Masquerade (6 page)

‘Of course not. You’ll be harnessed to me.’

‘OK.’

I
call Lana from the taxi.

‘How was it last night?

‘Absolutely fantastic.’

She laughs. ‘Good. Shall we have lunch?’

‘Royal China?’

‘One o’clock.’

‘You’re bringing Sorab, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. See ya later.’

By the time Lana arrives with my godson—he’s cuter than a six-week-old puppy—I am already on my second glass of orange juice and vodka.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she apologizes. ‘You look amazing, by the way.’

But I don’t really listen. Lana is always late. I take Sorab in my arms and he smacks me one straight on the mouth. I giggle because he is actually a very serious baby. I guess he’s like his father. Hard to get him to crack a smile for the most part. He has shiny bright eyes that watch you carefully. Sometimes he looks at me as if he is about to tell me off for smoking too much or drinking in the morning or eating stale pizza.

We settle him into his high chair with a coloring book and a couple of sticks of crayons and order our food. As soon as the waitress goes away with the menus Lana fixes me with her beautiful eyes. Did I ever tell you, my best friend is to die for gorgeous? When I was younger I fancied her something rotten. I might even have been a little in love with her. OK, OK, I was a lot in love with her. Me and a few other guys I know. I never told her, though. I thought it might make things awkward. Maybe one day I’ll tell her and we’ll laugh about it.

‘So,’ she says, leaning forward eagerly, her eyes inquisitive but warm, the way your best friend’s eyes should be. ‘Tell me about Mr. Pecs, Abs and Bulging Biceps, then.’

‘Still throwing me against walls and ramming his cock into me.’

For a moment she looks surprised then she throws her head back and laughs. ‘Oh, Billie. You are priceless.’

‘No, really,’ I say with a straight face. ‘That is what he does. Fuck hard. All the time.’

Lana glances at her son. ‘I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do if Sorab’s first word is made up of four letters.’

I look at Sorab. He is scribbling furiously in his coloring book.

‘I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want him to learn such a versatile and useful word. It is the only word in the English language that serves as an adjective, a verb and a noun. Besides, I think it is really cute when babies swear.’

She looks unimpressed.

‘You’ll be telling me next you don’t want Sorab to play with fire.’

She laughs and so do I. The sound comes easy. Life is wonderful. I think about Jaron. I want to remain cynical and detached, possibly even emotionally articulate, but I can’t. It’s like having a gift-wrapped Ferrari delivered to your door, and having someone say, ‘Act cool.’

‘So you’re really into this guy, then?’ 

‘Well, I’m still stuck on sixty-eight, but other than that all is just swell.’

‘Sixty-eight?’

‘He’s gone down on me, but I still owe him one.’

Lana gasps at my directness and I wink at her.

Suddenly she smiles warmly. I’m not in love with her anymore but I do so love her. ‘I’m so glad for you, Billie,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so happy.’

‘Don’t go making any wedding plans yet,’ I say dryly. ‘The sex is out of this world fantastic and everything, but there’s something not quite right about it all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He wears masks for different occasions. Sometimes I think I’ve seen the real him, but I’m not sure. The other night I was staring at him, looking into his moss green eyes, and suddenly I had this crazy thought. I wished I was a wolf. You know how they have enhanced senses. So every time he’s anxious and sweating or lying I would hear his heartbeat change. How fucking crazy is that?’

‘Are you in love with him, Bill?’

‘No,’ I say immediately. ‘Of course not. He’s a liar.’

‘You said he has moss green eyes. When was the last time you looked that deeply into anybody’s eyes?’

‘I’m having sex with the guy. Obviously I’m going to look into his eyes.’

‘Oh yeah? What was the color of your ex’s eyes?’

‘Blue.’

‘Not sea blue, or light blue, or flame blue?’

I frown. ‘Her eyes weren’t her best feature.’

‘I rest my case.’

‘It’s not love, OK? I’ll admit that we do have some kind of strange connection. And while it is also true that I’ve never had it with anyone else, the relationship is not straightforward by any means.’

Lana immediately looks worried. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, he deliberately shrouds himself in mystery. He has defenses, strong defenses. He is like a castle with a moat around him. Every time I try to cross that moat he disarms me first with one of his wicked smiles and then we are thrashing around the room in the wildest sexual behavior imaginable and I have forgotten what I wanted to know until he is gone.’

I stop and take a large gulp of my drink. I feel hot and bothered. I wonder if they have turned up the heat in the place. Lana leans forward and takes my hand. She has a small, narrow hand with delicate fingers, the nails painted white. The difference between her hand and Jaron’s is the difference between an elephant and a blueberry muffin: incalculable. It’s strange how much I suddenly miss Jaron’s large, powerful hand. I look up at her. She is frowning and full of protective instinct. God, I love this girl.

‘Shall I ask Blake to check him out?’ she offers.

For a second I am tempted. After all, he checked me out. He knew where I lived and that I have jam for breakfast. Who knows what else he knows? But the second passes. I don’t want to check him out. I don’t want to snoop around. I kinda respect him. I want him to have his privacy. Besides, if I find out something awful and I suspect I might do, I’d have to do something about it, and I’m not ready to do that yet. Let it just be liberated me having fun for a bit.

‘No, I don’t want him checked out,’ I say.

‘OK. But if ever you change your mind, just let me know. The things Blake can find out will blow your mind.’

‘I don’t want to find out things about him. I want to know what he thinks, but I don’t want someone else to tell me. I want him to tell me.’

She smiles one of her Zen smiles. ‘And he will.’

‘What makes you say that?’

She pauses and bites her finger while she mulls something over in her head. She looks up as if she has made up her mind. ‘I trust him. Yes, I would trust him if I were you.’

‘Why?’

‘I only met him once but I got good vibes from him. I liked him. In fact, let’s all go out next week. I’d like to know him better.’

‘OK.’

‘We’ll go to Annabel’s. I’ll watch him carefully.’

The thought of Lana watching Jaron closely makes me laugh.

‘We are free on Wednesday and Thursday night. Ask him to choose a night.’

‘Fine, I’ll ask him tomorrow.’ 

‘Why? Where is he now?’

‘Monte Carlo.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know.’ I sound rational and objective, but only I know that it is a total lie. I’d kill Bambi to know.

Our dumplings arrive and that thread of conversation is lost in the commotion of feeding Sorab, and tucking into lumps of unrecognizable meats stuffed into pretty shapes.

By the time we part it is nearly four o’clock. I take Sorab home with me. I feed him, mess about with him, then chuck him in the bath, and let him fall asleep in my lap. By eight thirty he is sound asleep in his cot and I sit and work until his parents come to pick him up at nearly midnight. Lana looks flushed. I know that look. I grin knowingly at her and she is such a little innocent she turns an even darker shade of red. I watch Blake pick up his sleeping son and for the first time in my life wonder if I will ever have children or a husband.

After they are gone, I feel strangely restless. I wonder what Jaron is doing and why he has not called. And always at the back of mind is the nagging question—why didn’t he take me, has he taken Ebony?

I pull out my pack of cigarettes and go out onto the balcony. I like it out here. The view at night is always pretty. Sliding a cigarette between my lips I light it. I inhale deeply and let the warm, sharp smoke fill my lungs before I exchange it for cool night air. Peace should have surrounded me. But it is not peace. Every day with him another piece of me exposes itself. I am a jigsaw that even I do not know. I suddenly feel cold. I smooth my T. It’s just sex, I tell myself. The more I fuck him the less I will want him. One day soon it will get old. I gaze at the dark sky and contemplate where he might be. What he could be doing. Who he could be fucking.

Fuck him, I think venomously. If he wants to fuck around let him. I don’t give a shit anyway. We’re not exclusive. I’m just having fun. And he is fun. For no apparent reason an image of Ebony’s two-inch talons curled around Jaron’s massive dick flashes into my mind and I actually feel physically sick. I stand from the couch. She must shred her vagina to ribbons every time she uses a tampon, I think bitchily. But the awful feeling of jealousy doesn’t pass.

I switch the TV on, take down the bottle of vodka and start drinking alone, and after a while I feel nicely warm and fuzzy. I switch off the TV. It was doing my head in anyway. Immediately my mind reverts to Jaron.

‘I don’t want…’ I start saying aloud and then I catch myself on the verge of a confused, drunken confession to thin air.

‘Better go to bed,’ I mutter and stagger toward the bedroom. The balcony door is open but I am too lazy to stumble over there and mess about with the sliding lock. It’s a safe area. There are never any robberies around here. None that I know of, anyway.

I brush my teeth and catch my own reflection. I look pale. ‘Who’s with you tonight?’ Fucking cheating snake. I stumble into the bedroom and fall into bed feeling furious and impotent. I really should have closed the balcony door. My last thought is… Bastard.

I
'm pulled abruptly from a deep, alcohol-fueled sleep. My body feels like lead, I can barely open my eyes, but the fear is immediate. Something is wrong. Like an animal I smell the danger. I didn’t close the balcony door.

Someone is on my bed!

My eyes jerk open. It is too dark to see. I'm being turned over as though I'm weightless. I open my mouth to scream and something soft is stuffed into my mouth. My body goes into shock and I freeze. During those precious moments of inaction the man straddles my body on my thighs and pins my arms down and over my head.

I start struggling.

But he already has the upper hand and he does nothing, only stays motionless and watches my useless struggles. My brain suddenly understands. He is just trying to tire me. I immediately cease struggling. My whole body is trembling violently with fear. I try to speak around the gag, but only strange guttural sounds escape.

‘Shut the fuck up…’ he says, and pulls both my hands together and, trapping them with just one hand, takes his other hand into my nightgown. He touches me between my legs. I shudder with fear and horror.

Roughly, he tears away the scrap of material between him and me and I start screaming my lungs out, but the sounds that come out will not carry. They are muffled and grunt-like.

I try to pull my thighs together, but it is impossible because he is sitting on them. Enjoying my total helplessness, he lifts himself momentarily to part my legs farther and I take that opportunity. With a burst of sudden strength I roll to the other side of the bed and spring out.

My only thought is escape.

I run toward the door. I know I won’t make it to the front door and then try to mess around with the locks. If I can just get to the kitchen I can grab a knife. He bolts after me. I can hear him.

I am at the dining table when he captures my upper arms and whirls me around to face him. He presses my body against him and catches my wrists and holds my hands high above my head. I’m not a black belt in judo or anything but I do know exactly how to disengage a man. I bring my knees upward but he pushes his hips back so I miss him, lose balance and stagger. He twirls me around.

He has the advantage of brute strength, but it is so dark in the dining room with all the curtains pulled shut that it is very hard to make anything out. That is my advantage. I know my house far better than he.

I lunge suddenly for the large, antique bronze clock that Lana bought for me and heave it toward me. The weight of it makes me collapse in a heap, the clock hitting the floor with an almighty crash. The thunder of its crash is obscene in the terrible silence of our struggle.

The silhouette falls on top of me and curls his hands around my throat and starts choking. A whisper, chillingly close, says, ‘Do not move.’

On my hands and knees, I freeze. He stops choking me. The ticking of the clock becomes so loud, I need to distract him. I let out the breath I am holding.

The clock is still gripped hard in my hands. I know I don’t have the strength to swing the clock but if I turn around suddenly I can smash my heel into his jaw. I feel a surge of adrenalin.

‘You should not have run. You should have accepted your fate…in your bed.’

I turn my head slowly in the direction of his voice. He is masked. A frighteningly white mask. It gleams in the gloom. I cannot breathe for the gag. He does not want money. I have only one thought in my head.
I must find some way…

The man tilts his head. ‘I have a knife.’

I make a small begging sound.

He fists my hair and lifts my face off the floor. ‘You are going to be raped.’

In an instant I grasp the true horror of my situation. I am totally helpless.

‘No!’ I scream, summoning all my strength. He pins me down with his body. Then every sound becomes amplified a thousand times in my head. A trouser zip being undone. The white mask falls close to my face. Before I can look up a blindfold is put over my eyes and tied behind my head. He doesn't want me to see his face, to call out, spoil his fun. Never before have I been blindfolded and gagged in the dark. I thrash out with my hands and he bites my shoulder. The pain makes me cry out but it also forces me to submit to his greater force. I am his captive. The more I struggle the more I am going to be hurt.

He presses his hand down on my back just below my shoulder and pulls my T-shirt nightie from under me. He tears it in two and exposes my buttocks and my back. I close my eyes when I feel his hard shaft released and pressing on the small of my back. I can smell him now. A man’s smell. Raw. A mixture of sweat and leather. The gag in my mouth is wet with my saliva.

Quickly he clasps his strong forearms around my waist and hoists my ass in the air, before parting my legs forcefully. Wasting no time, a massive cock is being forced inside me with such violence that I feel it tear me as it just keeps feeding into me, mercilessly stretching and going deeper and deeper, reaching right into my womb. I grunt when it finally can go no farther. There is a button or zipper caught between me and his body that scratches my thigh every time he moves. I block it out.

Then the pummeling begins.

He rides me relentlessly with brute force. I feel his sweat dripping onto my naked skin. He reminds me of an express train that is out of control. I am driven into so hard and fast that I cannot stop myself from being aroused in spite of myself. From wanting it. From moaning. From climaxing.

Over and over. 

His huge cock, throbbing, pulsating inside me suddenly shoots a hot stream up deep into my sex and his bulk collapses on top of me. We are both panting hard. My body is trembling, my sex still quivering with the pounding it has just received. He rolls off me easily and lies beside me, facing the ceiling.

‘Is that what you wanted?’ he asks.

I turn over so I too am facing the ceiling. ‘You ought to be careful. I was going to stab you with a kitchen knife.’

He chuckles. ‘Is that how you reward someone who brings your most secret fantasy to life?’

I turn to my side and kiss him on the lips. ‘Thank you. That is one hell of a fuck. I will never forget that one. I loved being raped by you.’

‘When did you know it was me?’

‘One second after I woke up, but it was fun to pretend.’

‘I brought something for you,’ he says softly.

‘Is it small and expensive?’ I joke, to cover my surprise and elation that he has thought of me while he was away and bought me something.

‘Yeah,’ he says and switches on a table lamp. I blink in the sudden glare. With a smug look he straps a bracelet on my wrist.

I lift my wrist and look at it. Even in the dim light of the lampshade it shimmers like blue fire. ‘Jesus. Is it real?’ I gasp.

‘Of course.’

‘My God.’ I exclaim, and sitting up stare at my wrist in shock. ‘It’s…stunning.’ I turn to look at him.

He smiles indulgently. So this is what mistresses the world over feel. They get showered with pretty stones by men wearing indulgent expressions. It might bore me later but at this moment I can see the attraction of the job.

‘I want to say you shouldn’t have, but I can’t, because I fucking love it.’ I throw my arms around him and whoop with joy. Holding aloft my hand, I admire it. I pull away from his neck. ‘What kind of stones are these?’

‘Blue diamonds.’

‘Oh, Lana has a pink diamond that cost the earth itself, but I’ve never seen a blue diamond before.’ 

‘Now you have.’

‘Oh, darling. I could so fall in love with you, when you behave like this,’ I quip. It’s a joke, obviously, but it doesn’t come out right.