"Did I?” he asked, lifting his eyebrow.
"You did. Was it…It had to be a fake. You fooled me. I was so sure…” The four men were likely friends of his and when they’d haggled behind her back, Malcolm had taken off his false beard and put on the red mask to trick her. And she’d been tricked, thoroughly tricked.
"You saw what I wanted you to see,” he said. "The oldest magician’s trick.”
"Is this a trick too?” She struggled to free herself from the organ that penetrated her and his body that trapped her against the wall.
"Oh no, this is real. This is the only thing that’s real to me,” he said. "Come to bed.”
He pulled out of her and drew her to the waiting bed, where he threw back the covers and put her on her hands and knees on the white sheets. He stripped out of his clothes and joined her on the bed. Mona shivered with eagerness as Malcolm pushed her hair off her back and kissed her spine from the base to the nape of her neck.
"We won’t be needing this anymore,” he said as he gently pulled the plug from her ass. She felt far too empty the moment it was out of her body.
"Malcolm…” She made his name a plea. Malcolm positioned his hips behind her and slowly entered her, filling the emptiness inside her. His shaft was wider than the plug but she wanted it inside her more. Mona leaned forward until her head rested on the pillow. Her ass opened up as she bent low and Malcolm was able to enter her fully. She took it all, every inch, and felt a sense of pride that she could.
"You enjoyed being sold and bought,” he said as he pumped his cock into her. The strokes were long but not hard, and she could take them easily.
"I hated it,” she said.
"You lie. It’s fine. I like liars. Lie all you want, my darling. I know you loved it. Your body tells me what your words don’t.”
"I’m your slave,” she said.
"No. You’re my employee,” he said. "A slave has no choice. But you’re here because you want to be. Aren’t you? Admit it, Mona…admit you love being my whore,” he said as he slid in and out of her ass. No man had ever taken her in that orifice before. Only Malcolm. And only because he’d paid her.
"Never,” she said. "Not in a hundred years.”
"A hundred years? Is that all?”
"You sold me at auction. You’re the devil.”
"I’m not the devil, my darling,” he said, sinking his teeth into the side of her neck again like some kind of rutting beast. "The devil wants your soul. I only want your body.”
He could believe that if wanted, but Mona knew the truth. If he kept fucking her like this, soon enough he would own both.
Nymphs and Satyr
Mona wanted to be angry at Malcolm but it was impossible. Although she’d been frightened by the masked men he’d brought to their liaison and furious he’d tricked her into having sex with a man she thought was a stranger, she couldn’t deny she’d never been more aroused in her life. All those men…all those hands…all those mouths on her body…she couldn’t think of it without growing damp. Often she’d sneak into the back room, lie on the bed, and bring herself to orgasm with her own hands as she recalled that night, the hands holding her legs in the air while a man she didn’t know from Adam plumbed the depths of her body with his fingers. And she could still feel that brutal phallus inside her, pressing against the plug in her ass, the wall of tissue between them quivering and tender. And Malcolm’s cock in her ass, she remembered it with such pleasure her nipples hardened with even the slightest recollection of it. Her body buzzed constantly with low-level ardor. If the month didn’t pass any faster, she might go mad waiting for him.
The month passed slowly. She didn’t go mad.
Instead, she went to an art appraiser to have Malcolm’s payment for her night on the auction block authenticated. He’d left a small pastel drawing of figs on the bed, which the appraiser recognized instantly as the work of nineteenth-century Swiss-French painter Jean-Étienne Liotard. She’d almost been hoping for another Degas so she could see Sebastian Leon again. But could she do such a thing? Date a man while her body was promised and sold to another? She was certain Malcolm wouldn’t mind her taking another lover. He’d even told her he wouldn’t stop her from seeing someone else. Malcolm only required her body one night a month after all. But how would she tell Sebastian about Malcolm? She couldn’t, of course, so she did not call him or find an excuse to see him. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her. After two nights with Malcolm and his perversions, she was pleased to find she still had a conscience.
On the fourth Saturday after her last assignation, she found the book of art on her desk again.
Poor Tou-Tou. She had to lift the sleeping cat off the book. He loved paper, loved to lie on it and bask or sleep. He whimpered a small feline protest when she moved him off the book cover and into her lap, but he settled there quickly and was soon fast asleep, twitching as he dreamed of mice or birds or something in between.
What did Malcolm have planned for them next? She was almost afraid to look.
But only almost.
She opened the book to the page he’d marked—again—with the red velvet choker she’d worn the night she’d played his Olympia. The painting this month was one by another French artist, William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Nymphs and Satyr. Four beautiful, nearly-naked women played on the banks of a halcyon lake. They’d caught a satyr watching them bathe, and now three of the four water nymphs tried to pull the reluctant man-goat into the lake as the fourth nymph waved for the others to join her at the water’s edge.
She knew who the satyr was, that was certain.
Mona spent Sunday turning herself into a nymph. She curled her long red hair and put a white flower behind her ear. She found a sheer white nightgown in the back of her closet. Malcolm would surely want her naked, but he could have the pleasure of undressing her himself.
Near midnight she returned to the gallery and entered through the side delivery door. As soon the heavy industrial door latched behind her, she heard music coming from the back room. Music? How odd. It sounded like pan pipes and chimes, playful music, sprightly and light. The score to a satyr’s conquest? Perhaps. She carefully eased the door of the back room open…
A hand grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the room.
"Here she is!” a girl’s voice called out. "I found her!”
Mona stumbled into the back room, which had somehow been transformed into a woodland paradise with potted trees and a bubbling stone fountain. The girl who’d grabbed her dropped her hand and joined two other girls, all three in gauzy gowns and long ribbons in their hair dancing about to the music. One girl wore a gauzy gown of yellow, her hair was black and tightly curled and her skin a deep and lovely brown. Another girl wore pink and her hair was white-blonde and her skin as pale as milk glass. Another girl wore a sheer gown of blue and her hair was warm copper and stick-straight and her complexion only a shade lighter.
And she, Mona, was now the fourth girl, with hair of apple red in a gown of white.
Mona was caught up in the dance and the music seemingly came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Two girls took her hands and soon they were skipping in a circle around the red and golden chair that Mona had loved since her childhood. It had become a throne now, Malcolm sitting naked upon it, his head crowned with laurels. It was a laughable scene, so Mona laughed and the girls laughed too. It was joyous laughter, not mocking, not disdainful. Malcolm’s beautiful cock lay half-hard on his lap as he watched his nymphs frolic and dance for him. She hadn’t danced in so long, she knew she must look a fool. But it was too pleasant a scene to stop. Her feet felt bewitched by the pipe music and the girls were all so pretty in their gauzy gowns with their hair ribbons flying and their faces all smiles.
"Come dance with us,” the girl in the yellow gown said, breaking from the spinning circle and pulling on Malcolm’s hand. "Come dance with us, you silly old goat.”
The girl in pink gasped and covered her mouth with her hands at the playful insult.
"Silly old goat?” Malcolm grabbed her hand with his other hand and yanked her into his lap. She squealed in surprise and burst into laughter as Malcolm tickled her stomach with his fingers. Mona and the three other girls stood together, their arms locked, watching.