Mercy

Really think about what I’ve said, think about what you want to do. Next Saturday night I’ll be sitting right here. If you want to give it a try, take a cab here and meet me. If you don’t, then stay away and I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

I nodded. Yes. I needed time to think. Time to come to terms with the decision I knew I’d eventually make, but wasn’t quite ready to make yet, not out loud.

“But Lucy,” he warned, “if you show up here, I’ll take it to mean that you’re ready to begin.

You’ll need to bring your overnight bag. Do you understand?” I nodded.

“Answer me out loud.”

“Yes, I understand,” I said, blushing hot. “But I can’t get here before 10:45, after the show.”

“Okay then,” he said, nodding. “I’ll meet you here at 10:45. At eleven o’clock, if you haven’t shown up, we’ll understand each other.”

He reached out to me and cradled my face in one of his hands. His fingers felt cool and firm against my flushed skin. He looked right into my eyes. I felt a strange feeling of closeness to him, I suppose because he understood me so well. “Either way, I’ve really enjoyed this hour with you. Tears and all. I think you’re ridiculously beautiful and sweet. Well, maybe not sweet,” he said with a wry smile. “But honest. I appreciate your truthfulness. You have no idea how much.” He released me and I held his gaze, awed and confused. “I’ve never been so truthful to anyone in my life.”

“Neither have I, in quite some time.” He turned away, looking out at the crowd around us. “I hate to ask it, but in these matters discretion is very important. I’d appreciate very much if you wouldn’t share our...truth telling with anyone who doesn’t need to know.”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t,” I promised. “Although my mother told me never to keep secrets for strangers.”

He looked at me very directly. “We aren’t strangers anymore.” He drove me home then, and watched from his car until he saw my light come on. I looked from the window but I didn’t wave. I watched him pull back into traffic and wondered what he was thinking at that moment, because my own thoughts were wild. It was 3:45 when I finally laid down, but sleep wouldn’t come. I fantasized instead of his hands on me doing vulgar things.

My fantasies were vague and salacious, because I had no idea what he would actually do to me.

And yes, I was quite certain that he was going to do something to me. Before we’d even left the coffee house, when he’d helped me from my chair and guided me to the door with his hand pressed to the small of my back, I had known. I had made up my mind. The words were right on the tip of my tongue, the words to plead with him to take me, that I wanted to be his, that I wanted him to use me, that I wanted him to take me right home. That I wanted him to hurt me with his big, strong hands, that I knew I would enjoy it, that I wanted to try. I didn’t tell him though because he’d told me to think it over, and already I was anxious to obey. So I would think it over until Saturday, as he’d asked me to do, and then I’d go to him at the coffee house, and then...

Then what? What would go on between us? How would it feel? Would he hurt me? How much? Would I enjoy it? Would I feel, as he had suggested, joy? Finally, too tired to keep my eyes open, I started to drift into dreams. The strange fantasies subsided, replaced by one single word. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. I was already gone for him, totally gone. I was naively, desperately crushed on Matthew Norris even though he’d told me very bluntly he didn’t want a girlfriend. And I believed he meant it when he said that to me, but I thought that would change. I was sure if I was good enough, I could change his mind.

* * *

Oh, my fucking back. It was just ridiculous. I looked up at Pietro toiling away at his canvas and I could tell he was in that zone, that place that he went to sometimes. There was no way I could stop him now, although my muscles ached for relief. What kind of art model would I be, to interrupt him in his moments of genius? A less sore art model, I thought dismally.

I’d sat for him all day Sunday, then on Monday for a few more hours. Now it was Friday night and he’d called me, his voice filled with urgency. “I’m so close to finished,” he’d begged.

“Lucy, please, you must come!”

So here I lay at nearly midnight, aching and twitchy. I let my mind wander, a trick I’d learned from dance. When something was torturous and took excruciating effort, you just let your mind wander away from the pain. You can probably guess the place to which my mind wandered. It wandered to Matthew, who I planned to see the next night.

I was impatient, yes, but a little scared too. Would he be happy with me once he had me in his arms? Would he realize he’d made a big mistake and end things? I had no doubt he would end things abruptly if he wasn’t pleased with me. I would do everything I could to prevent that from happening, but there was only so much I could give, only myself as I was. If he decided I wasn’t good enough...

I daydreamed there on the cold hard floor of a painter’s studio and pictured Matthew sitting somewhere more comfortable thinking about me. Maybe his mind strayed to me during some important developer business meeting, or as he sat in the backseat of his car on the phone while his beefy driver drove him around. That driver, I wondered what was up with him. Maybe he procured drugs for Matthew. Or women. Hookers. I couldn’t imagine someone like him staying continent for long. If he’d broken up with his girlfriend, what had he been doing in the meantime? I would make him wear condoms, wouldn’t let him near me without them, that was certain. There was no way I’d give in on that. Everything else, well...how far would I go for him?

How far would he try to make me go, and what would he do? How much time had he spent since he’d met me, thinking about how he was going to use me, as he’d said? Did he already know what would go on? Had he long ago planned exactly what would occur? Or would he make it up as he went along, based on my reactions?

My reactions. What might those be? I had no idea, because I still had no idea what he would do to me. I’d read books about BDSM. I had a general idea of what people did in the world of dominance and submission, but he’d scoffed and claimed that most of those things didn’t interest him. That all he cared about was using me, making me his own. His own thing. I smiled, remembering when he’d called me a thing of beauty. I’d told him peevishly that I wasn’t a thing.

He was probably thinking even then that he would have the last laugh. He had probably thought to himself, well, Lucy, we’ll see.

Chapter Four: Guidelines

I drifted through the Saturday shows lost in a world of my own. Grégoire knew I was meeting our rich patron for coffee, but I told him nothing else. I had actually planned to tell Grégoire everything, reveal everything we’d talked about that strange night, but in the end, I kept it from him. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Grégoire to keep a secret. If I had asked him to, he would have kept any secret of mine to the grave. Nor was I ashamed to tell him. I shared everything with him, every humiliation and every triumph. In fact, I shared so much with him, I couldn’t quite believe I was keeping something this big to myself. I guess I was afraid he might tell me not to go, that I shouldn’t let him use me, that it wasn’t safe. That something was wrong with me for wanting a relationship like this. All of the things I wouldn’t let myself think. All those things that were probably, unfortunately, true.

So I said goodbye to Grégoire by the stage door and climbed in a cab at 10:40 sharp. I had showered and carefully shaved, and scented and perfumed every inch of my body. I’d painstakingly made myself up to look alluring and sexy. I had applied my very best dark red fuck-me lipstick, and put on jeans and a sweater that hugged my curves. Under my clothes, I had on things I hoped he’d find exciting and beautiful. A black silk thong, a matching black balconette bra. I could have dressed up in more risqué trappings but I had a sense it might upset him, to take that initiative myself.

All too soon, the cab pulled up at the coffee house. I paid the driver with bills rustling in trembling hands. I stood in the cold night air for a couple of minutes outside on the sidewalk, then I just couldn’t bear the anxiety and I went in.

I was assailed right inside the door with the familiar smell of smoke and coffee, the sickly sweet scent of clove cigarettes. I swallowed hard and started the long walk to the back. What if he wasn’t there? What if he was there, watching from some hidden place, laughing with friends as I made a fool of myself returning to report to him? I looked around furtively, embarrassed and agitated. I took in all the happy people talking and laughing with their friends and for one split second of a moment, I almost turned and ran.

But then I neared the table and he was there, and it comforted me greatly that he looked nervous too. He sat rigid and still, looking down into his coffee. On the other side of the table was another cup, presumably for me.

He looked up, and my heart leaped. My heart leaped. So trite, but that’s actually what it did.

My breath caught and I had to choke a little to get it going again. He looked stunning dressed in casual clothes, jeans and a sweater. I’d only ever seen him in business suits and tuxedos, powerful clothes of status and formality. But in jeans and a sweater, you could see he was a man, just a beautiful man, potent and attractive. He looked up at me, and in that second the worry left his face, replaced with something else, something priceless—a broad smile of palpable relief.

He wanted me. He wanted me. It was written clearly all over his face. I walked the rest of the way to the table, propelled by sheer gladness, and I returned his smile with an uncontrolled smile of my own. He stood up to pull my chair out when I was close enough. So formal and old fashioned. I turned to mush. He sat back down and just gazed at me. I waited for him to say something but he just stared.

“Is this for me?” I asked, gesturing to the cup in front of me.

“It’s what you ordered last week. You can get something else if you like.”

“No, it’s perfect. Thanks.” He’d remembered what I ordered and ordered it again for me.

Sigh. I picked it up, warming my hands with it, and my face, which was still cold from outside.

“You should wear a coat,” he chided. “That little sweater wouldn’t keep Satan warm.” I laughed, just breathing in the coffee and letting it warm me, the coffee he’d gotten for me.

“So you came.”

I nodded.

“When did you decide to come?”

I thought of my recent impulse to flee.

“About a minute ago.”

He smiled, and his eyes moved over me slowly. “Are you scared?”