Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (94 page)

“Okay,” said Sona, standing. She was all enthusiasm and light as if our wedding wasn’t the most depressing situation ever. “Groom goes first. You ready?”

“Yes,” he said and pulled me toward him.

“Can you repeat after me?” she asked.

“I got this.” He was talking to Sona but looking at me. His big, tired green eyes were serious, committed. I hoped to God he lived even if it meant he lived to regret it. “I, Jonathan Drazen, take you, Monica Faulkner, to be my lawfully wedded wife.” He paused.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked. “You can back out. I’ll still love you.”

“Shh. Behave.” He smirked at me and took a deep breath. “Left hand, goddess.”

I held it out, and he continued as he slipped the key ring on my finger. “To have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, honor, and worship all the days of my life.”

“Excellent!” Sona said. “Monica? You want to do it the same? Or do you want to repeat after me?”

I didn’t want to repeat anything. I wanted to spill my guts onto the sheets. I wanted to take my heart out and put it into his chest. If there was ever a time to hold anything back, it wasn’t then.

“Jonathan Drazen,” I said, squeezing his hand, “you’re a manipulative bastard, a brazen liar, and a sadist. You’ve brought me to my knees. You’ve dominated me. You’ve told me who I am and then challenged me to be it. If you made me strong enough to stand up to the world, let me stand by you. If you completed the woman I am, let me be that woman in your honor. Every part in my body is dedicated to you. Every note I sing. Every breath in my lungs. My pleasure and pain. Take me. Let me serve you. Let me be yours.”

He put my hand to his cheek. I was going to kiss him before I was told because it seemed as though it was taking Sona forever. When I looked from Jonathan to her, she was holding her phone.

“Sorry,” she said, pocketing it, her good mood gone. “Gotta go do a ‘Last Rites’.” She cleared her throat and held up her hand. "You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, let no one tear asunder. I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Irene and Gregory clapped a little, but I didn’t pay attention to how wan they sounded. I was kissing my husband.

MONICA

S
ona and the staff had cleared out. Darren hugged and congratulated me. He fist-bumped Jonathan, promising him a wild night of beer-slinging and barhopping in Silver Lake. He kissed me on the cheek and left, promising he’d call.

Irene had warned me, while ignoring Jonathan, that nothing was to go on behind the closed door that might bring a heart rate up. Just in case I didn’t know, he was being monitored from the nurse’s station, so no “funny business.”

We laughed when the door closed. I wanted to lie on top of him, press my thighs to his, and tuck my head into the crook of his neck, but that was impossible. I sat in the adjacent chair and kissed his cheek.

“Do you regret it?” I said.

“I feel relieved.”

“I’m glad.”

He said, “I wish I could give you a wedding night. Throw you over my shoulder, dress and all, and carry you over the threshold. We wouldn’t even make it up the stairs.”

I made a satisfied purr. “I can just imagine it. Whose house?”

“Our house.”

“Is there a porch?”

“More than one. I’ll have you on all of them, regularly. Breakfast in the back. Lunch on the side. After dinner, we’ll drink wine on the front porch, and I’ll make love to you in the night air.”

“Can I still call you sir?”

“I expect no less.”

“Thank you, sir.” I kissed his hand, letting my lips linger on his skin.

“Here we are,” he said, “married, and we’ve never even talked about children.”

“Can we pretend we had them?”

“Four,” he said with a slight smile.

“Don’t be greedy.”

“Three. Can we settle on three?”

I should have agreed to ten children because there would be exactly none. There would be no house, no porches, no family.

“Can I admit something to you, my beautiful wife?”

“Yes.”

“I’m scared.”

I squeezed his hand and laid my head next to him. That was when the machine’s beeping was replaced with a high, constant whine.

MONICA

I
 stood in the hall staring at his door.

They’d done CPR. Changed the tube. Pumped more drugs into him. Assured me there wasn’t a spare heart with his blood type anywhere but Paulie Patalano’s chest.

What the hell were we made of? Sausage casings and prime cuts to be wrapped up and swapped out as needed. I felt ill. The twisting in my gut told me to run to the bathroom and bend over the toilet, but nothing came up because I hadn’t eaten in Lord knew how long. When I returned, panicking, he was alive, stable, and unconscious.

All the wrong things seemed definite and secure. I knew he loved me. I knew he was right in my life. But the life that fit mine so perfectly was going to end soon. Tomorrow. The next day. Didn’t matter. Too soon. The house of our love would crumble under a cracked foundation.

I found myself outside Dr. Thorensen’s office. He’d have answers, or at least different questions. “You’re here,” I said.

He was in the dark again, shades drawn, screens flashing. “Come in. Wanna play?”

“I can’t believe you get away with this.”

“I’m waiting to hear about something.”

“Jonathan?”

“Sit.”

“Is there a heart somewhere?”

He sighed. “I’m getting him put on the emergency list. I’m pretty sure it’ll go through in an hour, but I don’t want to leave until I see it. Come on. Sit. Your avatar’s on the cloud. We can start you from the beginning.” I hesitated. He patted the seat of the couch behind him. “Come.”

“Fine.” I sat, kicking off my shoes and tucking my feet under me. He rolled his chair back until the back of it pressed against the couch. The cushion was already indented from his hours of play.

He said, “You ready? There you are. I made you look like you.”

“Jesus, I don’t look like that.” My avatar was ravishing.

“Yeah, you do. Okay, so we start out in the woods. Forest all over, and we’re lost. We have to solve this puzzle before our guide comes. Hold on there! Get them!”

We shot down a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. We avoided shooting a blind guy. As a reward, he set us a puzzle to solve. We had that sorted out in no time, and I saw something I recognized.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

“Such a cheerful game, Brad. Don’t you have something with bunnies?”

“You can come over and play that next week.”

There won’t be a next week, Dr. Thorensen…
I had no time to make that into a joke. We had to navigate a parade, and a flag, right, left, left, right, and still get to our destination, a boat on a black river.

“Tell me something,” I said. “What are the odds of him getting a heart in time?”

“Can’t say. Hit left, left. Nice.”

“Do I duck the guy in the Pope hat?”

“God, yes.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t or won’t what? Just don’t let him touch you.”

“Can’t or won’t say about the heart. Fuck.”

“Oh! Nice move. Both. His blood type’s rare, so a good heart is hard enough but…okay, see that opening right there? Hit your blue button and the joystick at the same time.”

“Is there any way to speed it up? The heart thing? Shit! Wait…”

“You got it… No, only what I’m doing—pushing him up the list.” His shoulders slumped. “We’re in. River Acheron. Good job. You earned the coins, so give one to the guy in the hood.”

I clicked my buttons. “He won’t take it.”

“That’s weird.” He took the controller.

“What about the mafia guy? The brain dead one? If he died, would Jonathan get his heart?”

Brad was focused on the controls. “I can’t promise anything. Crap. I heard this happens sometimes.”

“What?”

“You’re stuck in the vestibule. That’s your sin. Wow. I guess we can make you a new avatar.”

“My sin?” I asked. “Which one?”

He threw down the controller and kicked his feet up on the couch. “The vestibule is where you go when you don’t take sides on an issue. Like when you could have taken action but didn’t. Or, look, I’m not going to pretend to be a philosopher. You were probably just feeling passive when you answered the questions. Wanna do it again?”

I thought for a second. Did I want to sit in Brad’s tiny office until sunrise, waiting for Jonathan to get bumped up a list, or did I want to make a decision about helping him? “I’m going to brush my teeth and find an empty waiting room couch.”

“Suit yourself.”

“When you know something, can you tell me?”

“I will. You tell me if you need anything, okay?” he said.

“Sure, and thanks.” I was pretty sure he didn’t know what I was thanking him for.

MONICA

J
onathan was still sleeping when I got back. I sat in the chair by his bed and looked at his hand in the moonlight and the little light-up Christmas tree. His fingers were set in a relaxed curl, the key ring wedding band half falling off. I knew those hands. They were strong. They were his instruments. I couldn’t see past his elbows, but I knew the rest of him. I read his body like a book. The velvet of his skin. His scent when his cologne had worn off. The warmth of his touch, its perfect pressure on me. The tones and cadences of his voice, rising and falling, clipped to command, breathy to soothe, chopped fine to laugh.

I put my palm on his cheek, and in my mind, his eyes close for a second before he turns his head and kisses my hand, my wrist, the inside of my forearm. His stubble scratches, lips awakening, tongue taunting, fingers closed on my wrist like a vise. I feel bound, secure, safe. My tingling body is an exploding cage of sin.

*

He is before me, dressed in his business clothes, and I’m naked. We’re in the hotel room where he spanked me the first time, the night I tried to hide my navel from him, and he gave me back my voice. He’d told me to be naked, and this is how I imagine it would have gone if I had been obedient.

He tells me to put my hands behind my back then kicks my legs open. He tells me that he won’t fuck me until he hears my voice, and I whisper my doubts that it will work. He smirks in that way he does and runs his fingertips across my shoulder and down my chest to my nipple. He strokes it until it’s hard. He bends it down, then circles it. He switches on the light and turns me toward the windows.

It’s night. We’re on a high floor, and Los Angeles is covered in a blanket of lights. I see myself naked, reflected in the windows, a ghost over the city.

“Put your hands on the glass,” he says. I do. The basin is spread before me, a checkerboard of pinpricks, exactly as Mondrian had envisioned. Squares of light, blinking signs of life create a haze in the distance. Above it all, my body, leaning into the window, stretched across miles of Los Angeles, bent at the waist as if I was about to fuck it.

“Anything that sounds like ‘no’ or ‘stop’ is effective. But you have to say it.” He draws his palm across my ass in a hard slap. At that point, he hadn’t spanked me yet, so my surprise overwhelms the arousal. I am immediately angry and defensive. “You have to use your voice. Do you understand?”

He puts his left hand on my rib cage, fingertips brushing my breast, and slaps me again. I’m not surprised the second time, nor am I angry. The raw tingle is arousing, as is the stroke and grab that follow. But what really arouses me is letting him do it. I submitted to it, making myself beneath him, under his command and control. I want it. I want every sting, every brush of his fingers against my sensitive skin. He slaps the back of my thighs, and I gasp.

“Monica, was that you?” he asks. I see him in the window, just behind me, his dark suit nearly invisible. I want him to take me, use me, fuck me like a whore. He reaches between my legs and jams two fingers in my cunt. My knees nearly buckle under the weight of my arousal. “You’re wet.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“You want me to fuck you?” He slaps my ass again, hard.

“Yes, please,” I reply in breaths.

“Say it.”

I can’t. I can’t engage my vocal cords. I can’t make sounds. My voice kills people, I am convinced of it.

He takes his belt off and loops it once. “You don’t know the power you have.” He whacks me with the belt. God, it hurts. I’m more aware of the presence and place of my cunt. I feel it hanging between the raw singe of my ass cheeks. It’s heavy, bloated, engorged with desire. He hits me again, lower, the leather kissing my wet opening. “Say it.”

“Please fuck me.”

“With your voice.” Whack. The sting is definite, lingering, burning as if I’d sat on a hot stove. “You don’t know the power you have.” He hits me repeatedly on the word power until my ass is on fire. My clit is so engorged the belt touches it when it snaps, and I scream.

“Monica, was that you?” He’s breathless himself.

I can’t make the noise again until he drops the belt and slaps my cunt twice, hard and fast. The sting then the rush of pleasure pulls one long vowel sound from my throat.

“There it is. That beautiful voice.” Behind me, he takes out his cock and places it at my opening. “Say it.”

“Fuck me. Fuck me please.” The air from my lungs vibrates my vocal cords, and I hear myself cry out as he rams into me. His hips touch my raw behind, making me feel every thrust as pleasure and pain. I’m filled with the spectrum of sensations, every thought, every cell, every warp of my soul feels him move inside me.

He pulls me up. My hands leave the cold glass, and I stand again, draped over the city, Jonathan fucking me from behind. I see him in the window, and he knows I’m looking at my giant self over the basin.

He whispers in my ear, “You’re not the same woman I met. You have control.”

I realize I’m hearing him say it the way he said it to me yesterday when he was trying to convince me to cut that EP. That same weak, enervated voice that I’d infused with muscle in my mind. I had stolen it and pasted it into the scene like a collage.