Wild Licks (26 page)

“If I hurt you because my lust drives me to cross your boundaries? I'll never forgive myself, Gwen.”

“You're hurting me
now
,
” I said, my voice starting to shake again, tears blinding me. “With all this talk of throwing away everything, of throwing
me
away!”

He was there suddenly, his arms around me. “I don't want to do that. I don't.”

“Then how do we get past this?” I sobbed, and pressed my face against his shirt. I really thought he'd changed his mind over the past two weeks, that I'd finally proved to him that it could work. But he was right back where he'd started, hating himself deep down for the very thing that I needed so very much from him.

“There's one way we could stay together,” he said, his voice quavering with emotion. “Quit kink.”

“What?” The words shocked me so much I literally pushed him away like he'd changed into a total stranger. I could also hardly breathe. “You can't…you can't…”

He tried to embrace me again and I found myself stepping back.

I saw the anger flare in his eyes, the disbelief that I'd defied him, then the defeat as he realized he could not order me to do anything and still “quit kink.” He zipped his fly instead, settling himself uncomfortably in his too-tight jeans. “That right there, that I'd take a step toward forcing you, was the proof I should not be trusted as a dom.”

“I think that was the proof that you know perfectly well the line between BDSM and being an abusive ass, and
you didn't cross it
,” I said, hugging myself. “If you ever did, you know what? We'd deal with it the same way we'd deal with any other mistakes or hurts in a relationship.”

He shook his head but it was more of a violent shudder than a reply. His eyes were squeezed shut and his jaw clenched.

“Please, Mal,” I said.

“Is that what it would come to? You begging me to hurt you? Tempting me constantly? Trying to entice me into hurting you?”

“You trained me to come from pain!” I cried.

“And it was a mistake!” he roared. “I never should have laid a hand on you. If you really love me, Gwen, then help me to stop.”

I swallowed and my voice came out a rough whisper. “If you really love me, then treat me like I'm not just an addiction you need to kick.”

He pressed his hand to his eyes and took a few deep breaths, then looked at me suddenly. “My coat.” He held out his hand.

I shrugged off the duster and handed it to him.

“What if I told you to suck my cock right now,” he demanded in a low voice as he put the coat on. “All I'd have to do is tell you I agree with you, you're mine, and a minute later I could choke you on this blasted erection.”

“That's…that's probably true,” I said, almost wishing he'd do it. Almost.

“That doesn't seem really fucked up and wrong to you, Gwen?” He adjusted his package like his balls were aching. “That I can snap my fingers and fill your throat with come just because I'm the dom?”

“There's a lot more to it than that, and you know it,” I said, my own anger reddening my face. I put my hands on my bare hips.

“Psychobabble and window dressing,” he said.

“You know what gives you clarity, Mal? Do you remember? Will you fuck me and then we can talk again?”

He shook his head. “Will you quit kink to stay with me, Gwen?”

“That's an impossible question.”

“When a woman doesn't say enthusiastically yes, that means no,” Mal said with a nod. He gave my naked body one last look and before I realized what he was doing, left.

Gone. Out the door. “Mal!”

I pulled the door open and looked into the hallway but he was already out of sight. By the elevator? He was counting on the fact that I wouldn't run after him while stark naked.

Unfortunately, he was right. I ducked back into the room. Where had he hidden my suitcase? In the closet. I dragged it out and hurriedly pulled on a pair of underwear and pants, a shirt, a sweater.

It felt so strange to be wearing clothes after two weeks naked. But even stranger to be wondering what the hell could be going through Mal's mind. A few hours ago I had been certain everything was solid, everything was perfect between us. And right now I didn't know what to think, what to feel. Give up kink? The thing that made us
us
?

I hurried out to the elevator: no sign of Mal. He wasn't in the lobby either. Should I go looking on the street? Had he gone back to that deli to confront those two waiters?

Running through the streets of Montreal at night was not probably the best strategy. I needed help. I went back upstairs and dialed Axel's room.

I walked. Stalked. Strode heedless through the empty streets, half hoping for trouble to present itself, as a violent confrontation would have been welcome just then.

But no attack came. The only trouble was brewing in my own head. How could she not see it? How could she let me do what she did? No: I could not rely on her to protect herself from me. To expect she would, merely placed the blame on her when it belonged squarely with me. The only solution was to stop altogether.

I was the one who could not leave well enough alone. I was the one who could not resist temptation.

Devil child.
That was what my father had called me a very, very long time ago for defying him. Even at the time—eight or nine years old—my thought had been,
You don't know the half of it.

Even Axel didn't know everything. In the years that we were apart, when he had gone back to the States and I was in boarding school? Those had been dark times.

Dark times. When I had hurt others as well as myself. The tattoo on my back largely obscured the scars I had inflicted on myself, in the days when I believed in penance, but they could still be felt.

I looked up and realized my feet had taken me all the way to the recording studio. It was located in an old industrial building that now had offices and art studios in it, and I could see the lights burning several floors up. Our studio's floor.

Curiosity, a desire to get out of the cold, inevitability, all pushed me to go upstairs. I punched the key code on the entry pad and rode the elevator up.

The music that met my ears when the doors opened was familiar, something Axel and I had listened to on repeat for days on end when we were teenagers. Nine Inch Nails.

I looked into the listening room to see who was there and was not wholly surprised to see Axel. The listening room was a conference room with surround-sound speakers, a boardroom table in the middle, and low black leather armchairs along two walls. Axel was at the head of the table, twirling a pen in his fingers. In front of him I recognized one of his old notebooks of lyrics and song ideas.

“Oh, hey, Mal,” he said casually. “What are you doing up at this time of night?”

“I had a fight with Gwen,” I said baldly, and threw myself tiredly into an armchair. “What are you doing here?”

He picked up the remote next to him and cut the music off. “Just trying to figure out if I can really live with some of these songs.”

“What do you mean? I thought we settled on which songs we're using.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, sighing. “I'm having serious second thoughts about whether I can really get up there in front of thousands of people and say some of the things that are in them.”

That didn't strike me as much like Axel at all. “You're the one who has pushed the band's image the most in the kink and fetish direction. You can't be getting prudish all of a sudden.”

He huffed, half laugh, half dismissal. “No, no, no. It's not the sex or kink that's a problem. It's all the…confessional self-loathing.”

“Johns has no problem with the lyrical content,” I pointed out, feeling my hackles starting to rise defensively. Most of the songs that we'd chosen, as it happened, were lyrically mine this time around.

Now Axel did laugh. “As you are fond of saying, Larkin Johns does not get the last word on what is or isn't a Rough song. I don't know, Mal. Maybe it'll be okay. I was just listening back to this old album trying to figure out where the line is. I mean, Trent Reznor really makes the dark self-loathing thing work, but…just…I don't know.”

“Don't know what?” I moved to the table to look at what he had been writing but he closed the book.

“Never mind. I'll…come up with a way to make it work. I guess.”

“Ax, you wouldn't be sitting in the studio at four in the morning if this was a small issue,” I said.

“Well, all right, like this one, ‘Inside.' It's kind of your version of ‘Closer,' isn't it? In the second person, you can kind of read it as just an innuendo, but it doesn't have the uplift of ‘Closer.' It reads as almost serial-killer level self-loathing.”

I shifted uncomfortably in the chair. Axel was finally reading the song as I'd felt it was intended initially, but which I hadn't expected anyone to get. After all, songs like The Police's “Every Breath You Take,” which was actually about a stalker, or R.E.M.'s “The One I Love,” which is about an arsonist, were interpreted by most listeners as tender love ballads.

He leaned forward. “So…is this a bad time to ask about your fight with Gwen?”

I met his eyes. My oldest and best friend. “No. Now is the perfect time. I've decided I'm quitting kink.”

Axel rubbed his eyes and looked at me. “You're what?”

“I asked Gwen to join me in quitting and she refused. I will not be adding her to the list of women I've ruined.”

His jaw moved a couple of times before words finally came out: “
Ruined
is a pretty strong word, Mal.”

“It's the word Camilla used for herself.” I practically winced saying my cousin's name. I didn't even like hearing it out loud.

“You mean the cousin who pretty much cornered you and jumped onto your dick? Tell me again how you ‘ruined' her? I was there, remember.”

“I know. If you hadn't let slip that I wasn't a virgin anymore maybe she would have saved herself.”

“For marriage, you mean?”

“Yes. I don't place any value on that rubbish but she—and her parents—certainly did.”

“She's happily married and not even to some dickwad duke or something,” Axel said with a shrug. “So maybe you did her a favor by ‘ruining' her suitability to marry a prudish aristocrat.”

“How do you know that?”

“Don't be thick, Mal. Social media. I checked her Facebook just the other day.”

Axel was the type to friend everyone he ever met. “Just coincidentally?”

“Yes, it's a total coincidence I happened to look her up just when you need your head pried out of your ass. Listen. She's running a successful art gallery in London. Just finished photographing a whole series of nude self-portraits in famous British historical sites. Seriously, Mal. You might have been the spindle Cinderella pricked her finger on but it didn't put her to sleep. It woke her up. Camilla knew perfectly well what she was doing seducing you.”

“Fine. Maybe things worked out for her. That doesn't mean I'm blameless. And there are others.”

“I don't exactly see them lining up outside with torches and pitchforks.”

“But you should.”

Axel flipped to the back of his notebook where there was a pocket for loose sheets and pulled out several in my handwriting. Some of them were quite old. He flipped through them. “I don't know why I didn't see this theme before, but now it's really coming clear. You see yourself as a monster.”

I stared at him. “You know I do.”

He shook his head. “When I said Dracula was a phase you were going through, I was only kidding.”

“It's not only Dracula, Ax. Think about it. The kinky one is always the villain. In every story.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but I could see his eyes drifting as he tried to come up with counterexamples and could find none. From Catwoman to Baron Harkonnen to Zod. “Jeez. In the movies the kinky villain is always British, too. What is up with that?”

“Perhaps it reflects an inner truth,” I said.

He laughed. “Or perhaps you've taken it entirely too much to heart. I mean, I know we all need role models, but Mal—”

I stood up, too discomfited by his flippant conclusions about my inner angst to subject myself to them any longer.

He stood, too, and caught me by the arm. “Listen. I know I don't sound serious, but I am. Just because the only representations of kink and desire you've ever seen are negative, are evil, doesn't make you evil. I
know
you.”

“This isn't some facile air I fancy,” I said, shrugging free.

“I know. Look, I remember us being ten years old and even then you were talking about the Need.”

My blood ran cold. I didn't recall actually confessing that to him. “I told you about that?”

“You did. I let you hang me upside down from an apple tree and pelt me with apples until I begged you to stop.”

I sat back down, my legs suddenly nerveless. “I don't even remember that.”

“After you let me down,
you
were the one who cried, which made no sense to me at all. I wasn't actually hurt. I was quite proud of myself, actually.” He made a fist like he was showing off his biceps. “But you told me you thought you were
possessed
, like in some book you'd read.”

I had no memory of this. Had I meant what I said or had that been a story, too? “Did you read the book? Did I lend it to you?”

“You did, but I didn't really get into it the way you did. I'd forgotten all about it until we saw that film premiere.” He sat down beside me again. “Listen, you think you want to quit kink? That's like gay people thinking they can be cured of homosexuality.”