Chaos in Paradise Read online

  “You like the pain?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes! I adore torture because it turns to body heat. And I’d adore it even more because of you.”

  “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “Why would I lie?” He looked at me amazed. “Are the women so stuffy in the North that they don’t accept but one kind of pleasure?”

  “I couldn’t speak for all.”

  “But you have your rules here, don’t you? And I’m probably breaking some law.”

  “You’re breaking no law,” he answered quickly. “Anything you want, Teagan, I’ll give you. Anything.”

  “Then you’re as much a slut as I am.”

  “Then I suppose I am,” I told him.

  My mind returns to the present and my room. “That’s when I knew I was hopelessly in love and so was he,” I tell Mariel.

  She lies with her head back on my bed, looking sultry, turned-on by my story. She’s a bit like a blooming camellia, the blossom floating on water, the petals fluted, opening in layers.

  “Did that make you horny?” I ask her.

  “You make me horny,” she replies.

  “But women don’t belong together in the North,” I remind her.

  “But they do in the South,” she says.

  “But we’re not in the South now.”

  “I never was,” she tells me. “What’s it like?”

  “Dirty. Desperate. And there’s a dry heat all the time, unless you’re on the beach. Though there, even the birds are weary and the salt air has a rancid odor. It’s hardly as fantastical as some people here believe. And probably not as chaotic. There just isn’t any real order.”

  “Tell me about the sex.” Mariel’s playing with herself through a white summery dress. I can see her small breasts barely swell the fabric, though her nipples poke through seductively. There’s an immeasurable jiggle to her thighs, like a bit of sexual mirth. As her hand presses her crotch, she rocks on the fingers. She’s so thin, her hip bones poke up leaving an alluring swell, her pubis makes a lush hill with a tuft of brown hair I can see as the light shines through the thin material. “Tell me about the rough stuff.”

  “About it rough with Keven?” I ask.

  “No, how it was in the South. The best/worst lover you ever had.”

  “That would be Cabot,” I tell her. “I slaved for him for nearly a year before I fled. It was wonderful and terrorizing at the same time …

  I float into my memory, while sitting in my chair by the window looking at Mariel fool with her pussy, and occasionally stroke her breasts. I’m getting aroused by her, but perhaps even more by my memory.

  “I thought I loved him,” I began. “He found me working for a printer in one of the larger towns. I’d proof the copy before the final press was made. But he didn’t like my boss’s politics. He was in the printing office one afternoon to complain about the tracts that were circulating, those originating in our office and other places. He was quite distinctive, wearing a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and his hair was black and very short, freshly trimmed. It isn’t often you see a man so close-clipped and manicured in the South.”

  I gaze at Mariel wondering if she’s really listening. I’d like to climb on her and make love, but she has an aloof feel to her, so I return to my daydreaming.

  “It was cold, that arid cold that leaves you breathlessly empty. Cabot was wearing a fine gray woolen coat. I think they’re making these heavy clothes in the East somewhere, but they are very expensive anywhere in our region. It made Cabot look formal, very official and stern. But I find that sexy too.”

  “That’s not like Keven, is it?” Mariel interjects.

  “No. Keven is more earthy and easygoing. Cabot was an intellectual, though I found him so alluring I let him take me from the printing office, away from my job. He planned for me to work for him in his small factory. He had a printing press too. Life was like that for me in the South. I seemed to move from place to place, from lover to lover, hardly like I had a will of my own. I moved the way the winds blew, and depending on whose hand was dragging my cunt to a new adventure. Being bored with the political tracts and lured by Cabot’s measure of authority, I didn’t give him a fight.

  “I expected him to want me for sex too. That’s how it works there. Most women give in to men without much fight, and it’s become so normal, no one thinks any different of it. That is why it seems so strange here. Anyway, we went to bed as soon as Cabot was horny. I opened my thighs for him and he had an enormous cock that hurt almost every time he fucked me. Still, I like feeling full. He didn’t expect anything but my willingness and I was willing every time. But he did need to control me. The first time I went off on my own, he was furious when I returned.

  “He hauled me by the hair into the bedroom and clamped a handcuff around one wrist and fixed it to the bed. He did the same with my other wrist, so I was lying face down, my arms stretched out to the two corners of the headboard. I started to cry, I was so afraid. When he jerked at my feet and I felt ropes tightened against my ankles, I tried to fight him, screaming, but there wasn’t anyone to rescue me. He had control of all his friends that lived with us, and the house was wedged in a valley between two hills, no one else around. There’d be no rescue.

  “Tearing at my skirt, my ass was bared. And looking back, I saw him take his belt from his pants, a shiny, black substantial one. I whimpered crazed and begged him not to use it on me. But he didn’t hear me. He spanked my ass with the thing so it burned. The hot blistering made me clench my ass cheeks in fright, but then the strangest thing began to happen. He paused for a time, long enough for the pain to ease off, and when he started again, the sensation was not as severe. Cabot stopped and started at least a half dozen times and when he was finished, not only was my poor bottom feeling like molten lava, my pussy was sloshy wet, ready to orgasm against the sheets.

  “‘You hot cunt!’ he seethed in my ear. He pulled me by the hair, lifting me off the bed enough so he could stuff a pillow under my hips. I felt his hand burrow between my ass cheeks and find my anus puckering. Moistening it with sex juice, I almost screamed until I realized that his massage of my back channel made it as steamy as my horny cunt. I was opening for him, this crazy shower of pain raining on me like bits of fire. I begged him for more. The first thrust was grueling, sparks flying everywhere. He’d slap my ass with his palm if I moaned too loudly. But then I think it was just me groaning with pleasure. We came within instants of each other.

  “That was the day I realized that I liked giving myself this way, that I liked pain and being owned by a man’s lust. I remained tied to the bed the entire night. When Cabot wanted me again, he took my ass—so much that I finally had to plead for him to stop fucking me there, and he did.”

  “You like taking it up the ass?” Mariel asks.

  “I do.”

  “I like playing with myself there,” she says. She’s in a somnambulant frame of mind, just half awake. But her knees are bent now, and her dress has fallen back so they are naked and she can get to bare flesh. I think she has both hands engaged, one with a finger at her anus—the left one I can’t really see—the other staying close to her pussy. I continue with my story, wondering if she’s going to climax listening to me.

  “Cabot’s a hard man. I lived with him doing everything he asked me to do, fucking him whenever he wanted, but still that wasn’t enough. He always found something to punish me for. There were times when he wanted me to screw his friends and I would. But then other times it pissed him off and he’d keep me chained to the bed for days, the room locked. I read a lot then, because he had dozens of old books. Most of them were falling apart and if I wasn’t careful he’d punish me for getting the pages all out of order.

  “One entire day Cabot kept me locked in a cage to punish me. This was kind of strange. I had been with him for nearly eight months, living with his personal brand of anarchy and not really paying any attention to what it did to me on the inside or out, how I might be
withering away. I think I liked the sex so much, I really didn’t care. But then something I heard from one of the other women jolted me. She wasn’t speaking to me, but the words hit home. Her name was Geneva. She had blonde hair like yours and big bright red lips. She’d been with Cabot’s friend for two years, and I’d always see her primping and pampering herself like a doll. I thought it was silly and so did all the other women. She’d just smirk. Then one day this new woman asked her why she cared so much about her appearance and she smiled real broad and pretty. ‘Because if I lose my appeal, I lose my life here. And I have no where else to go. No one else is going to want me. Don’t think these men don’t cast off the lazy ones and the used-up ones and the ones without a blush on their faces.’

  “That made wonder how I looked, how I really looked. I’d brush by the mirror so hastily I never took time to see myself anymore. Cabot didn’t approve of make-up and fixing my hair, but there must have been some special appeal that kept me with him. Did that remain?

  “It was a strange day, clouds but no rain, unusually steamy in the valley. I felt as though things were going to explode. I took off, just for a walk. Went into the woods thinking I couldn’t use my brain while I was in Cabot’s lair—all my internal dialogue would just vanish. When he couldn’t find me in the house, he came after me. When he found me I was scared to death. His cold eyes were hot. His jaw trembled. And his lip sneered dangerously. ‘You don’t leave my house without permission,’ he said.

  “‘I wasn’t leaving …’ I tried to plead with him, but I was afraid he’d slap my face, so I said no more. He drug me into the basement of the house where he kept his presses. And removing my clothes, he hog-tied me—belly down, arms back and tethered to my legs. He pushed me into a cage, gagged my mouth, blindfolded my eyes and left me there for hours.” I pause trying to remember if it was really that long. “At least until it was dark,” I finally concluded. “The first thing I felt when he returned for me was my pussy being played with. My arms ached, feeling scorched, burning from awkwardness. But I was so hungry with sexual appetite that I took his hands on me as lovers and let him raise an orgasm. Massaging my anus and my clit, my crotch was swathed in my own juices that flowed on his hand. He pulled out the gag and pressed fingers of liquid to my lips so I could smell my fragrant self and taste the sour juice. There was a dildo slithering inside my anus. Sweet bursts of pain wracked me end to end and I thrashed about the cage, groaning with the unhappy torture, while Cabot pinched my labia and clit. With him drawing his fingernail along the path from my anus to my cunt, I wobbled insanely. I came on the pain, on a dozen pains exploding everywhere.

  “‘Don’t leave me, or deny me, or refuse to offer your respect, or disobey any command,’ he said. I nodded because I couldn’t speak. ‘I will string you up and beat your ass tomorrow. But you stay in the cage the rest of the night.’ He unlocked the thing, took away the bindings, even the gag and blindfold, and left me there on my honor to stay there the night.”

  I look at Mariel lying on the bed, with her legs now splayed wide apart. Even from where I sit I can see her cunt juice glimmering. The light of afternoon is dying in the room. She shivers, and arches her back, raising her breasts toward the ceiling, or to heaven, whichever might be the thought in her mind.

  I want to go to her and lie with her, to run my hands along her cum-flushed skin, feel her wet pubic lips, slide my hands inside the petal soft folds and bring her juice to her lips the way Cabot brought mine to me. I think that’s what she’s thinking, but I don’t act on my desire. I remain in my chair until her undulating form finally stops the frenzy and relaxes into the crumple of sheets.

  “You think I’m a whore?” she asks.

  “In whose language?” I ask.

  “In any language.”

  “You’d fit well in the South,” I say.

  “But I don’t here?”

  “That depends on what you do with your lust.”

  “I don’t think I can be faithful to him.”

  “Then you’d better end it now.”

  “There will be quite an inquisition,” she says.

  “I’ll speak for you, if you like.”

  “It’s not that kind of inquisition.”

  I’m not sure what she means, though I’m sure I don’t want to know.

  Chapter Four

  “You’re still brooding about her,” Knowland confronts me in the abbey courtyard.

  I look up at him hardly making out his face with the sun shining behind him like a halo. I move my head so he blocks the sun and I can see the barely disguised amusement in his face.

  “And if I admit I’m brooding, you’ll what? Lock me up? Report me to a higher authority?”

  He laughs. “You ever wonder which one of us has the most power?”

  “I’ve always known it was you,” I tell him. “You’re not mired in conflict.”

  He smirks like a criminal. Good thing he was made to lead because he’d be the Utopia’s most dangerous felon if he wasn’t in power, legitimate power.

  “She’s just a woman. Why this one? We could search a few outposts and corners for some nubile thing that doesn’t know much about you, that would come here knowing who you are, but without really knowing what that means. Adoring you, she’d make the raunchiest wife anywhere around.

  “Yeah, we could do that,” I agree.

  He moves out of the sun, the shadows look much more natural to him. It’s nice to see he’s trimmed his beard, but it hardly looks like him. He leans back against the gnarled oak behind him, like it’s actually comfortable.

  “Why do you keep going back? Why when you assume it’s doomed?”

  “You don’t have anything else to do but ask me questions?”

  “I have lots of things I could do. But you’re a miserable ass when you’re like this. Spill your guts, man. And be done with it.”

  I don’t buy his prescription, but I’ll talk anyway. I focus on Teagan and the words seem to come naturally. “The impact of being sexually shocked brings me back to her,” I say.

  He looks at me like he doesn’t understand.

  “I’m addicted, I admit,” I try for an explanation he’ll understand. “The smell of her—she wears some oils she distills from herbs—they have power over my cock. I feel the thing striking the inside of my pants wanting to get out the instant my eyes catch a glint of that sandy brown hair. It’s worse yet when her tiny fingers dabble their way along my cheek, and she giggles with them moving down to my crotch. She has me figured out, by the time her hand covers my balls and she begins to squeeze them, I’m hopeless. I’ll be wasted without her.

  “We’ve been meeting in a cove on the beach. She thinks it’s as private as that little shack she lives in. I’m sure it’s not, but she tends to be more aggressive when she’s just a little afraid of getting caught. Caught my whom? I wonder. I wonder what’s in her head about living in this sin of hers. Then I remember she wasn’t raised with sexual sin. She’s not a Utopian woman.”

  “She’s a whore,” Knowland swiftly reminds me.

  “Not a whore, not the way whores here live. She doesn’t have a sad face and her hair shines, and she smells fresh.” I think of her and find my whole body beginning to throb with need for her. “But you know, her eyes are a lot clearer than when we first met, and her skin is not as pale and her mind doesn’t drift as easily—only when she’s in pain or about to cum. Then I guess it’s supposed to be that way.” I chuckle thinking of the last time I bound her. “I don’t want to think about what that says of my homeland—that it’s good for the soul? Is that possible? What does her sexual appetite say of us? What does her need for punishment suggest about women—or is this just some quirky fascination peculiar to her that she likes her body lashed?”

  “How ironic,” Knowland remarks.

  “See the problem I have?”

  “Tied up, bound, mean sex.” He looks fascinated. He would be, the brute.

  “The first time we were togeth
er, she told me she wanted it rough, and if I wasn’t up to that kind of thing, we’d better just forget being together.” I laugh. “Even her bluntness arouses me. And such a determined spirit to know what she needs. Apparently she knows what I need as well. The first time I took my belt to her ass—all I really had to do was draw it from my pants, and seeing her crouched in front of me like she was in the confessional—my hand started to tingle. She was nervous, a layer of sweat against the pearly translucence of her back.” I feel myself sounding like a poet, and I don’t even care if my words are lost on the practical Knowland. “She’s thin, her ass swelling like a balloon. But it’s firm and fleshy on the bottom and when I cracked the leather on her, it jiggled and she let out a tiny cry. I didn’t know if I was hurting her, or she was turned on. It’s been a long time, Knowland, a long time since I had that feeling, that desire as I conquer a submissive woman. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid of it.”

  He stares at me impassively, his arms crossed over his burly chest, these beady eyes waiting for me to say more.

  “You really want to hear this?”

  “Damn good story,” he replies.

  “Goes no where,” I remind him.

  “Whom I going to tell?”

  “Queleah.”

  “No, she’d tell the world. But I might find a way to strap her behind like that, she’s a bitch with a smart mouth anymore. A little penance would do her good. So her ass was red, huh?”

  “More like a deep pink rose. I didn’t whip her fast, but I did lay it on hard. I liked hearing the strike of the leather as it hit, and seeing how the fat of her cheeks would flex. I waited until she decided to relax before I laid on another. She was all clenched up, like she was waiting for safety, I suppose. But as soon as the pain drained away and she was rational again, and that plump butt of hers let go, I snapped the belt on her buttocks and stood back to watch the show.

  “She stuns me, friend. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful. I realized what was happening when I saw that pretty pubis of hers—all purple/pink—start to moisten. The wet was like a river, something I could sink my hand inside. If my fist was smaller it would take the whole thing. As it was, I eased four fingers inside her and pumped them until my cock ached too much to wait.” I stare at Knowland wondering what he’s thinking of his priest. “Is this what you want to hear? How I debauch a woman?”