Cry for Me (A Dark Erotica Novella) Read online

  CRY FOR ME

  A Story of Dark Desires

  Charlotte DeCorte

  Published by DelSin Publishing, LLC 2011

  Cry for Me

  Copyright 2011 by Charlotte DeCorte

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from DelSin Publishing, LLC. DelSin Publishing, LLC and the author assume no liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image Credit: Sergey Pristyazhnyuk

  Cover Design: CGM Web Designs

  Table of Contents

  Cry for Me

  About Charlotte DeCorte

  Writing as Claudia D. Christian

  Cry for Me

  Sevastian always made it a rule to never fuck his woman while she cried.

  The simple answer was because he enjoyed creating her precious tears.

  The complex answer as to why he enjoyed it had yet to be fully solved.

  Sevastian studied each perfect tear as it rolled down Ava’s reddened face. Hypnotized and obsessed, he crouched before her as she sobbed from their latest round of play.

  This time she was the poor, ravished maid and he the selfish, despotic aristocrat.

  Others had seen them as innocent schoolgirl and hard taskmaster, adoring nurse and arrogant doctor, lady of the manor and faithful butler, and a hundred exciting different personalities.

  Sevastian craved her total surrender. He needed to watch Ava lose control. Only when she screamed, when her lovely face scrunched up into a nearly unrecognizable mask of misery, did he feel something almost as blissful as Ava’s exquisite suffering.

  Freedom.

  Sevastian, the son of Russian immigrants, had never known this delicate perversion existed inside his cold, orderly mind. Excellence, hard work, and efficiency had been the guiding forces in his structured life since time memorial. Sexuality had naturally fallen right in line. Sevastian fucked the way he worked—intent yet removed, satisfied only by accomplishment.

  Then he met Ava. Lovely, glorious, ridiculously emotionally-complicated Ava.

  Ava who cried at his command.

  Ava who cried as he beat her tender backside with a riding crop.

  Ava who cried at his feet just to feel again.

  Unable to resist another moment, Sevastian leaned forward to kiss one blessed tear. It tasted of all things forbidden and wondrous.

  Ava’s maid character mistook his gentle gesture for leniency. “Oh, my lord! Please forgive me for disrupting your slumber! I truly thought your Lordship hadn’t yet arrived this morn.”

  “Save your rubbish apologies for someone who cares to hear them. I’m hardly done punishing you, girl.”

  Ava’s face rumpled again in preparation for another tearful torrent.

  “Tears won’t save you now, you silly slut. How many times have I told you to never awaken me with the clumsy efforts you call cleaning?”

  Sevastian, an aloof man who found it difficult to emote in public, slid into one character after another with gifted ease. Tonight’s romp as a sadistic aristocrat needed little prep work. Neither of them followed a script—which at times might have served them for their dialogue could be laughably stuffy—but aside from a costume change, spontaneity dictated everything.

  Well, perhaps not everything.

  Although currently trussed up over a padded bench, naked bottom crisscrossed with welts, and eyes heavy with morbid anticipation, Ava demanded only one thing from him.

  To make her cry as hard as he possibly could.

  “Please forgive me, my lord! I promise I won’t do it again.”

  Sevastian stood up. He pushed Ava’s chin up with the tip of his crop. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying to me. Whatever shall I do about it?” His diabolical smirk promised he would try very, very hard to come up with a proper solution.

  * * *

  Ava kicked her unbound feet in rabid enthusiasm. Her watered gurgles were a hideous contrast against her usually pleasant voice. Sevastian, fully in his element, taunted her as he made her count out each stroke against the back of her thighs.

  “What did you say?”

  …

  “I can’t possibly hear you through all that screaming.”

  …

  “I’m afraid that one doesn’t count.”

  …

  “We’ll have to do it again.”

  He paused in mid-swing. Leaning down from his considerable height, he whispered in her ear, “I don’t know if this is actually fair to you. Can you even count without using your fingers and toes?”

  Ava’s voice cracked. The urge to kiss him made her want to break character for a moment. “No, your Lordship.”

  Sevastian adjusted their play to fit her new parameter. “Well, then. I suppose I shall have to teach you. Although you’re quite the drudge, I’m sure even you are capable of simplistic learning.”

  Ava smothered a snort. Overachieving, brilliant, and independently wealthy as a result of her beautiful mind, she never had a problem with learning. Excellent grades, top schools, and coveted internships celebrated Ava’s many varied natural talents. Troubleshooting via risk management was the one that had made her an obscene amount of money.

  Her particular problem came from thinking too much.

  Unfortunately, Ava usually saw everything as a dilemma to dissect and analyze. Mental noise buzzed incessantly, making it difficult to relax.

  Coffee or tea? Magazine or book? TV or DVD? Red or black? Conference X or Conference Y? Brunch or lunch? Speaking engagement 1 or Speaking Engagement 2? Blue or yellow? Gym or walk? Dinner or takeout?

  The most trying times were when a complex anomaly miniaturized everything else in her life. Coating her thoughts, reactions, and focus, it put Ava in an unnatural state of heightened cerebral fixation. As a result, Ava’s vision narrowed into a speck consumed by the stubborn aberration.

  She dreaded those days even as she relished the challenge. Being able to sift through a thousand possibilities, seeing the eventual outcome for Plan A versus Plan B, creating contingency operations, all of it demanded a steep price.

  Ava couldn’t eat.

  Days went by with no memory of what little she had consumed. It was only later, after solving the issue that Ava would see the few food wrappers scattered across the kitchen counters. It was barely enough to feed her for one day much less four. The scale usually dipped a couple of pounds on the light side during these stretches.

  Ava couldn’t sleep.

  The gears whirled shy of the overheating point. Dreams became the breeding ground for more probable solutions and issues. She never felt rested. During those times the nights served only as a marker between light and darkness. Once Ava was free from issue containment, a full day sleeping in a windowless guest room (especially prepared for these times) followed. It always took a minimum of two additional days to reset her internal clock before the hellish process could begin all over again.

  Ava couldn’t cry.

  Whatever caused her mind to speed up also caused her tear ducts to shut down. Immersed in an impersonal world of calculation, Ava couldn’t feel emotion. All her mental resources demanded pure intellect. Nothing could penetrate the crystalline wall between her thinking and feeling sides. The end result would leave Ava a functioning, human automaton.

  “Now this is eleven. Say ‘e
leven.’”

  Ava gasped the word.

  “I didn’t quite hear it. We’ll have to do it again.”

  Her life, while accomplished, had definitely been missing someone like Sevastian.

  * * *

  The strange part of loving a woman like Ava came one unexpected morning.

  Sevastian had been seeing her for over a year after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Their courtship consisted of two sleepovers a week, three dinners, and no more than five phone calls in a seven-day period.

  Other women he had dated complained bitterly of this regiment. They felt underappreciated and ill-used, often comparing themselves to being just another convenience like his laptop or cell phone. In many ways they were right.

  Not because they were conveniences, but because they were work.

  Frequent self-rumination wasn’t Sevastian’s strong suit, but he understood the differences between himself and his ex-girlfriends had more to do with a lack of wanting to share his true thoughts than an inability to share his life.

  How could he share something undeveloped and uninspired?

  That all changed when he met Ava.

  She was the first woman Sevastian had been with who didn’t demand to see him more often. Ava respected his need for distance. Like her, he was also independently wealthy, courtesy of the IT Bubble. Other women had seen Sevastian’s status as a reason for him to spend all his time with them. They couldn’t understand Sevastian’s obsession to keep working—even if he only worked on developing pet projects.

  Ava understood him because she also worked like a devil. A confirmed workaholic, therefore not one to judge, Sevastian sometimes felt he was the one intruding into her world whenever they met up during a sparse break. During these visits Ava’s emotions would run the gamut; open, incredibly generous with access to her inner sanctum of likes and dislikes to closed, stingy towards the point of curt rudeness.

  Ava’s openness charmed him. Her stinginess—not so much.

  Sevastian wasn’t surprised to learn sustained relationships were one of her singular failings. He was, however, surprised at the rush of guilt he experienced when wondering if this is what his ex-girlfriends had felt in his distracted company.

  Luckily for them both he wasn’t one to experience rejection from her inattention—at least not any he admitted to. Sevastian liked Ava and wasn’t anywhere near ready to put a civilized end to their entanglement. Her fickleness did puzzle him enough to ensure she didn’t have another lover. (The private investigator confirmed Ava’s fidelity.) Sevastian just couldn’t pinpoint a reason as to why she behaved so radically different and it began to bother his curiosity.

  Eventually he broached the subject during breakfast.

  “Ava?” He waited until she looked up from a decadent meal of French toast, pancakes, fresh fruit, bacon, buttered toast, and scrambled eggs. “Why the change between last night and this morning?”

  She opened her mouth once. Twice. A shadow dimmed her cheerful mood. “Do you really want to know?”

  “I did ask the question.”

  “Okay.” Ava inhaled deeply and blew out her breath aggressively. “I have a problem. A strange one. I’ve gone through a whole matrix of cause and effect and while I’m sure I know the cause, I’m unsure as to why I have this particular effect.”

  Sevastian set his fork down beside his plate and placed folded hands into his lap. “Explain further.”

  Ava hesitated before plunging forward in a mad rush of words. “I stop feeling things. Every time I get really involved in a project I just stop feeling. It takes me a couple of days to regain my emotions. Last night I was still coming out of it. This morning I’m not.” Ava gestured to their breakfast. “I’m hungry now. I wasn’t yesterday or the day before.”

  Sevastian processed her frenetic explanation. “That’s why you cooked so much food this morning. When was the last time you ate a full meal?”

  “Five days ago. I think.”

  “Ava, this isn’t good.”

  She flushed and looked away. “I know.”

  “What are we going to do about this?”

  “You mean you want to help?”

  “Of course. I like you very much.”

  Ava smiled. She squeezed the table’s edge. “I noticed something last night. Something that changed things. Remember when you, ah, spanked me that one time?”

  Sevastian thought back to the night before. Ava was on her hands and knees. He had slapped her on the left hip right before he came.

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “I started feeling again after you did that.”

  He digested her answer and followed through. “Pain brings you back.”

  “I believe so. Of course, I’m not sure but it did seem to bring everything back into focus. Do you think you can do it?”

  Sevastian held his hand up. “I need clarification first. You’re saying you’d like me to hurt you…hit you…until you start feeling normal again?”

  Ava nodded.

  Sevastian ruminated, pondering if this would turn into something dangerous. “I’ve never hit a woman before.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she nervously giggled. “I’ve never done this before or ever asked anyone to do this to me. I still can’t believe I’m sharing this with you.”

  “In all these years you’ve never done this before with anyone else?’

  “No. Is that so hard to believe?”

  Sevastian suffered the current. “Why me?”

  “Because I think you’re like me. Just the opposite.” Ava giggled again. “You’re so closed up. There has to be something inside.” Her shy confidence waned. “It’s only a theory. Perhaps your striking me coincided with the natural realignment of my personality. Perhaps there’s nothing below your surface and you’re just an emotionless Russian.”

  Something settled hard in his stomach. He resisted the urge to defend himself. “How long have you been like this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Forever.” She laughed a frivolous thing. It disappeared as a meaningless sound meant to minimize space between confessions. “My mother always told me to keep hold of my humanity…to not lose myself inside myself.”

  Sevastian wondered if that ability had ever existed for him. “Did she think you were—”

  “Crazy? No, I don’t believe so. She thought I was an inevitable contrast between herself and my father. He was the academic. She the artist. Cliché after cliché starting with opposites attract to if you love him set him free and he’ll come back to you.”

  “Did he?”

  Ava smiled and shrugged. Her eyes glistened. “You know questions often reveal more about the questioner than the questioned.”

  Sevastian shifted in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable with her statement. Before he could answer, Ava cleared her throat. Once. Twice. “Look, Sevastian. You don’t really need to do this. There’s no point in doing any of this, okay? If I’ve unnerved you—”

  “I’m in.” The implications of what he just agreed to do hadn’t yet set in but the thrill already had. Sevastian’s mind spun with the possibilities as something foreign unfurled inside of him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes.” His first adult act of real spontaneity felt wonderful even if a bit frightening.

  “We’ll need to test this theory several times, Sevastian. It will probably get messy.”

  “I can handle it if you can. What exactly would you need me to do?”

  “I hadn’t really given it too much thought.”

  Sevastian pinned her with his incredulous stare.

  “Oh, all right. I have thought about it.” Ava coughed once. “I would like you to hit me…like you did last night…only more of it. Maybe you can, I don’t know, punish me?”

  “Punish you?” Sevastian looked down at his food. The shapes lost any meaning of normalcy. Reserve flaked away as desire possessed his inhibitions. “You want me to come over and then hit you. For how long? Every
time or just when you ask me to?”

  “Just when I ask you to. Unless we like it and then…” Ava’s voice trailed off into a tight whisper. “For all I know this won’t work.”

  Sevastian’s head jerked up as if pulled by an invisible string. “I already told you I’m in. We have to try and see if this helps you. I want to help you.”

  “You do? I appreciate it, Sevastian. I really do.”

  He reached out and folded his hand over her wrist. “Tell me what you think we should do to start.”

  She peeked at him from beneath a fall of hair, once more caught in delightful shyness. “I thought we could alleviate some of the strangeness if we pretended to be other people.”

  “Role-play, yes?”

  “Yes. We could role-play while we did this. It’ll be like a game.”

  “Role-play how?”

  Several splotches made interesting patterns on Ava’s fair skin. They mesmerized him almost as strongly as her reply did. “I thought you could be the one in a position of power and I would be the one without it. After all, how else would you be able to hurt me?”

  “Hurting you is what I have to do to make you better.” His quiet pronouncement fell between them.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Sevastian considered her discomfited posture and downcast eyes. “Would you have brought this up if I hadn’t?”

  “No.” She spit the word out as if it were a dirty, disgusting thing.

  Her vehemence shocked him. His hand dropped. “Why not? Don’t you trust me?”

  Ava looked up from her plate. “No, not yet. Not completely but I hope this will change that.”

  In that moment, shelved into the space in Ava’s mind between ‘Trust’ and ‘Don’t trust’, Sevastian found himself wanting to be categorized in ‘Trust’ more than he had ever wanted anything before.

  “Since you’re being honest, Ava, it’s only fair that I am too.”

  She stiffened, as if bracing herself for unwelcome news. “Okay then. Go ahead.”

  “I like it when you cry.”

  * * *

  “Take off those rags you call clothes.”