by CD Reiss
“I called Margie,” I said, crossing my legs and waiting for my tea to cool. “She’s getting an entertainment lawyer from her firm to work with me. I’m sorry if that was wrong.”
“It’s fine. She likes you. You’re the eighth sister she never had.”
I cleared my throat. “And you know that thing? That collector’s party?”
He glanced up at me, head bent toward his tea. “The Collector’s Board at L.A. Mod. Of course.”
“Carnival is a donor, so they’re sending Eddie. They want me to go with him. It’s part of presenting me as an artist.” I saw him tense, changing the angle of the towel draped on his shoulders. “It’s business.”
“Absolutely not.”
I was silent as I stared at him over the rim of my cup.
“Monica?”
“Jonathan.”
“He wants to fuck you.”
“I don’t think you’re actually threatened by Eddie Milpas.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll tell you what. You’ll go with me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, Jonathan, I’d so much rather go with you.”
“I want you to be warned it’s all Jessica’s crowd. They’re nasty. They’re bored and rich. If you’re with me, you’re a target for their boredom.”
“I don’t care.”
He put his face to mine. I smelled the tea on his breath. “They’ll whisper about you.”
“Fuck them.”
“We found the whole audio on her phone, and we posted it online. It’s gone crazy. Everyone knows.”
I got closer, put my nose next to his, and whispered, “What part of ‘fuck them’ was unclear?”
“That’s my goddess.” He pressed his face to mine, his mouth open only enough to move them in time with me, giving me a kiss made purely of lips and skin. There was sex in the kiss, but only the wafting hint of his breathing. Then he slipped his tongue between my lips, and my spine tingled as if some unholy spirit used my vertebrae as piano keys.
I groaned. My mouth accepted his darting tongue, the command of his lips. I arched when his hand slipped down to my breast, grazing the back of his hand against my hard nipple.
“Take me,” I whispered into his mouth.
“I’ll do as I like,” he said into mine, and I felt the force of his words in the pressure between my legs. The personality change that accompanied play was so stark that the first utterance in his stern, serious voice, made my cleft quiver like a plucked string. “Hands behind you on the counter. One on top of the other.”
I did it. He put his hand at the small of my back and pressed upward until I was arched and facing the ceiling.
“You need to go back to Bordelle.” He pulled my knees apart roughly. “This cotton shit is unworthy.” Opening two drawers, he placed my feet on the edges so my legs stayed open. I heard the clink of silverware. “This thing,” he said before I heard the soft crunch of fabric being cut. He’d sheared my panties with a steak knife. “It offends me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He ran his hand over me. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I felt his dry skin awaken nerve endings, grazing over my breasts, belly, thighs. Even the slightest pressure sent shards of pain at the black-and-blue base of my rib cage and the soft meat between my legs, a punctuation for the pleasure of his touch.
“You’re still bruised,” he said. “That’ll take time to heal.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I’m going to be gentle where you’re hurt,” he said. “But everywhere else is mine.”
“Yes.”
“Now, you want your tea?”
“Yes, sir.” Though my body was awake with desire, my voice was husky with heat and exhaustion. My vocal cords hadn’t forgotten that it was close to midnight.
He pressed my mouth open with his thumb and forefinger, as if I was a kitten taking medicine. The teabag hovered over my face, dripping hot liquid over my mouth. I felt hot fluid on my lip and the dry, waxen taste of chamomile tea on my tongue. It traveled down my chin and my throat. I swallowed it like an offering of communion.
“Thank you, sir.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of dripping tea down my chest. He must have dipped the bag back into the cup because the heat renewed on my nipples. Lines of molten liquid dripped down around my ribs to my back. I gasped when he put the bag on my belly and dragged it down to the edge of my triangle. I quivered in anticipation. That hot thing, on me. Soft and pliant, yet firm in its burning intensity. But he didn’t. He leaned over, kissing and licking the tea from me. He sucked my nipple gently as his hand stayed on the teabag, which felt as though it was cooling too fast.
I groaned. I had never thought to put a hot teabag on my clit, but it was all I could think about. He had to do it. Had to. Before it got cold.
When he moved his mouth to the other nipple, cleaning it with his tongue and lips, he slid the bag down, pressing it against my clit with the heel of his hand while putting two fingers in me. I yelled. Hot. Not straight-from-the-pot hot, but hot enough. Ten times hotter on my clit than anywhere else, and the fire added exponentially to my desire. Hot tea dripped down my cleft. I shuddered everywhere, spreading my legs wider, pushing into his fingers. His tongue was still at my nipple, and I was bruised, yes, but I wanted him to bite it. I wanted him to hurt me. I was addicted to it.
He pushed his hand against me, heel on hot teabag on clit, fingers in cunt, and he rubbed them in circles. My pussy drank it. The bag got drier as the tea was squeezed out of it, making it rougher, like crackling leaves in the fall. The little scratches from hot, sticklike herbs drove me to the edge.
“I want to come,” I cried.
“No.”
“I can’t.” I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me.
“You’re mine. No matter what happens. Your pleasure and pain. Your skin. Your lips. Your cunt.”
He pushed the bag and his fingers into me. “Jonathan. You own me. I am yours. God, who else? Fuck. Please. My king. Please let me—”
“Come.”
With a sharp movement, he brought me to orgasm in my kitchen again. I thrust against his hand, screaming, back twisting. He put his other hand behind my head so I didn’t bang it on the cabinet, and when I found myself winding around to the point where I almost kicked out a drawer, he caught me, panting and naked.
“Thank you,” was all I could say.
“You’re welcome.”
“God, I love you.”
“And I, you,” he said softly. “You still want tea?”
“It’s cold,” I said into his ear. “I don’t like it cold.”
“You have it all over you. Let me get you in the shower.”
He took me to my bathroom and got me into the tub. I stood under the water, letting it run where the tea had.
Jonathan got in, exquisitely naked, taut, lean, skin over muscle over bone in perfect proportion. I didn’t know if he worked out. I didn’t know where he’d find the time. He could just be the way he was with no effort whatsoever, and that was all right with me.
“You just dried off,” I said. “And I’m making you get wet again.” I put the bar of soap to his chest and rubbed, working over his shoulders slowly, and back to his nipples, to his tight stomach. His erection was huge, waiting, a sign of things to come. I stroked it with the soap. I didn’t want to rush. I wanted to take him in fully, in all his beauty, touch every surface, feel every bump and curve.
His eyes went over my body as I washed him. I cleaned his back by putting my arms around him, feeling his dick press against me. He took me by my hair and pulled my head back. The water got in my face, and I smiled. He wet my hair as he kissed my neck. He squeezed too much shampoo into my hair and massaged my scalp. The suds were everywhere. I laughed when they went into my eyes, and he laughed too, pressing his thumbs to my eyes to stroke the suds away. I was covered in shampoo, and Jonathan used it to bathe me, sliding his hands where the tea
had gone. He went gently where I was hurt, roughly where I wasn’t, until he got to where the teabag had made me come, and I groaned.
“Ah, goddess....” He slid his hand under my ass, his fingertips slipping into my folds. They were wet but not from the shower.
“Again, please.”
“Put your hands up to the showerhead.” I did, and his followed the line of my arms, cupping his hands over mine, sliding them to the pipe that held the shower head. “Hold that.”
My arms up as if tied, he pushed me against the tiles and put one of my legs around his waist. The head of his cock sat at my entrance, waiting. I pushed against him, and where his member touched me, my body responded in waves of pleasure. He kissed me, hands at my ass, spreading me apart with his fingers.
“Please,” I said. “I want you.”
“I’m yours.” He thrust into me. It felt like an electric shock through my body, pulsing as he thrust, every inch adding to the pressure. I was full, engorged, all surface area for him. “Look at me.”
I opened my eyes. His hair was soaked. Rivulets of water dripped down the angles of his cheeks and neck as his hips worked into me. He pulled my ass open and slipped in a finger. Just a finger. Exquisite. The pleasure with none of the pain. I clenched around him.
“Soon, when you’re healed, I’m taking this ass again,” he said.
“It’s yours.”
He pushed another finger in, and his eyelids dropped a little. I groaned, feeling stretched and possessed, as though every part of me was under his control and protection.
“Look at me when you come,” he said.
“I’m close.” My arms ached, but I didn’t move them, just held the pipe above me because he commanded it.
“Yes.” He went faster, pushing into me. He used the fingers in my asshole to draw our bodies together fast and hard as he slapped against me.
My clit filled, my cunt opened with sensation, my ass sucked him in. “Oh, God Jonathan. Jonathan.” I looked in his eyes, holding his face still in my vision.
“Come with me.”
“Yes.”
I released. The effort of keeping my face to his while I came prolonged the orgasm that washed over me. My arms were frozen. I couldn’t arch or close my eyes. I just exploded in a controlled way, toes curling, my hands gripping the pipe. My cries echoed against the tile walls. My vision blurred. His mouth opened, and he grunted a long slow vibration, slowing, pulsing in a different rhythm. His eyes and mine watched each other, locked in pleasure, above and below.
thirty-six
JONATHAN
The house was as dark, and the rain and cloud cover had darkened it further. We tucked each other into bed, and I curled against her. I shifted her T-shirt and kissed her shoulder, moving my lips across it. She tasted of warm milk and canned peaches.
“My Jonathan,” she groaned.
“I’m not making a pass at you.”
She turned to face me. “Like hell.”
“I think you’ll help me sleep.”
“You never sleep much.”
“Well, I’ve been sleeping less, and I don’t feel right. Not since the arrest. And since Rachel.” I cleared my throat when I choked on her name. My neck and arms hurt as if the nerves were being squeezed. I broke out in a sweat. Ridiculous. I tried to get control of myself, but it was hard to breathe. I must have been coming down with something.
She turned around to face me. “You ever going to forgive yourself for that?”
“I’ll get around to it.”
“You’re going to give yourself ulcers.”
I didn’t answer. Talking about my irrational emotional issues wouldn’t get either one of us to sleep, and we both needed it. I stroked her eyebrows as I’d done before, getting her eyes to flutter closed. She sighed and let me touch her, relaxing. Our legs got heavy together as she released the spring of tension binding them. She seemed on the edge of sleep, breathing regularly and softly. Her eyes stayed closed when I stroked her hair. Then she opened them.
“You’re wide awake,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
She sat up. “No, it’s not.”
I tried to sit up with her, but she pushed me down. I was stronger, of course, but I let her press my shoulders to the mattress.
“Stay here,” she said.
She rolled off the bed and padded away. I didn’t know where she was going or what she intended, but I hoped it didn’t involve Xanax or alcohol. I didn’t want to fight about that or anything. She came back with a viola and bow slung over her shoulder like a batter coming off the on-deck circle. If I’d ever seen anything as sexy as Monica Faulkner in a stretched-out T-shirt and wielding a stringed instrument, I’d be at pains to remember it.
“You going to knock me unconscious with that thing?”
“One way or the other.” She crawled on the bed, leaving one foot on the floor and stretching her body so the instrument fit under her chin. She drew the bow across, making it hum, then turned a knob at the top of the neck. I slipped closer until my lips touched her thigh. “Any requests?”
“Something bombastic. With percussion.”
She laughed and played a measure. I recognized it right away as Mendelssohn’s “Evening Song.” She was all right, my woman. What she was trying wouldn’t work, but the honest attempt wouldn’t go unappreciated. I stroked her knee with my thumb as she played and rocked her body with the slow rhythm of the song. The piece was short, and when it ended, she riffed on the melody, smoothing it further. Her hips rocked the mattress like waves on the ocean. I stroked her knee, then stopped, placing my hand on her leg.
I listened with my eyes closed, feeling her sway, hearing her music, as it got farther and farther away. The sounds of the ocean outside the window grew louder, and the water rose, coming over the sill and flowing onto her floor. She must not have noticed the flood or care about the fact that her house would probably float right down the hill, because she kept playing and rocking. I was too heavy, too weak, too contented, to stop her.
The rain got louder and harder, dropping into my eyes, blinding me. My stomach was in complete upheaval, and my head swam as the waves pulled me out to sea. I had a dead weight dragging down my right arm. It was a person. A woman. Monica? I’d let her face go under while I fought the tide. I pulled her up, the effort twisting my stomach. Her mouth was full of water, and her eyes were glassed over.
The scene was mine. I’d been blacked out from half a bottle of whiskey, but things had happened, and my brain had stored them deep.
“Rachel, baby, come on!” But even saying the words took more energy than I had.
I looked upward, to safety, and saw only sheer cliffs between us and the street above. The beach had drowned under forty nights of rain, and we were about to as well. No one knew we were there. Most of the population of Palos Verdes was away for Christmas.
So it was on me. All I had to do was keep our heads over the water and not drift too far out, a simple task that became more difficult as the minutes wore on. The car drifted away, the headlights getting dimmer as it drifted out to sea. I’d been thrown clear, saved by inertia and a body limber and pain free from conspicuous alcohol consumption. Rachel was sober and stuck, but somehow, I’d jumped in and pulled her from the car.
I looked up the cliff again, the rain dropping in my eyes. It was a black edge, cutting the starry sky in half. Hopeless. Going down had been as easy as a running jump. Getting back up would be impossible. I tried to keep our heads above water, and failed, and tried again, and failed again.
A light.
Two lights.
A car parked right at the edge of the cliff. I tried to cry out, but I had nothing left. The noise of the ocean and the rain would have drowned out even the most powerful scream. All I had was my body and my last bits of strength. I swam toward the lights, pushing against the current, and saw that the driver had found a way to crawl down.
The driver was my father.
He wor
e the khaki trench coat I’d looked for at Sheila’s house. I’d wanted his keys so I could chase Rachel. I’d seen him out the window, going after her, and run out. That’s how he knew we were there. Thank God for him. I’d never been grateful for my father before. I looked at Rachel. She’d become a dead weight in my arms, but I pulled her up. A wave caught us. A lucky break. I smacked against the rocks, managing to put myself between them and Rachel. My father got thigh deep in the water, grabbed my collar, and pulled me onto the ledge. I climbed with him, pulling Rachel. Dad grabbed her and helped us up. I collapsed at the top.
“This is going to cost me, son.” My father’s voice. “It’s going to cost.”
The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at Disney. I opened my eyes. In front of me, so close I had no context but a few blades of grass, the dark, rainy night, and my own nausea, was Rachel’s face. She too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face. She blinked, and a tear fell over the bridge of her nose.
She faded, like a movie going to black, and the sound of the rain in Echo Park replaced the sixteen-year-old remembrance. Monica breathed in my ear in the rhythms of sleep. Outside, I heard traffic, a bus on Echo Park Avenue, and the children playing in the Montessori school yard. I opened my eyes, as if waking not from a dream but a resurrected memory.
It was morning, and finally, Rachel was free.
thirty-seven
MONICA
I wore one of the dresses he’d bought me in Vancouver, sleeveless black one with a skirt that fell half an inch from the floor. The neckline so low it required a special bra that had been hanging with it. He requested I wear it, and it was magnificent.
I covered the yellowing bruises with a little makeup, draping hair, and whatever accessories I could gather. I wouldn’t stand up to a forensics team, but at night, in a dark party, maybe I wouldn’t have to crack a joke or tell a lie.
I’d wanted to take my own car, but Jonathan insisted on letting Lil drive, so I waited on my porch for the Bentley. It was exactly on time. Lil let Jonathan out the back. He wore a navy suit and a tie of darkest pink. His shirt was white and pressed, and he was perfect. I started down the porch steps, and he held up his hand.