3. Chapter 3
3
HER
I nspired by that, we briefly tried migrating the sessions from the desk to the bed, until we both fell asleep next to each other a couple of times. As blissful as that had been, it was also terrifying to wake up disoriented and unsure of how much time had passed, and from then on, he insisted we stay upright until the session was finished.
And then, of course, we were faced with the daunting problem of just how much sex we could get away with having without somebody catching on to the fact that we were having it at all. The answer proved to be: not much. And not nearly enough.
Just to be safe, we made a rule: one item of clothing could be shed per person per day, not more. In case of emergency, that could still be explained away—or so we told ourselves. Of course we also had to master the fine art of muffling every noise with my pink faux-fur blanket and cheetah pillows. Those parts fairly hummed with electricity under his practiced touch, and I got better at touching him. He learned to close his eyes and let me not only gently kiss the blister on his hand but even ever so gently curl my fingers up his back and brush them over the healing wounds, even as he would still joke about everything we weren’t doing yet. And so, in time, I got to see his abs up close. And he got to see the expression on my face when I finally saw those sublime six-pack abs tapering to a V and disappearing downward in a tantalizing trail of baby-fine golden hair, the abs I’d so far only glimpsed in one stark black-and-white photo on a site displaying them like a valuable commodity—which they were, of course, but not like that.
But they weren’t just evidence of what nature had given him but what people had taken away. There were switch and lash marks that curled away over his shoulders and back, puckered, snakelike trails of red and white and purple, in various lengths and stages of healing. And there were burns. From cattle prods. Thank you very much, Slavery Studies 101—and let’s face it, cattle was all he was to those who had done it. Hell, these days, there were probably animal rights people around to ensure cattle got treated better.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice barely a breath against his chest as I reached his waistband. He inhaled sharply as my lips grazed the scar, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “The whip,” he said, his voice low and even. “I was seven. First time. Before that, it was always a cane, which doesn’t usually break the skin. So it was my coming of age, in other words.” He answered my next question before it could leave my lips. “I wish I could say it was for some super-cool act of rebellion, but it wasn’t. I was dusting and accidentally broke this ugly china goose they had. And then panicked and tried to sweep it under the rug, literally.”
My heart clenched. It was impossible to imagine, and I knew he didn’t expect me to try. My fingers ghosted over the raised line. “I’m so—”
“Shhh.” He was smiling a little. “They did it,” he said, taking my fingers away and meeting my gaze. “And they aren’t you, yeah?”
Sure, it was long ago, and it was stupid.
But that didn’t make it okay.
Shaking, unsure where to begin, I just started, kissing a trail down his torso, my tongue hot against the sensitive skin, laving the places that lay slack and soft against his stomach, teeth gently nipping at the ones that stood erect. He shivered in response, breath hitching, and he closed his eyes. But it flickered deeply in the amber-gold—the old pain, the old humiliation. What I wouldn’t give to have been there. What I wouldn’t—
“Does it still—” I began.
“Shh. It’s okay now.” He quelled my lips with his fingers, then intertwined them with mine, guiding me down, nails scraping gently across my palm, guiding it past his waistband, trembling as they traced the scars together, to a place where there was no pain.
It was there we usually stopped.
Of course I knew parts of him were twitching to go even further, to enter and fill and infuse me with him—hell, I knew they were. I felt them. They came alive under my grip each and every time, as eager and excited and savage and wild as a boy who’d never even thought he’d be here, in his castoff clothes and jagged scars and metal chain, lying on a lacy, silky pink princess bed in a room reeking of camellia and pomegranate, with a girl who was actually asking him what he wanted, instead of trying to order him to do what she wanted. And then I’d be left hot and heartbroken and hamstrung to have to stop feeling them, to force him to roll over again and breathe a little and assure me he was fine, even though neither one of us believed for a second that he actually was.
But with three minutes left on the clock, it was just too risky to go on. Yes, we were young and horny and stupid, and we were self-aware enough to joke about that , too. But also, we were scared. Though we tried not to remind each other of it too much—tried to pretend that what we were doing was normal—the prospect of what could happen if the door to my bedroom was ever opened at the wrong time haunted us, and the ever-present ticking reminded us that our time was never our own. So among the many unspoken promises we shared, one was someday soon .
But talking—that was safe. Well, safer .
Luckily, we were both good talkers—and since we couldn’t leave the room, at least not if we wanted to behave normally, we left mentally, instead. He took me to the fairy-tale mists of the Black Forest, Heidelberg Castle, and the Philosopher’s Walk. I took him to massive gleaming yachts moored on the ancient crystal-blue coral reefs of Eleuthera. And dark matter and string theory gave way to history, politics, religion, art, and music. My slave boy confessed to loving—of all things—neo-impressionism and French jazz.
“I don’t get it,” I said after he clicked off one of the selections he’d chosen to play for me.
“It’s like … it’s like they’re inventing their own formula, their own set of rules, and it’s up to the rest of the world to figure them out,” he said. “You know?”
“Oh,” I said teasingly. “You mean like chemistry. Why does it always have to come down to—”
“Actually, I was thinking more like us.”
I could have melted. I cuddled back into his arms as he pressed play again on the laptop set up in front of us on the bed, this time, turning up some woman with a husky voice and a French accent, singing about lovers parting on a train platform. But honestly, it could have been about anything. I just loved that he loved something that much.
I probably opened and reopened that desk drawer about fifty times before finally getting up the nerve to offer him the pralines, ever mindful of what he’d said that night at the party. I’m not your pet to feed. That wasn’t what I was doing. I felt it. I knew it. And yet as I stood by the bed and he stared speechlessly down at the package and its Luxembourgish printing, I obsessively scrutinized every twitch of his facial muscles, ready to snatch it back and drop it into the wastebasket if need be.
He glanced up. “Every—”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, regretting everything. “I shouldn’t have. I know you’re not—”
He laughed. Oh, thank God. “Let me finish. Fucking hell, Lou. All I was going to say is, every other time I’ve had these, I had to do something. Either steal them or con them.”
I felt a blush creep up my neck but clung onto the package like a votive. “Well. I’m just offering.”
He took one praline and bit into it. I watched him chew, his face melting as if the clouds had just parted on paradise itself. He ate four more. Then five, then six, all with the kind of look on his face that had me thinking I should be paying ninety-nine cents a minute to watch it. When he paused, his half-smile was teasing but not entirely.
“So what’s the catch, really, Lou?” he finally asked, stretching his body out artfully and spectacularly across the bed, balancing on one long, lean, muscular arm, the other still holding the box of pralines. “What do I have to do in return?”
“Like I said, anything.” I swallowed. “Or nothing.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Can this anything or nothing be cashed in anytime?” he asked casually, though his eyes raked me up and down like he was scanning an entire dessert menu.
“You mean like a time where it doesn’t have to be muffled by a pillow?” I flushed hotter than I had been already. “But—” I paused.
“Wow, a choice. That’s like Freedom 101.”
“Wow, a course I could teach you?” I teased.
“Only if there’s a practical exam—I excel at hands-on learning.”
He just left it there, damn him, chewing his lip cheekily like he was curious to see how I’d react. Hell, I was curious to see how I’d react. How far I was willing to go to be close to him. And God, if he kept looking at me like that, that was pretty fucking far.
In fact, my stupid, self-sabotaging heart was already picking up, his words sizzling through me like live wire. We were so close, yet still so far from anything resembling the reality we deserved. But for now, we had a moment, and it felt so wicked and wrong and perfect and right, all at once. So nonsensical, and yet as logical as the simplest chemical formula. Kind of like everything else about us.
I moved closer to him, the heat of his body against mine, his scent filling my nostrils—sage and sun and soap and pure pheromones.
I whispered, “Do you really want to cash it in now?”
He turned his head so our mouths were mere centimeters apart, tracing one calloused finger—a finger whose touch I could feel on me already—along a stitch in the pristine, silken white duvet. The look in his eyes was enough to singe every thought from my mind and plunge me into some kind of full-body ache I couldn’t possibly be expected to resist. “I think you know the answer to that, professeur .”
And now I was dead. Here lies Louisa Danielle Wainwright-Phillips. Killed by one word of French.
Granted, I didn’t know how much a corpse weighed, but I’d never felt so light as his kisses started, playful and teasing in a way that said I so want to do this but with a hard undertone that said but we shouldn’t . I knew because I felt it myself. My body twisted wildly beneath him, trying vainly to get closer, and to pull away. But before I knew what was happening, he growled low in his throat and pinned my wrists above my head with the kind of strength I knew he had but had yet to feel, his hand sinking into my hair and pulling roughly. I arched again as he used his free hand to slide up my denim miniskirt and between my legs, pressing two fingers into me and eliciting a small gasp from the back of my throat that I forgot to muffle.
I couldn’t make that mistake again. But despite everything, despite the hour—and fuck, I could still see the clock from where I was—this was what I had craved. What I had ached for. He was what I ached for, and I’d do anything to have him and keep him, even if it was just for a moment.
He continued to work his fingers inside me. “You know,” he observed, “I’m no expert on this, but it kind of feels like you want this just as bad as I do.”
“Shut up. You are so an expert on this.”
“I know, but I was trying to be modest.”
“You failed.”
“Only thing I’ve ever failed at.”
“God,” I panted, biting my bottom lip to stifle another moan. If he were anyone else—anything else—I’d be saying his name right now. “Fuck, what the hell am I supposed to—”
Suddenly, we froze. He raised his head, the flush in his cheeks so sexy. Voices drifted up the stairwell. Soft footsteps came from the foyer below. The front door shut with a definite click.
“Shit!” I hissed, pushing him off me none too gently, my arms suspended like a cat on her back with paws in the air. Granted, no one in this house had any reason—yet—to burst into my room demanding to know what we were doing or even care, but—well, I cared. A lot. And given his frantic efforts to keep me still, so did he.
“It’s probably just a delivery or something,” he said, catching his breath next to me, though I noticed his strong shoulders rising up and down more rapidly than normal. “Relax.”
“Delivery or not, we can’t take that chance,” I whispered, scooching off the bed and tugging my skirt down, sighing with a mix of relief and frustration—and bodily need so intense it felt like it was trying to burn me from the inside out.
I managed to get up without making too much noise. But before I could, he grabbed my hips aggressively and pulled me toward him.
“Are you insane?” I asked, trying and failing to keep from shrieking.
“That is one of the many things I’ve been called in my time,” he admitted with a slight laugh.
“Someone nearly heard us! We could get caught!” I hissed, batting his arm.
He paused for a moment, then said seriously, “I’d never let that happen.”
Well, if anything was insane, that was. But for now, I was willing to go with just about anything to make sure he started tonguing my neck again. I almost cried out from the sensation it created, fire and ice all at once as he growled into a kiss, his tongue forcing its way past my lips and inside my mouth, tasting of the pralines we’d shared earlier and something more, something like clear autumn skies and green Luxembourgish meadows, like we had all the time in the world. I wrapped my legs around him and moaned into his mouth, feeling him grind against me, his erection throbbing through his jeans.
He wanted to go inside me. And for one single, solitary, unhinged second, I considered letting him. It all surged through me, greed and lust and some other base emotion I couldn’t even name, but I didn’t care because he was here now. Finally, this beautiful man I wasn’t supposed to be touching was in my bed and—
“We can’t,” I said. Fuck me. “We really can’t.”
“Tu as raison.”
You are correct. If we were at the desk, I would have loved to hear that from him. In bed, I just wanted to explode.
Still, he didn’t stop, thank God . Instead, my beautiful genius seemed to get, of course, an idea. He ground his hips against mine, his hand finding my clit and manipulating it through my panties as he bit my earlobe gently. He pulled away and reached for the hem of my shirt, lifting it slowly, inch by inch, over my head, his cool lips trailing down my neck and across my collarbone. I arched into him involuntarily but kept my hands busy, yanking at his shirt, too eager to see those abs again after all those days I’d had to go without. And all of a sudden it was there, that body , so lovely and maimed, a priceless canvas slashed, filling my whole rarefied, limited world, as he traced me through my panties, outlining my folds so gently I wanted to scream. Instead, I only dug my hands deeper into his scarred shoulders.
He sank down between my legs and licked me through my black silk panties, slowly teasing out the wetness with his tongue until I felt like I was floating apart. My hips bucked off the bed and I gasped loudly, feeling the head of his cock as he ground it against my entrance for just a moment through the fabric before he pulled back. And the idea of that—of him , the shape and size, the weight of him, and how close I was to feeling it all, so close and so far—was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“Tu veux que je te fasse plaisir?”
I nodded frantically, unable to speak, and I wondered what Madame Pelletier from senior year French would be more horrified to know: what he was saying, or that my mind had gone too blank to translate it. Though I couldn’t answer through the haze of pleasure, I somehow managed to nod again. Then he was tearing my panties off me, tossing them aside along with the one article of clothing at a time rule. He innocently tongued his fingers and then two of them were inside me, stretching me open as his thumb pressed against my clit. And then there was his tongue, lashing against me, driving me up the wall, making me arch off the bed once again.
“Fuck,” I moaned, my voice strained and needy. “Please.”
He pulled his fingers out and rolled onto his back, his golden hair spilling over the pillow, and grabbed my hips again. I straddled him before he could change his mind and he hitched me up and positioned me over his face while he kept moving his fingers in me, in and out, matching the rhythm with his tongue on my clit. It felt incredible, gentle and rough and innocent and dangerous at the same time, a bundle of infinite contradictions, just like him. I groaned again, my knees thrashing from side to side on the pillow. He sucked and inhaled the nub as he pushed them deeper inside me, probing, tunneling, causing a deluge of pleasure so intense it burned through every nerve ending I had. He thrust his fingers in and out of me slowly at first but then faster, harder, until I was clawing at the sheets in desperation, silently cursing and begging and screaming, though no sound left my mouth at all—I was getting good at that—until my body tensed and I shuddered, rocked to my core in a thousand different ways. I clutched his shoulders tighter as my climax shattered me a billion more. And no, I couldn’t say his name, but all of a sudden, a name was there just the same, arriving in a silent, unspoken litany in my head and on my lips.
I’d never tell him.
When it was over, I collapsed on top of him, burying my face in the crook of his neck, breathless, spent, complete.
And utterly terrified at the gift I held in my arms.
Down the hallway, a million miles away, the landline in Daddy’s office rang. Soft, insistent, and cut off in an instant when he presumably answered.
“We’re gonna die, you know,” I said, feeling the shoulders I rested on tremble slightly. His eyes flicked up at the ceiling, for a second, then back. He brushed a damp curl from where it clung to my lips. “It was worth it to see you like that,” he murmured.
I think for him it really was.
“Oh God,” I breathed suddenly, arching into his touch because he was still working magic—or science, or religion, or all three—between my legs, even as I shook with the force of all that release. “Again?”
He glanced up at the clock and then back at me like I was crazy. “Of course. We’ve still got five minutes before the hour is up.”
I smiled serenely and collapsed on my back on the mattress.
If anybody knew how to make the most of what he’d been given, it was him.
The next day, I caught him curiously examining my bookshelf—only with his eyes. I didn’t think he’d ever actually touched anything I hadn’t given him permission to touch. And even though it might have started out as some arbitrary rule about how a slave should behave, it wasn’t anymore. Besides, everything I had given him permission to touch, he’d ravaged.
Anyway, we started exploring. Though way above average for a foreigner, his understanding of Shakespearean English was not as thorough as mine, though it didn’t prevent him from trying to enthrall and horrify me with his dramatic interpretations of Titus Andronicus baking Tamora’s sons into a pie. But beyond that, he seemed curious about the book of Plautine and Terentian comedies I’d read in my classics course. After he promised me he had a good hiding spot for it, I gave him that to read during his hours off next Sunday, as long as he agreed to read aloud my favorite verses from Les Miserables , in the original French, of course. As he did so, I was so absorbed in how beautiful the words sounded coming out of his mouth that I almost forgot to think about what they meant. And if he did—well, he kept those thoughts to himself.
Nous vivions cachés, contents, porte close
Dévorant l’amour, bon fruit défendu;
Ma bouche n’avait pas dit une chose
Que déjà ton coeur avait répondu. 1
HIM
The day before the exam, Louisa sat in her usual swivel chair, gazing out the window at the distant mountains she’d seen all her life, her body present, but her mind clearly miles away.
“Where are you, Lou? Tell me,” I whispered as I leaned in close behind her, brushing her curls gently back from her face. “Maybe I can help.”
“Worrying about letting you down tomorrow,” she replied.
I’d been afraid of that and equally afraid that all the drilling and quizzing and practice problems in the world couldn’t overcome her self-doubt if she chose to let it win. And as much as I wanted to help her conquer it, I didn’t know how. I’d only studied chemistry, not psychology. “You could never ever let me down,” I assured her.
“But what if I fail?”
“Then just try again. Find a way to succeed next time. Or do something else altogether. Believe me, if there’s anyone who knows about pushing through difficult, thankless tasks that never seem to end, it’s me.”
“But—”
“Besides,” I continued, wondering how she’d take what I was about to say. Maybe she’d just dismiss it as silly, simplistic folk wisdom, invented by slaves for slaves. But I forged ahead anyway. “I haven’t taught you the most important lesson yet. The one that will get you through this exam and every test yet to come.”
“What’s that?”
“Breathe,” I whispered.
“Huh?”
“See? You’re holding your breath even now, and you didn’t even know it.”
“I am?” She turned around, clearly surprised to find I was right.
“I notice you doing it all the time,” I said, going for the professorial effect as I sat back in my chair. “Never ever hold your breath, even for a second, as much as you want to. When you do, you’re just depriving your brain of oxygen. It’s like trying to die, basically. And as a future doctor, I think it’s safe to assume you’re against that.”
“Did your professor teach you that?” she asked.
“No.” Suddenly, the pencil I was twirling in my hand had become utterly fascinating. “My mom did.”
HER
“Funny thing happened at work yesterday,” said Corey.
Outside the o-chem lecture hall, his clammy hand—one I’d managed to blissfully avoid coming in contact with since the dinner party—clamped onto my bare shoulder. He physically forced me to turn around and look at his tanned, fine features, which, to be honest, didn’t look particularly fine at the moment. Rather, they bore a sort of blotchy, alcoholic bloat, one I easily recognized.
“Langer says he isn’t renewing my internship next semester, and it’s all because of that fucking slave of your dad’s.”
I kept my voice calm, though I already didn’t like where this was headed. Especially when my nerves were liable to shatter like glass at the slightest rattle. “If Langer’s canning you, it’s probably because he can’t stand the sound of your voice anymore, in which case I’m in complete agreement with him. No slave had anything to do with it.”
“That’s funny because I would tend to disagree,” he said. “Shame what happened to him after dinner that night, by the way.”
I felt sick, but I had had an inkling, of course. “What kind of complete monster hurts someone who you know isn’t allowed to fight back?”
“So what? He deserved a lot worse for running his mouth like that to free men, and if your dad didn’t give it to him, it’s because he’s a weak, manic-depressive cuck.”
“Leave my dad out of this.” Was Corey trying to ensure I failed this exam? “What he does or doesn’t do with his slaves is none of your goddamn business.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?” He pushed. “Ever since that slave appeared, you’ve been a complete bitch.”
“If standing up for people is what you call being a bitch,” I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t become one a lot earlier.”
“People?” Corey scoffed with a dismissive chuckle as if I’d just claimed unicorns were real. “Is that what you call—”
“Hey, guys, is everything okay out here?” One of the TAs stuck her head out the door of the lecture hall. Her gaze landed on me. “We’re about to start passing out the exam books in a second.”
“Oh, right, that one your slave’s been helping you study for,” remarked Corey.
The TA’s eyes got rounder, but she didn’t say anything.
But as she stood there, Corey turned up his volume as if twisting a knob, loud enough for startled heads to turn up and down the corridor. “I mean, everyone here already knew you couldn’t cut it in college. That you were a stupid, spoiled bimbo only here to snag a rich boyfriend after Daddy went crazy and pissed away his fortune. And this only proves how pathetic you are. You know, you might as well just use that exam for toilet paper and turn it in. You’ll probably get more questions right that way. Maybe try using an actual tutor next time instead of a slave.”
“Better a slave for a tutor than an asshole for a boyfriend,” I snapped, turning around, unable to disguise how violently I was shaking. “Not that that term will ever have anything to do with you . Don’t talk to me anymore.”
“You think I’m blind?!” He caught me by the arm again. I jerked away as everything became a blur. He’d wanted people to stare, but now it was backfiring on him. Heads were turning. A crowd closed in, and he had no choice but to loosen his grip. But he kept shouting as I darted into the safety of the lecture hall. “I know what this is really all about!”
In the back of the freezing hall, I regarded the chalkboard in a stiff, unseeing stare, shaking too hard to even macerate an eraser or two as usual. Exams and answer sheets trickled their way to the back of the hall courtesy of a pack of grim-looking TAs.
Fuck Corey. I could blame him for shattering my confidence, but the fact was, I’d never had any to begin with.
It had made sense, for a time. It really had. The lecture notes, the practice problems, the hours and hours my unlikely tutor had spent helping me spin those arrays of infuriating little carbon and oxygen molecules around like cogs and gears until they miraculously reassembled themselves into something that worked for my brain. But now it was gone, collapsed into one terrifying, soul-sucking singularity.
Panic set in. I could see it all laid out in front of me like some tortuous map to hell. After all that had happened, all the work we’d done, I was still going to fail, lose my scholarship, and drop out, but now it was even worse. Yes, Mr. Supportive had said exactly what he was supposed to say, and it was very sweet and all, but seriously, how could I possibly ever face him again if I failed? To explain that he’d wasted hours of his life, of which he had so few free to begin with, trying to fix a hopeless dummy? I should have known better than to ever involve him in this mess.
Watching the fear and anxiety seizing my classmates’ faces as they stared down at the exams landing in front of them was no help. Helpless, my breathing grew quick and shallow, a sure sign of an impending freak-out. I reached into my leather schoolbag for my study notes, hoping that staring at something familiar to me might at least help get my memory working again in the seconds before the paper landed on my desk.
As I shook out the papers, I was surprised to see something bright and strange flutter to the floor from where it had been lodged in my bag. I snatched it up greedily: a wildflower.
A sprig of blush-orange globe mallow, one of the only flowers that bloomed in the desert in the fall, its petals shedding delicately in my hand.
And on top of the notes, a sticky note with a message in a by-now-familiar spiky scrawl.
Hey, put down the notes and breathe. You got this.
x
1.
We lived hidden, content, door closed/Devouring love, good forbidden fruit/My mouth had not asked a thing/That your heart had not already answered.