Library

Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

Y ou pin me up against the door of the elevator, hips hard against mine, and your hands roam my body, one sliding up to grip my hair and the other stripping me of my clothes. Your mouth crushes mine, but this is not a kiss, this is a demonstration of ownership. Your mouth steals my breath. Your hands steal my will.

Your body erases my thoughts. You are hard against me, giving me no chance of arguing, of hesitating, of pulling away. I am imprisoned by your mastery over my body. You know the buttons to push, and you push them. I am rendered helpless.

You are an incubus.

Somehow, you become naked. I do not remember seeing or feeling you remove your clothes, but I feel your skin against mine. You are not gentle, or slow. You ravage my mouth with yours until I must rip my face away and gasp for breath.

And that is when your hands press down on my shoulders and I am forced to my knees. Your hand is tangled in my hair, and you force my head back. My heart hammers, and I stare up at you, lips parted in shock. This is not the Caleb I know, the man who has possessed my body every night, every day for... for as long as I can remember.

Your penis is an erect shaft in front of my face, thick and veined and plump-headed and as perfect as the rest of you, although I suppose I have no frame of reference, only the knowledge of your body, thus.

"Open your mouth," you command.

I open my mouth. My body obeys, although my mind is numb.

You thrust yourself into my mouth, roughly. I gag. You pull back. Thrust again.

"Is this what you want?" you demand. "The way I treat them?"

Ah. We return to this.

You thrust into my mouth, and I taste flesh, gag as you reach the back of my throat, choke as you push deeper. My eyes water, and my nose touches your belly. I cannot breathe, and my jaw aches, my eyes leak involuntary tears, and I am paralyzed by this, by you, by the ache, the choking of your erection down my throat, and I suck in a breath through my nose.

I do not like this.

I shake my head and try to pull away, but the door is behind my head and I have no escape.

"Is this how you wanted it?" You ask.

I shake my head.

This is starting to feel like violation.

Betrayal.

And then you slide your erection out of my mouth and your fist closes around it and you begin pumping your fist up and down, up and down. One hand in my hair, knotting my locks in your fist.

"You want to take it on the face, don't you? Like Rachel?"

Why are you doing this?

I could cry, but don't.

I watch your hand move in a blur on your shaft, and then your face tightens, your jaw clenches. You point the tip of your penis at my face. You release in silence, lip curled in a sneer.

You come on my face.

It drips hot down my forehead, trickles into my hair. Down my cheek. Splashes hot onto my lips, and I taste salt. Down my chin.

You step back, and I shoot to my feet, fighting sobs. I stand, chest heaving, disgusted, aching in my soul.

And... oh, I hate myself. I loathe myself.

Because I cannot deny the truth: If you had done that without forcing me, I might have liked it. Watching you. If it had been my hand on you instead of your own, if it had been done with any kind of mutuality...

But it wasn't, and I am enraged.

I spit your own semen into your face. "Fuck you, Caleb. You are a pig."

"It's what you wanted." You make no move to wipe away the spittle-tinged semen from your cheek.

"Not to be forced to it!" I shout.

I am seized, spun around, pressed flat against the door, and then you are up against me, and you bend at the knees and slide up and into me. Slowly, gently. Your lips touch my shoulder. The back of my neck, just beneath my hairline. You hold my hair up in a pile on top of my head and kiss my neck, down the curve to my shoulder again. Thrust.

You've already come, but you are either still hard or impossibly hard again already.

"Like this?" Slow, gentle, gliding thrusts, kisses to my neck.

Yes , part of me says.

"No," I growl. Push back, elbow you as hard as I can.

I let you put your penis in my mouth, but then you took more than I was willing to give.

I never said no, did I?

I question everything now. Myself most of all.

I still have your come on my face.

"Tell me to stop, X."

"Stop, Caleb." My voice is calm. I am proud of this, because I am not at all calm.

You release me, back away. Empty, I sag. Brace against the cold silver metal of the elevator door. Chest heaving. Gasping. Tears prickling my eyes. I turn around. Take a step toward you.

I slap you, open handed, as hard as I can. My palm cracks against your face. I slap you again. And again. You make no move to defend yourself.

"That is how I treat them. I do not ask them what they want. I fuck them. I do what I want. I am not gentle. They take it, or they leave. You ... I don't do that with you because you are not like them." Your cheek is red from my slaps.

My spit, your seed, it is smeared on your face, on my hand. We are both of us a mess.

"That's not what I saw with Rachel." I want badly to wipe my face, but I won't give you the satisfaction. "And is that supposed to make what you just did any better?"

"You could have stopped me. You had my cock in your mouth. You could have bitten me. You had both hands free. You could have hit me, punched me, grabbed my balls. Any number of things. You didn't. You just knelt there and took it." You pause for effect. "You liked it."

"Don't you dare turn this back on me, Caleb Indigo."

"Why not... Madame X? Is it not true? Couldn't you have stopped me?"

He's right. I could have. I didn't fight hard enough.

I slam into him, shoving him backward. "Goddamn you, Caleb! Why are you doing this?"

You catch your balance easily, and turn away. Wipe your face with your hand. Dress with your customary precision. "You want me to be the bad guy. So, I'll be the bad guy." When you are clothed, and I, again, am naked, you stare down at me. "And you know deep down you liked it. Maybe you didn't like that I was rougher with you than you would have initially preferred, but you liked it. Same way you liked watching me fuck Rachel. You hate me for that, but I think you hate yourself more for liking it."

I shake my head but cannot find the words to deny it.

You do not quite smile, but there is a ghost of amusement on your icy features. "You don't deny it."

I open my mouth to speak, but I have no words.

And then . . .

You kiss me.

It is gentle.

There is sweetness to it.

You pull away, reach into an inside pocket of your suit coat, withdraw a slippery, silky, maroon necktie. You wipe my face with it, and then you kiss me again.

Do you notice that I do not kiss you back?

I am reeling. Your emotional manipulation has left me exhausted, empty.

You reach into the hip pocket of your slacks, withdraw a slim white rectangle. A cell phone. You hand it to me. "It's yours. I programmed my number into it. Len's, if you need a driver or anything." You glance down at the pile of fabric that is my clothing, my dress, my underwear. There is a small square of folded paper. You bend, retrieve it, unfold it, read it. You toss it, let it flutter back down. Take the phone back, tap at it for a moment. "There. Now you've got his number too. This is me giving you choices."

You hand the phone back, and I take it, still and silent. I am so tired now that I can barely stand upright. You just stare at me, your expression characteristically inscrutable.

"You want to be her?" You point at the square of paper. The name written thereon. "Then be her. Be the immigrant girl."

You turn, open the elevator, step on, insert your key. I am within reach. You palm my hip, tug me to you. Kiss my mouth again, the way you never have before. And then you release me, and I stumble backward.

"You are Isabel, and I am Caleb." You leave off the rest, and somehow that is worse than if you'd said the rest.

As if by leaving off the rest, you are acknowledging the lie. That there was no bad man. That you did not save me. I suddenly want the lie.

I want the lie.

But you only repeat the new truth: "You are Isabel, and I am Caleb."

You twist the key, and the doors close, and I see your frame in a narrowing perspective, until there is just a sliver of you, and then you are gone.

And I am alone with your words.

You are Isabel, and I am Caleb.

Oh, you are cruel. Even if I am her, I am still yours.

I take a shower, a long, scalding shower, and I scrub myself until I am pink and raw, and the water runs cold. I brush my teeth until my gums bleed.

None of that scours away the scrim of ugliness on my skin, or purges the mire from within me.

I fall onto the bed, wrapped in a towel, mind spinning in dizzying circles.

I am Isabel.

You are Caleb.

I am Isabel.

He is Logan.

I am Isabel.

I think of a line from a Bible I once read, in my library, long ago, back before everything changed: "I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway."

I didn't understand those words then, but I do now.

I am an addict, and you are my drug.

I am Isabel.

If I want to be anyone other than the addict, the Caleb-junkie, the no one, the girl on her knees, taking what you give as if it's all I'm worth, then I have to choose someone else to be.

I choose Isabel, a dead immigrant girl I may or may not have once been.

I am Isabel.

Sleep is a long time coming, and when it does claim me, it is with tear tracks drying on my cheeks; the walls echo with the ghosts of my sobs, the specter of X writhes in my soul, and the memory of choking on you is a livid scar across my mind.

Comments

0 Comments
Best Newest

Contents
Settings
  • T
  • T
  • T
  • T
Font

Welcome to FullEpub

Create or log into your account to access terrific novels and protect your data

Don’t Have an account?
Click above to create an account.

lf you continue, you are agreeing to the
Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.