“He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
M. gets up and walks toward me. Abruptly, he grabs my hair and yanks my head back. “I don’t think you’re nearly as cynical as you’d like me to believe,” he says. He leans down so his face is in mine. I see every threatening pore on his skin, every dark lash curling on his eyelids. He stares at me, unblinking, and cups my chin with his free hand. “And you’re definitely not as cautious as you should be. I killed your sister, remember? Or so you think. You shouldn’t be here.”
I stare back at him, trying not to show fear. But I do. This is the first time he’s touched me, and his hand burns on my chin as though it were a brand. “I’m not scared of you,” I tell him.
“You should be,” he says. He looks me long in the eye, then adds, “And you are.” He releases me and stands back, smiling, a snide, self-satisfied grin. I sit up but resist the temptation to rub my scalp where he pulled my hair.
He goes back to his chair and sits down. “Seduce me,” he says. “Show me what you can do.”
I ignore him, then take another drink, stalling for time. He’s turned things around, and I need time to turn them back again, to gain control. I stretch out on the couch once more, affecting a nonchalance that I don’t really feel. “Don’t ever pull my hair like that again,” I tell him.
M. says nothing, drinking his martini.
Slowly, I rub one leg with the other. Then I shift around on the sofa, languidly, as if I have all the time in the world. I wait for M. to come to me, for him to make the first move. The clock ticks off the minutes. He sets his drink down.
“Take off your dress,” he orders.
I smile; I didn’t have to wait very long. I stand up and pull the zipper all the way down. The dress falls off my shoulders. “Do you like what you see?” I ask. I turn around slowly, letting him see my ass, then turn back again and face him. I reach behind to unhook my bra, but M. raises his hand.
“Not yet,” he says. “Sit.”
I remain standing. M. watches me, an annoyed look crossing his face.
“There’s something you might as well learn right now,” he says. “If we’re going to fuck, we’re going to do it my way. If I tell you to get on your knees and suck my cock, you better head for the floor. If I give you an order, I expect you to obey. Now sit down.”
His chauvinism makes me want to laugh. Never before have I taken orders from a man, in bed or otherwise. But I’ll play along, if that’s what it takes. I smile sweetly and sit, crossing my legs.
“That’s better,” M. says. “I don’t like the sarcasm of your smile, but we’ll work on that later.”
He gets up and goes over to the desk, then rummages around in the top drawer, puts something in his shirt pocket, and walks back to me. All his movements are unhurried, deliberate, as if calculated for effect. Gracefully, he kneels in front of me, then puts one hand on my face. He traces my lips with his finger, saying, “I’m going to break you, Nora. It may take a month, it may take only a week—but you’ll learn to obey. And you know what? It’s going to be easy, and you’re going to like it.”
His voice has a sinister timbre, low and soft yet still conveying a threat. His dark eyes look into mine. They are cold and confident, the eyes of a predator certain of its prey. My breathing quickens. He says, “Now spread your legs.”
Again, his voice is quiet, as smooth as soft, silky fabric, but I hear the weight of his words. I uncross my legs and open them.
He puts his hands on my thighs, says, “Wider,” and pulls them open. “That’s better,” he says. He takes my hands and arranges them on my thighs, palms up. “Now close your eyes.”
I hesitate. My heart beats faster at this uncommon ritual. Nervously, I glance at his shirt pocket. What is inside it?
“Close them,” he repeats, and he rakes his hand gently down my face, closing my eyes, then takes away his hand.
Legs spread, eyes closed—I am completely vulnerable. My body is taut, my chest tight. I want to open my eyes, but I don’t. I sense that M. is conducting some sort of test, a trial of nerves, a test of my nerve. Pinpoints of anxiety prickle my skin. I think of his shirt pocket and what he could’ve slipped inside it.
“Stay like this,” he says, and I jerk when I feel the touch of his hand. His fingers trace my jawline. “Relax,” he says, removing his hand. “But don’t move. And keep your eyes shut.”
I hear him walking away, or at least I think he is walking away—the room is carpeted, and I’m not sure. I let my eyelids slide open just a crack, an almost imperceptible slit so M. will not notice if he’s watching. A filament of dim light seeps through my lashes. My range of vision is narrow, and all I see are the palms of my hands and the tops of my feet. I think of Franny in her red bustier, tied to the dining room chair, legs spread, ready for M.’s punishment, the nature of which I can only imagine. I clench my fists, fearing M. may have something similar planned for me. But then, from across the room, I hear music. I open my eyes. M. is at the piano. What a strange man he is. I’m sitting here, in black lace bikini underwear, legs spread wide, and he’s playing the piano on the other side of the room.
The irony makes me smile. With M. at a distance, I can relax. A halo of light shines down on him, and he looks almost angelic—his expression tranquil, his fingers graceful on the keys, the lines on his face softened in the flattering light. The piano is a baby grand, five feet long, probably, and shiny black, with the lid propped open. The music seems to float lightly in the air, soft, romantic, lyrical—a piece by Chopin, I’d guess, although I’m not positive.
I close my eyes and listen. The melody dances slowly, lightly, and goes on and on, like a free-flowing, fresh water stream, and I let it carry me along to some idyll of years past, picking wildflowers and chasing after yellow butterflies. It is a beautiful melody, hypnotic in its simplicity. But then, just as the last bit of tension leaves my body, the tempo changes.
I watch M. He doesn’t look so angelic now, bent over the keyboard, concentration furrowing his brows. He pounds out the music, loud, rhythmic, sexual. It laps out like a violent body of water, lapping, overlapping, growing larger and larger. In undulating chords, it fills the room, every corner, from the ceiling to the floor, and then fills me. My pulse quickens. I feel M., I feel his intensity, his heat, from across the room. The melody draws me toward him, although I haven’t moved an inch. He seems oblivious of me, of everything, as the music speeds to an end, and then, abruptly, concludes. He sits for a moment, composing himself. The room is silent; deadly, passionately silent. He rises and walks back to me.
“That was … wonderful,” I say, and I mean it. Franny never wrote in her diary how gifted he was. I still feel the music, its unsettling melody, but M. seems completely recovered.
He stands above me, one hand in his pants pocket, thinking. A tuft of black hair has fallen over his forehead, but he doesn’t brush it back. “Music,” he says, “is my passion. It’s the one aspect of life that’s enduring, lasting.”
“Not everyone would agree with that,” I say. “What about other forms of art? Sculpture, painting, literature? And what about people? Some people marry, and have children, to form a union that will endure.”
Pulling me up to my feet, he says, “Art is enduring, yes, but not people. People are the least permanent of all, and the most disposable, the most interchangeable. You’ll be with me for a certain period of time, and then, when your shelf life has expired, you’ll be replaced with someone new.” He smiles, and I wonder if he’s teasing or being sincere.
He sits on the couch and motions me to put a leg up on his knee. He caresses my calf, my thigh, letting his hand linger. It is a simple gesture, yet it catches my breath—and it shouldn’t. I’ve slept with a lot of men. It must be the aftermath of the music.
He unsnaps the garter and rolls down the stocking, his gentle hands moving leisurely on my leg, expertly, as if he’s done this many times before. He kisses the inside of my bare ankle, and I feel it up to my groin. With his lips still touching my skin, he looks up at me, and I see the undisguised smile in his eyes. He knows he pleases. He places my leg on the floor, motions for the next leg, and proceeds to remove the other stocking. My body feels fluid, pliant, still filled with the music. M. is a dangerous man, yet the thought of sleeping with him—the danger, the fear—excites me. And he knows it. I despise this man with all my heart, but still his touch titillates me. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.
He peels off my bikini panties, but leaves the black bra and garter belt on, then pulls me down on his lap so I’m straddling his legs. He kisses me. His hands on my hips pull me closer, and I feel the fabric of his pants against my exposed crotch. His tongue is warm, searching, and I know I shouldn’t be here. He reaches in his shirt pocket. A frisson of fear shoots through me. But all he pulls out is a set of chrome nipple clamps. This is what he’d gotten from his desk earlier, what I had been so worried about—tit clamps.
“First time with these?” M. asks.
I don’t say anything, feeling a bit nervous.
“They’re tweezer clamps,” he says. “Not too intense—good for beginners.” He takes off my bra and attaches the clamps to my nipples, watching me for a reaction. There is pain at first—which I refuse to show—and more pain as he tightens them, then a gradual numbing as the blood circulation is cut off. He smiles. His tongue goes back in my mouth, his hand goes between my legs, and the fingers that played the piano now play me.
He pulls his head back. “You’re already wet,” he says, and he places me on the couch, then kneels on the floor, and licks my clitoris until I come.
He looks up at me, between my legs. “That was easy,” he says, a note of smugness in his voice. He stands and kicks off his shoes.
“I’m not through yet,” I say.
He unbuttons his shirt, and I sit up to watch him undress. He slips it off, hangs it over the back of a chair, then takes off his slacks and folds them neatly. He looks as I imagined him: slimly built yet muscular, sexy for a man close to fifty, no paunch, no sagging skin. He’s wearing black briefs, and he has an erection. His penis pushes the material out, bulging erotically. I wait for him to strip off his underwear, but instead he takes off a sock. Then the other sock. Then his watch. Finally, he slips the underwear down and stands in front of me. “Suck me,” he says. It comes out as an order.
I hesitate briefly, stopping to gaze at a fine specimen for a forty-nine-year-old man. I’ve never been one to dwell on the size of a man’s cock. Big, small, thick, thin—I have no preference. They’re all pretty much the same to me. But there’s something about the sight of an erect penis that stirs me profoundly. I think the feeling must be innate, going back thousands of years, to an ancient world, to a time before consciousness when fucking had to do with survival more than sport, because I felt that hoary stir upon sight of my very first penis, an immediate lust-felt response.
I take his cock inside my mouth, and then, licking and sucking, I traverse that ancient, throbbing universe with the new. But now, here, with M., there is a new dimension to cocksucking. And it’s all about power, that unharnessed force reigning in this small piece of turgid flesh. I suck for his power, wanting to drain him of every drop. I feel his hands on my shoulders, knowing he could wrap them around my neck and squeeze. I realize I am playing a dangerous game. I renew my efforts. I want to—I must—milk him until he comes.
But he stops me.
“I’m going to fuck you,” he says, and he shoves me back on the couch. The abruptness of his movements, and his force, startles me. Instinctively, I push myself up. M. shoves me back down. With a snap of his wrist, he flicks off a clamp. A sharp pain shoots to the tip of my nipple as the blood rushes back. He flicks the other one off, then climbs on top of me and fucks me roughly. Gradually, while he’s fucking, I relax. I maneuver into a position that is good for me, but he yanks me back. He moves me as he wishes, allowing no freedom of choice. I watch him fuck me, objectively at first—hovering over me, lifting my legs, turning me on my stomach and twisting my body, flipping me on my back again—then something happens and I lose my objectivity and some of my fear. I’m pulled into his world. He is on his knees, sitting up, fucking me fast and hard, his arms straight out, gripping my breasts as if they were round handles or knobs, grinding my shoulders into the couch. His face is changed, dark, mysterious, twisted with pleasure. I think of cavemen, of early man with his hairy body and low, threatening forehead. More animal than man. I am home, wherever that might be, and I think I must be crazy to stay here. He grabs my hair and pulls my head to the left, hard. I start to object, but then close my eyes and see the wild man. I hear his voice in my ear. “You like this, don’t you? You’ll do whatever I say. You like being my whore.”
And the truth is, I do. I can’t explain my reaction. My feelings are paradoxical: I hate him, fear him, yet at the same time his dominion over me, however brief, is intoxicating. I come, and then minutes later I come again.
I wake with a start. Jerking myself up, I look around the room. My heartbeats are rapid and frantic. I’m in M.’s bedroom, in his bed. Particles of light from the morning sun seep through the draperies, giving just enough illumination to bring out the colors of the room, soft shades of gray and blue, etiolated from the stingy early light. The room seems almost cavernous: huge, hollow, hazy. I hear the steady streams of water coming from the shower in the bathroom. I hadn’t heard M. get up this morning, and this alarms me.
I have no idea when I finally, unintentionally, dozed off last night. M. took a sleeping pill, which he said he does occasionally, and fell asleep immediately. I lay awake for several hours, positive I was in bed with a killer. The thought of M. waking and watching me while I slept makes me shudder. I was at his mercy, exposed, unprotected. I mustn’t be so stupid in the future. I lie back down, hugging a pillow, gripping it tightly, and listen to him in the shower. My head feels light and groggy, my mouth dry—too much scotch, too little sleep. I think of Ian, my trusting Ian, and immediately feel guilty about last night. But I know I had no choice. I want information about Franny, and if I have to sleep with M. to get it, then so be it. The sex was impersonal, I rationalize, and had nothing to do with me and Ian. Still, I feel a deep, bruising knot of remorse. My rationalizations do not provide the palliative effect I desire. I’ll deal with my feelings later; I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with both Ian and M. now. I need to stay focused so I can handle M.