Mercy (19 page)

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” I whispered through one last gush of tears, and I meant it. I didn’t say it to try to get out of being punished, because I knew I wouldn’t. “I’m so sorry I said those things to you. I didn’t mean them.”

“I know it, Lucy. I know.” His hands were so strong, so firm and so warm. He massaged and stroked me from my shoulders to my thighs. He didn’t do it to soothe me or stop my tears, I knew. He did it because he liked to feel my curves, liked to hold them under his hands.
These shoulders, this waist, the flare of hips, it’s mine.
Even so, I loved every moment of it, and basked in the sensation as long as it went on. I stretched a little the way he liked, flexed my dancer’s muscles beneath his fingertips.

“You know,” he said as I did this, “my rules, my requirements, they aren’t always easy. But they’re important. They’re there for a reason.”

What reason?
I wanted to cry out.
Why won’t you love me? Why do you hold these rules between us?

But what I said instead was, “I wish I could be more perfect for you.”

“Oh, Lucy,” he said after a moment. “You’re more perfect than anything I have.”

* * *

The next morning he dragged me out of bed before dawn and hauled me down to the basement without a word. He bent me over one of the ottomans and cuffed my hands in perfunctory silence. I put my head down on the cushion, resigned. Yes, I’d behaved terribly and I deserved severe punishment. Davis was there too, looking tired and annoyed. Must suck, to be dragged out of bed only to witness me get my ass beaten. Well, maybe he’d be invited to fuck me again now that Matthew realized how much I hated it.

Matthew lectured me first about tantrums and rules, then dropped his many spanking implements in front of my face, then gave me a lengthy and businesslike disciplinary beating that came very close to being more than I could take. Ten with the paddle for disrespect, ten with the crop for raising my voice, ten with the strap for covering myself from him and crying like a baby, ten with the cane for just generally being a stupid fuck, as he so colorfully put it. I screamed and I begged and I cried up until the end, but his only response was to kneel down behind me and lube up my ass. He fucked me then, steady and hard, not brutally, but not gently, no. As always during punishments, I was not allowed to come. Then he invited Davis to fuck me in the ass as well, and he did. Thankfully, he did not again invite him to wield the cane.

When Davis was done fucking my then tender ass, Matthew pulled me up from my knees, shaking and weak. He had me thank him for disciplining me, and thank Davis for fucking me. Then he lightly kissed my wet, tearstained cheeks and sent me upstairs to his bedroom.

I came down afterward for the obligatory uncomfortable breakfast, now cleaned up, dressed, and all made up. Human again, not a toy for beating and sex. My ass was so painful, sitting down was its own punishment. I fidgeted helplessly even though Matthew snapped at me to stop. Mrs. Kemp bustled back and forth without so much as a glance. Davis ate with us too, which was excruciatingly weird and awkward. Near the end of breakfast, Matthew told me to tell Davis goodbye, that he would not be back with us again.

* * *

The incident with Davis actually turned out to be a good thing because it opened my eyes, snapped me back to reality. It was Matthew’s way of telling me that what I was doing was not okay, that it was absolutely not okay to fall in love with him. Letting Davis abuse and fuck me was an explicit way to tell me that I needed to fucking get my head straight. Of course, I thought,
of course
Matthew had known exactly how I felt, exactly what false hopes I harbored. What a dork he must have thought me, to believe I loved him, to think he might one day love me back. To think we might one day marry and have babies, be a happy family during the day, and spend each night behind a locked basement door. By inviting another man into our insular world, he got his point across with clarity and élan.
Don’t fall in love with me, Lucy, or I will hurt you. Don’t fall in love with me or I’ll show you that love hurts.

So, yes, as much as the Davis incident hurt me, in the end, it helped me infinitely more. I returned to our next session with a new attitude, new conviction. New promises to myself that I was determined to keep. I would no longer let myself crush on Matthew. I would not harbor silly, girlish fantasies. I would not imagine him confessing his true and undying love for me. I would not picture him pining after me when I was gone.

After that, things got much easier. A new silent and burly driver was hired to shuttle me back and forth but he never joined Matthew and I downstairs. Putting pointless hopes of love and affection from my mind, I focused only on pleasure and pain. I developed into a perfect little sex slave, with my lust-laden mind trained only on pleasing him. Matthew commented on it often, praising me for the progress I made. I even stopped gagging when I sucked him and he had to find other reasons to punish me, which he effortlessly did.

In turn, Matthew began to beat me less cruelly, or maybe I just got more used to the pain. And he gave me more pleasure, more delicious pleasure than I thought I could bear, and almost always, he let me come.

Eventually, too, the marathon sessions of depravity altered, commuted into something less frenetic and more refined. He always still hurt me, and he always still fucked me soundly, but he began to spend a lot of time just looking at me too. Sometimes he’d make me stand there for an hour with my hands at my sides, my legs spread, and a toy burning in my ass. All the while that I stood there facing him, he’d sit on the couch and stare with an unfathomable look, a look that would make me want to fidget, although I could not.

Sometimes he put clips on my nipples and on my clit, and made me lie still in front of him, wet and desperate, but untouched. Other times he would pore over work contracts, take phone calls and send emails while I stood with my ass to him and my hands cuffed at the small of my back. At first I worried that he was getting bored with me, and I tried harder to please him when we played. I moaned louder, wiggled more frantically under his beatings, debased myself even beyond what he asked of me. Of course this only incensed him, and he snapped at me to cut it out.

Over time I came to realize that he wasn’t planning to get rid of me, and in fact, one Sunday, he requested to see me more. I was so happy about it that I almost wept. He added Sunday night and part of Monday, so that the only day off that I had to myself was Monday afternoon and night. That was actually really good for me because when I was alone, without rehearsals or shows or Matthew, I was completely lost. I withdrew from my friends and I soldiered through work. I still loved to dance, and I still did it well, but it was only something I did until I saw him again.
Grégoire
snapped at me more than once after we danced, to come back from wherever the hell my mind was.

Poor darling
Grégoire
. Our deep connection suffered, and in turn, our dancing partnership suffered as well. Our ten year friendship began to degrade. He tried to hold onto me, and I to him, but we just grew apart. I couldn’t share with him anything about Matthew because he so thoroughly disapproved, and it made me sad because up to that point,
Grégoire
had been so much a part of my life.

Whenever he tried to bring his concerns up to me, I gave him stony silence. “He’s taken over you,” he said to me once. “He’s completely taken over your life. What will you do when he drops you, Lucy?”

“I don’t know, G,” I had answered, shutting out his words.

Because that was the truth. I really didn’t know what I’d do.

* * *

I had another relationship that suffered, and that was the relationship between me and
Pietro
. He called me to sit for him and I agreed to, and I begged Matthew not to beat me the session before.

“He won’t like the marks.”

“The marks are part of who you are now.”

“I know, but there’s just one more painting. One more of this series. Please, Matthew, please.”

He sighed. “I’ve been waiting all day to mark you. Two days. Since Thursday night.”

“Can’t you just hit me softly?”

What a face he made then. “You tell me.”

In the end, he didn’t beat me at all, but he used me for sex that made my toes curl. Even so, the marks from Thursday were still visible on Monday when I showed up at
Pietro’s
studio. To me, they looked rather mild, considering the bruises and welts I normally had, but to
Pietro
, I guess they were something else altogether, and there was a horribly awkward moment as I tried to explain them to him.

“It’s totally consensual,
Pietro
. It really is.”

“Consensual? You do this consensually with who?”

“You know him,” I said, a little piqued. “You’re the one who gave him my name.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Do not say such a thing. I promise you, I give no one your name who treats you this way.”

“The man who bought the first two paintings,
Pietro
. He told me you gave him my name when he asked.”

He frowned, caught, and his teeth ground together. I felt bad for him, and I quickly spoke again.

“I don’t mind. It’s okay. We’ve been together since October.”

“Since October? He does this to you since October? What of that very nice boy you were to marry? James or John...?”

“Joe. He left me.”

He began to draw me as I was, standing there looking at him with my hands in fists, embarrassed and defensive.

“How do you want me to stand?”

“I want you to stand just as you are.”

He drew for long moments in silence, and his strokes were angry and quick. Then he said, “You like this, really, Lucy? To be beaten this way?”

“Yes I do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He makes me feel protected.”

He snorted, an ugly, derisive sound.

“If this makes you feel protected, there is something wrong with your brain.”

“
Pietro
, it’s really none of your business.”

“If I want to draw your body that you abuse, then it is.”

“Fine. Then don’t pay me. If you’re so unhappy with me, you can draw me for free.”

He closed his notebook then with an angry snap.

“Put on your clothes and get out, please. I can’t paint you anymore, not like this.”

I stared at him. “
Pietro
! Why? You can’t even see the marks in this pose!”

“No, I can’t see them, but when I look at you...” His voice trailed off, and his shoulders slumped. “I used to look at you and see amazing beauty. Now I look at you and see only a stupid and beaten girl. Please get out of my studio. Please leave now. Here, take this with you.” He tossed the drawing he’d done to the floor.

He turned his back on me and went to wash the charcoal off his hands, wash them off violently as if he washed his hands of me. My face was hot and I felt numb and cold all over. I put on my clothes quickly, not wanting to be naked anymore. I glanced down at the drawing, and it was me, cloaked in shame and sadness. I left it lying right where it was and walked, blind with tears, out the door.

In all the time I’d spent with Matthew, he had never, ever come close to making me feel shame like this. Coming from
Pietro
, it devastated me.

He might as well have settled himself over my shocked face and shoved his cock right down my throat.