Beg Me (15 page)

I have to believe there are fruit flies that have a longer life expectancy than some Manhattan clubs.

Oliver made a couple of calls, and so that things didn’t look blatant or obvious, we were joined by a couple of his…friends. Three girls from Brooklyn, who couldn’t have been any older than twenty-four at best, who had to tell you their names were spelled with an
I
or
ee.
I was sure I would forget them the next day. I certainly wanted to.

One was a white girl who finished her sentences with “yo” and did her best to use every latest bit of African-American slang. She set my teeth on edge. One of them kept her iPod earphones on even an hour and a half inside the club. “How do you know these ditzes?” I asked him silently in the cab.

He leaned in very close to whisper into my ear, “I know, I know! Okay? I slept with the sister of one of them. They buy from my store. They’re camouflage.”

They can read?

“I never knew bookshop owners had groupies.”

They did a pretty impressive job of snubbing me—like I cared. But Oliver was host, and Oliver spoke to me. When he and I started talking about dialects in Africa while waiting in the queue, you could smell their fear of the grownups. Airhead snobbery can’t beat genuine life experience.

I was telling Oliver about the Nuba and the roving militia bands in the Sudan when one of the girls suddenly cackled, “What you goin’ on about, girl? You never done that shit!”

I turned around and smiled in amusement. “Now, why would you think so?”

“Why wood aye theenk sew?”
said the girl, mimicking my accent—badly. She got adolescent giggles from her friends. “You like us, honey. You tellin’ us you been to
Africa
?”

First thought: I suppose it was a perverse compliment in a way. I was a few years older than them but not by much, and it was kind of nice to be reminded that I didn’t look my age. Second thought:
Americans.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Americans. But it boggles my mind that when you talk to them on their home turf, they reject anything that contradicts their own experience or Fox News. And now I was holding up my passport to shut up this reject wannabe for
America’s Next Top Model.

“Shit,” she muttered.

We didn’t have to wait long to get into the club. The bouncers nodded to Oliver. He wasn’t A list, he was on the secret triple-A list.

Throbbing bass first, always. Silhouettes in darkness. Lights. DJ playing a good mix of favorites and stuff by some up-and-comers. I like to dance as much as anyone, but the days of shouting myself hoarse over speakers, watered-down drinks, and indulging the BS playa lines I hear in dark nooks and crannies—ugh, they’re long over. I’m not getting old—I just have a lower boredom threshold. But this was on the clock, for the job and the greater good, etc.

Oliver leaned into me about two hours into the night and said, “There he is.” He pointed out a large muscular guy of deep mahogany skin and very close-cropped hair, with a nose that looked like it had been broken a couple of times and a half-moon scar above his upper lip. This, I was informed, was Trey.

“Uh-huh.”

“Last chance.”

“Get things started,” I said.

He did. He wandered over, and I watched, sipping my drink, as Oliver talked and every so often, Trey moved his head in what passed for a nod. It was more like he flexed his neck muscles. If you liked beef, this was your man. I expected attitude when he lumbered up to me, but he smiled shyly, and we danced for a while.

“Oliver says you want to be treated like a princess.” Obvious code, but direct enough.

“You know how to do that?”

Oliver hadn’t fed me any responses to use, and so I guessed I’d better play at least a little hard to get.

“You’ll have to prove you’re worth it.”

Any guy who said something like this to me back home would be watching my back as I left. But I wasn’t supposed to be “me.” I was Teresa Willoughby, wannabe sub, ripe for princess training.

And, yes, I was borrowing Helena’s surname.

I’ve borrowed lots of things from Helena in the past. Her car, occasionally a room in her house, books. She wasn’t using her name in America at the moment. She was my friend. She’d understand—if I ever told her.

My logic was that if Oliver could flush out my past so easily, manipulators like Isaac Jackson and Danielle Zamani would have me made in an afternoon. If they did choose to check on me, the address and phone number I was using for London traced back to a Kensington flat that Helena’s male escorts used for special occasions.

They’d think I had money, or came from money, and that might sweeten their interest in me.

But first it was time for Trey. I didn’t have a clue what he had in mind for me to “prove I was worth it”—that I should meet his fellow princes. He took me by the hand presumptively and led me up a circular staircase. There were private rooms above the dance floor they must hold for just this purpose.

He shut the door, and I heard the distant bass and my own breathing.

Oliver couldn’t help me in here. He had walked me through part of the drill, but I was flying solo now.

“This is a test,” said Trey quietly.

“I understand.”

“Then do as I say. Make yourself ready.”

I took off my clothes, all of them, and then knelt down in front of him. He assessed my body coolly, with that same detached look I had seen in Oliver’s face.

“Good. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He undressed in front of me with these languid, theatrical motions. His chest was wide and he had this bullish masculinity about him, more of a brute. His penis looked like it was starting its arousal, thickening but not yet hard. I kept my eyes low, but I watched him take a deep breath as if he had to remind himself what he was supposed to be doing.

There’s no sex at these tests,
Oliver had explained to me.
Well, not regular sex anyway.

“Do you want to be clean again?” he asked.

“Yes, please. Cleanse me.”

I rested my palms on the floor and assumed the position on all fours. I heard the
whrrruppp
sound of his belt being yanked from its loops. He stepped behind me.

Waiting. Waiting for the strike of the loop.

I felt the soft, slow kiss of leather between my legs, teasing me. All at once—

Smack.
“Uhh!”

One second, two.
Smack.
“Uhheee!”

My ass burned.

Smack.

Oh, God. I was wet.

Smack.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” he demanded. “Is that what you want instead?”

Another blow whipped across my buttocks, making me flinch, prompting another squeal. “No!”

“I think you want my cock inside you!”

“No.”

“You do. It’s better than pain. You can’t take this pain. You want to be fucked!”

And
smack, smack
—two quick blows. I wasn’t sure I could hang on. I was getting those purple lights in front of my eyes. But I managed to offer the correct response: “I don’t belong to you.”

“Yet,”
he growled through gritted teeth. His hand came down and cupped my ass.

“Aaaahhh…”

I arched my back and shut my mouth tight, the sound escaping in a mournful “mmmmm.”
Smack.
And then the return of his hand on my ass cheek, and I felt the sweat on my body and hung my head a little because I was coming. I couldn’t stop the shiver of my body, and when the next (“Uuuhhh!”) blow came, it took all my self-control not to touch myself, not to say,
Give it to me now.
I heard a creak on the floorboards and was confused for an instant. I couldn’t look back, not allowed, but out of my peripheral vision I caught him turning away.

He was struggling to calm down, to stop himself from creaming all over. God, he was huge too. There was no way I could have taken in that thick brown bar.

When he won his quiet battle for control, he barked another order to me. “Come here.”

I turned around on my knees, knelt close. An inch or two, and my tongue could flick out and lick that impressive pole. If I did, he would have gladly let me—and then I’d be rejected.
They don’t look for a ho,
Oliver had told me, not sure how to explain.

They want
…And he had searched for the words.
They want demure but suggestible. They want to mold a girl but also see a spark of her own sensuality. You’re going to have to get creative.

I could do that.

If a Nubian prince climaxed during a test, he was considered bested by the girl. He had to admit it and suffered a temporary minor reduction in “rank.” I asked Oliver what was to stop these guys from simply lying through their teeth. He had looked at me, appalled.
They just can’t. They’d never do it.

I thought: Oh, yeah? If a bunch of immature morons can lie about sleeping with a girl or screwing for hours, I could easily see guys lie about their staying power in a game like this.

“Please me,” ordered Trey.

Be creative.

Still kneeling, I slid my fingertips up the back of his thigh, tracing the muscles, finding the exact point. I began to knead it under the pads of my fingers—a spot within his inner thigh, close to his balls but not touching. My other hand began a feathery piano progression up his spine.
Here.
Here he was, sensitive between the blades. And down here, near the small of his back. Here was where he kept all his secrets.

Imagination is everything.

“Stop, stop,” he whispered gently. He moved off and snatched a handkerchief out of his shirt, turning his back on me. Putting one hand out to steady himself on the cracked plaster of the wall, he shot into the cloth. I saw he was slightly embarrassed.

He went into the toilet off this little room and cleaned up. Then he came out and told me brusquely I could get dressed.

“Do you want to be taken care of?” he asked.

I played innocent, kneeling back down in front of him. “By you?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not just me. There’s a place. I think you might like it there. You should come out and meet some friends of mine, and we’ll play. We’ll see how you get on.”

He asked me if I worked or was a student. I told him I had stayed past my visa, doing work under the table, waitress shifts and sometimes au pair work. He said that if things worked out, I wouldn’t have to scrounge anymore. They—his friends—would take care of me.

“You got anything going on tomorrow? No? Good. Meet me down at the Lighthouse Museum at eleven. Don’t be late.”

Better not to say anything back. Just nod. Like a good girl. Obedient, submissive, with lots of potential.

I had found my way into the temple.

7

I
arrived early to the Lighthouse Museum to make it look good. And there he was, big muscular guy with close-cropped hair, the broken nose, and the half-moon scar above his upper lip. Trey. He had actually instructed me before we parted last night: “Be on time. We are always punctual.”

It struck me as a surreal comment. He might just as well have told me:
We are a secretive cult that engages in aberrant sexual practices and mystic rights. And we value good penman-ship.

“Hey, babe,” he said, and kissed me like a boyfriend, a quick peck on the lips. “You find it all right?”

“Yeah, no trouble at all.”

“Oh, man, I love that accent.”

Jeez.

Oliver had given me the address of the temple mansion, but I still got a flutter of anticipation as Trey and I took the Staten Island Ferry. A black sedan picked us up on arrival. I’ve never been comfortable out in the ’burbs, whether it’s a day exile beyond Cockfosters for God only knows what reason or here where I could see fields past the ribbon of highway. As we left the ferry behind, Manhattan was reduced to a postcard skyline.

The mansion stood on several acres of land, and the car took us through a buffer zone of lawn and neatly cut hedges that held back the curious. The house itself made me gasp—pretty impressive. I don’t know American architectural styles, but suffice to say the place had
wings
to it. Multiple fireplaces, logs of wood stacked in an impressive pile in an open shed nearby. What looked like a hobby farm on an ambitious scale was in the back, where I saw pens for pigs and other farm animals. My guides said they grew food that they distributed to soup kitchens and the like in the poorer neighborhoods back on Manhattan and in the Bronx. Then I was led into the house. I crossed my fingers, hoping they hadn’t ruined the inside with some hideous avant-garde decoration.

The guy who had picked us up had his head shaved. Lots of guys shave their heads. Now inside the house, I saw almost
every
guy here did.

“Shoes, shoes,” Trey chided me gently.

And I dutifully kicked off my sandals. Most of my African and West Indian friends and I all had a strict no-shoe policy in our homes back in London anyway.

The robes, however, threw me.

Everyone was in robes. Like at a monastery.

They wore street clothes when they went into town or into Manhattan, they explained, never their robes in public. They looked like a lost sect of black Buddhists, only the Buddhist monks and nuns I saw in Thailand didn’t have getups like this. They weren’t what you’d exactly call the most deliberately modest. Somebody had specially designed these so they had a hint of spiritual formal wear. But only a hint.

For the guys, there was a kind of over-one-shoulder toga thing happening, and for the women there were three variations. One was a kind of bikini top combined with a sarilike garment over the skirt, one was more of a summer dress that was backless, and the third was the daring Diana Greek goddess number that exposed one breast. The one I had seen Danielle wear in the photo.

Cotton for everyone, guys in gray, women in a sand, deep brown, or blue shade.

You get self-conscious with one or two people dolled up like this while you’re in your regular clothing. A whole mass of them and, yes, it’s a uniform. Plus I had to give credit: The girls’ ensembles all had high slits up the side, so when they walked, they glided with a show of leg that appeared and disappeared. Sexy and graceful.

“Hello, I’m Danielle.”

She gave me a smile of perfect white teeth, a look that was friendly but with a cool detachment, quietly assessing me. So this was Danielle, the lady who handled the fine details. Isaac’s kitten with a whip.

The photo Oliver had showed me didn’t come close to justice. I’m talking stunning here. Not my type, mind you, but I could see how she made herself every guy’s. The same long black hair, but now I could see there was lots of it, same green eyes with black eyebrows that weren’t overly tweezed, and her lips were naturally full. The Persian background was especially in her nose and eyes, and the accent I heard sounded a fairly neutral New England. My bet was she grew up in the States, second generation.

She was tall, taller than me at five nine, and no lanky anorexic model build for her. She had curves. She also had grace. She was the type of girl who would have infuriated the rest of us when they taught us how to walk “like a lady” at the school I went to.

It figured that her robes weren’t like the others. She wore pastel green that went well with her skin tone and her eyes.

“I’m Teresa,” I said, and I made the mistake of putting out my hand.

“Oh, honey!” laughed Danielle. “This isn’t a job interview.” She took a step forward and kissed me on both cheeks, European style. “You’ll stay with us a few days, won’t you?”

“Stay…?” I glanced at Trey. He hadn’t said anything about sleepovers. “I didn’t bring anything, not even a toothbrush.”

“Don’t worry about that stuff,” answered Danielle. “We can get you a new toothbrush, easy. Everything you need is here. First thing we ought to do, though, is make you feel comfortable. Jimmy, take her to a guest room and help her dress.”

I quickly learned that Jimmy’s—or Danielle’s—idea of “helping me dress” was to undress me. He looked like a boy of nineteen, and though he smiled shyly, there was nothing overtly sexual in what he did, more of a faint whisper, a promise of eroticism to come in his deft movements. Jimmy only said, “Please” each time he needed me to turn or to move. “Please…Please.”

Somehow, perhaps from Trey’s report or through intuition, they knew I would make no protest as this young man unbuttoned my blouse and undid my jeans. I let him take off my underwear, thinking: Is this another test? I sat on the edge of the bed and watched in amazement as he slipped out of his robes in a matter of seconds and knelt in front of me. “Please.”

He washed my feet with a soft cloth and soapy perfumed water in a bowl.

Taking me by the hand, he urged me to stand up and then dressed me. Huh. The robes I saw on the girls out there were a little more opaque than this. He passed me my panties and slipped this thin garment of unbelievably soft cotton—Egyptian linen or something—over my body. It was the kind that offered a nice view of my back. Well, at least he hadn’t given me the Amazon number.

“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t know what else to tell him. Strange experience.

It was a hot summer. I could wear this thing.

“You wear that well,” Danielle told me when I found my way back to the main hall. “Let’s give you the tour.”

Nobody had bugged me so far for money, trying to convince me they did good works here. Yes, they grew food and gave it away, and that was all very nice. I hadn’t seen any brothers or sisters in these getups in Brooklyn or Morning-side Heights with begging bowls, so I had to take their word for that one.

Just how, then, did the economics work? Heroin? Yet to be confirmed. Oliver had said it—it was a mystery how they paid for all this.

As near as he could tell, there were ranks he never graduated to, ones where the whole truth was laid out and business got done. Okay, sure, you might say, that’s obvious. And I would fire right back to you: Yes, but show me the trail. Because whatever they were into, they were hiding it
very
well.

For three days nothing happened. I felt like I was a guest at a hotel for a Thomas Cook holiday. Trey and a group of the others showed me around Staten Island. (Trey, it seemed, hadn’t been demoted in rank. I guess he wasn’t as forthcoming about his own orgasm during my test as Oliver claimed the princes had to be.) I had hours of free time to sunbathe, to go for walks, to do as I pleased. People came and went with no pattern I could easily decipher, and no one ever said don’t go here or there. But when you tried certain doors—yep, definitely locked. Well, better to wait on those until I was
in,
accepted.

Besides the main foyer, I was impressed by two enormous rooms in the mansion. One was the kitchen, and every mid to late afternoon when I dropped by, there was a touching camaraderie among those preparing the meals. Music played on overhead speakers; girls chatted about everything from the news to fashions as they chopped vegetables and checked mutton cooking in the enormous pots. It had a real family atmosphere.

“Princes supervise,” I was told, and, yeah, one of the guys sailed in wearing—I kid you not—chef gear, to take control and ask the women to fetch him ingredients. I don’t know why I was surprised. The doms in this closed culture were all guys, so it stood to reason they bought completely into the “men are the best cooks” line.

One dom wasn’t a guy—Danielle. Mother superior to them all.

And I still hadn’t seen Isaac.

The second enormous spot was the reading room. Reading room? It looked like the inside of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, complete with green shaded lamps on tables and plenty of computer terminals. There were even magazine subscriptions in racks. From
Vogue
to
The Atlantic Monthly.
I went to the shelves, slipped out a volume, and saw on the inside cover that it had been purchased from Bindings. Oliver’s bookshop. Hmm, that one didn’t surprise me so much. But what did they need this huge library for? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly pro book—but this private collection implied a purpose.

Maybe just to have things look impressive. And keep the ignorant busy.

Very little fiction. Lots on anthropology, archaeology, African-American studies, about everything Kwame Anthony Appiah ever wrote, same for Molefi Kete Asante.
No
Patricia Hill Collins, no
Fighting Words
sitting on one of these shelves. There were books on gardening, cooking, painting…even an impressive set of shelves devoted to sciences—a lot on space physics, astronomy, futurist design. Interesting.

On the third day I had reverted to my old clothes, thinking I should return for a brief spell to Manhattan, perhaps do some more research and contemplate my next move. Who knew? Maybe they were waiting for such restlessness.

A whole group of them approached me as I stood in the main hall by a table, flipping through the yellow pages for a taxi that could get up here. Danielle was in the lead. Invitation or confrontation? I wasn’t sure which. I put down the phone receiver and nodded politely to them.

“How would you feel about staying indefinitely?” asked Danielle, her smile taking me by surprise with its warmth.

I shrugged, trying to make it look good. “I don’t know. What would I do here?”

“Be a student,” she answered. “A student of who you really are, of who women are supposed to be. You’ll learn—learn to become a princess.”

“What do I need?”

“You have everything any woman needs,” she answered, and I got the sense this was a speech learned by heart. “You have mind, body, soul. We’ll help you find your place. You’ll learn that you can only truly be empowered through surrender.”

“Okay…”

“Like any organization, you’ll have to start at the bottom. Are you prepared to do that, Teresa?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t agree to it lightly. It’ll be much harder than the initiation with Trey. That was nothing compared with the trials you must go through.”

“I can do it.”

Another warm smile. I couldn’t tell if it was honestly expressed or part of a carefully rehearsed routine. She touched my cheek in an almost maternal show of affection and then said, “I’m sure you can. I think you have the courage to be obedient. Very well, then. We’ll start right now.”

I looked at the others. They were beaming at me, both men and women, with this vacuous expectant smile, as if they’d just presented me with a Christmas DVD player. I smiled back and nodded shyly to Danielle.

Then things got serious.

“First rank is
pet,
” said Danielle. “It’s to test obedience. This is not surrender but taking on what we call a ‘debt of will.’ When your debt is fulfilled, you will progress. You acknowledge your debt by acceptance of the collar.”

She held it out for me. A leather collar, just like you’d put on a dog. There was a thin silver chain that hung in a loop, intended for any prince to take on a whim and give me a hard yank.

I tried to breathe in through my nose, control my fluttering nerves.

I was in a big house, far from safety.

It occurred to me that Anna must have passed through all these steps.

I reached out my hand to take the collar, and Danielle pulled it away. “No. We place it on you. We take it off. Your gesture is enough for acceptance. Your last words should be a response to my question: Do you grant permission for all that might be done to you?”

“Y-yes.”

She moved to put it on me, and I pushed my hair away from my neck. It was slightly heavier than I expected. I was starting to feel ridiculous, all of them standing there and treating this bizarre ceremony with such gravitas. I knew my lips held the threat of a mocking smile. Then all at once rough hands grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back.

Danielle reached out and mauled open my top in a single efficient strike. One of the princes stepped forward with a pair of shears and began to cut away my bra. Other hands pulled down my trousers and then were tearing away my panties. I was nude within seconds, the others crowding around me all clothed.