Beauty and the Baritone Read online

  “When I went to college I was raped at a frat party. The guy who did it told all his frat brothers that I was begging for it. I got a reputation for being a slut when I was a victim. It destroyed me.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Thank you. I am also. I sometimes wonder if I might have been different, had a different life if I’d only done something. What would have happened if I’d gone to the police after I was raped? What if I’d gone to a school counselor?”

  “But you did none of that?”

  “No. None of that. Do you want me to take off the dress? I like how you look at me.”

  “No, keep the dress on. I’m not ready for you, Carolina.”

  “Then let me tell you more of my story. Because I started to go crazy in college. I drank, I took drugs. And I fucked. I didn’t care about myself. I was too chicken to kill myself but too damaged not to try to do it in other ways.

  “I never said no to anyone. Get me a drink or a snort and I’d open my legs. I didn’t feel anything. I was so numb I might have well been dead. I don’t know how I managed to graduate but I did. And I got my Masters and then got a job and somehow I kept going.

  “I slowly started climbing out of that pit. I stopped taking drugs. I stopped drinking. And I stopped dating. I became a drone.”

  “You lived the life then that I live now.”

  “Yes. I continued not to feel. And then I met Gene. He was the musical director of an opera company that employed me. He was married. He told me when we met that he was going to fuck me but not fall in love with me. He was right on both counts.

  “He wasn’t very nice to me but I didn’t mind that. In fact, secretly I liked it. I liked that he had a wife and it tormented me. I lived for his attention and I rarely got it. Usually the only way I could get him was by sex.”

  “And you hated it?”

  “I loved it. Deep down it was exactly what I wanted. He treated me terribly, used me and it made me feel more alive than anything else.”

  “This was not healthy.”

  “I know. But my psyche is what it is. The only men that managed to get me were those who were unavailable and uninterested emotionally. David helped me see that I didn’t have to turn to married men to get what I wanted. I need a man who can use me.”

  “I am not that man Carolina.”

  “Can you fall in love with me?”

  He hesitated. She saw it on his face. He hated the truth.

  “No,” he slowly admitted, “I cannot.”

  “Would you be able to tie me to your bed and use my body for your own pleasure?”

  He couldn’t help himself. He looked at her breasts and his breathing quickened.

  “Damn you and damn David too.”

  That was answer enough.

  *** *** ***

  Once upon a time he had been Mateo Lopez. He hadn’t questioned why women were with him or why he was with a woman. He was famous, he was celebrated and women wanted him. He had his choice of women also and he indulged.

  He’d been in love a few times but love was the same luxury as a vacation or a bottle of wine. It all ended. Bottles were emptied, vacations were replaced by jobs and commitments. Love was brief and forgotten in the next rush of celebrity or between the thighs of another.

  “You are not the first woman since my accident.”

  He hadn’t meant to say it.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  The woman was determined to confound him.

  She was sitting on the edge of his bed, completely naked yet demure. Her feet were on the floor, her hands folded on her lap.

  He was still wearing his clothes. What was he supposed to do?

  “Do you want me to undress you?”

  He’d never questioned what to do with a woman before. She wanted to be used yet he had no idea any longer how to use a woman. She would be disgusted with him. She might not have turned away from his face but there were scars on his body that she’d see. Scars that shamed him.

  He stood too long, indecisive and then she stood. She was beautiful in the most basic feminine way. He wished he was the man he’d once been so he could take her without hesitation.

  In her bare feet she was almost as tall as him. Her hands came to rest on his chest, feather light. He felt her breath, warm and soft on his skin.

  He’d been with a prostitute, he wanted to tell her. Not once but twice. There was no satisfaction with them, no warmth, no passion. It had been his way to prove he was still a man. The shots his doctor had to give him proved further he was capable of sex as well as stupidity.

  His shirt was peeled off his shoulders and he watched her face as she examined his body. “My leg,” he said and then stopped.

  “You were hurt.” She traced the scar that puckered his shoulder. “So badly hurt.”

  He thought she meant to kiss it as she leaned in but it was her tongue, tracing the line of it from his shoulder to his chest. Scars crisscrossed his chest and her mouth traversed the path they created.

  She was working her way down and he stood, his belt loosened and his trousers pulled down.

  He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever been undressed by a lover. Not like this; completely stripped and left standing and she used her mouth to caress those parts of him he despised.

  She nuzzled around his penis, touching it with whispers of breath, a brief kiss, the silken touch of her hair. She dragged desire up from him. He thought it had been broken also, destroyed with his body but his penis hardened and his body quickened with need.

  She was brave but not skilled. Carolyn told a story that drew her as a woman with more experience, more technique than what she showed. Her kisses though brave were not bringing him to the peak of desire. Her touches did not make him forget the soreness of his muscles.

  Even when her mouth closed on his cock, when the soft, wet wonderland of her embraced and sucked his hard flesh; his leg throbbed with ache. He’d stood too long; his muscles were bunched and sore.

  He fisted her hair and roughly drew her head back. Her face was rosy, her lips wet and slightly swollen.

  “Go to your room,” he said roughly.

  “I don’t understand. I can make it better.”

  “No more. Leave me now.”

  He saw the shame that flushed her face. Her expression shuttered, brittled.

  Standing she was still glorious. How he wished he could be the man he’d been. He might once have satisfied her, But now he needed to sit, to get the weigh off his clenching muscle.

  He sunk onto the bed as the door closed and pushed his fist into his leg. There was still so much pain.

  There would always be pain.

  *** *** ***

  There was a television hidden in a credenza. Her e-reader was fully charged as was her phone and tablet. There were any number of distractions but Carolyn couldn’t be distracted by them.

  There was only him.

  It was her damned nature to see things from the world of opera, the vestiges of large emotions and dramatic stories.

  He was a hero worthy of the stage.

  He couldn’t hide his discomfort and she cursed herself for not recognizing it. She should have had him sit or lay down. There were other ways to have done it and not left him standing on his bum leg.

  Damn David and his suggestion that she come here.

  She turned her tablet on and pulled up a page she had looked at numerous times: the Wikipedia page on Mateo Lopez. The picture at the top showed him before the accident; back when he was headlining the best houses. Back when he was the greatest living star in opera.

  He’d never look like that again. So much masculine attractiveness in the lines of his face, the depth of his eyes. The mouth was lush and without the sardonic twist that a windshield had carved into his face. Before his body was a roadmap of scars and puckers that would never fully heal.

  He still had the presence of the greatness in him. He was commanding, despite his body he was strong. She would hav
e walked out but the way his shoulders were always held back, his chest forward was a draw to her.

  If he had been soft, the accident took it from him. He was the same as the carcass of the car he’d been in: twisted and destroyed. But where the car became scrap, the man became a recluse.

  She wanted him.

  It was an impossible situation. He would never take her as she wished to be taken. It would take a miracle.

  Thankfully she still had a few planned.

  *** *** ***

  He was going to send her away. There really weren’t other options. She was a reminder of a past he no longer knew, a future he couldn’t have.

  He turned in his bed, his body unable to find comfort. There was no possibility of sleep, less even of rest. He would start his day with exhaustion and pain. He hoped she wouldn’t cry.

  It was just like David to send this woman into his world. David was the devil, damn him, and always untouched by the destruction he wrought. Did he send this red-head knowing that she would create such chaos in his quiet life? Did he plan yet another way to bring the baritone down?

  A noise from the hallway froze him. He knew all the sounds of his house, from Simon’s footsteps to the creak of the roof in a hard rain. He knew when a tree limb brushed a window or when a shingle fell.

  He knew it was her.

  His door opened slowly and she appeared as if a vision. She wore something, he couldn’t see it clearly but it didn’t matter; once the door closed behind her she dropped it from her shoulder and down to the floor.

  Carolyn approached the bed and Mateo lay still, pretending to sleep.

  She was made of shadows and light. Her hair was black in the moonlight, framing a face he could only see glimpses of. The shape of her body, fluid as the dappled darkness, teased him.

  The bed sighed under her weight as she climbed in next to him. He tried to appear sleeping but knew that the quickness in him would be apparent to anyone. His breath was shallower, his heart was drumming, his pulse dancing in his throat.

  His cock stirred below the duvet. He could see the peak of a hard nipple as she bent over, on her hands and knees, doing something next to him that he couldn’t see. Only by letting her know that he was awake could he watch what she did.

  Instead through slit eyes he saw the nipple, the curve of her stomach, the shadow between her legs.

  She moved again so that she was turned onto her back, and she manipulated herself and he opened his eyes wider to see if she was doing what he figured she was. And indeed, she was.

  It might have been the tie from her wrapper or a tie abandoned by an ex-lover that she bound herself to his bed with. She had tied one hand and then looped a knot that she fastened by pulling her other hand through. She was naked and bound on his bed, her offer so complete that momentarily he was humbled.

  She didn’t speak and he couldn’t think of a word to say.

  He was going to send her away. Let David deal with the living and he, Mateo, would return to the dead. He didn’t need a woman next to him, he didn’t need to try and understand someone else’s twisting roads.

  This wasn’t for him, he wanted to say. It didn’t matter that he wanted to touch her, to feel her flesh. Her temptation was easy to ignore.

  She moved and her leg, above the cover, touched his below.

  The need to touch her was stronger than the need to prove he could resist. He’d curse later; despise his body for yet another reason.

  She made no sound as he skimmed his hand over her heat. He touched for no reason except to feel her flesh.

  She was hot, her body burned darkness.

  He couldn’t imagine tenderness and he offered none. As he felt the hard edge of her nipple he tightened his fingers over it. If he intended to cause pain, he was unsure. He wanted to feel her. Damn it, he wanted to remember the joy of female flesh. Remember the pleasure of sex.

  She arched and a sigh escaped into the night around them. It was a catalyst, an open door, an invitation that screamed to be heard.

  Mateo shifted so that his weight was off his side and more on his arms and stomach. Her body was his for the using and he was determined to try and ignore the woman and only enjoy her flesh.

  He squeezed her breast, pulled the nipple. It was a beacon and he needed to taste, to swallow the light.

  She was more than he dreamed of asking for. She was a mythical creature come to him who would fade into the darkness when she was through. She was Venus, she was Medusa, she was Persephone trapped in Hell.

  And he was in Hell with her.

  He wanted to taste and he did. Moving his body up, he took a breast in his mouth and suckled it. She arched into his mouth, her breathing louder and quicker. He was giving her what they both wanted.

  He didn’t want to deny himself the pleasure of her body. It was so warm and lush, her breast filled his hand and the hard nipple jutted to his mouth. Few women had bodies made for such pleasure, they starved themselves to bones and men were supposed to find that exciting.

  She was lean and he would have her softer but she had the softness in her breast and belly that he craved. Her long legs parted as invitation and he could smell her musk as he drew her other nipple to his mouth.

  She wasn’t lying when she said she knew what she wanted.

  He wasn’t worried about gentleness when he touched her. He wanted to feel her wet and she was, beautifully and delightedly warm and wet in her core.

  His leg twinged, the muscle was already straining. If he fucked her the way he wanted to, he would be in pain. She was the kind of woman who should be taken hard, who needed virility and ferocity in her fuck.

  He was so hard, he didn’t know how he could possibly stop. The pain would be formidable but the pleasure even more so.

  He touched her as deeply as he could, his fingers delving inside, reaching for that place where she would stop thinking. Reaching to find where she might not care that it was him in the bed with her and not a whole man, an uninjured lover.

  She tensed and cried out, her voice sharp and clear. She’d been so silent but at that moment he felt how willing she was to be lost in the moment. Her entire body poised for more pleasure, more taking.

  It was time to stop thinking and to allow himself whatever his body could take.

  She was tight and wet and although his muscles strained to hold him atop her, he didn’t care of anything but the warm wet that surrounded him and tightened around his aching cock. Thrusting into her, hearing the soft exhalation of breath, the tiny whimper of pleasure and he was lost to everything.

  His body no longer had limits. Aches disappeared, muscles remembered themselves and for that moment, gave him back the man he used to be.

  The world became just him and her. Two bodies moving together, two people seeking to find something in the other that they lacked when alone. He wanted to hear her climax, to know he was still a man who could bring a woman such pleasure.

  He wasn’t a cripple as she tightened around him. He wasn’t broken as she trembled in excitement. He was the man he was before the accident, before the body failed him and his mind became doubting and unsure. When she cried out in climax, he was Mateo Lopez once again.

  The feel of her orgasm on his cock was all he needed to bring his own climax. He’d stood on the cliff’s edge and finally he fell down, that glorious fall into release.

  *** *** ***

  “If your leg hurts we can sit.”

  She’d been woken by Mateo untying her arms. She’d fallen asleep still bound to his bed and her arms had been sore as hell upon awakening. Mateo moved stiffly and Carolyn figured that the pain in her arms might match that in his leg. If so, he’d be miserable.

  He said he needed to walk the pain away and although he hadn’t invited her, she quickly dressed and joined him.

  The garden was beautiful. The landscaping was as beautiful as the interior of his home, the baritone obviously spent a lot of money to keep his castle maintained. Unfortunately he seemed t
o be lacking the same upkeep his home had.

  Mateo was walking stiffly, his leg dragging just a little more. Carolyn knew she was the cause but that was okay with her. He hadn’t given her what she needed, not really, but he’d used her body and she liked that.

  “I need exercise.” His manner was as stiff as his leg.

  “I really like your home. It’s all so beautiful. Picture perfect.”

  “Unlike the man who lives in it.”

  She stopped walking and looked at him. “You must enjoy being miserable.”

  He stopped and turned slightly. His eyebrow lifted slightly.

  “It’s just that we usually seem to choose what makes us happy. Singing makes me happy so I try to sing. Being fucked is a smiling event. I like wine and good food. I don’t really get into misery.”

  “You believe yourself too clever,” Mateo said. He walked to a nearby bench and sunk down on it. The tiredness on his features hurt her heart. However the look on his face had a different effect. He looked at her in a way that seemed to sear into her soul.

  “Sing,” he demanded.

  She would have stripped at that moment if he asked her to and taken him in her mouth at his whim. She could have offered herself in any way and felt a glorious humiliation in it. But this was something that stripped at her soul.

  “I can’t.”

  “And in this you are unsure?” His voice mocked. “You who can lay my soul bare cannot share your voice in another way? Sing for me Carolina. Let me hear what you hide.”

  Damn his soul straight to Hell. And damn the fear that coiled inside her like a snake ready to strike.

  She sang. She hated the quaver in her voice, hated the uncertainty that infused the melody and stained the notes.

  She wasn’t good enough and he could hear it. She would never reach greatness, never be someone that the world needed to hear.

  She didn’t even finish the song. The words died in her throat, the notes refused to be sung. She was humiliated and hurt as his face remained completely passive although the accident caused sneer seemed to be so apt.