Chapter Sixteen
The Four Seasons Session
He said he’d try not to scare me. He said we’d go slower. I didn’t know what that meant, but I agreed to another date, and even put on a designer dress for the first time since he’d cut off my Lanvin suit almost two months ago. This was trust, if not friendship. For once, I looked forward to our session with more anticipation than dread.
Well, there was a lot of dread too.
I walked across the glitzy hotel lobby and found my way to the elevators. I’d never met a client at the Four Seasons before. The rooms were ridiculously expensive. I felt like I was breathing in expensive air and walking along expensive ground. The Four Seasons seemed too stately, too old-world-wealthy to use for tawdry sex, but here I was. How did W afford these hotels, on top of what he paid for exclusive access to my services? Who was he? What did he do?
Believe me, I’d tried to figure it out. I’d badgered Henry for any scrap of information, but his mouth was firmly shut. I’d searched design magazines and design firms, and researched modern poets. No dice. I’d pored over fetish websites and personal ads, but there were so many profiles to sift through, and so many men in New York who claimed to be rich and dominant and sadistic. A quick scan of each profile, and I’d know it wasn’t him because the person was trying too hard, or coming off fake, and W wasn’t fake. He was irritating and scary, and unfathomable, but he wasn’t fake.
I tried to convince myself that this compulsion to know about him was only natural curiosity, not some deeper feelings. I had a boyfriend, after all, and W was just a client. He was a very small part of my big and complex life, and the fact that he gave me exquisitely mind-blowing orgasms didn’t mean I was falling in love. Oh, Jesus, don’t let me be falling in love.
I walked down a silent hallway to the fiftieth-floor room. W loved his corner rooms. I checked my carefully applied makeup and smoothed my hair, and knocked on the door. My stomach fluttered with familiar anxiety as the lock clicked and the door swung open. He looked stylish as ever, in dark dress pants and a white starched shirt, slightly open, no tie. I stared at the base of his neck, at masculine muscles and defined tendons.
“You came,” he said.
I looked up to meet his eyes. He smiled as he drew me inside, but it wasn’t a simple, friendly smile. It was a complicated smile, like everything about him.
“Are you being brave?” he asked, and that sounded complicated too, caught between happiness and mockery.
“I’m being stupid,” I said.
“No.”
That was all he said, no, but just like that he was in charge of me and I was scared. He took away my bag and stripped off my dress, barely sparing it a glance. I wore nothing underneath, which he liked.
“Take off your shoes,” he said, running his hands over my skin.
I kicked them off, wondering how W made me feel so much more naked than anyone else. He pinched one of my nipples, holding my gaze, and I was already white-hot, already willing to do anything on earth for him.
He backed away abruptly, releasing me.
“There’s a beautiful view.” His words sounded thick, or maybe my brain wasn’t firing on all fronts. I tried to readjust from his presence and control to this view he wanted to show me. We looked out together at Central Park fifty stories below us. So pretty to look at.
The room was pretty to look at, too. There was a polished wood desk beside the window, and a leather upholstered chair, and across the room, a wide king bed with smooth white sheets. But all I really wanted to do was look at him.
What’s your name? Who are you? His blond hair was dark and light at once, and his blue eyes could seem dark and light too. So many things had become dark and light in my life, good and bad at the same time. Like my boyfriend. Like escorting. Like W. I supposed this whole “view” thing was his attempt to go slower and be easier with me. I didn’t like it because it was fake.
I turned away from the window. “Well, I’m here,” I said. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Will you let me tie you to the bed?”
“You’re asking?”
“I’m asking if I can tie you to the bed. After that, you have no more say in what I do to you. And you probably won’t like what I do to you.”
That sounded more like him. “What if I say no? That you can’t tie me to the bed?”
That smile again. “I guess I’d try to convince you to let me.”
“With words?”
He shook his head, slowly. Seductively. When had I begun to find the threat of him so seductive? I glanced back at the door.
“You won’t make it,” he said. “And you’re naked. They frown on naked women tearing through the halls of the Four Seasons.”
I moved first, toward the door, because I knew he wanted me to. He grabbed me around the waist. Not gently. This wasn’t a game. I knew if he got me tied to that bed he was going to do everything in his power to make me regret my life choices, like the choice to fight him when I knew it would only make him excited.
He hauled me over to his briefcase and somehow managed to open it and extract some rope while I flailed and clawed at his face.
“Let me tie you up,” he said. “Be a good girl.”
I was not a good girl. I was a wild, fighting girl, and I was thrown across the bed so hard it knocked the breath out of me. Before I could regroup, he was on top of me, straddling my ribs. He corralled my arms and looped the rope around my wrists five or six times, leaving a tail. Then he leaned over me, his crotch pressed to my face. I moved my head, searching for air, but all I got was gabardine and balls. His hard shaft pressed against my cheek, over the bruise Simon had put there two days ago.
I didn’t want to think about that now.
“I can’t breathe,” I yelled with what little air I had left.
He moved back, leaned down and grabbed my chin. “Maybe I don’t want you to breathe.”
“Jesus. No matter how nice you are to me, it always ends like this,” I said, meaning the force and roughness.
He frowned. “You have no idea how it’s going to end.”
While he was suffocating me with his cock and balls, he’d tied me to some tether point in the headboard. I yanked hard. Nope. Nothing. When I kicked my legs he held them down.
“Be still. You’ll stay where I want you to stay. You should know that by now.”
More rope, more brutal force to capture my legs and bind them together. He wound rope from my knees to my ankles and fixed the end somewhere under the footboard. I was bound tight, barely able to turn or stretch. So much for him trying to be less scary.
He undid his zipper and took my face in one of his hands, and shoved his cock into my mouth, or more accurately, my throat. I choked and tried to sit up, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I groaned and sucked him. The bondage took away my choice to comply.
“That’s fucking hot, when you groan like that,” he said.
He played with me for ten minutes at least, pounding into my throat, rubbing his balls on my face, demanding that I lick or kiss or nibble or suck. He pinched my nipples with excruciating force whenever I did it “wrong.” No matter how much I writhed and tried to get away, I was stuck, a prisoner to his will. When he finally shot his load in my throat, I was relieved, not turned on. Well, I was a little bit turned on.
“That was nice,” he sighed, sitting on my chest.
“Your vision of nice and my vision of nice are so different,” I whispered. “Also, you’re crushing me. Please get off me.”
“Shut up.” He drew a finger across my drool-covered lips. “Jesus, you’re a mess. So sloppy and wonderful.”
“Your vision of wonderful and my vision of wonderful—”
He clapped a hand over my mouth. “One more word, and you’ll be gagged for the rest of this session. And that won’t suit my purposes at all.”
Oh God, I hoped that didn’t mean his purposes included more blowjobs. Or chokejobs, as I’d come to think of them. He got up and went to the bathroom while I waited, still tied to the bed. I wondered if W ever had gentle, caring sex. I wondered if he’d ever tried it, just once.
He came back and cleaned me up in a relatively gentle manner, kissing me and wiping all the drool from my chin, neck, and ears. I stared at him, because I wasn’t supposed to talk, but I wished he would talk to me. I wished he would connect to me somehow, with something beyond his cock.
He finished wiping me off and tipped a water bottle into my mouth. I spit some of the water out to keep from drowning, and he went back for the towel, blustering about what a mess I was. As he sopped up the dribble, he took the opportunity to hurt my nipples some more. The truth was, he loved reducing me to the level of a drooling, helpless victim.
And we were only about twenty minutes into this scene.
He stood and went to his briefcase, and dug out his phone. While he scrolled through messages, he unbuttoned his shirt and scratched his chest. My God, so freaking sexy. His cock spilled carelessly from his fly, all his beautiful masculinity flaunted in profile. Sadly, I couldn’t do a thing about it. Just take off the pants, I thought. Take it all off. Let me look.
He stroked his half-hard cock, ignoring me completely. There was something about the careless, confident way he stood there that fired my desire. I was drooling harder now than I’d drooled during the blowjob. I shifted on the bed, pressed my legs together the slightest bit. Of course he noticed.
He threw down his phone with that smile again. Why was he so damn happy today, when he’d been such a bastard the session before? Not that I trusted that smile, or even believed it signaled happiness. It might just as easily signal disaster.
He reached in his briefcase and pulled out a blindfold. Damn it.
“You should be resting,” he chided in his evil-Dom voice. “Maybe this will help.”
I shook my head, for all the good it did me. He circled my head with the black length of silk and tied it a bit to one side, so I wouldn’t be resting my head on the knot.
The darkness and helplessness took me right back to our first session, to the nerves and WTF feelings that had consumed me. I wanted to tell him about those feelings but I couldn’t. I just wanted to say one word: Remember? But I didn’t dare. I hated being gagged, and I couldn’t bear it on top of the bondage and blindness. I made a soft, urgent sound instead, and was rewarded with a slap on the cheek.
“Quiet,” he said.
That was it. Quiet, and then he left me to stew in my horny, dark world, wondering what would come next. More slaps? More face fucking? Nipple clamps? My legs were tied together, which kind of limited what he could do to me fucking-wise.
As I lay there, still and bound, I listened for his movements. I listened for the door (I didn’t want him to leave) and the zipper of my purse (I didn’t want him to root through it) and the sound of his clothes hitting the floor (because that probably meant something else was going to happen). I listened and waited but I heard nothing for long minutes. Was he playing on his phone? Looking out the window? Staring at me?
I thought he was probably staring at me. He’d trussed me up on the bed, his whore-in-waiting, and now he was studying me, thinking up the best ways to screw with my head. His silence frightened me.
Why was I here, allowing myself to be terrified? Why did I let him take over me this way? But I knew why. For the orgasms. I didn’t drool earlier because of his beautiful body, but because my body remembered what his body could do.
At last I heard movement and—yes!—the whisper of clothes being pulled off and thrown over the chair. I heard him take steps toward the bed and stop. He tugged at the rope holding my legs and then released the tether point. He unwrapped my lower legs, then ran his fingers along the places the rope had been. I drew in a breath as he caressed my sensitized flesh. How could his barest touch make my whole body shudder?
I pressed my legs together, dreading the next touch but wanting it too. I wanted to protect those vulnerable parts between my legs but I also wanted him to force my thighs open and take me, because no one else made me feel the way he did.
“Why are you shaking?” he asked, running a hand over my tensing muscles. “You’re allowed to talk now. I want to hear what you’re feeling.”
“I’m scared,” I said. “I’m worried. I don’t know what you’re going to do next.”
“Ah, but you don’t have to know. That’s the fun of it. I could tell you right now what I plan to do, but then it wouldn’t be as exciting for you when I do it.”
He moved. I flinched. I felt him settle against my front, not crushing me this time, but lying above me. He pushed my thighs apart with his knees, pinning me down, not that I’d made the first attempt to escape. My arms were still tied above my head. He kissed the sensitive underside of one of my forearms. I turned my face, seeking his warmth.
“You smell so good,” he said. “Like vanilla and woman. Not that you’re very vanilla anymore. Do you like this, Chere? Do you like being tied up, subject to my every whim?”
It took me a moment to admit it. “Yes.”
“Yes, Sir,” he corrected softly.
“Yes, Sir,” I said. “I like it.”
“Do you want me to kiss you?” He said it so quietly I could barely hear.
“Yes, Sir.”
I flinched when his lips contacted mine, not because he was rough, but because I didn’t know when to expect the kiss. He licked my lower lip and kissed me again, sweet and sultry. I could feel his hardening cock between my legs. I arched to him, needful, wanting. He chuckled.
“Not yet, my little plaything. My captive. Let’s make out for a while.”
Just like that I was a captive, and he was my Master, implacable and in charge. I squiggled in frustration and his arm came around my waist with a quelling sound.
“You can’t get away,” he reminded me. “The most you can do is flip over, although I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless you want to be fucked in the ass.”
He poked his cock against me again. He was so thick and hard, already ready for round two. He gripped the blindfold so it was tight against my eyes, and then he grabbed my hair and pulled it, and kissed me at the same time. I moaned at the dissonance of pleasure and pain.
“You want that now, don’t you? Since I mentioned anal, you want me to flip you over and ream your ass, you little slut. You love when I hurt you.”
“No, Sir,” I lied. “Please don’t.”
“You don’t get to choose. Shut the fuck up.”
He shut me up with his lips, his kisses that grew hotter and more insistent. I whined as he yanked a fistful of my hair. The harder he pulled, the more I ground against him. No one else had ever made out with me like this, rough and painful and soft and tender all at once.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said against my ear in a hoarse whisper, and at the same time he said he wasn’t going to hurt me, his fingers tightened around my neck.
I turned my head. I wished I could see his face. Did he look angry or loving? Was he going to kill me or just scare me?
“You’re hurting me,” I rasped.
“Calm down and let me choke you.”
My body was making involuntary motions to get away. My arms jerked. My legs strained. My neck lengthened under his hands and blood heated my face. “Please don’t,” I begged. “Please, Sir…”
His grip loosened. I gasped in air at the same time he kissed me. It felt like he stole my breath. “Please,” I said, and I didn’t even know what I was pleading for.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again. “Do you trust me?”
“No,” I cried, just before his grip tightened on my neck again. I fought but he held me down. Next I knew, I woke to the sound of frightened keening and realized the sound was coming from my own throat. I panicked because I couldn’t see. Oh, God, I couldn’t move my arms.
W said my name, stroked my cheeks and kissed me. “Okay, you’re back. It’s okay.”
I calmed, and remembered the hotel room and the blindfold, and the bondage.
“Please don’t do that,” I pleaded. “Don’t make me pass out like that.”
“Why not?”
I felt too weak to yell at him. Instead I whispered, “What if I don’t wake up?”
“I’ll make sure you wake up,” he said against my lips.
He started kissing me again, but I couldn’t enjoy it any longer. While one hand stroked my hair, the other still rested around my neck.
“You said you would try not to…to scare me,” I said when he let me come up for air.
“I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Because of the blindfold, I couldn’t tell if he was willfully fucking with me, or if he honestly thought he wasn’t hurting me. I suspected it was a combination of both.
“You might kill me,” I said, so aware of his fingertips against my throat.
“I would never kill you,” and this time he said it like he meant it. “I just want to kiss you.”
As he said it, his fingers tightened a little, but not enough to bring back the tumble into nothingness. It was worse somehow, that restrained threat.
“Please,” I begged. “I’m so afraid.”
“I know, baby.” He nuzzled me, moved his hips against mine and licked a line from my neck to my cheek, and along the edge of the blindfold. “I love how afraid you are. But I swear, I promise, I won’t hurt you. I would never kill you.”
The more he said it, the more I shivered, because his fingers were pressing on either side of my esophagus, bringing death a little increment at a time. Then he was gone. I heard a condom wrapper ripped open, and the snap of him adjusting the tip once he rolled it on. I was so concerned for my breath, and my life, that I’d forgotten about his cock. Within seconds he was back on top of me, nudging open my legs and sliding deep within me. I clenched around his thick length and remembered. Oh, yes, I remembered.
He moved in me slowly, taking his time. I luxuriated in the feeling of fullness and wished I could hold onto him. My shoulders ached from my arms being bound over my head, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the other pleasure I felt. I moaned and groaned and arched to him. Then his hands were back at my neck.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, and gave me just enough oxygen to feel fear and panic and not pass out. At the same time, he kept fucking me, driving me across the sheets with powerful thrusts so the rope tethering my wrists went slack. I struggled like I might free myself, like he might ever let me be free.
“Please, don’t,” I said, but at the same time, those alternating forces were working on me. Fear, need. Breathlessness, bliss.
“You’re mine,” he said in response. “I can do what I want to you.”
You’re mine. I was thinking how weirdly happy and euphoric those words made me feel when his fingers tightened and set off pastel explosions behind my eyes.
The last thing I remembered was his cock filling me up, all of W filling me to bursting. And when I came to, he was still there, deep inside me. “There you are,” he said. My cheek felt hot, like he’d just slapped me. “Want to go again?”
“No,” I gasped.
“No, Sir,” he reminded me.
“No, Sir, please. No more.”
“Time for your assfucking, then?”
I didn’t answer, just let him flip me over and give my ass cheeks a few spanks. I was weak as a kitten. No more fight, no more energy to do anything but cry and lie there as he went for lube.
“Don’t choke me out while you’re in my ass,” I begged. I didn’t know why, but the idea terrified me, that he might be in that sensitive, vulnerable place while I was gone to the world.
“Don’t choke me out while you’re in my ass,” he repeated in a mocking falsetto. “Really, Chere, why would I? I want you to feel every minute of this, from the moment I force it in until the moment I come deep inside you.”
I cried some more as he pried open my ass cheeks and shoved the head of his cock against my hole. The ritzy white Four Seasons bedspread had to be smeared all to hell with my juices and tears. For $1500 a night, they could deal with it. I braced as he straddled my hips and eased his shaft into my passage. Ow, ow, owww.
I was exhausted, but not too exhausted to feel every inch of his length. I tried to be open, especially since he wasn’t giving me much choice. I couldn’t defend myself or wiggle away, which made it feel worse.
“That hurts,” I groaned.
One hand gripped my hair again, and the other clamped over my mouth.
“It ends when you come,” he said. “So I suggest you stop whining and figure out a way to get off. This doesn’t end until your ass milks the cum out of my cock.”
Fuck. There was no way I could come when it hurt so bad. But then, the idea that I had to come to make all this stop…that was a very powerful mindfuck.
“I hate you,” I said against his hand. I truly hated him, but there was something about his cruelty and perversion that turned me inside out in a wondrous way.
“That’s right,” he said. “Feel me taking your ass, tearing you up. You can pretend I’m raping you if you want.”
I tried to shake my head but he only laughed.
“I’m waiting for you to come,” he goaded. “Do you want me to help you?”
I feared what his “help” might entail, but when he let go of my hair and grasped my pussy instead, it felt much better. Way better. He hurt my clit, but it was a good kind of hurt that blended with all the other hurt to make me sub-spacy and hot. I was his, trapped, blind, used, manipulated. I groaned, wanting this to be over, only because the torment and feelings were so overwhelming.
“Please, please,” I begged.
“Come on, you horny little bitch. This fucking doesn’t stop until you realize this is the only reason you exist. To please me. To amuse me. To surrender to me. To take my cock in any fucking hole I want, however I want.” He punctuated each assertion with a pounding thrust, and then he slapped my pussy hard, and my body and my mind decided this depraved treatment was worthy of an orgasm after all. I tipped off the edge of the cliff and fell, fell, fell into a powerful climax.
“Oh God. Oh Jesus,” I babbled. He groaned and pounded me harder, and yes, I think I milked his orgasm right out of him. My pulsing release went on and on, too intense to feel very pleasurable.
“I can’t. I can’t,” I repeated weakly. “I can’t. Let me go.”
I didn’t even know what I meant by I can’t, except that I knew I couldn’t bear any more stimulation. I had to be released. I had to recover.
He withdrew from my limp, ragdoll body and went into the bathroom. I heard water running. Not the shower. A bath.
Oh, yes, I needed a bath. When he returned and untied my wrists, and lifted me from the bed, I huddled like a baby against his chest. It wasn’t until we were together in the water that he undid my blindfold and let me see. The lights were dim, but they still seemed too bright. There was too much glass and mirror and chrome. I whimpered.
“Close your eyes if it’s too much,” he said.
I did, just for a minute. He washed me, running hands over my skin and down between my legs.
“I’m finished now,” he said. “I’m finished hurting you for today. I’m finished fucking you, I promise. Look at me, Chere.”
I blinked my eyes open.
“Are you okay?” He asked it very slowly, and very kindly, and I was okay. My body still hummed from arousal. As usual, he’d taken me from too-much to too-fucking-much.
“I need to touch myself,” I said.
“Be my guest.”
I rubbed one out there in the tub, straddling his legs, pressed against his chest. I could feel him get hard again but he kept his promise and didn’t stick it in me. Maybe he rubbed one out too. For a while, I was too oblivious to care.
After that orgasm, it was like my body came back to itself and I was able to settle down. The water had chilled by that point, but it felt good. W watched me steadily, leaning back against the lip of the Four Seasons’ fancy soaking tub. This was luxury and depravity, and no one did it like him.
“You weren’t better this time,” I said when I felt able. “You were worse. Scarier.”
“No. You were more scared at the Empire, when you thought I was a serial killer.”
I splashed him as he smiled. “You shouldn’t be proud of that,” I said. “And I came back again today because you said you wouldn’t be as scary.”
“I don’t know if I used those exact words.”
I curled up in the water, studying him, trying to understand how someone so sadistic could be so handsomely beautiful at the same time. “You shouldn’t choke people out,” I said. “It’s creepy and sociopathic.”
“Breath play is a common enough fetish.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“That’s probably true.” He shrugged. “I won’t do it to you very often. I did it today because I felt very close to you, and happy to see you.”
“You choke people when you’re happy to see them?”
“I choke people who move me, who surrender to me and make me feel energized.”
I gave him a skeptical glance. “Not energized. Powerful.”
He shrugged again. “Yes. It makes me feel powerful to put my hands around your neck and watch you struggle for breath. I’d like to do it again someday, but without the blindfold. Next time, I want to see the fear in your eyes.” He touched my leg. “That blindfold was a kindness, by the way. You would have been more scared without it, because you would have seen what was in my eyes.”
“Murder,” I said.
“No. Don’t even joke about that. I’m careful with you.”
Your vision of careful and my vision of careful are different. I didn’t say it out loud. What was the use?
He took my wrists and kissed them, and kissed me. I could always count on the kisses, no matter how much he hurt me beforehand. I used to think the kisses were an apology, a way to make things up to me, but now I wasn’t sure. He made no sense. Violence and poetry. Choking and kissing. Degradation and caring.
What’s your name? Please tell me.
“Can I stay here tonight?” I asked. “It’s really beautiful. You choose the most beautiful hotels.”
He smirked at me like I was sassing him. I wasn’t. It occurred to me that I’d paid him very few compliments in our escort/client relationship. He at least deserved a few.
“You can always stay the night,” he said. “The room’s paid for, and I don’t mind. You can even order room service and dirty movies.” He kissed me one more time. “But I have to go.”
The water was cold, and he was suddenly restless. We got out and dried off, and I put on the fluffy Four Seasons robe, while he went out into the other room to dress. When I joined him, he was sitting at the desk, his pen poised over paper. He’d finally turned on the lights.
After the blindfold, and the soft light of the bathroom, it seemed too bright. I walked over to stand beside him. After all I’d gone through, I wanted my poem. I wanted to watch him write it out with his own hands.
“What’s our selection tonight, Mr. Cumming?” I asked.
He smiled and looked up at me. “You remember my name.”
“Your fake name.”
His smile faded. He stood and took my chin, and tilted my head toward the light. “What happened to your face?”
The makeup. My tears. The bath. All my makeup had washed away, exposing the bruise from when Simon backhanded me in the kitchen. It had been an accident, mostly. He hadn’t been in his right mind. I said what any self-respecting idiot would say in this situation.
“I walked into a door.”
“You’re a fucking liar,” he said in an icy tone. “A bad liar, too. Your addict boyfriend did this.”
I blinked at him. We both knew he was right.
“This happened that night?” he asked, staring between the bruise and my eyes. “That night we were on the phone, and he was banging on the door?”
“No. It happened a few nights later.”
“Jesus fucking—” He let loose a string of epithets.
“It was an accident.”
His blue eyes snapped. The lights were way too bright now, and his grip on my chin was starting to hurt.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Chere? You’re telling me he accidentally hit you in the face?”
“You hit my face all the time.”
Now his fingers were around my neck, not my chin. He gave me a sharp little shake. “Do not compare me to him. You have a bruise on your face. I’ve never bruised your face. I’m not even bruising your neck right now.”
I pushed away from him and he let me go. We retreated to opposite sides of the room—I slunk over by the TV, into the shadows, while he stood looking out the window at the dark.
“You’re an idiot,” he muttered, not looking at me.
“It was an accident,” I repeated. “He was raging around and I got in his way.”
“Did he apologize?”
“I don’t remember. And it’s really none of your business.”
I could see his eyes close from across the room. He stood like that for a while, with his eyes closed. Then he opened them and turned to me. “You’re right. It’s none of my business if you want to live with someone who—”
Who hurts you. He couldn’t say it. He would have been the world’s biggest hypocrite to say it, because he hurt me all the time. He got off on hurting me; he intentionally hurt me, which was way worse than Simon, because Simon never meant to hurt me. Simon hurt me for reasons outside his control.
“Do you need money to move out?” he asked. “Is that the issue? Do you need help finding another place to live?”
“I don’t need you to rescue me. It’s my life. My problem. I’m working on it.”
“So what’s your plan?”
I could tell from his hard expression that he wasn’t going to let this go. I sighed and shrugged.
“He has a show next week. The plan is…” As I started telling W about it, I realized what a hopeless, flimsy plan it was. “Well, the plan is that he’ll sell some work, and build up a little momentum so he can take time off to go into rehab. It’s all about momentum in the art world. He’s trying to get to a place where…” My voice trailed off.
“A place where he can stay high all the time?” W suggested.
“Where he can get better. Speaking of which, I can’t see you next weekend. One of the week days would be fine, but we’re having a big reception on Saturday at the gallery. I’ll have to be there Sunday too. This show is consuming him and he…he needs me. He needs this to be a success. I’m sorry. It’s just the one weekend.”
W’s lips tightened. He looked at me with such anger, such irritation that I added, “If you even want to see me again…”
“I want to see you again,” he snapped. “Preferably without a bruised face.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I snapped back.
The nerve of him. He’d choked me until I passed out—more than once!—and he had the gall to judge Simon for accidentally hitting me. I drifted away from the corner to sit on the bed. He leaned over the table and started writing on the Four Seasons stationary. As soon as he started, he stopped and put down the pen.
“You know what, Chere? I’m not in the mood for poetry.”
“You promised me poetry.”
He gave me a dark look. “I’ll give you a poem next time I see you. In the meantime…” He wrote out something quick, ripped it off the pad, folded it over a couple times and brought it to me. He pressed it into my palm and touched my bruised cheek. Then he brushed a kiss across my lips and left without looking back at me.
When the door closed, I unfolded the paper and smoothed it in my lap, and read the two words, dark and bold, in W’s handwriting.
Love lies.