Burn

by Dawn Steele

  “He’s only a prude in public,” Rachel remarks.

  In front of Rachel’s door, they start to kiss again while Rachel searches for her keys in her purse. The door opens, and all three of them fall inside.

  Rachel slams the door behind them.

  Devon almost loses his balance as the two women attack his clothes in a rush of need. They rip off his leather jacket in haste so that his arms are almost caught in the sleeves. Off comes his wife beater. Rachel immediately reaches for the fly of his jeans and unzips him with dexterity. He wears nothing underneath, and his cock springs to impressive tumescence.

  He is quite alarmed at how sexually charged they are tonight. Perhaps it is the wine. Perhaps it is the thought of a threesome – the three of them together, naked and rolling in one bed.

  They lead him, naked, to Rachel’s bedroom. It is usually a place where he gets to fuck Rachel only after his punishment for the night has been meted out. There, for consolation, he gets to prove his worth as an alpha male – something he is not allowed in the pain room – and get his much awaited release on her bed. He is usually not allowed to achieve climax in the pain room or she would have doled out even more severe punishment on his raw and vulnerable flesh.

  Rachel pushes him roughly on the bed. He falls onto the mattress with a bounce.

  Her bedroom is done in an extremely modern design, with clean angular lines. The bed is raised on a dais, almost as though it were an offering upon an altar. The alcove upon which the headboard nestles against is lighted with hidden lamps, much like her collected treasures outside. The entire effect is that of a tasteful hotel suite.

  “Stay,” she commands him as though he were a dog.

  He has nowhere to go anyway. He watches them through curious eyes as they undress swiftly, baring their breasts and flat midriffs. They both obviously tone themselves at the gym. He can’t help comparing their bodies – Claire’s petite, small-breasted beauty to Rachel’s thin, ultra-tall Nordic build. He has no preference for a certain body type. He can fuck either one of them easily.

  Rachel stretches all four of his limbs out on her bed. She pulls his arms above his head. Before he can protest, she ties his right wrist swiftly to the bedpost with a yellow silk scarf that she plucks from her bedside table drawer, and Claire does the same to his left wrist.

  “I thought we were going vanilla tonight,” he says, his pulse beating hard. Well, as vanilla as a three-way can get.

  “I’m giving Claire a taste of dominance.” Rachel secures her knot with a flourish. Her bonds are very tight. Claire is a lot more solicitous with her binding, and so he is more stretched out in his right arm than he is on his left.

  The imbalance jars him. His right hand feels trapped of all circulation. Rachel has always been overzealous in her bondage, as if she’s afraid he would get away. He tries to flex and unflex his numb fingers.

  Claire smiles sweetly, showing her white, well-polished teeth.

  “I thought this wasn’t your kind of thing,” he says to her.

  “I thought I’d take Rachel’s offer of a tour.”

  He flickers his eyes anxiously over to Rachel. “I didn’t sign up for any pain tonight.”

  “There will be no pain,” she promises him. She lights an unaccustomed kiss on his forehead.

  Still, he is unnerved. He swallows and struggles with his wrist bonds as the women secure his ankles to the bedposts at the foot of the bed. His muscular thighs are now wide apart. His betraying cock is ramrod straight and standing at a right angle to the plane of his flat abdomen.

  “If you’re both going to beat me,” he warns, “I’m going to have to charge a thousand more.”

  “So charge away, because I’m not going to whip you,” Rachel says.

  He admits defeat and lies there without moving, letting them finish up with the bonds on his ankles too. Once again, the imbalance is apparent. Rachel is strident and decisive with what she is doing, and Claire is a hesitant but ultimately willing student.

  “Are we allowed to play with him now?” Claire asks, looking to her more experienced friend for instruction.

  Somewhere out there, a doorbell chimes a musical jingle. Rachel gets up in a catlike gesture. She is all overpowering Scandinavian princess tonight.

  “Yes, you can play with him.”

  She walks out of the bedroom, still naked, her white buttocks rolling enticingly. Claire turns back to the fearful Devon, who still hasn’t lost his hardness despite his misgivings.

  “She can be mean,” he pleads with her.

  “Don’t worry,” she soothes, pulling at his shaft and stroking it to the tip. “I won’t let her hurt you.”

  Too late for that, he thinks.

  Claire’s face is full of unexpected tenderness as she gazes down at him while continuing to stroke him.

  “I’ve grown very fond of you. Did you know that, Devon?”

  He doesn’t know what to answer to that. Her hand strays to his hair and she tousles it carelessly, as though he is a little boy. Her eyes wear an inexplicable sadness.

  Rachel comes back, still naked, with a man. Devon’s entire body goes cagey with apprehension. He pulls at his bonds, but they hold taut.

  The man is patrician-looking, with silver hair and a sleek nose that curves slightly to the left. But he is far from old. He has a youngish face which may be the result of either natural youthfulness or Botox. He wears an elegant charcoal grey suit and tie. He takes in Devon’s spread-eagled body and the large penis that stands so erect and true, and he smiles a predatory smile that sends shivers down Devon’s back.

  “You said this was a three-way,” Devon accuses, staring at Rachel.

  “A thousand more,” she offers. “Take it, Devon. It’s a good deal.”

  The man takes out his wallet and extracts a wad of bills from it. He tosses the money onto the dresser. Rachel begins to tug at his well-tailored jacket. The man’s burning eyes never leaves Devon’s ripe body.

  Devon’s fists bunch and he cringes in embarrassment from the collective stares in the room. The temperature suddenly has gotten a lot higher.

  Two thousand dollars, he tells himself.

  Is that the price of his soul?

  INNOCENCE

  Devon is unusually quiet over the next few days, but Abby puts it down to the three-way he was probably involved in. She checks his body surreptitiously for marks of abuse, but there are none, and so she heaves a sigh of relief and plays the role of the cavalier roommate. Devon has not suspected that she followed him, and she does not let it slip.

  She does not have to pose for him for the time being. He is still working at the painting. Her painting, she thinks proudly.

  “Is it finished yet?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  He looks thinner somewhat. Sadder. As if something had happened on the night of the three-way that touched someplace deep inside of him in a bad way. She wishes she can ask him more about it, but it wouldn’t do to let him know she was spying on him.

  “Can I see it?”

  He nods. She sits up eagerly, unable to believe her ears.

  “You mean you really, really finished? You’re not shittin’ me?”

  “Come take a look for yourself.” He steps back with a flourish of his paintbrush.

  She almost trips as she stumbles out of her chair. It is like being promised a thousand dollar reward at the end of a particularly tough exam, and being told that she made the grade. She crosses the room to his easel, where the canvas he has painstakingly worked at for so many days resides.

  And stops in her tracks.

  “What?” he says, running a paint-speckled hand through his rich, chestnut hair nervously, “you don’t like it?”

  She can’t stop staring.

  “No . . . I like it fine.”

  She loves it, in fact. He has accomplished something no photographer has ever managed. He has managed to make her look beautiful.

  And not only beautiful, but ethereal. He ha
s captured and composed and enhanced her pixie features, her shock of dark, short hair in all its glossiness and highlights, her wide dark eyes as she gazes into the face of her artist. Her expression in the painting is simultaneously fey and curious, like that of a doe wandering into human civilization. She doesn’t believe she has ever looked quite like that.

  But even more remarkable is the much-touted backdrop. Instead of the apartment room they are in, he has painted in a whole kaleidoscope of jagged, multi-hued mountains and peaceful, rolling countryside with rivers twisting through it like fat snakes. It is a vista that could have formed ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

  Even her attire has been transformed from the usual sweatshirts and jeans she wears while posing. He has painted her in an off-shoulder Greek nymph gown, or what she thinks nymphs would wear if they exist. The gown is lily white, and her shoulders are slim, supple and bare.

  “I call it ‘Innocence’,” he says. He is still anxious about her opinion.

  He needn’t be, she thinks. She has some eye for art, seeing that her grandfather was a collector, and Devon’s talent was evidently displayed in every oil brushstroke and nuance he has so painstakingly captured or imagined on the canvas.

  “You are very, very talented,” she says, the awe coating her voice. She didn’t know how talented he was until now. She had always reckoned he was a fly-by-night artist, someone who wanted to do more than he was capable of. But now she knows.

  “Thanks.” He blushes and turns his face away.

  “No, I mean it, Devon. Your work should be displayed in a gallery. You are that good.”

  “I didn’t even finish art school.”

  “Why not?”

  “I ran out of money, and I figured that whatever they were trying to teach me was cramping my style.”

  “You seem to have plenty of money now.”

  “New York is expensive.” His eyes flit away.

  She pauses.

  “You know, you’re better than you give yourself credit for, Devon. You don’t have to do whatever it is you’re doing to make money.”

  He turns back to her suspiciously. “What’re you saying?”

  Careful, she warns herself. “What Billy said that day . . . about you being bank-rolled.” She assumes an innocent face.

  “He’s just talking out of his ass. Pay no attention to him. And it’s none of anyone’s business anyway, what I do.” He gives her a significant look.

  She swallows. He is right. It’s none of her business. She’s just his roommate, and only by his good graces.

  “What are you going to do with the painting?” she asks, changing the subject.

  “I’m going to put it aside and then start the other one. With you in it again, of course.” He smiles.

  It’s nice that he is painting again, she thinks. And it’s even nicer that he is painting her.

  “Are you going to make me look beautiful again?”

  “You are beautiful,” he says in a serious tone. “You just don’t think you are. That’s why you don’t try to make yourself look nice. But you could, you know.”

  “What? Make myself look more like a girly girl?”

  If only he knew.

  “Yes. When you get a proper job, I can take you shopping again. Dress you up in nicer clothes that don’t make you look like you have extra ten pounds padding. We can do your hair too in one of those nicer, more upgraded styles. You’ll look really pretty.”

  She’s pleased despite herself.

  He adds, “Have you given that waitressing job a thought?”

  She has already decided she is not going to take it. Not with Billy on the alert.

  “I’ll find something else.”

  He mock scowls. “OK, but don’t ask me to do you any more favors.”

  She lays her hand on his arm, aware that this is the exact gesture she has seen the dark-haired woman do to him. “It’s not like that, Devon. I’m really grateful for everything. I’ll go get a job today, I promise.”

  Of course, he may be pushing her to get a job so that she can get a place of her own and be out of his hair.

  He nods. “I’m not trying to rush you or anything, but I figured you might want to get on with your life.”

  With me out of it, she reads. The thought of it makes her inexplicably sad.

  He remarks, “I’m going to see Billy today too . . . to pick up that mural job where I left off.”

  She smiles. “You never started.”

  “Well, I didn’t have the inspiration before. I do now.”

  They exchange meaningful glances. She can only hope that this is the start of him paying his own way without having to be bank-rolled by any sadistic female freak.

  “I’m going out now,” she finally says. “I’ll catch you later.”

  He looks so beautiful in the natural light of his studio/lounge, even in his overalls covered with smudges of different colored paints. A frog bolts into her throat.

  “Later,” he promises, and turns back to his painting while she grabs her jacket, her keys, and goes out of the front door.

  INTERVIEW

  Crossing a busy street, Abby chances upon a woman who looks exactly like the blonde goddess she has seen with Devon in Orso.

  The woman is walking very fast in her heels. She is wrapped up in a Burberry trenchcoat and a white Hermes scarf. Abby can’t be totally sure it is the same woman, but the blonde’s looks are very distinctive. The blonde navigates the streets like a seasoned New Yorker, barely giving the window displays a glance as she purposefully strides towards wherever she is going.

  She breezes past Abby. And Abby decides to do the needful. She turns heel and follows the woman down the block.

  Abby is certain that this woman is responsible for the whip lashes on Devon’s back. Don’t ask her how she knows, but she has a suspicion from his body language towards the blonde at Orso.

  She follows the woman discreetly from a distance of about twenty feet. It is easy. She blends into any crowd like any typical New York college student – blue blazer with hoodie in tow. The woman turns around a corner and walks into a store called ‘Zipangu’.

  Abby pauses outside the storefront. The window is filled with jars, vases, urns and vessels of all sorts – all lit in a way to display their attributes to the best effect. There is an African tribal vase that is carved out of mud but which possesses impressive animal motifs, so it has a price tag of $2000. An unusually shaped Chinese Ming Dynasty jar nestles beside a jade snuff box. Both carry the price tag of well above $5000.

  But most promising of all is a printed sign by the glass door: SALES ASSISTANT WANTED.

  Abby pauses only for a moment before pushing the door open.

  Inside, the store is warmly lit. The vessels are mounted everywhere on tripods and shelves. They are massed on tables in alcoves carved in the walls. Abby is very careful not to knock something over, especially when the ‘Nice to see, nice to hold, once broken, consider it sold’ placards are everywhere.

  The blonde is behind the cash register counter, speaking to a blond man who resembles her remarkably. He can almost be her twin, but there’s something a little off about him. Whereas she is ice cool and regal, he is restless and shifty. He is handsome, but in an unapproachable in an off-putting way, as if he is a denizen of the lower reaches of Asgaard rather than the crème de la crème, like she is.

  They are having a rather heated exchange. Abby hears the words “money” and “running the business to the ground”, but they stop as soon as she enters.

  “May I help you?” the blonde says, taking in Abby’s rather drab attire.

  She probably figures out Abby will not be able to afford anything in the store. And she would be right in current circumstances.

  “I saw your sign outside,” Abby says. “For a sales assistant, I mean. I would like to apply for the job.”

  “I see,” the blonde says, relaxing slightly. “In which case, have you brought your resume? We can do the interview in my
office.”

  The man glances askew at Abby. The expression in his eyes is rather calculating.

  “I don’t have my resume today,” Abby says quickly. “I can bring it tomorrow. But I can do the interview today, if you like.”

  The blonde thinks about this for a while.

  “OK,” she says. “Come into my office, please. I’m Rachel Krieg, and this is my brother, Richard.”

  She turns and Abby follows her through the door behind the counter. Richard does not move from his position, but his pale blue eyes trail Abby’s derriere with interest. Abby shivers inwardly. Richard gives her the creeps.

  Rachel’s office is filled with more jars and vessels, and so Abby has to navigate herself very carefully to the chair in front of the single desk. She keeps her arms to her body so as not to knock anything over. Wouldn’t do to make a bad first impression.

  Rachel seats herself. Even seated, she is extremely tall. Almost as tall as Devon, Abby reckons.

  “So tell me about yourself.”

  Abby takes a deep breath. “My name is Abby Novak.” Not the truth, but she can easily fudge that in her resume. “I’m twenty years old.”

  “College?”

  “I never went. My . . . parents couldn’t afford to send me and my grades weren’t good enough.”

  “High school?”

  “Yes, I finished high school in Atlanta.” Not the truth, but it can be stretched.

  “That accounts for your slight Southern accent.”

  “Yes.” She does have an accent, but it isn’t as pronounced as it should be. “I have some sales experience. I sold ad space for an Internet company called Groupon.”

  That part is true. She did it as a summer job commission, not for the money but for the experience.

  “Groupon? That’s interesting.”

  Yes, the mention of Groupon always did perk other people’s interests, especially since most of them have had experience in buying something off their website. The basic pay was the pits, but the commissions hefty were if you landed your targets.

  “I was junior salesperson of the month,” Abby adds.