She never wanted it to end.
He took his hand out from behind her head and grasped her thigh. The other hand held the other thigh. He jerked her hips toward him, impaling her on him as he impaled himself into her. The chanting grew ever louder until it was all she could hear. It was louder than her breathing, louder than his, louder than their coupling, louder than her own cries as he rode her toward a final climax. She thrashed on the rock, turned her head and buried it against her arm, screamed as muscles inside her spread, twisted and rearranged themselves to accommodate that inhuman organ thrusting inside of her.
Would it ever end? Yes, it had to. She felt it nearing its end, speeding toward the final cataclysm. She tried to hasten the end with wild gyrations, and the cloaked man responded with faster thrusts. It was a primal union of bodies. There was nothing left of Mona—not her name, her past, her life in the outside world. There was no outside world. There was the joining of their bodies, the wetness, the rock behind her and the cloak shielding her and nothing else. The Minotaur penetrated every part of that devouring orifice. It was coming. She could feel it. It was coming. Almost there. It was coming. The final spasm of union. It was coming. The closing of the wound. It was coming. The sacrifice that brought them together. It was coming. It was coming. The man pounded into her depths. She looked up at the night sky and saw all the stars turn red.
It was coming.
The man pulled back his hood and Mona screamed.
"It’s me, darling,” Malcolm said into her ear. "It’s only me.”
Mona found herself in the bed in the back room, Malcolm, naked on top of her, inside of her, moving within her. Mona’s orgasm shook her down to her core, her cervix contracting wildly, painfully almost, even as she screamed again in her terror.
The Minotaur—the cloaked figure who was but was not Malcolm—was gone. So were the fire and the priestesses and the chanting and the chains around her wrists and stomach and the bolder against her back. In their place there was nothing but a candle burning on a stool, paintings of women around and about the bed, the sounds of the street, and Malcolm’s own weight holding her down onto the bed.
She pushed him off her and sat back against the headboard, semen pouring out of her. Malcolm knelt in front of her, an ironic smile on his face.
"Did I give you a little fright?” he teased.
"A little fright? You drugged me.”
"Never. It was nothing more than pomegranate wine. Then again, pomegranates do have very special powers.”
"That was not just wine. What I saw—”
"You saw what I wanted you to see as always. When you drink it, it opens the mind.”
Her heart raced like she was still chained to the boulder. Her hands shook, her entire body shook.
"I warned you I like to play games,” he said. "I warned you that next time, you would hate me.”
"I do hate you.”
"It’ll pass.” He shrugged, sent her a kiss and a wink. "It always does.”
"Get out,” she said.
"If you insist. I wasn’t quite finished with you. But no harm, no foul,” Malcolm said, waving a hand dismissively. He climbed off the bed and quickly dressed in his three-piece suit. "Next time we’ll end on a better note.”
"No next time. I don’t want you to ever come back.”
"I’m afraid we had an agreement, did we not? You recall this?” He pulled a crisp white rectangle of paper from his inner breast pocket. He showed her one side—white and blank—and the other side, also white and blank. "You agreed to do anything.”
"You drugged me. You made me hallucinate.”
"I didn’t, actually…but even if I did, that would fall under the umbrella of ‘anything,’ wouldn’t you agree?”
Mona snatched the card from his hand and ripped it into pieces. She sent them scattering all over the bed.
"Get out. Never come back.”
"You don’t mean it.”
She pulled away from him, turned her back on him, and wouldn’t look at him.
"You’re a monster,” she said, a sob rising in her throat.
"It was only pretend. I warned you…”
He had warned her she wouldn’t know fantasy from reality. He had, but this was different. Fantasy and reality were one thing, but Malcolm had made her question her very sanity.
"Get away from me. Now.”
He slammed the door so loudly she jumped. The candle blew out, and the room went dark but for the skylight.
Only pretend, he’d said.
Pretend? No one’s imagination was that good, certainly not hers. He had drugged her. She knew he’d drugged her. The violation of her trust was unforgivable.
Mona dressed in yesterday’s clothes and checked the time—it was nearly dawn. Hours had passed since she’d drunk the wine he’d left for her by the book. She would have to hurry. She didn’t want the drugs leaving her system before she could be tested for them. Hospital emergency wards were slow, but if she left now, she might make it back before opening the gallery at ten. Not that it mattered much. The gallery would go under without Malcolm’s financial support. But she would rather watch barbarian hordes tear it down brick by brick than allow Malcolm to touch one hair on her head ever again. No man was allowed to drug her. She knew he liked to play games, but this was too far. Whatever his endgame was, she wanted no part of it.
She gathered the pieces of the white card off the bed and tossed them into the trash in her office.
The game was over.
The Bleeding Man
Pomegranate wine and nothing else.
No opium, no LSD, no mushrooms, nothing.
Mona couldn’t believe it. A few days after her panicked trip to a doctor, she got the call with her test results. There had been no drugs in her system, none at all. Only alcohol, and not even enough of it to make a dent in her senses.
She thanked the nurse who called. The woman sounded concerned, suggested Mona talk to a police officer if she believed someone had tried to drug her. Or perhaps a therapist if her drinking was causing her to black out.
Mona drank little, and when she did it was rarely enough to get drunk. And what would she tell the police if she did call them? She’d agreed to whore herself to a man without a last name who paid her in artwork? That he’d given her a glass of pomegranate wine full of an untraceable hallucinogenic and somehow he’d made her believe she was chained to a boulder in a sacred forest being sexually sacrificed to a cloaked and hooded Minotaur so much larger than any man?
She’d be in a mental hospital by lunch.