wanting her completely for myself, knowing it can never be that way…her life, my life…
She pulls back and frowns. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re fine. I just—”
She interrupts me with her fingertips pressed to my lips. “Remember who you’re talking to? It’s me. Order us some room service. I have to do something real quick anyway.”
Grabbing her bag, she leaves the room. Where? The answer comes when I hear her voice, softly at first then a bit louder. Then softer. I understand when I realize she is paci
ng in the hallway outside the room and talking on her cellphone. I’m evil, I tiptoe over to the door to listen and hear her saying, “Is it okay that I called you at this number?”
I hold my breath, trying to hear before realizing that she is listening to whatever the person on the other side of the call is saying.
Finally, more of her voice, “I’m sorry I worried you. I was asleep. I think the time change back and forth finally knocked me down last night. I must not have heard the ringtone. Sometimes I sleep like the dead.”
I hate the pauses, I imagine him chastising her, I imagine him topping her, and I don’t know why I think it, but I do. No, that’s not true, her voice sounds different, deferential, and I don’t like that one bit. I’m not going to like this new man in her life. Nope. Not one bit. Why did Jameson have to be such a tart? If he hadn’t gone back to Emma…
No, I can’t blame this on Jameson, as much as I’d like to.
If I hadn’t stayed with Toby, if I’d have just kept my date with her last Friday, she’d have never even met this man. This is all my fault. Damn.
“So you’re in Sydney?”
Yes! Eavesdropping is wrong, but knowing he is in Sydney and Australia is an entire ocean away from LA makes me want to jump up and down with glee. Bianca needs to focus on her life here while he is there. I fill my mind with plans, plans to make her forget this new loser. Others have come and gone. Why should this one be any different?
I tiptoe across the room, and just in time because she enters as room service picks up my call. I act as if I’ve been on the phone awhile and am merely repeating back the order. “Yes, that’s right, a double order of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast.”
“Make mine a bagel,” she says.
“Add a toasted bagel, cream cheese on the side, and whatever fruit you have.”
She sits down on the edge of the bed, looking tired. It makes me hate the fuck who is fucking with her mind from the other side of the Pacific.
“Two coffees.”
“Add a hot tea,” she says, “with cream and sugar.”
Hot tea? I don’t ask.
Chapter 27
Bianca
Over eggs, Adrian announces with a serious tone, “I need to talk to you about something.” What is it about the men in my life going psycho all of a sudden? I expect the worst when he says, “Toby wants to explore what intimacy feels like with a woman.”
Huh?
“She wants to have sex with you.”
I choke on my tea.
“What?” I shriek, standing to pace away from the table. I’m shocked, confused, but inside my head, the damage is done, I’m already seeing her naked, laid out on my bed for the taking. I see want and need in her eyes. She is looking at me the way she looks at Adrian.
“Sex, Bianca. She’s never had sex with a woman before. She wants you to do something about that for her.”
The first question that comes to mind is, why me? But since I refuse to even entertain the notion, I say, “It’s just a full moon, next week things will go back to normal, this week is just entirely too weird.”
“I’m serious. I can’t go back to her and tell her you said no. What’s that going to do to her self-esteem? She just wants to explore a relationship with a woman in the safety of where she feels comfortable.”
“What?”
“She wants me to be there too, so that she’ll feel safe, and so you can teach her the difference between roles.”
“Okay, she wants you to watch. And?”
“Teach her how to dominate me,” he added.
“If she wants to learn how to dominate you, bring her to the class and participate. Next month I will completely choreograph the class around what you think will work for the both of you.”
“She’s big into privacy. She wants to do it with a girl, she chose you, just make love to her,” he said.
“Right,” I said sarcastically. “I’m going to have sex with her while you are sitting in the corner watching. Are you going to wank off too?”
“Tie me up in a corner or something.”
“Because that would be so much better…and really, if you’re tied up in a corner, how is that going to make her feel safer?”
“You can’t penetrate her vaginally. She draws the line at that.”
“Making a strap-on out of the question, I suppose.”
“Actually, she wants you to teach her how to use a strap-on.”
“For use on you, I’m assuming, because there is no way in hell I am letting her top me.”
He smiles broadly. “I think you’ve got it about right.”
Oh yeah, I got it all right. The visual in my head is insane and intense. I’ve opened Pandora’s box. “You’ve lost your ever-loving mind! Both of you have!”
“You know you want to, Bianca,” he says with a super-sweet tone. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“No,” I insist, knowing as I do that even though I’ve never faced the truth, Toby intrigues me. But enough to fuck her? I roll my eyes. Of course. Who am I kidding? Toby’s a hot little thing.
“Yes?”
“Adrian…even if I was as hot for her as a bitch in heat—I wouldn’t! I couldn’t. This is asking me to cross one of those squishy lines between lovers that everyone knows will only lead to trouble, but they do it and their mistake ends up ruining everything! I really can’t even believe you’d ask this of me.”
“Who else would I ask?”
I sigh, lifting my hands, knowing the issues and problems he is facing and not caring. “Not my problem.” To myself I think that I’ve already lost Jameson, I won’t screw up and lose Adrian too.
Waiting, he stares at me like he knows that if he does it long enough, challenging me to step up to the plate on this, I will cave.
“I’m not doing it,” I repeat, taking a bite of bagel. It tastes like cardboard, but I keep chewing and he keeps staring, adding a pouted lip, the same lip that is now sporting a bloody scab because I bit him. “You are not going to guilt me into this.”
I hide my face behind my hands, hating myself that I am even considering doing what he is asking…because it is wrong—because it will change everything. On a very real, very deep, very emotional level, I want to, but not for the reasons he would think.
Lust? Sure, now that I’ve thought about it, I want Toby so badly it scares me. But there is more to it than that…and that’s the part I don’t want to think about. Toby needs what I can give her, and that isn’t being egotistical. She needs to get a handle on her sexuality…her sensuality…learn to use it to empower herself. She needs to own who she is, not just act out a part. The revelation that comes with the thought is a surprise. I’ve always seen Toby as mysterious, intriguing, but the girl hiding in the shadows watching my class was frightened. Frightened of who she could be.
I scare myself by saying, “I’ll think about it. Just let me think about it.”
He stands, kissing the top of my head. “Thank you.”
Oh, holy fuck.
My decision has already been made. Even while I was bitching and moaning about how what he was asking me to do was going to change everything, and I have no doubt the dynamic of our relationships is going to change, that isn’t even the debate. I’ve already accepted the consequences. I just wonder if Adrian will.
Toby isn’t going to be the same little boy after I’m done with her.
To Adrian’s credit, he drops it, giving me time to process it all because it’s a lot to process. I climb into the shower and turn on the water, not even caring that it is ice cold before it actually turns warm. I close my eyes, really wishing I had someone to talk to about this. This is insane! I promise myself to find girlfriends, a whole gaggle of them, my very own sex-in-the-city friends. Not for sex—Lord knows I have enough lovers—but honest to goodness friends I can talk to.
I imagine myself calling the character Kim Cattrall played…oh God, what was her character’s name?
Samantha.
&n
bsp; I imagine myself calling Samantha…she’d know what to say. Oh hell no, she’d say, “Go for it!”
Not Samantha, and not that mousy little Charlotte…maybe Miranda…would Miranda understand? I always thought of Miranda as a lesbian. Why wasn’t she a lesbian in Sex in the City? I wonder if she is a lesbian in real life.
God! Why am I thinking about this now? Who cares if Cynthia Nixon is a lesbian? I’m avoiding. I’m so good at avoiding. I’ve been avoiding my whole life…really…avoiding life. Isn’t that what Bishop accused me of?
I am.
I really am.
I step out of the bathroom, no towel, walking back into the bedroom, dripping, soaking wet as I square off against Adrian. He is still lying in bed, a big goose-down pillow propping up his head, his glorious nude body spread eagle and waiting…
“I’m going to talk to her about it, and when I do, you are not invited. And I don’t know when I’m going to talk to her, but I will. Soon. So don’t pressure me.”
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
“Eh!” I lift my hand in a definite shut up gesture and storm back into the bathroom.
Chapter 28
Toby
Orgasms is closed on Sunday and usually it is mine and Adrian’s kick-back-and-laze-around day at home, but today is somebody’s birthday and instead of relaxing, I am the unofficial and reluctant hostess at the private party he is throwing at the club. Decorating was delegated to me; cooking, Adrian. I’m glad it wasn’t the other way around.
I don’t give much thought to who is coming to the party. What do I care? I spend as little time as possible at Orgasms, which might seem strange, but I really don’t like to see the person Adrian is when he’s here in his element. For a second I worry that Phelps might be coming and that bothers me, so I ask, “Will he be here today?”
“He?” Adrian asks, not looking up from the delicious treats he’s creating.
I roll my eyes and growl, “Phelps.”
He does look up. “He won’t be here.”