The Honeymoon
Anthony Beal
email: nightknight@moonman.com
The game had begun again, inevitably. He had that "Your ass is mine, bitch!" look in his eyes as he hurdled the aged cannibis-green couch at the center of the loft, cutting her off before she could reach the kitchen and the steak knives.
She decided to make do with a shard of the cracked wine flask he'd hurled at her head. He wailed like a stuck virgin as the jagged fang of sea-green glass opened a bleeding chasm in his forearm. She laughed, going in low for a second strike.
His knee failed to catch her chin squarely. It struck hard enough, though, to momentarily take the wind out of her sails, which was really his only aim. She tasted blood. Its flavor mixed well with the taste of him. Making use of his sixty-pound weight advantage, he threw himself onto her in a wild-eyed lunge. It was the same method he often used to throw himself inside her when she was bound or inebriated. Her hair filled his mouth. Her hips sought to crush his rib cage.
Passionately, the two grappled for the sea-green shard of glass, bloodying their fingertips and battling with the knowledge that its winner would decide how the rest of the evening was to be squandered. Smaller, quicker fingers prevailed after several seconds of obscene breathing and tangling of delicious limbs. The hateful spike of glass bit his throat.
The game was hers.
Tonight…
"Say it," she demanded with a bitten tongue, spraying blood between her teeth. A familiar sneer uncurled across his face, mocking her self-proclaimed authority even as she pressed him down. Her thighs were still wreaking their characteristic pleasure-pain upon his narrow ribs. She sank the glass deeper by a quarter inch. It was enough, as evidenced by his failure to suppress a wince, and she felt sorely tempted to ask him if her point had been received. She didn't ask. Puns of that sort were best delivered in a deadpan fashion that she was unaccustomed to, and was more than she could presently manage.
"Say it!" she commanded a second time, determined not to be denied. Tonight was hers, and she would be vindicated or at the very least, amused at his expense.
He coughed. He blew her a kiss and smiled. But he said nothing.
"Say it, asshole!" she shouted in his face for the third and final time. Part of her, the sadistic part so rarely unsheathed except on those nights when his arrogance grew stifling, hoped for a third denial. The sight and scent of flowing blood always made her wet. She was faintly disappointed to hear him speak to her for the first time all evening.
"Love is not a gun" he replied in a yielding huff. She sat back and savored the defeated look etching creases into his brow as she would a sip of wine or a hit of acid.
"Bullshit," she murmured, skeptical. He'd fooled her too often in the past, and his deceptions usually culminated with her in handcuffs, with her taste upon the tongues and noses of housepets.
"Convince me. Finish it", she whispered against his ear. Her voice was more of a dagger than the blood-stained shard of sea-green glass.
"Love is not a gun," he told her, "but you are a bullet." She relaxed the green glass needle a little, relishing his recitation of the script tattooed across her stomach. He took no notice of the gesture.
"And?" she prompted, steeling her bloody grip on the weapon again, prodding his Adam's Apple with it.
"And you were right. We should have served the Chicken Cordon Bleu tonight at the reception." His mortification seemed to perfume the cool air and she breathed deeply, filling her lungs with it.
"Good. Now get undressed," she told him, speaking volumes to him with her eyes. It was going to be a hell of a long night. She held onto the shard of glass. It seemed this first lesson in the proper treatment of his new bride had been well-received. His days of raging against her body and mind were ended. In time, it would seem as if they'd never existed.
She watched him rise from the floor and stalk toward their bed without a word, scattering undershirt, boxers, and socks across the polished oak floor in his wake. She pursued him at a leisurely pace, and decided the next lesson she taught him would touch upon maintaining cleanliness around the apartment.
"I love you," he whispered against her ear as she slid into bed with him, her skin feeling supple and warm as always despite the draftiness of the loft. The shard of sea-green glass rested upon her nightstand, a blood-stained guardian stationed at its post. Keeping it within an arm's reach seemed to please her. He felt the same way about the extra pair of handcuffs hidden beneath the mattress; the pair that she didn't even know was there, the pair he'd managed to reach for without her noticing just before she joined him in bed.
"Who wouldn't?" she replied, climbing into a sitting position that placed her comfortably astride him. Her lips touched his. She parted them with her tongue and stabbed it deep, claiming her prize.
Something cold captured her left wrist and snapped tightly around it.
This story has previously appeared in Volume 10 of Dark Muse Webzine (http://www.darkmuse.com).
about the author: Born and raised in NY where he lives with his wife, Anthony Beal is a published erotic/horror author and poet whose short fiction has appeared in such online publications as Dark Muse, Terror Tales, The Murder Hole, Morbid Musings, and House of Pain. His dark, sensual poetry has appeared in such print magazines as Mojo Risin', The Ultimate Unknown, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, and The Nocturnal Lyric, and online with Dark Moon Rising Magazine, Ophelia’s Muse, and Fear of the Dark Webzine. Forthcoming works of his are scheduled to be published in and Space and Time Magazine. Anthony Beal is an affiliate member of the Horror Writer's Association.
