Punish Me with Kisses (27 page)

She slipped out of his bed at six in the morning, careful not to wake him up. She didn't feel up to a shower and breakfast scene, a rush home to change, then the subway ride back to B&A. She much preferred just to slip away, felt elegant riding uptown alone in a taxi at six-fifteen in the morning when it was still dark, thinking to herself:
I'll run and eat and go to work, and maybe tonight I'll ball again with Mac, and that way I'll keep myself sane and busy, and I won't think about bad things, won't drive myself crazy anymore.

T
here was something very erotic, she thought as she ran in the Park, something stimulating about running without having bathed after sex. She thought of her and Mac's mingled sweat heating up beneath her running suit, steaming up in there. She pulled her sweatshirt open and sniffed; she could smell the aroma of sex.

I wonder
, she asked herself as she rode to work,
does Mac think I'm a great lay
?
Does he think I've got good tits and a terrific ass? Do I appeal to his "offbeat" tastes?

She worked well that day, better than she had since the trip to Maine, and again she thought:
This is the way—to keep busy all the time, to concentrate each moment on what I'm doing. Use sex to obliterate pain. Most important not to brood.

Mac called her in
in
the middle of the afternoon. They talked about some business for a while, then he said: "It was very chic the way you left this morning. You're really a terrific kid."

"So," she said, "I'm a kid. My father calls me 'kiddo.' Jared used to call me 'babe,' and my sister used to call me 'Child.' People always say 'dear' to me in stores—men and women. Am I all that cuddly? I'd really like to know."

"You're very cuddly, Penny," he said. "Want to have dinner tonight?"

They met at a French place this time, a midtown bistro full of people talking and laughing and eating well. The wine was even better than the night before, and again she found him fascinating.

"I'm learning more about publishing by eating with you," she said, "than in a year working at the house."

He liked her, she could tell. She'd proven herself at the office, been cool with him at work. She could see he respected her for that. She liked the idea of being the cool coworker who could turn tempestuous in bed.

This time he didn't ask if she wanted to go home. He simply took her to his apartment, poured out cognacs, then sat beside her and talked. She found his opinions on people at the office biting and astute. ("Doris Gaff—she's making a big plus out of her menopause"; "Ben Gale—living proof that ass-kissing the critics pays off in the end.") When she asked about Lillian Ryan he said: "Personally I find her repulsive, but there's nothing new about that—some of the most successful people are. She's getting by now on sheer pushiness, but she doesn't touch you, Penny, hasn't your depth or class." Then he smiled. "That's what you wanted me to say, isn't it? Well, I hope it makes you feel good. It's true."

They made love as they had the night before, she following his lead. He was less athletic than Jared, but more forceful, she thought, his rhythms more subtle, his movements more efficient—he was a man who used his body to express his will.

"Ever do anything kinky?" he asked afterwards.

"No. Not really," she said.

"Your boyfriend ever suggest anything?"

"Depends on how you define 'kinky,' I guess."

"Well—like being balled in the rear."

She shook her head.

"You've thought about it, though."

She didn't answer, didn't want to admit she'd ever considered anything like that. Then he did something she didn't expect. He spanked her—not hard, just snapped his hands across each of her buttocks very quickly. She jerked around.

"Oh, Mac, I don't think I'm into that."

"Relax." He massaged her. "It's part of the trip for me that your ass be a little pink."

She let him spank her. He did it very lightly. To her total amazement it made her feel good.

"See—you like it. Tell me," his voice insistent, "tell me it turns you on."

"It turns me on," she said obediently, and saying that also made her feel good.

"You're a good girl, Penny. A good little girl. Now turn over again."

He took her in long, slow, agonizingly slow strokes. She could feel the waves surging across her body, felt engulfed, blinded by the power of sex and her response. "God!" she screamed. She felt herself climaxing. "God.
God!
" She gripped onto him. When she came out of it she was bathed in sweat.

"Well," he said, "you do get into it. You're not repressed at all."

"You knew that all along, didn't you, Mac? Tell me how you knew."

"Just a hunch."

T
hat morning she ran five miles in thirty-five minutes, and all the time she kept thinking to herself:
I'm like Suzie, on a father-trip. I like being spanked, punished. What's happening to me? I like it. Why?

The third night he took her to a Japanese restaurant. They sat on
tatami
mats, were kidded by the waitresses, drank sake until they were high. Back at his place he asked if it would turn her on to be tied down while he went down on her. When she said she thought it might, he tied her hands to the headboard, allowing her to writhe and thrash as much as she liked while he tormented her with darting probes of his tongue. She loved it, and afterwards she thought:
Now I know what Suzie felt at that orgy in Great Neck.

They drank their cognacs after sex that night and talked about the psychology of writers. "Basically they want parental love," Mac said, "but you must give it to them subtly, because they're very sensitive, and if they suspect you think of them as children they're apt to get annoyed."

He was congenitally manipulative, she realized, a gamesman who would have done well in the movie business or the diamond business or the rag trade—anywhere he'd chosen to play. He was playing a kind of game with her, too, she thought, though she wasn't sure what his objective was. She was worried that their sex might affect their professional relationship. He was offended when she brought that up.

"Really, Penny, I told you—one thing has nothing to do with the other. I'm editor-in-chief and that's a power trip. What we do here is something else. I'm a sophisticated man. I keep my sex life and publishing life separate. Believe what I say, and please don't worry about it."

She liked him more and more, felt aroused by his kinky sexuality and wondered what sort of a man it was who had to dominate and what sort of a woman she was to crave his domination. She decided it all came down to being released. It didn't matter how one got it on.

He spanked her harder the second time while she lay across his lap, struggling, giggling, kicking the air with her legs. He squeezed the back of her neck while he sat back on one of his leather couches and had her service him on her knees. Sometimes when he lay on top of her he set his teeth in her neck. He held her gently but with the unspoken implication that he'd bite her if she tried to twist away.

Breaking his rule about the separation of work and sex, he told her to write him a memo on B&A stationery telling him a fantasy she'd like him to enact. She thought about it all day, didn't know what to write. Be his slave girl; play a prostitute—everything she could think of sounded silly and trite. Finally she wrote that she wanted to be treated like a little girl, as if she were his daughter and they were having incest. She handed the memo to him in a sealed envelope ("that report you wanted, Mac"). He winked at her. The secretary didn't notice. Late that afternoon she received a letter in the interoffice mail. She went to the ladies room and ripped it open. "OK," he'd scrawled. "Will do this weekend. Mac."

They spent the entire weekend in his apartment. He bought all sorts of cheeses and delicatessen meats and fresh breads and smoked salmon and wonderful wines. They didn't go out for meals, didn't leave the building at all. He called her "little girl." She called him "dad."

"Oh, daddy," she'd say. "what a great big thing you have down there!"

"All the better to skewer you with," he'd reply, "in your virginal little pussy, my dear!"

They laughed a great deal. He showed paternal affection. Sometimes he spanked her a little and told her she was bad and would have to stand in the corner until she improved. At other times he caressed her and told her she was the best little girl in the hole world. When he kissed her good night he implored her to have "sweet dreams."

On Sunday afternoon he broke the spell. "We've gone as far as we should," he said. "It was good for you to live it out."

"I really got into it."

"I saw that you did."

"It was, I don't know—something I've been thinking about a lot."

He walked away from her, went to the bar, and made himself a drink. Sensing he had something important to say she braced herself when he turned around.

"Sex is so complicated, Penny. There're all sorts of fine lines you cross. Perhaps the finest is the one between games and deviations, playing kinky and really getting weird."

"Why are you telling me this, Mac?"

"Because I sense something in you, in myself, too—something that makes me think we could cross that line if we go on.,"

"Are you trying to let me down easy? Is that what this is all about?"

He smiled. "You can put it that way if you like. I'm very fond of you, Penny. I don't want to lead you across any lines. Also I want you to be my assistant, help me with my books. I want things to be tender between us. That might not be possible if we go on."

She was surprised by this sudden termination but delighted by the prospect of the job. And she was grateful to him, too, for sensing her vulnerability and pulling back. "Thank you, Mac," she said. "You're much sweeter than I would have guessed."

A
fter her week-long affair with Roy
MacAllister
, Penny felt relieved. The incest fantasy bothered her. She knew she'd been trying to void her horror of Suzie and her father by satirizing their relationship away. It had been interesting, Mac had found a responsive chord in her, but she didn't want to be kinky. She wanted to feel, to explore, and, like Suzie, to forget. Mac had been an interlude. She was pleased they'd both behaved with style. Now their professional relationship could prosper, and maybe, every so often, they'd get together and ball for fun. She was surprised, too, at how little she missed Jared, how distant and immature he seemed.

But as Christmas neared, Fifth Avenue turned into a parade of Santas ringing bells, the shops filled with holly and tinsel, the days got shorter and the humming of carols could be heard around the corridors at B&A, she found herself growing increasingly morose. Her father called and asked about her coming up to Greenwich for the holidays. She could barely control her voice as she lied to him and told him she couldn't, that she had signed up for a charter to the
Carribean
instead.

"OK, kiddo," he said, "we'll miss you, but I understand. Have a great trip. I don't suppose it helps much but I think you made the right decision about that boy."

Her heart was pounding when she put down the phone. So—he knew. But then, of course, he knew everything. Chapman security kept him informed. In that case, she realized, he'd find out she'd lied about the charter flight.
Well, so what
, she thought.
Let him wonder why I lied.

O
ne night after work she stopped by a local bookshop to browse. Mac had urged her to study the marketing of books, to watch people in bookstores, watch what they picked up and put down and finally bought. "Get the pulse of the marketplace," he'd told her. "Get it into your head so your
hunches'll
be good about titles and dust jacket designs." Now she was taking his advice, watching all this mad Christmas shopping on December 22, and she suddenly thought:
there's no one in my life I want to buy a present for, no one I care enough about.

It was shocking, this realization she had no real friends. She left the store, walked over to Rockefeller Center, stood in the cold with masses of tourists, and stared at the big tree of the City of New York. Cold wind swept down among the great buildings; she pulled up the collar of her coat. Tears came into her eyes as she watched the skaters twirl and dance.