The Red

  "He’ll probably take her from there as well,” Sunshine said, gesturing at Mona’s sex. Malcolm reached down and casually tugged Sunshine’s nipple. "I deserved that.”

  "You did,” Baby Blue said, and Malcolm did the same to her. "I didn’t deserve that,” she said, "but I shall bear the injustice stoically.”

  Malcolm tugged her nipple again and she yelped.

  "Perhaps not very stoically,” Baby Blue said.

  "Silence, nymphs,” Malcolm said. "I must see if Moan-a is worthy of being numbered among you.”

  "How may I serve you, Sir Satyr?” Mona asked, swept up in the game once more. She could hardly keep the smile off her face.

  "You may kneel at my feet and kiss the royal scepter.”

  "What’s a scepter?” Pinky whispered into Sunshine’s ear.

  "It’s a prick,” Sunshine said.

  "It’s his prick, Moona,” Pinky said. "That’s what he wants you to kiss.”

  "I figured as much,” Mona said. She knelt on the floor, her knees sinking into the soft pile of yellow, pink, and blue gauze left behind from the carnage Malcolm had done to the girls’ dresses. She took Malcolm’s scepter into her hands and rested her elbows on his furry thighs. It felt so real, it all did. The thick hair on his legs and the points of his ears, the warm animal scent of his body. The music didn’t sound like it came from a radio or a record. She swore she even saw fireflies flashing in and among the trees of the sacred grove they played in. And the three girls were all impossibly lovely—their youthful ageless faces, their tender breasts, their hairless bodies. They were watercolor nymphs in a watercolor world.

  Had all the dancing and spinning and laughing made her dizzy? Was she dreaming?

  Perhaps, but she didn’t care. She was far too happy in the dream to wake up now.

  She pressed a long kiss onto the head of the satyr’s cock. Then she opened her mouth and slid the tip between her lips. She tasted his musky flesh, a dash of salt, and craved more of it. Mona ran her hands up his thighs and wrapped her arms around his hips as she sucked the shaft deep into her mouth. Vaguely she heard the nymphs giggling their sweet musical giggles as Mona devoured their satyr lord’s prick with her mouth, sucking it all the way to the back of her throat. She ought to have gagged on it, but didn’t. She was caught up in the moment, in the fantasy world he’d created for them. She felt she could do anything, even fly if she wanted to—though she would turn down the offer of wings to have her satyr inside her.

  "A beautiful new draping for my lap,” Malcolm said, as he gathered her hair in his hands, lifted it, and arrayed it all around him so that it draped off his thighs. "Finer than silk, more shimmering than satin, and sucks me off better than any linen ever tried.”

  Mona beamed with pride, his organ still in her mouth. Her satyr was surrounded by his nymphs. Baby Blue was behind him, placing the laurel crown atop his head again. He turned to Pinky on his right and kissed her lips before turning to the left to lick Sunshine’s breast. They all took turns kissing him and he took his turns sucking and licking their necks and breasts, poking his fingers into their wet little cunts, and groping their thighs and their bottoms without apology.

  "You make me wish I had four pricks,” he said to his nymphs. "I’d take you all at once, my beauties.”

  "Or we could find three more satyrs,” Sunshine said.

  "I like my idea better,” Malcolm said.

  Mona had to stop sucking him simply to laugh. She stroked his prick, catching her breath. After taking the three girls he should have been wilted as a rose in the desert, but under in her hands he was a rod of iron wrapped in warm flesh. She couldn’t stop touching him, wouldn’t stop even if the world had ended. His scent drew her in—his scent and his power.

  He tickled under her chin like a master to his cat. She smiled and set to licking the tip again.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, not pushing her away but massaging her, caressing her. He lifted his hips off his throne to thrust deeper. Mona gripped his thighs hard, holding onto him as he pumped into her mouth, addicted now to the organ down her throat. She had to have it, had to taste it, had to suck it. She was sealed to it and it was lodged in her. The satyr Malcolm groaned in his animal lust, stamping his bare foot on the ground as if the pleasure was maddening. The sound it made was hard and hollow as a hoof on the floor.

  His nymphs caressed him, their hands and lips dancing over his skin. Mona heard their whispers: "You can do it, Sir Satyr. You can take it.” And Malcolm saying, "No…no…it’s too much. She’ll kill me with that mouth of hers. She’ll suck it right off.”

  "We’ll put it back if she does,” one of the girls said. "Who brought the glue?”

  And they all laughed except for Mona, who couldn’t stop sucking Malcolm off if she wanted to—good thing, then, that she didn’t want to stop.

  Mona gripped the base of the shaft with one hand and took his heavy testicles in her other. Malcolm growled like a wild beast and stamped his foot again. He writhed under her mouth, moving against his will. Oh, it was dirty, dirty bliss and Mona loved it as much as he did. Her pussy throbbed as if her heart was between her legs, beating and pounding and pumping. She felt Malcolm’s hands on her naked back. He clutched at her shoulder blades. She glanced up and saw his head fall back in ecstasy and knew he was there. She sucked as hard as she could, hard enough to make him believe she really would suck it right off. Malcolm roared like an animal again and his body went stiff as a board under her, his hips hovering in the air a few inches off his throne.

  Then he came. It was such a surge of hot fluid in her throat, Mona could barely swallow it all. It surged and surged and she swallowed and swallowed. She thought it would never end. It tasted salty as the ocean, but it refreshed her like water from a fountain. When the spurts finally ceased, Malcolm rested on his throne, his head back and his eyes closed and his arms dangling down as the nymphs kissed his fingers. She didn’t want to release her hold on his cock. It had all been so delicious.

  She looked at him and he blinked and opened his eyes.

  He smiled.

  "See?” Sunshine said. "It didn’t break off.”

  "That’s good,” Pinky said. "I forgot the glue anyway.”

  "Kiss me,” he said to Mona, his voice a whisper meant for everyone to hear. Reluctantly, Mona let him slip from her mouth. She rose to her feet and gave him the kiss he had commanded of her.

  Their tongues mingled and mated. He took her by the waist and held her in place so that she couldn’t escape his mouth on her mouth and the tongue that lapped at her lips and delved into her throat. He seemed to be tasting him inside of her. His majesty’s royal scepter was as hard as ever—she felt the bulb of the tip pushing into her belly and she craved it inside her. As they kissed, the nymphs resumed their dancing, hand in hand in hand, weaving around the little trees in a race that seemed to have no end, no beginning, no winner, no loser. Malcolm rose off his throne slowly, not breaking the kiss once. He wound her arms around his neck, lifted her off her feet and brought her down onto his cock. He ran her through with it and she cried in relief as it filled her up to the breaking point.

  She was a rag doll, light and limp. He lifted her again, brought her down, slid her up and down the full length of him. His hips bucked into her and she could do nothing but hang helplessly in his herculean grasp as he fucked her. He locked his wrists around her waist, forcing her to bend her back so he could ravage her breasts with his tongue and lips. He suckled and licked her. Mona moaned, earning the name he’d given her. She moaned and whimpered as his mouth clamped onto her breast like he never intended to let it go. All the while he worked inside her aching orifice. The ache grew and grew as he rammed her and pounded her. He was the predator and she his prey and he devoured her like he had not fed in weeks. Her vagina closed on his penis, trapping it inside her with its wild clenching contractions. They were in a battle with each other, both intent on conquest. But when his semen shot into her, showering her i
nsides, she surrendered to him entirely.

  He vanquished her with one final, brutal thrust.

  She sagged in his arms and he held her close a moment before releasing her to stand unsteadily on her feet.

  "Rest now, my lady nymph,” he said, gently pushing her to her knees again. He touched her eyelids like he was bewitching them. Or perhaps, instead, blessing them.

  She stretched out on her side on a blanket of gauzy pink and yellow, blue and white. The dance continued around her. Malcolm gave chase to the girls as the music played on. Mona couldn’t look away from the sport, even though her body ached for sleep. The nymphs, lush and lovely, were shameless in their nakedness. Malcolm—hard still or hard again, she didn’t know—caught one in flight. The girl squealed and laughed as he laid her over the throne arms and coupled with her. She wriggled away from his grasp and once free, turned on him and chased him. One minute he was the pursuer, the conqueror, the ravisher of innocent nymphs. The next moment he was the hare in the field, and the nymphs all red and hungry wolves. It was an orgy of laughter, sensual and innocent and erotic all at once. How had he done it? Who were these beautiful girls? As she watched them fight and copulate, dance and kiss, she loved them all. They were finches. They were foxes. They were fools. And she was one of them. A nymph in a moon-white gown. A creature of myth and mist. A girl kissed by goddesses and mated by satyrs.

  Until she woke up the next morning in the bed of the back room, that was.

  The sacred grove was gone. The nymphs were gone. Malcolm was gone.

  And she was merely Mona again.

  A Portrait of a Gentleman

  The only explanation Mona could conjure up to explain the events of that night with the nymphs was that Malcolm was a very wealthy man indeed—which she’d already deduced. Only money could buy the necessary "magic” to turn the back room of an art gallery into a small grove and populate it with nubile young women willing and able to sexually service a man dressed as a satyr. She would have guessed he’d drugged her, but there was no drug in the world that caused hallucinations so vivid and solid that also left the taker of the drug feeling better the next day, not worse. The morning after she’d been sore from the dancing, tender from the intercourse, but invigorated like she’d swam naked in a cool clear blue spring on a burning red August day.

  It wasn’t easy returning to the real world after her night in the grove. But she did because the real world demanded it of her. Malcolm paid her for her night with the satyr and he paid her well. The payment came in the form of a painted miniature of Queen Victoria, which he’d left on her pillow. It was appraised for another fifty thousand dollars. She was tempted to try to sell it at auction, but knew it would fetch a far better price once she could provide Malcolm’s promised unimpeachable provenance.

  If that day ever came.

  The weeks passed by in a crawl. The gallery kept her busy with shows and launches. A writer of erotic books came and did a reading, which allowed Mona to display many of her mother’s strange pornographic paintings out in the open. She sold two of them. It would have done her mother’s boho heart good to see the pleasure her collection brought to a younger generation.

  All that time Mona couldn’t stop thinking of Malcolm. Who was he? Why had he picked her? Why did so much time pass between their assignations? What did he have planned for her next? More nymphs? More auctions? More whoring?

  All of the above?

  At first he’d come to her once a month, but two months had already passed since the night she played a nymph for him. He’d warned her not to expect him to come often. He didn’t seem a capricious man, but he had said the liaisons took much out of him. She imagined him in England with a wife and children he could rarely escape. He paid for women because he wanted a sort of sex he couldn’t have in his respectable marriage. It explained why he wasn’t ready to give her his last name yet, why so much time passed between dalliances, and why every night they spent together was such a production and lasted for hours and hours.

  And hours.

  After two long months, however, she wondered if she would ever see him again. But in mid-October, when the leaves turned bright orange and rusty red and the temperature demanded sweaters with skirts and stockings on bare legs, she entered her office to find a book on her desk, the red velvet choker marking the page again.

  She smiled. It was about damn time.

  This time Malcolm hadn’t marked a page in the big white book of art history. The book on her desk was the most recent auction catalog from London. She turned to the page he’d marked and saw what there was to see…and what there was to see was a late eighteenth century portrait from English Catholic artist James Sharples.

  Portrait of a Gentleman, Small, Three-Quarter Length, Seated on a Chair, In Hunting Attire, A Riding Crop in His Right Hand.

  That was certainly it. She saw a dashing gentleman. She saw the canvas was indeed quite small. She saw the man in the portrait was seated on a chair and that he wore hunting attire and in his hand he held a riding crop.

  It was a very accurate title for the painting.

  So it was to be the crop this time? He’d warned her of that, too. She’d never had a lover beat her before, consensually or otherwise. Her mother had never spanked her. She’d had her bottom pinched by a boy in a bookshop once, and she was ready to slap him when she saw he was no more than fourteen. She’d gotten her revenge by telling on him to his mother, who’d been drinking tea in the café while her son pretended to look at books. The mother had dragged him from the shop by his ear and Mona had smiled all the while. A good memory but not erotic. She didn’t imagine she would enjoy being beaten by a riding crop, but who knew? She never thought she’d enjoy frolicking with nymphs or being sold on the auction block or having a bottle stuffed inside her either. And yet she had enjoyed it.

  She’d enjoyed it all.

  As Malcolm had given her no instructions for what to wear for their Sunday night assignation, she wore her favorite fall dress of crushed red velvet—ankle length, skin tight, backless. She pinned her apple-red hair up in a chignon and let tendrils fall down her neck. If that wouldn’t please a man such as Malcolm, nothing would.

  Midnight came at last.

  Mona went to the gallery, and spent a moment petting sweet, sleepy Tou-Tou in his bed before heading for the back room. She didn’t want to seem afraid, so she opened the door without hesitation.

  Malcolm was waiting.

  He stood in the center of the back room, his back to her. He’d dressed like the man in the portrait. Hunting attire. White breeches, a green velvet jacket, and brown leather riding boots that clung to his thighs like a second skin. He was magnificent, resplendent, utterly desirable. His hair looked a shade longer and a shade lighter, and it was curled on his head in the consummate Regency style.

  In his right hand he held a long wooden riding crop with a leather tip.

  Mona ignored the crop. She cared nothing about it. She walked to Malcolm, almost ran, and he took her into his arms and kissed her passionately. His mouth was warm and tasted of spiced wine and cigars. She couldn’t stop kissing him.

  "Beautiful girl,” he murmured against her lips. She wanted to tear off his fine white linen cravat and lick the hollow of his throat. She would have kissed it and bitten it. She would have drunk wine out of it. She hadn’t given that hollow a second thought until it was covered and hidden from her view.

  "I want you already,” she said as she grasped the back of his coat and pressed her breasts to his chest. He kissed the tops of her breasts, swelling out of her dress. He ran his fingertips over those soft swells and she shivered and sighed. Her nipples needed sucking and her clitoris needed licking and her pussy needed his cock. She was pleased they would be all alone tonight, their first time all alone together in months. She had things she must ask him, but she knew she couldn’t until he’d spent his lust on her. It would be hours, she knew, if the pattern held.

  She could wait.

 
Malcolm had looped the leather cord of the riding crop over his right wrist, and she felt the tip of it tickling her backside as he kissed her mouth. He lightly scored her back with his fingertips, caressing her skin along her spine, cupping her bottom before tickling his way up to the nape of her neck again. He kissed her earlobe, kissed her collarbone. As he kissed her neck, he pulled the strap of her dress down her shoulder to bare her left breast. He held it in his hand, squeezed it as he kissed her mouth. He cupped it in his palm and looked down, smiling at it like a prized possession.

  "So lovely,” he said. "So young and ripe.” He teased the tender red tip with his thumb, tracing the edge of the aureole. Her nipple hardened quickly. It was a red marble under the pad of his thumb. He toyed with it to make her moan. "Tell me what you feel, Mona. Tell me what I do to your body.”

  "I feel desire.”

  "Tell me much more than that. How does your nipple feel?”

  "Hard. It feels as hard to me as it does to you,” she said breathlessly. "A woman can feel when her nipples are this hard.”

  "As a man can when his cock is hard.”

  "Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that. When you touch my nipple when it’s soft, I feel pleasure. But when you touch it when it’s this hard, the pleasure is magnified. Ten or twenty times. It’s hard to stand, hard to breathe. I ache, Malcolm.”

  "Where do you ache, Mona? Tell me everywhere you ache.” He whispered the order and kissed the top of her breast. His soft hair tickled the bare flesh of her chest. She would die if he made her wait for him to take her.

  "My breasts ache,” she said. "They need to be licked and sucked hard. And I ache inside for your cock.”

  "In your cunt.”

  "In my cunt,” she said. He inhaled sharply as if it aroused him