The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (15 page)

He reached for my face. He ran his fingers over my lips. I licked them, then took them in my mouth, one by one, sucking on them while I undulated my hips, taking him deeper and deeper inside me until I’d reached the root of him. I settled against his balls, reveling in the fullness of him buried deep inside my body, and said, “Hold.”

He groaned as I kissed him. I clutched the back of his neck and started fucking him again, harder, much faster now. “Hold, my love…hold…” I murmured against his mouth even as I worked him up toward climax. I could tell when he was near his end by the way he fought his body to obey me. I could feel my own climax building at the base of my spine. I gave him one last, hard thrust and then let him go. He clutched me tight and thrust up into me as far as he could go in the seconds before we came together. I kissed him and he cried out in my mouth as he trembled and spilled himself inside me.

He sagged back in his seat and I leaned against his chest, with him still buried deep inside me. I kissed his face all over and we made out like a couple of randy teenagers before he drew back, clutched my face, and said, “Stay with me, Evelyn. Don’t leave me. Be angry with me, but don’t leave me.”

Before I could answer him, he was up and out of his seat, my legs wrapped around his waist. He carrying me effortlessly over to the sofa where he laid me down upon the cushions and tried to press me down, press into me again, trying desperately to fuck me on his own terms. I growled a warning and grabbed him by the tie. I pushed him over, so he was beneath and I was atop, where I wanted to be. He was strong. So was I. I held him down and started riding him hard while his hands reached for me, clutching at my breasts, my hair, my shoulders, anything to pull me down, to kiss me even as he thrust and thrust inside all my wetness, crying out my name. Each thrust seemed to burst inside of me, to fill me with a little more love and a lot more lust. Each thrust made me grunt from the power of his impacts, but I didn’t mind the pain. I didn’t mind pain if he was with me. Near the end, I slid my hands between us and held him down. I stopped him from coming until he snarled in frustration. 

The blonde receptionist was standing over us, looking vaguely horrified by our behavior. “Mr. Sterling’s two o’clock appointment is here,” she informed us rather primly.

I looked up at her and said, “Tell Mr. Sterling’s two o’clock appointment that he is otherwise indisposed at the moment and he is to return at
three o’clock
.”

The blonde looked confused.

“Now!” I shouted, and she took off like the hounds of hell were snapping at her heels.

“Christ, Evelyn, she’s the best receptionist I’ve ever had,” Mr. Sterling said.

I clutched his face and kissed him to shut him up. I started moving again, fucking him hard, letting him fuck me. He dug his fingernails deep into my hips as we strained against one another and he fought me for his release. I knew he would fight me. I knew he would do anything for me. That’s why, just as I felt him nearing his release for the second time, I stopped him again. “Not yet. There are conditions,” I told him breathlessly as I looked down at him. I decided that Devon was right. The fights between courtesans and their gentlemen were more than worth it when the make-up sex was this good.

He stared up at me with feverish desperation, his hands snarled in my hair. “What conditions?”

“Firstly, you’ll have to accompany me on that vacation to France and England.”

He groaned, trying to move inside me. But I held him back. I held him still inside me. “Yes, of course. And the second?”

“One day a week, on Saturdays, we do role reversal and you become my courtier for the day. You do everything I say. Everything I want. And you remember that a courtier’s place is
beneath
his lady.”

I didn’t know what to expect from him, if Ian Sterling would even agree to my terms or not. So I was surprised to see the fierce spark of admiration and excitement in his eyes. “Today is Saturday, my love.”

“Yes, I know,” I told him and finally let him come.

The End

Bonus Story

TEN YEARS LATER

The gallery was vast and white. A dozen L-shaped partitions b
roke
up the empty
space, and hanging from
each of the gallery boards was a nude in black and white
. Each of the nudes was a
doll from the Dollhouse, dressed and posed to resemble a
silver screen
actress, the face a soft
, blurry
whiteness like a lily, the lip
s like black roses. More
big, softly shining photographs covered the walls. I walked among the crop of modern-day Bette Davises and Ava Gardners and Rita Hayworths and Bette Pages and marveled at their fertile, almost touchable beauty. Ten years ago I would have guessed them
all
to be the result of Malcolm and Devon’s artistic eye. I would never have guessed that Ian was capable o
f capturing such perfectly lush
beauty.

Ian stood near the end of the gallery, staring at the
last picture on the wall
.
Despite the
years, he was
still
tall and very trim, though there was quite a lot of silver in his hair now. I didn’t mind it at all.
It made him seem even more virile
,
alive and real and beautiful
.
The photo he was looking at was mine
, b
ut not done by him. This one was from the shoot I had done with Malcolm
ten years ago
. I knew Ian was uncomfortable with including it in tonight’s showing, but I thought it
would be a nice gesture
to include the work of the artist who had inspired him to try his hand at photography in the first place.

I sta
lked up to Ian
and said, “You aren’t going to fret about th
is
all evening, are you?”

“I shan’t make a fuss and ruin your perfect evening, no,” he answered as drolly as possible.

“It’s not
my
evening,” I reminded him, playing with the silk scarf
tied around my long ponytail
of hair
.
“In fact, it’s not even
your
evening
, technically
. It’
s for the F
oundation. That should give
you courage if nothing else
.”

“Yes, of course,” he answered.

I wondered if I had to remind him that w
e’d only just begun the Sterling Foundation
in order
to b
enefit burn victims, and
this “art party
”
(as Devon called it) was vitally important to our funding
.
It had been
mostly Devon’s
idea
, actually
. Each
week
,
when
we visited the Dol
lhouse, Devon and I
snuck
off to
bounce ideas around
while our husbands were off mingling
. We’d finally
agreed that
Ian
should share
his private collection with a number
of very moneyed
friends. The hard part
was in convincing Ian to agree to the party. It had taken me weeks to wear him down, and ever since real preparations had begun for tonight, I’d lived in mortal fear that Ian would get cold feet and withdraw his work.

Ian was looking skittish again, so I went up to him
and took his arm and rested my head on his shoulder
to calm him.

“Could we at least withdraw this one?”

“This is your favorite one,”
I said. The nude
didn’
t bother me so much, despite the fact that no one outside the Dollhouse had ever see it
. It looked like a different girl to me, some girl made of pearl
and light
who had fallen wet and sated from the atten
tions of her lover upon the furs.
And when I thought of it that way, I didn’t blush. At least, not much.

“Ye
s, exactly,” Ian said, sounding annoyed
.
He moved a hand to my hip, drawing me closer against him
in
an
unmistakably
possessive gesture
.
“It’s a part of my
personal
collection
, Evelyn
. And that’s
my
courtesan
on the wall
.”

I liked the way he said t
hat. I liked his
righteous indignation
, as if it were the most important thing in the world that he defend my honor. His words made me feel younger than my thirty-five years.
And prettier, as always.
And tonight, as others looked at the picture, I knew I wouldn’t
just
feel like
the
wife and
private secretary to Mr. Ian Sterling.
I would feel like a courtesan again. Not that being a wife
or
private secretary
was bad, because I enjoyed those things as well.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t even realize what was happening until Ian’s hand had slid t
o the hem of my dress and shoved
it up
to my waist
.
His
hand found
the string of my bikini underwear. “Panties, Evelyn?” he said, sounding disappointed. “I thought I broke you of that deplorable habit
years ago
.”

I started making
excuse
s
,
but he grabbed me and pushed me back against
the wall beside the photograph
of me
, the motion so sudden the breath went out of me
in a
sharp gasp
. Then he was there, pressing me against the cold, bare bricks of the wall, his hands gripping my hips to hold me in place
while he kissed me
, his mouth rough and demanding, like he meant to eat me whole. The r
oughness of his cheek scraped my face
and his teeth nipped my bottom lip so that
in mere seconds
I was
writhing against the wall and
whimperi
ng like some young, untried courtesan
for him.
“L
ittle dove
,” he said, his voice coming h
ot and muffled
and
intimate
against my skin
, “present yourself to me
.
”

Oh G
od, he meant to play a game with me. Right now.
Right here.
With less than ten minutes before the first guest
s
arrived.
“No,” I said,
fisting my hands in his jacket. “Ian, t
he others will be here any minute.”

“That’s correc
t.”

I started fighting him
then
,
I started shouting “No!” at him,
but he held me against the wall with his body, using almost no effort at all. His hardness pressed into m
y stomach. It
seemed to grow
exponentially
with my struggles. I whimpered
and begged him to let me go. I knew he was waiting
to hear our private safe word, but when I didn’t immediately use it, he
grabbed me by the chin, being careful not to smear my makeup, and said,
“Evelyn, I don’t sho
w you enough discipline, I think
.
You’ve grown too forward.
”

“Ian, please…” I began, then saw the disapproval simmering in his eyes. I immediatel
y slipped into my position as professional courtesan
. “Mr. Sterling, please, sir, no
…”

He
liberated
the scarf from my ponytail
so my hair
showered down
and started binding my wrists together in front of me.
My heart started thudding up somewhere near the root of my tongue.
My eyes kept darting sideways, half expecting the ushers to throw open
the doors of the gallery so
all o
ur frie
nds could
start pouring in. What would they find? Ian Sterling
, CEO of Sterling of New York,
tying up his wife
. If it were the Dollhouse we were ente
rtaining, I wouldn’t even mind very
much, but these were our
other
friends, the men Ian worked with, the wives I lunched with.
People we planned to beg money from.