Mercy

When we got out, he handed me a towel and I dried myself, wondering at his sudden change of mood. He had gone from being warm and complimentary to being brusquely and puzzlingly cold. He took my towel away and pulled me into the bedroom, leading me straight to the bed. He had a condom in his hand that I hadn’t even seen him pick up, and he put it on with practiced finesse, using only one hand. With the other, he pushed me onto my stomach and held me there, bent over the bed. He used one of his legs to part my thighs, then placed his cock at my entrance and forced his way inside. I gasped, shocked, because it hurt, and I thought then that he wasn’t cold, he was angry.

Was it my reaction to the paintings? That I’d accused him of feeding me lines? The poem I’d recited to him? He fucked me roughly, pounding me hard. My pussy ached, and I felt strangely detached from what had been for me, previously, a romantic act. Lovemaking. This wasn’t lovemaking, this was fucking, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. I’d never been with a man as large as Matthew, and I felt battered rather than sensuous. I lay still and pliant and I didn’t think of coming, not even once. No, the whole time he fucked me, I just stared at the paintings, and I thought, those paintings are beautiful, but this, what he’s doing to me, is not.

I heard him grunt, felt the last thrust, felt him hold himself tense against my back. He pulled away as soon as his orgasm was over.

“Up. Into bed,” he ordered, slapping me once on the ass. I crawled quickly onto the bed and moved to the side where he nudged me. He went to discard the condom and then got in on the other side. He pulled the covers up over us, turned his back to me and turned out the light, settling down with a sigh. The silence was deafening. I would have given anything just to hear him mutter goodnight. So that was the first time we had intercourse together. To say he’d made love to me would be a laughable deceit. He had used me, exactly as he’d told me he wanted to, and while I knew this was what I’d signed up for, I started to cry.

After a moment, he turned the light back on. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I sniffled through tears.

“I’m going to hang you from a hook and flay you alive next time you say ‘I don’t know’ to me.”

“I’m confused!”

“Why?”

“I don’t—” I stopped myself just in time.

“You didn’t like what we did tonight?”

“My ass hurts,” I finally said, and the welts did hurt a little, but that wasn’t really why I cried.

He just watched for a long time in silence, just watched me cry as he had that night in his car, as if I was some kind of museum exhibit. What do we have here? This is fascinating.

Intense.

“Are you really hurt, Lucy? Or are you just ashamed? I thought you said you liked it.”

“I did like it.”

“So you cry then, when you like things?”

“I’ve just never...felt anything like this. I don’t know how to feel about this. And I do feel a little ashamed about it all.”

He was quiet for a long time, and then he sighed again.

“Listen to me, Lucy, I’m not a big fan of shame. I know I’m kinky. I know I’m crass. But I’m not ashamed, and I don’t want you to be.”

He lifted my chin, made me meet his eyes. One broad thumb swept the tears from one cheek and then the other as he spoke.

“So you like to get roughed up, get fucked, get ordered around. So what? I like doing those things to you. So you being ashamed around me is both annoying and ridiculous. Just go to sleep, instead of lying there crying like an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot.” I tried to say it respectfully, but I guess I failed from the look on his face.

“Listen to me,” he said, his fingers digging into my chin. “You’re whatever the fuck I say you are when you’re with me.” He turned away from me again. “You’ll learn,” he muttered, and turned off the light with a snap of his wrist.

* * *

When I woke the next morning, it was because his hand was jammed between my legs. His fingers spread me deftly to find my clit, and began to trace slow circles there. I was still groggy and achy from the night before. I pressed back against his front, half expecting him to shove me away. He didn’t though. He pulled me closer, molding his body to mine and nibbling on my neck.

“Good morning, Lucy.”

“Good morning.”

“Do you want to fuck?”

It was a rhetorical question since he was already sheathed and nudging his cock into my wet slit from behind. He drove in, holding my hips still, pulling me back against him. The whole time he never stopped the slow circles on my clit, slow rhythmic circles that made my thighs clench. I leaned my head back and he nuzzled me with his rough morning stubble. The sensation was overwhelming, and I feared he would stop what he was doing before I could come. I put my hand back on his thigh, and the other over his hand on my clit, but he made a disapproving sound and I took them away. He caught both my hands hard in one of his and held them trapped between my breasts, and the whole time, the slow circles never stopped. I felt like I was melting right into him, the delicious heat of him. The pleasure he was giving me crowded everything else from my mind.

I moved back against him restlessly, never wanting the sensation to end. I could feel the sparks and tension building inside me. I wanted him to make me come, but knew very well he might choose not to. He kept on driving me, driving me to the very edge of that cliff. Finally I whimpered, a sound of entreaty, begging for release.

“Yes, okay,” he said, driving deeper. “You can come.” The moment he breathed his words in my ear, his fingers found the very part of my center to trigger it, and so, that instant, I did. My walls contracted and I shuddered, pushing back against him, riding out the molten waves of pleasure. He grunted and bucked jerkily through his own orgasm just after mine. Our soft feral noises blended together in the silence of the morning, and his hot, strong hands didn’t let go of either part of me. He still kept my hands captured tightly in his left hand, and his right remained between my legs, possessively stroking my mound.

“Little girl,” he said, “who taught you to come like that?”

“I thought—you said—”

“Yes, I said you could come. And you did. Jesus Christ.”

“I’ve never come like I have...last night...and now...” I stammered, totally at a loss for words. Or more accurately, I was afraid to spill out words I shouldn’t say.

“Well, I like it,” he said. He stretched beside me, warm and masculine. Hard muscles, soft, ticklish chest hair. I lay still in his arms shivering from aftershocks. I looked over at the paintings and unexpected tears came to my eyes. I’d actually had no intention of crying again. I was terribly embarrassed that I was, and steeled myself for another lecture. Where the tears came from now, I had no clue. I thought of all those nights before I’d met Matthew, when the tears wouldn’t come. But I couldn’t talk to him about that, I couldn’t explain that to him no matter how hard I tried.

He turned me back to face him. Again, that look of detached curiosity.

“I’m sorry. For crying again. I…I don’t know why. I can’t help it.”

“You’re allowed to cry. It’s pretty common in relationships like this.” I brushed at the tears. “I guess it’s because I don’t know how to feel.”

/>

“What do you mean, how to feel?”

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to enjoy.”

“You’re allowed to enjoy it all. I told you that yesterday.” I could barely meet his eyes. What I really wanted to ask was, am I allowed to fall for you?

But I didn’t ask that, of course. I tried to turn off those feelings that I suspected were leaking out from my eyes in those undisciplined tears.

“It’s always an adjustment in the beginning,” he said to me. “It will get less confusing. At least I hope so.” He kissed my forehead and, slowly, both of my eyes. “You can leave after breakfast,” he said, and got up and dressed and went downstairs.

* * *

My muscles protested as I climbed down from his Mount Everest of a bed. I took a quick shower, even though I wasn’t sure if it was allowed. I really felt the need to wash myself off. I needed to wash off all the depravity of the night and that morning if I would be expected to face him over breakfast.

I was shocked at how my muscles ached, muscles I didn’t know I had. It had been so long since I’d felt aches like that, being a dancer. I maintained a relatively standard level of fitness.

Matthew had somehow exercised muscles my body didn’t use in dance, or perhaps, exercised them beyond what they were accustomed to.

As quickly as I could, I got ready and went down the stairs to the modern kitchen where Matthew was eating. Not just Matthew, but the driver too, whom he introduced as Davis.

Another woman, Mrs. Kemp, bustled around serving everyone. I soon learned that Mrs. Kemp cooked for Matthew and kept his house, while Davis ran his errands and was his “jack of all trades.” I also discovered later that these two people knew everything about his proclivities, but that morning, I only wondered, and felt humiliated as I took a seat at the table. Mrs. Kemp brought me piles of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Matthew looked at my plate over his paper and snorted.

“Mrs. Kemp,” he said. “Lucy is a dancer, not a farmhand,” to which she laughed. And yes, I could eat probably a fourth of what was on the plate, although Davis and Matthew ate twice my serving and more. I guess it took a lot of energy to fuck the way he did. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, so I guess he burned it all.