Property of the Marquis

Chapter 5

“Then he walked away. I stood up, not moving for a long time, gulping back pangs of guilty anguish, ‘what would Matthew say? … should I tell him…Elise! Are you crazy?’ I almost started to laugh out loud at how juvenile this was. I mean, isn’t that the most cliché of s*x fantasies—the trench coat? I did it once for Matt in Spain, and it was hot. But to be ordered by a man eleven years younger than me, this punk phenom with the crazy hair and the swagger of a cocky adolescent…I was crazy to even consider it.

“But the mark still burned like the day it was burned into my flesh on the island,” she sighed deeply. “The feeling kept spreading upward and going deeper inside. I could almost recall the throbbing of his groin against my ass. Was that real? Or did I just imagine his c**k pressed to my bottom? I could have dismissed it out of hand, but there were the repercussions of this… what if… I could lose my job if the truth of our trysts ended up in the tabloids. Cabral is tabloid fodder, and there’s some morals clause in my contract—not to mention that I am a married woman. Cabral could cost me my position without tarnishing his. He could say that my tempo was sluggish, my technique is sloppy, that he wants me out of the orchestra, and has another better pianist he wants to audition. He’s already done this to Marion Brandt, so I know he has it in him to work whatever angles suit him. I’ve wondered if Marion had been caught in his trap. Had he demanded s*x from her? Was that possible? Dear Marion,” her voice fell sadly. “Some people think I’m a stodgy stick in the mud, but Marion is twice as demure, and very mousy. Maybe that’s what he likes, unlikely women. I dismissed the idea, the craziness seemed to be spreading. But my head was swimming, fear and heat coming down on me at once. By then I hardly thought of Matt. My own survival. My own pressing need. Like Sandra,” she turned toward her friend on the couch, “I was hornier than I’d been since we were together on the island…

“I assume you men him?”

“Of course, I went,” Elise went on as she took gulps of wine to refresh her palate, although by then the wine was starting to taste bitter and sour her stomach. “In my red high heels, my trench coat and my sexiest Vicky’s Secret underwear. I get to the motel, to the room, and he’s already there, pacing, a drink in his hand—mind you, it’s ten in the morning. He’s wearing jeans and a white sweater, his hair as natty as usual, but he has this allure that shouts out, ‘I’m special, worship me, b***h!’ He’s moody and cross, just as he is with the orchestra, and he’s going to play me with the same precision as he does his one hundred piece instrument in the symphony hall. I know this the moment I step in the room.

“He stares at me, while I stand shivering in my shoes. I’m a little dizzy…I mean very dizzy. I’m swaying in the high heels, nothing to hang on to but my fear. I still want to laugh, this seems so silly, he’s so serious, but I don’t laugh. I know what’s at stake and I know how my p***y lips will glisten for him once I open my coat, so I can hardly be blameless. It’s just astounding to me that he could know I’d be an easy mark.

“While he’s casually drinking his scotch at ten in the morning, he tells me to open the coat. I do and stand there before him, practically naked. ‘Turn around,’ he tells me. I turn three hundred and sixty degrees and then face him again, feeling my body teeter a little off balance like a reprimanded schoolgirl. I right myself and wait.

“‘I need a whipping girl,’ he announces without batting an eye, ‘And you’re it, Elise. I like that you’re older than me. It’s kind of like fuckin’ with the babysitter, don’t you think?’ His lip sort of turned up in a twisted, smug way. ‘You’re going to satisfy my cravings to punish women. You will bend to me, bend before me. You’ll do any damn thing I ask when I have you here.’

“I can’t believe what he wants. I’m howling inside, trying to figure a way out of this, meanwhile, I’m sweating with arousal and my p***y is leaking juices down my thigh. He notices, of course, and that only gives him more ammunition. ‘You’ve got the kind of nature that submits to men, so you might as well submit to me. I know you want me, that you despise me at the same time, but that doesn’t really matter, Elise, because you’re going to do this, so we can both stay sane.’

“I closed my coat, about to run off, and he walks closer, stands right in front of me. I smell the liquor on his breath. I feel the heat of his body, and then his hand clutching the back of my neck. ‘Someone branded you,’ he says, ‘which means you belong to some man; I think that man should be me. You think I’m insane, but look at you. You came with so little persuasion on my part. I’m sure you’re afraid of me, you want your job. It’s a good job that your talent is barely suited for, and you know that too. So, we have a deal now, don’t we, Elise?’ I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t speak, so he shakes my head. ‘Yes, we have a deal,’ I said, bowing my head. It shames me that I can be bought so cheaply.

“He shoved me to the floor, on my knees, my back to him, and took out a cat o’nine tails and whipped my back. My cunt was scorching hot and ready to come by the time he finished, and dropped to his knees behind me. He’s got a long, arched c**k that goes places Matthew’s just won’t go. He had my hair in his hand, his other hand grabbing at my hip and the hot brand. He was all pent-up that first day. After he came the first time, he put me on the bed on my hands and knees and used the cat on my ass and the back of my legs, going over the flesh again and again. I thought he’d never stop. I was about to scream when he finally dropped the thing and shoved himself inside me again.”

Elise stopped for a moment, while the three collectively caught their breath.

“Two weeks later, before the opening night of the symphony season, he stopped me in the hallway just a half hour before the curtain was to rise. ‘In my dressing room,’ he says. I hadn’t been with him again since that first day, and I was a little anxious about that. Of course, I knew the whole arrangement was dangerous, but I wanted it even if it was. He’d been the only thing in my mind, and I know Cabral could see that in my eyes every time I looked at him during rehearsal. I went to the dressing room just as he ordered. He stared at me, like he’d stared at me in the motel room, then said, ‘Take off your panties.’ I was all dressed up, make-up perfect, my clothes immaculate, you know me, I won’t go on stage otherwise. This could get ugly, I’m thinking, but I lifted my skirt and removed my panties and handed them to him. He proceeded to drop them in his trash can and turned back to me, ‘Unzip your dress and straddle the chair,’ he pointed to a straight back chair he’d placed there for the occasion. I did as he asked, drawing the zipper down my back, my head bowed like a measly slave girl, then I climbed on the chair, having to hike the skirt up around my waist. I could imagine the wrinkles forming in the cloth. Something Cabral wouldn’t care about. I shrugged the dress off my shoulders and leaned into the back of the chair, as I offered my flesh for the braided flogger he had clasped in his hand. I held my breath and tucked my head, while the ferocity of his wrath rained on me again. It might have been a small flogger, but this was a lively one, jumping across my skin like a cunning joker, cutting my flesh to shreds, to the point just before it started to bleed. My naked cunt rocked against the wooden seat; I ground it in harder, the harder he whipped me, mewling softly as the rush of endorphins carried me away. He whipped me until he exhausted himself, maybe about five minutes, almost non-stop. The punishment was horrific and wonderful, but I couldn’t imagine recovering enough to play my solo—which would begin no more than fifteen minutes after the opening curtain.”

Elise paused, her eyes connected with both Sandra and the mesmerized Laney.

“Both of you were there that night, in the second row.”

“Yes, and you played like an angel, Elise,” Laney remembered.

“I know. He made me a better pianist and I made him sane enough to be brilliant.” Elise smiled. “I asked him later how he knew about the brand. ‘How do I know these things? I have no idea,’ he said. We don’t talk about why I have to do this. He knows I’ll do anything he asks. He likes thinking of me as the over-the-hill woman. I don’t think of myself that way. Not at all. I still feel foolish being dominated by this horny, overachieving kid. He’s still dating starlets, going to head-banging nightclubs, downloading hip-hop to his I-Pod and ‘IM-ing’ his Gershwin trio friends about the cute cunt with the big boobs in the first row of the string section. Dammit!” her emotions rose and her shame twisted in her gut. “I’m so deeply into this man—I couldn’t extricate myself from him without severely damaging my career. And, of course, Matthew knows nothing about it,” she took a deep breath, as she finally reached the end.

She looked up, as if a great load had been lifted off her weary shoulders. “So, now I’ve told you everything.”

All was quiet in Elise’s living room for a long time. The pretty, chestnut-haired pianist had talked herself hoarse, maybe as much as she’d ever talked at one time.

Laney commented first, “So this had nothing to do with the Island, or the Marquis…?”

“Nothing.” Elise thought a moment. “Not as far as I know. How would Cabral know about that scene? He’s just a kid from New York, who took Julliard by storm and now has taken over me. I keep thinking he’ll tire of me, and I weep about that. He even had me here, in my own house just last week, in my own bed, in Matthew’s bed. I did get him to promise he wouldn’t take those chances again, but if he showed up on my doorstep now, I’m not sure I could send him away.”

“What if during one of the little scenes before a performance, someone just walks into his dressing room?” Sandra asked, sounding shell-shocked by the torrent of raw passion behind Elises’s story.

“I try not to think about that.”

“So, does he use you often?” she probed further.

“So far, every week. Sometimes after rehearsal, sometimes before, sometimes the motel or his apartment—but only once at his apartment. I’m not a girlfriend, I’m his whipping girl. That distinction has been made very clear. I probably need to speak to him about discretion, since he’s as deeply into this as I am, and it would be damning to both of us.”

“Be careful, Elise, and be careful with Matthew,” Laney warned. “Could you imagine what he’d say, what he’d do?”

“I’m as careful as I’m going to be, Laney. Maybe I have a handle on this, maybe not. But I don’t expect it to stop anytime soon. The island made me fair game, vulnerable to creative sadists…what did it make you?” she paused. “What about you? You started this, you begged us for these confessions.”

“Begged? I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, but Laney, you have this way about you. You’ve always been an instigator, a goad. You know that.”

“My story is more simple than either of yours.” Laney smiled, unable to hide now. “As you already know, Erik and I got pretty deeply involved with Domination and submission. Now since his death, I’ve become famished…so thirsty for s*x that I feel as though I’m crawling in the desert gasping for water…and none comes. I can’t continue on like this. I know it’s only been six months, but I can’t wait as my desires grow stronger every day. That’s why I’m taking off next week—call it a vacation, I really don’t know what it will turn out to be, but I’m returning to Marquis Island.”