Torment Me (Rough Love Part One) (22 page)

As black as hell, as dark as night...

“Chere.” Simon’s voice drew me from my thoughts. “We’re going out to a club. Want to come?”

He said it in a surly tone, like he hoped I wouldn’t. Tough shit. They were all off their faces, and I didn’t want him going out without a chaperone. He was manic and ratcheting up. He’d made a lot of money tonight—and he knew he’d made money. I was afraid he’d do something stupid if I didn’t stay with him.

My feet hurt from the Fendi shoes, it was a hot, sticky night, and I had to chaperone wacked out artists and posers around the Meatpacking District.
Love lies.
I was so miserable.
Love lies.
I wanted to go home.

I pushed through his cabal of friends to take Simon’s hand. He smiled down at me, high and happy. “Do you want to dance? Let’s go dancing.”

One of his friends led us to an underground disco, one of those secret-knock, dank-stairwell types of places. It was a cement box with jet-engine level rave music. Simon and his friends surged onto the dance floor while I stared up at the crumbling concrete ceiling and gauged the likelihood of it burying us alive. Wouldn’t that be a fitting end to my life, being buried alive? I already felt buried alive.
Your life must be miserable
, W had said.

I wish I’d drunk that champagne now. I wish I’d drunk a whole bottle of champagne so this might be more bearable. I looked around for a bar but there was no bar here, nothing so civilized as that. People brought in whatever they needed to get altered. I saw pills exchange hands, clusters of addicts using needles in the corners. I thought I saw someone against the back wall smoking crack. Simon jerked and jumped in the middle of the crowd. Rachel was near him, smiling up at him. He was surrounded by his adoring posse. I was extraneous here.

What would it take to cross the ever-widening distance between us? I was afraid it would take pills. Needles. A crack pipe. I’d grown up with addicts, and I’d always sworn I wouldn’t be one, but standing alone in the middle of hundreds of blissed out people, with my ears hurting, and my heart hurting, I wanted drugs. I wanted to sink down in oblivion and never rise again.
Love lies.

Love dies.

Someone shrieked in time with the music, an ear-splitting noise that set me on edge. The person next to me reeked of body odor and the beats were endless,
duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh,
over and over to oblivion. My feet throbbed in time to jackhammering rave music, but I couldn’t sit down anywhere or I’d never get the filth off.

I watched Simon on the dance floor, his long hair bobbing, his eyes like deep, black holes in his head. He thrust his hands in the air, waving his arms. His cuffs fell down almost to his elbow. His wrists were so thin. When had he gotten so thin? He was so frail, but I couldn’t shelter him anymore. I had to get out of here before I lost my mind.

I turned and headed back the way we’d come in. Let his friends get him home. Or better yet, let them all die here in this concrete rave death box. Let him bury himself here with the people who idolized him while slowly killing him. I didn’t care.

I covered my ears and pushed my way to the exit. The doorman laughed at me, but it didn’t matter. I knew, finally, that I was doing the right thing. It wasn’t his friends killing him. It was me. I was killing him by letting him kill himself.

No, that couldn’t be right. My conscience was in knots. It wasn’t my fault. It was his. Wasn’t it?

After the stultifying stench inside the club, the humid night air felt cool and cleansing. I tottered down the block. No cabs. I was too tired for this. Fuck it. I was going to sit down and rest, and if any of the jacked-up night crawlers around me tried to mess with me, they’d get a Fendi heel in the eye socket. I was done with this shit. I found a spot free of litter and vomit and planted my ass on the sidewalk, and laid my head against the rough stone wall behind me.

Love lies.
W had done everything in his power to show me I was a fuck-up, that my thing with Simon was lame and untenable. Not that it was any of his business. I pressed a fist against my heart. What was I feeling? Tears burned behind my eyes, and I wanted W. I needed W. I needed him to hurt me and punish me, and be really
real
with me.

I fumbled in my bag for my phone. I had his number from when he’d called me. I’d never tried to use it, for obvious reasons, and now that I needed to use it, I knew it wouldn’t work. He would never have connected us like that, and given me a way to bother him when he didn’t want to be bothered. I called anyway, held the phone to my ear and listened to the whole “this number is not in service” spiel before I shut it off.

I thought for a moment, and then I dialed Henry. When it went to voicemail the first time, I dialed again.

“Geez, Chere,” he said by way of greeting. “It’s four-thirty in the morning. What do you want?”

“I want to know...” My voice wobbled. I was losing it. I couldn’t ask Henry for W’s phone number. That was so against the rules.

I heard rustling, a soft groan. “Where are you?”

I looked around Meatpacking, watched cobblestones blurring mustard yellow under the streetlights. Where had everyone gone?

“I’m nowhere, Henry.” My voice sounded steadier now. “I’m nothing. You of all people should understand.”

He sighed. “Are you at home?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to come get you? Are you safe?”

“Tell me who he is.” I was begging. I had to beg, because I wanted W’s number in the worst way. I just wanted to hear his voice. No, that was a lie. I wanted to know where he lived, so I could go see him right now instead of going home to my bleak loft and my bleak life. I was feeling dangerously needy. “It’s just...I’ve been meeting this guy for weeks now, and I don’t know his name. Who is E.E. Cumming?”

“He’s a poet,” Henry replied in a hard voice.

“I’m not talking about the poet. I’m talking about the asshole I see every week.”

“I know who you’re talking about, and you know I can’t share clients’ contact information.”

“Please tell me his name,” I said. “I won’t use it. I won’t look him up. Just tell me his first name.”

“You don’t need his name. You know everything you need to know about him. You know where to show up for the dates, and you obviously know what makes him happy.” He was silent a moment, then he asked, “Are you falling for him? Is that what this is all about?”

“No, I’m not falling for him,” I said, and I sounded like a whiny, needy liar.

“Because if you are, you need to remove yourself from the situation. You know that’s not how this works, and you know...” I could practically see him shaking his head. “You know any love for him wouldn’t be returned. So if you’re falling for him—”

“I’m not!”

“Then why are you calling me at four-thirty in the morning? What do you need?”

His name. His number. Anything about him.
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t need anything. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”

I hung up on Henry. He called back a moment later, but I let it go to voicemail. Fuck him and his accusations. I got up, took off the shoes from hell, and started down the street. Eventually a cab would pick me up, and if one didn’t, then I’d just walk the fuck home, fueled by my frustrated anger.

Even if I was falling in love with W, it wouldn’t matter, because I’d lost faith in love.
Love lies. Love flies.

Love dies.

Why the hell would I want to start that cycle all over again?

Simon and I had a huge fight Tuesday night, when he finally came down from the art opening high. I made the mistake of reminding him of his promises, his plans to go to rehab. His reply was a furious rampage that left his studio—and several of his works—in shambles.

“Is this what you want?” he screamed. “You want me to destroy my career? Give up everything I’ve worked for?”

It was no use reminding him that we’d planned this all along, that he’d promised to take a break after the show to get better. Addicts had no memory, and no reasoning abilities.

His raging turned to shouting, and we engaged in the usual melee, where I called him an addict and he called me a whore, and told me that I was just jealous. “You won’t leave,” he said, when I threatened to break up with him. “You’re too fucking weak to leave.”

I drifted through the Mandarin Oriental’s lobby, still numb from the things Simon and I had said to each other, from the vast emptiness that opened between us each time we tried to communicate. It probably wasn’t the best time to show up for a date with W, but we’d made arrangements, so I wore my black maxi dress for mourning, a pair of black patent pumps, and nothing else. The last thing I needed was a pair of panties setting off my temperamental client.

He opened the door and my heart gave its usual flip as he fixed me in his leonine gaze. He was already shirtless, and his pants were undone. No underwear. That made two of us.

“Hello,” I said.

I couldn’t meet his gaze; it was too intense. I fixed my eyes on his chin, staring at a couple days’ worth of stubble. He had an amazing, stubborn chin.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” His growl drew my gaze to his lips as he yanked me through the door.

He shoved me down with one hand and pushed his pants down to his hips with the other. He was hard in an instant, and buried in my throat. His fingers wrapped around the back of my neck when I tried to jerk away. The maxi dress pooled around my knees, and I kicked off the shoes so the patent finish wouldn’t be ruined by the carpet. I was so numb, so outside myself that those were the things I thought about: whether my skirt was arranged prettily, whether my shoes would get scuffed.

It didn’t take him very long to realize I wasn’t present in that face he violently ravaged. I looked up at him when he smacked my cheek, and I wasn’t there either. I was back in Simon’s studio, watching him rip up a canvas and call me a freak and a whore, and blame me for all his problems.

W pulled out of my mouth and yanked me up by my hair. That finally got through to me, that sharp, screaming pain. He knew the top of my scalp was more sensitive than the sides. He knew all the best ways to hurt me by now. I tried to squirm away and found myself thrown back against the wall.

“Don’t fight me today, damn you. Just let me have you.”

He pinned my legs open with his knee and yanked my dress straps down. Something ripped, a ragged sound to harmonize with my ragged breath. He grabbed my arms, slapped my breasts and pinched my nipples. He shoved his thigh up against my pussy and I cringed from the pressure, but I didn’t pull away.

If he didn’t want the fight, that was fine. I didn’t have a lot of fight left.

“I’m going to fuck the shit out of you,” he said, shoving my dress down over my hips. It fell to the floor, and his fingers were in my pussy, probing me, searching for my spot. I went up on my toes with a moan.

“That’s right. I know you’ve been waiting for this. You’ve been waiting to be fucked and hurt the way you deserve.”

The way you deserve.
Yep. I moaned again, because I felt guilty and shitty and sad. I pushed at his waist and he answered by trapping my wrists and popping my cheek again. “Bad girl,” he said. “You don’t push me away.”

He took his belt from his pants. He smacked me twice on the front of my thighs as I danced and cried in alarm, then he turned me around and struck my ass five times while he muffled my screams with his hand. Next, he grabbed my wrists and wrapped the belt around them. More pain to bring me out of my drifting sadness. I loved him for giving me this pain.

“Stop,” I said, because I knew he would want me to. “Let me go.”

“You don’t fucking want to be let go.” He held the belt with one hand and smacked my ass with the other. Somehow his hand felt way worse than the leather. I shifted on my toes and begged again for him to stop. He put his cheek beside mine.

“I’m not stopping. You’re mine to hurt, to use. Are you my slave?”

How could I be his slave when I didn’t even know his name? “I don’t know,” I cried.

“Yes, you’re my slave. Whenever my hands are on you, you’re my slave, and I’m your Master.” He stopped spanking me and gave the belt a shake. “When we’re together, you’re mine, Chere.”

“I’m not yours,” I said, just to anger him. “I’m only your whore.”

“You’re whatever I say you are, and you damn well better pretend you belong to me.”

This might seem weird, but looking back, I think
that
was the moment I broke up with Simon, there with my cheek to the door, with W’s cock pressed against my spanked ass, and my hands cinched in a belt behind my back. Not that I envisioned some new future “belonging to” W. I wasn’t that stupid.

But that was the moment I realized I felt nothing for Simon anymore, while I felt everything for W. That was the moment I understood that I was falling in love with W, that he was doing all the things Simon wasn’t: accepting me, appreciating me, trying to engage with me.

I never would have said any of this to the man gripping my neck, not even under torture. But that was the moment I admitted everything to myself, that I loved W, and that if I stayed with Simon, it would kill my soul. Two facts—and both of them scared me. Jesus, all of this scared me so bad.

W kicked off his pants, lifted me up and carried me to the bed, and I thought,
what the hell am I going to do now?
How was I going to hide these feelings from him when they were so intense, so strong? Everything inside me felt dangerously close to the surface, like a volcano about to blow. W wouldn’t be into lava. I knew that.

He rolled on a condom. His cock was so hard it scared me. I turned on my side, away from him. “No,” I said, because no had become my word for “
I love you
.”

“You don’t tell me no,” he snapped, which maybe, a little bit, had become his words for “
I love you too
.”

I let him flip me onto my front and mount me while my hands struggled in the belt’s grip. His cock surged into me, driving deep, taking away all my words and willpower. I didn’t want to want him. I didn’t want to have feelings for him, but when he tugged at my wrists and whispered in my ear that I was his
slave
, his
toy
, I had feelings for him.