Riley: Guilt and Ravishment
Jack lays out an elegant little black dress for me, with long sleeves and a very short hem. I wear six-inch black heels and he drapes a strand of rubies around my neck instead of a collar. I’m sure they’re real rubies. They just look…different than the imitation stones I’ve seen before. I should feel kept and objectified, but I don’t. I feel beautiful and powerful, like a queen going to meet a few disorderly subjects.
I’ve been to the Montcrests’ Wall Street firm before, but when we arrive today it’s different. The main floors look the same, but as we pass by back rooms, I see men and women who haven’t been there before. Jack’s people. He’s started taking over Hector’s firm for whatever shadowy purposes the Amontillados have for it.
We reach the enormous conference room at the top of the building near Hector’s office. A large, polished, dark wood table stretches down the length of the space. Jack and I sit at one end. Hector is already there, sitting at the other end. He has some of Caleb’s features, but his face is harder, almost pinched. His dark hair is flecked with gray and combed back extravagantly. He’s an overly proud man—I knew that even before his failing firm was being torn from his clutches.
He glares down the table at Jack. Jack doesn't seem to notice. A lithe, clean-cut man about Jack's age in an incredibly sharp navy suit comes in and sits near the middle of the table. Jake Compton, one of the Amontillados’ lawyers. Hector is surrounded by a half dozen of his own people—all older white men. They remind me of buzzards.
Hector puts a recorder on the table and hits play without speaking. “…my stupid slut of a daughter getting into trouble again following her fucking delusions…” It goes on for a few more lines before he pauses it. I recognize my mother’s voice and blush.
“My mistake, wrong track,” he says with a smirk. Hector Montcrest is a power-hungry man, and—even when that power is being stripped away—he’ll claw bitterly at anything left that he can grab. “Riley’s parents have been very upset at the situation she’s been put in.”
I glance at Jack. He seems entirely unbothered.
“It’s a shame your stupid son put her in it, then, isn’t it?” As if remembering Caleb for the first time, he waves to Compton, who goes out and comes back in with Wyatt. They have Caleb in tow. He looks worn and bedraggled, although I can’t see any sign of physical harm or mistreatment. Caleb just doesn’t do very well when things aren’t going exactly his way.
Hector ignores his son. “Riley’s parents have offered a significant sum of money for her return—well, her father has. Significant, at least, for them.”
“Not worth it,” Jack says.
“A good bargainer would hear the price first.”
Jack shrugs. “She’s not worth any amount. I have all the money I want. I can’t replace her.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could.”
“That’s because you have poor taste.”
Caleb and Hector both stare at me as if even they can see through me to what I've been doing with Jack. To what I've been willingly, wantonly, pleasurably doing with him. I feel as if they can see in my face—as clear as a video—how I've given my body to him.
I don’t give a damn about Caleb, but shame still floods through me. Their eyes judge me, and it makes me shrink. Suddenly I’m embarrassed by my jewels and elegant little dress. I realize that my mother will hear about it from Hector.
“Riley—”
"We're not going to talk about Riley anymore," Jack cuts Hector off. "You claimed you wanted to check on her well-being, and your son's—although obviously you don't really give a damn about her, which is your loss. Now you've seen them. They're well. Sign the papers."
Hector’s veneer of sneering calm breaks. “You can’t just take a man’s—”
“I can take anything I like. You built a little kingdom of lies. You stole from a lot of people and ruined a lot of lives. And then a bigger bad guy came and took it away from you. See it as cosmic justice, if that helps. Or just see it as the gears turning. I don’t really care. Sign the papers. I’m done wasting time with you.”
“You can’t just take a man’s fiancée!” Hector tries.
“Ex-fiancée. And sure I can. I’ve already done it. Your company is mine. Riley is mine. Caleb will be returned to you when the deal is done and the papers processed. The negotiation’s over. That’s all we need to say.”
“I—”
"Sign the papers." And this time there's something in Jack's voice that scares even Hector, safely seated in his little boardroom in his little building. And just like that, the meeting's over. Hector cracks. He signs the papers. Compton gathers them up and heads out. Wyatt takes Caleb and leads him out.
Caleb stops at the door. He looks like a petulant child to me, full of anger at the world not treating him as special anymore. He doesn’t have anywhere to direct it but me.
“What have you done?” he spits out. “What have you done, Riley?” And for all the reasons I have for why it’s Caleb who’s wronged me, his words still fill me with shame. It’s a reminder that I’ve given my body up to Jack, submitted to him, and loved it. I don’t give a damn about Caleb, true, but shame is ingrained in me all the same.
My body’s clean, but my soul feels like it’s weighed down by a layer of grime. I’m exhausted. Everything feels wrong. I’ve been humiliated in front of my family. I feel like I’ve made every wrong decision and given into every terrible urge over the last weeks. Embarrassment sits and pulsates like some dark, living stone at the core of me. Hector knows what I’ve done. My hateful mother knows what I’ve done. I can feel their judgment as if they were right here, jeering at me. I feel like a silly, stupid woman filled with nothing but delusions.
We return to the San Sorreno and I wander away towards my room.
"Riley." Jack's voice stops me in my tracks. I hang my head. I don't want to turn and face him. "Did I give you permission to walk away?"
“Jack, please. I can’t…I just can’t right now. I don’t want to break the contract. But please, I just can’t.” None of it holds any excitement. I just feel wrong and foolish, like a girl caught doing something dirty by her parents and scolded for it. All I have is shame.
Jack doesn’t seem to care. He repeats himself. “Did I give you permission to walk away?”
“No.”
“‘No’ what?”
“No, Sir.” Obeying him seems to send a charge through me. I straighten my spine by habit.
“Where are your hands supposed to be when you’re addressing me?” We had fallen into more casual interaction as we became familiar with each other. Jack’s forcing the formality back into my submission. I know the answer.
“Behind my back, Sir.”
“Why aren’t they there?”
I clasp my hands behind my back. It still feels wrong. I don’t feel a thrill or any arousal like before. My body feels cold as stone. All I can think about is Hector’s judgmental stare and the disdainful, judgmental tone of my mother over the recording.
“Arch your back more, pop your ass out, and present for me properly. Stop messing around.” His voice is stern. It compels me to obey and makes it clear none of my backtalk or excuses will be permitted. I do it.
“Good girl. Now get on your knees and crawl to my bed.”
“Jack, please…” Shame rises in me at the thought of doing something so slutty and lewd right now.
He steps up to me and his hand wraps around my neck, choking me gently but firmly. “Did you just disobey one of my orders?” he growls quietly into my ear. His other hand reaches down. He massages my bottom roughly through my little dress, and my words catch in my throat as the faintest gasp.
Like a vine growing through stone, the smallest tendril of desire splits the cold deadness in me. It’s so faint that I can barely feel it, but it’s there.
“Answer the question,” he growls. His voice is all anger and dominance. It scares me. And that excites me.
“Yes, Sir!” I gasp.
He spins me to face him, and in one violent motion he rips the dress open. My pale breasts spill out.
“Jack!” It’s such an expensive dress.
“I don’t give a fuck about this dress. It’s hiding the thing I want from me. The only thing I give a fuck about is your fucking body.” And he pulls me in and kisses me rough and hard. His stubble scratches against my soft skin. His lips and tongue suck and probe me, then he throws me over his shoulder, carries me to his room, and tosses me onto his bed.
“Please…please…I just can’t right now—everyone…everyone knows what I’ve been doing with you…”
He puts his hands back on my throat and bottom.
“Whose is this?” he asks, squeezing my butt roughly. “Does it belong to Caleb? Or Hector?”
“No, Sir.”
“Who does your bottom belong to?”
“You, Sir. It belongs to you.” As I say it, it feels true.
“Who does your gorgeous body belong to?”
“You, Sir.”
“Say my name.”
“It belongs to Jack Turner,” I say, and another tendril of arousal rises up within me. The faintest warmth and tension starts to seep into my body.
"You belong to me. This body," he says and tears the dress the rest of the way off of me like tissue paper, "is mine. You are mine. And you shouldn't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks about you. Do you know the only opinions you should care about? Yours and mine. Damn the world."
I lay before him, naked except for rubies, heels, and a little black g-string. My heart is starting to race. I feel like the prize of some violent king.
“You’re foolish to believe the idiotic things they think about you. Now I have to punish you for being a stupid little girl.”
The warmth and tension are spreading. They're not tendrils now. It's like a swelling wave, pressing out the cold. It emanates from between my legs, but the warmth feels as if it's coming from my heart, too. I'm getting turned on by Jack's rough, dominant treatment. But it's more than that. I realize that he's playing a game with me—putting on this dominant aspect to draw me out again, to make me feel better. He's putting on this whole heightened act because he cares about me. Because he's attentive to me. Because he could see how dreadful they made me feel.
The faintest smile flickers across my mouth.
“Do you think this is a game?” he asks sternly. And we both know that it is. I set my face into a serious expression.
“No, Sir!”
“Are you going to take your punishment like a good girl?”
“Yes, Sir!”
I crawl across his lap and get spanked in my rubies and heels until I’m drenched in sweat and trembling in his arms. I’m not sure if anyone in the world knows how to spank a woman as well as Jack. He knows just where to touch, just how hard, just how much. He always knows just when to pause and rub it in—when to turn the sting into wonderful pleasure and fill me with arousal.
By the end of it, I'm blushing and wet. My thighs and bottom are bright red. "Please, please, Sir!" I beg almost joyfully. "I'm not sure I can take any more!"
“That’s not up to you, is it?”
“No, Sir.”
“If you can’t take anymore, then you’ll have to get another punishment, won’t you?”
“Yes, Sir!” I say, trying to keep the elation out of my voice. The dreadful meeting feels far away now. I’m lost in the distraction and delight of our bodies.
“What else can you offer me to punish?” He rubs and squeezes my bottom as we talk and it makes it nearly impossible for me to concentrate.
“You…you could punish my pussy, sir. You could fuck my pussy.” I thrill at saying the dirty words aloud.
“Do you think you deserve to get fucked?”
“Yes, Sir. Since I’ve been very bad…”
Jack doesn’t need any encouragement. He flips me onto my back. I only have the little black g-string protecting my delicate mound from him. His clothes are off in a moment. He tears the little panties away and without hesitation plunges into me.
We just fit. It just feels right. It feels more natural having Jack’s enormous size in me than it does being empty. It feels as if we were meant to fit together. I’m so wet that he slides in and out of me easily. The stretch, the depth—it all just feels almost unbearably good.
He dips his head and bites my breasts and nipples, and I gasp and moan. He has no intention of teasing me today. He pounds my pussy with long, full strokes and twists his hand down, rubbing my clit—that supremely sensitive, throbbing spot—thoroughly and directly.
I don’t stand a chance.
The warmth and tension quickly build to maddening levels and then release and blossom within me. I nearly sob from how incredible it feels. I wasn’t prepared for him to take me so hard and so fast and so thoroughly. He presses his lips to mine, muffling my moans. I explode on his cock, trembling and writhing beneath him.
He holds me tight to him and keeps pounding me until I’m begging him to stop from how tender I am, and he does. He rolls to the side and wraps me in his arms. I curl up close to him, still filled with his incredible size.
I drift away in post-orgasmic bliss and don’t come back for a long time.
But he’s not done with me. Again, his stamina seems limitless. He fucks me again and again and again. I didn’t know it was possible for me to orgasm so much. Finally, his cock throbs and erupts deep inside of me, filling me with his seed. It feels warm and wonderful. I’m left exhausted.
I’ve just done something filthy, but I don’t feel grimy anymore. I feel clean, light, and new. He holds me in his arms and whispers sweet, warm things in my ear. We lie like that for a long, long time, and for a moment, I’m able to forget about the world and all the reasons why I can never really have Jack Turner, and he can never really have me.
For a while, I’m simply happy in his arms.
I wake up a few hours later. "Come on," Jack says and leads me out of the bed. He takes me down to the basement of the penthouse.
“You don’t have some Hannibal Lecter torture chamber down here, do you?”
“Hannibal didn’t have a torture chamber.”
“What a comforting answer.”
It's not a torture chamber, though. He leads me to a shooting gallery—his own private training room deep below the city. A row of targets stands at the far end of the room. Jack takes a black handgun out of a locker and offers it to me.
“I can’t let you actually shoot Hector or Caleb, but we can pretend at least.”
I feel like I should say, “no.” But violence against the Montcrests sounds exceptionally appealing. I wrap my fingers around the handle and accept the gun.
I point it at him. “I thought you were smart enough to not arm your own kidnapping victims.”
He smiles. “We both know you’re smart enough not to pull the trigger. I think, at least. I guess I’m about to find out.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Jack shows me how to stand, hold the gun, undo the safety, load a clip, chamber a round, and fire it.
I squeeze the trigger and the gun cracks and kicks in my hand. It feels really good. It feels like power. I squeeze off another shot and another.
“Empty the clip,” Jack offers, and I do it, firing as fast as I can. Every shot misses the target, but I figure it wasn’t a bad effort for my first time.
He shows me how to empty it and reload and I fire again. I picture Hector Montcrest’s infuriating face as I fire. It’s sickeningly satisfying. Jack lets me stay as long as I want, and after two hours and a pile of empty clips, I’m starting to hit the target every once in a while.
“Can I do this again?”
“Whenever you like—just ask Benjy or Christie to bring you down. And don’t shoot them, please. If you’re going to shoot someone and try for an escape, I’d prefer it was me. I’d be overwhelmed with guilt if you shot Benjy—he’d never even see it coming.”
“I won’t shoot Benjy, I promise.”
Jack kisses me and takes the gun away. I let him. My body feels on fire again, and he grabs me and gropes me. Jack roughly throws me over his shoulder and I gasp.
He takes me back up to his bed and tears away my clothes.
He doesn’t let me go for hours. I love every minute of it.
Jack finally has to get up, wash, and dress. He looks at me, lying naked in his bed, with a longing I actually believe.
“I have to go, maybe for a few days—I have business upstate.”
I know what that means. Business is violence—some battle in his war for control of the city. I know that when he gets back, our time will almost be up—we’re approaching the point where I have to be given over to Daemon. Still, I ask.
“What business?”
He’s quiet for a long time and I think he’s not going to answer me, but then he says, “I think I’m going to have to kill a man. A man I know.”
“Why?”
“Because he fell in love.”
If he’s trying to get my attention, it worked. “What the hell does that mean?”
He pauses again, considering how much to tell me. “There’s this little, dilapidated town upstate on the edge of this little, dilapidated city. Black Pines, right outside of Eldora. There’s not much to do up there. There’s a lot of poor people and a lot of heroin. The place is Amontillado territory. Each week, at the back of this bowling alley in Black Pines, all the high rollers from the city get together and gamble—politicians, developers, Mafiosos—the handful of guys who wheel and deal with each other to suck the money out of Eldora.” Jack ties his tie in a perfect full-Windsor knot without looking in the mirror.
“Now, the Amontillados don’t run the poker game. It’s organized and controlled by the Vilkorov syndicate. They’re our rivals, but we do it as a gesture of good faith—let them run a game on our territory. Everyone’s happy. The high rollers get their game, the Vilkorovs get respect from them for running it, and we get respect from both for letting it happen. But about two weeks ago, two idiots decide to rob the game.”
“Who could possibly be dumb enough to rob a game like that?”
“Some guy and some girl. Really desperate people.”
“Isn’t there security at these things?”
“Yeah, but the Vilkorov’s fucked up. To make everyone feel safe—neutral ground, you know?—all the players and their guys have to turn over their guns before they play. Then the Vilkorovs provide security for everyone with their own guys. But they just get lazy the night of the robbery. They don’t have enough guys, and the guys there aren’t paying attention. I mean, who would be a crazy and dumb enough to rob a game like that, right?”
“How much did they steal?”
“Between robbing the pot and everyone in the room? Six million dollars.”
“That’s absurd!” Even though Caleb was doing the same, stupid thing, I still can’t quite understand throwing money around like that.
“One of my guys, Leon, is running the game that night—filling in as another goodwill gesture to the Vilkorovs. He sees the whole thing—gets shot, actually, during the robbery—but he’s really strong and he’s back on his feet quickly. I went up about two weeks ago, checked things out, and put him on the case.
“Daemon wants us to get the money back first, then hand it over. It’s bad optics, someone robbing a game on our territory. It makes us look weak. Makes us lose respect. We can’t have that. Daemon thinks that if the Vilkorovs get the money first they’ll hold it over us. Plus, those fascists that you got to meet at Club Six—New Dawn—have started operating around Black Pines, and they’re going to be sticking their fingers in things once they hear about the money.
“Leon’s job is simple: find the thieves, kill them, and bring the money back. Except it’s not that simple—the guy has skipped town by the time Leon tracks down who it is, but he gets his hands on the girl. Leon keeps her for a while, tries to break her down, tries to use her as ransom to lure her boyfriend back.”
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know, it’s not over yet. Leon’s finally set up a meeting with the boyfriend, but it feels like something’s off. Things just feel wrong to me. I’m worried that the Vilkorovs or New Dawn know about it and are going to show up and try to take the money themselves. And I’m worried that Leon isn’t going to hand the girl over.”
“Because he’s in love?”
“Yeah.”
"How could you possibly know that?"
Because I’m in love with you and I can recognize the same thing in him. “Intuition, I guess.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Picture that you’re Leon. You have a good life. You’re respected by everyone around you; you have power, money, women—anything you want. All you have to do is hand over one stupid, grimy girl from a trailer park in the back end of Black Pines. Leon’s good looking. He’s smooth. He could have any woman he wants. If he hands over this girl he gets even more money and respect. He gets to go smoothly back to his life of complete satisfaction and decadence where he can have anything he wants. If he hands over the girl, the Vilkorovs are going to kill her. If he keeps her, I’m going to have to kill them both. She’s going to die either way. People don’t just get away with stealing six million dollars from the mob. That doesn’t go unanswered. There are costs. So what does he do? Does he hand her over? How far will a man go for love?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s what will decide what I have to do.”
“You can’t just let them go?” It comes out as a plea.
“If I let him go, then I have to face the consequences from Daemon and the Vilkorovs. I have to come up with a lie and cover it up. I have to suffer a dozen different things. Do you think I believe in love enough to spare two people because of it?”
I bite my lip. I wish he did. There’s a sadness between us over the inevitability of the whole thing. I can’t think of anything to say. Jack leans over his bed and kisses me, then lifts me and carries me to my room, like a knight carrying his princess.
“Jack, please don’t kill that man. Please don’t kill that girl. Let them go.” He kisses me one more time, the longing palpable in his lips, and then he’s gone.