Diana in Love (Dirty Diana #2)

Prologue

I like her immediately. She’s tall and blond and soft-spoken. She tells me, with a smile, that her name is Brigitte. I like her made-up name and repeat it out loud as many times as I can: Have a seat, Brigitte. What can I get you to drink, Brigitte?

She settles into the chair opposite me and I press record.

“My fantasy is in Paris,” she says.

I smile. Paris is the backdrop for so many people’s fantasy. “Tell me everything.”

She stretches out her legs in front of her and crosses them at the ankle. As she speaks, she pulls at the stack of brightly beaded bracelets on her wrist. “I grew up in a tiny nothing town. A town so nothing they stopped posting the population because it was dropping too fast. You pass it on a road trip and think, ‘Does anyone actually live here?’ So naturally, I fell in love with anywhere else. But really, Paris. Anything French. I wanted to go to Paris for my honeymoon ever since I was twelve. It was the setting of an Audrey Hepburn movie I saw at my grandma’s in Seguin. As we watched, she sprayed us both with French perfume to heighten the sensation that we were actually there. When I went to college, the city was a poster on my dorm room wall. My roommates had bands or movie stars smiling down on them, but I was dreaming of the Champs-Elysées. I was fascinated by the bright lights and slick rain. Paris felt like my destiny. I wondered, as I fell asleep each night, if French rain was the same texture as Texas rain.

“But then I got married, and I knew I was doomed as soon as my new husband took me to Texas Typhoon to ride waterslides instead of honeymooning in France. I guess I really knew I was doomed before that. How I chose someone so totally lacking in flavor is not something I can really explain. Even his name filled me with a quiet dread. I would be Mrs. Smith, one of millions. But we were young and he played football and liked me, so I thought I was meant to like him back. The wedding was pretty. My mama did my hair like she had done hers when she was a Rangerette. But there were all these relatives of my husband’s and friends of his relatives. I’d never met half of them and I felt, from the moment I arrived at my own wedding, inspected. There’s no other word for it. I walked down the aisle wearing this delicate blue-gray veil as my ‘something blue.’ I wanted to do something at least a little different from frilly and small-town expectations—one tiny homage to Parisian elegance so that my grandma in heaven could smile down on us.

“When I met him at the altar, his expression was flat, like I’d rolled his face with my baker’s pin. He leaned in close and I thought he was going to say You look beautiful, but instead, in front of all those guests, he hissed, ‘ That’s what you’re wearing?’ I looked out at this sea of strangers and felt the humiliation wash over me, like a wave pulling me under, as they all stared at me. Even the wedding pictures came out wrong. My husband posed me in strange, uncomfortable positions. The same was true in bed. It was all about trying to keep him hard, and that usually meant I had to hold still, or not speak, or say things I didn’t want to say, words that made me feel ugly and used. The town was shocked when he left me for a younger model he met on a weekend trip to Port Aransas. I was relieved, to be honest. I really was. I wanted to see and taste and feel and never be bland or taste anything bland ever again.

“So, in my fantasy I take up a French pen pal. Something I’d seen in my grandma’s old movies. Me and this guy, we write pages and pages to each other about our lives, where we live, what we dream about. Then we start writing about what turns us on, even sharing naked pictures that I print and seal inside the envelope. And by our fifth letter, we discover a shared kink. He tells me the thing that had drawn him to BDSM is the communication. He’d recently gone through a divorce because the communication had fallen apart. They couldn’t talk to each other. ‘If you get into BDSM you have to say what you want, when, what your boundaries are, your “no” list, and you can’t transgress or you’re out of this community.’ His next letter has a round-trip ticket to Paris inside and he wants nothing in return except to be disciplined. By me.

“I rush to the airport the next morning and it feels like I am making a getaway from my life. The flight is long but the second I am on it, I practice being a different person. The man at French passport control smiles at me like he knows where I’m headed and what I’ve agreed to do. I land to rain. Perfect, since I was already feeling myself get wet.

“In my hotel room, I impatiently watch the art deco clock, like the one Audrey Hepburn had in the old movie—only she wasn’t about to meet a stranger she had agreed to treat as a submissive.

“The car arrives exactly on time, with my pen pal in it. He is even better looking in person, like an exact cross between Bond and a Bond villain. I’m glad it is so cold in Paris. It makes my nipples stand even firmer under the green satin teddy he’d had waiting for me. The black heels are higher than I’d ever worn, and when we exit for the club I almost fall on the Paris cobblestones. In my hair, I wear the most important thing, which I’d carried with me on my lap for the whole flight.

“?‘Do you want me to carry you the rest of the way, Mistress?’

“?‘You may.’

“He scoops me into his arms and I rest my head against his chest.

“Once we’re beyond the velvet rope, he carries me down a blue staircase—down and down and down, me still in his arms. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the club, but all the way, I can smell a heady mix of incense and Bulgarian roses, and the lower down we go, the higher I feel.

“By the time he lays me down, I feel we must be deep in the belly of the club. I am on my back on a lush chaise lounge, the ceiling glass reflecting me back to myself. I look beautiful, more beautiful than I ever have.

“He comes toward me on his hands and knees, supplicant, worshipful, and hands me a black leather suitcase. It opens with a click. Out of all the instruments on offer to me, I choose a pearl-embossed choker and put it around his thick neck. There is something so hot about gently fixing it to his masculine lines.

“?‘What a pretty little bitch you are,’ I tell him.

“?‘Thank you, Mistress.’

“He kneels, his head inches from mine as I attach a long, heavy chain to his choker. He is already panting, looking up at me, a man in his forties, but with hopeful puppy dog eyes. ‘Do what I tell you,’ I say. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘anything.’ He had taken the lead at first, but now he has handed it to me, like a baton.

“His dick is the baton, protruding rock-hard. As my eyes get used to the darkness, I see I am not the only one admiring him. Now there is a crowd around us. Well heeled, beautiful bodies, and masked.

“?‘You turn me on so much,’ he tells me.

“The people around us start to touch themselves. They are aware they are watching a performance. Women with legs spread, dipping their fingers into themselves. Men, eyes half closed, slowly rubbing their growing erections.

“?‘Do I please you?’

“I think about it. Does he? Am I into this? I scan my body. I look around and into the eyes of strangers who stare straight back at me. I’m swollen, thumping with desire. Yes. I tug on my pretty little bitch’s hair. ‘Yes?’ he says.

“?‘Tell them to take off their masks,’ I say.

“?‘But they need anonymity.’

“?‘Tell them.’ My voice is harsh.

“He turns around and speaks to them. They look at one another, then remove their masks. Good. Now I can see in their faces, not just their hands rubbing themselves, not just the sound of rapid breathing, how into it they all are.

“I look up at my reflection on the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance, way up on the pavement, I can hear the rain.

“?‘Tell me I’m different.’

“?‘You’re different,’ he answers.

“?‘Tell me I’m special.’

“?‘You’re so fucking special,’ he says, crawling meekly toward my legs and spreading them. He looks into my eyes for approval, and I nod, like I am a cult leader and he is my devotee.

“?‘You’re so special, I can taste it on you.’

“The guests move their palms faster up and down their cocks.

“Then I slap his face.

“?‘Can I make you come, Mistress?’

“?‘You don’t deserve to.’

“?‘I’m begging you!’

“I pull the chain at his pearl collar until he is pressed again into my neck and I whisper: ‘Tell me I’m never going back to that town.’

“?‘You are never going back to that town,’ he answers.

“?‘Now do it!’ I order, and he puts his dick in me.

“We move with the thrill of finally being bound together. We move hungrily and he begins to explore different rhythms and speeds, until I am lost in the motion with him, pulling his chain to go harder and deeper.

“?‘Fuck that town,’ he says, and our audience claps and cheers. I’m getting closer to my edge—an edge I’d never crossed with any man before.

“?‘Do I have to go back?’ I hear myself say.

“?‘Never!’ He almost shouts as he fucks me so purposefully his reflection in the mirror is now a blur. ‘You’re free!’

“I come so hard I see stars. I see stars, like on the Champs-Elysées poster.

“I drop the chain, my limbs limp.

“I let my body shudder with orgasmic aftershocks, and he gently lifts my blue-gray bridal veil so I can study my blissed-out face in the ceiling mirror.

“I whisper something in his ear and he smiles and repeats it to me exactly as I’d told him to: ‘Mistress? Do you love me?’

“?‘No,’ I answer, ‘and I never did.’?”