“Yes. Let you. So far you’ve just ruined clothes you paid for. You’re even keeping your hand between the blade and my skin. The lesson’s ov --”
Feeling the tip of the blade against her nipple, Hallie froze. Aaron stared at her for a long second before he lifted the blade. He dipped his head, his mouth closing over the areola to suck at it. His tongue ran a slow circle around the perimeter and then he held the nipple tight between his lips as he lifted his head.
“Aaron…” She fought to keep the pleasure out of her voice. He knew exactly how to tease her breasts, to bring out every ounce of sensitivity despite their heavy size.
He released her breast and slowly shook his head at her. He dropped the boxcutters to the floor. With another twist of his powerful body, he had her on her stomach. He bent low over her, his erection sliding against her bottom as he retrieved the boxcutters.
She kicked at his back and felt her heel connect with his spine. “I’m not enjoying this.”
“Didn’t expect you to.” There was the sound of more fabric being shredded and then the boxcutters flew over her head and bounced off the wall. It took him maybe five seconds more before he had her hands bound behind her back.
Leaving her on the couch, he walked into the bathroom. She twisted into a standing position, then looked around for something to cut away the silk straps from around her wrists. Seeing only the boxcutters, she headed toward them, but Aaron was out of the bathroom too soon, tossing her effortlessly over his shoulder and carrying her back to the couch.
She kicked at his face -- missed. “Untie me. Now!”
The bastard laughed, caught her foot and kissed it center sole. She jerked her leg back and saw what he had gone into the bathroom for -- lube. He would need it if he planned on fucking her. She sure as hell wasn’t wet.
With his big hands wrapped around her thighs, he kept her legs forced apart. Instead of entering Hallie, Aaron placed his cock against her mound and slowly rocked in place as she twisted beneath him. He brought his mouth close to hers, his lips tracing its edge. He still hadn’t kissed her mouth in all these weeks. Now he was trying to blackmail her with the promise of it.
“You can walk out,” he whispered. “Leave. I’ll send you a check for the commission. You can take it with you -- the check and the canvas.”
She tried to head butt him but he was too fast for her. He circled her lips again, his tongue licking slowly at the sides of her mouth.
“But you’ll always have that block. You’ll go to your grave with your mother’s picture unfinished.”
Tears rolled down the side of her face. She twisted far enough that she could motion with her bound hands. “And what is this supposed to teach me?”
“You’re too afraid of dying.” He kissed her eyes closed and brought his mouth directly over hers, his breath warm against her lips as he spoke. “Leads to too much ego control.”
God, she’d given up all ego control in his bed -- on the head of his cock and the tip of his tongue. Did he really think she was still holding back on him?
Kissing everywhere but her mouth, he continued to rock against her, the pressure of his cock against her clit building. Her legs tensed and she tried not to push against him or rock her hips in unison. His hands closed over her breasts. He squeezed, knowing just the right amount of pressure that would make her moan.
He’d always made it about getting her off, bringing her pleasure at heights she’d never experienced with any other lover.
“Aaron.” She kept her voice calm. “You don’t want to hurt me.”
“No.” He slid lower down her body while his hand reached up. His fingers curled around her throat. “It’s just something that has to happen.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
His only response was to pop the cap open on the lube. She felt the cold squirt of jelly against her labia. He kept her pinned by the throat, the pressure only increasing when she tried to move.
Slowly, he spread the lubricant between her lips, around the opening to her cunt. He slid a finger or two inside her, his body oddly angled so that he could hold her throat with one hand and finger-fuck her with the other while he kept his mouth against her clit and gently rolled the hood between his lips.
He stroked the inside of her pussy, his fingers finding the sweet spot he knew so well and gently rubbing against it.
“What are you going to do?” Her body started shaking from the effort of resisting him.
He met her gaze, his tongue taking long, hard swipes at the spine of her clit while he pushed another thick finger into her pussy. He curled his tongue around the sensitive ridge, rhythmically stroking and sucking the line while his thumb rubbed a tight circle against the bottom of the hood and the rest of his hand possessed her cunt. Forgetting the hand at her throat, Hallie melted against the cushion. She pressed her eyes tight, unwilling to witness her hips’ rolling surrender as he fucked her with all four fingers.
“Not yet, Hallie.” He shifted forward so that his head rested against her chest as he listened to her little gasps and moans and sucked at her lush breast.
She wanted her hands free, wanted to grab him and hold on tight as she felt the whole of his hand stretching her. Her chest rising and falling in a pant, her cunt closed around his wrist. He started to pump and then, with the hand at her throat, he tightened his grip.
Squeezing, he whispered her name, his words carrying with them the unmistakable sound of ownership. She turned her head, tried to twist free. Her pulse pounded low and hypnotic through her head, each beat matched by a contraction of her pussy around his fist.
The floor moved around them. She threw a leg up over the back of the couch, opening herself to him. He relaxed his hold on her throat and her head lolled to the side. He stopped the thrust of his hand, easing her back from the edge of climax as he did nothing more than clench and unclench his fist inside her.
Slowly, he returned to alternating between his fingers tight around her throat and his hand flexing and pumping inside her. She knew -- her life, her pleasure, were completely at his command. The knowledge only intensified her climax.
Colors bled to gray at the edge of her vision. Shadows took shape and fell like a blanket over her face, blacking the world out, leaving her to the sound of her breath squeezed through her throat, the wet thrust of his closed hand as she trembled around it.
She was coming, had been doing so for what seemed like minutes. Every time she thought she would lose consciousness, he pulled her back from the edge, the rhythm of it submerging her in an orgasmic trance.
Letting go of her throat, he moved his head down to her cunt. His fist still controlling her sex, he rolled his tongue around the hood of her clit then gently suckled the tip. She was jerking uncontrollably, her thighs pressed tight around his arm and wrist as she rode her climax. When he started to pull out, his slow, teasing withdrawal unleashed sobs from Hallie.
Aaron reached beneath her and untied her hands. Then he kissed and massaged his way up her body until he had his big arms wrapped around her, her head cradled against his chest.
“I can’t think.”
He chuckled, his lips against her throat. “I’d be insulted if you could.”
Ignoring the deep throb between her legs, she forced her arms up and around his neck. She grabbed a handful of hair, tried to knot her fingers in the thick curls but her fingers wouldn’t obey.
“You’ll be lucky if I don’t Krazy Glue your dick to your stomach,” she warned.
He reached between her legs, a quickly inserted middle finger revealing the deep muscle contractions that still pulsed through her cunt. He nipped at her ear. “You’d miss my cock too much,
moro mou
.”
Biting at her lower lip, she looked away. True as it was, Hallie didn’t want to admit it.
Chapter Seven
Two more weeks passed in a creative fugue. Hallie finished the portrait of her mom, paint breaking across the canvas in a splash of rich, sunbaked colors and not the institutional gray that had marked the last months of Mama Brandt’s life. With the image done, she was finally able to sit down and finish the piece Aaron had commissioned.
He’d placed it on the wall opposite their bed last night, the canvas unframed to give the oils time to cure. With the picture up, he had fucked her senseless -- in the bed, at the edge of the bed, on the floor.
He’d spent an hour eating her out -- his lips, tongue and fingers teasing her cunt every which way possible until he had taken her head in his hands and held her still as he locked eyes with her. They’d fucked like that, lips open, tongues touching, so close to taking that forbidden kiss. When their climax came, it came hard, draining them so that they had quickly fallen asleep, her secure in his arms, him still buried deep inside her, their bodies nestled tight together.
Falling asleep in his embrace, the last thing she had expected was to awaken alone in his big bed.
Hallie snitched a robe from his closet and headed to her studio.
The door was open. Sheets draped the furniture. The easel was gone, as was the paint cart. Crates filled the room -- one for each of the other paintings she had completed.
Hallie walked over to the intercom, pressed the call button and released.
Silence.
She pressed the call button again.
Still nothing. Not that she could blame them. Must suck to kick your boss’s lover out.
She marched to his office, heart sinking at the wide-open door until she saw the dark curls.
He looked up -- and her heart sank all over again.
Not Aaron, but Heckle.
Or Jeckle. It was no use trying to think of them separately. They walked as a unit, talked as a unit. Hell, they probably even breathed as a unit. If they bothered to breathe at all.
He looked to his left and she followed his gaze. Standing in front of the stone wall was his pale, bloodless twin. Next to him, a wide section of the slate floor was missing. Rough-cut stairs descended into pitch black.
She cinched the robe tighter, her gaze darting between the stairs and Aaron’s uncles.
Was that it? Had he left Heckle and Jeckle there to break the news that he was kicking her to the curb now that the painting was done and he had no more lessons to teach her?
Well, she sure as hell had a few to teach him. “Where is he?”
Like old women, they turned to one another, ignoring Hallie as they talked in faintly thrilled voices.
“He’ll try to keep her.”
“They never stay, do they?”
Hallie jabbed her finger in their general direction. This time she yelled her question at them. “Where is he?”
They pressed closer together, the dark one pulling a pocket watch out and checking the time. “Tick tock, my beauty. You don’t want to wait for one of us to answer that question.”
She eyed the opening in the floor. She couldn’t see more than four steps down.
“Not afraid of the dark, are you?”
“Claustrophobic, perhaps?”
She bent toward the stairs, ready to call his name. Her throat seized. If he was down there, he wouldn’t answer. She knew it low in her stomach. If he had any intention of answering her, he wouldn’t be down there in the first place. She glanced suspiciously back at Heckle and Jeckle.
Maybe they’d stuck him down there?
They smiled, showing her the one feature they shared completely -- gray gums.
Might as well be goddamn mummies, she thought and hiked the robe a few inches with one hand.
She headed down the steps, slowly placing one foot down at a time. When her head was level with the floor, she placed her palm flat against the wall. The texture was all wrong, not like the bedrock she would expect in the valley floor. Instead, it was smooth like the carved wall she’d just left behind.
The stairs curved. She counted each one as she went. Christ had descended a thousand steps into the underworld -- the ground below Aaron’s house leveled out at one hundred thirty-eight.
Arms outstretched to touch both sides of the passage, she kept walking, her count starting over from one as she felt for any breaks in the wall that indicated a side passage.
Cold and moist, the air wrapped around her like an embrace. She forced herself to keep the same pace. She didn’t want to run face-first into a wall or a low overhang in the ceiling. If Aaron had needed to leave without waking her, only Heckle and Jeckle knew she was down here.
Hallie comforted herself with that thought until a blue light flared ahead of her, showing that the passage opened onto a chamber a few feet ahead. The light brightened as she approached and Aaron’s body slowly took shape in front of her.
More blue flames flickered to life along the wall. Aaron turned away from her and walked into the next chamber, the folds of his black robe billowing behind him. He came to a stop in front of a black sarcophagus. The piece was huge and topped by a carved angel.
She walked past him and ran her fingers over the familiar features. “Your face.”
She glanced once over her shoulder, but he kept silent. She ran her hand along the head, across the strong neck to the rising expanse of wings. She thought back to the scales, still placed on the table upstairs. Leaning her head against the statue, she asked, “Your feather?”
What the hell was she thinking?
Aaron answered with the brush of his fingers against the back of her neck. “You’re not crazy, Hallie. Neither am I.”
He turned her until she faced him. Parting the edges of her robe with his finger, he stroked the skin just over her heart. “Your deadline for the painting was today. I didn’t know it until…”
He looked to the dark passage that led back up to the house.
“Until Heckle and Jeckle showed up at the crack of dawn?”
He offered a slight nod, his gaze never leaving the line he’d traced down her breast.
Hallie wrapped her hand around Aaron’s. “You really expect me to believe that shit? How many lovers have you fed this line of bull to?”
He lifted his gaze, just a second’s worth, to the wall. She looked and saw three vases topped with lids. She pushed him back from her and took a step closer to the wall.
Not vases.
Urns.
And more than three. She turned, counting until he interrupted her.
“Before you? Sixteen.”
She came to the sixteenth urn and saw, next to it, the pearl shell.
Her shell -- just as she had painted it.
“Only the Green River Killer had that many.”
“I don’t kill, Hallie. I judge. I rule… I…” He approached an urn -- seemingly the first and the largest. “These are the women who have ruled with me -- who weighed each heart until their own grew too heavy from the task.”
For a moment, she felt sorry for him.
Until she remembered that he was crazy as a bed bug.
She took a step back, and then another. He lifted a hand as if to halt her and the lights dimmed. When she turned to run back up the passage, the walls and door were in shadow. Trailing her hand against a wall, she tried to remember; had there only been one doorway into the room?
He followed, stopping when she stopped, his hand out and ready to touch her but never bridging the gap between their bodies. “It’s your heart, Hallie.”
Bright light flared and died in an instant, leaving heavy black shadows dancing in her vision so that every wall looked like it had a door or two in front of it.
Turning sharply, she ran into Aaron.
“Let go!”
For once, he obeyed her.
If only he would stop talking.
“You can feel it.” He reached out, just far enough to stroke a fingertip down the inside line of her breast. “Not enough blood coming in. Just a small area of the aorta stretched thin right now.”
Taking a step back, Hallie fell to her knees.
“A few minutes at most, and it will tear.” He dropped to his knees with her. “Before then, your brain will begin starving for oxygen. You’ll begin to see things…”
She was seeing things now. She reached out and gripped his forearms while shadows danced behind his back like raven’s wings.
He inched closer, reversing their position until he was holding her by the back of her arms. “You don’t have to die, Hallie. I cannot give you life. But if you stay with me, I can give you afterlife.”
She was sinking to the floor. Aaron’s words grew fainter. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap, his whole body cradling her.
“Stay with me. You can sculpt deaths, conduct last breaths…”
Hallie thought of the studio, the draped furniture and crates. She rested her head against his chest, struggling to fill her lungs with enough air to speak until she managed a weak “But not create?”
He tilted his face to hers, his lips, for the last time, not quite touching hers in a kiss. “You can create beautiful deaths for the innocent, move the world to action with it --”
“But not paint,” she pressed.
“No, not that,
kardhoola mou
.” He put his hand over her heart, pressing as if he could slow time. His other hand cradled her head. Tears fell, as dark and brilliant as the rest of him. “Just a kiss, Hallie. That’s all I’m asking.”
You only kiss your wife
. Was that it? To kiss him was to become Hell’s Mistress?
The words wouldn’t come. She tried, but cold crept over her chest, freezing her lips. He would have to take it, reading her consent in her gaze if he could.
Aaron dipped his head, his tongue gently prying at her lips. His thumb pressed at her chin, coaxing her mouth to open. He sealed his lips to hers, his every exhalation thawing her frozen limbs and filling her with something that was neither life nor death.
He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her more deeply. He explored Hallie’s mouth, his tongue stroking and wrestling with hers before he took her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged at it.
She looked at the urns that lined the wall. Would their failure be hers? Dismissing the idea, she wrapped her arms around Aaron’s neck and pulled him back into the kiss. Above them, doors slammed as the uncles left, disappointed.
It was time those old birds learned a new trick.
And she was just the dark queen to teach them.