Page 40 of The Red (The Godwicks 1)

Already her sex stirred back to life at the sensual tone of his voice, the kisses, the bite of his teeth onherear.

"No,”shesaid.

"More?”

"More,” she begged. "More and more and more.” He started to move again, to fuck her again, to fill her again and with each stroke she said that word. More. It was her only want. Heronlyneed.

More.

And more was exactly what hegaveher.

Dora and theMinotaur

The welts took nearlya month to heal. Mona wondered if Malcolm had timed his evening with the crop to coincide with the coming of cold weather. Whatever the cause, she was glad for the chill in the air to give her a reason to keep her body well-covered as she healed from the crop and its hundredkisses.

In the days after that night, she could barely remember the events without trembling and hiding herself in her office until she’d gotten hold of herself again. How had he done it? Trained her so quickly to crave pain? And she’d asked him permission to love him? What had possessed her to ask him about hischildren?

Possessed her. That was it. She felt like he’d gotten into her soul somehow, into her mind, and had taken control of her body and her brain. The thoughts she had of him kept her up at night—sometimes weeping with shame, more often burning with longing. Not a day passed she didn’t make herself come once or twice. One day, four times when she became fixated on the specific memory of her lips on his boot buttons, how she’d worshiped him on her hands and knees, how she’d opened her holes up to him in an offering that he’d accepted with a vicious lash of his crop. No man had ever made her feel so much as Malcolm did. Pain didn’t cancel out the pleasure—it doubled it, trebled it. With other lovers she’d felt pleasure and lust. With Malcolm she felt pleasure and lust, but also pain and fear, love and hate. It was the most potent of alchemies. She would have sold herself to him every night of her life for another taste of those bootbuttons.

Mona didn’t know what to do with herself while she waited for Malcolm’s return. She tried focusing on her work. Malcolm had left her a pen and ink drawing by German-American cartoonist Lyonel Feinenger as payment for the night with the crop, and she liked it so much she knew she wouldn’t sell it to pay off her debt unless she absolutely had to. The drawing was of two ghosts carrying their own urns while a tall and skinny black cat stared wide-eyed at the pair of sillyspirits.

A handful of gallery events had generated a little income for The Red, but the debt still loomed, growing larger with interest every day. She treated it like she treated fantasies of Malcolm, chasing them from her mind whenever they reared theirheads.

Still…she thoughtofhim.

Mona wanted to believe Malcolm had some feelings for her. Feelings other than simple lust or desire. He never left until she fell asleep, and she often fell asleep with him inside of her, his ardor for her body far greater than her stamina. She’d asked him the night with the crop why he came to her so infrequently and he’d said their encounters were taxing, that it took him time to recover. She found that difficult to believe. A man with his libido worn out for a month or two from one night of sex? Impossible. No, he must have a wife waiting for him in England. She’d worked up the courage to ask him about his children, but she couldn’t stomach mentioning a wife. Though if his children were grown as he said, why wouldn’t he leave his wife? If he even had a wife? Was she the source of all his money? Is that why he stayed with her? Or was he divorced, and something else took him back to England for weeks on end? Grandchildren? She’d guessed his age at forty. If he were older—forty-five perhaps—it wouldn’t be unreasonable at all for him to have a grandchild or two if he had married in his early twenties and his children had too. She shouldn’t think about such things, about his home life, about what he did when he wasn’t with her. A girl could go crazy letting her mind run along that rabbit trail. Her brain felt like a horse on a carousel, always moving but goingnowhere.

October turned to November, and the orange and red leaves turned brown and then fell to the sidewalk where they made their final transformation to sooty black. The crisp air turned cold. This would be her first holiday season without her mother. Mona had friends, but she’d seen little of them since Malcolm came into her life. She cried off dinners and movies, pleading poverty and exhaustion. She didn’t want her friends asking her what was going on. In a weak moment she might tell them, and since meeting Malcolm she’d had nothing but weak moments. She tried to put herself in her friends’ shoes. What would she say if her college roommate Natasha called and said she’d sold her body to a man—a man with no last name, a man who didn’t use condoms, a man who had no qualms about fucking other women in front of her or bringing other men to their sessions to fondle and finger her? No, Mona couldn’t tell anyone. They might try to talk her out of doing it, and that was the last thing she wanted. She could either see Malcolm or she could see reason, and Malcolm was a finer sight than anything as dull asreason.

November turned toDecember.

Mona’s body had healed completely, no marks left at all. It shamed her how much she missed them when they were gone. She’d started sleeping in the bed in the gallery’s back room. First she slept there only one night a week. Then two. Now she slept there almost every night, little Tou-Tou on the pillow that should have been Malcolm’s. She’d rise early, go home to shower and change clothes, and then return to the gallery. If she’d had a full bathroom at The Red, she would have lived there. In the brass bed, even alone, she felt closer to Malcolm. Even after washing and replacing the sheets, she could still smell the faint cedar and cigar smoke scent of him when she laid on the pillow at night. She hoped it would never fade. Any ideas she had about ever selling the bed disappeared. As long as she lived she would keep the bed she’d shared with Malcolm. She wanted to conceive a child in it, his child. It’s what her mother had done after all—gone to bed with a strange man she met at a party for the sole reason of having a child on her own. Maybe he would allow that as long as she promised never to trouble him for money or support. It was what her mother would have wanted Mona to do. Maybe Mona could have convinced herself to follow through on this plan and abandon her birth control except it was nearing Christmas. This was the time of year when she wished the hardest she knew who her father was and where he was. With her mother gone, she had no family at all with whom to spend the holiday. She wasn’t sure she could do that to her child. The dream would have to have to stay a dream. It wasn’t as if she had the money to raise a child on her own anyway. Admit it, she told herself, you want him toloveyou.

She admitted it, but only toherself.

The week before Christmas, the gallery phone rang after hours. She picked it up and was pleased to hear Sebastian’s voice ontheline.

"How have you been?” he asked. "Do you have more Degas sketches toshowme?”

"None, I’m afraid,” she said with a laugh. "You’d be my first phone call ifIdid.”

"There’s a Degas exhibit this month. Have youseenit?”

"I haven’t, no. Worththetrip?”

"How could you ask me such a thing? I’d walk across a desert with no water for a Degas exhibit and this one is only a cab ride uptown. Come with me. I’ll tell you all of the master’s secrets. You can see the final result of that sketch you have. It’s on exhibit. You won’tregretit.”

"Now where have I heard thatbefore?”

Oh yes, fromMalcolm.

Hungry for company, Mona agreed to meet him at the exhibit. But only to meet him. She didn’t want him thinking it was a date, even if it sort of was. She was too far gone in whatever this was with Malcolm to get romantically entangled with anyone else. But still, Sebastian was terribly handsome with his curling dark hair, warm brown skin, and vibrant eyes. And he knew everything there was to know about Degas—his art, his life. Sebastian’s enthusiasm was infectious. She would have to see about getting a whole display of Degas sketches at The Red. When it was time to part, she kissed Sebastian on the lips—a quick small kiss, but more than she’d intended. As he put her in a cab to send her home, she realized she’d gone two whole hours without thinking of Malcolm. A small victory, but one she’d desperately needed on a cold gray Saturday in a lonelyDecember.

As usual, she went to the gallery instead of her apartment. She pretended she was there solely to check Tou-Tou’s food and water, but she knew what she wanted was to work so late she could justify, yet again, sleeping in the brass bed in the back room. When she walked into her office, she found a book and a glass of red wine waiting onherdesk.

Malcolmwasback.

Mona could hardly catch her breath as she walked to her desk and sat down in the ancient swivel chair that needed oiling. She looked at the wine first. A white card sat propped up on the glass stem. On it in bold male handwriting were twowords.

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