Brazen (5 page)

I pick up the
hairbrush. It’s a paddle brush, pine with a wide, flat back. As it strikes him
it makes a sound so fierce I almost feel guilty. I go in slow, uneven intervals
and his body bucks with fresh surprise at each spank and his breathing grows
labored and raw. I toss the brush aside and scrape my nails over his reddened
skin. He flinches, muscles tensing.

“Up,” I say,
getting off the bed.

He hikes his
jeans up with a wince and stands dutifully before me.

“Go upstairs
and wait. Leave your shirt.”

He slips each
button free with a torturous slowness. He lets it drop to the floor before he
exits, making me watch the muscles of his back writhe with each graceful step.

I dress in a
cashmere turtleneck and a layered crepe skirt and flats, and I wander upstairs
at my leisure. I pour two glasses of wine and find him in the den, the
television droning softly, reading lamps glowing. He’s watching an old movie on
TV, probably just the last channel I left it tuned to. I hand him the glass.

“Join me,” he
says, as if this were his home.

I glare at
him again but I sit and we drink, and we watch the movie for a few minutes. I
know what’s going to happen between us and it frightens me, so I drink more. He
takes the glasses after a little while and sets them on the coffee table,
ignoring the coasters. I fix this transgression and then he pulls me back into
the cushions and kisses me.

It’s been
forever since I’ve kissed anyone. Since well before the divorce, and even
before the sex dried up in my marriage. My husband and I still fucked long
after we quit bothering to be affectionate toward one another. The last time I
did this, it turned my stomach. This time, it’s wondrous. Behind the wine, I
can taste him.
The faintest trace of salt and some elemental
human flavor.
His hands cradle my jaw, and he’s in charge. He starts
with nips, little bites on my lower lip.
Then suckling.
His tongue traces the seam of my mouth then penetrates—just as it did to my
pussy four nights ago, except this moment is a hundred times more intimate and
personal and raw.

I study his
handsome face with my hands, feeling his cheekbones and his temples, pressing
my thumb against the shallow cleft in his chin, brushing my fingertips over his
closed eyelids.

I pull my
mouth away and ask, “How old are you?”

“How old do
you want me to be?”

“Between
twenty and twenty-eight.”
I’m nervous now, hoping he’ll lie if need be. I study him
harder. He has little signs of wear, a hundred tiny things that combine to
create something the other boys don’t possess.
Dignity.
Experience.
Substance and wisdom.

“I’m going to
disappoint you again,” he says.

“My assistant
is going to get a stern talking-to. Didn’t he check your ID?”

“He did,”
Sean says. He kisses me. “Then he said something about an exodus and said you’d
forgive him.”

“So how old
are
you?”

“Thirty-two,”
he says, and I feel something cold drop into my stomach—danger. He’s young, but
not young enough. It has nothing to do with the fetish, the taboo, the harem,
the
rules. It has everything to do with reality. In reality,
I could never be with a man who’s twelve or fifteen or twenty years younger
than me. It’s
an impossibility
and a relief. That Sean
is only seven years my junior is scary. That I could be seen with him out to
dinner at a restaurant and not be judged is terrifying.

“This isn’t
going to work,” I say. I pull away from him and I feel chilly.

“I wasn’t
suggesting it would.”

“What do you
want from me?” I ask again.
“From this?”
I wave my
hand to mean the room, the house, the scenario.
Us.

“What do
you
want from this?”

“I think it’s
pretty obvious.”

“Let me stay
for the evening,” he says, “and I’ll show you what it is you really want. Just
let me stay, and watch you with the others and you’ll see.”

“You watch
and
I’ll
see?”

He nods.

“You’re a
cocky little shit,” I say, and I smile at him, amused. “Let me pour you another
glass.”

* * * * *

By nine
thirty, the boys are all here. Lots of them change into pajamas when they
arrive, and soon the fourth floor is full of young men in low-slung flannel
bottoms, like a fraternity sleepover with funeral parlor etiquette.

Troublemaking
Sean is acting suspiciously well-behaved. He slid out of his jeans as the
festivities began, and he’s sprawled in his boxer briefs in my favorite reading
chair again, looking as if he’s in on some secret. And he must be. How else
could he be here, looking so smug, drinking my wine, watching me with such
disobedient fervor?

His eyes
follow everything. Each time I sink into a new seat beside a new boy, he
watches. There’s a first-timer here tonight—Sean’s replacement. He’s young and
tan and hung like Christmas has come early, and I make sure his legs are spread
wide in Sean’s direction as my hands unwrap the presents. When I order him to
stand so I can kneel and take him in my mouth, I make sure Sean gets our
profiles. I call another boy over and I take turns sampling them. It’s hot, as
hot as it’s ever been, but they have nothing to do with it. Sean’s eyes on me
are ten times more erotic than either of their hard dicks in my mouth. When I
finish them they’re dismissed, and I aim myself toward the sunroom for the next
course.

Sean catches
my sleeve as I pass by his seat, and he whispers, “Save room for dessert.” I
yank my wrist away coldly.

Five boys
came tonight and soon enough, five boys have come. I work my way through the men
on offer until only the uninvited one remains. Sean followed me into the
sunroom, and as the last hired man exits in delirium, he draws my eye from his
perch in the bay window. I wonder what the people in the park make of his
near-naked silhouette from four stories down.

“Follow me,”
I say, and he’s gotten very good at taking this one order. I lead him
downstairs three flights to the center room with no windows, its corners piled
with my photography equipment. I drag a chair in from the parlor and push it
against the bare wall and toss a black drop cloth over it.

“Sit.” I set
up a camera and lights and an umbrella until he’s bathed in the drama his bone
structure demands.

“Sit the way
you do in my den,” I say.
“Like you’re judging me.”

Sean reclines
a bit, casual, and I begin snapping overexposed pictures. Tonight is the last
time I plan to see him, but I want to possess his body long after he’s banished
from my house. He follows my directions through dozens of shots, maybe
hundreds. I capture his face in every emotion, his eyes boring into the lens,
cast down, glancing to the side, closed. He touches himself when I ask, his
hand over his shrouded erection at first, then dipping beneath the cotton. He
holds the waistband down to show the camera then sheds them completely. The
photos will document all of his details—the tendons that stand out along his
throat when he
moans,
the crease in his brow when he’s
so hard and close it must hurt. I record his beautiful back muscles and the
shadows of his shoulder blades, the still-glowing mark on his ass from his
penitence earlier.

“Why do you
think you’re here?” I ask him as I near the end of my project.
His eyes burn into mine through the viewfinder.

“Because I’m
special,” he tells me then he laughs a little and smiles, and I photograph it.

“You think
you’re special?”

“More than
the others,” he says. “None of them have tasted you or kissed you. None of them
will ever fuck you the way I’m going to. And you won’t be able to forget about
me like you can with them.”

“What makes
you so sure?” I ask, and I click the camera off.

“I don’t
know, but I think you feel it too.”

I collapse
the tripod and lights and shoo Sean from the chair so I can fold the drop
cloth. I carry the chair back to the parlor and he follows.

“Where?” he
asks when we reach the second-floor landing.

“My
bedroom.”
We climb another flight.

“How?” he
asks as I close the door behind us.

“Rough. Be
mean and rough.”

He nods once
and then it’s on.

He grabs my
wrist and pulls me with him to the bed. I’m tugged hard onto his lap,
face-to-face, and my skirt rides up as he wraps my legs around his waist. He’s
still naked, still hard as iron, and his strong hands make me ride the thick
length of him. I wish my panties would just catch fire and disintegrate
already, so we could be fucking right this instant.

“Keep that
up,” he tells me, and his hands take my face. His kiss is deep and explicit, as
are the noises that escape him. I ride him and fantasize that he’s inside me.

“Good,” he
moans against my lips, and for a brief moment I’m in charge.

“You better
fuck me right,” I tell him.

“You won’t be
able to walk,” he promises.

He pushes my
sweater up and yanks it over my head. His lips find my nipple through the lace,
sucking until it’s a hard peak then doing the same to the other. His warm hands
squeeze my breasts together and he buries his face between them, taking in the
perfume and the sweat and whatever else he’s after. I reach back and unhook my
bra, dying for the sensation of his wet tongue on my bare skin. He laps and
suckles, greedy, and the pleasure mounts between my thighs, breaching the dam.
My panties are so wet that I’m bathing his bare cock with them. It’s too much.
Too hot.
Too right.
I start to
come, moaning low and harsh. His hands grasp my ass and keep me riding, keep me
coming until he decides I’m done.
Until I’m limp and reeling.

“How do you
want me?” he says, nearly sneering.

“I don’t
care.
Just hard.”

He helps me
to standing, such a selectively courteous gentleman. “I need to get something.”

“No, you
don’t. I have a note from your doctor.”

“You’re on
something?” he asks, stepping close.

“Since
the dawn of time.”

“All right,
then.” His face looms above mine, chest pushing into me. He’s staring me down,
forcing me to walk backward. “Get on your knees.”

I obey.

“Give me what
you gave the others.”

“I don’t
give
them anything,” I say haughtily. “I take—”

“Just suck my
bloody cock,” he says, apparently disinterested in my semantics.

He’s hot and
thick and throbbing when I wrap my fingers around him. His smell makes the
glands in my mouth pucker and sting, anticipating.

“Suck me.”

I lick him
first. I bathe the smooth, taut skin of his head with my tongue and I taste
him.
Heaven.
I look up to find his hooded eyes staring
down at me.

“More.”

I do as he
says.
The first inch then another.
I take half of his
long dick in my mouth and stroke the other half, hard, from the base. He’s
big—bigger than the others—and I revel in the intimidation that tingles its way
down my spine. I listen to his moans and swears, let him pump his hips gently,
and I take what he gives me. He seems so close to the edge, but then he stops.
I’m drunk from him and it feels wrong when he pulls away.

“Turn
around.”

I shuffle in
place until I’m facing the cheval mirror. He angles it just so, and I watch his
reflection fall to its knees. He pushes my skirt up over my hips, yanks the
crotch of my panties to one side. Two fingers plunge deep, finding me still
dripping and swollen from my climax.
So ready.
I watch
his face in the mirror, the tremble in his lips and the narrowing of his eyes,
as though he’s in disbelief.

“Please,” I
say.

“Please
what?”

“Fuck me,” I
beg him.
“Now.
Hard.”

His fingers
thrust deep. “Say my name.”

“Please,
Sean.”

“Again.”

“Fuck me,
Sean. Please.”

He finds the
tiny zipper and jerks my skirt and panties down my thighs and off my calves. I
watch us in the mirror, just two naked strangers, both dying for the same
thing.
Alone together in this empty house on a rainy night.

He guides his
cock between my legs and runs it cruelly up and down my wet lips. I study the
muscle and bone flexing in his hips as he moves, the tight ridges of his
abdomen,
the
hard shapes of his arms as his hands
clamp around my waist.
Strong.
Young, but not like the
others.
More real.
Far more
dangerous.