Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission (13 page)

She had not entirely forgiven him for his abusive behaviour, but she was glad that she had not left for reasons that were not simply materialistic. The truth was that Daniel was breaking down barriers within her that she had known about for years but had been unable to face up to on her own. And she had to admit that, with that one exception, the sex was fantastic.

Throughout part of the night she had been sketching and drawing, starting a fire in the hearth so that she would have some light to see, less concerned now with visual precision than with the impressionistic capture of her imagination. After a while, she had dozed off upon the sofa then, in the early hours of the morning, she had crawled
—
almost silently
—
upstairs.

Daniel had been sleeping on the bed, naked but for the sheet that covered his lower portion
—
and that his demonic manhood was hidden from her enabled her to revive her desire for it. He was a satyr down below, that she knew, and if she was to remain here she would simply have to accept it. She wanted to accept it
—
but more on her own terms. With a sense of sadness as she watched him sleeping in the dim crescent moonlight that illuminated the window, she realised that she only had a few very brief days here. After that, who knew what would happen?

With that thought, she had removed her clothes, letting them drop to the floor, and climbed into bed next to him. Still dreaming, he had reached out for her with one of his massive limbs, pulling her close, and she had curled her naked body next to his, enjoying his warmth. He was not forgiven, but the soft animal inside her wanted him, despite everything. When he had woken, she did not allow him to penetrate her, but instead she kissed and licked his erection, sucking down his seed while he in turn gently kissed and pleasured her, bringing her to a softer orgasm.

As sunlight entered the bedroom, she lay back in his arms. “I’ve just remembered. Shit
—
I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before.”

“Remembered what?” he asked.

“Your eyes
—
who they remind me of. David Bowie. My mom was really into him when I was young.”

Daniel snorted at this. “Thanks. Now you’re making me feel rather old. Always the
best of feeligns
.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what comes of fucking a younger woman. You should get used to it. There’s not much else of you that’s like him though. He’s always been a bit too androgynous for my tastes while you... well, you really are
all
man. Even the bad bits. Come to think of it, especially the bad bits. My mom really liked his stuff, but I found him a little creepy.”

“Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad surely. I rather like some of his
music as well
—
and before you say it, I was
not
old enough to hear most of it first time round.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Kris let her head fall back and looked up at the ceiling of the room, suddenly rather sad at the memory of her mother. “I only have some pretty fleeting recollections of her,” she said, more to herself than him. “She died when I was seven.”

“And your father, is he still alive?”

Kris was silent for a while. “No,” she replied at last. “He died a few years ago.” Her body tensed up at the thought of her father. The familiar prickles started to swoop across her limbs in waves and her mind closed down.

“There it goes again.” Daniel’s voice was quiet.

“What?”

“Your armour. It comes across you quickly but very effectively. I should have been more... observant, the other day.”

Kris brushed aside her objections to his previous behaviour, and instead tried to change the subject for a number of reasons. “And your parents?”

She felt him shrug behind her. “There’s very little to tell. Yo
u should have guessed that I’
d be tight lipped on such a subject.”

“And you dare to reprimand me on my reaction to mine?”

“It’s not that. There’s something different
—
unusual
—
in the way you react when any thought arises about your father. A closing up.”

Kris was silent for a moment. It was her turn to shrug. “I guess so,” she replied.

“If it helps to talk.”

“Not really,” was her only response, although it was only moments later that
—
once more
—
the dam inside her began to trickle, sprigs and branches of old memory springing leaks as they tumbled away as she lay there.

“We hadn’t talked for years before he died. That’s probably where the rot set in, after he had gone, and I couldn’t talk to him about my feelings for him. I never got to make amends
—
or for him to put things right with me.”

“What had he done to you?” Daniel’s voice was cautious, probing. Kris was unable to respond immediately. The flash of her mind in another bedroom, a long time ago, made her suddenly rigid
—
but at the same time, other pieces of the barrier to her memories were crumbling slightly. The pressure to speak was relentless.

“Did he...?” Daniel left the rest of his sentence unspoken, and for a few seconds Kris was unable to comprehend his meaning. When she did, she jumped forward and turned to face him, her face vivid with shock.

“No, no! Nothing like that! Well, not so bad. No, really, it’s not what you think. He was a drunk, and he was too free with his fists from time to time but...” Yet she could not go on. The old censor was back in place. Kris felt her jaw suddenly seize up, and her left fist clenched. She wanted to shout in frustration at it all.

But she could not shout. And so, instead, she had come out into the open air, dressed in one of Daniel’s shirts and her jeans, and was lifting the axe up and letting it fall. The mindlessness of those actions, surrounded as she was by the louring sky with clouds floating from the sea towards the distant mountains, in turn cleansed her memory.

When she returned inside, she found Daniel preparing something to eat. While she had no desire to completely unman him, she had to admit to a sense of satisfaction at this reversal of traditional gender roles. She herself was carrying a pile of wood, and her torso was sweaty and mired a little in her body’s own secretions. Only a week or two previously this would have filled her with disgust, but now... now she rather enjoyed the sensation of being honestly dirty.

She went behind Daniel, reaching around his waist with her arms and squeezing him. It was his turn to stiffen. He knew that he was still on a kind of probation, and so his testing and pushing of her had gone into abeyance. Instead, he was waiting for those signs that would allow him to proceed.

For a little while she simply let her head rest against his back, his shoulders high above her face. She smelt him, enjoying the warmth of his broad shoulders. When she was ready, she began to speak.

“I’d been out for three days. I hadn’t left any phone number of information where I was going. It wasn’t the first time I’d gone missing, but never before for so long. I was fifteen.”

As she spoke, Daniel stopped chopping food on the wooden board and let his hands rest on the surface, remaining silent and still while she talked.

“I’d met a guy, nearly ten years older than me. He was smart. He was drop dead gorgeous. He had a car, and money. He was my first real crush, my first love. It wasn’t that long before I lost my virginity to him. There had been fumblings before that, but he was the first one to really do it with me.

“And of course I wanted to spend as much time as I could with him. Things were going through a tough patch at home. Dad was as often crawled round the inside of a bottle, and when he wasn’t there he was spending time with one of his floozies. Actually, I’m pretty surprised I made it to fifteen still a virgin with the example I got at home.

“But it was pretty thoughtless of me. I guess the first day he treated it as a fairly normal occurrence
—
if he even noticed. The second day perhaps he started to worry. Apparently I found out later that he’d phoned school, but I was taking a fairly liberal approach to my education by that point. There wasn’t much that I wanted to learn there that they could teach me. By the third day, however, when I returned home, he was frantic, absolutely out of his mind.

“I knew I was in trouble the moment I set eyes on him. He didn’t beat me
often
—
don’t get the wrong impression
—
but from time to time... I guess he just couldn’t help himself. I sometimes wonder if he ever hit mom, but she died long before he started drinking heavily.

“I tried to get away, but... but...” She paused. “He must have known what I’d do. Heck, I’d learned most of what I knew from him. He grabbed my hair and dragged me into the bedroom. Fuck it. He’d been prepared. He had some cord
—
you know, like that nylon stuff they use to tie up boats with? Really strong stuff. I was screaming and yelling at him, but he was just staring intently at me while he bound it over and over around the end of the bed, tying my wrists ever tighter. I couldn’t move, and I was kicking out at him, calling him every name under the sun. God! I fucking hated him then
—
hated him more than anyone I’d ever hated in my life.

“Then... then he told me to shut up. I’d never seen him like that before. It was... it was like he was in absolute control of himself. This was pretty unusual for him by this point. He was, to be honest, well on his way to becoming a fucked up mess. But for a little while he knew entirely what he wanted to do.

“I was scared. Absolutely terrified. He pulled down my jeans. I started screaming again, but he slapped me across the face
—
hard. Damn! I can still feel that blow now, even though it was over a decade ago. He pulled down my jeans and my knickers, so my backside was exposed as I was bent over the bed. Then... then he drew his belt out of his trousers, and curled it up in his hands.

“I was looking behind me, shaking in complete fear. I can still remember the shiny, dark brown surface of the leather as it looped and folded, the tiny stitches around the eyelets, the tarnished metal hoop at the end.

“He didn’t hold back when he hit me. He was fucking brutal. I mean, really brutal. I’ve never been hit that hard before or since. I’m not sure how many lashes he gave me with that belt of his, but it hurt me more than anything I’d ever experienced. The bruises took nearly a month to disappear and for a couple of days it was painful to even sit down. He was crying by the end, and when he finished he left me in that room for the rest of the night, still tied up to the bed. I could hear him from time to time, drinking downstairs, and I wondered what the hell he would do. I was genuinely terrified for his sanity at one point, but he didn’t return to my room until the next day when he came to untie me, apologising profusely for the violence of his actions.”

She stopped talking for a while. Daniel said nothing, but she could feel him listening, as though with his whole body, thoroughly attentive to her.

“The worst thing... the worst thing wasn’t the pain, or the humiliation, though both were pretty bad. No, that’s not why I keep closing down whenever I think of that day. It was... it was the fact that within seconds of seeing that belt in his hands, before he’d even touched me, I knew exactly what he was going to do and... and I became so wet down there. I thought I’d experienced my first orgasm with the nice, older guy who would take me out in my car and fuck me in the back seat after we’d been to the movies, or perhaps it was when I used to play with myself in the fields beyond our house. But those orgasms were nothing to what I felt that day when
dad
beat me with his belt, when he tied me up and punished me for being a bad girl.”

She stopped speaking and pressed her face deeper into Daniel’s back. Still he said nothing, but it didn’t matter
—
was even better that way. She could feel from his silence that he understood. This, perhaps, was what he had been waiting for. It was certainly, she realised at last, what she had wanted for such a very long time.

“How were things between you after that?” Daniel asked at last. Still his back was turned to her, but it was as though he was concentrating on her aura.

“Superficially, things improved. I focused a little more on school work, but I wanted to get out of that house as quickly as possible. I couldn’t bear to look at him. He thought it was because of his aggression, but I knew that it was... something else. He was pleased as hell when I got into Saint
Martin
s
, but we really didn’t speak, and when I finished college I never really returned his calls or sent him messages or anything. And then it was too late.”

Daniel remained turned away from Kris, and she let her hands fall down his waist to the front of his jeans. Squeezing his crotch, she felt the lump of his erection stirring there, but her fingers did not remain in the one place. Rather, she lifted them slightly to the buckle of his belt, starting to undo it. She could feel his breathing becoming faster, and her own heart was beating more rapidly. There was a sound of rushing blood in her ears, and she was oblivious now to everything else around her.