Mercy (28 page)

“I love you too, Matthew,” I sighed, completely transported by his hard, punishing thrusts. When I came, he came at the same time. It was like we were one, one creature, one being. I came with my legs kicking, my pussy clenching around him, his teeth buried in my neck.

* * *

The next morning he woke me by parting my thighs and starting to eat me out. He licked and stroked my pussy with his tongue, sucked at my clit, parting me wider and wider to taste me.

“Turn over,” he rasped. I flipped over, still not fully awake. He came over my back, the tip of his cock pressed against me, and drove all the way in, warm, pulsing flesh.

“Matthew! No!”

“I’ll pull out.”

“No.”

“I’ll pull out. Trust me.”

“Please!” I knew he was clean, we’d been tested long ago, but a baby would end my career. “Please, Matthew. Please don’t! If you don’t want to use a condom, fuck my ass.”

He stopped and pulled out of me with a groan, lying beside me on his back.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t let you. If I get pregnant—”

“No, it’s okay. You’re right to make me. I’m just being a dick.” He leaned over to get a condom from the bedside table, along with some lube, which he used to ease his finger into my bottom. “I think I will fuck your ass though, now that you mention it.”

He pulled me up on my knees and spread my legs wide. I trembled as he parted me and pressed the tip of his cock to my asshole. I buried my head in my hands and willed myself to relax for him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, that he would make me come. I willed myself to accept him, and slowly, he made his way in. “Good girl,” he breathed. “Jesus, what a good girl you are.”

When he was fully seated inside me, he fucked me while I clawed at the bed, overwhelmed as always by the sensation of being plumbed by his massive tool.

“You like the feel of my big fat cock shoved in your ass?”

“Yes! Please, fuck me. I love it!” My hands scrabbled at the sheets.

“You’re a little whore.”

I whimpered in agreement.

“Are you mine, Lucy?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m yours.”

His hands clenched in my hair and he breathed on my neck. “Mine. You’re mine.” His hands roved over me and I felt his ownership deep inside, deeper even than he fucked me. Deeper than the blue of his eyes. He touched me in all the places that thrilled me, tapping my clit, pinching my nipples, until I was shuddering to come. “Oh, please, Matthew!” I howled as his cock jerked in and out of my ass, fast, slow, shallow and deep.

“You want to come?”

“Please, I want to come with your cock in my ass.”

He made a growl of assent and we came together, and I basked in all my favorite pleasures. The clutch of his hands, the strength of his thrusts, his breath rasping against my ear. Afterward he held me a long time, and he asked me again, “Are you mine?”

The answer, of course, was “Yes, I am.”

“Am I your dominant boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

He frowned. “I know that you belong to me. That you’re mine. You are mine, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? Why are you mine? How did I get so lucky?”

“I don’t know that luck had anything to do with it,” I said, gazing up at the three paintings that now graced his bedroom wall.

“
Mmm
. How’s your ankle?”

“Almost completely better.”

“Lucy,” he said. “Do you think it’s time for you to stop dancing?”

Oh, Jesus. “No, I’m fine. It barely hurts anymore.”

“I think you should stop before you hurt yourself. I can tell it’s not as easy as it was, even in the months I’ve known you.”

I buried my head in his neck. “Matthew, please. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. Just fuck me again.”

“Again? You’re a greedy little slut.”

He pinched my nipple hard, and caught my yelp in his mouth with a kiss. He kissed me a long time, then whispered, “Get a condom and roll it onto my cock. And yes, Lucy, I’m your fucking boyfriend. Your fucking dominant slave of love. If you ever try to top me, I’ll hurt you.”

I smiled as he pulled me under him. I had no desire to top him, although I had a certain power over him of my own.

“Lucy, will you always be truthful to me?”

“God, yes. Yes, Matthew, I will.”

* * *

But I was a big liar. I wasn’t truthful to him, or truthful to myself. I slowly turned into a big, fat liar in the weeks that followed that sweet little talk, because I was in pain of the most excruciating kind.

Two decades of wear and tear on my joints had brought me to a point where the pain made it impossible to dance. So I did what any self-respecting dancer would do, which is drug myself in order to get by. I didn’t go to
Grégoire
. He wouldn’t have gone along with it. We all knew what dancers were hooked up to the pills, so I talked only to the people I had to. I took only what I needed, but that amount slowly increased, and then my flexibility started to go and the pain was that much worse.

In desperation, I considered seeing Matthew’s friend Dr. Rob, who’d been so very kind to me. But I had no doubt he would have told Matthew everything. Not only that, but he would have told me to stop dancing. So I soldiered through on what pain pills I could get my hands on, and I tried, I really tried to not let things get away. But sometimes, you know, they just do.

Chapter Thirteen: Lies

Hello, my name is Matthew and I’m an addict. I’m addicted to a drug named Lucy Merritt. This girl, this little dancer named Lucy fills my every waking hour with either longing, craving, pleasure, or peace.

I met Lucy back in October. It was almost May now and spring was in the air. I was sitting and waiting now for her to come to me. It was one of “our” nights, the nights when she was mine. I suppose now that she’d moved in, every night was really “our” night, but there were only certain nights I required her to play. The other nights were by choice,
her
choice, because my own choice, of course, was a perpetual “
yes
.” Most of the time, yes was her choice as well, but she wouldn’t move in without a “no” choice clause, so we agreed that some days she belonged to me, and other days she would be able to choose if she was mine.

But tonight, no. No choice. I’d already planned what I was going to do to her. Some days I planned things, plotted
pervertedly
, other days I just went with the flow. It all depended on how much control I felt. When I really wanted her, it was better to make plans so things didn’t really get out of hand. Sure, it happened sometimes, but I never hurt her, not really, and I never ever would. By some freakish good fortune, she gets off on pain, the same way I get off on watching her endure it at my hands.

I was running through my plans of depravity when I heard Kevin bang in the door.

“Mr. Norris!”

I jumped up. “Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s out in the car.” The way that he said that, it wasn’t to reassure me, it was to tell me something was wrong. “She’s in the car. I can’t wake her up!”

I was across the room in an instant, pushing past him.

“She was fine when I got her, and then I thought she fell asleep. But she won’t wake up.”

“Is she breathing?”

“Yes, she was when I left.”

I ripped open the car door, and she was breathing but she was so, so still, and so very pale. I lifted her and her warmth was reassuring, but she was limp and lifeless as a rag doll.

“Get her bag. Find her phone. Call that guy she dances with. His name’s
Grégoire
.”

I took her inside and laid her on the couch. Her breathing was shallow and she was just utterly gone. I shook her and slapped her face a little, shook her harder again. Nothing. I gestured to Kevin to hand me the phone.

“
Grégoire
,” I yelled. “What’s wrong with Lucy? What did she take?”

“What? Who is this?”

“This is Lucy’s boyfriend, Matthew. What the hell did she take before she left the theater?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what she took. God damn it, she doesn’t tell me.”

“Who would know? This is not a fucking joke. She’s passed out on my sofa and she doesn’t look good.”

“Hold on, I’ll make some calls. I’m coming over.”

“Yeah, get over here, and call whoever would know.”

Kevin let
Grégoire
in hardly five minutes later.

“Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She’s dead to the world. I don’t know if she’s okay or not. What is she on?”

“Mariel said she thinks she took some pain pills she got from another dancer, that he bought off the street.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What kind of pain pills?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of painkillers.
Vicodin
. Something like that. Ellie said she thinks she took four.”

Four. Jesus Christ.

“She should go to the hospital, Mr. Norris.”

“No, I’ll call someone to come here. You stay with her.”

I crossed the room and called a doctor friend of mine, and he arrived and examined Lucy while we watched. During that time, she woke up a little, and he told us her heart rate and pupils looked good. He advised me to have her sleep it off, and that any pills off the street were most likely not full strength.

After he left us with instructions to monitor her, I glared at
Grégoire
. “She danced tonight?”

“Yeah. She was fine.”

“Is she really fine, though? You’re her partner. Is she really fine?”

He looked at me, and I saw the answer in his gaze.

“Who is doping her?”

“Lucy is doping herself.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s in pain! Because her joints hurt.”

“Well, why don’t you fucking make her stop?”

“Me? I’m supposed to make her stop? She doesn’t listen to me anymore. Her world revolves around you now, sick as that is.”

I ignored that barb. “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know.” I scowled at him. “They don’t drug test dancers?”

“No,” he said like I was an idiot. “They don’t.”

“You knew she was taking drugs to keep dancing.”

“I suspected, yes, but I never saw her take anything.”

“You never asked her?”