The Pearl Read online

  “But not here,” she said. “In the bedroom. Come with me.”

  With long-legged grace she slid away from him and stood, then patted her thigh and waved for him to get up and follow her.

  He didn’t. The last vestiges of his pride kept him there on the floor. Her words rang in his ear.

  You’re my bird now—my bird in my gilded cage. How does it feel, getting treated like your great-grandfather used to treat his whores?

  What else would you expect from a hundred-grand whore besides perfection?

  When you buy quality, you only cry once…

  If he did this, had sex with her right now, on her terms, these terms, he really was her whore. Selling himself to earn back his great-grandfather’s portrait. Selling himself to keep Charlie in his parents’ good graces. Selling himself because his body was the only currency she would accept.

  Regan came back to him, stood next to him so close he could have rested his forehead on her stomach. Her cunt was inches from his face, hidden by lace and the silk of her robe. He thought he could feel the heat emanating from inside her.

  She dug her hand into his hair and brought his head to rest on her hips.

  “It’s all right,” she said, running her fingers through his hair again. “The first time you sell yourself is always the hardest. Don’t worry, it gets easier. So much easier you’ll wonder why you were ever fool enough to give it away for free. I sold myself and look what I got.” She raised her hands to indicate the penthouse, the art, the hotel, the world. “Come on now, Brat. As the Americans say, you’re on my dime.”

  As cold as her words were, they worked. He rose off the floor. Though she was tall, he was taller. He was still in jeans, she was in her flimsy kimono. He was male, she was female. But as he stood there silently awaiting her next command, it was clear to both of them who was in charge here.

  If he hadn’t been grateful for his military training before, he was now. At the very least, he knew how to follow orders.

  “Three things,” she said. “One. When I want you here, you will be here. When I don’t want you here, you will not be here. Otherwise, you are free to go about your life. Two. I can’t have children, and I haven’t been with anyone but my elderly husband in years, so you don’t have to worry about catching anything, including a baby, from me. So let’s not bother with condoms unless you insist. And three, when you are here, you will do everything I tell you to do, give me everything I want given to me. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Four. Don’t call me ma’am. Oh, and five,” she said, “remember—no one forced you to do this. You could have walked away and let your parents deal with it, but you chose this.” She pointed at herself. “What did you choose?”

  Arthur took a long breath before answering.

  “This,” he said.

  * * *

  He followed her up the staircase and through a red door into the bedroom, which was splendid red and gold from top to bottom. The damask curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows, the wallpaper, the canopy on the enormous four-poster bed—all red and gold. Brass lamps with matching shades cast shadows all around.

  He took in every detail, cataloging the room like he was doing inventory. It was all he could do to avoid thinking about what he was doing here, what was about to happen in this room.

  Arthur didn’t want to think, didn’t want to feel. Because if he thought anything, he might have thought about how drawn to Regan he was. If he felt anything, he might have felt something like excitement. Anticipation. Even, terrifyingly…relief.

  “Stand there,” Regan said, pointing at the floor in front of the fireplace. He waited on the soft plush carpet while she switched one of the bedside lamps off, this one in the shape of a woman holding the moon. The room grew dimmer.

  Outside the rain had picked up again and the wind blew hard against the windows. Regan drew the heavy drapes, but he could still hear the rain, only softer now.

  “Are you warm enough?” asked Regan as she shut the bedroom door.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Comfortable?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “And how are you?”

  “Better,” she said, ignoring his derisive tone. “I’m surprised to find I like having you here, even if you are a brat.”

  “I’d hope you would. It was your idea.”

  “It was, wasn’t it? One of my better ones. Take your clothes off.”

  He took off his shoes and socks, set them on the floor. Then came his trousers and boxer briefs in one push, like ripping off a bandage. And there she stood, watching him do it, staring at him like he was nothing more than a statue in a gallery.

  “You have a perfect body,” she said.

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m never letting an old man touch me again. Nothing but younger men for the rest of my life. Lay down on the bed. In the center.”

  He stared at the golden sheets and red pillows piled high, at the reality of it—undeniable now.

  “Your great-grandfather used to fuck his whores in this bed,” she said, leaning against the post at the foot.

  “Hope you’ve changed the sheets since then.”

  “You’re making jokes because you’re nervous. You don’t have to be. You can put your clothes on and leave. Anytime. All you have to do is say the word.”

  “What word?”

  “No, of course. Lay down on your back in the center of the bed.”

  The shame came rushing back again. If she would just kiss him or drop the ice-queen act for a few seconds… But no. This was what she liked, being in command, in control.

  He might have been doing this for Charlie, but there were worse jobs in the world than letting an incredibly attractive woman use his body.

  He didn’t say no. He didn’t say anything as he stepped from his shed clothes and onto the bed.

  He lay on his back in the center, small pillow under his head. The counterpane was a rich thick brocade and the raised pattern of gold threading pricked against the back of his body. The silk tickled. The fabric was cool, though growing warm quickly. Regan’s eyes were on him, and he felt ridiculous, embarrassed by his erection, his penis hard and dripping, resting on his stomach for all the world to see. What was worse—being hard when you didn’t want to be or not being hard when you needed to be?

  Regan untied a golden cord from the curtains at the foot of the bed. “I wasn’t joking about putting you in a golden cage,” she said, “and tying you to my bedposts.”

  She climbed onto the bed and sat beside him. She beckoned for him to give her his arm, which he did without reluctance. His willpower had been worn down. She wrapped the cord around his wrist with quiet efficiency. Never in his life had he felt more like an object.

  He stared up at the canopy, pretending to care about the intricate red paisley pattern, impossible to see them as anything other than enormous sperm swimming in a sea of gold.

  “Tell me if it ever gets too tight,” she said, threading the cord around a bar in the headboard and wrapping it around his other wrist. “I’ve never actually done this before.”

  “Tied someone to your bed?”

  “Never. Fantasized about it, yes, but first time ever doing it. Not Sir Jack’s cup of tea.”

  He felt an unexpected pang at her confession. That he was her first. He couldn’t say he felt honored, but he did feel…chosen. He’d chosen this, but she’d chosen him.

  As soon as she was finished—as soon as he was trapped and tied down—something changed. Suddenly he was blameless, without agency. He could do nothing wrong because he could do nothing at all. A sweet and easy surrender came over him. Strangely, he felt safe. Though he didn’t understand why he felt this way, he also didn’t feel any urgency to understand. Later, yes. Not now.

  “Comfortable?” she asked.

  He answered honestly this time. “I think so.”

  She sat beside him, stroking his chest,
his stomach. She wrapped her hand around his cock again.

  It felt too good. He wished he didn’t enjoy it so much, but how could he not? Soft hand, firm grip. It had been a long time since he’d had any hand on him but his own.

  She was looking down at him, at her hand stroking him. She smiled as she touched the wetness dripping from the head. “Do you know why they named this place The Pearl?”

  “No idea,” he said. “Was Pearl some famous prostitute back in the day?”

  “Rumor has it they called it The Pearl because of this…” With her fingertip she gathered a drop of his come and held up her hand, displaying the proof of his desire, the pearl of his semen. “Now tell me again why you’re doing this? For you or for Charlie?”

  “For Charlie. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

  “We met because of him, but tell me the truth. If I’d handed the painting right over…you’d still be here, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d be home in my own bed.”

  “Why won’t you admit you like this? Every inch of your body tells me you want this, every part of you but your lying tongue.”

  With a flick of her tongue, she licked the come off the tip of her finger. Arthur grew even harder.

  She smiled at him. “Poor Brat. We’ll get there. Until then, I suppose you’ll simply have to suffer through it.”

  She slipped off the bed and untied her kimono, tossing it over a red wingback chair. He stared at her as she worked her black knickers down her legs. Long shapely legs and smooth firm thighs and at the apex of them, a patch of lustrous brown hair.

  The bed moved as she climbed back onto it and that small vibration was like a shock wave through his body. His heart was pounding hard again, almost through his ribs. She straddled his stomach, her small hands on his chest for balance.

  He wanted to touch her but was glad he couldn’t. If he did touch her, wouldn’t that prove her right, that he wanted this? Not just the sex, but this…submission, this obedience. This eating out of her hand like a pet.

  She bent low and her face came to his, only inches away. She ran her hand through his hair, and he met her eyes. He didn’t mean to, but once their eyes locked there was no unlocking them.

  Her fingers came to his face and caressed his cheek, his chin, his lips. “Do you want to kiss me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe next time I’ll let you.”

  His cock was straining toward her. She was so close he could feel her soft pubic hair tickling his lower stomach. She was warm between her legs. He felt her heat, craved it. She pushed back, her cunt against the tip of his penis and he felt the wetness along the seam of her body. He groaned softly. This made her smile, and it was like he’d won a prize. He knew now that he wanted her to come tonight more than he wanted anything else in the world.

  She moved lightly on top of him, brushing her warm mound against his stiff organ. He wanted to sink inside her, bury himself in her, but other than lifting his hips to seek out more of her, he couldn’t do a thing but wait for her to use him.

  God, he wanted her to use him.

  As if she heard his silent plea, she took him in her hand again, and guided him through her slick folds until the tip of his cock kissed the entrance of her vagina. She was tight. The end was thick, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Apparently she didn’t care about that very much. She pushed down and onto him, forcing the head into her. Arthur watched her closely, her chin lifting and her breasts rising and falling with her breaths, and the little wince around her mouth and her eyes but then came a sound…a murmur of pleasure as she slid herself down onto him. Her body opened to receive him though it was a slow process of sliding up and down the length of him, working it into her.

  Yes, she was wet, wet, and scalding hot inside but narrow. Her inner muscles squeezed around him as her passage enveloped him inch by inch.

  With her hands on his chest for balance, she moved her hips, rising and falling on her knees. Every undulation sent waves of pleasure through him. The heat of her around him, engulfing him…he couldn’t help but move under her, pumping his hips into her. Then they were fucking, really and truly and thoroughly fucking. She wasn’t just fucking him. Even with his hands tied, he was fucking her. He pushed his heels into the bed and lifted his hips, thrusting his cock up and into her from below. Her head fell back, exposing her bare throat. He wanted to lick her from the center of her chest to the tip of her chin until he met her mouth in the hottest kiss in history. That she denied him the kiss made it even hotter. This was pure unadulterated fucking they were doing, without tenderness or emotion. Just the thick inches of his cock spearing her as she rode him.

  Her fingernails dug lightly into his chest as she pumped, slowly at first and then faster. The pressure built in his hips, in his stomach, down the back of his thighs. He strained against the cords on his wrists as she leaned back and grabbed his thigh. Thank God she hadn’t blindfolded him, he thought as he watched his own cock splitting her, disappearing through the soft curls and into that hot little cavern that captured him and held him inside her.

  Two fingers found her own clitoris and she stroked it. Arthur envied those fingers. He wanted to touch her clitoris and her cunt, put his fingers into her and open her up, explore inside of her. But for now he had to be content to lay there and let her ride his cock for her own pleasure. And he was happy to do it as long as her face was flushed like that, a blazing rose, and she kept making those pained sounds of pleasure, those pleased sounds of pain.

  The bedroom was an oven. They were both sweating and slick and their bodies were soon so tightly joined together, sealed like hot wax, that there was no telling where he ended and she began. She ground herself into him, moving her pelvis in tight ovals that let his cock move even deeper into her.

  She opened up completely for him and he felt the tip press against the entrance of her womb. Her head fell back again, and she worked herself hard and fast, rubbing her clitoris, pumping her hips. Her breaths were fast and labored and small cries escaped her mouth, cries of pleasure that would ring in his ears for days.

  Arthur watched her. She was there, almost there…and then she came with quick tight contractions all around his length. She clutched him so hard, his shoulders came off the bed and he came inside her without warning. It was sudden—the muscles in her squeezing him, like the tug of a hand. Shocked by the sudden pleasure, he released into the core of her, filling her with spurt after spurt of his semen.

  His orgasm was blinding. He felt a completion like he’d never experienced before. As Regan came to rest on top of him, his cock still inside her, he took huge deep breaths, swallowing air. Her hands were on the bed, her head hung down, the tip of her plait fell over her shoulder and brushed his stomach.

  Slowly she lifted her head. He felt her vagina giving its final little flutters and gasps around him.

  “Remind me, Brat…who was that for—you or Charlie?”

  He was too spent to lie.

  “For you,” he said.

  Her eyes widened suddenly—suddenly and subtly, but he saw he’d gotten to her. She wore the look of a woman who’d just had a glass of water thrown on her face without warning. Or been kissed by a stranger. Or slapped by a friend.

  She rose up and his softening penis slipped out of her and dripped onto his stomach. She wrapped her kimono quickly, carelessly around her, then reached over his head and untied his wrists.

  “Are we…are we done?” he asked, surprised and a little wounded to be set free so fast.

  “Get dressed,” she said, and stood with her back to the fireplace mantel, her arms crossed over her chest. “When I want you again, I’ll contact you. Fly away home now.”

  She waved her hand to dismiss him, and then waited by the mantel as he dressed in front of her, awash with embarrassment, hurt. They’d been so close only a few minutes ago that they couldn’t have been any closer, and now she was so far away she might as well have been in another world.

&
nbsp; He held his shoes to his stomach. He’d put them on when he was downstairs. “Did I do something wrong?”

  She wouldn’t look at him. She looked at the bed where they’d just fucked.

  “I haven’t had good sex in years and I’m not going to be...” She paused as if reaching for words. “I won’t be young forever. I bought you to fuck you, not to fall in love. So get used to it.”

  “Did you ever get used to it? Your gilded cage?”

  Now she looked at him—a quick glance that revealed a wound as deep or deeper than his own.

  “No.”

  He didn’t know what else to say. Arthur slipped out of the golden bedroom and went down the stairs, put on his shirt, jacket, and shoes. He left The Pearl.

  In a daze, he drove to the Piccadilly townhouse and parked in the drive. Almost midnight. He stepped out of his car and into the cold night. The street was dark and quiet, the ancient elms covered the moon, the soaring townhouses of the rich and the powerful blocked out the faraway lights of the city. A cold wind blew through him. Dry autumn leaves scratched and skittered across the brick walk to the backdoor. The air smelled damp and cloying, the corpse of summer rotting underfoot, a scent he usually loved—the scent of autumn. Tonight, however, it troubled him. Everything troubled him—how it had happened, why it had happened, how it had ended…and how much he’d liked it.

  God, he’d liked it.

  Arthur found his way to his bed in the dark. Although he knew he really ought to take a shower—he was covered with the fluids of sex, his and hers—he simply stripped naked and slid under the covers, the cotton sheets cool against his burning body.

  The question Regan asked him echoed in his mind.

  Who was that for—you or Charlie?

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  That was the hundred-thousand pound question.

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