Master class, p.7
Master Class, page 7
I try one last time to keep us apart. “I’m seeing Charles tonight,” I say, holding his name out between us like a cross against a vampire, a ward that will protect me from him—and from what I want.
He brushes it aside easily. He rises to his feet, and I come with him, our bodies locking together like magnets, finally clicking into place.
Malcolm says, “Then it has to be now.”
Without speaking, we walk into my room, and he shuts the door behind me. Somehow in the process he’s transformed fully back into Master again, and his gaze is hot on my skin when he says, “Take off your clothes.”
I step out of my sleep shorts, unbuttoning my pajama top with trembling fingers. He’s seen me naked plenty of times before, but it feels different now—somehow, I’m painfully aware that we’re the only two people in the room. This isn’t educational. It isn’t for show. It’s just me and Malcolm and what we want. It’s almost like we mean something to each other, even though I know we don’t.
He strokes himself over his pants as he watches, his gaze calculated and considering. The sight of his hardness obliterates any objections I might have had. I need to feel him inside of me one more time.
“Get on the bed,” he says. “Hands and knees.”
I crawl onto the bed, head down, and wait. He sits down behind me, stroking a hand down the line of my spine, between my cheeks, down to the seam of my cunt.
“Malcolm,” I say, but then I don’t say anything else, because there’s nothing left to say.
“You’re wet,” he says. “God, you need it so badly.”
“I do.”
He smacks my ass once and then twice, hard, one for each cheek. I hear him open his pants.
“Get my cock wet for me,” he says, moving to the side of the bed so my face is confronted with his massive cock. “It’s going to need to be as slick as your pussy if it’s going to fit in that tight little asshole.”
He doesn’t have to ask me twice; I crawl to the edge of the bed and open my mouth. He takes me by the back of the head and impales my face on his cock, pushing hard and deep so I swallow him in a few strokes. He tastes even better than I remember, like salt and skin and sex, and his hands tangle in my hair so tightly that my scalp burns. The weight of him on my tongue and down my throat is so invasive I can barely breathe, and my eyes water as I bob up and down on his length.
“Good girl,” he mutters. “Fucking swallow it, just like that.” Then he frees one of his hands so that he can play with my ass while I suck him. The angle isn’t quite right, and he can’t get deep enough to really stretch me; instead, he just touches me enough to make me feel insane, like I want to open up but can’t figure out how. I’m in heaven, and I lose track of what I’m supposed to be waiting for, so it’s a shock when he pulls my head up and off of him.
“Don’t get greedy,” he commands.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’d better be.”
He stands and unbuttons his shirt, revealing the firm planes of his torso and chest. He’s thick everywhere, corded with muscle, his skin smooth and tan except for the rough line of hair below his navel. When he’s slipped his shirt off his shoulders, he takes his pants off, too, and the sight of him is almost too much for me to take: his enormous cock bobbing, red and wet, between his powerful thighs. He’s going to destroy me. I’m going to let him. I’ve never wanted anything more.
“I should take my time with you,” he says. “Take every one of your holes, make you come ten times at least before I put anything in your ass. Make you beg like you’ve never begged before. Even a whore should pay me something for the pleasure of this cock, don’t you think?”
“I’ll do anything,” I say, and I don’t let myself think about how true that is.
“On your back.”
He hovers over me, tracing a hand down my body, his skin scribing a burning path from my neck to my collarbones, between my breasts to my clit.
“I’m going to fuck your cunt a little bit before I open you up,” he says. “Because this is the first time, and I’m going to need you nice and relaxed when I take your ass. And you know what, Juliette? Just this once, you can come as many times as you want.” He tweaks my clit as he says it, and I cry out, convulsing as a wave of pleasure roars through my body.
Then he slides his cock into me, so thick and stunning that my eyes roll back in my head. He fucks me ruthlessly, sucking on my nipples, thumbing my clit, and I’ve barely finished coming once before a second orgasm sneaks up on me, dismantling me like a plywood shack in a hurricane.
I can’t keep track after that; I’m just rolling through my pleasure, giving myself to him. It’s like that night at Loki’s party with a vibrator tied between my legs, except the pleasure is magnified, because I know exactly who’s giving it to me. It’s Master, it’s Malcolm, with his stern hands and huge dick, his sharp green eyes watching as I come apart at his command.
The next thing I know he’s easing his cock out of my pussy while he pushes two fingers into my ass, both of them dripping with my slick.
“That’s enough,” he says, shifting down to kiss my tits, then my belly. “You can come again when I’m in your ass. Not until then. Not if you want this cock where you need it most. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
He doesn’t let up on me while he stretches my hole, though, and I’m strung out on sensation. He puts his mouth on my pussy, giving me long, hot licks, and his hands, hot and strong, on my breasts, on my hips, and always pressing deeper and deeper inside of me. After a while he stops touching me to pull away and watch his fingers sliding in and out of me, my body grasping, greedy for more.
“Fucking whore,” he spits. I watch helplessly as he lubes up a dick big enough to split me in two. “I’m gonna put my cock in you now. I’m gonna fuck you, and you’re going to come without me touching you, and you’re never going to forget that I was the first person who fucked your cunt and your ass. I own this orgasm. I own your asshole and your pussy and your mouth, because I. Own. You.”
“Yes,” I hear myself saying. “Yes, yes, yes, please,” as the head of his cock breaches me, so much bigger than his fingers, than the rods, than anything. I only realize I’ve stopped breathing when he tells me to start again, soothing my sweaty hair away from my face as he keeps pushing in and in and in.
“Perfect,” he growls. “Fuck, this is perfect, the way you take it like a whore. Just a little bit more.”
“I can’t,” I gasp, “I can’t, I—”
“You can,” he says. “You are.” And then he’s all the way inside of me, scorching, a brand on my body. He’s right: I’ll never forget this. I’ll never get over this.
His thrusts are shallow at first, a rhythmic pulsing that picks up in speed as my body gives around him. He sticks his thumb in my mouth and I suck on it gratefully, glad to have something to fill me up there. I know he told me I could come once he was fucking my ass, but I try to hold off as long as he does. I want to fall off the cliff with him; I want to take him with me when I tumble. To know we’re together in this, one last time.
This will never happen again, I tell myself. This is my last chance to feel this, to have this. I keep my eyes open and watch as Malcolm fucks me, our bodies moving in perfect concert. I watch the muscles in his shoulders work, his abs flex as he thrusts into me. I feel the stretch of his cock inside of me, claiming a place no one else has ever touched. My nails score down his back, and at last he leans against my neck and says, “Come for me, hummingbird.” So I do, shouting as he shoots inside of me, both of us senseless with pleasure, his body held tight by mine.
12
He slumps against my body afterwards, letting me take all of his weight, just for a moment. I feel the rhythm of his breath, just out of sync with mine: the flex of his rib cage, the movement of his belly. His lips press against my neck, not a kiss, just a touch.
Then he pulls back and pulls out of me, careful as he does it. He doesn’t say anything, just gets up and goes into the bathroom. This time, when he parts my legs, he’s particularly gentle, swiping at the sticky mess he made of me, cleaning me up. He’s intense as he does it, as focused as I’ve ever seen him, but somehow he still feels far away, like he’s taking this all in, but from a carefully-held distance.
I lie still and try to just feel as his fingers whisper across the tender insides of my thighs, my swollen pussy, noting where I’m red from his touch, probing, reminding himself of what he did to me.
The sleep that wouldn’t come last night feels possible, now, all of a sudden; my body is heavy and fuzzy and the world starts sliding gently out of focus when I close my eyes.
“I’m going to get you some water,” Malcolm says. “Don’t fall asleep on me.” But he has to coax me awake when he comes back. He holds the glass and has me drink from it like a baby bird, but he won’t look at me while he does it. Every touch feels intimately personal and yet strangely absent, and I don’t know what to make of it. It feels like a tug-of-war is going on between the Master I first met, a man who broadcasted disinterest and disdain, and the Malcolm I’ve gotten to know, who’s taken care of me like I really am a songbird, delicate between his palms.
I close my eyes again as I settle back onto the pillows, and when he reaches to straighten the blankets that have gotten twisted underneath me, I see something I’ve been missing for months now. It’s so simple, so clear. How did I miss it?
And yet, of course I did. Because I wanted it so much I couldn’t possibly let myself think it was real.
“Oh,” I say, my voice syrupy with half sleep. “You broke the rules.”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
He’s mistaken my meaning. He thinks I’m talking about Charles’s rule that he should be the first in my ass. He thinks I’m talking about how he breached his own code of trustworthiness.
Stupid, stupid man. There are more important rules than that.
If he can be obtuse, so can I. I muster the last of my consciousness and sit all the way up. “Do you really not want him to know?” Tell me, I think. Say it, so I don’t have to.
But he isn’t going to give in that easily. Of course he won’t. That’s now how Master or Malcolm plays the game. “Say what you mean, Juliette.”
It’s now or never. I gather my nerves. It’s ending either way, I remind myself. And I’m right about this I have to be.
“You broke the rules,” I say again, clearer this time. There’s no pretending I’m half awake now. I know, and I need him to know that I know this. That as hard as he’s tried to hide himself from me, I’ve seen him. I’ve seen right through his act. “Between us. You have feelings for me.”
He laughs like I’m being ridiculous, but still doesn’t meet my eyes. “You and your fucking romantic fantasies.”
My resolve wavers. A second ago, I was so sure of myself: sore from his cock, glimmering with the aftershocks of our mutual pleasure, it felt impossible that I didn’t know him as thoroughly as he knows me. But I’m stepping all the way out to the edge of a limb here, accusing him of something that would ruin his career—if—and I’m less and less sure every moment—if it’s true.
But it’s not just that. My heart is on the line here, and plenty of my pride, too. What if I try to insist, and he shrugs me off again? I can play this off as a sex-stupid thing to have brought up in the first place. But only if I let it go right now, and never, ever bring it up again.
Maybe it’s the force of my orgasm, or just how badly I want it to be true. Or maybe I just say it because, no matter how badly it will hurt to hear whatever he says next, I need some truth more than I need to cling to any delusions after he leaves.
“You can’t deny it,” I say, willing my voice to stay clear and steady. You’ve already told me.”
Now he does look at me, a fear in his gaze that I’ve never seen from him before. “I’ve never said anything that would lead you to think—”
“You have. Not verbally, exactly, but you told me in every other way you could.” As I’m saying it, I realize that this isn’t the first lie Malcolm has told Charles on my behalf. It might not even be the biggest. After those nights with Mistress Fiona, when I set my own lessons and let a strange man fuck me without anyone’s permission, Malcolm covered for me. He did it almost without thinking. Reflexively. Like it had been his instinct all along.
That alone could have broken his reputation and his business, long before he put his cock in my ass and claimed it for himself. He took a risk on my behalf, and I was too naïve to see it for what it was. It’s clear to me now.
You don’t take that kind of chance for someone who means nothing to you.
But I don’t bring it up when I start to list off the rest of the ways he’s shown me what he’s wanted all along.
“You showed me when you wiped my tears with your handkerchief when Antoine pierced my clit, and when you took me up to the overlook, a place you only ever go by yourself, to be alone,” I said, resisting the urge to count on my fingers like a kid. “I saw it on your face while you fucked Trina, but even with your cock in her ass, you were looking at me like you wanted to eat me alive. Even just agreeing to do this—risking your reputation, your business. That’s your life, Malcolm. You wagered everything you have so you could possess something my husband won’t. You do this for a living. You must have been tempted before. But with me…with me, you gave in.”
“I wanted to fuck you, Juliette. Nothing more.”
“But you’ve never wanted to fuck someone the way you wanted to fuck me.” I pause, giving him a chance to argue, but he doesn’t. “That means something.”
“You’re mistaken,” he scoffs.
“I don’t know what it is you’re afraid of—”
He stands up, starts to pull his pants on. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
But I know, now. I know. And I won’t let him lie to me—to both of us—anymore. “Why are you so scared of admitting it?” I ask. “It’s not Charles. You’re not scared of him. It’s not your business reputation. It’s something else. Something more personal.”
“You have a date,” he says. “With Charles. The Client. Your husband. You should be getting ready.” He finds his shirt on the floor, slides it back on. His hands tremble just slightly on the buttons. His hair is mussed from where I grabbed it, a flush still fading down his chest from how he fucked me until neither of us could stand it any longer. I can’t make him stay, but that’s fine. I was wrong before. This isn’t how anything ends. It’s only the beginning between us.
He walks to the door, and it’s only then that I speak.
“I’ll make you face it,” I say, watching his spine stiffen, his shoulders set. He doesn’t turn around, but he doesn’t keep walking, either. “You forget that I’ve gotten really good at being patient.”
Break
I know what I want now.
I know what I need, and I don’t know if I can live without it.
Or, rather, who I need like oxygen.
He needs me too.
I can prove it, I swear, if he’ll just give me the chance.
If I can hide what I’m doing from the man who’d forbid it.
I just pray I’m not wrong...
1
Every night, I watch dusk fall and I wait for him. For days, I wear my favorite dresses: sweet, girlish confections of silk and lace, with my favorite lingerie underneath them, all straps and rings, leather and chrome. Then I wear sheer cotton with nothing underneath it, the shadow of my body begging him to slide my skirts up my thighs and slip his cock into me before I have time to say a word. One time, I even strip down naked in the middle of the overlook, my body as bare and vulnerable as I feel. The breeze hardens my nipples, caresses the insides of my thighs. It reminds me with every breath of all the places he’s touched me, and how electric it feels every time.
And every night, his car climbs the mountain’s curves. He drives a Bugatti most days, with tinted windows and a sleek black exterior that shimmers with power and sex. The tires hug the road no matter how hard he throttles the engine, how his hands move on the gearshift and the wheel.
He slows down just slightly as he passes—long enough to see me, in lace or frills, leather or my own skin—but always wrapped up in desire—just to see that I’m still waiting for him.
Every day, my heart skips a beat when he slows down. Every day, I think today is the day he’s going to stop and unlock the door for me to get in. Every day I believe it’s going to be the day he drives me away.
But every day, he speeds up again and passes me by, leaving me with a view of his taillights in the twilight and the scents of burnt rubber and scorched hopes.
I can take it. I’m used to acrid stench and bitter rejection. I have been tutored in the arts of patience, and of desire. I am an excellent student of both. I will wait as long as I have to.
Tonight, the sky is vivid pink, the clouds gilt-edged. The air is crisp with fall chill, and I’m wearing something simple: a black wool minidress that nips me in at the waist before flaring out into a pleated skirt. My thigh-high stockings cost almost as much as the dress did, and the seams that run up the back make my legs look miles long. They’re hooked to garters, and the chrome of the rings is chilly against my skin.
I stand straight and tall in my black patent heels. The ends of my hair dance at the edges of my vision, soft blonde strands lifted by a light breeze. I feel like a soldier at her post, expecting nothing, but ready for anything.
I hear him before I see him: the growl of his motor, the hush of rubber on pavement. But then a sharper sound cuts the whoosh. My phone chiming in my pocket.
My fiancé’s name is on the screen. Charles. I press answer and hold the phone to my ear, listening as the sound of Malcolm’s car gets closer and closer.
