Wild Licks (19 page)

I'd seen a number of couples who would spank or flog until the bottom burst into tears, or even past that point, and they always seemed blissfully, euphorically happy afterward. Chita had told me it was like having a really good cry at a romantic or sad movie but that she could only get there with a partner she really trusted emotionally.

I wasn't sure if it was Mal's intent to make me cry, but by the time I started feeling the urge to, with tears pricking the corners of my eyes, I knew if I didn't, I was going to feel unfulfilled.

But Mal was always so good at fulfilling me, wasn't he? Just when I feared he was going to stop, the blows came raining down so quickly I could barely catch my breath. He must have been twirling the floggers the way I had seen, but now I couldn't look; I could only stand there and feel every nerve in my body going into overdrive.

Each swipe of the flogger seemed to wear away a little more of my natural resistance to crying, to letting it all out, to letting go. And when the last bit of reserve was washed away under the lashing torrent of leather, I cried as loud and as hard as I could ever remember. As hard as I'd ever cried for my mother or when my father had disappointed me or when I'd fallen on the playground and no one had come rushing to pick me up.

Everything comes pouring out at a moment like that, everything, and any emotions you haven't been facing are suddenly staring you in the face, raw and undeniable.
Mal!
I was crying too hard to actually say his name but my heart was saying it. I wanted him, I needed him, and I was terrified of losing him. Terror. Terrified that I'd already lost him. That it was too late, too late…

And then strong hands were holding me up while my wrists came loose, and I felt him pick me up and carry me. I clung to his neck, my eyes closed as the feeling of being carried gave me a moment of vertigo, or maybe that was the intoxication of breathing in his scent. He was real and he was here and I pressed my wet eyes against his chest as relief swept through me. I gulped as if I could breathe Mal like air, soaking him in, and every breath now seemed to stoke the flames all along my skin and deep in my center. I'd never felt such a heady mix of arousal and emotions before and him carrying me only made the feeling that I was floating all the more intense.

He'd worked up a glorious sweat while beating me and I licked his chest.

He growled and threw me down onto a bed, or tried to. I held on to his tank top and pulled him with me and a moment later his mouth was at my neck, licking and suckling while his body covered mine. I wrapped my legs around his hips then and wished there were a magic spell that could make our clothes disappear.

“You,” he said, when he had to pause to breathe. The word came out harsh, like an accusation.

I didn't care. Guilty as charged. I pushed at his jeans, trying to get them off, open, anything.

He shoved them down until his cock was free and then quite suddenly the bulk of his erection was crushing my clit as he sank his teeth into the join of my neck and shoulder again.

“Oh please, oh please,” I urged him, writhing to try to get the right position.

The thick head of him suddenly caught the proper angle to penetrate, and penetrate he did, all the way in, prompting a scream of ecstasy to tear free of me. Yes, yes, yes! That primal need to be completed, to be filled, roared. Did he feel it, too?

“So much for a beating exorcising your wantonness,” he hissed in my ear as his hips shimmied.

“Not when it's you doing the beating,” I answered.

“You're wetter than I've ever felt you.” His hand worked alongside his cock and a thumb brushed my swollen, slippery clit. I realized that his hip shimmying had been him pushing his jeans farther down his legs without disengaging from me.

“It's because of how much I need you,” I said, gripping a fistful of his tank top. How could I explain it?

“Need. Greed,” he said, and began to fuck me hard, mercilessly, exactly the way I liked it.

Needed it. Needed it so much he made me come twice without even having to work that hard. Needed it so much it wasn't until after he came with an anguished cry that I even gave a thought about safe sex.

He pulled out hurriedly and looked at me with a look of pure panic and self-loathing in his eyes.

“It's okay—” I started to say.

But he backed completely off the bed, hands shaking, unaware of his own hair in his mouth, eyes wild.

“Mal, it's okay,” I said, sitting up slowly. I saw we were in one of the small playrooms. “I'm on birth control.” When that didn't seem to sink in, I tried, “Mal? It's
Gwen
.”

He drew a rough breath and blinked, seeming to come back to himself a little, pulling his underwear and jeans up. He smoothed his sweaty hair back from his face. “That was…”

“
Wonderful.”

“Completely…inappropriate. Out of control.”

“I think it fell well within our negotiated limits, actually,” I said, crossing my legs. “Though we should've had the condom discussion first, I think we could both work on talking about our limits in the future.”

“Future?” he spat, zipping up his fly and clearly getting ready to run off. “Gwen, this is exactly why I said we couldn't do this anymore.”

“Mal, for Pete's sake, why are you so freaked out? I'm not hurt, am I?” She made a show of checking that she wasn't bleeding anywhere. “The only thing that'll hurt me is if you walk out that door without a proper explanation.”

The minx somehow knew exactly what to say to take the wind from my sails. Nothing ruins a dramatic exit like someone telling you they're expecting it. I looked around the room where a few hours before her sister had lectured us primly on safety and rules.

What a sham. No matter how many precautions we could take, there was nothing that could keep me from being consumed by the Need. I didn't belong in this neatly ordered world of checklists and negotiations. I was a wolf among the sheep.

Well, but she expected me to play along with the sham, to keep up appearances. Disappointment burned bitter in the back of my throat. Appearances. I'd had about all I could stand of keeping up appearances, but I supposed I could pretend for a short while longer, at least until I could make a more graceful exit.

“Fine. If you would like the explanation to be ‘proper,' then let us wash and make ourselves presentable again.” I let her precede me to the bathroom with the shower stall large enough for four to use at once.

She seemed to respect my silence as we went through the motions of showering. She soaped my back and I hers, and my heart ached to see the graceful curve of her neck as she tipped her head back into the spray. I had left marks where they could be seen. How was an actress going to explain those bruises to a casting director, to the makeup artist who would have to try to hide them before sending her onto the red carpet for a thousand photographs?

I wanted to claim every inch of the lithe beauty before me for my own. But I knew perfectly well that could never be more than a fantasy for so many reasons. The Need does not recognize petty human concerns like career or emotional safety. There was only one way to keep her safe and that was for me to absent myself from her life.

Her affection, in the face of our inevitable separation, was painful. She toweled my skin dry with sweet care and allowed me to do the same to her, pressing a wistful kiss to the back of her shoulder, her neck, so near to where my teeth marks doomed me.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, wanting to apologize for the marks but only those two words made it past my lips.

“Mal, hush,” she said, and handed me a plush bathrobe to put on. “Let's go for a walk and we can talk when we're away from the hubbub.”

The sounds of spanking, laughing, orgasmic cries, and other play-party sounds echoed down the hallway. “All right.”

She belted herself into a robe as well and took me by the hand, leading me upstairs, down a hall, and through a large parlor to the patio.

The swimming pool lights glowed softly through the placid water. The air was crisp but not cold, and some kind of frog or insect called from the trees in the shadows beyond the patio's edge. We walked together by silent agreement along the edge of the pool.

We made our way into a back garden, but the path was poorly lit and she turned us back toward the pool. “So where'd you learn to use twin floggers like that?”

“Took a class,” I said. “A few years ago.” Before the smug complacency of the kink scene had begun to grate on me and before it had been a liability to fame.

“I've kind of wanted to check out some of the classes I see offered on the Internet,” she said, “but I worry about keeping everything a secret.”

“You think it's easier for other people?” I mused. “The stakes are perhaps different but no less high. Any teacher or doctor could find their job in jeopardy if they're associated with kink. Or any job if one's boss is a prude, for that matter. Divorced parents have to worry that if their ex finds out they went to a kinky party or a BDSM class that they could lose visitation rights to their own children.”

She shook her head. “That's so wrong.”

What's truly wrong is that they're right when it comes to me,
I thought. Most kinky folk were harmless. Gwen and her sister and their safe little secret dungeon were proof of that.

Gwen pulled me down to sit next to her on the diving board. “Mal. Talk to me.”

I forced myself to look at her face. “I don't have anything new to say, Gwen. We shouldn't continue. I shouldn't come to these parties. I shouldn't be tempted to hurt you. Because I will. I don't know what's worse, that you don't realize how seriously out of control I was tonight or that you do realize and you want me anyway.”

She tried to take my hand but I pulled it away. I ended up jamming it into my robe pocket and she burrowed her hand in beside it.

Her fingers felt chilly. I sighed and put my arm around her, pulling her close, keeping her warm. It seemed the polite thing to do given that the only reason we were in exile from the festivities was because of me.

“Mal,” she said. “You make it out like you're some kind of monster.”

“Yes.”

“No. You know who the real monsters are? The users, the abusers, the jerks who would never even consider whether they're a problem or not. That's obviously not you.”

I said nothing.

After a while she went on. “My first lover, the first guy I met when I was out of the house and on my own, was a sleazebag. I didn't know that at first. All I knew was I had met a kinky guy who made me feel like no one else had. Who didn't think my fantasies were unhealthy or sick, who, if I told him I had a fantasy about being locked in a cage naked for the weekend, instead of laughing and telling me I was a weirdo, would look up the price of dog crates on the Internet.”

I nodded to keep her talking.

“And he talked the talk: consent, boundaries, negotiation. It was all so thrilling and new to me that I didn't realize he was actually terrible at those things—the mere idea of bringing them up was enough to convince me to trust him.” She nestled closer to me and I breathed in the scent of her damp hair, mixing with the hint of creosote from the breeze coming down the hills and the chlorine tang of the pool water. “What I didn't know was that he took me being submissive as equivalent to me being a doormat. He gave me an STD, and when I went to confront him about it, I found him in the middle of a threesome with two women I didn't even know. And when I tried to confront him about
that
, he tried to order me to get in bed and lick pussy until I ‘learned my place.'”

I tightened my arm around her, disgusted by this man and wishing I could time travel back to kick down his door. “I take it you refused his order.”

“Damn right I did. I learned right then and there that he was the worst kind of fuckhead, and it was super obvious he was preying on my fantasies, on my willingness. I was just a piece of tail he used. And it took me a while to untangle that from the fact that I
liked
the feeling of being used sexually. But that's the key, right? I did figure out there was a difference between actually being used, or abused, and creating a consensual situation where that feeling could be experienced without it being the actual thing. Just like people who like to role-play and scream
no no no!
don't actually want to get raped by a stranger in a dark alley.”

I kissed her hair. “An important distinction, if you don't actually wish to be hurt.”

“Plus you promised not to injure me.”

“And I broke that promise.”

“It was an accident.”

“Not tonight it wasn't!” I held her at arm's length. “Did you see the marks I left on your neck?” The ones I wanted to leave so much that I had done so against all rational judgment.

“Mal—”

“Hear me out, Gwen. You think you can tell the difference between good and evil, that your sleazebag first lover was evil and that I am somehow good? You're wrong. You say you become the best version of yourself when you are in scene? I don't. The absolute worst in me comes out and I can't stop it.”

She was shocked into silence. “Right now you can convince yourself that you don't mind the bruises; you can forgive the careless accident. But when the infatuation starts to fade, you'll realize I'm right. At some point I won't be able to stop myself from going over the line, and then you won't have forgiveness for me anymore. It'll be the same as it was with your first lover. You'll be left with nothing but contempt, self-loathing, and perhaps a permanently damaged capacity for love.”

Her eyes glistened with tears, but her voice was clear. “Speaking of self-loathing…Mal, why are you so convinced you're going to go over the line?
What line?
”

“Try to look at this from your sister's point of view. Do you think she'd approve of the many lines we've transgressed? The unprotected intercourse? The fire accident? Pretending not to know each other? The fact that you won't be able to show your neck in public for a week, maybe two?”

She withered a little under this line of inquiry. “Ricki doesn't need to know everything.”

“You've kept secrets from her because you know perfectly well, deep down, that you were foolish and that what we did was
wrong
.” I stood. “You said it: two wrongs don't make a right. It's only a matter of time before I wrong you even more severely than I have.”

She hugged herself and I felt ill for hurting her emotionally, but better a small hurt now than utter devastation later. “Mal, it doesn't have to be that way.”

“I like you, Gwen. You're intelligent, clever, funny, insightful, kind, and good-hearted. You're so beautiful that sometimes it's painful to look at you. But my desire for you rages like a fire that can't be contained. I…” I reached down and took her hand. “I love you too much to destroy you. I'm not as noble as you make me out to be.”

“Do you hear yourself?” she said.

I pulled my hand free. “You like when I play the part of the villain for you: the Linder Mage, the Dragon, the Beast. There's a reason these characters always die in the end, Gwen. Because they're the villains. Don't you see it? The reason I identify with them all? I'm a villain, too. Maybe for a while it would work out, but ultimately there will come a day when it'll be too much for you. When I'll demand too much, go too far.” Now I was repeating myself and it was time to stop. “I should go.”

Gwen stood up, too. “Tell me about who hurt you,” she said softly, reaching for my face. “Or who you hurt.”

I shied back. She had struck far too close to the truth. Having so recently admitted it to Chino, I might have found it easier to talk about Risa, but no, it was as raw and sore a subject as ever. “No.”

“Is talking about your past a hard limit?”

“Don't joke about that.”

“It's not a joke.”

“Then, yes. It is.” I knew I was being unfair, but monsters do not have to be fair. And it worked. She let me go that time and did not follow when I went back into the house. I found the butler, who retrieved my car and who was too impeccably trained to say anything about the fact that I drove away barefoot in a bathrobe.

Well, that didn't go as planned,
I thought as I watched him storm away. And when Mal stormed, it was like a dark cloud with lightning bolts shooting out of it followed him.

The thing that struck me most about what he had said was the bit about how keeping things secret from Ricki proved it was wrong. The moment he said it, I had bought into it, like,
Oh shit, he's right
, but after the party, when I was in the kitchen trying to figure out if we had almond milk, things didn't seem anywhere near as dramatic.

That was the thing, I guess. When Mal was around, everything seemed super dramatic. Passionate. Intense. But that meant nothing really made logical sense either. It was like seeing a really good movie and then on the drive home realizing there was a hole in the plot or a gap in the continuity.

Why
was
I hiding everything from Ricki, anyway? I'd told Madison the whole story, after all, and she was just a close friend. But I knew Maddie wouldn't judge. I didn't want anyone to judge me, to criticize my choices or my mistakes, especially not my sister.

Was
I ashamed to have done some down-and-dirty things?

I know I was supposed to be. I had even embarrassed myself a few times thinking about that beer bottle, but the feeling had faded. I didn't really feel any shame about it anymore.

And shame didn't mean something was wrong or evil. How could Mal make that mistake? Obviously. Churches, politicians, homophobes, and so many others were always trying to make us feel ashamed of any sex, of any pleasure, and
that
was clearly not valid.

I was too tired to make hot chocolate and just put a mug of vanilla almond milk into the microwave. While it went around and around, I thought it through. People needed sex, love, and pleasure. Some of us got that pleasure through means that seemed unusual to others, but we couldn't let their judgment control us. That was pretty obvious.

So how did Mal end up thinking if a person was afraid of being judged that meant they were doing wrong? I
felt
that fear, that under it all we were sick or twisted, broken inside. There were books and movies that made it seem that way, like people only needed kink if they were unhappy.

But Mal
is
unhappy.
I carried my hot mug to the kitchen table. Mal was unhappy because he was making himself unhappy.
Does Mal really believe that under it all he's, like, a serial killer or something?

How could he not see that in the same breath he was claiming he wasn't as noble as I thought he was, that he was leaving for
my own good
?
Does it get more noble-hearted and self-sacrificing than that?