I touched his face, cupped the edge of his cheek against my hand.
I looked into those suddenly serious eyes, while the music beat and pulsed around us. In that moment there was no crowd. There was nothing but his face and my decision. I forgot the people, forgot that I was supposed to be embarrassed, forgot everything but that I wanted him to smile again.
“No, don’t pick anyone else. I’ll try. I’ll really try.”
He gave me that flash of smile that I’d only recently known he had in him, and he dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands played lightly on my knees, and he began to spread my legs apart, but he was still dancing to the music, even on his knees, and he saw the problem before the rest of the audience did.
He put his body between my knees and leaned in enough to say, “You’re not wearing anything.”
I had to smile at the almost surprised embarrassment on his face.
It was nice to know that he could be embarrassed. “Nope,” I said.
He laughed again, and raised up high on his knees, his hands on the back of the chair again. He thrust against me, not touching, but it must have looked worse to the audience, because they yelled and screamed and began to throw money onto the stage.
He didn’t so much fall down my body, as spill down it, again that sense of liquid grace that the wereanimals had when they wanted to. He ended with his face in my lap, across the stretched fabric of the skirt, his upper body actually hiding the rest of me from the audience. The skirt had ridden up enough that everyone knew I was wearing black lace thigh-highs. His hands traced up my hose, above the boots, across my knees, and up my thighs, until his fingers came to the edge of the lace.
His fingers traced just above the lace, played along the bare skin of my thighs. He turned his head in my lap, just enough so that his lips were close to my bare thigh, and he kissed the inside of my thigh. That one small touch made me shudder, and close my eyes in a sigh.
He was up while my eyes were closed, hands putting my knees together so when his body moved, I wasn’t flashing anyone. He danced behind me, and suddenly his hair feel over my face and body like an auburn waterfall. I was suddenly drowning in the vanilla scent of his hair.
He whirled around me, touching me only with his hair, then he had my hand in his and pulled me hard and fast out of the chair, so that I was forced against his body. It was like a move in a dance but more forceful, if you wanted your partner to stay on her feet. If he hadn’t caught me, I might have fallen, but his body was there, and my hands were on that body, I couldn’t help it. I just caught myself with his arm and chest, but the sight of me touching him like that sent more money onto the stage, and raised the frenzy of the women grouped around the stage.
His other hand had gone to the back of my skirt and tugged it down. He made it look like he was taking liberties when it was the exact opposite. Whatever they thought he was doing, they liked it.
The music had slowed, changed, and he was suddenly dancing with me. It was almost a waltz, and he did three quick turns across the stage, and we were back at the chair. He used my hand to whip me out from his body and have me facing the back of the chair. He put my hands on the curved back of the chair, then put his body as close to mine as he could. He was close enough that I could feel the tightness of him pressing against the back of my skirt.
He whispered against my hair, “This would be easier if you were wearing underwear.”
I started to turn and ask what would be easier, but his hands covered mine, trapping them against the curve of the chair, and he suddenly started pressing that tight part of him against my ass.
I’d said he pantomimed sex before, but I’d been wrong, because he was doing it now.
He thrust against the back of my body, with his hands trapping mine against the chair, and his body curved over me. With my legs together he wasn’t brushing up against anything that Requiem had hurt.
With my legs together, the angle would have been wrong if we were actually trying to have sex, but that wasn’t what the show was about.
As he’d said hours ago, it was an illusion, the illusion that they could have him. The illusion that he could bring someone up on stage and have them in front of everyone else.
The cloth of the G-string was satiny, but what lay inside that satin was hard and firm, and all I could think of was earlier in my office. Of the feel of him inside of me for real. Of him pushed inside me as far as he could go, of him sliding in and out of my body, of him stroking over that spot inside me, of the feel of him so careful, so delicate, so very strong, as he moved inside me. My imagination was suddenly not my friend. Because between one breath and another, the memory overwhelmed me, and suddenly that heavy warmth spread from low in my body to spill over my skin in a dance of goosebumps. I spasmed against the chair, against Nathaniel’s body. His body was still bent over mine, and the weight of him rode me as I spasmed, as I orgasmed.
It was a small one, no screaming, no clawing, just that helpless spasming, and not much of that by my standards.
He whispered against the side of my face, his breath almost hot.
“Anita…”
But the next moment there was movement behind us, I felt it like a disturbance of air, and there was a sound I didn’t know, and a sharp sound of something heavy hitting flesh. Nathaniel’s body reacted to the blow, spasmed, almost like mine had. A second blow came, and this time words, Jean-Claude’s voice, “Bad cat, very bad cat. Away from her bad cat, away from her.”
Nathaniel’s body responded to every blow, almost like it was a miniature orgasm. His body tightened around me, as if the feel of my body next to him while Jean-Claude whipped him was something he didn’t want to lose. But Jean-Claude drove him off, with a joking voice, and Nathaniel made sure my skirt was in place before he let Jean-Claude drive him across the stage.
I was left holding the chair, so weak-kneed I didn’t trust myself to move yet. Jean-Claude had a small many-tailed whip in his hand.
Nathaniel crouched and crawled across the stage, and Jean-Claude beat him. It was like an odd version of an old-time lion tamer act, except the chair served an entirely different purpose.
“You are a very bad kitty-cat, very bad. How do we punish our bad kitty?” For a second I thought he was asking me, but he wasn’t. The women around the stage started to chant, “Tie him up, tie him up, tie him up.”
Jean-Claude smiled, as if that had never occurred to him, but what a good idea it was. At a gesture from him, chains descended from the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed them in the welter of lights and cables. Oh, hell, I hadn’t even looked up.
Two bare-chested waiters, wearing only leather pants, came up on stage and dragged Nathaniel to his feet. They chained his arms spread wide, wrists above his head.
Jean-Claude came to me, walking so that his hips rolled more than they should have. He touched my arm and whispered, with a smile that did not match the words, “Are you alright, ma petite? ”
I nodded and whispered, because I knew he’d hear me. “Flashback.”
“Not as strong as those that our Asher can give.”
I shook my head.
“Interesting,” he said, “are you well enough to finish this show?”
“I promised,” I said.
His smile widened, and his voice was suddenly that room-filling, jolly sound, “Now, you may help us punish our bad kitty. You may make him pay for taking liberties.” I got a shadow of what he was doing to the audience. When he said “punish,” it was a sharp pull on the body;
“bad kitty” made you think of very naughty things; “pay,” and more money hit the stage; “liberties” had a lascivious lilt to it that made the audience do that nervous giggle, like what they were thinking was worse than anything they’d seen tonight.
I just nodded and let him take my hand. That one touch was both a mistake and a help. It made me feel less shaky, but it also opened me to him more. Touching just his hand was more distracting than touching so much more on most men. He led me a little dazed across the stage, until we were standing behind Nathaniel, facing the bareness of the back of his body.