A Taste of Blood
When Andy tasted blood on her lip, she was frightened. She had let Jason tie her hands together behind her back and leash her, standing up, to a radiator pipe, reluctantly, but he had teased her so gently that she gave in. It was nice, at first, being freed of responsibility and feeling him caress her breasts and stroke her pussy. Her hands were tied. There was nothing she could do, and his kisses were sweet. She had heard the expression. It was a common thing to say. She always thought it was a metaphor. But now it wasn't. His kisses were sweet. His entire mouth when she responded to him was sweet, sweet with a moist sweetness like honey. Another cliché, but in his case, it was amazing, it was true.
Then she tasted the blood. It was her own blood. She could tell because every time she licked the drop that was on her lip, another drop formed. She looked into his eyes imploring him not to hurt her. She realized that she was trapped, dependent entirely on his mercy. The door in the entrance hall was locked. Her hands were tied. She was afraid to speak and could not even find her voice. She was aware that she was being submissive, and although she did not want to be, so she thought, she was being submissive. She had no choice now. She was stuck.
The windows in the room did not open. They were walls of industrial glass, the kind of glass they use to build towers, like this one that he lived in; glass that could resist gusts of wind and rain, the thuds of misguided birds, and the vacillations of high and low temperatures, even on the upper stories. This apartment was on the forty-fifth floor. Just standing by the window looking down as she had earlier that evening before they had agreed to this, before he brought it up, when they were doing the regular things that people do on dates like drinking champagne and taking a couple of pot hits, and listening to soft jazz, she felt the vertigo that such heights gave her.
He made it sound so exciting. He managed to get her wet just by talking to her, by whispering how much he wanted her to trust him, how much he wanted her to feel how gently he could caress her, how tender he could make her feel, how much he could see that she was the kind of girl who always wants to surrender, who is constantly in the grip of that need and is always looking and never finding someone whom she can trust, someone who can get her to surrender, who can let her surrender, who can make her surrender. But he would. He would let her surrender.
She could not say that she did not know what she was doing or that he had forced her, because she did know what she was doing, and he had not forced her. He opened the way for her, the way she wanted to take. He was right when he described her secret passion, her gnawing need. He was not taking anything from her. He was giving a gift. He was making an offering to her.
She tasted her blood. He stroked her cheek very gently. Her heart lightened. A grateful smile began to shine in her eyes and form on her lips despite their being bloodstained. The warmth of his smile matched hers, and completed her assurance. Her breath had loosened and as she felt herself relaxing she was startled by the slap across the cheek he had just caressed, a hard slap, not the playful simulation of a slap but a real slap that left a sting that lodged itself inside the skin.
She looked at him puzzled, sad, begging him for gentleness. He smiled at her tenderly, with understanding. All harshness in his features melted. She saw love's purity in his eyes and it confused her. He touched her lips with his and softly touched his tongue to where it was bleeding and licked the blood away. He kept his tongue on the cut, the way one presses a cut to stop the bleeding, and as their lips were together, he caressed her burning cheek with the soft cool flesh of his palm. She began to cry softly. He brushed his lips against her eyes and kissed her tears.
"I will always care for you and take care of you. You are soft and delicate and helpless. I will protect you," he said stroking her hair. She believed him. She cried more deeply and her breath became a crescendo of cascading sobs. He kissed her through her sobs and stroked her heaving breasts and held her snatch and massaged it with his fingertips. Her sobbing turned to moaning and her frantic breathing became fierce begging kisses. He pulled her nearer to him until their flesh seemed to meld. He loosened the bonds that tied her wrists together and she threw her arms around him and wrapped her legs around his waist and he forced his way into her. She emitted a flood of short gasps as she opened and closed her sphincter, embraced his cock with the undulations of her desire, in the frenzy of her pleasure.
The city was quiet Saturday morning as she stepped onto the sidewalk, passed the doorman, who touched two fingers to his cap in salute. She smiled to him. Outside it had just begun to snow. She was glad she was wearing high boots and a maxi-coat. She pulled her scarf over her head. She was lucky to find a cab. As it drove across to West End Avenue, she sat in a mindless, blissful reverie still feeling him inside her. She wanted to call him right now, to tell him how happy she was, how she had fallen for him, how she loved him, wanted him, needed him. But she was afraid that if she did she would break the spell, that she would frighten him with her neediness, that she had to wait for him. A surge of desire shot through her.
She told the driver to stop on Broadway, a few blocks away from where she lived. She needed the cold air, to feel the grip of it on her skin. The snow was continuing to fall, and though it would become a blizzard later, it still fell gently now, and made everything that was lovely or stately all the more beautiful because of the delicate white patina it imparted everywhere. She, too, felt coated by a glowing patina as if with the divine mist that Athena cast over those she loved and protected and whose beauty she made shine beyond the luster of mortal beauty.
Her cat, Tristan, sat on the piano as if posing as the avatar of an Egyptian divinity and did not move when she unlocked the door. Once inside, she realized how tired she was, and once out of her coat and boots and skirt, dropped only half undressed, still in her stockings and garters, onto her bed and fell asleep. When she woke, the day had given way to evening and the snow was still falling. From his dish, she could see that Tristan had dined, but once again he was standing like the sculpture of a cat on the piano. She got out of the rest of her clothes and drew a bath, loaded it with bubble bath and soaked a good long time. She wrapped herself in her fluffy robe when she got out and when she was dry got into a pair of faded jeans and a bulky knit sweater. It was easy for her to look like a boy, and she often went out that way. She moved as lightly as if she were in a trance, her mind blank: she was present only as an emanation of radiance created by the sensation of Jason's presence pulsing outward from inside her where she still felt him.
Roberta, green eyes, short-cropped red hair, in jeans and a lumber jacket and hiking boots, came over later that night with sushi and a DVD. After dinner and before the movie they turned the heat up in the apartment. Andy did their hair, put make-up on herself and Roberta, nail polish, too, and they got into sexy lingerie.
"Tell me about last night," Roberta said as they sat facing each other, sharing a joint.
"Uh, uh," Andy said with a mischievous smile.
"Come on."
"Let's watch the movie," Andy said, refusing to say anything more.
"That deep?" Roberta said, and raised her eyebrows. Andy made no hint of a response. Roberta sat down next to her, put her arm around her, clicked the remote, and kissed the nape of her neck. "You smell delicious, good enough to eat." Andy touched her cheek, spread her legs, and Roberta kneeled before her.
When the movie was over, Roberta sensed something was different. "I ought to get dressed and go?" she said.
Andy smiled gratefully and laughed when she said, "Don't forget to wash your face before you go outside."
Roberta grinned.
"Thanks for understanding," Andy said at the door. "I'd like to be by myself tonight." Maybe he would call.
Jason did not call.
At Broadhurst & Loebeck, Monday morning, where he was the executive administrative assistant to Arthur Loebeck, nothing went smoothly. The conference room he thought he had booked at the Plenipotentiary Hotel was not available on the twenty-fourth and the only room that was, did not have the cachet that investors with Broadhurst & Loebeck had been accustomed to expect from a firm of their distinction. But that was not all. He had book Mr. Loebeck's flight to Chicago for the twenty-seventh, not the twenty-ninth.
Loebeck was calm but patronizing in his rebukes, and Jason understood that only a few more screw-ups would cost him his job. He was deferential and penitent in the face of Mr. Loebeck's warnings, and luckily, with the energy and cunning that comes from the release of adrenalin, he was able to change the flight and find a suitable conference room at the Carleton Executive Hotel, not a block away from the Plenipotentiary.
When he got home, he threw his topcoat on the sofa, yanked his tie from around his neck, unbuttoned his shirt. He rubbed his chest and remembered Saturday night, but it was eons ago, and he had been someone else.
Nothing like that had ever happened before. He did not go to S&M bars. He did not own a leather jacket. He had used his necktie to bind Andy's hands and his belt to make her leash. Where did that come from? It began playfully enough. And then, something gave way, and everything became real. It did not feel like he was playing a role. It felt real. He was engaged, but it was a reality that eluded him now.
Perhaps he had reacted to the effect that he saw his behavior had on Andy. Perhaps that had taken him into the unchartered territory that he found himself surprisingly apt to negotiate. He was still surprised. Whatever it was, he had never experienced anything so electric, so magnetic, so volcanic, and he had never seen his effect on someone else be so overwhelmingly powerful. He had never seen anyone so willingly, so desperately, surrender to him.
He was afraid it could never happen again. He certainly did not feel like he had that power to make it happen now. He was afraid to call Andy. He could not be the lover he had been, the lover she would expect him to be.
He was hungry, and put on jeans and a pea coat and got a bowl of soup and a hamburger at Marty's and walked around, but it was chilly and the streets were empty. His inbox was filled with work-related stuff, and the inbox on his other account, the one with the fake name that he used in lieu of cruising was empty. He let a week go by without calling Andy, and without being able to stop thinking about her. Yet, he did not call; he was trying to let her slip out of his memory. After a week, it was even harder to call her than before.
She was being torn apart every day, every hour, by unquenchable desire, by restless, insatiable yearning -- by indecision. Could she call him? Ought she? Would he be angry if she did? How could she deal with it if he was cold, distant, didn't want to see her? Wasn't his letting a week go by without calling her already an indication of his feelings? It was clear enough to her: he did not want to see her again! But how could such a strong connection so easily evaporate? Her whole body, her very spirit, was contracted with the desire to be with him, to be the object of his desire. It was madness. It was more painful than anything she had ever experienced. It was debilitating.
She put off calling him. He did not call her. Every time he began to, he became paralyzed; he began and stopped. There was no voice in his throat. Every time his phone rang, he was afraid it might be her, and he was always relieved that it wasn't, and disappointed. They both let the time slip away. Each day they waited made calling the following day harder. They each became more nebulous to the other. The time they had spent with each other became a fading shadow of itself until it disappeared into unreality, leaving a hollow that could not be filled. A lost memory had evanesced into an unrealizable desire.
Andy lay in bed, not fully awake, rubbing her nipples, regretting Jason, daydreaming he was inside her, thick with desire, distracted from her reverie wondering how anyone who had been so near her, who had brought her to such an intimate contact with him and with herself, could forget about her. The bedside phone rang. She jumped, but there was no reason for her heart to skip a beat.
"Are you up yet?"
"Just about," she said in a voice still distant with sleepiness.
"Did you go over the script?" Herbie asked.
"I did."
"What did you think?"
"It's weak."
"Weak?"
"No punch. No drama. No allure. I didn't care what happened to the boy or the girl. I couldn't see how they would fall in love, what either could see in the other."
"Maybe that's the point."
"What's the point?
"They go for each other because they each know that no one else would go for them. They are two losers."
"This is supposed to be a comedy."
"But this makes it funnier."
"Or maybe nastier," Andy interjected, but Herbie ignored her.
"Do you think you can reshape it from that angle, and maybe add a little poignancy?"
"Poignancy?"
"Yeah, poignancy. Ok?"
"Anything you say. But won't Larry have a fit?"
"Larry is just glad that a play of his is finally being considered. He wants to see his name in lights, even if he knows it really ought to be your name."
A strong wind on West End Avenue: Andy protected her eyes against the sharp attack of snow. It was no day to sit on the terrace of the corner café. Inside, she got a corner table, took off her coat, ordered a coffee and a croissant, opened her laptop, and tried to figure out what to do with Larry's play. She was distracted by a sense that she was the object of someone's attention.
"Is it a girl or a boy?" a man of early middle age, well dressed and laughing dismissively, asked the counterman, pointing at her.
"What do you care?" Jerry said, pouring coffee for a biker on the stool next to him.
"It really doesn't matter," the man answered. "I'd bang it from behind and never give a second thought about whatever it was," he said with a wink. "A hole's a hole."
"I'd watch it, if I were you," the biker said, swiveling around on his stool and facing him.
"Is that a threat?" the offensive gentleman challenged him.
"It's a piece of advice."
The man tipped his hat. "Much obliged," he said smoothly, pitched a few bills on the counter, and left.
The biker caught the counterman's eye, and shook his head. Andy signaled for more coffee. Jerry brought a fresh cup to the able and a piece of apple strudel. "On the house."
"Thanks, but let me pay for it."
Jerry waved his hand and shook his head. "Some people are just assholes," he said, apologetically.
Andy put her hand on his wrist and smiled. "I'm used to it," she said.
"Maybe," he said, "but that doesn't mean the rest of us ought to be."
"He's right," the biker said, walking over to Andy's table, carrying his coffee.
"May I?" he said.
"Sure," Andy said.
"You come here every morning," he said, looking for something to say. Despite his leathery appearance, he was shy, and it did not look like he needed to shave much either.
"It's a good place to work," Andy said, smiling. She liked him.
"I'm sorry about that guy," he said.
"It's not your fault."
"But I'm still sorry. I'd like to see you."
"Without even being sure whether I'm a girl or a boy?" Andy said mischievously.
"I don't care," Zach said.
Regarding Andy's gender, all I can do to satisfy a reader's curiosity is repeat a story a friend told me: When asked if he was gay or straight, he answered that he did not know. His questioner, determined to pin him down, continued. "Well, the first person you slept with, was it a man or woman?" to which my friend responded, "I was too excited to ask."
When Zach came to pick Andy up Friday night, he brought a dozen pink peonies. Andy's mouth dropped when she saw the bouquet, but not as much as Zach's did when he beheld Andy. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Andy had on a black, skintight mini dress, held up by stringy straps. The dress was entirely covered with glittering sequins. Her ankles were gorgeous and alluring in strappy stiletto heels; her legs, likewise, in black, open work diamond mesh stockings. Her face was delicately made up. She wore bronze eye shadow and umber lip-gloss. Her nails were glazed with a polish of the same shade. Her hair was a cloud of auburn curls. She greeted Zach with an inviting smile, thanked him speechlessly for the flowers.
"Come in," she said. "I did not realize when I saw you at Jerry's how drop dead handsome you are," she said and, placing the flowers on a side table, impulsively kissed him.
Zach was dazzled not only by Andy's beauty, but by just how delicate she was, how fragile she felt in his arms, how thrilling it was to feel her kiss him.
"Take off your jacket," Andy said. It was a motorcycle jacket. He was as much in costume as she was.
"I've made a reservation for dinner," he said.
"Wouldn't you rather stay here?" she said. She slipped her hand through the placket of his shirt and touched a nipple.