Exit to Eden (22 page)

And my anger gave way to another more savage emotion. Get him. Fuck him, the bastard. I was ready, too.

Champion, she called him. Probably done it hundreds of times. A goddamned gladiator, that's what he was, and I was right off the bus. Okay. I was getting more and more exhilarated, crazy. It was sublimely brutal and it was galvanizing me, yet another doorway opening on something that had always been locked up.

"Remember," the handler said pushing me towards the ring. "On your hands and knees always, and no hitting. And don't waste any time defending yourself. Get him. Now go to it." And he shoved me down and under the rail.

With a loud clack, the count began.

I saw him moving in front of me, glowering at me from under his dark brows, the oil beaded on his hands and his cheeks. Stockier than I am, just a little muscle-bound, not good for him. The count was up to thirty, thirty-one…

Suddenly, he lunged at me as if he'd go over my head, and I spun around sharply to the right just in time to see him land in the dust clumsily. But the secret was to mount him now, without a second's hesitation, and I sprang at him before he could recover, making in effect a complete circle from the time he had rushed for me. I got on top of him, and locked my left arm around his throat, reinforcing it with my right. But it was madness trying to hang on, his body slipping and sliding under me as he bucked in fury, his greased fingers scratching uselessly at my hands. I could hear him snarling.

But he wasn't getting away, not from me. It was the gutter fights I'd never had, the alley rapes I'd never committed, nor ever even truly imagined. And he had it coming, the son of a bitch, he would have done it to me. It was divine. I humped him as if I were already in, clamping down on him like a vise. It was working. He couldn't throw me off and he was weakening. His fingers slipped as they grasped at my arms, and my hands. The crowd was roaring. I rammed him hard. He shook his head savagely and tried to roll over, but I was too heavy for him, too mad and determined for him, and I was in. I had him, and I had both arms around his neck again, and he didn't have a chance now.

The crowd broke its counting—110, 111—to scream and applaud. And his frantic bucking only made it better, the friction gorgeous as he tried to get free. I came, spewing into the heat inside him, shoving his head down in the dirt.

******

They let me rest for a little while after the shower and scrubbing. I sat on a little patch of soft grass with my arms folded on my knees and my head on my arms. I wasn't really tired or worn out.

I was thinking. Why had she chosen that particular game for me? It had been the very opposite of a humiliation, yet the exposure had been dazzling. And the lessons unique. Rape without guilt. Should every man experience that once in his lifetime, his capacity to use another like that, but in a situation where no real moral or physical damage is done?

I could have gotten addicted to that little game. Except that I was already getting addicted to her. It nagged at me, why had she chosen it? It was too tricky, giving me a chance to master the other one. Was she building me up for a real fall?

When I finally looked up, I saw her leaning against one of the fig trees watching me with her head to one side and her thumbs hooked in the side pockets of her suede skirt. She had the strangest expression on her face, her eyes large, her lower lip very kissable, her face girlish and soft.

I had that odd desire to speak to her, explain something to her, the same urge that had come over me in the bedroom, and again the anguish: what the hell would she care? She didn't want to know me, this woman. She wanted only to use me and that was why I was here.

Yet we were looking at each other over the distance of the little bathing place, oblivious to the racket from the ring where the same drama was being reenacted, and I was scared of her again, just as I'd been scared for hours, scared of what was going to happen next.

When she beckoned to me, there was a stirring in my loins that I could almost hear. I had a real premonition, that it wouldn't be any more macho antics right now.

I rose and walked over to her, the anxiety getting worse.

"You're very good at wrestling," she said calmly. "You can do things that a lot of new slaves can't. But it's just about time to whip you again, don't you think?"

I stared at her boots, the tight fit around her ankles. Back to her room, please, I thought. I could take anything if we were alone there again. Just thinking about it… I knew I was supposed to answer her, but I could not make the proper words come out.

"Blond slaves give everything away with their faces," she said, her curled finger stroking my cheek. "Ever been whipped at a real whipping post?" she asked. "For a nice large and appreciative crowd to watch?"

So here it comes.

"Well?"

"No, Madam," I said dryly with a little cold smile. Not ever for any crowd. And God, not for this crowd, not in this place! I had to think of something, something that wasn't an out and out entreaty. But again, nothing came out.

A handler appeared behind her, flash of hairy wrist, the
de rigueur
strap.

She said: "Take him to the whipping post. Let him walk with his hands at his sides. I like the way he looks that way, better than the other ways. And fully shackle him for the whipping. The works."

Total absence of discernible pulse. And the cold realization that if I said no and refused to move, the son of a bitch would whistle up his assistants and probably drag me to it all the same.

Well, that wouldn't happen.

"Lisa…" I whispered, shaking my head just a little.

Her hand came towards me again with a distinct whiff of perfume—flashes of the bedroom, the sheets, her naked under me— and closed warmly on the back of my neck.

"Shhhh. Come on, Elliott," she said, her fingers massaging my neck muscles. "You can take it, and you will, for me."

"Merciless," I whispered, clenching my teeth and looking away from her.

"Yes, exactly," she said.

He was getting a little scared for the first time now. All the good humor had drained out of his face. And the anger wasn't there either, the way it had been right before the wrestling match. No, something was really working finally. He didn't like the idea of being shackled, whipped in front of spectators. The nerve had at last been touched.

And what a laugh it would be if he knew how scared I was of disappointing him, how damned panicky I was that I just wasn't giving him his money's worth.

I mean all this bull about the slaves existing purely to please the masters and mistresses was just that: bull. We had to give everybody in this place what he or she bargained for, and we knew it. The system absolutely depended on satisfaction all around. What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn't really grind him under, give him what he came here to get?

But now with the whipping we had something. Okay.

I told the handler to lead him in front of me because I didn't want, for just a minute or two, to see his face. I had to break away from him. I had to get myself under command again.

When you train slaves you learn to watch everything, the slightest change in expression or respiration, all the little signals of distress that vary enormously from punishment to punishment, motif to motif. Ideally, you are also involved. Impassioned. But you learn to do it so well that you don't need to be burning anymore. And sometimes the burn is so steady and so continuous that you're not aware how powerful it is until you start to bring it to a close.

But something else was going on here. I wasn't just watching him; I was magnetized by him. It was an agony for me not to look at him every second, not to touch his skin, his hair. I wanted to provoke his rebelliousness again, his absolutely surprising insolence, his sense of his being
right there
.

What I couldn't stand was the idea of conquering him and that was what he had every right to expect me to do.

I let them get several yards ahead of me, just a little amazed by the way that he was looking around. The handler jerked his arm once or twice but it didn't have much of an effect. I could tell just watching his posture, the stiffness of his shoulders, that he was tense as a wire.

And that rational part of me, that part of me that was pure professional, kept trying to figure out what was really going on with the two of us, why I was out of hand.

Okay. He's a thousand times as handsome as the file pictures. Forget early calculations on that score. His hair is thicker, almost bushy, and that softens the shape of the head. And he does have a slightly cruel expression when he isn't smiling, a toughness that he hasn't invented, but on the contrary, tries to conceal. He doesn't like his own toughness all that much. He takes it for granted. Okay. That's nice.

And blue eyes, yes, unbelievable, and infinitely beautiful by sunlight, torchlight, incandescent light, whether or not he is smiling, staring, merely thoughtful, grave. The body is
the
body for a man to have. Say no more.

Now, add in the long fingers, the narrow hands, the manicured nails (almost unheard of among the slaves), the bearing, and the deep inflection of the voice and the way he does almost everything I tell him to do and you have Mr. Macho with inveterate elegance, the square-jawed guy by the fire in the ski lodge in the cigarette commercial, drawing on a Marlboro as if he's lazily recharging his batteries with it, the guy you know will like Mozart as well as Billie Holliday, be a tolerable judge of French wines.

All right, I have that part. And I admit I have never seen a slave quite like that before. That's dream stuff, only I never dreamed it.
Reads Russian novels word for word
.

But what about the rest of it, the look in his eye, the odd and intimate way in which he smiles, the way he
told
me he was scared of me, the damned smart cracks—nobody ever does that with me—and the particular energy that starts burning out the circuits when we touch?

I never fell in love in high school, never believed all that stuff about guys "kissing" better than others. But damned if he doesn't know how to kiss. He kisses the way I imagine men kiss each other, rough and really luscious, and affectionate in a way it can only be between equals, real equals, when there is equal potential for the acceleration and the fulfillment of desire. I could crawl into the back of a Chevrolet with him to kiss like that for an hour. Only guys don't kiss each other in the backs of cars, do they?

What in the hell is going on?

We'd come to the triple whipping post. Okay. He was really uptight.

Flood of white light on the three round cement stages, each slave tethered by the neck to the high post that came almost to the chin. And the line of shackled slaves waiting their turn, only two of them blindfolded, one gagged.

The crowd was the usual nine o'clock five-or-six-drinks-and-nobody-has-to-drive-home-because-we-are-home crowd, the guests at the tables on the raised terraces the ones who make no bones about the fact that whipping, pure and simple, turns them on. They don't need the games and the races. They think they're silly. And never mind that the whipping is 50 percent show and noise.

And the usual drifters, a good hundred or so milling in front of the stage with drinks in hand.

The handler, a very abrupt and rough young man I didn't know, led Elliott to the side, but Elliott was turning his head to look at the slaves who were "getting it," and the handler gave him a corrective crack of the strap.

I drew in a little closer. I half wanted to put the shackles on myself, but the handlers do it better, faster. They have more practice. I came up just close enough so that I didn't interfere.

Elliott looked at me for a second. There was a little muscle dancing in his cheek, and the dark red flush.

The handler put the thick white leather strap around his chest and then laced his wrists to the strap in back. It was driving him crazy. He looked off at the crowd and I could see the glaze over his eyes.

I kept reaching to touch him and tightening my fingers, moving so the gesture wasn't noticed. But now I put my fingers in his hair. He looked at the whipping post steadily, not acknowledging me, and his mouth twisted a little, looked a little mean.

When the handler put the white leather collar around his neck, I thought he was going to struggle. And he almost did.

"Take it easy," I said.

It's a lovely collar, lined in soft fur, and it pushes the chin up gracefully, but it makes you feel fifty times more helpless than you already are, and I could see he was clenching his teeth hard.

"You've been through this before…" I said, stroking his back. I was really not liking this so much. And I could see it was killing him that he couldn't lower his head to look at me, couldn't even turn it anymore.

"Blindfold him," I said.

Definitely not expecting it, silently terrified of it. And the handler pulled his head roughly as he slapped the blindfold around his eyes. He went rigid. I could see the thick pads under the white leather, thought how they felt when they were pressed to the eyelids. The handler buckled it tight. And as always happens, the lower part of his face looked irresistible, the lips working nervously, stretching, pressing together, going slack.