Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

  At the landing, the house parted ways with itself and split up into two wings. Rosemary turned right, toward the west wing, where she passed through a door that opened unto a hallway. On her left was a smaller door with a sliver of pale light indicating it was ajar. She tapped lightly just as a bolt of thunder rattled the windows. She pushed the door open.

  Dorian sat alone at a small oak table. The room appeared to have been a bedroom that was converted into a dining room, with a terrace attached. Stooped over his plate, Dorian emanated a most unusual dejection. Pangs of adoration and self-consciousness took turns at Rosemary. She cursed herself for coming here and wanted to run away. If only she’d collected herself before rushing over here. She felt Helen’s familiar reprimand, “So dramatic!” hissing like a snake.

  Oddly, Dorian did not turn to see her when she entered, though he seemed aware of her presence, for he stopped eating and sighed as if he had to face something he’d been dreading. Rosemary deemed it best to act exceedingly happy.

  “Why, good morning there!” Rosemary said with forced cheer. “Though, actually it is high afternoon. May I?” She gestured to the vacant seat beside him. He nodded and yawned loudly, then returned to his eating. He still would not look at her. She took the seat.

  Being close to him still held its humiliating enchantments. She bowed her head shyly, a flush of pleasure stealing into her cheek. Biting her lower lip, she wondered what facile excuse she could invent for her appearance, not to mention her inexplicable frenzy and showing up at his door without invitation. Act as if nothing is wrong, she thought. Just be natural. But what was natural anymore? She was not the same person that she was before she met Dorian Gray. Ah, she wasn’t even the same person she was hours ago! Her father, the only man in her life, the man she worshipped and trusted with the entirety of her being, was just a liar. The celestial angel she’d long to know all her life—her mother—hadn’t even loved the pathetic man. Ah, that angel was a fallen one, perhaps.

  “Dorian,” she started at last. “I’m sorry for not telling you that I’d be coming at this hour, but I figured I was more or less expected, since we agreed that you would take the painting as soon as it was ready to go. I thought it would be done days ago, but since I didn’t hear from you, I really didn’t think it was much of a rush. But, wouldn’t you know, paint takes so long to dry! Much longer than you’d think. It always surprises me—even after all these years!”

  Oh, dear. She was so nervous that she was going to just keep talking. Usually, when she did this, Dorian looked at her with amusement, a spark of flirtation lighting up his eyes. But today he was altogether indifferent. He just went about finishing his food, now and again dabbing his chin (which was uncharacteristically stubbly) with a silk napkin that bore his initials in a steel-colored thread. When he was done, he tossed the napkin on the crumb-filled plate and took a long sip of his tea.

  Still, he said nothing. It was as if he was stalling or perhaps preparing to make eye contact with Rosemary, who was willing him to look at her. She needed him. She needed him to love her.

  “Dorian,” she said. At last, his eyes on hers. His face was as beautiful as ever, and there were no signs of fatigue, but there was an absence in his eyes, an unknown darkness filling it. Rosemary went on chatting, but now, with his cold gaze upon her, so stark and unfeeling, she felt that she was on the brink of a wonderful danger.

  “You look well,” she said, her voice trembling. “Yes, as well as ever! But, honestly, you do seem rather withdrawn and seeing that you’ve taken your breakfast so late, I’m prompted to ask: Are you feeling all right?”

  In the background rose a sudden, small dinging of a bell. It startled Rosemary, and she looked around for the source. Then, glimpsing the service bell on the other side of Dorian, she realized it was him ringing it. In a flash, the old valet swooped in and cleared the table. In another flash, he was gone.

  Dorian stretched in his chair and yawned again. He rubbed his eyes as if his head ached. It seemed he’d been going over and over a problem in his mind, sleeplessly, for days. Yet he really did look well. He looked beautiful, in fact. She was not surprised when he did not say the same of her.

  “You look thin,” he said, speaking at last—his voice hoarse and dry as if these were the first words he’d spoken since waking. “I hate when you become thin,” he said, looking at her with black eyes. Rosemary had never seen them so lightless. And his tone was so begrudging. How at odds his unblemished face was with his manner! He was like a water lily: What one saw of him was the bright, vivacious beauty bobbing on the surface, but in the turbid waters below lurked unknowable slime and disease.

  “I’ve been eating heartily,” Rosemary lied. Eating had become a near-intolerable chore. She only bothered with it when her stomach began to gnaw and growl. Dorian dreaded the sight of a skeletal girl. When he’d sat for her he had often eyed her full figure with approval. Occasionally, he suggested that she could stand to gain several pounds. Whenever she was around him, she was so nervous as to devastate her appetite, but on the few occasions they had lunched together, she’d made a point of scarfing down everything her plate.

  She would have carried on fictitiously about how much she loved to eat, but Dorian had lost interest. He stared out the window that looked onto the back patio. Everything there was gray and wet. Rosemary was anxious. She both wanted his attention and wanted to get out of the dining room which felt haunted by Dorian’s . . . what was it, gloom?

  She stood up and clapped her hands.

  “Shall we find the absolutely perfect place to hang your portrait?” she asked, and started toward the door.

  Dorian’s eyes followed her, but he made no move to get up.

  “Come on,” she said, suddenly excited to show him her work, knowing that it was all the more beautiful in its elegant frame. She held a hand out to him. He looked at it, stood up, but did not accept. Still, there was a promise as he stood that he would join her.

  He shadowed her down the stairs. She kept feeling the urge to look back at him, so heavy was the sensation of his gaze upon her, but she talked her way through it. The whole way down she chatted about how much she loved how the painting had turned out and how grateful she was that he had agreed to sit for her. She doubted Dorian was paying the least attention and was glad of it.

  She unwrapped and lifted it quickly, her arms still aching from lugging it across town.

  “Where is your fireplace?” she asked of Dorian as he met her in the foyer.

  “Which one?” he said.

  Rosemary laughed. Dorian did not.

  “Alright, where is the largest one?” she asked, switching out of her playful tone.

  Dorian raised his eyebrows in the direction of what appeared to be the main dining hall. Rosemary proceeded ahead of him.

  There was a magnificent marble table chaired for over a dozen, with matching Oriental vases all down it bursting with fresh flowers. Oh, how she would like to sit at the head of that table, Mrs. Dorian Gray! At the end of the room was the fireplace. It was lifeless of course, because of the season, but oh, Rosemary imagined it churned quite the fire in the winter!

  “What about up here?” she cried, leaning the painting against the mantle. No art dwelled there, and it was an ideal place for a portrait. Destiny, she thought. This painting is destined to live here, in the most splendid space of all.

  “Dorian!” she called. Her voice boomeranged back at her in an echo that revealed her to be diminutive and frightened. She closed her eyes in an effort to conjure courage, and went on. “A nice roaring fire and your splendid form above it! If perhaps your valet would assist, we could hang it up and see what it is like!”

  Dorian stepped into the dining room. He walked toward her slowly, with a heaviness quite contrary to his typically light and boyish gait. A strange darkness still hung over his face. Rosemary went on chattering about light, and frames, and wall space. But all she could think about was his nearness. He came to stand right besi
de her. His scent was sweet and musky—intoxicating. In her dreams, she breathed it in and was wondrously infused with life.

  “Why did you come today?” asked Dorian, turning to her darkly.

  Rosemary felt herself turning beet-red. Was she so transparent? Well, look at yourself, she thought, frowning at her tattered smock. And your frantic entrance! Ha! You flung yourself in looking about ready to lie down on railroad tracks.

  “I came to give you the painting, Dorian,” she said. “I came because I can’t have it in my studio for a moment longer. I can’t have it anywhere near me.”

  Dorian remained perfectly calm. Oh, he was always so wonderfully calm! It helped her articulate her crazed thoughts.

  “Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality has had the most extraordinary influence over me,” she said, nodding. Yes, she must keep going. It was time to tell the truth. Let the world lie to me, she thought, but I shan’t lie in return.

  “I was dominated—soul, brain, and power—by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of everyone to whom you spoke. Helen, oh, Helen! I shall never forgive her for stealing you from me, but that is another matter. I wanted to have you all to myself. That has been my only want since I laid eyes upon you. I am only happy when I am with you. When you are away from me, I live in unbearable desire. These dreams of you—of things you do to me, err, things we do together— they possess my life both waking and not. Of course, I never let you know anything about this because I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection face-to-face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes—too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing. . . . Weeks and weeks passed, and I grew more and more absorbed in you. For so long I have been hiding from what I know, but there is no point in hiding from it any longer.”

  In a leap of bravery, she grabbed his hands, clutching them to her heart. Unable to yet look in his eyes for fear of the rejection that could be dwelling there, she kept her focus on his hands, imagined them tearing through her chemise as they did in her dreams.

  “Perhaps Helen is right!” she cried. “It is a far greater sin to deny our nature than to let it be free!”

  “That Helen,” he said, with a cruel ripple of laughter. “Helen spends her days in saying what is incredible and her evenings in doing what is improbable.”

  “You’re starting to sound like her,” said Rosemary. She regretted bringing Helen up. Already she felt stifled, choked, as if Helen were standing behind Dorian, making mocking faces at her.

  “I talked to Helen about my infatuation with you, Dorian, and she just laughed at me. I didn’t mind it then, so accustomed was I to her taunting me, but after she took you from me, I realized that, no, I won’t be the meek mouse in this while she stalks you like a cat. I don’t know what you’ve done together, but looking at you now, so alienated and despondent, I know it can’t have been good. Oh, as if anything Helen does is good! She strives for the very opposite!”

  She was nearing hysterics again. Why must she fixate on Helen? Here she was holding her beloved’s hands—and he wasn’t pulling away!

  “Perhaps I have been foolish in imagining that there was anything between us beyond friendship. If I am so foolish, you must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told you.”

  Biting her lower lip as she knew he liked, she at last brought her eyes to Dorian’s. She was surprised by what was looking back at her in those gray, hooded eyes: sheer, primal hunger. His hands were still clutched against her when he wiggled them loose and felt her breasts freely.

  “Dorian,” she said, both uncertain and completely certain of where this was going.

  He brought a finger to her lips.

  “Shh.”

  With slow, predatory caution, he regarded her mouth, his finger tracing the curves of her lips.

  “I’ve thought about this moment, Rosemary,” he said. His other hand was now slid fully into her cleavage, gently kneading the ample, milk-white flesh. Her knickers felt on fire, and she closed her eyes, letting herself get lost in the ways of his touch. He leaned forward, and she felt his breath on her lips. She quivered in suspense. But he did not kiss her.

  “No one has ever made love to you, is that so, Rosemary?”

  She nodded rapidly. He could ask her anything and she would tell him the truth—as long as he just kept touching her. His hand circled her nipple and it stiffened, became alert. He brought his mouth to her ear and lightly licked her earlobe. She let out a small whimper of arousal at the feel of his tongue.

  “Would you like me to make love to you?” he asked in a low whisper.

  She nodded again. What was happening? She’d waited so long, she thought she would wait forever. And this was indecent! They were not married; he wasn’t even courting her. I am so sorry, God! But, oh, as he tugged delicately on her hard nipple, nuptial statuses really ceased to matter.

  “Come,” he said, and fishing his hand out of her bodice, took her hand. He led her back up the stairs, but this time they turned into the left wing of the house and entered a magnificent bedroom. Oh, my, she was in his bedroom! It was as large and lavish as she had dreamed it would be, with flowing satin curtains along the beveled bay windows. In the center of it was the bed itself. It was not as tidy as she had dreamed it would be. The covers were tousled about. Usually they didn’t look that way until the end of her dream.

  He led her to the bed where she sat, somewhat awkwardly, on the very edge.

  “Just a moment,” he said, and abruptly left the room.

  So this was it. Dorian was going to take her. At last her dreams were to come true! But the dark stuff of her dreams . . . the times when he tied her down or gagged her with knotted cloth and spanked her . . . that wasn’t going to take place, was it? No, such terror would be an unbearable crime! Surely, it was just the stuff of nightmares. People didn’t really do that. Well, maybe in Helen’s world they did, but this was their world now: hers and Dorian’s.

  Watching the dying storm through the curtains, she heard him talking in the hall with the valet.

  “Victor,” he said, “Would you fetch me the red towels?”

  “Sorry, Monsieur?” replied the valet.

  “I don’t know where you’ve put them. They were a gift from Lady Henry Wotton. A beautiful set.”

  “Ah, yes!” said Victor. “I had them laundered. They are just over here, Monsieur.”

  Their footsteps pattered down the hall.

  Rosemary crossed her legs and chomped down on her lower lip. A gift from Helen? In her mind flashed the napkin he’d used at breakfast. Helen had a set of napkins with the same design, though it bore the initials H. W., of course. What a devil that Helen Wotton was, showering Dorian with gifts, seducing him with a wealth that had come to her by way of a faithless marriage!

  Dorian appeared in the doorframe holding the sought after Helen Wotton-tainted red towel. The sexual mood had not deserted him. His eyes grazed her voraciously.

  “May I?” he asked.

  Not knowing what she was acquiescing to, Rosemary nodded. Thinking about Helen had upset her, and she was no longer feeling very sensual. But that changed when Dorian came over to the bed. All he had to do was nudge her hip gently—motioning her to scoot to one side—and a bolt of lust fluttered between her legs. Dorian drew the rumpled covers down and spread the towel flatly on the mattress.

  Rosemary’s heart thudded in anticipation. This is it, she thought. This is what you’ve been waiting for! How foolish of you to think you could repress the desire into obsoleteness! You need him, and maybe he needs you, too. Oh! To be needed by Dorian would be Paradise!

  Dorian took her hands and kissed them worshipfully. A lock of golden hair fell over his eye and feeling exquisitely liberated, she brushed it away. He looked at her with a spellbinding intensity. Gone was the lighthearted gaiety of the D
orian she’d painted.

  “Lie down,” he instructed. She obeyed, and he began undressing her. Oh, if only she were wearing a more appropriate outfit.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied without thinking. She wanted to apologize for everything—she felt so fragile and ready to be devoured.

  “You’re frightened,” he said.

  “No, not all!” she cried. “No, I’m just—I don’t really know how this goes. I know there will be pain.”

  “There will be, at first,” he said, expertly undoing the strings of her corset. “Then there will be great pleasure.”

  She felt the perfect roundness of her breasts as they were freed from her chemise. Dorian grazed them lightly with his fingertips.

  “You are superb, Rosemary.”

  He moved his hands down to her waist and slowly slid her knickers down. Her vagina was fully exposed, moistening under his marveling gaze. He looked at her as if she were a work of genius art.

  “I am going to kiss every part of your body, Rosemary,” he said quietly. “Would you like that?”

  “Yes!” she gasped, surprised at how shrill her voice sounded.

  “Good,” he said. “Where would you like me to kiss you first?”

  Rosemary bit her lower lip and blushed.

  “Mmm,” he said. “You want me to kiss you there.” He leaned his face close to hers, and tilted her chin up.

  “Have you ever been kissed by a man?” he asked.

  She hesitated, then shook her head. Before she could feel any shame, he kissed her tenderly on the mouth. His lips were warm and soft. He took his time, until by her own will, she opened her mouth slightly. She felt his tongue slide along the inner parts of her lips then find hers and rouse it into a gentle play. She was kissing him back with passion. This is it, she thought, this is kissing! With each locking and unlocking of their tongues, Rosemary felt the craving between her thighs intensify.