Hard Rhythm

by Cecilia Tan

  Axel tried to keep from laughing but couldn’t entirely. Ana seemed unperturbed, pretending she’d heard nothing perhaps, but Flora looked around nervously. I tried to come up with something to say to defuse the tension, or any plausible explanation, other than what it obviously was, but my mind drew a blank.

  Walking toward the kitchen took us farther from the dungeon area and the sound receded. I had never really thought about it before but the Inquisition Room had to be directly under the foyer, the main room under the main parlor. Ricki had started up a bit of tour guide chatter, describing the history of the mansion and the founding of Coast to Coast Pictures by her grandfather after World War II. Flora continued to look spooked and Ana placid.

  They were both beautiful: Flora wide-eyed and Midwest healthy plump, like a dark-haired Adele, Ana trim and deceptively youthful. If she’d had Chino when she was twenty she wouldn’t be quite fifty, I realized. Same age as Julia Roberts. Her hair was loose and she was wearing a simple dress and a soft-looking sweater. Ricki got everyone settled around the kitchen table and then began pulling out the post-party food that Mina had prepped and left for us.

  “Let me help you,” I offered.

  “No no, you sit, rest,” Ricki said, then made a face, worried that had sounded incriminating. “Er…”

  “I’ll at least get the drinks,” I said.

  “Okay.” Ricki set about putting the mini quiches and other such things into the oven while I got out glasses and a pitcher of fresh lemonade, a bottle of seltzer, a bowl of ice cubes, and tongs.

  And then I was out of things to do and I sat down next to Chino, facing his relatives.

  When Ricki put a platter of food down in front of us—chicken wings and mini quiches and Swedish meatballs—and proceeded to hand out plates, Flora finally cracked.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t eat this food,” she said.

  “Flor!” Ana said sharply.

  “I can’t eat the food from a house where such things are going on. I can’t pretend—”

  Ana silenced her with a sharp whistle and a hand on hers. “What, you think the food’s going to taint you? Is it like the magic food in stories you’re not supposed to eat?”

  “And we’re supposed to stay here? To sleep here? How? I’m afraid I’ll be raped in my bed.”

  Chino tried to fix it. “Flora, it’s not like that. We didn’t know you were coming or we wouldn’t have been…having so much fun when you arrived.”

  “Fun! You think I don’t see the marks on Madison’s back?”

  I sat up straighter suddenly. This dress only had thin straps over the shoulders. I hadn’t even realized the flogging had left any marks. It didn’t hurt and I didn’t think about it.

  Chino moved my hair aside and traced one welt gently with one finger, his eyes sad. “This is not like what happened to Mom. Mom, I’m sorry you had to get such a shock. That was never my intention.”

  “And you!” Flora continued, pointing at me. “How dare you give advice about escaping battering.”

  I tried, too. “Flora, it’s different. What we do with each other, it’s consensual, it’s for…stimulation and, and bonding. Your brother loves me—”

  “And my stepfather loves my mother!” She made a disgusted noise and pushed her chair back from the table.

  Ana stopped her with an iron grip on her sleeve and said something quickly to her in Spanish. I didn’t get much of it but I thought I caught the word for “virgin” and I doubted she was talking about the Virgin Mary.

  Then Ana addressed us in English. “I’m sorry my daughter is so excitable. She’s been raised very sheltered. Not only does she not know your rock and roll, she has a very unrealistic view of sexual relations.”

  “Sex doesn’t include hitting. If it did, why did we leave?”

  “This?” Ana pointed to her still swollen black eye. “This was not sex. And it was not done for ‘love.’ This was done by a man who wished to do me harm, against my will, because I would not bend to his any longer. Perhaps he had a right to be angry that the woman he had sheltered and supported for years was going to leave him, but he had no right to harm me or to threaten me. And that is why we left. And Chino has no right to harm or threaten Madison, am I right?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “We play. We play with…spankings and things like that. But like I said, for stimulation, not because he’s actually punishing me.”

  “I thought you said it was only for show,” Flora said to me.

  “I never said that, Flora.” I clasped my hands. “You’re the one who said that. I tried to explain—”

  “You said it wasn’t real!”

  “And it’s not real,” I said firmly, “if by real you mean abuse and injury. It is real love, though.”

  Chino appealed to his mother. “I love her. I cherish her. We belong to each other.”

  Ana made that fly-swatting gesture again. “Yes, of course you do. I know all about bondage, and paddling, and flogging. Did you think your generation invented it? I met your father at fetish night at a dance club.” She reached for the serving tongs and moved some food onto her plate and then put some onto her daughter’s plate as well. “Flora, I know it’s a shock but that’s because all your life you’ve been taught everything about sex by men who know nothing. It’s time for you to grow up finally. Forget the petty, sad notions of sex that men put into your head and learn to recognize love.” Her voice quavered momentarily while she set down the tongs. “I could never teach you to see it because it took me until now to learn the lesson myself. And it is crucial that you choose love over money, over anything else. If I have sacrificed my best years so that you would never go hungry, the most important lesson you must learn now is to love.”

  Chino looked like his eyes were about to fall out of his head. “Ma.”

  “Mi hijo.” She smiled, her eyes a bit watery. “If you love her well and she considers herself well loved, you have my blessing. Now, enough foolishness. Eat. All of you, eat.”

  We were pretty hungry by that point, and we attacked the platter lustily. Flora looked sheepish at first, but after a few bites began to loosen up. Soon Axel had figured out something in common they could talk about: California beaches. Flora remembered the beach from when she was a child and said the Great Lakes were never the same—too cold, not enough waves, rocky shores. Mal told her he lived within walking distance of the Santa Monica Pier and her eyes lit up.

  Shortly after that Ricki took them to the guest wing to get them settled for the night and gave the all-clear for the rest of the party guests to emerge from downstairs. Once it was established that Ana and Flora were okay, Lawson was long gone, and so was Schmitt, there was much laughing and joking about Helene being audible even through stone (and probably air vents) and about Chino’s mom being in the know.

  Once they were all gone, Chino and I decided to stay the night. Axel and Mal were as a matter of course, and we decided to be there in the morning when the women woke up.

  “Besides,” Chino said, once we were ensconced in a guest room far from any others, pressing me back against the door with his hips. “We were interrupted and I don’t think I’d make it all the way through the drive back to your place without needing to do this.” He lifted me up and rutted against me.

  “Bed,” I said. “My backside and welts are sore and this door isn’t helping.”

  “I suppose the bed might be a good idea,” he said and carried me to it, falling down onto it with me. “Although we’re both wearing too much.”

  “Race you,” I said, then laughed as he was still getting the fly of his jeans undone when I had pulled the sundress off over my head and slipped my panties off in half the time. Soon enough he was completely bare, though, wrapped only in his tattoos—and a condom.

  “Can I come inside you without any foreplay?” he asked.

  “My body is yours,” I said. “It says so right on the label.”

  “Mm-hm. And your heart is mine, too. Bu
t your mind will always be your own, Maddie. And that’s a good thing. So tell me what you think about me fucking you with no foreplay.”

  “This entire night was foreplay,” I said.

  “Then I take that as definite consent,” he said, and held me down while he rubbed his cock up and down my slit. The dirty talk and that little bit of rubbing were more than enough foreplay for me and although I was at my tightest, I loved the feeling of him wedging in.

  So, apparently, did he. “Nnnghh. Love to fuck you. This hole especially.”

  “Was that really the first time we did it in missionary position?” We’d had a lot of sex over the past few weeks and yet I hadn’t noticed.

  “It was. I was saving it for a special occasion.”

  I grinned and rocked my hips in time with his as he set about fucking me slowly. At least at first. Once he settled into a languid but steady rhythm, he began to ask me things. “Were you okay with the guys helping out like that?”

  “I loved the guys helping out. I loved…being exposed.” I tried to explain the feeling I’d had. “I don’t mean physically exposed, but it felt kind of like that. Like you bared my kinky soul to everyone there.”

  “And you liked that?”

  “Mm, yes, Daddy.”

  “That’s because my definition of a good girl is a dirty girl who loves sex,” he said, dipping his head to suckle at my neck and send pleasure shooting down my skin. “Who loves it when I do twisted things to her.”

  I wrapped my legs around him, trying to drive him deeper. “Mmm. I don’t know which I like better: when you punish me or when you reward me.”

  “Oh, you definitely like the reward best, sweets. But you like it even better after you’ve been punished.” His mouth met mine and his tongue darted between my lips in time with his thrusts. When he let me breathe again he went on. “You were a very, very good girl tonight. You took everything I dished out, you were super awesome to my mom and sister, and you trusted me. Now I know how deeply you trust me.”

  I had a sudden shiver, though. “Can you believe Lawson? What a tool. I hope he doesn’t press assault charges.”

  “Ricki seemed to think he won’t be daring to show his face in our circles again. Her comment to me was ‘he’ll have to move to Australia to get a job in the English-speaking world.’” Chino kissed me on the neck, the forehead, the mouth. “Okay, doll, I’m turning off your ability to move now. But you can come if the way I fuck you takes you there.”

  He proceeded to fuck me for a long time after that, long enough for an incredible, gradual slow-build orgasm to accumulate drop by drop until I was completely brimming, and then when he came I spilled over, awash in sensation and the overwhelming feeling of never-ending love.

  Epilogue

  Six Months Later

  We took Ana and Flora with us when we went house hunting in the Hollywood Hills. They both preferred my place in West Hollywood, so our plan was to move them in there and for me and Chino to buy something in Laurel Canyon where there’d be room to put in a dungeon…and a nursery when we were ready to do that. But they liked to come see the houses with us.

  We walked up the driveway to a house that looked familiar. So did the agent standing in the kitchen. Her eyes lit with recognition. “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, wasn’t it? I believe you visited this property the first day it was on the market. And here you’ve decided to re-visit now that it’s on the market again?”

  “What happened to it in the meantime?” I asked.

  “Oh, the usual. Buyer and seller took a long time to settle on a price and contingencies, then the buyer’s financing fell apart. Lost his job at a website startup or something like that and wasn’t able to get re-employed fast enough to satisfy the mortgage company.” She did a double-take suddenly as she got a clearer look at my face. “Oh! You’re the vibrator advice lady!”

  I smiled. “Yes, I am.”

  “This property has so much great natural light. Have I showed you the upstairs rooms? Suitable for bedroom or office or studio…”

  We followed her up the stairs and then also spent a long time looking around outside while she greeted some other prospective buyers.

  I sat down on a rock on the hillside with a view over Los Angeles and Ana came to sit beside me. She patted my hand. “Are you troubled, mi hija? Is my boy troubling you?”

  “Oh, no, Chino is wonderful,” I admitted cheerfully. “But I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Ana. And I never quite know how to bring it up.”

  “Okay, okay, let me guess, then,” she said with a smirk that reminded me startlingly of her son. These days she smiled more and more. “You want to ask me to share my story for your non-profit charity for women, but you’re worried it’s too soon.”

  I laughed. “No, that wasn’t it, but that’s a great guess and if it’s not too soon, I actually would like you to become one of our regular speakers.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I guess I’m still chewing over the question in my mind. If you knew about kink and consensuality, how could you choose a relationship that was essentially nonconsensual? Is all we’re doing to educate people wasted if it can happen even if you know?”

  “Ah.” She patted my arm. “First of all, I was too young when I got involved with Cisco to know right from wrong yet, but I thought I knew. Cisco was young and stupid, too, and we got a lot of it wrong, and I did not like his pornographic art. If I’d encouraged him to pursue that instead of making him promise to stop, who knows? Perhaps he could have earned more. Perhaps if I had been less afraid of my own desires I could have learned to love him for who he was instead of passing judgment on him. I could tear myself apart if I thought about these what-ifs every day. But the truth is that when I made the decision to marry for the sake of the children, I convinced myself of a few things. One, that love would come. Two, that my love of God would be enough to sustain me if love in the relationship did not come. Three, that because I had liked when Cisco spanked me that I could handle whatever might come. I fooled myself on all counts, and it took me years to not only acknowledge that I had fooled myself but then to actually gather up the will to leave.”

  “I need to understand, though, Ana. If I’m going to be a domestic violence educator, I need to understand how a woman as intelligent and thoughtful as you could get sucked in. I know it happens all the time to very smart women but I still haven’t wrapped my head around it.”

  “Well, you know they are nice at first. And they are nice exactly when they have to be, to convince others that they are harmless, or you. But the dark side begins to show whenever they think you have no choice but them. He had so many things he could lord over me. My immigrant status—he told me if he divorced me I would be deported and never see my children again. When they make enough threats like that, you come to believe you are truly trapped, and that is when the violence begins.”

  “I’m so sorry you went through that.”

  “Don’t be, mi hija. It’s in the past now. That’s why it’s so crucial we teach others. So fewer will suffer what I did.” She squeezed my hand. “You are a good woman, and very good for Chino. I can see it. The way you look at each other, the way you turn toward each other like flowers toward the sun.”

  “Flora is still a little skeptical,” I said.

  “Flora will find her sun eventually,” Ana said. “There is a cute tattoo artist who works in a shop in Koreatown who likes her. He is being very patient. Bringing her flowers. Very old-fashioned. Perhaps it will work.” She shrugged.

  A tattoo shop in Koreatown? A different one from the one where Cisco worked? Seemed unlikely. That meant Ana had to be in touch with him. But neither Cisco nor she had mentioned it to me or Chino. Curious.

  Ana stood. “Christmas is coming soon,” she said, and left me wondering what she meant by that.

  I found Chino in the room that would become our dungeon if we bought this house. He snagged me by the waist and spun me around. “Hands against the wall,” he grow
led, and then rubbed his hand up and down my jeans until I wiggled back against him.

  “Good girl,” he said as I twirled in his arms to kiss him on the lips. “Very good, indeed.”

  A Note from the Author

  Although I fully believe in the power of fiction and fantasy, and in the ability of readers to tell the difference between a hot fantasy that breaks consent (Christian Grey, anyone?) and what is acceptable in real life, in this book I wanted to inject one particular element of reality: The domestic violence hotline number that Madison gives to Flora is real. 1-800-799-7233 is the USA National Domestic Violence Hotline, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2016 and answered its four millionth call for help. I wanted to include a real phone number in case it might help some reader escape an abusive situation. The bit about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops condemning abuse and making it grounds for annulment of marriage is also true.

  There are also many good local advocacy organizations. In the Boston area where I live, The Network/La Red is one in particular that helps LGBTQ and members of the BDSM community with partner abuse problems. Their 24-hour hotline number is 617-742-4911. Please remember that liking kinky fiction, or even kinky sex, does not mean you support abuse, nor that you should tolerate abuse.

  The BDSM community and domestic violence advocates share a goal: consenting partners and consensual relationships for everyone. Be safe out there!

  Everyone knows Ricki Hamilton as the icy heiress living in a billion-dollar mansion. But few realize that behind the gilded gates, Ricki is the mistress of LA’s most exclusive private club. A place where no fantasy is forbidden and no one goes unsatisfied—except for Ricki. She’s ready to leave the business behind, until she meets the one man who changes her mind…

  Please see the next page

  for an excerpt from Taking the Lead

  Chapter One

  Overture

  RICKI