shivered at the contact, the soft prickle of the velvet on her bare legs, a sensation delicious to her heightened senses. As he positioned himself between her open thighs, she searched out any sign of his face within the hood of the cloak, but the cowl and the darkness obscured his features from her. Somehow, the hidden face was far more unsettling than the leather bull mask she’d pictured.
The enormous hand touching her face moved to her right breast. The Minotaur took the nipple in his fingers and pinched it, then pulled lightly on it. Yes, it was Malcolm, or some version of him. It had to be. This was how he touched her, possessively, without warning or apology. Her breast seemed so small in the massive hand that fondled it. She was grateful for the hand behind her head as she squirmed in her chains. He fondled her other breast next, groping it, squeezing and pawing at it. The rough treatment aroused her though she didn’t want it to. She extended a leg into the folds of his cloak and felt a rock hard male thigh. She raised her other leg and found another thigh. It was warm within his cloak. His skin was shockingly hot to the touch and in the cool night air she craved that heat. The man grunted as she wrapped her legs around his waist, and his hot breath blew over her face. The hand on her breast slipped between her legs. He probed with his fingers, seeking her wetness and finding it. He pushed his thumb and forefinger inside her. She moaned like an animal when he spread his fingers apart at the opening of her body, then did it again deeper. He was preparing her to receive his cock. She felt the organ now, massive as the rest of him. It pressed against her inner thigh, hotter even than the rest of his body, dripping fluid and hard as the stone behind her. She craved it terribly, even though its exaggerated size scared her.
He removed his hand and notched the tip of the organ at the slit of her vulva. It was too big to fit. It would tear her open if she took it. She shrank from it, but there was nowhere to hide or run. The man lowered his cloaked head to her chest and flicked his tongue across her nipple. It felt strange, not like Malcolm’s tongue or mouth on her. It was oddly cold, but not unpleasantly so. Over and over again he lapped at her nipple and licked the entire breast with long strokes. With each flick and lick of the tongue, the man’s massive member eased a little deeper into her hole. Mona rocked her hips to take even more of it. The Minotaur grunted again, an inhuman sound that would have scared her had she not been so lost in the pleasure of the penetration. Deep vaginal muscles groaned in protest as his great organ split her apart, pushing the walls open as it burrowed further into her. With her legs fastened tight around him, she anchored herself and worked her hips up and down. The pleasure was unholy. She went wild with it. He rose up and thrust into her. She cried out as he filled her completely, more completely than she’d ever been filled. She couldn’t bear it. She had to have it out of her. A spurt of his seed hit her cervix and she orgasmed suddenly from the incredible force and heat of it. He thrust again and the slick seed inside her eased his passage. The enormous organ moved far more easily inside her now that he’d ejaculated. And yet it seemed the fierce coupling had only begun.
His thrusts were slow and deliberate. He pulled out to the tip and entered her by inches. He was close to her, so close that she could raise her head from the stone and nuzzle it against his chest if she could somehow part the folds of the cloak. The coven of women still chanted though Mona barely heard it. The man said nothing. They copulated in total silence but for their breathing. Her thighs were damp and she felt more fluid dripping down the rock under her hips. Minutes passed. He moved faster inside her but not fast enough to bring her to a second orgasm. She sensed something building, something more than her own climax. The chanting grew louder, his thrusts harder and deeper. Even chained to the rock, Mona felt her body floating, weightless, unmoored. Again the colossal hand found her breasts and fondled them, pulling on the hardened points, squeezing them mercilessly. The hand was perfect in all ways but for its freakish size, and she couldn’t stop herself from arching against the huge palm. She was torn between her desire for his rough caresses and her need to shrink from this cloaked creature, run from it, hide. But where could she go? Even if she weren’t chained to the rock, the cock inside her speared her to the boulder as completely as an iron stake through her body.
The Minotaur—the man, Malcolm, whatever or whoever he was—lifted her back off the boulder and slipped his arm under her. They were sealed together at the loins. Another spurt of seed filled her and she orgasmed again. Only with Malcolm had she ever been able to feel a man coming inside her. It should be over now. No man could come twice inside a woman and continue to fuck her afterwards. It was unnatural. It wasn’t possible. Yet he continued to thrust into her hole. Her sex felt like an open wound, the tissue wet and raw and pried apart.
She needed it to stop.
She never wanted it to end.
He took his hand out from behind her head and grasped her thigh. The other hand held the other thigh. He jerked her hips toward him, impaling her on him as he impaled himself into her. The chanting grew ever louder until it was all she could hear. It was louder than her breathing, louder than his, louder than their coupling, louder than her own cries as he rode her toward a final climax. She thrashed on the rock, turned her head and buried it against her arm, screamed as muscles inside her spread, twisted and rearranged themselves to accommodate that inhuman organ thrusting inside of her.
Would it ever end? Yes, it had to. She felt it nearing its end, speeding toward the final cataclysm. She tried to hasten the end with wild gyrations, and the cloaked man responded with faster thrusts. It was a primal union of bodies. There was nothing left of Mona—not her name, her past, her life in the outside world. There was no outside world. There was the joining of their bodies, the wetness, the rock behind her and the cloak shielding her and nothing else. The Minotaur penetrated every part of that devouring orifice. It was coming. She could feel it. It was coming. Almost there. It was coming. The final spasm of union. It was coming. The closing of the wound. It was coming. The sacrifice that brought them together. It was coming. It was coming. The man pounded into her depths. She looked up at the night sky and saw all the stars turn red.
It was coming.
The man pulled back his hood and Mona screamed.
"It’s me, darling,” Malcolm said into her ear. "It’s only me.”
Mona found herself in the bed in the back room, Malcolm, naked on top of her, inside of her, moving within her. Mona’s orgasm shook her down to her core, her cervix contracting wildly, painfully almost, even as she screamed again in her terror.
The Minotaur—the cloaked figure who was but was not Malcolm—was gone. So were the fire and the priestesses and the chanting and the chains around her wrists and stomach and the bolder against her back. In their place there was nothing but a candle burning on a stool, paintings of women around and about the bed, the sounds of the street, and Malcolm’s own weight holding her down onto the bed.
She pushed him off her and sat back against the headboard, semen pouring out of her. Malcolm knelt in front of her, an ironic smile on his face.
"Did I give you a little fright?” he teased.
"A little fright? You drugged me.”
"Never. It was nothing more than pomegranate wine. Then again, pomegranates do have very special powers.”
"That was not just wine. What I saw—”
"You saw what I wanted you to see as always. When you drink it, it opens the mind.”
Her heart raced like she was still chained to the boulder. Her hands shook, her entire body shook.
"I warned you I like to play games,” he said. "I warned you that next time, you would hate me.”
"I do hate you.”
"It’ll pass.” He shrugged, sent her a kiss and a wink. "It always does.”
"Get out,” she said.
"If you insist. I wasn’t quite finished with you. But no harm, no foul,” Malcolm said, waving a hand dismissively. He climbed off the bed and quickly dressed in his three-piece suit. "Next ti
me we’ll end on a better note.”
"No next time. I don’t want you to ever come back.”
"I’m afraid we had an agreement, did we not? You recall this?” He pulled a crisp white rectangle of paper from his inner breast pocket. He showed her one side—white and blank—and the other side, also white and blank. "You agreed to do anything.”
"You drugged me. You made me hallucinate.”
"I didn’t, actually…but even if I did, that would fall under the umbrella of ‘anything,’ wouldn’t you agree?”
Mona snatched the card from his hand and ripped it into pieces. She sent them scattering all over the bed.
"Get out. Never come back.”
"You don’t mean it.”
She pulled away from him, turned her back on him, and wouldn’t look at him.
"You’re a monster,” she said, a sob rising in her throat.
"It was only pretend. I warned you…”
He had warned her she wouldn’t know fantasy from reality. He had, but this was different. Fantasy and reality were one thing, but Malcolm had made her question her very sanity.
"Get away from me. Now.”
He slammed the door so loudly she jumped. The candle blew out, and the room went dark but for the skylight.
Only pretend, he’d said.
Pretend? No one’s imagination was that good, certainly not hers. He had drugged her. She knew he’d drugged her. The violation of her trust was unforgivable.
Mona dressed in yesterday’s clothes and checked the time—it was nearly dawn. Hours had passed since she’d drunk the wine he’d left for her by the book. She would have to hurry. She didn’t want the drugs leaving her system before she could be tested for them. Hospital emergency wards were slow, but if she left now, she might make it back before opening the gallery at ten. Not that it mattered much. The gallery would go under without Malcolm’s financial support. But she would rather watch barbarian hordes tear it down brick by brick than allow Malcolm to touch one hair on her head ever again. No man was allowed to drug her. She knew he liked to play games, but this was too far. Whatever his endgame was, she wanted no part of it.
She gathered the pieces of the white card off the bed and tossed them into the trash in her office.
The game was over.
The Bleeding Man
Pomegranate wine and nothing else.
No opium, no LSD, no mushrooms, nothing.
Mona couldn’t believe it. A few days after her panicked trip to a doctor, she got the call with her test results. There had been no drugs in her system, none at all. Only alcohol, and not even enough of it to make a dent in her senses.
She thanked the nurse who called. The woman sounded concerned, suggested Mona talk to a police officer if she believed someone had tried to drug her. Or perhaps a therapist if her drinking was causing her to black out.
Mona drank little, and when she did it was rarely enough to get drunk. And what would she tell the police if she did call them? She’d agreed to whore herself to a man without a last name who paid her in artwork? That he’d given her a glass of pomegranate wine full of an untraceable hallucinogenic and somehow he’d made her believe she was chained to a boulder in a sacred forest being sexually sacrificed to a cloaked and hooded Minotaur so much larger than any man?
She’d be in a mental hospital by lunch.
A week after that night, Mona went hunting and tracked down pomegranate wine in a specialty liquor store. Alone at her apartment, she drank a glass of it on an empty stomach. It was delicious, yes, sweet and tart, but it did nothing but give her the typical buzz any glass of red wine would. Malcolm had claimed pomegranates had special properties, but when she researched the fruit she found nowhere that claimed it could cause hallucinations, even when fermented.
One line about pomegranates did catch her eye, however. The Greeks called it "the fruit of the dead,” and was once believed to have come from the veins of the Greek god Adonis. Pomegranate, the only fruit that grew in Hades. Myth and legend. Pomegranate wine would not have made her seen what she had seen, do what she had done, enjoy what she had enjoyed. Something else was at play. But what?
After their fight, Malcolm made no attempts to see her or contact her in any way. She thought he wasn’t even going to pay her for their encounter until she came to the gallery three weeks after that bizarre red-cloaked night and found an empty red wine bottle on her desk, the cork pushed back inside the mouth. She took the cork out, not wanting to know what Malcolm had left for her. She turned the bottle over and the white card pieces fluttered out. He’d come here while she was gone, gathered them up and put them into the bottle. What did it mean? Was he trying to tell her again that she’d promised him carte blanche? She remembered their first night together. He’d used her glass water bottle inside her as a dildo, fucking her with it. She’d called it perverse and he’d teased her that it could be worse, he could have used a wine bottle.
That’s what the message meant. It could have been worse.
In anger, she gathered every single little scrap of fine white paper in the bottle and dropped it into her wastepaper basket. She could not be bought or cajoled into seeing him again.
It was over.
Underneath the bottle was a linen napkin. She lifted the linen and underneath it was another sketch.
A close-up of a ballerina’s hand, she knew on sight it was a Degas. A beautiful sketch beautifully done. Sebastian would be overjoyed to see it—and her. Oh, he’d be overjoyed to see her again. He’d phoned her twice since they’d gone to the exhibit, and she’d put him off with vague excuses about not feeling well. He’d been sympathetic, if disappointed. She wondered why she told him no. She’d been furious at Malcolm because she’d been certain he’d drugged her. Then she’d learned he likely hadn’t, and she was desperate to find another reason to stay angry at him. He hadn’t raped her. She’d been a willing participant and had agreed to let him do whatever he wanted to her as long as she wasn’t physically harmed. And he hadn’t harmed her physically, not unless she counted have an aching back and swollen vulva the morning after. She told herself he’d made her distrust her own senses, made her question reality, made her think impossible things could and did happen, and that was unforgivable. Because impossible things didn’t happen and if they did they wouldn’t be impossible. If she hadn’t been drugged, then the maze had been real—and so had the clearing in the woods, the coven of priestesses and the horror of the Minotaur who’d copulated with her. She had no proof he’d drugged her. No proof the maze wasn’t real. What was she to believe? That it had happened as she remembered it? No, she refused to believe it. She’d be on the road to madness next.
Once she reconciled herself to never knowing the truth, Mona did her best to put that mad night and all the memories of it behind her. During the day she could occupy herself with work and her constant fears over the gallery’s imminent closing. But at night she dreamed of Malcolm and the beast he’d become and the enormous cock inside her. She would wake up orgasming, wishing to feel the rock under her back once more. Sometimes she even wept. The need to see Malcolm again and spread her legs for him and be taken by him was so strong it left her breathless, reeling, half-sick and miserable. Every night she’d sneak Tou-Tou into her apartment for the sole reason that she could not stand to be alone at night anymore. She passed New Year’s in her bed reading a book and cuddling with Tou-Tou on her chest. The thought of going out and smiling for friends and flirting with strangers made her dizzy. She wanted nothing to do with the world outside her gallery anymore.
Mona couldn’t go on like this forever. She refused to. Every day she came into the gallery fearful of finding a message from Malcolm, more fearful she wouldn’t. A month passed without him returning to put the red velvet choker into a book of art. Then six weeks. Her resolved started to crumble. She felt it breaking down, heard it cracking. But she stayed adamant—she would not give in and forgive Malcolm.
The Degas sketch of the ballerina??
?s hand waited in a folder in her desk. It felt like a test, somehow. Like Malcolm knew about Sebastian, knew he tempted her.
On a quiet Friday she closed the gallery early and called Sebastian.
"I have something for you,” she said.
"The words every man longs to hear from a beautiful woman.”
"Can you come see it?” she asked, smiling at his voice, so warm and solid and kind.
"Tell me when.”
"Right now,” she said. "I’ll be at my gallery all evening working in the back room. I’ll leave the side door unlocked for you.”
"I’m on my way,” he said. "Then I’m buying you dinner. I won’t take no for an answer. Unless you mean it.”
She laughed softly. "I won’t say no,” she said. She wouldn’t say no to anything.
As soon as she hung up the phone a wave of nervousness washed over her. It was late January and she hadn’t let herself be intimate with any man except Malcolm since June. Malcolm had consumed her life for far too long. She’d stopped going out, stopped dating, stopping seeing her female friends out of fear they’d judge her for Malcolm. She didn’t want to bear their judgment, especially knowing they would have done the same if they only saw him, spent one night with him.
She had to get over Malcolm any way she could. Any way at all.
When Sebastian knocked softly on the door to the back room, she opened it.
She was naked.
He stared at her a long tense moment, only stared. He was handsome as ever. Brown eyes, not black. Brown hair, not black. Tan skin, not pale. He wore a normal suit, not a three-piece—tailored gray trousers, black and gray tie, white shirt and jacket—and he wore it well.
All at once he moved, without warning, taking her in his arms and kissing her. His tongue pushed into her mouth the second she opened it to him. His hands were all over her back and bottom and shoulders. He kissed her so hard he nearly bent her backwards. He turned her and pushed her back to the door and groped her breasts. He dropped his head to her nipple and drew it deep into his mouth, so deep it almost hurt, and she sighed because this was what she’d missed, this was what she craved. Already she was wet, already she