Pomegranate wine and nothing else.

No opium, no LSD, no mushrooms, nothing.

Mona couldn’t believe it. A few days after her panicked trip to a doctor, she got the call with her test results. There had been no drugs in her system, none at all. Only alcohol, and not even enough of it to make a dent in her senses.

She thanked the nurse who called. The woman sounded concerned, suggested Mona talk to a police officer if she believed someone had tried to drug her. Or perhaps a therapist if her drinking was causing her to black out.

Mona drank little, and when she did it was rarely enough to get drunk. And what would she tell the police if she did call them? She’d agreed to whore herself to a man without a last name who paid her in artwork? That he’d given her a glass of pomegranate wine full of an untraceable hallucinogenic and somehow he’d made her believe she was chained to a boulder in a sacred forest being sexually sacrificed to a cloaked and hooded Minotaur so much larger than any man?

She’d be in a mental hospital by lunch.

A week after that night, Mona went hunting and tracked down pomegranate wine in a specialty liquor store. Alone at her apartment, she drank a glass of it on an empty stomach. It was delicious, yes, sweet and tart, but it did nothing but give her the typical buzz any glass of red wine would. Malcolm had claimed pomegranates had special properties, but when she researched the fruit she found nowhere that claimed it could cause hallucinations, even when fermented.

One line about pomegranates did catch her eye, however. The Greeks called it "the fruit of the dead,” and was once believed to have come from the veins of the Greek god Adonis. Pomegranate, the only fruit that grew in Hades. Myth and legend. Pomegranate wine would not have made her seen what she had seen, do what she had done, enjoy what she had enjoyed. Something else was at play. But what?

After their fight, Malcolm made no attempts to see her or contact her in any way. She thought he wasn’t even going to pay her for their encounter until she came to the gallery three weeks after that bizarre red-cloaked night and found an empty red wine bottle on her desk, the cork pushed back inside the mouth. She took the cork out, not wanting to know what Malcolm had left for her. She turned the bottle over and the white card pieces fluttered out. He’d come here while she was gone, gathered them up and put them into the bottle. What did it mean? Was he trying to tell her again that she’d promised him carte blanche? She remembered their first night together. He’d used her glass water bottle inside her as a dildo, fucking her with it. She’d called it perverse and he’d teased her that it could be worse, he could have used a wine bottle.

That’s what the message meant. It could have been worse.

In anger, she gathered every single little scrap of fine white paper in the bottle and dropped it into her wastepaper basket. She could not be bought or cajoled into seeing him again.

It was over.

Underneath the bottle was a linen napkin. She lifted the linen and underneath it was another sketch.

A close-up of a ballerina’s hand, she knew on sight it was a Degas. A beautiful sketch beautifully done. Sebastian would be overjoyed to see it—and her. Oh, he’d be overjoyed to see her again. He’d phoned her twice since they’d gone to the exhibit, and she’d put him off with vague excuses about not feeling well. He’d been sympathetic, if disappointed. She wondered why she told him no. She’d been furious at Malcolm because she’d been certain he’d drugged her. Then she’d learned he likely hadn’t, and she was desperate to find another reason to stay angry at him. He hadn’t raped her. She’d been a willing participant and had agreed to let him do whatever he wanted to her as long as she wasn’t physically harmed. And he hadn’t harmed her physically, not unless she counted have an aching back and swollen vulva the morning after. She told herself he’d made her distrust her own senses, made her question reality, made her think impossible things could and did happen, and that was unforgivable. Because impossible things didn’t happen and if they did they wouldn’t be impossible. If she hadn’t been drugged, then the maze had been real—and so had the clearing in the woods, the coven of priestesses and the horror of the Minotaur who’d copulated with her. She had no proof he’d drugged her. No proof the maze wasn’t real. What was she to believe? That it had happened as she remembered it? No, she refused to believe it. She’d be on the road to madness next.

Once she reconciled herself to never knowing the truth, Mona did her best to put that mad night and all the memories of it behind her. During the day she could occupy herself with work and her constant fears over the gallery’s imminent closing. But at night she dreamed of Malcolm and the beast he’d become and the enormous cock inside her. She would wake up orgasming, wishing to feel the rock under her back once more. Sometimes she even wept. The need to see Malcolm again and spread her legs for him and be taken by him was so strong it left her breathless, reeling, half-sick and miserable. Every night she’d sneak Tou-Tou into her apartment for the sole reason that she could not stand to be alone at night anymore. She passed New Year’s in her bed reading a book and cuddling with Tou-Tou on her chest. The thought of going out and smiling for friends and flirting with strangers made her dizzy. She wanted nothing to do with the world outside her gallery anymore.

Mona couldn’t go on like this forever. She refused to. Every day she came into the gallery fearful of finding a message from Malcolm, more fearful she wouldn’t. A month passed without him returning to put the red velvet choker into a book of art. Then six weeks. Her resolved started to crumble. She felt it breaking down, heard it cracking. But she stayed adamant—she would not give in and forgive Malcolm.

The Degas sketch of the ballerina’s hand waited in a folder in her desk. It felt like a test, somehow. Like Malcolm knew about Sebastian, knew he tempted her.

On a quiet Friday she closed the gallery early and called Sebastian.

"I have something for you,” she said.

"The words every man longs to hear from a beautiful woman.”

"Can you come see it?” she asked, smiling at his voice, so warm and solid and kind.

"Tell me when.”

"Right now,” she said. "I’ll be at my gallery all evening working in the back room. I’ll leave the side door unlocked for you.”

"I’m on my way,” he said. "Then I’m buying you dinner. I won’t take no for an answer. Unless you mean it.”

She laughed softly. "I won’t say no,” she said. She wouldn’t say no to anything.

As soon as she hung up the phone a wave of nervousness washed over her. It was late January and she hadn’t let herself be intimate with any man except Malcolm since June. Malcolm had consumed her life for far too long. She’d stopped going out, stopped dating, stopping seeing her female friends out of fear they’d judge her for Malcolm. She didn’t want to bear their judgment, especially knowing they would have done the same if they only saw him, spent one night with him.

She had to get over Malcolm any way she could. Any way at all.

When Sebastian knocked softly on the door to the back room, she opened it.

She was naked.

He stared at her a long tense moment, only stared. He was handsome as ever. Brown eyes, not black. Brown hair, not black. Tan skin, not pale. He wore a normal suit, not a three-piece—tailored gray trousers, black and gray tie, white shirt and jacket—and he wore it well.

All at once he moved, without warning, taking her in his arms and kissing her. His tongue pushed into her mouth the second she opened it to him. His hands were all over her back and bottom and shoulders. He kissed her so hard he nearly bent her backwards. He turned her and pushed her back to the door and groped her breasts. He dropped his head to her nipple and drew it deep into his mouth, so deep it almost hurt, and she sighed because this was what she’d missed, this was what she craved. Already she was wet, already she wanted him inside her. She told him as much and he looked up at her with surprise. Then he had her by the arm, dragging her to the bed. She hadn’t expected this sort of intensity from Sebastian, but it pleased her to no end that he could be so commanding, so demanding. The bed was made and he didn’t bother to pull the covers back before he pushed her down onto her back by the footboard and climbed on top of her. With his knees he pushed her thighs open while he unzipped his pants and pushed them down his thighs. His penis was hard already and jutting upward out of a thick patch of black hair. She reached for it, needing it, and he pushed her hand aside. She lifted her hips in invitation, and he entered her with a rough stroke. She cried out in relief and joy.

Bliss. The purest bliss. He drove his cock into her with more rough thrusts. It was a thick organ with an upward curve that tickled a tender spot under her navel. He played with her breasts while he fucked her, tugging on the tips, massaging them with his whole hands. Her head lay at the edge of the mattress and each thrust pushed her head further off the bed. She arched her back and the world turned upside down. It was dizzying, being fucked like this, but she relished it. Anything to stop her from thinking of Malcolm. Sebastian didn’t fuck like Malcolm. His penis felt different inside her, and whereas Malcolm made soft dirty grunting sounds during sex, Sebastian stayed completely silent. Even his face was silent, no expression as he rode her hard. She raised her head and watched him fucking her. When he saw her looking so intently, he pulled out of her, grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up. Mona let herself be putty in his hands. He could put her in any position, take her any way he wanted. Sebastian placed her on her hands and knees on the bed, and left her there waiting for him while he stripped naked quickly, discarding his clothes all over the floor in his haste to get back inside her. He took her by the hips and entered her again from behind. His hands cupped her breasts and held them while he rode her with long thrusts. He seemed in no hurry to orgasm and she was pleased he was taking his time inside her. He brought his middle fingers to his lips, licked them and then ran the wet fingertips around and over her nipples. Without asking she knew he’d fantasized about doing just this to her—entering her bare, licking his fingers, fondling her nipples… Mona wanted him to do everything he’d fantasized about doing to her and she told him. He laughed softly at her words, grabbed a handful of her bottom, pinched it hard and then slapped it. The sound rang out in the room. A spank, an ass slap, normal sexual fantasies. No nymphs. No slave auction. No riding crop. No maze, no grove, no Minotaur. It was better like this, this normal human sex without Malcolm’s bizarre fantasies, without the games he played on her body and her mind. Wasn’t it?

Across the back room, Mona saw her and Sebastian’s bodies bound and locked together in the cheval mirror. They looked good together, his tall lean male body curled over her smaller female form. His mouth at her neck. One hand between her legs to caress her clitoris as he slid in and out of her with wet strokes. In the mirror she saw herself on her elbows on the bed, her back arched and Sebastian’s hips pumping into her. She wanted to come but she wanted to watch Sebastian come even more. Her nipples brushed the silk of the bedcovers and tightened painfully again. They wanted sucking but they could wait for their turn.

Mona could tell Sebastian was close. His head fell back and he groaned, the first audible sound he’d made since entering her. His hands held her by the pelvis and he jerked her back against him. Mona took the deep thrusts stoically as his curved cock pounded painfully inside her. At the last moment he pulled out of her, took his shaft in hand, and pumped his semen onto her back. Mona watched it happening in the mirror, the pearly spurts covering her skin, Sebastian’s face contorted into a mask of ecstasy.

He took a few breaths when it was over, then pushed her onto her back again. He buried his face into her pussy and ate her. She writhed underneath his mouth, his tongue delving deep into the tender hollow he’d just fucked. It was beautiful to her, seeing his head between her thighs. She had to force herself not to watch him working so she could concentrate on coming. He lapped at her clitoris and she moaned in pleasure and approval.

Her climax built quickly. She’d needed this for weeks. Mona gripped the covers, almost tearing them with her long, manicured red fingernails as she pulled on them. Sebastian’s tongue was relentless. He didn’t let up at all, not once, until she was screaming from her climax. Her vagina fluttered, grasping at emptiness. She needed to be filled again. Sebastian rose up over her and she saw he was erect again. He started to mount her and she stopped him, smiling, and put him on his back. He let her do it without protest—what man wouldn’t?—and she took the cock in her hand and pushed it into her sex, which was still gasping from the orgasm. She moaned like the whore Malcolm had made her, sliding down the rod, taking every inch of it. With her palms flat on the bed by his shoulders, she worked herself up and down the length of him. Sebastian took both of her breasts in his hands, squeezing them, pulling her down to his mouth to suckle the red and tender tips.

Her writhing and contortions proved too much for Sebastian. His hips bucked under hers only a few times before his head fell back and he came again. She was too close to stop.

"Forgive me,” he said between breaths. "You’re too much for me.”

"I need more.” Her sex ached. It needed pounding.

"What do you need?” he asked.

"Put your fingers in me and fuck me that way,” she said, moving over so he could sit up. She stayed on her hands and knees, spread her thighs, made an offering of her dripping cunt to him. He put two fingers into her hole. It wasn’t enough and she told him so. He fucked her with three fingers, then four. The hand, she told him. The whole hand. In the mirror she saw him start in surprise but he did as she asked, turning his hand and sliding it fully into her. She could sense he didn’t think she could take so much but her body received the hand, enveloped it, and she groaned in relief when it was inside her all the way up the wrist. She spared another glance at Sebastian in the mirror and saw him staring at his arm inside her in fascinated horror. He’d never done this before. Neither had she, but she’d known instinctively she could take it and she had. She reached behind her, grabbed him by the forearm and showed him how to fuck her with his arm.

This was what she needed, total penetration. She rocked her body on Sebastian’s hand, fucking herself, impaling herself, bringing herself to orgasm while he watched her using him. Deep throated groans came out of her as she clawed at the sheets, nearly tearing them. The fist was an immovable object inside her so she moved herself all around, squirming and twisting and contorting herself to make it touch every spot that needed touching. Mona was gone again, lost in the blinding waves of obliterating pleasure. The fist in her was too much to take but too much was what she wanted. She needed the extremities of pleasure and pain. Nothing in the middle would do for her anymore. Malcolm had seen to that.

The climax built to a fever pitch. She could no longer hear her own moaning through the sound of the blood pounding in her ears. Sebastian moved his hand inside her in a gentle spiral that opened her up even more. She came with a sharp single cry. Her interior muscles contracted so hard they forced Sebastian’s hand out of her.

Mona collapsed onto her side and lay there breathing through her nose. Finally, she was spent. But for how long? If Sebastian touched her again she would want him inside her. The aching between her legs was a permanent fixture now. She would have to get used to it.

Sebastian didn’t touch her again. He slid slowly off the bed and found his clothes on the floor. He dressed while she watched. He didn’t speak.

"I’ve horrified you,” she said.

"It’s not that.”

"But it is,” she said. "You can admit it.”

He paused while buttoning his shirt. "I had imagined it differently, that’s all.”

"Did you think I was innocent?”

"No.” He shook his head. "I thought you were...like a girl. I don’t know how to say it.”

"If I’m not like a girl, what am I like?”

"Like an animal.” He didn’t say it like a compliment.

She slowly sat up on the bed and spread her legs wide.

"Your semen is on me and inside me,” she said, using her fingers to hold her labia open. "See? If I’m an animal, you’re a man who fucks animals.”

He glared at her. "You’re a whore, aren’t you? A whore.”

"You knew I was.”

"No, I didn’t. I thought you had a lover and to please you he gave you gifts.”

"He doesn’t give me Degas sketches because I fuck him. I fuck him because he gives me Degas sketches.”

"Show it to me,” he said. "I want to pretend that’s why I came over here.”

She shrugged and stood up.

"It’s in my office,” she said.

"You won’t put on your clothes?”

"The gallery is closed,” she said. "Why should I?”

He followed her to the office. She could see him out of the corner of her eyes trying not to look at her nakedness.

She switched on her desk lamp and placed the sketch before him on the desk. Sebastian studied it a long time without touching it. She saw his pupils dilate and she knew the sketch excited him in a way that fucking her hadn’t nor ever could. He was the sort of man who wanted a woman to be a girl and if she was too carnal, too sexual, a woman who challenged his primacy, his lust would turn quickly to hate. And to think she’d once judged Malcolm for preferring whores over other women. Now she understood why he did. She’d rather spread her legs for the Minotaur again than this sanctimonious man-child.

"It’s a fake,” Sebastian said, standing up straight and crossing his arms over his chest, defiant.

"You’re certain?”

"I am. Dead certain.”

"I see.” She picked up the sketch and made as if to tear it into two pieces. Sebastian lunged and snatched it out of her hand.

"I thought so,” she said, then laughed at him.

He slapped her.

She stared at him in shock. It had barely hurt, barely stung. He seemed as surprised by the slap as she. Mona laughed again.

He reached for her and pushed her down onto the desk on her back. Mona spread her legs for him as he unzipped his trousers. He leaned over her and entered her. She came almost immediately. Her breasts bounced as he rammed her repeatedly, spearing her with his cock right into her core. This was hate, not lust, but it felt all the same to her. He fucked her to punish her, to shame her for being too much for him. He fucked her to punish her for having desires he could never satisfy, needs he could never meet, a hole he could never fill no matter how many times or how hard or how deeply he penetrated it. He gripped the back of her knees and spread her legs further, holding her splayed open on the desk before him. It seemed the entire office shook with the force of their fucking. A book fell off the shelves and landed on the floor. The desk drawers rattled. Even Sebastian lost control enough to grunt with each stabbing thrust into her. She grasped his shoulders to steady herself she came again. Her pussy clamped down on his shaft, tight as a hand, and his body bent like a bow when he felt it. He cried out and orgasmed with her.

When it passed, she released his shoulders and lay passively on the desk. He remained inside her, his head down as if weeping or praying or hiding his shame.

"Again?” she asked, lifting her hips to taunt him.

"You disgust me.” He wrenched himself out of her and straightened his clothes with his back to her. She wasn’t hurt by his words, only disappointed in him. He had desire but no passion. They would never suit and she’d been a fool to think they would.

"I wonder if I’ll have a bruise on my cheek tomorrow,” she said.

She sat up on the desk and crossed her legs to keep the semen from spilling onto the papers underneath her. Probably too late for that.

He turned around. "I shouldn’t have struck you. I’m sorry.”

"I hope you find a fine sweet young virgin someday to marry,” she said. "And I hope she opens her cunt for your brother and your father and your best friend the minute your back is turned.”

She thought he would hit her again, but he didn’t. He only picked up his coat and threw it over his arm.

"The sketch is real,” he said. "You have my word on that.”

"Here, you can have it.” She held it out to him. His eyes widened.

"You don’t mean it,” he said.

"I do.”

"It’s worth thousands. It’s Degas.”

"He’s your favorite, not mine. Take it.”

Slowly he raised his hand and took the sketch from her.

"There,” she said. "Now we’re exactly the same. You fucked me. I paid you. This is how it works.”

His eyes were nearly red with fury. She smiled.

"You are a whore,” he said.

"Not today. Today I’m buying. So what does that make you?”

He left her then without another word.

He took the sketch with him.

Mona came off the desk. She didn’t want to put her clothes on, didn’t want to rejoin the real world. She had tried and failed. The world held nothing for her anymore. She wanted only Malcolm, but she had sent him away, ended their arrangement and she had no idea how to contact him again, how to beg him to come back.

Exhausted, spent, and sorrowful, she walked around to the book on the floor that had fallen while Sebastian had fucked her the final time. Without closing the book, she picked it up and studied the page it had opened to when it fell. The image on the page was of a painting called Der Blutende. "The Bleeding Man.” The date was 1911 and the artist was Viennese painter Max Oppenheimer, a Jewish artist Hitler had labeled a "degenerate,” according to the caption. The painting was of a young man with dark hair. He had some sort of gauzy white garment falling down his thighs, partly revealing his flaccid penis. The man’s body was curved to the side as if he were in agony. His eyes glowed with pain and he held his hands to the center of his chest where blood was spattered and spurting. Did the blood come from his hands? Or from a wound on his chest? Apparently no one knew for sure. But Mona knew from one glance that the beautiful young man was bleeding from his heart, and he had to use his own hands to hold the heart and the blood inside himself.

She touched the man’s face in the painting and loved him. How could she not love such a perfect picture of a broken heart? She wished she could crawl into the painting, hold his naked body to hers, and seal the wound in his chest with her own flesh.

"Malcolm,” she whispered. Was he sending her a message with this painting? Had she broken his heart? Was that what he was trying to tell her?

No. Nonsense. She slammed the book shut and pushed it back onto the shelf. The book had fallen off the shelf because a man had fucked her with all his wounded male pride and the earth shook when a man’s ego was wounded. That was all.

She went into the gallery bathroom and washed Sebastian’s semen out of her and off of her as best she could before returning to the back room. The bed called to her. She pulled back the covers. Sebastian hadn’t exhausted her with sex, but he’d worn her out with his tantrum afterwards. She would sleep and when she woke, she would put it all behind her.

Seconds after her head hit the pillow, she fell deeply into unconsciousness and dreamed she woke and saw Malcolm in the bed at her side. She was happy to see him in her dream, even happier that he was naked. She slid her body on top of his and took his cock inside her. He had his hands on his chest and she tried to move them but he wouldn’t let her.

"I missed you,” she said as she rode him.

He shook his head. "You banished me.”

"I didn’t mean to,” she said. He felt huge inside her and it was a relief to be filled the way she needed. "You scared me.”

"I didn’t hurt you,” he said.

"I thought you had. But you hadn’t.” She touched his face, his lips, looked into his eyes so dark as the nights they shared together. "Come back to me, Malcolm. I forgive you. Forgive me too.”

"I don’t know if I can.”

"Why not?”

"Because of this.” He dropped his hands from his chest to reveal a grotesque hole, black and red and smoking, and blood pumping from a severed artery.

She screamed herself awake.

Mona sat up in the bed. She shook all over. Clenching a pillow to her chest, she rocked back and forth, back and forth, trying to bring herself to her senses.

"Malcolm…” She said his name into the pillow as if she could conjure him with words and wanting.

Was she losing her mind? She almost thought she was. It was the only thing that made sense. Was Malcolm even real? Had she dreamed all of it? No. There were the paintings as proof. The paintings and the etchings and the sketches proved he’d been here. She had to see him again. She would die if she didn’t.

She left the bed and walked into her office, switched on the Tiffany lamp once more. In her coat closet she found a wrap sweater and pulled it on to keep her warm while she worked. She took the wine bottle she’d tossed into the wastepaper basket, uncorked it and dumped the fragments of the white card onto the desk. In her desk drawer she found tape. For the next hour she set about putting the pieces of the white card back together. The ragged tears and porous paper made the task maddeningly difficult but she didn’t stop, not even when Tou-Tou jumped on the desk and scattered some of the pieces. She didn’t know why she did it, only that she had to get a message to Malcolm. How he saw her, she didn’t know. How he watched her, how he seemingly knew she’d gone out with Sebastian to the exhibit…all mysteries. But he watched her, that much she knew. He saw what she did and who she did it with…and he’d see her message.

She had to have him back.

Finally, it was finished. Every piece back in place, taped down so that it looked like a Frankenstein card. She found her clothes and put them on, picked up Tou-Tou and put him in the large leather handbag that doubled as his carrier. She left the card on the bed and went home to her apartment.

There was nothing left to do but wait for him.

That night she dreamt of The Bleeding Man again. In the second dream he died while inside of her and the red was everywhere, on her hands and on her chest and on her mouth as she drank the blood straight from his heart.