“It wasn’t a lie, Cami! It was real. It was the most real thing I’ve ever done in my life. Being with you, I feel more of a person than I ever have. I’ve felt like a robot, going through the motions, most of the time. Sex is exactly what you said it was, mechanical. An act. Much like any other act that requires a bodily function where you expel bodily fluids. That’s how I think about it.”
“Oh, so what you did down there was just like when you take a shit. You find a toilet, any one will do, and you release yourself into it. Then you flush it all away and no one should even worry about what you just did. It was a bodily function, everyone has to do, in order to live. Is that pretty much how you think about what you just did?”
He sits on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. “Pretty much.”
“You will never be the man for me. You will never be what I need in my life. And I think it’s better I figured that out before I fell head over heels in love with you, Cyprian. Because I could fall so easily for you. Thank you for fucking those girls, minutes after our date ended. Thank you very much for bringing to light that you are not a man I want in my life.”
I turn to walk away but he stops me as he asks, “Why were you over here in the first place?”
I turn back to him with eyes full of tears. “I was bringing you a plate of cookies. I wanted us to share a couple of them and a glass of milk then I was going to leave you with another goodnight kiss.” I turn away again.
His hand on my shoulder stops me. He turns me to him but I can’t look at his handsome face. It’s just too hard. “Cami, I need sex. I need it. You don’t seem to understand me. If I give you the commitment you need, will you give me the sex I need? Then we can make this work. I do care about you and I do love spending time with you. You are my most favorite person and if I lost you…”
“You already have,” I tell him before he can say anything else. “I will not be holding you to me with a sexual rope. I will not be held to you with a commitment that doesn’t involve love. I cannot trust you, Cyprian.”
“I go all week without sex. On the weekends, I’ve had an abundance of it for twenty years, Cami! You cannot expect me to go cold turkey, with no idea when I will get to feel the inside of a woman again. When I’ll get to feel, soft breasts, pressed against my chest. When I’ll get to feel sweet lips on me. You can’t begin to understand my needs. I have them too, Camilla.”
“I cannot change my entire way of thinking, just so you can get off. I don’t have sex, I make love. You don’t have real feelings about anything or anyone. Any woman will do for you to relieve yourself in. I can’t handle that. Sorry, Cyprian. You’re asking for more than I can give you.”
I pull away from him and leave him in his bedroom. I’m not trying to punish him or manipulate him in any way. I am merely trying to keep myself from getting hurt any more by him.
Making my way down the stairs, I let myself out of the house and get into my car and drive all the way to the gate before the waterfall of tears overtakes me.
Why does he have to be so damn corrupted…
Lady Killer
The Reconstruction
Of Cyprian
By Michelle Love
Chapter 1
CYPRIAN
The horses thunder down the track in front of us. The afternoon is warm and I find myself pulling my jacket off and rolling up the sleeves on my white button-down. “Have a mint julip, Cyprian,” my father says as he passes a tall, slender glass down to me.
I am sandwiched between two brunettes. Simone has green eyes and Joanie has dark eyes, nearly black. They latched onto me as soon as I came to my father’s private booth. He’s now the new owner of Charlemagne’s Choice, a feisty thoroughbred he’s had his eye on for some time.
Joanie places the cold drink in my hand. “Here you go, drink up. I have plans for you soon.”
Simone looks around me, at the other woman. “Back off, Joanie. I want him all to myself.”
“Ladies, there is no need to fight over me. I won’t be needing any special attention from either of you. I’m not feeling it, today. Sorry,” I tell them and earn a frown from them both, and my father.
“Come with me, son,” he says as he gets up and goes to the back of the small but elaborately decorated room. He rests his hand on my shoulder as I meet him. “What’s been going on with you? You haven’t been coming around to the parties. Did the girls I sent you last night treat you well?”
“Papa, I’ve messed up. I met someone. A good woman. A great woman, actually. The girls you sent me, ruined that for me. She wants nothing more to do with me. She caught us. And I am devastated.” I take a long drink of the minty liquid to numb the pain that’s overwhelmed me since she left me.
“So, you think you found a woman? Like a girlfriend?” he asks as he goes behind the bar and mixes himself up something to drink.
“I did,” I tell him as I take a seat on one of the tall barstools. “But I blew it. I should’ve sent the girls away but I let them toy with me.”
“If you had a special lady friend, why did you feel the need to mess with the girls I sent you? Is your special lady not sexually satisfying you?”
I cock my eyebrow as I say, “She wants love before sex. And she doesn’t want sex, she wants to make love.”
His laugh is low and deep as ice cubes splash into the amber liquid in his short glass. “Love? What do any of us know about love?”
“I had to read some books on it. The life we’ve led had nothing to do with love. But I want to experience it. I want to experience it with her. Camilla Petit is her name. She comes from New Orleans, originally. And she is gorgeous, sweet, funny, and amazing. And I blew it, all for a piece of ass. I am morally corrupt, just like she said I was.”
“She called you names?” he asks then takes a sip of the concoction he made himself. Making a face, he looks around the bar and comes up with a single cube of sugar and drops it into the glass.
I watch it melting as I say, “Not exactly. She’s not mean. She’s honest. I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t. I think it might be because I have been conditioned to accepting sex.” I look at my father. “At times I feel like a machine, work, work, work then play, play, play. It matters to me where I make my money from but when it comes to me, personally, well, it hasn’t mattered where I got sex from. But Cami wants a commitment, which I offered her. She refused it. She wasn’t willing to accept the condition of sex being part of the commitment. And I was left alone. Papa, I’ve never felt more alone in my life.”
“You are feeling sad and hopeless, aren’t you?” he asks me as he stirs his drink with a red swizzle stick.
I lean on the bar. “I am.”
“Do you see what love and relationships do to a person. This is exactly why I’ve stayed the hell away from them. You see, I had myself a girlfriend in high school. At first, it was great. Then she and I started bickering over nothing at all. She wanted a hot dog and I had bought her a hamburger. I was thoughtless, she told me.” He stops and takes a drink as if the memory stirs things in him, he’d rather be left alone.
“So, was she your only girlfriend?” I ask as I sit up and listen to him.
“No, I had another one in college. She was smart and classy. The kind of woman you can take home to mom and dad, you know?”
“I do know. Cami is that kind of a woman. Very respectable.”
He nods. “Well, then you can expect her to want you to be just as respectable as she is. That’s how mine was. She hated my drinking. Said it wasn’t a thing she wanted me to do, except on occasion. So, I modified my nightly Scotch to every other weekend when we went to social functions.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I say. “It’s a healthy way to live.”
“It is. And if it would’ve been my decision, it might not have started to bother me. But that wasn’t enough. You see, I found my love for the racetrack while I was in college. And she found gambling to be deplorable. So, she told me she didn’
t want me to do that anymore.” Another long drink has his glass empty and he stares at the bottom of it.
“She was controlling,” I say as I nod.
“As are all women of that nature. The ones you can bring home to meet the parents are all the same. The want you to straighten up and fly right by their side. They will dress you, make you eat what they deem, appropriate. They will make you bend to their rules of how things must go if you are to stay in a peaceful existence with them. Which, by the way, is quite impossible, even if you bend until you break.”
“I read where things are not supposed to go peacefully in healthy relationships. Arguments occur because men and women see things differently. The key to a happy relationship is learning compromise. But even once that’s learned, arguments will still occur. There is no getting around them,” I tell him as he shakes his head.
“Why would you want that?” he asks as he looks deep into my eyes. “Why would anyone?”
“I guess to procreate. It’s bred into us.” I look back at the ten women my father brought along to the races today. “You want women around, Papa. The women you want around are paid, though. They will act however you want them too. If you want docile, they will be that. If you want aggressive, they will be that. It’s an act. The whole thing, including the sex, is an act. It’s not real.”
“But it is peaceful. There are no arguments. They may be paid and it all may be an act but what isn’t, son? Isn’t life just a series of acts you must do each day? We must get up every weekday and attend to our work, whatever kind you have. It’s an act. No one really wants to be doing it but it has to be done.”
“I liked to go to school and I like to go to work. I find it stimulates my brain. I need that stimulation. I crave it.”
He shakes his head. “I did not. I did what I had to, in order to make the kind of money that would support the lifestyle I imagined for myself. And I made that happen. You came along and I saw my chance to groom you to take over and give me the rest of my vision. The freedom to never work again. To completely relax.”
“And I’m glad I can give you that. I am different, though. I need the problems and I love to solve them.” My wheels start moving as I think about what I’ve just said.
I love to solve problems!
Could I have made the decision to be with those women last night, in order to create a problem where there wasn’t one? Could I have done that, so I would have to use my brain to fix the problem between me and Camilla? Am I really that person who does that kind of thing to themselves?
“You are different, Cyprian. So, this woman you’re upset about, how come she broke things off with you? Had you given her a commitment already?” he asks as he looks behind the bar and comes up with a platter of meats and cheeses.
“We did not have a commitment, no,” I say as I pick up a slice of salami.
“Then why would she end things? You were a free man. Did you not explain that to her?” he asks as he piles meats and cheeses on a cracker.
“I did but it did no good. She was right to do it. We had barely finished an amazing date. Literally, five minutes after I dropped her off, I was with two other women. It hurt her, I saw it in her eyes. She was devastated. And now, so am I.”
“I can give you some advice. It’s a mental game, one sometimes must play when trying to get a woman. I’ve never used it, as I lost any want to mess with relationships after those two nightmares.” He comes around the bar and takes a seat next to me.
“I’m not into games, Papa.”
“If you want a relationship then you should know, you will have to play some. Now, jealousy is a great catalyst. You want this woman to know you will not sit around and wait for her to come to her senses. She needs to know that.”
“I think she already does. She’s not dumb, Papa. She’s a scientist. She’s extremely smart. She’ll be on to me, quickly,” I tell him, as I’m skeptical about making her jealous. She simply ended things with me with the first bit of that.
“If you don’t want to play that card just yet, then keep the pressure on her. Send her flowers and candies. See her as often as you can. Is there somewhere she goes you could show up at?” he asks as he watches another set of horses race.
“She works at a little store at the edge of town. That’s where I met her.”
“She’s a supposed scientist who works at a store?” he asks as he shakes his head. “She’s a liar, son.”
“No, Papa, she’s not. She’s still in college, at Clemson University,” I say then laugh at my father’s skepticism.
“If you have a place where you can go see her that’s what you need. Be nice to her even if she’s short with you. Remind her of any good times you had together. And end every short visit with an invitation for her to come to you. If after a while that doesn’t work, you can get aggressive with her. Treat her like you own her.”
“That woman will never accept that kind of treatment. Not ever. That would be a fatal mistake. But you may be right about the seeing her every chance I get. I will put that plan into action and see what happens.”
“I’m telling you, son. Show up with a pretty girl on your arm and watch her move mountains to get you back into hers,” he says, making me think he might be right. But I’d like to give a shot at the other way.
I’ve already hurt her enough as it is…
Chapter 2
CAMILLA
“Men have needs, dear,” Gina tells me as we clean out the coffee machines in the back of the store.
“I have the need to know I’m loved first and that I love the person I’m about to give myself to. What about my needs?” I ask as I slosh bleach water around in one of the glass coffee pots.
She stops scrubbing a pot someone left on the burner too long and coffee burnt to the bottom of it. “It sounds to me, that date he took you on and how he acted toward you, showed promise. He cares for you, at the very least. And I can see you care for him.”
“He’s a man with no morals,” I say as I rinse the pot and place it on a rack to dry.
“Teach him what you expect. In turn, he’ll teach you what he expects. And that means he expects his girlfriend to give him the sex he needs to function. You don’t understand how some men’s minds work. I’ve been married three times. I’ve studied the beasts. They are simple creatures. Feed them, coddle them when they need it, and keep them happy in the bedroom, or where ever they feel like getting frisky. Don’t be such a prude, Camilla.”
Prude!
“I am not a prude, Gina!”
“I think you are a bit of one. How do expect you and this man to know if you are compatible? Let’s say you don’t have any sex and you fall madly in love with one another, if that can happen without having any sex? Then you get married and the wedding night comes and boom, he sucks! What then? You got yourself into a marriage with a crappy lover.”
“I didn’t mean we had to wait until we got married,” I say with a huff. “I’m not that bad. I just meant until we were sure we didn’t want to see other people. That’s all I meant,”
“But, didn’t you tell me he did offer you that? Just before you left him?” she asks.
“Well, yes,” I say as I toss the dishrag I wiped my hands on, into the dirty rag bucket. “But he had one condition. Sex being the condition. I’m not into that.”
“You aren’t into having sex being a part of a real commitment?” she asks as she shakes her head. “You’re being unrealistic. Why have a commitment at all if not for that reason?”
“Life is about more than sex, Gina,” I say as I walk away with the chirp of the door that means we have a customer. “I’ll take care of this one. You have your hands full.”
“Not to a man, it’s not!” she calls out to me as I leave the backroom.
“Welcome to Ty’s…” I stop as I see Cyprian, waiting at the counter.
“Hi,” he says.
I shake off the panic my body is suddenly filled with and walk forward. “Let me guess, you ne
ed more condoms?”
“No,” he says as he places his hands on the counter top. “I need you. That’s all I need.”
“Aww,” comes from behind me as Gina is eavesdropping.
I turn and glare at her. “Those coffee pots won’t clean themselves, Gina.”
“Hi, Gina,” Cyprian calls out to her. “How’s it going tonight?”
“Well, and you, sir?” she asks.
“It would be better if a certain someone would forgive the imbecile I have been and see fit to give this old dog another chance,” he says.
“Aww, Camilla, don’t be a stubborn fool. Why, I’d jump through hoops for a man like him,” Gina says and I wave my hands to shoo her away.
I turn back as she disappears to the back again and I make my way to the man who has torn a hole in my heart with his immoral ways. “Cyprian, look, at this point, there are no hard feelings on my part. You are the man you are. I merely cannot deal with that.”
“I was a fool who was in a state of sexual frustration. I am not blaming you for that, I am merely stating a fact. And all that can change but that’s up to you, Cami. I want you. I want all of you. I want to see you every single day. I’ve never wanted to see anyone that much.” He smiles as if that’s going to make anything better.
“Lucky me,” I say, sarcastically. “And let’s pretend for a minute that it is possible for me to give you sex whenever you need or demand it. Because there will be certain situations which will arise when I will not be able to have sex. Physical reasons, you know?”
“I am not an addict, Cami. I do have the ability to deal with the fact you are unavailable for that at certain times of the month and when you’re sick. It’s not like I need it all the time. But I do want it on the table. I need it on the table. I’m willing to give you the commitment. It will be only you, I see. I will stay away from my father’s parties and the track but I will expect you to fill that empty space.”
The Reconstruction of Cyprian Page 10