Brazen Read online

  Now if you will refer back three paragraphs and remind yourself what it is my boys are expected and allowed to do while they’re on the clock, I will tell you now that the trouble-man is doing few of those things. He doesn’t sit still or act particularly coy. He meanders. He leans against doorframes, an aristocratic cowboy, hip cocked, eyes fixed on me like a compass needle drawn north.

  I will tell you more about him, though I’m not a writer by trade and a photograph would surely do him far more justice. He’s tall and sculpted, as the requirements dictate. He’s still violating the harem’s rules by wearing a tee shirt, but I can tell from the way the cotton stretches over the two crests of his abdomen and the contours of his chest that he’s got a body custom-made to keep me up nights. His arms look strong with pronounced triceps, matching veins at the crook of each elbow that make me think of pumping blood and the smell of male exertion.

  He’s blocking the threshold between the hall and the sunroom, and I want him to move so I can sit by the windows in the latter and wait for the next round of lightning and thunder. I have a fat candle in my hand as I approach him, and the flame lights up his face, his straight, noble nose and full lips. Even in the relative darkness, his eyes are bright. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest, but as I come close he drops one and raises the other, taking hold of the top frame of the door, casual. He makes no move to quit blocking my way, but to scold him too openly would dilute my authority in front of the others.

  “No shirts,” I tell him in an even, bored voice.

  His lips tighten in the smallest possible twitch of a smile, and he obediently reaches down and peels his tee up and over his head. Two feet away now stands a body even finer than the theoretical one I’ve been fantasizing about since the night he first appeared. Not an ounce of fat. Every shape and shadow of him is honed to conform to an imaginary manual of specifications shelved somewhere in my reptilian brain. I want to sink my teeth into the rounded swells of his shoulders. I want to lap Scotch out of the hollows above his collarbones. And I want him to get the hell out of my way.

  “Follow me,” I say.

  He steps aside the tiniest bit and I slip by, feeling his energy as if I were breaching a force field. I take a seat on the sofa, below the bay window, beside a young man who politely sets aside a newspaper he’d been perusing in the candlelight. He’s European-looking with stylish, long-ish dark hair and an angular jaw. Black tattoos all up his arms, some kind of tasteful, intricate design. I beckon him to straddle me and to the trouble-man I say, “Sit down,” and pat the empty cushion to my right. “You could use a tutorial.”

  The tattooed man relocates, pushing his knees into the upholstery on either side of my legs. He’s wearing black boxer briefs, and I run my hands over his backside, hard as some impressive cliché. I stroke my palms up his stomach and chest, surveying the thin trail of dark hair that runs down from his navel to disappear behind his waistband. He’s stiff already, and I admire the long curve of his erection where it strains to one side against his underwear.

  The trouble-man sinks into the couch, looking relaxed.

  “Take your jeans off,” I order him.

  “Sure,” he says in a voice I never asked to hear.

  “No talking,” I say with orchestrated nonchalance.

  He stands and unfastens a thick leather belt, unzips his fly and lets his pants fall to the floor with a clunk of the heavy buckle. He too wears boxer briefs, gray ones. His hips make a V that draws my eyes straight down to his bulge. He steps out of his pants and sits back on the sofa.

  I catch the eye of another man—the one I made suffer the other night during Cool Hand Luke. He’s watching from a chair on the other side of the narrow room. I beckon him over to occupy the remaining empty cushion. He knows what to do, and I think he’ll set a good example for his worrisome new coworker.

  I begin to stroke the tattooed man in my lap as my star pupil does the same to himself at my side. I pull down my man’s briefs enough to free him and my pupil follows suit. The trouble-man just leans back, one arm draped along the back of the couch, and watches with a little self-satisfied grin tweaking his lips. He is distracting in his inactivity. I will probably have to fire him after tonight. Which is a pity, I think, glancing to where his dick weighs heavily against the cotton of his shorts.

  “Touch yourself,” I say to him coldly.

  His lips part a fraction but he doesn’t speak. He nods instead and runs a lazy hand down his belly, settling it over his cock. He’s in no hurry.

  To my left, my star pupil’s strokes match the ones I’m using to torture the man in my lap. He adjusts, kneeling to face me so both their exposed cocks are pointed at my belly. The two obedient men exchange a look and then they each reach a hand out to cup the back of the other’s head and they kiss. This is a bonus I happily pay extra for. They kiss deeply, faces angled, eyes closed. I take one of the tattooed man’s hands and wrap it around the other’s cock.

  The troublesome man to my right is unscandalized and infuriatingly controlled. His two colleagues are unraveling rapidly, but he’s fondling himself with a look of such obnoxious placidity that I want to slap him. Perhaps I will in a little while.

  “You may moan,” I inform the other two, and they waste no time in following my order. Both are glistening now, and I rub the fluid up and down the length of the tattooed man’s long shaft. Hidden from view, my own body is priming too, putting his to shame. As I play with him I think of the trouble-man again. Again, I imagine him coming up from behind, those hands on my hips. Again, no regard for the rules and the order of things in my little kingdom. That voice, loud and rough, cutting through the peace, barking orders of his own. His cock, cutting straight into my core.

  In reality he’s still sitting beside me, still stroking his hidden erection with a slow hand. He’s not watching the other two—his eyes are on me. I can feel them. When I sneak a glance to confirm this, he runs his tongue over his bottom lip, looking hungry.

  The two obedient men lose the coordination needed to continue kissing each other. I admire their flushed faces, lidded eyes. I guide my star pupil’s hand and let it take over for my own on the man in my lap. I watch them jerk each other until they’re panting and hoarse. The man in my lap comes first, his cream spurting over the other’s knuckles and wrist. His colleague follows suit seconds later, and their dicks touch as he releases with a deep moan.

  Politely, they each stand and gather their garments and exit the room with all the dignity possible in such a situation. In their wake, the air is practically quivering with the heat and smell of sex. I will tip them very generously.

  I’m alone now with the trouble-man. I turn to face him, and he snatches the breath from my lungs with those piercing eyes. I try to ignore them. I focus on his hair—brown, glowing gold around the edges in the candlelight. A model’s cheekbones. I wonder absently if that’s his day job. Then I think of my complementary day job, and of laying him across my bed and photographing his strong, young body, naked and aroused. Gritty, high-contrast black and white, so I won’t have to remember how blue his eyes are.

  “Should I keep going?” he asks me, and I realize with some surprise that he’s English. Not posh—somewhere northern and working-class. Manchester or Liverpool, I guess.

  “Don’t speak,” I tell him. “And yes.” I watch his hand, the tendons in his forearm. He’s casual and cool, but I can tell from the dark patch on the gray cotton that he’s ready. He reaches a hand out to my shoulder and I slap it away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  The trouble-man smiles and he says, “My name is Sean.”

  “I don’t care what your name is,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Don’t touch me, and don’t talk to me. And don’t make me tell you again.”

  “Let me taste you,” he says, leaning closer and I stand.

  “Follow me,” I say.

  I grab a candle and march through the fourth floor and down a flight of stairs. I hear the man whose
name I’d prefer I didn’t now know behind me a few paces. I lead him to my room and point to the queen-sized bed. “Lie down,” I say, and slam the door shut behind us.

  He sits at the edge of the mattress, looking smug.

  “I said ‘lie’,” I remind him, and he stretches out across my claret-colored comforter.

  I dig two pairs of nylons out of my hosiery drawer and walk to the far end of the bed. I yank his hands through the slats of the oak headboard and bind his wrists together.

  “There’s one rule corrected,” I say. “Open your mouth.”

  He does and I gag him with the second pair of stockings, tying them tight at the base of his skull.

  “Better,” I say. “Now turn over.”

  I have no clue what the trouble-man’s game is because he seems eager to follow directions, suddenly. Perhaps he just craves attention. He flips over onto his stomach, bound arms crossing, and I leave for a minute to fetch myself a glass of wine and a couple more candles. Outside there’s a flash and a delayed peal of thunder and I jump, nerves crackling.

  Mr. Troublesome is as he should be when I return. I set the candles on the vanity and close the door and perch at the edge of the bed. I sip my wine and admire his back muscles and shoulder blades in the jerking light. He has his head propped to one side on his arm, eyes on me, waiting. It’s hard to tell with the gag, but I think he’s smiling. I take a deep drink and set the glass aside.

  “I’m firing you after tonight,” I say. “You’re extremely disappointing.”

  He watches as I crawl to the middle of the bedspread. I slide my feet then ankles then legs beneath his hips, until he’s lying across my lap. I feel his hard dick against my thighs as I run my palm over his ass. He’s excited, and his skin is damp and warm as I pull his shorts down his hips. I reach my hand between his legs to fondle his balls for a few moments, teasing him with rough pulls. The weight of his bare cock makes me ache for something I swore never to do with any of my beautiful boys.

  I hear his deep, nasal breaths and muffled grunts. I think of how flagrantly he disregarded the rules of this house—my house—and I make him feel every ounce of my anger when I slap him. The force or the frightening sound of it jolts his body.

  I spank him until I can see his skin branded red even in the dim light, until his back is shining with a fine layer of perspiration and his ribs expand and contract fast and deep. He finally shows me some helplessness, and I relent. I’m not a powerful woman. I’m average height and of graceful build if I may say so myself. I was a dancer before I took up photography. I’m fit but not built for dominance by any stretch of the imagination, though at this moment I feel magnificent and cruel and masterful.

  Our collective skin is warm and sticky as I maneuver my bare legs from under him, smoothing my silk skirt back down my thighs. He watches, still.

  “Turn over again,” I say, and I hear a new weight in my voice.

  His smell is potent as he settles on his back. I explore him with my eyes, from his sweat-matted hair and furrowed brow, down his strained, muscular body to his long, thick cock. Longer and thicker than I’d prefer for my usual purposes. A very nice size for other activities, however. I pull his underwear all the way off then stalk up the mattress and jerk the gag from his mouth, letting it lie limp around his throat. Below his stubbly chin, just to one side of his neck, there’s a mark—a reddish bruise like a hickey. I catch his eyes and I shuffle to the headboard and reach for his hands. I don’t release them, but I feel his rough fingertips, the calluses on his left hand. I sit back down on the covers and study his face.

  “You’re a violinist.”

  “Would you like me to play for you?” he asks, and his voice is as deep and haunting and melancholy as his chosen instrument.

  “Definitely not,” I say. “I don’t do romance.”

  His eyes dart condemningly to the candles, my wine, to the panes where the rain is pelting. One window is open halfway and we can both smell the earthy autumn air blowing in.

  “Let me please you,” he says, and words come out thick and needy, his first real show of desperation. I need more proof like this. He humiliated me with his confidence earlier, and I want to hear him beg for forgiveness. I study his tight stomach, his deepening breathing.

  I’m firing this man as soon as I’m done with him, but I think perhaps the time has come to take things to another level. He’d never work out as a safe, disposable toy in my harem, but he might make a fine whore for one night. And I’m goddamn overdue.

  “Fine.” I slip off the bed and unbutton my cardigan and unzip my skirt and stand before him in my camisole and panties. Nothing fancy—I hadn’t planned on anyone seeing me so near to naked. Still, my bra and underwear match, a nice cream-colored satin set. Too good for this man but no matter.

  I catch him licking his lips again.

  “Untie me,” he begs, pulling against the headboard.

  “Why?” I ask, snotty. “What do you want to do?”

  “I’ll fuck you,” he promises, tugging hard. “With my fingers while I eat you out. I’ll make you come as many times as you want.” A very pretty threat I must admit.

  “I’ll bet your fingers are very talented,” I allow. “But I doubt your mouth has much to offer. So far it’s given me nothing but grief.”

  “Let me show you. Untie me.”

  “Earn it,” I say. I climb onto the bed and crawl to him, crawl over him, making my way up his body, letting his erection rub against my belly and the friction tightens my pussy like a greedy fist. I hold the headboard and hook one calf under his shoulder, then the other until I’m locked tight against his face. I feel his hot breath warming me then his tongue tracing the crotch of my panties. I moan unintentionally. It’s been so fucking long.

  I make him work through the fabric, and he finds the swollen nub of my clit easily. The satin grows wet, feeling as though it’s dissolving. His tongue teases and his lips suckle until I’m drenched from both of us. It feels so good it hurts, the pleasure a tight, hard streak running through my body, buzzing and impatient. Every stroke of his tongue sends waves of desire pulsating up from my core. I need more.

  Reaching down, I yank my panties to one side and then he’s there. His caresses are slippery and hot and firm. Hungry. I adjust myself and let him taste what he’s coaxing from me. He laps up the juices with harsh little grunts, and as his tongue begins to spear me I make a terrible mistake.

  “Sean,” I moan. His tongue thrusts deep and the tip of his nose grazes my clit. I say it again, and it feels like the most forbidden syllable in the history of sex.

  His mouth pulls away as much as it’s able. “Untie me,” he pleads. The words heat my tender skin.

  I hesitate, and he laps at me. “Please,” he says, and licks me again. “Please. You won’t regret it.”

  I already do, but I reach over and claw at the knot in the nylons. All his tugging has made it impossibly tight, but I don’t have the patience to leave his mouth and search for a pair of scissors. He senses how frantic and useless my efforts are, and he tugs harder. He pulls and fidgets until the material stretches to let one hand slip out then the other. He’s on me in a flash. I’m flipped on to my back without preamble and he’s above me, our heads suddenly at the foot of the bed. His hips push my thighs wide and his cock presses along the length of my lips, a flimsy strip of drenched satin and cotton my pussy’s last defense.

  “Don’t,” I say, even as I feel him reaching down. He adjusts his dick so he’s pressing into my entrance, straining against the fabric.

  “How long has it been?” he asks.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Tell me,” he whispers into my neck, and he kisses me there. No one has kissed me in a very long time. His hips thrust him into me over and over and I want to cry out, the desire is so violent, the need for his penetration like withdrawal from the cruelest drug imaginable. His roped arms are locked at my sides, his chest pinning me to the mattress. “Tell me,” he murmurs a
gain.

  “Almost five years,” I admit.

  “Do you want me?” he asks.

  “I hate you.”

  “I’ll make you scream for me,” he promises, and he pulls away. All at once the aggression is over. He steps to my bedside table and brings me my glass.

  I sit cross-legged and sip the wine and watch as he picks up the tall cheval mirror from beside the closet and carries it to the middle of the room, centering the bed in its reflection. He takes my glass away. When he comes back, he pulls me by the ankles to the edge of the mattress. He sinks to his knees on the floor.

  “You better be good,” I say. I scratch my nails across his scalp and grasp a fistful of his short hair.

  I feel his fingers at my hips, and he tugs my panties off. His rough palms push my thighs wide and hold them there. As his head lowers I feel the vapor of his breath on my skin. Five years…

  I study his body in the mirror, his muscles lit warmly by the candlelight. Powerful arms, hands holding me open, that gorgeous, ripe ass, toned back and shoulders. I want to know him, suddenly. I want to know why he’s here and who he is and what he likes and how his body came to be so perfect. I want to see his face as he comes. I want to see him cry and hold him tight. Most of all, I want my sanity to return.

  “Tell me your name,” he says softly. His eyes dart across my wide-open center.

  “Go to hell.”

  “I want to say it when I take you later,” he murmurs, and a hundred fantasies flash across my mind. Sean closes his eyes and brushes his stubbly cheek against my inner thigh, looking transcendent. He seems to understand the balance I crave, that impossibly narrow tightrope stretched between dominance and submission.

  “Why did you come here?” I ask.

  His eyes open and meet mine. “I wanted to know who you are. What sort of woman demands to have her selfish fantasies fulfilled so openly. By strangers. I wanted to meet you. And now that I have, I want you to use me. Even more than the others.”