1984

Blaise cocked his head, smiling faintly.

"I always want something."

The need in his loins had dulled to a low drone, like underground wires, just beneath the surface-

Ready to be unearthed. All the warning signs were there.

"You don't really think I would leave it at that, without getting mine."

Violetta slid her arms around his waist.

She kissed his stomach.

Blaise sighed.

His cock ebbed with slow pulses of blood, tingling with renewed arousal.

"I want to suck your cock," Violetta whispered.

He lowered his eyes to look at her.

"Do you?" he said, coolly.

He was somewhat surprised, although he did not betray this. Pauline and Cynthia and Lindley and Ashley and Patricia and Melanie- they would all go down without a fight- but he would never go so far as to say they wanted to.

Violetta said nothing, deliberately taking him in her hand, as if to prove her point. He lurched to life in her grasp.

Blaise smiled.

"Then suck it," he said, calmly, setting his wineglass aside.

He watched her with indolent eyes as she ran her fingers up the shaft, lightly, causing little tremors.

Blaise let his eyes trace her lips, already flushed from the brief but ardent abuses of his mouth, flushed from arousal. It gave a deeper undertone to her shell-pink lipstick, the vestiges of which still clung brightly to her lips. He had not kissed her hard, or enough, to vanquish it.

Her mouth parted and he breathed in, ever so slightly, at the sight of her little pink tongue, its sweetly pointed tip.

She descended, her tongue flicking over his cock, outlining it, from head to shaft and back again, circling the head in a taunting swirl.

Both cruel and kind- he liked her approach.

Not unlike his own.

Blaise leaned back, holding her languidly under the cool graces of his sleepless eyes.

Rapt, Violetta leaned forward and took the head of his cock between her lips, pressing the flat of her tongue against the hot, fevered skin.

He caught at his breath.

Her eyes grazed upward, over his body, until she met his gaze.

She paused there for a mere instant, before plunging down and taking in the length of his shaft, swathing it in her mouth, and deeper.

Buried softly in her throat, Blaise could only exhale and work his fingers gently against her head, encouraging her.

She smiled diminutively, feeding on his reactions like a latter-day succubus, moaning as his body clutched, watching the revolutions of his breath for clues, determined to unravel his desire.

Blaise was unraveling, there was no doubt about that- shedding his skin like a snake, his strings breaking one by one, ripping open, slowly, like her shirt had- deconstructed.

Was that it?

Yes, that was the word she'd used.

He was beginning to understand it, now.

She had found a rhythm that pleased her- circling the head with her mouth and tongue, then driving down- up, circling, driving down- and he let his head fall back, imprisoned by the circuit of motion, the reliable jolts of sensation that assaulted him with each scalding strike of her mouth.

The flesh of his loins felt hot and liquid like melted wax, dissolving under the intense heat of pleasure- everything, all of it- all but his cock, which struck up, solid as stone from the midst, like an obelisk to channel the sun.

An iron fist in a velvet glove.

Violetta purred around him, around his flesh, indulgent.

He exhaled, gripping the arm of the chair in his hand, creasing the supple leather.

"I'll devour you," she whispered, slowly releasing his cock. "Do you want it?"

"Are you fucking kidding?" he demanded, his eyes bright and lustrous.

She laughed.

He stroked her jaw, ran his hand back over her head, seizing her hair, gentle but firm.

"Swallow it."

Blaise guided her back to his cock, pushing her down, slow, insistent.

Her mouth slowly covered him, like warm honey, yielding to the force of his hand, his arm- the inevitable re-entry of his cock.

She looked at him, and he saw the smile in her eyes, a bare trace.

Christ, she made him hot.

Violetta was through fucking around.

She began to slam his cock, fiercely, thrusting her mouth down.

He watched her, breathing through his teeth.

Her hand found his balls and curled around them, stroking, pulling. She had a way of undulating her neck, massaging with her tongue as she sucked him off- that and her hands, all centered on his cock, veered dangerously close to ecstasy.

Blaise liked ecstasy, but on his terms.

This was entirely something else, a territory unknown to his nature.

Violetta was dragging him, slowly, inexorably, toward the brink.

Breathing in, Blaise looked down at her.

Calm settled over him.

"I'm going to come," he intoned, shuddering, running his hands through her hair, stroking it. "I'd like to come in your mouth. Can I do that?"

Violetta was, of course, unable to answer, absorbed in pleasuring him.

Instead she renewed her onslaught, fiercely working his cock- deeper, faster, closing around him, a velvet Venus flytrap, spurring him towards his release.

It came on a down-stroke- he came, as her mouth descended- and he felt all the heat gather and flare, all the molten sensation in his loins drawn up, into his cock, through it, imploding, exploding, shattering-

Through his cock.

Through his cock, liquid mercury-

Both burning and freezing, shooting through him- shot from the head of his cock in bursts of fluid cannon-fire.

And she- her lips caressing, taking him at that moment, as he shuddered and breathed, feeling himself deconstruct, rupturing against the back of her throat.

Blaise threw back his head.

"Fucking…Christ…" he hissed, overwhelmed.

He felt her swallowing.

Another twinge.

Violetta pulled back, as if she meant to give him space, but he recaptured her hands and held them to his chest.

He gazed at her through half-lidded eyes.

Her hair fell around her face in cataclysmic disarray, very new wave, looking almost orchestrated in its imperfection.

Blaise kissed her, suddenly, hungrily. Violetta opened her lips and he ravaged them, without thinking- it was beyond him at that moment.

His hands ran down her back, up to her hair, over her arms.

At last he released her, blinking, breathing.

He could only think of one thing.

"Fuck," he said, "you do that to him?"

"Maxwell? Christ, no."

Blaise smiled, vaguely.

"No?"

He rubbed his thumbs slowly beneath her eyes, smoothing the black circles of her make-up.

"He curls up into the fetal position if I so much as touch him."

Blaise could picture that, and he immediately did, enjoying it immensely.

She sighed, wiping her lip with a stroke of her finger.

Then she smiled, slowly, as if she were discussing something slightly more or less important than what she ate three weeks ago on Thursday.

"Maxwell. What the fuck ever."

She shrugged, yawning.

"We share a nice, big loft on the beach. It's largely an image thing with him- not sex- and for Christ's sake, not love."

"You live with him?"

"On and off. I also have my own place. A roommate, Marina."

She rose slowly and pushed back her hair.

Blaise raised his head and watched her hourglass shape unfurl.

"She's a glass-blower. Schooled in Venice," she added. "The real Venice. Anyway, I'm going to head there tonight, so Max can be alone with his tantrums."

"Immolation."

"What?"

"Alex said he was threatening self-immolation."

"Oh, yeah," she said, vaguely. "That's a popular one."

Blaise ran his fingers through his hair, and wondered if Paul Mitchell had forsaken him at last.

"Sleep here," he said.

Violetta paused.

"What about Pauline?"

Blaise laughed, wearily.

"I would be hard pressed to explain exactly how little I give a fuck."

He closed his eyes.

"Stay if you want to stay."

Blaise had never been a contact sleeper; Pauline had even accused him of being "cold", of coveting, and jealously guarding his personal space.

Yet Violetta was something else- wasn't she?

He'd just fucked her like a wild animal- cliched, but Christ, what else was there to say about it?

It wasn't so odd, wanting to touch her body, to fall asleep enveloped in the olfactory fusion of sex and sweat and Coco Chanel. Kind of primal, really.

Blaise thought about Maxwell Cox.

About fucking Happening in Green and rainbow macaws.

"Let's have dinner sometime," he said.

Violetta laughed quietly.

"Is that upper-crust semaphore for 'let's fuck'?

He smiled in the dark, drifting.

"With the acceptance of a dinner invitation, the ensuing sex is implicit."

"Aren't you protozoan."

"If by that you mean streamlined, wide-spread and efficient, then, yes."

"Your over-developed cock is less of a mystery, when viewed beside your atrophied heart and withered humanity, Blaise."

"You said my name," he remarked, mildly. He leaned on his elbow.

Violetta's hand was stroking his hair.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Isn't that a gold standard of the pack?" she whispered.

True, all true, thought Blaise, until he was no longer thinking. He couldn't place exactly where he ceased to think and started to sleep, but his sleep was deep and dreamless.

He was awakened by a call from Alex.

"Hey- sorry about that fucking message I left last night."

"No problem." Blaise said, rubbing his hair and sitting up.

"Maxwell was just having kittens. I had to make him shut up, you know?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"He's all tweaked out about some gallery showing on Friday."

Alex paused.

"Anyway, at least you got a laugh out of it."

"Yeah," said Blaise slowly, glancing around the room. "That I did."

Violetta was gone, had left, probably hours ago.

He wanted coffee.

"Wanna meet for breakfast?" asked Alex. "At the club?"

Blaise lifted his eyebrows, trying to rouse his face.

"Yeah. That sounds good. Can we make it an hour?"

Alex's voice was cheerful.

"Sure thing, buddy- I'll see you there."

"Alex?"

"Yes?"

"Did you sleep last night?"

Alex laughed.

"Not that I recall."

"Christ."

"I'll see you in an hour. We'll play racquetball."

"Breakfast."

"Right."

Blaise hung up and climbed out of bed.

He showered, shaved, blow-dried his hair, which was almost blond, but didn't quite make it that far.

What the French called aussi blond.

In France, you didn't get to have anything but "blond" or "brunet", and brunet didn't mean brown, god no- not in France. Brunet was dark brown, and blond was blond.

Everything else was "aussi blond", or- also blond.

However, as usual all bets were off at the designer level.

Yves St. Laurent would doubtless call it fawn.

Pauline would probably call it "serval" or "crème brulee".

Actually, Pauline probably had several choice adjectives for him at this moment.

He doubted they involved color.

He took his keys from the armoire, and his eyes fell on the bed. It was a jumble of down and hundred dollar throw pillows.

The pillows were his Waterloo. Even had he wanted to, he couldn't have reassembled them to their original battle formation.

Not that it mattered. The maid would be here at ten, to wrangle the innumerable pillows, take his laundry, change the sheets.

Blaise frowned, and looked closer.

On one side of the bed, the white silk Gautier pillowcase was stained with feathery black smudges.

"Holy fucking Christ on a catamaran," he sighed.

The pillowcases alone had cost two hundred dollars.

He picked it up, catching the faint hint of Chanel.

Blaise sighed, pulling the case off the pillow. He eyed it, from one angle, then another. The dry cleaners had gotten out worse.

His finger traced the stains, slowly.

He should leave this pillowcase, with a note for Melinda about dry cleaning.

He wondered about Alex, and whether they were actually having breakfast.

Slowly, Blaise folded the pillowcase into a silken square, absently matching the corners. He put it in the bedside table drawer.

It probably wouldn't come out anyway, he thought.

Running a hand over his hair.

Taking his racquet before he left.