Property of the Marquis

Chapter 4

“Yes, he did.”

“And you’ve seen him four times,” Laney chimed in, “So what does he do?”

“He flies in on business and calls, telling me to meet him. Once was at his hotel room, the other times were in the homes of his friends. He likes the private houses better, says it’s more intimate—which obviously it is.” She stopped talking, looking up nervously at both women.

“So…” Laney had to prompt her.

“So, he makes me take off my clothes and kneel for him. Then, depending on his mood, I wait on him like a serving wench. It’s kind of strange in a strange house, to be walking naked into the kitchen to make Essex a drink and find the lady of the house drinking her coffee or making dinner. The last woman told me she wanted to see me after I was punished. I was so embarrassed that I practically ran from the room.

“That afternoon, Essex gave me an enema in front of the woman’s husband. He had a whole room outfitted for medical play. It was cold and creepy and erotic and… oh, I don’t know, it had me shivering.”

“Really, Sandra, no…” Elise uttered through her mesmerized stupor.

“I knelt on a hardwood bench inside the sterile room, my ass in the air, my breasts crushed against the wood, strapped down with a belt, while a wave of hot soapy water swept inside my body, rushing like rapids into my bowels, going deep, like the water was going to fill me up and I’d burst at the seams. I got all confused and disoriented. The rushing water made me feel so desperate that I started to cry. After a while, the feelings seemed to settle, but the pressure was steadily building. That’s when Essex started beating my ass with a cane. I started to scream and they gagged me with a thick rubber hose, and he kept on beating my bottom. I was sure that I’d explode, but then suddenly I’m jerked to my feet and shoved into the bathroom. I was as weak as a kitten once I expelled the water, but my body was hungering for more. The pain and humiliation aroused me more than anything I remember doing on the island. It far surpassed Essex’ previous visits. A few minutes later, I was strung up in the center of that white-tiled room and the two men, Essex and his host, came on me from both sides, f*****g my ass and cunt at the same time till I was delirious. I guess they’d removed the gag at some point, although I don’t remember exactly when. I don’t know how many times I came; it seemed like one long stream of crushing spasms. I couldn’t stop coming, and I could barely walk when it was over.

“What I remember most,” her blue eyes blazed darkly, “—and this is so funny—” funny, but she wasn’t laughing and she didn’t look a bit amused, “I looked toward the door as I’m finally coming back to life, just before the men pull out, and there’s the wife I met in the kitchen staring at us. She’s drinking her coffee, all dressed up like a perfect suburban housewife, and there’s nothing odd at all about seeing a naked woman dangling from her ceiling, with c*m juice dripping down her ass and legs.”

It took a long while before Laney spoke. “This happened yesterday?”

The trance-like spell Sandra had maintained throughout her story seemed to break and she giggled nervously, “Yes.”

Laney looked at her strangely… “So you want this, Sandra, or what?”

“I don’t know,” the emotional blonde seemed close to tears. “I only know that I can’t stop. I can’t tell Essex no.”

“And what about Jason? You told him what happened?” Elise asked.

“Not exactly. Sure, he found out how I spent my afternoon, and was all smiles, all c**k by the time I finished telling him the story. He started f*****g me in the kitchen, then we moved to the living room. We f****d like a pair of minks until dawn, and I slept until just before I came over here. I guess I still barely believe it happened. There were other times, but yesterday was definitely the most extreme.”

Only the sound of the softly snapping fire was heard for several minutes as Sandra’s revelations sunk in and she finally added, tearfully, “I’m so glad we decided to meet, I had to tell someone, and you’re the only two people who would understand.” She looked at them for comfort, approval… something she sought with her deep, blue teary eyes.

She waited for comments, but none came.

“Didn’t they say that their influence in our lives wouldn’t stop on the island?” she reminded them. “We didn’t believe them at first, but then this happens to me…” She stared back and forth from Elise to Laney. “Oh, please, come on now. You want to tell me that nothing unusual has happened to either of you since Marquis Island?”

Elise sighed audibly. “I need another glass of wine,” she said abruptly. “This one is wearing off.” She hopped to her feet, moving swiftly toward the kitchen and reemerged with another bottle of Chablis. “Anyone else need to soften the blow, huh?” She poured herself a glass, while Sandra turned down the offer and Laney held out her glass for more.

“Elise, you’re flushed,” Laney said, as she sat back.

“Am I?”

“Thinking of Essex?” Sandra asked. She wryly turned the phrase.

“Actually no, dear, I’m not thinking of Essex at all.”

“Matthew?” Laney probed. Elise had a history of being obtuse.

“Matthew?” said as if she could hardly remember that Matthew was her husband. “No, no.” She shook her head. “He’s been in San Francisco a lot in the last eight months.”

“Has something soured between you?” Laney wondered.

“I don’t know.” She half smiled, answering the question with the vague reply. “But you’re right, Sandra… life has not been the same since the island. Like you, I thought that world was just a break from reality, but the last eight months…there’s no Essex,” her voice was now musical and dreamy, “but, but… I guess I can’t keep the secret forever, can I?” The diminutive Elise liked to appear mysterious and uncertain. She was quiet, introspective, brooding at times, a little like a scared mouse. Her innate beauty soared with her music, and when she was sexually engaged, she could be the tigress. Until now… as far as anyone knew, she’d reserved the tigress for Matthew—and those few public moments on Marquis Island.

“Can’t keep what secret, Elise?” Laney spoke fiercely.

Elise smiled. She was thinking hard, looking for a way to keep from turning the night into her true confessions, but that wasn’t really possible. Maybe she was as torn inside as Sandra apparently had been. She didn’t know about Laney, although her intuition said that Laney was hiding something, too. Elise took her time; she always liked the drama behind a really good story. Although maybe this time, she didn’t need more drama, her monstrous story would stand on its own, drama enough. She got up and moved to the record player, one Matthew had bought at a flea market a couple of years before. It still played the old vinyl records beautifully. Elise loved to hear the loping sound of the turning disc, the slight lisp in the music, the scratches in the wearing grooves. Chopin’s Etudes. She could play everyone herself by heart, but tonight she was content to listen to her favorite recording.

Sandra was reclining on the couch now, while Laney remained as she had all night, sitting crossed-legged on the floor. The two waited for Elise to settle herself. The finicky pianist seemed a little more nervous than she had been before. Once the music started playing, she took a moment to fluff up the pillows on the chair opposite Laney—the floor was no longer comfortable—then she poured herself another glass of wine and slipped into the chair, settling in with a big sigh.

The moment moved on with the sweet music lulling their wine-soaked senses, but they were immediately reawakened from a reflective daze when Elise finally made her grand announcement.

“I’ve been having an affair,” she said. Although she tried hard to sound fearless, her voice quavered slightly and she waited for her friends to say something, but neither Laney nor Sandra knew how to respond. By now, after so much delay, the announcement was hardly earth-shattering. Elise averted her eyes from their wondering expressions, while fingering her skirt nervously, making her look a lot more childish than womanly.

The awkward quiet begged to be broken, and Laney finally had to prompt her. “You obviously want to tell us, Elise, for crissakes get on with it!”

“This isn’t easy,” she whined a bit.

“Well, it shouldn’t be,” Laney came back, irritated.

“Don’t you go judging me, Laney Priestly.”

“I only meant that having an affair wouldn’t be easy for you, confessing it even more difficult. I wouldn’t think it was in your nature.”

“Well, maybe my nature has changed—matured.”

“I really wouldn’t know, but you’re dying to tell us, so…”

“It’s astounding even to me, I mean to admit I’ve been unfaithful, and yet being unfaithful to Matthew is furthest thing from my mind. It’s not about unfaithfulness at all.”

“So who’s your hot new lover,” Sandra wanted details.

“Cabral Icaboni.”

“Who?”

“He’s the new conductor of the symphony. A phenom, a virtuoso. As you’d expect, he’s volatile—just like Matthew, but much younger.” Her eyes closed as if she were bringing him to mind that moment. “He has this patrician face that’s sculpted like a Greek God’s, and a rag mop of blonde hair that plays to the crowd of old ladies who will spend their season ticket money lusting after what’s in his pants. Like they’ll ever know.” The more she spoke, the more Elise drew in on herself, half mindful of her friends, half in the dreamland of her memories, grasping for every detail. “Matthew and I haven’t been doing well, not since the island, and that’s the plain facts of it. Matthew expected to go at a dead run into this sadomasochistic lifestyle. Whips and chains and leather, dungeon houses and bondage brothels. I told him no. Of course, I was frightened, but it was more than that. It’s so much easier to put on propriety’s clothes when you live in a normal world, with normal people behaving normally all around you. It’s just not me to be parading around in leather in some seedy underground dungeon, with unwashed hairy types, beer drinking Harley riders with their trashy females hanging on like pestering flies. I know, you don’t hear this kind of judgmental talk from me, but it’s what I think inside about that crowd. I tried it once, for Matthew’s sake. We went to this pubic dungeon in someone’s rank basement. It wasn’t exactly public; they required a password to get in. Anyway, after about a half hour, I couldn’t stand the smoke or the music or the people, and I practically puked in the bathroom. I called a taxi and went home, didn’t even tell Matthew I was leaving. I called him on my cell soon as I got home. He came home furious. It’s not been the same between us since, and now I think he has plans to move to San Francisco. I don’t know that for sure, he hasn’t said as much, but can feel him drawing further and further away…”

Sandra and Laney only needed to keep their eyes on her, Elise wouldn’t need prompting.

“But this isn’t about Matt, it’s Cabral’s story,” she sighed. “About three months ago, a few weeks after he took over the orchestra, I was in the rehearsal hall after everyone had left. I was cleaning out my sheet music, bending over the piano, and suddenly Cabral is behind me. He puts his hand right on my thigh, right on top of the brand. It started to throb, like he’d turned on a switch. He started to rub it and I got all juicy between my thighs. At the same time, I was frozen, completely unable to move, I was so shocked. I’m thirty-two and married, he’s twenty-one and quite single. There’s not a runway model on the East Coast who hasn’t dated Cabral. And there are the Hollywood starlets, and a number of ingénues in the New York theatre crowd. He could have the entire flute section of the orchestra, and a couple of first violinists. But he doesn’t date the orchestra members. He said that to me as if it would be lowering his standards to fraternize with his underlings.

“I’m older though, and good for other purposes he says…but that’s getting ahead of myself. Cabral has his hand on my thigh, pressing the brand as if he knows it’s there. ‘You have a special vibe, Elise,’ he tells me. ‘I do?’ I said. I was petrified. ‘And you have a special assignment.’

“He stood up and put a key in my hand, a motel key for a place just outside of town on the state highway. ‘Come in your trench coat and a pair of high heels, red high heels, spiked high heels. Maybe a bra and panties, but that’s all. Tomorrow in the morning, ten o’clock.’