Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray (12 page)

“Get the glass back,” instructed Helen.

“What?”

“You heard me,” said Helen.

Frazzled, Dorian reached for the glass. Sybil handed it to him with a look of appreciation. He returned it to Helen.

“Greedy girls actresses are,” said Helen, examining the empty glass.

“Helen,” said Dorian, with the girl's dreamy eyes upon him. “I want to know what is going on. And I want to know now.”

“I got us Sybil Vane!” cried Helen, heating up another glass.

“This is quite a way to go about it,” said Dorian.

Helen clucked her tongue happily. “Isn't it, though?”

“The amount of trouble you may get into for this—” started Dorian, but Helen cut him off.

“The amount of trouble I may get into for this?” she repeated. “Me alone? Who is the Prince Charming here who has just set her free, for whom she was tied up in the first place? Now, Dorian, don't be daft. Get what you came for.”

She handed him the hot glass. He looked from it to Helen to the girl, dumbfounded. The girl smiled at him as if to agree with Helen. There was no longer fright in her eyes, only stupefaction. She slid out from the cabinet, still in full, gaudy costume, and spread herself like a wounded bird on Dorian's lap.

“Prince Charming,” she murmured. “Are you going to make sweet love to me now?” She rustled around in a daze. “I'm sorry to tell you I am not a virgin.” Her eyes twinkled with sleazy secrets. Dorian took a gulp of the absinthe and waited as his senses muddled into a new keenness.

Before he knew it, he had finished the glass and Helen was back at the table refilling it.

“Will you . . .” began the girl in a slur. “Finish untying me?” She laughed and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Dorian was slow to register, but then understood that she wanted him to unfasten her corset. Blearily, he obliged. A heap of paper stuffing came out of her bodice—support to amplify her small breasts that now lay vulnerably before him. Dorian wondered how old the girl was, estimating that she couldn't be more than sixteen. What sort of life had she led? He touched her breasts lightly, as if they would tell him, and Sybil Vane writhed. She'd led a life of writhing.

“Prince Charming, are you going to make me your Princess . . . ?” she asked and paused to think of a title for herself. Unable to invent one, she giggled. “Your Princess Charming?” she said and laughed maniacally. She had teeth missing in the back of her mouth.

Helen stepped in and deftly undid the girl's petticoats, bringing them to a rustling halt against her ankles. She ran her fingers up the girl's legs. Sybil giggled squeamishly.

“That tickles!” she cried.

Dorian felt he had nodded off for a moment— absconded with a beautiful dream in which a harp was playing in mellifluous splendor and Rosemary, her sweet body lain out before him, was quivering at his touch. He snapped back into reality and saw his hands still on the slight breasts of the young but used actress. Helen was head deep in the girl's knickers.

Sybil Vane moaned contentedly, her eyes still cast in a fantasy on Dorian's. She brought her hand to his face as if to touch stained glass, a look of worship filling her eyes.

“My prince,” she said, flinching as Helen's tongue darted into her. “My beautiful prince, won't you kiss me?”

And so he did, rubbing her breasts. With a tongue between either of her lips, the girl cooed and wiggled. Together, Dorian and Helen were coaxing her into exultation. It was a kind of erotic choreography, and soon they traded places. Helen was perched at the girl's breasts, sucking her nipples, and Dorian was between her legs, rousing her with his fingers.

“Yes, my Prince,” she crooned. “Come inside me now.”

The absinthe and the opium and the gin were all simmering in Dorian's veins, blurring his senses, connecting them to each other and to everything around him. Sight, sound, smell, touch—it was all melting into one evanescent channel. And then there was his cock, which was taking it all in, hard as iron.

As he mounted Sybil, Helen moved aside. She sat on the floor beside them, watching as Dorian entered Sybil, relishing in the girl's cry of completeness when he pushed his cock into her and began to thrust. She was not as tight as he'd have liked, but he still felt a gentle bursting at her thick seams.

“Oh!” screamed Sybil. “Yes! My Prince!”

Dorian and Helen locked eyes, and she started rubbing herself in a fury, moaning and trembling as she brought herself to a near-instantaneous orgasm. Her face was smeared with the girl's furtive juices, and she had a drunken smile on her face. Dorian continued to thrust into the girl, feeling he could go on forever without coming. The girl's pussy tightened with each of his thrusts and he felt she was on the brink of coming. He went on thrusting, holding her hips as they gyrated and went into a flurry of spasms.

“Ah!”

The girl came in a fast flicker and flung her arms back in surrender as she subsided, panting.

Dorian felt nowhere near close to his conclusion, but went on drilling into her. He could go on forever if he must, but must he? Something was wrong.

Helen sensed it. She got up from her sunken post at the wall and came over to Dorian. She crouched down beside him, studying his position. The girl lay languidly beneath him.

“Hi,” she said dreamily to Helen.

Helen looked at Dorian, who was furious in concentration. She clucked her tongue, assessing the situation, then went to the wardrobe where the girl had been tied up. She returned with the long yellow ribbon that had been used to hold Juliet's hair up, and then Sybil Vane's wrists.

“Get up,” she instructed Dorian, putting a hand firmly on his sweaty shirt. He had only undone his pants. He pulled out of the girl, who promptly wailed.

“Oh, Prince Charming!” she cried. “How huge and perfect you are inside me!”

Helen grabbed the girl by both arms.

“You, too,” she said. “Get up.”

The girl rolled up drowsily. She looked around the room as if trying to remember where she was.

“Come on,” said Helen, bringing the girl to the dressing table. She kicked one of its legs to see how sturdy it was, then tied the ribbon to the leg and the ribbon to the girl's wrists.

“Again?” murmured the girl.

“Nothing is the same thing twice,” replied Helen.

“Oh,” the girl said, looking at Dorian, confused. Helen's abstruse witticisms were lost on the poor girl.

“It's all good for your Prince Charming,” said Dorian.

Sybil smiled. “Yes,” she said. “My Prince Charming.”

As he watched Helen tighten the knot around the girl's wrists, he felt his erection grow. He was desperate to fuck the girl. Helen posed Sybil Vane on all fours, on her elbows and knees. Her ass was surprisingly large for her build. In the scant light it was luminous, the slender dark crack running between its cheeks gleaming, an ideal point of entry.

Dorian jumped up and seized the girl roughly by the arm. He mounted her and stuck his unyielding cock inside her, where he'd been before. The girl cried out, happy to be filled up again by him. He grabbed her hair, pulling her head back. He did not want to kiss her, but he did want to bite her, and he sunk his teeth into her neck with animal hunger. The girl cried out. When Dorian took his mouth away, he tasted blood.

“Do you like it, whore?” he asked, enraptured by his climaxing and not guarding his thoughts. Yes, she was a whore, and she was his to do with whatever he wanted. He plowed harder and harder into her, and when he felt himself about to come, he started hitting the girl—not just on her ass, but on her back and neck. His cock stiffened and grew closer to erupting its seed when he got the idea to hold her by the neck. How frail and small her bones were. It would take so little to break her. He went on thrusting as little choking sounds escaped her mouth. He came at last and remained in paradise for a stretch of moments, then let go of the girl and rolled over onto his back, breathless.

Sybil Vane was making the ugliest noises—gasping, coughing, and sounding like she may retch.

“Untie me!” she screamed.

Helen, who had been sitting out of view with a glass of absinthe, approached the girl and offered her the glass. The girl shook her head.

“Untie me!” she repeated, sobbing.

“I shall untie you,” said Helen calmly. “But you shall drink this first.” She held the glass out to the girl, who took a small sip.

“Another,” ordered Helen. The girl heaved but did not retch and took another drink—this one a gulp.

Within a minute, her sobs subsided. Her head began to droop. Helen ducked under the table and untied her. As soon as the girl was free, she caved forward, falling on her face.

“Dorian!” called Helen.

Leaning against the shabby wardrobe, Dorian was feeling a stabbing headache coming on. His heart seemed to be racing at an abnormal pace—more rattling than beating—like a rodent caught in a plumbing pipe. He felt unable to move, and wondered with a quiet sob: Would his beautiful, young life come to an end in this forsaken back alley of a dressing room? How perfectly tragic he felt!

“Dorian!” Helen was shouting his name still. “Come here at once!”

“Yes,” he said, or tried to say. There was a great static noise in the lines of communication between his brain and his body. The latter was not receiving messages clearly. And overwhelming need for sleep penetrated him. For a moment, he drifted off and into Rosemary's bosom, where he found a most extreme peace. He snapped awake in a fright. To lose consciousness now would be to risk losing it forever.

He was helplessly nodding off again when the ice water was dumped on his head, forcing him to wake up entirely. Helen was standing beside him with a metal pitcher, tapping her boot expectantly.

“I drugged the girl with laudanum to keep her from scrambling out into the street in hysterics getting herself either killed or arrested,” said Helen in a strictly business tone. “But she's gone totally dead—oh, don't bug your eyes out, the insufferable actress breathes. But she is fast asleep on her face beneath her dressing table, and I need you to prop her up in her chair while I clear the scene.”

Sopping wet, with a chill in his spine, Dorian stood up and approached the dressing table under which the girl lay in a naked heap. He dragged her out and laid her on her back. A cry of horror nearly escaped his lips, but the chain of command between mind and body was still too muddled to get the job done. Dark blue and black bruises streaked her neck, evidence of his prying fingers.

Behind him, Helen was wiping the glass they'd drunk the absinthe from.

“Put her here,” she said, scooting out the wobbly chair. He hoisted the girl onto it. She groaned, her head swinging back, hanging from her neck like a rag doll. Dorian tilted her head forward and it slammed down on the table. Her face landed partially in the messy tins of makeup, setting off a small bomb of powder and rouge. Dorian and Helen coughed together.

Helen set the absinthe glass on the table and positioned Sybil Vane's limp fingers around the stem. She moved the near-empty chalice in front of it.

“Poor girl drank herself into a stupor,” said Helen.

Dorian turned to her. He was wide awake, and his tiredness had turned into giddiness. He was hungry for more adventure.

“And now?” he asked.

“And now we go our separate ways,” said Helen, looking exhausted. As she was leaving she turned back to Dorian. “Remember,” she said, pointing at her eyes with two fingers and then at his. “Here.”

Dorian stood around for a few minutes, at a loss without Helen's instructions. Then he remembered his belt, the only article of clothing he'd taken off. He found it coiled neatly on the floor beside the wardrobe where he'd dozed. Pity he hadn't thought of it when he was . . . no, he glanced back at Sybil Vane, who was snoring in her dusty tins, a sliver of drool growing tiny puddles around them. No, the girl had suffered enough.

A
s the dawn was just breaking, Dorian found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint light, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with lilies rumbled slowly down the empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers. Their beauty was a dull comfort. He followed them into the market and watched the men unloading their wagons. A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips and yellow and red roses filed in front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables. Crowds formed around the swinging doors of the coffeehouse in the piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Pigeons ran about picking up seeds. After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.

Wishing to not attract attention from any servants, Dorian entered through a side door connecting to the main dining room. Lights were still burning from three flickering jets: Thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table, his eye fell on the portrait Rosemary had painted of him. It was still propped against the mantle where they'd abandoned it in their passion. But the hasty wrapping was coming undone. His flawless face stared back at him. Only, no, it wasn't flawless. Something was off. Something was horribly off.

In the dim light that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.