by CD Reiss
I’d felt like a foreigner in my own skin, dragging around a sack of muscle and bone held together with medicine. Even after the doctor appointments dwindled and life returned to something that looked like normal, I still hadn’t adjusted to being two people in one body, and my wife knew it. She was drifting away like a bottle bobbing in the surf, tide by tide. She wasn’t Jessica. She’d never leave, at least not for someone else. But she’d leave with distraction and indifference. And at the thought of the lost intimacy, I felt a blade of ice cold rage so thick I had no room for a reaction or an emotion. My head was clear. The anger had pushed out all the clutter. She was mine to lose, but she was mine.
Three days.
MONICA
I missed two things.
I missed my freedom, and I missed slavery.
I got myself caught in a nether region where I couldn’t come and go as I pleased, and I didn’t feel protected.
I was being unfair and I knew it. What man could be expected to keep up Jonathan’s intensity for any length of time? No human could continue to be a raging lion after having their heart ripped out.
So, though we burdened each other with many things, I never burdened him with my longing for my dominant Jonathan. That man was gone. I loved the man who replaced him. He was everything I almost lost in that fucking nightmare of a hospital. He was funny and thoughtful. Gracious and wise. He was still the best lover I’d ever laid my hands on.
“Hello?” His voice was thick with sleep. The sun was just coming up over Caracas, tainting the sky brown.
“I’m coming back early,” I said as I walked across the tarmac toward the Gulfstream. Jacques waved. His temp copilot for the day took my rolling suitcase and stowed it underneath.
“Really?” Jonathan sounded as awake as a gallon of coffee. “I have something for you.”
“But I have to go right into the studio,” I said. “Jerry wants me to work on Forever for this sampler idea he’s—”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll walk in the door the same time as if I’d stayed here. I just wanted you to know what I was doing with your plane.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Goddess,” he said, and I heard something in his voice I hadn’t heard in half a year. It stopped me on the steps up to the fuselage door.
“Yes.” I was shocked at the small sound of my own voice.
“I don’t give a fuck about the plane.”
“It’ll be fast. I’ll be home by lunch.”
“Text me where you’re going to be.”
“Why?”
“What?”
Fuck. I promised myself I’d never forget what Jessica did to him, yet here I was, serial-bailing on him and giving attitude about it.
“It’s the same place as always,” I said, backpedalling as I snapped my seatbelt on.
***
I ate a lunch of chicken fingers and a half a radicchio salad in the engineering room. I shot the shit with Jerry and Deshawn. We talked about promoting the sampler, getting beer thrown at me in Caracas as a sign of respect, the roaches in the hotel, the excellent food. Half an hour later, we were back to work. Executives drifted in and out to hear me. Eddie even showed up for fifteen minutes.
The phone had been face down on the baby grand piano; the sheen of it let me know when the glass lit up with a call or text. But I wouldn’t pick it up. I was in the middle of something. Only when I was done did I check it.
—I want to see you—
The text had come ten minutes earlier, when I was in the middle of recording Forever. It was based on a poem I’d written while Jonathan was in the hospital, and I was so angry I imagined myself in an eternal, raging battle with death.
I couldn’t take a text. We were trying to get the last two words right. Forever fuck. It had to sound like a powerful curse, but be muddled, and on key, and gravelly and transcendent, all at the same time. My feet hurt and the foam egg carton pattern on the walls seemed inverted, my brain and eyes were so exhausted.
I couldn’t possibly take a text, even from my husband.
—Where are you?—
Ten minutes later.
—You were supposed to be out two hours ago—
I scrolled through his texts. Jerry and the sound team packed up. I was going to have to deal with this. I had my career. He knew what it entailed. He didn’t have the right to harass me while I was recording.
I took a deep breath and called him from outside.
“Hi,” I said. The parking lot behind the studio smelled like sweaty asshole and stale cigarettes.
“You’re out?” Jonathan asked.
“Just finished up.”
“I have a surprise for you when you get home.”
Home. A house in the hills that already had too many painful memories. Medications. Falls. Fights. He’d been sick and pissed. I loved him. I’d never leave him. But some days, I felt like we were coming apart at the seams.
“The guys were going to dinner. I’m a little hungry.”
He paused. The silence seemed eternal, and though I imagined him staring into space with the phone at his ear, when I heard a car door slam, I knew he hadn’t been inactive.
“Jonathan, it’s—”
“Stay there.”
“Not tonight, I—”
“This sounds to me like you’re telling me no.” The calm, arrogant dominance in his voice was like a slap in the ass because I hadn’t heard it in six months. “For the sake of clarity, goddess, when it comes to me, that’s not in your vocabulary. I don’t hear it.”
I said yes sir with all the sarcasm of a spoiled adolescent, and immediately regretted it. Luckily, my husband had already hung up the phone.
JONATHAN
This shit stopped tonight.
I parked in the back and went into the building. There were a couple of doors ajar, behind which I could hear the laughter and mumblings of men. I heard her three down, her voice humming, piano strings getting hammered one by one, slowly.
I slipped into the engineering room and looked at her through the window.
She sat at the keyboard, scribbling something onto a notebook, then considering the keys again, back straight, neck as long and white as a swan’s, ebony hair braised and twisted to the top of her head. A goddess. She’d waited. I don’t know what would have happened with us if she hadn’t.
The engineering booth was empty and dark, and I watched her like a movie. I saw her bite a fingernail. Close her eyes. Tap a finger, then suddenly burst out with a word in one long note. It was you. She hit three keys, then three different keys, sang the word again, in a different register, and wrote it down.
It was as if I hadn’t seen the length of her neck in months, nor the delicacy of her wrists. I knew every inch of her skin, every curve of her body, yet, that day, when she’d said no to me, I anticipated the prospect of showing her why that wasn’t going to wash any longer with no little delight.
I went back into the hall, closing the engineering room door behind me.
MONICA
His scent cut through the dank musk of the studio before the sound of the door closing reached my ears.
“Hi,” I said without looking up from my notes. “Can we meet with those guys? Jerry wants to lay out a plan for Wednesday.”
His fingertips grazed the back of my neck, and I shuddered, closing my eyes halfway.
“No,” he whispered.
“I’ll meet you at home later, if you want.”
“Stand up.”
I looked up. He stood over me, hand at the back of my neck, face broaching no arguments. I don’t know what my expression said, but my mind went utterly dark for a second.
I stood, reaching for my bag.
He gently took it from me and laid it back down. I started to object but didn’t get past the first syllable before he had his fingers to my lips.
“Unbutton your shirt,” he said. We gazed deeply at each other for
longer than usual, and I knew even before my fingers touched my shirt, that he wasn’t interested in a standard, sweet, encounter.
He brushed his thumb over my lips, across my jaw, and lodged it under my chin, fording me to look at the dusty fluorescent lights.
I undid my buttons in a businesslike fashion while he spoke.
“I haven’t told you this in a long time, so I want to remind you. You are mine. Any time. Any place. Without questions. You get on your knees when I say. You spread your legs when I say. You open your mouth and take whatever I put in it. Do you understand?”
He must have felt me swallow against the heel of his hand. He was back. I didn’t know when or how, but this wasn’t sick Jonathan getting pissed at his handful of pills. This wasn’t the guy who let me top him, or the man who made love to me fearfully and gently. That man was a good husband. Difficult, because he felt like his body wasn’t his own, but a good life mate by any standard.
For as long as I’d been married, I hadn’t felt safe.
Until then, staring at the ceiling, unprepared to hear the voice of my king again. Then, my insides vibrated like a piano string and I shut my eyes tight against tears.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Pull your pants down.”
I worried about the door. Was it open? And the door to the engineering room. Anyone could walk in.
This was a simple matter of trust, which I’d forgotten how to do. Trust him. You’re safe with him.
I opened my pants and wiggled them down. I wore lace and garter, which felt scratchy and uncomfortable under jeans, but I wore it because I promised I would, even if I’d promised a different man.
He slipped his finger under the straps. His touch had gone electric, exactly right, like when we first met. I felt it through layers of skin and muscle, to my bones.
“All the way off.”
I stepped out of my pants.
“Why are you crying, goddess?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your safe word?”
I blurted a laugh to the ceiling. “Fuck. I forgot.”
“Do you want a new one?” He slid his finger under my bra, pushing it up, releasing my breasts. The nipples were hard candies, ready for him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your choice.”
“Invictus.”
He pinched a nipple and pulled it to the point of delicious pain. “Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, for my unconquerable soul.”
“Jonathan…” His name was a prayer.
“Turn around.”
I faced the piano, putting my back to him. He slid his hand over my neck and around my shirt collar, pulling it down my arms, drawing his hands over my skin.
“I’m going to ask you something,” he said, pulling my long sleeves halfway off. He twisted the sleeves around my arms, wrapping them around and tying them tightly at the elbows.
His pause long enough for me to say, “sir?”
“Are you happy?” he asked. I heard the distinct clack of his belt buckle.
I didn’t answer. He slid his belt out of his pants with a whook.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that the answer?” He gripped the back of my neck
“It’s confirmation that I heard you.”
With a sharp push, he pinned my face to the shiny black of the piano.
“Are you happy?” he repeated.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Sure.” With a thwack that was as hard as it was unexpected, he slapped my ass with his belt. I screamed.
“Too hard?”
“No, sir.” It was. A fierce burn was settling where he’d hit me, and I already wanted more. I wanted him to tear me apart. In the second, the breath’s worth of time it took for my body to register pain, I cracked. I didn’t want to go to dinner with Jerry and the guys and I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to hurt, and hurt deep. I wanted to feel pain, and safety, and surrender; to lose myself and my own will. I’d forgotten how much I needed it, but like a woman waking from a dreamless sleep, the reality of who I was came back to me. I swore I wouldn’t say my safe word until I was near death.
“Behave, then, before I gag you.” He whacked me again, and again. I grunted, but didn’t cry out, even when he hit the sensitive area at the backs of my thighs.
“Now,” his breath rasped with effort. “Tell me, goddess, are you happy?” his last stroke was so hard it felt like a blowtorch on my ass. He took the hair on the back of my head in his fist and brought his face close to mine. “To avoid misunderstandings. Are you happily married?”
I swallowed.
He put his belt down in front of my face and squeezed my ass. The pain was overwhelming. I could barely see through it, nor could I form words past the gushing arousal between my legs.
“Answer me,” he said. “And the truth. Are you happy?”
He was foggy through my tears, but his voice was clear enough to focus on.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
As much as I broke down into tears and hitched sobs, he seemed unfazed by the news. As if he’d already known. And as if he didn’t give a shit about my happiness. He brought his hand over my burning cheeks, lacing a finger in the crack, down to my opening.
I was soaked. Dripping. Gushing readiness for him. I wished he’d asked me for the truth after he fucked me, because how could he now? I tell him I’m miserable and expect a body-ripping, passionate screw? Crazy, magical thinking.
He slipped a finger inside me. I’d fucked him a few hundred times in the past six months, but that finger cruelly jamming into me, with the palm laying against my scalding ass, was the best thing I’d had in half a year.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said. “But you’re wet. And crying.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Poor goddess.” He pulled his finger out and slipped it to the hard nodule of my clit. My eyes shut. My mouth opened. My cunt was awake with anticipation as he continued. “Even in love, you need pain.”
“I love you,” I whispered.
He drew his hand back and slapped my ass with full force. I bit back a cry. “Don’t talk,” he growled. “There’s been wholly too much talking between us.”
I nodded.
He folded the belt in two and said, “Open your mouth.” When I did, he put the belt in it. “Bite.”
I bit the leather. It was still warm from hitting me. Had he ever been this cruel and hard? Had he ever been this dominant? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t think.
Then Jonathan put his hands on my hips, and let his cock touch where I was wet. I bit the belt as if I wanted to swallow it. He didn’t ask for permission to jam his dick into me in one fell stroke, making me grunt into the tanned skin. He didn’t ask if my happiness was required. He just fucked me. He fucked me like I wasn’t even there, slapping himself against my burning ass cheeks, a frame of pain for the pleasure between my legs. He pulled my cheeks apart, stretching them, pain everywhere, and drove into me with everything he had, using me mercilessly. I lost myself in him, in the hurt, the rising tide of my emotions. I’d told him I was unhappy, and the weight of the misery fell off me, leaving an empty place for him to fill with his cock and his searing belt.
I grunted with every thrust. It was coming. The rush of pleasure. My grunts turned to squeals, and he slowed to barely moving.
“I didn’t say you could come.”
I hadn’t had to ask permission for an orgasm in six months. I hadn’t even thought of it.
He removed the belt.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I gasped. “May I come?”
“When?”
“Now?” I paused for a hitched breath. “And later, if it pleases you.”
“No.” He slowed, letting me feel every inch of him. He opened my cheeks again, right where my legs met my ass and I was red and sore, getting hi
s whole length in.
I choked out a half sob, half moan.
“No,” he said, slapping my ass. “The answer is still no.”
“I don’t think I can stop it.”
He pulled out. I gasped. But as much as I expected him to continue fucking me, I didn’t expect what he did next, quickly guiding himself to my asshole and mercilessly pushing forward.
“No!” I shouted.
He yanked my head back by the hair. “What?”
I couldn’t repeat it. Safeword or no, he’d stop. “Nothing.”
He pushed the rest of his cock in my ass without preamble, my soft weeping turned into face-soaking sobs. “God, oh God it hurts.”
“Pain is the point, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your ass is mine, whether I warn you or not. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He yanked my hair again, pulling back until I faced him. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
The first few strokes were murder. I felt torn apart, ripped from the inside. We’d done some gentle, well-lubricated anal in the past few months. But not like this. Not as a beating.
“You’ve been a bitch, goddess. That’s over. From now on, you step when I say walk. You eat when I feed you. You come when I allow it. If I so much as look at your knees, you get on them and open your fucking mouth.”
I grunted. He reached around me and put his palm to my throat. He pulled me back, and though I felt like I was falling, I trusted him and put weight on my aching legs, shifting back. He sat on the piano bench, and with my back to his front and his cock in my ass, I sat into him.
“Spread your legs.” Not giving me a chance to even obey, he yanked my legs apart, squeezing my ass cheeks together, tightening me around his cock. I bit back a cry of pain. “All the way. I want your cunt out.”