Page 29 of The Red (The Godwicks 1)

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

"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 commandedofher.

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 breakingpoint.

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 insides, she surrendered to himentirely.

He vanquished her with one final, brutalthrust.

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

"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,blessingthem.

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 bysatyrs.

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

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

And she was merely Monaagain.

A Portrait of aGentleman

The only explanationMona 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 redAugustday.

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 unimpeachableprovenance.

If that dayevercame.

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 youngergeneration.

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? Morewhoring?

All of theabove?

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 andhours.

Andhours.

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 pageagain.

She smiled. It was aboutdamntime.

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 JamesSharples.

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

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 aridingcrop.

It was a very accurate title for thepainting.

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 hadenjoyedit.

She’d enjoyeditall.

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, nothingwould.

Midnight cameatlast.

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