Mercy

I didn’t talk because I was afraid of saying something stupid, afraid of sounding too familiar and loving during this meal that felt like a date. He didn’t talk because he was too busy just staring at me, staring at me with eyes that made me burn. I was half afraid he’d turn me over the table right there and fuck me, lift my skirt and thrust inside while the other patrons looked on.

His eyes were so alive with smoldering lust, I had no idea why he hadn’t just taken me straight to his home. It had been nearly a week then since we’d been together, and we both felt that strain.

“I’ve missed you,” he said when the waiter brought dessert. I stirred my coffee, too nervous to reply. I remembered that night long ago at the coffee house, when I’d first drunk coffee with him and he’d told me what he wanted from me.

“I’ve missed you too, Matthew.” It was a safe, inane thing to say. Then he reached over and picked up the rectangular box he’d carried in, and handed it over to me.

It was wrapped in heavy, elegant paper, a stylized holiday print of berries and holly leaves.

There was a bow on top, perfect and crimson.

“I didn’t get you anything, Matthew,” I said, running my fingers over the gorgeous wrappings.

“Good. I didn’t want you to.”

“Whatever you want, I’ll do it for you later. Anything at all.” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a dweeb. We both know you’ll do what I want anyway. Just open it up. I wanted to get you a present, and now I fucking want you to see what’s inside.” I smiled. He was so ridiculously charming, even when he called me a dweeb and ordered me around. I carefully undid the paper, not wanting to wrinkle it, and honestly, not really wanting the moment to end.

“Rip the fucking paper off it, Lucy. Open it up or I’ll break it over your ass.” I smiled wider and looked up at him from under my lashes. I ripped off the rest of the paper and lifted the lid. I had expected something typically appropriate between us. Some new lingerie, or a paddle or a plug, but there was nothing sexual or kinky inside that box. There was a beautifully framed piece of parchment covered in spidery calligraphy and decorated at the top with a painting of a Grecian urn.

He’d gifted me with a framed copy of the Keats poem I’d quoted to him, the one about truth and beauty, and it made my breath catch in my throat. Ode on a Grecian Urn, it was called, five stanzas long. I stared down the poem while he sat and watched without a word. The first two lines drew me in with their strange, appropriate sentiment: Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

thou foster-child of silence and slow time...

Silence. Slow time. I thought of our hours in the basement when he only sat and stared. He’d found this for me, or perhaps, knowing him, had it crafted by some artist to his exact specifications.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter...

Thou canst not leave thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss.

As I read, it seemed every single line spoke of our strange relationship. Matthew and I were frozen in time just like the pastoral scenes on the urn that Keats described. We were frozen in a scene where we reached for one another, but would never actually touch.

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above...

For us, it would always just be passion. He would love me while I was young and perfect, his unchanging ideal. And then what? Someday, the urn would be broken, would crumble to pieces, capitulate to the ravages of time. The poem was so appropriate to us that I shivered, and for a long time, I couldn’t look up into his eyes.

At the end, the famous and well known words we’d discussed so long ago...

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The simple words that exemplified Matthew’s view of the world, all Matthew desired.

You’re beautiful to me. There will be only truth between us.

I looked over at Matthew and wondered what it meant. If it was a declaration of some kind, I didn’t understand it. Perhaps it had no significance at all. Maybe it was a mindfuck, a way to hurt or mock me. Maybe simply a gift to a lover with whom he’d spent so much time.

“Thank you, Matthew,” was all I dared say in the end.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. I love it. It’s beautiful.”

He stared at me, long and hard, but I gave him nothing, no emotional reaction. I felt suddenly we were both teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“I love everything you give me,” I said as an afterthought, and thankfully, he left it at that.

He took me back to his house afterward, and when I turned towards the basement, he pulled me instead up the stairs. “Not on Christmas Eve. I won’t beat on you tonight.”

“You can if you want.”

“No.”

Up in his room, he took off my dress as I kicked off my shoes. “Go stand against the wall,” he said, stripping out of his clothes. He pushed me over to the broad white wall, the one without the paintings, and I stood there in my black stockings with my hands at my sides. He sat on the bed, looking at me, stroking his cock which was already huge and hard.

“Play with yourself. Stroke your clitty, pinch your tits.” I did what he asked, trying to look sexy. He didn’t like that at all.

“Fucking submissive. Harder. Touch yourself.” He stood up and strode over to me.

I moaned as he pinched my nipples, then twisted them mercilessly hard. He reached between my legs and found my swollen clit and pinched that too until I danced under his touch.

“You little cum whore,” he breathed. “Come on. Come for me, let me watch you.” I reached out to him and squeezed his shoulder hard, and he let me, so I kept squeezing, just as he squeezed and worked my sodden clit. “Come on, you little slut,” he prompted me again, then he pressed himself against me, pressed me to the wall and kissed me hard and violently, with more feeling than he ever had before. He hauled me over to the bed and pushed me onto my hands and knees and drove into me standing up from behind. He came just moments later, driving hard, then collapsed on top of me, his lips against my neck.

Before he even caught his breath, he gasped, “Lie down. Lie down and spread your legs.” I did, the obedient slave, and he fell on me at once. He stroked my thighs, bit the top of my stockings, licked and teased me while I flew on a high of sexual pleasure and pure infatuation for the man who mastered me.

He devoured me, kissed and sucked my sore clit, licked my pussy and asshole with a fervor that made me wild. He had gone down on me on many occasions, but this time, somehow, it was even more abandoned and wild. The arousal built, throbbed, turned inside out and then exploded.

I came apart, thrashing under his mouth. He held my thighs hard between his hands and began again. I begged for respite, but he allowed none. He made me come again, this time finishing by thrusting his thick fingers in and out of my cunt. As I came, he gazed down at me chanting,

“Yes. Yes, beautiful girl.”

He lay beside me then on the bed while I gasped for breath, completely spent, sprawled at his side. He watched me, his head propped on his hand.

“I have an unhealthy addiction to watching you come.”

I looked over at him. “I’ve noticed. I don’t mind.”

He stroked my face a moment, and then leaned over and kissed me like a true lover, and I let myself kiss him back just the same. We kissed like that while time spun away, and then he broke away from me. He suddenly seemed agitated and cross.

“Lucy, can you go home now? I’ll call a cab for you. You can’t stay here tonight. I’ve got things to do in the morning. You understand.”

I nodded. Yes, I did. Of course I did. I took a cab home that he insisted on paying for, and I was really okay with that. I climbed the stairs to my little apartment with my framed K

eats poem clutched in my hands.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest...

Matthew, my handsome and mysterious priest. And I, the urn, frozen in beauty, not permitted to change.

He was the artist, the priest, the shaman, and I was the urn, existing only to receive.