Night Owl (30 page)

"Wow, I... made a mess, huh?" I glanced at the lube coating Matt's groin. My backside mustn't have looked much better. "Maybe... I'll grab a washcloth real quick."

"Hannah." Matt's voice was low with menace.

"Oh right, sorry..." I crawled toward the headboard. Every manner of irrational fear came to me as I untied Matt's hands. Was this off limits, binding Matt? Fuck, why hadn't I asked? Was he going to get up and walk out?

I got one of his hands untied. I half expected him to grab me by the throat, but he only rolled his wrist.

"Last one..." I loosed Matt's other hand.

He sat up in a flash. Steely arms hauled me onto his lap.

"Hannah," Matt snarled into my ear. He plunged two fingers into my ass and I yelped. I tried to wriggle off his hand, but Matt pinned me in place. "You must be very pleased with yourself. Do you like it, having my cum in your ass?"

His long fingers stirred and I squeaked. Matt was right; I was proud of myself for taking him like that—and I was also sore.

"Can't hear you, darling. You need a third finger in this very capable ass of yours?"

"No!" I panted. "Er, yes! I mean—"

Matt trembled with laughter. God... there it was, the breathless, cynical laughter that made my insides melt.

"No what, Hannah? Yes what?" Matt poised a third finger against my ass.

"No... no more, please. I... yes, I—" I warmed. "I like... having your cum in my ass."

"Ah god, Hannah." Matt eased his fingers out of me. He began to stroke the curve of my bottom. Reflexively, I pushed it out for his touch.

Everything was different. Everything. The way he caressed me—so possessively, with such satisfaction—and his voice in my ear, exultant with power.

My heart thrilled. My eyes watered. He was back, god, he was back.

"Such a sweet ass," Matt sighed, squeezing my rump. "You're a good girl, Hannah, so good to take my whole cock. Were you scared?"

"Yes." I hid my sheepish smile against his neck.

"Mm, I bet. You did well. You made me come hard. Are you ready to help me again?"

Again?

Before I knew what was happening, Matt banded the blindfold across my eyes. He jerked my hands behind my back and bound them together. Disoriented, I tumbled from his lap.

I lay in a painful, awkward position on the mattress as he began to pull on my nipples.

"God! Matt!"

The store of darker desires, which Matt had suppressed for months, seemed to break over me all at once. He was hasty and starved. There was no logic to his motions.

He twisted and tugged on my nipples, pressed his fingers into my mouth, slapped and squeezed my breasts. I squirmed on the sheets and moaned, my arousal spiraling upward.

"Yeah?" Matt laughed. "How is this, Hannah? Just right?"

He pried my legs apart and slapped my sex. Fuck! The sting of pleasure echoed through me. He bit on my clit. He dragged me off the bed.

On my feet suddenly, I swayed against Matt.

"Matt," I panted. "Where—"
Where are we going?
The words died on my lips as Matt pushed me forward. He guided me out of the bedroom.

For a split second, I envisioned Matt fucking me on the balcony. No way! But he turned me into a room that smelled of old books.

Ah, my lover's writing room, where he was doing zero writing.

I heard a whoosh of papers. Matt forced me forward. Cool, smooth wood pressed into my breasts. I was bent over Matt's desk.

"Stay put," he murmured. Matt padded away and left me with my pumping heart. Every part of me loved this—the waiting, the exposure, the pain and degradation—and I never stopped to ask why. I knew better. Desire is arcane.

Matt's footfalls returned, moving up the hall. I felt his presence when he entered the room. The air stirred. Papers whispered against the floor.

Without hesitation, he gripped my hip and a hard strap hit my ass.

"Fuck!" I cried, jerking violently. "Matt!"

I scrabbled to get away. The leathery band came down again, cracking against my skin.

Holy fuck, Matt was spanking me with a belt. I couldn't process the pain fast enough to feel the pleasure.

"You've needed this for a while," he growled. "I won't stop until you stay still and take it. Yield to it, Hannah—you love it. You're dripping wet."

To my total mortification, I realized Matt was right. Desire oozed from my sex.

God, but it hurt! My breasts were smashed against the desk; my ass was burning. I gulped in a few breaths and willed my body to stillness.

Yield to it. Stay still and take it.

I could do this.

"God, baby," Matt moaned.

I went limp. I sagged against the desk and let the belt's blows come down in that merciless rhythm. My pussy throbbed and I felt a string of wetness sticking to my thigh.

"Oh, Hannah... fuck, fuck."

I heard Matt unraveling as I lay there. God, he adored this. Bolstered by his approval, I began to moan and spread my legs.

"Uhn! More,"I panted.

"Hannah, god damn," he hissed. "God you're good, you're so good."

The numbing lashes of the belt ceased. In the same second, Matt's cock filled me. I knew what he wanted and I gave it to him. I lay motionless over the desk, taking it.

Matt found my clit and rubbed it furiously as he fucked me. He took me to the edge of ecstasy. No, he forced me to the edge. And when he drove me over it, I screamed his name.

Matt exploded into my spasming body.

Afterward, we stumbled into the shower. I was dazed and flushed from head to toe, and Matt was grinning like the Cheshire cat.

Best sex of my life: bent over a desk and belted. Who would have thought?

As we showered and toweled off, Matt's emerald eyes followed me. He made me conscious of my every motion. My tiger... always watching me.

When I went to pull on a pair of yoga pants, Matt smirked and shook his head.

"This," he said, handing me a tiny ivory babydoll that barely covered my ass. "For the rest of the day."

My blushed turned up a notch.

Matt dressed in a pair of pale lounge pants. We sat on the couch eating cupcakes and laughing. He couldn't believe my gall, he said. He meant my birthday present.

"Hey, neither can I!" I dabbed frosting on his nose. His eyes darkened. Oh damn, I loved that look on his face...

Around dinnertime, Matt disappeared into the office.

When I went to see what he was doing, I found the door closed.

Hmph.

I sulked for a while, sitting in the main room and petting Laurence.

I didn't know that I had just met my writer.

In the following days, I met the damn writer again and again. Matt seemed himself, the sex was amazing, but he grew restless when I melted into my afterglow.

"Going to check on something," he'd say, or, "I'll be right back."

When I went looking for him an hour later, I invariably found the shut office door. Sometimes I heard him pacing, but mostly he was silent.

My cooking occasionally lured him out.

I would turn from the stove and bump into a looming Matt—jump—and then laugh helplessly. God, he was adorable.

"I smelled something," he'd say, brushing past me to poke around.

I had him for ten minutes as he wolfed down dinner, then I lost him to his prose.

While Matt wrote, I spent my own time reading and working on yoga. I came to look forward to those private hours. Time together and time apart, didn't every relationship need both?

Though I was powerfully curious about Matt's writing, I knew better than to pester him. I figured he would volunteer what he wanted me to know—which turned out to be very little.

Sometimes, before I went to work or after I got home, Matt paced and spoke animatedly about writing in general.

I loved to hear him then. I loved to see him lost to me, strange as it sounds, and consumed by his passion. He talked to have it out with himself, arguing points I wasn't contending, and he stared into the heart of a fire I could not see.

My lover was a writer. He was a writer first, and my lover second.

On the last Friday in November, I found Pam waiting for me in my office.

I shrugged off my coat and glanced at my watch. Whew, I was on time. No matter how long I worked for Pam, her presence put me on eggshells.

"Morning Hannah."

"Ms. Wing." I smiled.

"I need you to read these manuscripts." She tapped two thick envelopes on my desk. "Laura thinks they have promise, but I haven't got time to go through them."

"Sure thing. Is that all?"

"For now." Pam moved toward the door. "Oh, and when you're done with that..."

"Hm?" I looked up. Pam was grinning at me. Yikes, playful Pam was decidedly scarier than serious Pam.

"Well, if you get the time, I have the latest offering from Jane Doe."

My eyes widened. Pam laughed, obviously gratified.

"Pam!" I whined.

She stepped into her office and returned with a stack of pages. I snatched them. There was no doubt in my mind that Pam already ransacked the pages, but I didn't care.

I shut out the world and read hungrily.

It was
The Surrogate
, of course. It was the complete manuscript.

The story darkened as I read, and more than once my throat tightened with grief. The surrogate's lover found out his secret and abandoned him. I felt Matt exorcising his turmoil in the prose. Only a few people would know the truth of this fiction.

If I had wondered at Matt's agony in the cabin in Geneva, now I knew. For him, the loss of me was
a presence...

...a hole in his life that should not be filled. It was over, and it could not be over because he could not forget. She would become all that emptiness. In that, there was a comfort.

Nothing lasts forever, and nothing ever ends.

I scrubbed the tears from my eyes. I wanted to fly home to Matt, but I'd only put two hours on the clock. Fuck.

Matt's novels notoriously ended on low notes.
The Surrogate
was no exception. It closed with the surrogate on the run.

I gaped at the final line.

He disappeared off the cold grid, into the blackness of darkness.

What did that vague-ass sentence mean? Did the surrogate kill himself? What?

I stormed into Pam's office. She was laughing before I got there.

"Okay Hannah, what do you think?"

"I think he's a dick! And I hate literary fiction!" I jabbed the manuscript at her. "God, it's like... he spends every novel getting you by the balls, only to tear them off!"

Pam raised a blow. I blinked.

"Why Hannah, I didn't know your opinions could be so... explicit."

"Sorry, I—"

"Quite alright. Matthew's view of the world is dark. But you know that, don't you? I took you for a fan."

I folded my arms and tried to think objectively. Pam was right. I loved Matt's fiction... when I didn't love Matt.

Now?

Now I saw him every day—Matt in slippers, Matt after sex, Matt sniffing around the kitchen—and I couldn't bear to think he housed such strange sorrow.

Sad things seem truest to me.

His words. More of his words.

"Pam, I—"

"Go on," Pam said. She nodded at her door.

"I was... going to ask for an early lunch."

"Take a day, Hannah."

I wanted to hug Pam. Except never.

I gunned it home.

Matt was sequestered in the office, of course. I flung the door open. By the look on his face, my intrusion shaved a year off his life, but a smile quickly replaced his surprise.

"Hannah, hey." He rose from the desk. "What did you think? I gave Pam—"

"I know," I said. I buried my face his shoulder. "Matt, it's too sad."

He chuckled and hugged me.

"But Hannah, you know I think—"

"I know! I know. You think life is sad." I drew back enough to search Matt's expression. "But are you happy?"

His brows lifted.

"Of course I am. How can you ask me that?"

"I don't know. Your writing, that story..." I blushed. Had I read too far into Matt's fiction?

"Hannah." He lifted my chin. He stroked my cheek and feathered a hand through my hair. "I have you. I'm happier than any man has a right to be."

"That's all I need to hear," I whispered. "Every day."

"Oh, suddenly she has demands."

Matt defused my maudlin mood with a swift smack to my ass. I yelped and laughed.

As we held one another, my head on his chest and his chin in my hair, my gaze wandered to the desk. His notebook lay open.

"Are you starting something new?"

"Mm."

"What is it?"

"Our story," Matt said. He tilted his head and regarded me carefully.

"Our story?" I frowned. I could hardly handle
The Surrogate
. I knew I couldn't handle Matt turning us into a tragedy.

"It's a love story, Hannah."

"How does it end?"

Matt's gaze was suddenly inscrutable.

He hiked up my skirt and lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

"It never ends," he said, and he carried me out of the office.

EPILOGUE

_____

M. Pierce Writes from the Grave

February 3, 2014

AARON SNOW, staff writer

Critics are grudgingly offering praise for
Night Owl
, the internet phenom turned ebook, which reached the top of Amazon's fiction bestseller list last weekend.

The alleged author W. Pierce has openly styled himself (or herself) after the late Matthew Sky, a reclusive writer who published under the pen name M. Pierce and kept his identity a secret throughout most of his literary career.

Just months after Sky's death rocked the literary world, W. Pierce's
Night Owl
began circulating on the internet.

"It's a publicity stunt," said Pamela Wing, Sky's former agent, "and one of the lowest order. His or her unoriginality aside, W. Pierce is making a platform on Matthew Sky's death. No reader should support that, and no critic should take it seriously."