Shards of Glass (3 page)

“You’re so big,” I breathe.

He spins me around again by my waist as if I’m a doll, and I’m now on top of him, facing him, my lips on his lips. He has me staring into his eyes. “I want you to ride me,” he demands. “Ride me hard. I want you to come around me until your delicate little body can’t stand it anymore.”

He presses his hand into his jeans’ pocket and pulls out a condom packet. “Put this on me, Janie.”

“I don’t really know how,” I reply.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve never done this before. You’re not a virgin, are you?”

“Of course not, I’m twenty-one,” I protest.

“Well you never know,” he says with a crooked grin. “You could be religious . . . or something.”

“I don’t think you’ll find many virgins over the age of eighteen,” I say, as if I’ve had all the experience in the world. The truth is, I have only ever had sex with one boy, and that ended a year ago. But I don’t want Daniel to know that. I want him to think of me as worldly.

He pushes me off him. “Come to think of it, you’re too young, Janie,” he mumbles. “What was I even thinking?” But the mumble is to himself. He kisses me softly but then says, “No, Janie, no, I can’t do this to you. You’re too young. Too vulnerable.”

Hot. Cold. I can’t stand the torture.

He’s killing me softly with this kiss,
Killing Me Softly
with his words, the tune swims in my mind—all I want is him. All I desire is Daniel Glass inside me, even if that glass cuts. Even if it wounds me.

“Please,” I beg. “Please. I need you. You’re my director. In every way. I’m so crazy about you, it hurts. I come to work every day obsessing about you, desiring you in every movement I make, every step I take. Everything I do is for you, Daniel.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Tell you that you’re a god to me? That even if you hurt me sometimes, I love you anyway? That I can’t get you out of my mind? Nor night nor day. I love you, Daniel Glass. I love you.”

“Let’s just lie side by side and hold each other, Janie darling.”

He called me darling. I’m in a swoon.

“Be still, Janie.”

He kicks off his jeans and pulls them, and his boxer briefs, away from his toes until we are lying naked, side by side. His body is beautiful. Worked-out but not overdone. Smooth like caramel, faintly tanned but not too bronzed. His lips are curved, the corners lifting upwards as if somebody is pulling invisible threads. His skin is clear and unblemished, his nose straight with the tiniest bump that makes him look like a Greek statue. He tells me I’m too young for him, yet I feel his hardness pressed up against my skin. I let my hands wander south and feel him there. He groans. He doesn’t push my hands away.

“I love you, Daniel,” I say again, and every cadence in my voice speaks the truth. I would die for this man.

“I love you, too, my little Juilliard star. You’re precious to me. You shine like a diamond, half cut, half polished. You’re special, but not everyone has seen how bright you’ll shine. But they will. I’m going to pull that out of you. Coax it out. I’m going to make you weak, yet strong.”

“How?”

“By making love to you. I’m going to have to fuck you, Janie.” He pulls me close to him and I slip on his huge erection with ease, my wetness surrounding him like a knife cutting into oozing butter.

He starts making small thrusts as we lie side by side and he kisses me, his tongue darting into my open mouth, greedily sucking me, licking me. It feels . . . ooh, so . . . so good. I claw onto his muscular ass with my nails, leveraging my body to ease myself up and down him. I want him in . . . deep.

“You, Feel. So. Good. I. Love. Fucking. You,” he growls, plunging his way in harder. He’s above me and has my ass in his hands, lifting my buttocks up with each thrust. He’s controlling me, dominating me, totally fucking me. In out, in, out. Aah, it feels incredible, all my nerves are on fire. I’m soaking wet. I’m like this tiny thing and his huge hard cock is taking over my body. Whole. Each time he slams it in, he pulls me tight towards his groin. We are one, our hips meeting as close as is physically possible.

“I love you, Daniel.”

“Sweet little tight pussy,” he says groaning. “Making. Me. So. Fucking. Hard!” Each thrust is punctuated by a word. His voice is raw. I have this powerful man weak with desire and I feel hot. He rolls me over in one sudden pull so I’m now on top of him. His erection has slipped out with the movement so I guide it back in with my two hands. The pressure of his cock slapping against my clitoris has me screaming with pleasure and, as I push it inside me, I feel myself coming—the rush and spasms making me climax in two places, my clit and deep down within me. My tits are smacking his chest, my nipples rosy and firm, my nerve-endings electric.

“That’s right, baby, come hard, come around my cock, oh yes.”

His tongue is inside my mouth, exploring every last bit of me, his eyes intense as he cries out. I feel his erection thicken and stiffen even more. My body trembles and quivers as he explodes inside of me. “I’m coming Janie, I’m coming hard.”

His mouth is on mine, tongues wrapped about each other, orgasms uniting in one golden shimmering firework.

I hear my cell ring.
What the—

I bolt up with a jerk. My hands are pressed between my legs. Now I know the meaning of a wet dream. There’s sweat all over me. My bed is empty. Daniel Glass is nowhere to be seen. I grab my cellphone and look at the time. 6.55 p.m. Holy smoke! I can still feel the tingles pushing through me, my post-orgasmic body shot with a thunderous bolt. I press
ANSWER
.

“I’m outside your apartment building.” It’s Daniel. His voice is clipped. Urgent.

“I’ll be down in a second.”

“Don’t be long,” he warns. “I don’t want us to be late. Curtains go up at eight sharp. I’d hate to let my fiancée down.”

His words are groggy syllables in my head. “Your f . . . fiancée?” I stammer.

“Yes, didn’t you know? Natasha Jürgen is my fiancée. We’re getting married in two weeks. Don’t want to be late for her greatest performance yet.”

His sentence cuts through me like splintering shards of glass.

He adds, “You need to see Natasha act; you could learn a lot from her. Now get your heinie down here, Miss Janie Juilliard. Right now, or we’ll be late.”

“Coming,” I blurt out, realizing the irony of what I just said.

1

O
BSESSION IS A DANGEROUS THING. You can call it infatuation, or even love, you can call it whatever you like, but it is a sickness. Even Shakespeare knew that. Especially Shakespeare. Daniel was my every thought, my every movement. He consumed me. He eked his way into my nightly dreams, where we would be in love. Not unrequited love, but tangible and equal—both of us crazy for each other, simultaneously. Then I’d wake up empty. This happened every night. Over and over again.

That evening, when he took me to the theater, when I watched Natasha Jürgen’s performance in awe—and envy—was humiliating. A slap in the face. They were going to get married. He was in love with her: a glamorous, worldly, thirty-five-year-old. I was out of her league. She had long blond hair, breasts that any woman would kill for. She was a beautiful, Teutonic force of power, with legs that went on forever, and a bewitching smile. She commanded the stage. I wept at her performance, sad tears, happy tears. I was bowled over. It felt that it was the most catalytic moment of my life, because observing her made me more determined than ever to hone my craft; become the actress I knew I was born to be. Little did I know that a far more life-changing moment was yet to come.

In the months that followed, however hard I tried, I couldn’t rid myself of Daniel, neither physically nor mentally. I was working with him—seeing him nearly every day in rehearsals, and when we were done rehearsing, we would be performing by night; his eyes on us. His ears. Afterwards he’d give us notes backstage. Even when we’d been up and running for a month, Daniel was still there in the wings, up in the gods, front row sometimes—you never knew. But he’d be studying our every move. A tilt of the head, a twitch of a smile; nothing went unnoticed with Daniel. He was a perfectionist.

I would often click on Wiki and read the official Daniel Glass bio. Like a glutton for punishment, I needed to remind myself whom I was dealing with. A man out of my league. Worse: a
married
man. A man who could never be mine.

Daniel James Glass is an American stage director. He was born in New York City, the only child of Valerie Peterson, a university English professor, and Wilson James Glass, a self-made billionaire who amassed his fortune by way of the auto parts industry. His father, who was from New Hampshire, was of Scottish and Italian descent.

Glass’ parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Manhattan and attended Yale and later Magdalen, Cambridge University, England, where he graduated with a double first in English (summa cum laude). While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlow Society and acted in, and directed, several plays, including a production of David Mamet’s
Speed The Plow
, which got him noticed by Harold Pinter, who cast him to play Albert Stokes in
A Night Out
at the National for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award in 2005. According to Pinter, as well as being “an outstanding actor” Glass was also a “brilliant” cricketer, and played for Magdalen College.

In 2012 he inherited his father’s vast fortune, after Wilson Glass died of pancreatic cancer. In that same year, Glass married the actress Natasha Jürgen.

I needed to read that last line. Needed to drum it into my head.

I repeated to myself, over and over like a mantra, “He’s married, Janie. Worse, he’s in love—not even in your dreams, Janie. Not even in your dreams.”

Yet, however much I tried, I could not squash those dreams and wayward fantasies. Daniel Glass was my world. I breathed for
him
more than for myself.

My hard work and obsession with pleasing him did pay off though. Seven months later, I was nominated for a Tony award. I didn’t win, nor did I expect to. I lost out to the invincible Natasha Jürgen. Lost out in every way. She had it all. The man. The beauty. The talent. The glittering career.

And then, one day, she didn’t.

Just like that, it was all over.

2

I
HEARD THE NEWS six months after we finished the play. I was at my parents’ house in Vermont. Well, Mom had been dead for several years, but I still referred to it as my parents’ house. I was at the pottery wheel, throwing a bowl, and when the news came on the radio, my suddenly unsteady hands caused the clay to flop all over the place and spin off the wheel in an oozy mess. My late mother was a professional potter, and my dad was a carpenter; both having given up acting and music to pursue other interests—those that could actually pay the bills. He still kept the workshop and business, where he sold their one-of-a-kind, custom-made artwork which, after years of hard work, had now become quite profitable. I was spending time with him and my younger brother, Will, at our house near Stowe for a few weeks, until I started a new job in New York: a guest role on a TV show.

A female voice interrupted the music I was listening to on the radio: Brahms, I think it was.

“The Tony award-winning Broadway actress, Natasha Jürgen, has tragically and unexpectedly died. She passed away in the early hours of this morning, at Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City, where she had been admitted after an accident with a swerving bicycle while she was crossing the road in Central Park, yesterday. Apparently, the actress seemed uninjured even though she had bumped her head in the fall. Witnesses say she got up and laughed about it, refusing to be admitted to the hospital, after an ambulance had arrived at the scene. However, a few hours later, she complained of a headache, and her husband, director Daniel Glass, insisted he take her to the hospital. She fell into a coma last night. The cause of death was an epidural hematoma. The family thanks everyone for their kind condolences and ask for privacy at this very sad time. A funeral will be held later this week in an undisclosed location.”