Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray (5 page)

Dorian remained speechless, so Helen spoke for him.

“Of course he likes it, Rosemary. Who wouldn't like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you like for it. I must have it.”

Rosemary looked down and sighed.

“Oh, come now, love, you can and shall part with it,” said Helen.

“Yes, I shall part with it,” said Rosemary.

“Good girl!” cheered Helen with mock applause. “Now for the real art in all this painting: the business transaction!”

“Oh, no,” said Rosemary, biting her lip in a way that most infuriated Helen because it was such a pose for attention. “I'm not selling it,” she said. And before Helen could continue, she said, “Nor am I giving it away to anyone. It's not my property, Helen,” she said.

“Whose property is it?”

“Dorian's, of course.”

“He is a very lucky fellow.”

“How sad it is,” murmured Dorian, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was always to be young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world that I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

“You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Rosemary, would you?” Helen scoffed.

“I should object very strongly, Helen.”

“Yes, it would be rather hard lines on your work,” said Helen, laughing.

“This is not a joke!” cried Dorian. “Helen is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

Rosemary turned pale and grabbed Dorian's hand. “Dorian! Dorian!” she cried. “Don't talk like that! I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things, are you? You are finer than any of them!”

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something away from me, and gives something to it. Why did you paint it, Rosemary? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!” He tore his hand away from Rosemary, and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions as if he was praying.

“This is your doing, Helen,” said Rosemary bitterly.

Helen shrugged. “It is the real Dorian Gray—that is all.”

“It is not.”

“If it is not, what have I to do with it?” asked Helen, coyly.

“You should have gone away when I asked you to,” muttered Rosemary.

“I stayed when you asked me.”

“Helen, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both, you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and color? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them.”

Dorian lifted his head from the pillow and, with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, watched Rosemary move to the desk where she stored her utensils. She opened a drawer and dug around, her fingers straying among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes. She pulled out a long knife with a thin blade of lithe steel.

With a stifled sob, Dorian leaped from the couch and, rushing over to Rosemary, tore the knife out of her hand, and flung it to the other end of the studio. “Don't, Rosemary,” he said, regaining his composure. “That would be murder.”

“I'm glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said Rosemary in a hurt tone. “I never thought you would.”

“Appreciate it?” said Dorian. “I am in love with it, Rosemary. It is part of myself. I feel that.”

“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished and framed and sent home,” said Rosemary. She wiped her hands on the rag that hung on her easel. “Then you can do what you like with yourself.”

Helen, relishing the drama, jumped to her feet and clapped.

“Bravo!” she cried, ecstatically. Dorian smiled sheepishly at Helen, much recovered from the moment's theatrics.

“Helen, please,” said Rosemary. “I'm exhausted now. I think it's best that I just retire early. Painting this intensely, for so long, always drains me.” She turned to Dorian with a look of sadness in her eyes that perplexed Helen. “I'm sorry, Dorian. I hope you shall soon excuse me to lie down.”

“We shall,” answered Helen. “We're going to the theater.”

“The theater?” said Dorian and Rosemary in unison. Dorian laughed and shook his head as if he couldn't keep up with this Helen Wotton, but thought it was a fun chase. Rosemary looked as if she could retrieve the knife.

“I entreat you,” Helen said to him.

Dorian hesitated and looked over at Rosemary, who was watching with a mournful look from beside the canvas.

“I must go with Helen,” he said.

“Very well,” said Rosemary.

“Thank you,” he said, and went to her with his hand extended. With apparent reluctance, she gave him hers. He granted it a quick kiss.

“She won't like you the better for going,” said Rosemary suddenly. Then, she urged him in a whisper that was loud enough for Helen to hear: “I beg you not to go.”

Dorian only nodded politely. “Get some rest, dear,” he said and headed for the door. Helen followed. Just as she was exiting, Rosemary ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulder.

“I trust you,” she whispered. Her lovely blue eyes were wild with worry.

Helen wrapped her arms around Rosemary. “I wish I could trust myself,” she whispered into Rosemary's ear, then leaned down and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips, nudging her tongue gently to part them what little way they'd go.

H
elen's driver, Edgar, was a small man with a weathered, alcoholic complexion and permanently chapped lips. He'd started his work with the Wottons as the driver of Helen's husband, Lord Henry Wotton, but was fired after he drunkenly careened the carriage into a tree with Lord Wotton inside. Lord Wotton had not been alone, and the whore—whose mouth was hard at work in his lap at the time of the accident—was thrown out of the cab and left with a broken jaw and the end of a career.

Helen, feeling that Edgar was of some use (he was, after all, loyal, and did, after all, have a tireless tongue that could fleck her cunt for hours), hired him as her own driver. He was in love with her in that worshipful, self-ruining way that gets people killed long before they muster their last breath. He couldn't bear to look her guests in the eye for he knew that, like her husband, Helen took full advantage of her company in the bouncing carriage.

The beautiful Dorian, with the piercing gray eyes and the strong, tall build, must have been a painful sight for the dwarfish driver. He hurried to settle the two inside, then ran around to reclaim his post on the back of the hansom. The horses lunged forward as Helen shouted instructions.

“Edgar, please take us to Regent Street. To Verrey's,” she ordered.

Dorian's eyebrows rose. Verrey's was one of London's more expensive restaurants. And it was miles away.

“Certainly you've been there?” said Helen.

“No,” Dorian said quietly. “No, not yet.”

“Hmm, curious. You know, I really am dying to know your situation. It's clear from your dress and manner that you're hardly a beggar.”

Dorian eyed her suspiciously. “If you already know, why do you ask?”

“To know better,” said Helen, stripping off her gloves. She nestled beside Dorian like a loving sister and grasped his hand. His mouth went rigid in a frown. “I'm really quite common in that I always like to hear the bad news first. Dorian, tell me about your mother.”

Dorian sighed and looked with deep thought out the window. “She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman,” he said at last.

“I imagine her nothing but,” said Helen.

“The bluest eyes you've ever seen, I'm told. She could have married anybody she chose, and plenty of rich and handsome men were mad after her. She had a husband here, in England. They had a daughter together, but she died, I'm told. I don't know. I never met the husband or even learned his name. He loved her more than she loved him, though, of that much I am certain. A true romantic, she left him, and fled to America, which is where she met my father—a penniless young fellow, a mere nobody. He was killed in a duel a few months after I was born. It was an ugly story, one that was never fully divulged to me, but I have picked up scraps of details growing up. I believe that her husband—to whom she was still legally bound—got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult my father in public, paid him to do it, and that the fellow did away with my father as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed up, and my mother soon fell ill and died. My Great-Uncle Kelso arranged for me to be brought to London. Ultimately, he did the right thing by me, and when I came of age, I had a pot of my mother's money waiting for me.”

So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crude as it was, it stirred Helen by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude, and the tyranny of an old, loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It made him more perfect as it were, because behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Helen was overcome with the urge to possess and dominate him, to make this wonderful spirit, this son of Love and Death her own.

She smiled and clutched Dorian's hand tighter. He looked to her for what to feel next. There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To convey one's temperament into another as if it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume—there was a real joy in that.

“Dorian,” she started. “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. When you—”

And here Dorian interrupted Helen, leaping up and kissing her on the mouth. His breath was hot, his tongue was searching. She'd never been kissed with such intensity. Usually, men went through such political steps—they sought the right moment, a certain expression in the damsel's eye. They were careful not to be rough, and fumbled for momentum. They saved their real kisses for whores.

While kissing her, he climbed on top of her, his thumbs digging into her shoulders, pinning her beneath him. His strength was impressive, and if he were to really let go, he could go to marvelous lengths. He was still operating with a good deal of self-restraint, Helen sensed, probably due to the smallness of the carriage, and so she refused to allow him to overpower her. She fought back, slamming him into the door. She circled his tongue with hers, their mouths enmeshed, then she bit down on his lip hard. Harder. A whimper escaped him, brief and muffled. He buried his head in her neck, and fixated there, began to suck with ferocity, rubbing her breasts. Helen tossed her head back and moaned.

“Bite me,” she commanded.

There was a brief moment of hesitation before he sunk his teeth into her, biting as hard as she'd bit his lip, only he didn't let go, keeping his teeth clamped to her neck, while his hands rushed through the complicated affair of undoing her corset, tearing her loose with the one snatch. Helen brought her hands to his scalp and tugged his locks of lush blond hair by the roots. Each time she tugged, he kissed her more forcefully, but when she pulled so hard she felt a hair snap, he slapped her hands away and seized her hair by the bun and yanked it loose. She spread her legs apart, and he pushed himself against her, his cock lunging. She ran her hands down his shirt, popping the buttons. She unfastened his belt and pants and, while fondling his massive erection with both hands, slid her knickers down. All the while, the carriage, gaining speed, bobbed and bounced on the uneven cobblestone.

She sunk to the floor of the carriage where the rocking was more intense. She kept a one-handed massaging grip on his heated, throbbing cock while bringing the other hand to her mouth, where she licked it, pooling spit in her palm. She brought the moistened hand back down his cock and glided her fingers loosely around it with ease. Dorian closed his eyes and moaned in ecstasy. She moved her hand faster, jerking the skin around his cock back and forth, and tightened the pressure of her thumb at the base of his cock. The rhythm intensified, his cock quivered and lunged. Seeing that he would explode into her hand at any moment, Helen abruptly let go.

Dorian gasped and opened his eyes. He glared at her with animal hunger, panting.

“What?” he said. “Why did you—?” His good manners stopped him, so he was unable to complete the sentence.

“Why did I stop rubbing your cock?” asked Helen.

Dorian was silent.

“If you're so eager to come like a schoolboy, why don't you finish the business yourself like a schoolboy would?”

He didn't utter a word, and for what felt like the first time since she was a girl, Helen found herself unable to read the expression on the face before her. There was the let-down, of course, as he held a terrific erection in his agile hands. And there was anger—that she'd taken him this far only to abandon him so close to the end. But there was vacuousness, too. His eyes, so many shades of gray, were strangely devoid of feeling. They bore through her, so hollow and with the power to hollow out everything they set sight on. Helen felt her soul emptying, offering itself to him. The sexual ache in her crotch flared, and dripped warmly on the cool leather seat.

As if possessed, she lifted her skirts and leaped onto him. In a hurry, she fit herself onto him. His cock filled her up. So large, it pushed against the walls of her vagina, probing unexplored zones of pleasure. As she began to grind, she felt a delicious sensation—that if he took full advantage and rammed into her as far as he could, he could break some virgin remnant within her. She straddled him tightly with her thighs and moved slowly up and down. Delight swelled inside her. Dorian held her sternly by the thighs, rocking her back and forth. His eyes rolled into his head, and, moved by a bizarre tenderness toward him, this new creature of pure beauty and the ability to give ungainly pleasure, Helen ran her hands through his hair—a quite unwelcome gesture. Dorian slapped her hand away and held her wrist firmly so she couldn't make such a move again.