The Auction by Tiffany Reisz

8

Two days passed. Long days. Daniel had meetings to keep him occupied—lawyer, accountant, financial advisor. Being rich was a full-time job, Maggie had warned him. True. Not that he was nostalgic at all for his salad days. Between being rich and being broke, well, it wasn’t a competition at all. Look at Anya, working two jobs and selling herself to a stranger in one week’s time to get her brothers and sisters out from under the thumb of an angry alcoholic father. Anyone who romanticized poverty had never been poor. But…he did sometimes miss having a real job. When he jogged past the Stephen A. Schwarzman building where he used to work, he was hit by a wave of nostalgia. The library was just opening for the day. Not too many tourists there yet in the Rose Reading Room to be offended by his sweaty t-shirt and track pants.

Daniel jogged up the stairs and once inside the scent of wood polish and old books hit him like a truck. He almost had to sit down, the memories washed over him so hard, so fast. The day he got the job at the most famous branch of any library in all of the United States of America…calling his parents from a payphone to let them know he was going to be okay, that they didn’t have to worry about him anymore…first day at work, taking the tour with Suzette Mayer who’d worked there for fifty years, knew every nook, every book, everything there was to know about the place and tried to teach it all to him in one day...

Boxes of dust. That’s what she gave him for his first task. So it seemed at least when he pulled off the parcel tape and a cloud of dust wafted into his face. He sneezed for five straight minutes before he went back to the box and found the papers of a famous dead poet inside, papers that had been moldering in a New England attic for eighty years. Suzette said they’d been saving that box for the “new kid.” Lucky him.

He was lucky. He loved the work, the quiet hours, the digging deep into the past like an archeologist-slash-treasure hunter. He did find treasure. Loads of it. The missing last will and testament of a long-dead industrialist, one that changed the life of a distant descendant. A first draft of an Emily Dickinson poem jotted on the back of an envelope. A previously unknown love letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Arthur Stieglitz.

Daniel had brought Maggie here on one of their early dates, at night, using his key to let them into a staff door around the back. The place was empty but for the security guard and the cleaning crew. He’d taken her up to the third floor, to one of the Rare Books Rooms. He’d only brought her there to show off. The library was legendary. A work of art in itself. The Rare Books Room contained a million dollars’ worth of books and he had the key to the cases. She’d been dazzled. Though a life-long New Yorker, she’d never seen the hidden rooms of the library. Sure, she worked in a Manhattan skyscraper with people who made more money in a day than he made in a year but had she ever been to the secret storage room where all the Victorian-era pornography was hidden away, brought out only for authors and grad students doing “research?”

He remembered it like yesterday. It had been the first time they’d had sex. Here, in the library. First kiss in the Rose Reading Room. Second kiss as they turned the pages of a photo album full of sepia-colored photographs from a birching club that had been in business around the turn-of-the-century. Men being spanked. Women been whipped. By the time they made it up to the Rare Books Room, Daniel was dying to have her. He’d kissed her there too, after shutting and locking the door.

The entire time he’d been fucking her he couldn’t believe this incredibly beautiful obviously over-educated older woman had her legs wrapped around his twenty-five-year-old back and was tight enough around him to clench his cock like a hand. He had put his hand over Maggie’s lips to silence her moans. He had pushed a finger into her mouth and told her to bite him if she needed him to stop—otherwise he wouldn’t. She didn’t, and neither did he, and he came inside her so hard he’d almost blacked out.

After the sex, she’d done something even more wicked than fuck a librarian in his own library. She’d taken a pencil and one of the rare books—a first edition, first printing of MobyDick, worth about fifty-thousand dollars—and written inside the back cover, Daniel Caldwell is a great lay. When he’d told her she was on the hook for fifty grand, she said she could afford it. When he told her she could get him fired for that, she promised she’d take the blame.

Daniel wondered…was it still there? He hadn’t erased it, worried he’d do the old book more harm than good. He took the stairs up the to the third floor and into the Rare Books Room. There was the big oak table where he’d had Maggie all those years ago. There was the barrister bookcase. There was the book. She’d only picked it because it had “Dick” in the title. The bookcase was locked and he’d long ago turned in his keys. He knew he should let it go, just enjoy the memory but for some reason, he wanted to see Maggie’s handwriting again.

He found one of the librarians who’d worked there during his tenure. They chatted a few minutes and by the end, it was nothing to ask her to open the bookcase for him. He explained he was thinking of buying a first edition of Moby Dick, that he’d seen one in an antiques store but wanted to make sure it was the real thing. She happily unlocked the case for him and left him alone with the book and a pair of cotton gloves.

Carefully he opened the book and turned to the end pages. There it was, Daniel Caldwell is a great lay.

That wasn’t all that was there, however. Under those words was written something else, also in Maggie’s handwriting.

Daniel, if you’re reading this, I’m gone. Please find love again and get married again. I can rest in peace if I know you’re happy, my love. You’re too good a lay to waste.

The words took the breath from his body. He laughed, then cried, then laughed again, all alone up in the Rare Books Room where they’d made love so many years ago on that very table. If someone saw him now, what would they think? That he just really loved the ending of Moby Dick?

Maggie must have come back at some point, gotten the book off the shelf—had she told the same lie?—and written him that note before she got too sick to go out on her own. She knew him so well, knew how nostalgic he was, how sentimental. She knew he’d come back here someday and remember that wild night he’d snuck her into this beautiful room to ravish her, surrounded by the greatest works of literature in history. Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she guessed. Maybe if he looked, he’d find this same note written all over the city, in all their old haunts.

Get married again? Too good a lay to waste? That was Maggie.

“I’ll try, my love,” he whispered to the secret words.

Daniel took a photo of the message with his phone camera and then put the book back. He didn’t erase the words. Knowing what he knew about Herman Melville, the old rascal would have appreciated his book being used to pass a lusty love note across time and from beyond the grave.

When he left the library and returned to the city, he felt like he’d been given a gift.

Energized by that gift, by that last message from Maggie, he jogged all the way home. It would be good for him to wear himself out. Sleep had been elusive since coming back to the city. Maybe if he could exhaust himself physically, he wouldn’t dream about Anya like he had last night, and the night before… As his shoes pounded the pavement, he imagined Harpring’s face under the soles. He imagined every man who would bid on Anya the night of the auction being pummeled under his feet.

Still drenched with sweat from his run, Daniel decided to take a long, hot bath to help ease the soreness from his legs before going back out again. He started running the water but had to shut it off when he heard the doorbell chime.

“Who is it?” he called out before he reached the door.

“Celine Dion.”

Daniel was so shocked at the sound of her voice that his mind went momentarily blank. He recovered his senses and swung the door open. Anya was wearing a pale pink empire-waist sundress, her hair in two small buns on each side of her head like Princess Leia.

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m being punished.”

Daniel laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Kingsley’s punishing you?”

Anya nodded sheepishly.

“Why?”

She sighed. “I was at his house reading on the floor. On my stomach. He saw me and asked me what I was doing.”

“And you said?” Daniel asked, picturing Anya lying prone on the floor and rather enjoying the image.

“I said I was doing my impression of Paris during the Nazi Occupation.”

Daniel nearly died holding his laughter in. Anya had all the makings of a S.A.M.—a Smart-Ass Masochist. He didn’t want to encourage such terrible—if hilarious—bad behavior.

“Kingsley should be punishing you, not me.”

“He said he was too busy.”

Kingsley was never too busy to punish a beautiful girl for having a smart mouth. It was one of his favorite hobbies. That meant only one thing—Kingsley was making good on his promise to “help” Daniel. How? By playing matchmaker? Apparently so.

“What’s your punishment? Is he making you come cook lunch for me or something?”

“He said I had to do whatever you told me to do for the next two hours. Except—”

“I can’t have sex with you. Obviously.” Daniel considered his options. Anya wanted him—fact. But she didn’t want him enough to let him help her—also a fact. Maybe he could change that.

“Look, you don’t have to stay. I’ll tell Kingsley I made you mop the floors on your hands and knees. He’ll never know.”

Her eyes widened. “You want me to go?”

“No, but I imagine you wouldn’t mind two hours off.”

He was baiting her, making her choose him. Cruel? A little but a little cruelty was just his style when it came to beautiful submissive women who drove him up the wall.

“It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t get punished. I have been very bad.” It looked to Daniel like she was having trouble saying that with a straight face.

“Then I suppose I should punish you. Since you know you deserve it. Come in.”

She eased across the threshold and stood in the middle of his living room, looking around without speaking. She looked nervous. Good. He was about to make her even more nervous.

“It’s nice to see you again,” he said. “I’m sorry we were interrupted two days ago.”

Her hands were clasped behind her back. She shrugged as if the whole thing were forgotten.

“Did you come last night while fantasizing about me?” he asked.

Her cheeks reddened. Had any woman ever blushed more beautifully?

“I only said that to make you kiss me,” she said. “When you’re kissing me you don’t talk so much.”

“Ah, I see.” He nodded. “Makes sense. I was thinking of you when I came last night. In case you were wondering.”

She stared at her shoes. “You did?”

“I did. Do you want me to tell you what I was fantasizing about?”

She lifted her eyes to his but quickly lowered them again. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

This made him unreasonably happy. Maybe she wanted him enough that he could convince her to let him help her.

Help her.

Fuck her.

All of the above.

“Then I suppose I better start punishing you,” he said. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Bathroom.”

“What are we doing in your bathroom?”

“I’m taking a bath. And you are going to help.”

* * *

Anya followedDaniel to his bathroom and didn’t say a single word the entire walk there. Not a word of complaint. Not a word of insult. Either she was scared or she was excited.

In the bathroom, he shut the door. “Scared?” he asked, turning the tap back on.

She lifted her chin. “Of course not.”

“Really?”

She clasped her hands nervously in front of her and rubbed an invisible speck of something off her thumb.

“I have three brothers. I changed their diapers and helped them dress for school. You don’t have anything that will surprise me, Daniel.”

Daniel grinned at her in a way he hoped made her even more nervous than she already was.

She glared at him. “Sir.”

“You’re submitting to me for the next two hours,” he reminded her. “When you submit to me, you call me, ‘sir.’ Comprenez, ma petite?”

“Your accent is terrible.”

“You forgot to call me ‘sir.’”

She was silent a moment. “I don’t want to do that again.”

“Why not?” he asked softly. “Didn’t like it?”

She didn’t say anything at first. Then, finally, “I think I liked it too much.”

“Too much?”

“It’s not good for me to like it so much.”

No, he supposed it wasn’t. It wasn’t good for him to like her so much, either. Off-limits, he reminded himself. Well, this was going to be awkward.

“All right,” he said, shutting the water off now that the tub had filled. “Call me Daniel then.”

“Daniel,” she repeated. Somehow she managed to sound deferential just saying his name.

“Good. Now undress me.”

Anya’s eyes went wide—comically wide—but she didn’t object. Instead, she crossed the floor so slowly, so gingerly, one would have thought she’d been walking barefoot across broken glass. It took everything he had not to laugh out loud at her nervousness.

Slowly Anya reached out and laid her hands flat on his stomach. Curling her fingers, she grasped the fabric of his sweat-stained t-shirt.

“You have beautiful hands,” Daniel said, noticing for the first time her delicate fingers, so graceful and well-formed.

She shook her head. “I don’t. See?” She released his shirt and turned her hands over letting him see her palms. All over her fingertips he saw small calluses and pinpricks from her sewing needles.

Daniel took her gently by the wrists and raised her hands to chest height. “Still beautiful…but you work too hard.”

He lifted one hand to his lips and kissed the center of her palm. Anya breathed in sharply as his mouth met her skin. Under his thumb he could feel the rapid beating of her pulse.

“Now…continue.” He reluctantly released her wrists, and she once again grasped the fabric of his t-shirt.

“You’re disgusting, Daniel.” She started to pull the shirt upward. “What were you doing?”

“Running.”

“Fou. Madness.”

“Exercise.”

“Was someone chasing you?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Then yes, madness. Lift your arms, s’il vous plaît.”

Daniel didn’t move a muscle.

Anya sighed with obvious irritation. “Lift your arms…please.”

He raised his arms and let Anya pull his shirt completely off. As she took it off she turned around and held the sweaty garment out in front of her.

“What are you doing, Anya?”

“Looking for an open flame so I can burn this.”

Daniel laughed. “We’ll have a bonfire later,” he said, tossing the shirt into the corner of the steam-filled bathroom.

He stood before her shirtless. She stared at the floor. Poor girl. He really was torturing her. He’d feel bad about it if he didn’t feel so good about it.

He took her wrists in his hands again and pressed her shaking palms into the center of his chest.

For nearly a full minute Daniel said nothing, simply letting Anya’s anxiety build. He wanted her anxious, afraid. For her own good.

“Your hands are shaking. You’re white as a ghost. Think about how you feel right now. Imagine, Anya,” Daniel said in a low voice. Anya closed her eyes. “Imagine being with someone you’ve never even met before and doing this. Or worse. Any man who wins you will own you for the night. He might already have you tied to the bed at this point. He might already be inside you. Feel how afraid you are right now and multiply that by a thousand. At least a thousand.”

Anya finally looked at him, really looked at him. First at his eyes and then his lips. From his lips her eyes roamed down his neck and across his shoulders and chest, up each arm and down his stomach before grazing up his body again to look once more into his eyes.

“I’m not afraid,” she whispered. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”

“Not afraid? Really? Then why are you shaking?” he demanded. He had to get through to this girl before she made the worst mistake of her life.

“Because…” She stopped and swallowed again and stared at something over his shoulder.

Daniel lifted a hand to her face and caressed her neck under her ear. “Answer the question, Anya. Why are you shaking?”

She met his gaze. “Because…I want you.”

Daniel didn’t speak at first. He let her confession hang in the air between them.

“Say it again,” Daniel ordered.

“I want you. I can’t…since that day in the music room, I can’t stop thinking about you. I hate you so I must be crazy, too.”

“I don’t think you do hate me. I don’t think you hate me at all. I think you like me.” Daniel continued stroking her face, her neck just under her hairline and was rewarded with a shiver.

“I can’t afford to…like you.”

He gently grasped her chin and forced her face up to his. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t like me then. I’ll like you enough for the both of us.”

He brought his mouth down onto hers and waited. He didn’t have to wait long. Anya parted her lips and let her body relax into his. Tenuously at first she kissed him. And while everything in him wanted to push her against the wall, force her lips wider, and take full possession of her mouth, he held back and let her do most of the work. He cupped the back of her head and allowed himself the liberty of pushing the tip of his tongue against hers again and again.

Finally he wrenched his mouth from hers. He’d take her right on the bathroom floor if he didn’t get himself under control again. She watched him, her amber eyes wide as a frightened deer.

“No more stalling,” he said. “The water will get cold.”

He was dominating her right now, supposedly. He refused to let her see how much that kiss had affected him. He shouldn’t be doing this with her, not with his self-control so low and his need so strong. That note he’d found from Maggie had cut him open, bared his insides, left him too vulnerable to the scared kisses of beautiful young women.

Anya’s hands still shook as she knelt down on the floor in front of him. Now Daniel had to glance away. If he looked at her on her knees in front of him all hope for continued self-control would be lost. She fumbled with the laces of his running shoes. He raised one foot, then the other as she pulled them off, along with his socks. She must really be scared as she offered no commentary about burning his sweaty footwear.

As the seconds passed, Anya seemed to fall into her submissive role. She set his shoes aside neatly and tucked the laces into them. She put his socks in the far corner with his sweaty t-shirt. Daniel lost the battle of wills with himself and started watching her again. A veil seemed to fall over her eyes as the angry, scared, temperamental Anya disappeared and a new placid, contented, submissive Anya took her place. At that moment, Daniel wasn’t sure which Anya he preferred.

Submissive Anya reached up and started to pull his track pants down.

That Anya. Definitely.

She kept her eyes respectfully lowered as she brought his pants all the way down. Daniel studied her as he stepped out them.

“You’re beautiful to see. Just like this.”

She whispered something in French and Daniel cursed himself for spending the last year and a half perfecting his Spanish and Portuguese. He even knew how to ask, “Which is the safest bush for pissing on?” in Quechua. Instead he should have been learning some damn French.

“What was that?” he asked and decided to start brushing up on his French first chance he got—that day, preferably.

“Vous aussi,” she repeated. Anya looked up at him from the floor. Any remaining fear had disappeared from her gaze. Only innocent trust remained in her wide eyes. “You also.”

Daniel said nothing, only smiled. He stepped away from her and sank into the steaming bathwater. Without even waiting for his order, Anya stood up, took off her shoes and came to the bathtub. He leaned forward to make room for her to sit on the edge of the tub behind him, then leaned back, forcing Anya to spread her legs so he could settle between her knees. When she reached for the bath sponge, he turned his head and bit her lightly on the inside of her thigh. She flinched and kicked water.

“So much for submission.” Daniel grabbed a towel and wiped water off his face. “Was nice while it lasted.”

“You could have warned me you were going to bite me.”

“It’s not as much fun if you know it’s coming.”

Anya huffed peevishly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying my best. I’m…nervous.”

“And I’m not making it easier on you, am I?”

“You are not. You’re very attractive and very…big. Tall.”

“I’m five-eleven. One inch shorter than Kingsley, remember?” he teased. “Although we’re fairly well-matched in one other area.”

“Is that so?” she asked. Iz zat so? Could her accent be any sexier? Daniel thought about it, decided the answer was no. “You’ve seen him naked?”

“This is Kingsley Edge we’re talking about. There are only three people in the city who haven’t seen him naked. And they’ve all been in comas since the late eighties.”

Anya laughed as she started scrubbing his shoulders with the sponge. He leaned forward again to give her access to his back.

“Monsieur is so strange to me. His French is parfait. It’s obvious he is from France. But his name isn’t French.”

“His real last name is French and it’s as long as his…it’s a big name. Boissonneault. And the ‘Kingsley’ is American because his American mother named him.”

“His mother is American? I can’t wait to mock him for that.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Why not?”

He looked up at her. “I’ll get jealous. I’m the only one I want you being mean to.”

Anya smiled down at him. Then she wrung the sponge out on his face.

Daniel tore the sponge from her hands and rubbed it on her face. Squealing, she raised her arms to block his assault as she let loose a stream of words that he felt reasonably certain constituted some of the worst insults in the French language. Finally he relented and threw the sponge on the floor all the way across the spacious bathroom.

“You’re dangerous with that thing,” he said.

“How am I supposed—”

“Use your hands.”

Anya mumbled something under her breath as she picked up a bar of soap and lathered it up between her hands. Slapping her hands hard onto his wet shoulders, she began to knead his taut muscles.

“You might get better access if you joined me in the bath,” Daniel said and wished he could see her face.

“I would get wet.”

“That would be the plan.”

Anya groaned and stood up. She walked around him through the water and came to sit on the ledge at his side.

Daniel raised a leg out of the water and put his foot in her lap. “No tickling,” he ordered.

“This dress wasn’t meant to get wet, you know.”

“You could take it off.”

She glared at him.

“Just a suggestion. Not an order.” Daniel winked at her. “You know, for someone who claims poverty and supposedly sends all her money to her brother…you dress very chic.”

“I make all my clothes. This dress—”

“Zat dress?”

Anya stuck her tongue out at him. “Oui, zis drezz only took a day to make and maybe…ten dollars? Fifteen? Maman and I made all the little ones’ clothes.”

Daniel studied her dress for the first time, rather than the woman in it. Though it was a simple pink sundress, nothing about it looked cheap to his eyes.

“Have you thought about going to design school?” he asked. “Or starting your own line? You’re incredibly talented.”

She bent over and gathered water in her cupped hands. Pouring it over his calf and foot she merely shrugged. “Once all the children are through school, then I will think about it.”

“How old is the youngest?”

“Seven.”

“Seven? You’re going to wait eleven years before going to school?”

Making no reply, Anya lathered up her hands again and ran her soapy fingers up and down his legs. He noted that she stopped at his knee, seemingly fearing to move farther up his leg. Probably a wise decision. Her delicate fingers on his skin both moved him to arousal and also simply…moved him. This girl was so much younger than him, so inexperienced. Had he ever been with a virgin before? No. Never. Even the girl he’d lost his virginity to had been with one person before him.

“Anya?”

“I’ll be thirty-five,” she said, smiling. “And I think that’s a perfect age.”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

She released a sigh of pure disgust. “Terrible. I’ll have to make you a cane.”

At the word “cane,” Daniel reached out and grabbed Anya by the wrist. With one tug he had her in the water. She yelped at the sudden move, but didn’t fight when he forced her to straddle his thighs.

“Never say ‘cane’ around a dominant.” Daniel wrapped his arms around her lower back and whispered into her ear, “I’ll get ideas.”

He held her on him, letting her feel through the lace of her panties how much he wanted her. She tried to wrench free of his tight grasp, to no avail. Until she said her safe word, he wouldn’t back off an inch.

“Do you fantasize about that?” Daniel asked as he ran his hands possessively up her back, feeling the fabric of her dress dampen with his touch. “About bending over my bed while I cane you?”

She closed her eyes tight and rested her forehead on his shoulder. She didn’t answer in words but he felt her nod.

Daniel slipped his other hand under her dress and let it rest high on her thigh. Her soft skin felt so smooth and warm in the steaming bath water. What he wouldn’t give to have her naked against him.

Anya let out a low groan.

Daniel squeezed her thigh and let his hand inch a little higher.

Slowly, Anya wound her arms around his shoulders. He felt her hands, balled into nervous fists, finally start to unclench.

“I have a cane. Several. Want to see them?” Daniel moved his hand from her thigh to between her legs. He pressed two fingers gently against the lace of her panties. Even through the fabric he could feel her swollen clitoris. Anya stiffened but made no protest.

“Do you?” he asked again. Daniel brought his mouth to the hollow of her throat. His fingers made tight circles against her clitoris as his other hand gripped the back of her neck.

She nodded again, as if she’d lost her ability to speak. Her chest rose and fell with her rapid breaths; her small, taut nipples showed against the wet front of her dress. Over and over she thrust her hips against Daniel’s fingers.

Daniel remembered the first time he fantasized about Anya in Signore Vitale’s shop. He imagined fucking her from behind against the mirror. He’d vowed to himself…

“Say something nice about me,” Daniel ordered. “You don’t get to come until you say something nice. Now.”

“I lied.” The words came out immediately, hungrily.

“Lied? About what?”

“Monsieur…he didn’t punish me by sending me to you.” She closed her eyes tight and bit her bottom lip. “I just wanted to be with you again.”