by JR King
I could feel lies hanging heavy in the air between us, both tangible and treacherous. I swallowed down the metallic taste of fear. “Or else,” the strength and entitlement in my voice diminished as I wholeheartedly lied, “we’re done. Forever.”
“You should know better than to give me an ultimatum.”
I nearly choked on the sharply indrawn breath. I opened my mouth, but with swollen glands nothing came out. Withholding my eyes from leaking, stiff silence cleaved the moment. I scrambled to my feet and set off for the bathroom.
While all kinds of thoughts ripped through my mind, a voice taut with rage rose above it all. “Elena!” Alexander stalked toward me in the dimly lit corridor, backing me into a wall. Through gritted teeth he fulminated, “Don’t walk away from me, fucking ever.” I could see the pulse in his neck speeding up, felt beads of sweat form on my upper lip. “I didn’t kill Peter with my bare hands, I can safely swear that. But fuck, I’d kill for you in a heartbeat.” He stepped back and took a long, calming breath. “Robert’s men abandoned him somewhere in Crimea. He was alive and healthy. By his own hand…fuck…would you leave me just like that?” Dark despair shadowed his face. “I’d kill for you. Give up my life for you. I can’t stand losing you.”
With this, I knew he was telling the truth.
“Will you leave me?”
Hearing the ache in his voice, I gave him a reassuring smile. “You’re woefully wrong if you think I would.” Maybe the saké and wine pairings had gotten to me. “O Ya, I’m totally hung up on you.”
That caused a smile to finally slide down his face. “Mine.”
With his stalwart, alluring air of dominance, people could neither rival nor refuse this man. I’d seen him break down narrow-minded politicians, destroy journalists, and somewhere along the line he’d financially ruined a dozen of oligarchs or two, but he was no killer. “Yours.”
He waited as I relieved myself, and we walked back together. Stuffed to the gills, I wanted to tell the waiter to stop bringing food.
“There’s still dessert, babe.”
Saké that reminded me of Taylor’s Tawny Port was paving the way for the rest—making me retain my calm as well. “You’re telling me about dessert? You, Mr. de Sade?”
“My adorable kitten is back,” he smirked laconically, caressing my bare arm. Clearly he was attempting to improve his odds.
I gave him a little smile. “Touchy, aren’t we?”
“The irony isn’t lost on me,” he told me with a sardonic smile of his own. “I usually skip dessert in Japanese restaurants because it’s the weakest course. Not here, little Elena. May I feed you?”
“In public?” I piped up wistfully.
Giving me an irritatingly sexy smirk, he held his hand out to me, and I took it. “I’m trying to apologize.”
Opulently satisfying both our mouths with bites of molten chocolate cake, raspberry sorbet, tres leches Boston cream pie, and some zingy berry yuzu creation, Alexander gave me a tireless account of his travels to Japan. Together with his mother, visiting the Meiji Shrine, Kōtoku-in, and the Tōdai-ji Buddhist Temple complex were some of his most cherished memories. Rascal that he was, he’d taunted sika deer at the latter, invoking not only the wrath of locals, but also that of his mother. Then he sat down beside the enchanting creature and spoke to it about his gun collection, explaining he was…the perfect little slice of Amerikajin. A personal discovery was that I loved having a boyfriend who possessed the right amount of humor, and sadism. I laughed, he laughed, our stupid-happy faces attracting the attention of the three chefs. Alexander seemed to miss his parents just as much as I missed mine and, I was thankful we had each other to commiserate.
“Whatever underwear you’ve got on, I’ll tear it to ribbons,” he muttered as he signed the check. I watched his Visconti pen travel rapidly across the smooth paper, sliding voluptuously over it to print a large, neat capital A. “I’ve earned that right fair and square.”
“Uhm…yes. That could be a serious problem.”
“How so?”
“I’m not wearing any.”
“You always go commando to farewell parties given in your honor?”
I smiled proudly. “Only to the first one.”
“Making me waste my time eating all of this when I could have been eating you is inexcusable.”
Straight thoughts for dramatic impact. “Playroom, Alex.”
He shoved his arms into the sleeves of an Armani overcoat before helping me into mine. Then he grabbed my hand and locked our fingers together, and that’s how we walked out of the restaurant. We were back in the Rolls Royce before I could blink.
“I’m so sorry I doubted you, Alex,” I confessed at home. He seemed to read it in my eyes because he smiled that slow, predatory smile, fingers sliding around the back of my neck as he brought his mouth inches below my ear, kissing the point where my neck joined my shoulder.
“I know,” he whispered, kissing a little higher up my throat this time, tugging on my earlobe with his teeth so that I gasped and squirmed. “Still gonna punish you, babe.” His fingers danced down my spine, a smooth percussion of contact, slipping toward my dress’s zipper. I held my breath when his touch vanished, felt the slow tug of him undoing my dress. A slow drag, fingertips trailing, warm skin tripping down my exposed back as he drew the zipper past the curve of my back, until my entire backside was bared. The slinky dress fell open against my skin with silky heaviness, and a gentle shift of weight. His breath changed in tempo. I expected him to pull it off me, but he seemed in no hurry. “My collection of cat o’ nine tails is gravely underused.” Thinking the storm had settled, I didn’t expect this avalanche to come crashing down on me. “You’ve such a lovely back.” The murmuring sound that clipped the declaration felt as though it could convince me to jump from a balcony into thin air. “Be a good girl, tonight. Take back the rest of it, too.”
“What? That you’re mean?”
I gasped when his head dipped down to tease my cleavage. “Take it back.” His stuttered inhalations brought a smile to my face. “Pray it.”
“No fucking way,” I mewed into his chest in response.
“Be nice and say: Alexander Turner is a sweet, fair, gentle god.” He smiled the creepiest smile yet. Remember in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when the old man smiles just before he slits the girl’s throat? That’s how he smiled. “Say: Alexander Turner is the one and only god I love.”
Like Marilyn Burns running through dark woods, I broke into a run.
Not Leatherface, rather Leonidas caught me, the highly sculpted and practically naked King of Sparta. Six-foot-three, with a strong V-shaped back, a chiseled torso, and toned biceps, this god possessed a much too lean and sinewy physique. “Now, be a good slut and do as I say.”
I submitted, said all the right things, and so did he.
You want to know, don’t you?
“Paddle or whip, Elena?”
I considered my options a little too long, as if my adventurous side was on vacation.
“Don’t make this tiresome. Either do it or safeword. I won’t ask again.”
“Whip.”
The playroom used to be his sex den; a place where society women and high-class call girls entertained him, satisfying every cockeyed carnal desire he’d had. I was fine standing in a room where other women had screamed and cried his name alike, serviced him like a pro and served him like a slave. I could care less, I suppose. What mattered is that he was mine now. Hell yeah, I was far from being an angsty bit of damaged goods.
He whipped me—while I counted—six times. For some particular reason, one that he didn’t care to go into, six lashes was a kind of limit. I yelped as his hand crashed down against my bottom. He gave me two firm swats, then I heard a bottle pop open, and soon afterward he was rubbing lavender oil on my sore backside. A pleasant cooling sensation spread as he worked the liquid into my skin.
He wasn’t without mercy.
He was very sensual.
“Perfect,” he murmured, running his hand from one too-small breast to the other, the skim of warm fingertips around my nipples making me arch into the touch. With sweet eyes, I parted my legs and lifted my feet until they rested on the edge of the bed, and begged for release. His eyes, in turn, dropped to focus on the damp place between my legs. “Perfect,” a repeat came out, his fingertips dragging down my protruding hipbones, lower and lower, circling the lips of my recently depilated sex. I trembled with the effort of not bucking against him when his fingers went over that spot. He didn’t press, nor did he spread my sensitive flesh. Just caresses and brushes that drove me crazy, and recurring murmurs, “Perfect.”
Everything changed the minute he pushed a finger inside me. I vaguely remembered cursing at him before it all went blank.
“God, please,” I keened.
“That’s me.” The chuckle that tumbled from his lips was eminently worthy of the devil.
Either way, I was in bliss. Yep, I had a huge thing for rough, manipulative sex. The rougher Alexander was with me, the more it turned me on. I loved being held down and teased like crazy. Whenever I was in an aggressive mood, like tonight, the more I resisted, the rougher he became. If I stopped resisting, and by this time my aggressiveness was gone, his roughness vanished. He worried he’d gone too far. Manipulating him was as easy as pie. He fucked me harder when I acted like I wasn’t interested, pulling my hair back so I was looking him in the eyes as he drilled me.
“You fucking slut.” His nostrils flared and his jaw flexed and clenched. “Trying to manipulate me?”
“Bite me,” I laughed.
“With pleasure.”
Hours later, I rolled against his chest, my fingertips finding their way over his stomach. I felt his abs pulsing beneath my fingers as he exhaled. My hand moved lower, and his throat emitted a groan when I tried closing my hands around his cock. “Don’t start unless you want more.”
“I’ll always want more, Alex. I can’t get enough of you.”
“Then marry me.”
I’m not ready for this type of commitment, I had to admit to myself. Too young and too inexpert. I couldn’t insult his intelligence by saying that out loud. He looked me in the eyes, a visibly hard swallow moving through his throat as I explained I wasn’t ready. The light dimmed in his eyes, his hands clenched, his mouth tightened into a hard line. Suddenly he seemed like an old man in a perfectly preserved body.
“Alex…I’m not saying no. It’s just moving—,”
“Forget I mentioned it. Good night, Elena.”
He was so much larger, the tuck of my body placing his lips against the top of my head, so I pulled back a little. “You’re moving too fast, Alex.”
“I’ll slow down.” A carousel of sighs and kisses later, he yelled lights off at the system and rolled away. In the darkness, I could barely make out the features of his face. I pressed my forehead against the pillow and wept as the enormity of what he’d demanded hit me.
Elena Anderson
The Adventures of a Girl in Love
Spring brought along the wind of growth and a balsam fragrance. The resurrection of last year’s greenery had that earthy pungency of old leaves heated and dried to it. Nearly every evening this week Alexander had showed up either holding a gift or offering to take me out to an exclusive restaurant. It was confusing to me because of how I felt; I desired him in every which way possible, yet I didn’t want to get married. Marriage reminded me of my father hugging my mother goodnight, or giving her a kiss on her forehead, or placing a friendly squeeze on her wrist. Maybe that’s why she’d turned to a lover named X.
I wanted Alexander to lust dangerously after me, that’s all. And, judging by his playroom, I knew he valued novelty. For a Friday night escapade, he told me to dress exceptionally. We were going someplace new, he’d told me with a boyish smile on his handsome face.
Evidently, this isn’t a comprehensive how-to guide to become a fashionista overnight, but this coutureistic look is worth trying out if your boyfriend spoils you rotten. Dressed to impress, dressed to kill, call it what you want. I looked like an Ottoman Empire princess. My Balmain minidress dipped in a scandalous V down my chest, ornate details in an opulent mix of gold, silver, and white channeling my inner glamour girl. What made this 2011 collection incomparable is that it was designed with the Vegas era of Frank Sinatra type of charm and Elvis Presley type of rock and roll bling in mind. On this dress, in particular, there were references to Elvis’ infamous white rhinestone jumpsuit. Yellow diamond chandelier earrings dripped from my ears, and Alaïa python bell stiletto sandals with Romanesque straps lifted me several inches higher.
“Have I mucked up coutureistic brilliance?” I asked Alexander.
He was in the middle of giving me an Anna Wintouresque once-over. When he smiled at me, it was electric. Every vein within me sizzled with hot blood…every cell vibrated…every breath shimmied out unsteadily. “Very Cleopatra. I like it.”
I slid my arms through the sleeves of the jacket he held open for me. As soon as we slipped into the limousine, Alexander poured himself a stiff drink. His face gave nothing away, his gaze hooded and impenetrable.
I shook my head when he held up the crystal decanter in silent query.
“Come here.” Patting the seat, he tossed back the drink and set the empty tumbler in a cup holder.
I settled on the seat beside him, keeping my distance. He put his arms around my shoulder and pulled me closer, snuggling against me.
“Is everything all right?”
“Now it is,” he sighed gruffly, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
On our way to God knows where, he put on Led Zeppelin songs and reminisced about all the coke and pot he’d used in college. I knew about his dealings with substance abuse, and had come to love these confessional moments: glimpses into the real him.
Our destination was Legal Harborside at the Liberty Wharf marina. To host unique cocktail parties, this place had a four-season rooftop and an unparalleled view of Boston Harbor and the city skyline. Decks overlooked the Boston Fish Pier and gave way to a bird’s-eye view of the Bank of America Pavilion.
Aidan’s firm was responsible for this grand cocktail event. The surprise was that they’d recruited Sara. After months of extensive job searching, she was at her wits’ end, so this was incredible. Even with the limited light, I noticed that all kinds of impressive people were in attendance. The seafood was fabulous, maybe the best I’d eaten in a long time. I was smiling more than the usual because being in a lounge with Sara reminded me of the old days when I was single. Alexander was watching me far too closely, drinking in each of my smiles with an unnatural amount of affection.
He all but dragged me into the Presidential suite at the Fairmont Battery Wharf. We didn’t make it to the bedroom. The moment he followed me inside, he ripped my panties off my body, rocking me dangerously on my shoes. The sharp bite of pain as the fabric dug into my hips before tearing apart only fueled my lust. I didn’t have a second to acclimate, he was on me, the expensive material was bunched at my waist and he pulled down the top so he had access to my breasts. I lifted one leg and anchored it to his hip, but even with the high heels I was too short to take his cock. He gripped the backs of my thighs and hefted me up. When he thrust his cock inside me, my body responded immediately. There’s no denying that an excruciating erotic current between us existed, but I felt out of touch with him.
Most definitely he felt the strangeness between us as well, and as if it challenged him, he fucked me harder than he had in a long time. “Your pussy is mine,” he kept swearing, flicking my clit almost angrily. Although it wasn’t unusual for him to express possessiveness over my body, whenever he did it vulgarly it made me wilder. We were sweating and panting by the time we collapsed on the floor, spent and splintered. Holding me close, he carried me to the bed and slowly lowered me onto it.
“Much, much better,” he murmured, sliding sinuously beside me, his hand on my belly. Leaning
over me, he ran his tongue along my clavicle, ending with a sharp little nip on the soft hollow of my throat.
“Tell me,” I moaned, arching against his mouth, “why you’re acting weird.”
The few lines, I gathered, were autobiographical. A degenerate but deliciously lurid tale about two sisters and three hunky guys meeting in this suite. His voice was low and gritty and doing strange things to my body as he gave me his narrative POV.
“Great sex, but making love to you feels a gazillion times better.”
“You’re immoral.”
“That’s what you like, don’t you, kitten? My dirty mind? You consider yourself morally righteous, so it’s easy to blame me for everything, isn’t it?”
“Shut up and fuck me.” I hardly recognized my own voice; it was low and raw, somewhere between a moan and a sigh.
There was none of the weirdness from earlier, only a smile as he straddled me. One of his hands traveled down my body, catching on a nipple and tugging, then it lingered on my hip, pressing into the bone. My body bounced against the mattress with every slick slide of his cock.
“Come for me,” he ordered through a thick slur of panting, shaking movements. “Come for me, Ariel.” And I obeyed, arching against him as my toes curled and my head tipped back. This time, I felt a slow release, a peak that lifted me into ecstasy for a long, shining moment before it was gone. I didn’t shout so much as murmured my release, but it was no less powerful. Alexander pounded into me for a moment more, then cried out, his whole body stiffening before collapsing against me.
Dating Alexander helped me accept the aesthetic of my body unconditionally. I learned to love myself, thighs and all. I felt beautiful, and the sex-craze came fast. It was fun to finally let myself indulge in all sorts of daydreams and fantasies. Somewhere along the way, I started materializing a few of them.
My grandparents were modern people, but wholly innocent compared to my new world. Growing up, there were unspoken rules I was meant to follow. Don’t be pert-mouthed and strident. Don’t wear mini skirts. Don’t cross your legs at the knees, only at the ankles. Don’t look grownups in the eye. Don’t drink your champagne too fast. Don’t chew on big chunks of meat, small cuts always. On the grounds that it was unladylike to cross your knees, the day I explained this gesture—I think I was twelve years old, my grandparents realized I was trouble. In the midst of a fit, castigations of puritan banality annoying me, I shouted at them that traditionally ladies were taught to cross their ankles because crossing their knees made something of an awkward tent of long, shitty skirts. Shitty was the word that stilled them. I’d never used it before, not at home. Surprisingly, they both opened up, telling me they had little idea how to raise a second-generation child. They were strict because, well, that seemed safe, and that’s what they knew. Their idea of a wild night out was seeing a racy cabaret show and dinner at a trendy restaurant where waitresses wore lingerie type of dresses. To this day, grandpa considered a sexy Gentlemen’s Club a little too adventurous for him. I was sure they were both high the night they snickeringly confessed they’d just seen Dita von Teese’s burlesque performance.