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THE LAST TIME
Four years. Bronwyn hasn’t touched another person with intent since the night she accepted Netherlust’s keys, since she bound herself to the abstinence vow that came with proprietorship. Sometimes, in the small hours when the club finally quiets and she walks the empty rooms checking locks and wards, she thinks about that last time. Not with nostalgia – she’s not sentimental about Harold – but with the wry recognition that her final sexual encounter before four years of celibacy was, of all things, aggressively mediocre sex with a man who collected Greek marbles and fucked like he was afraid of breaking something valuable.
Harold had been deliberate. A palate cleanser after the months of escalation with Valmont, after nights that pushed past pleasure into territory that left marks she couldn’t always explain away. Harold, forty-something, divorced, no children, on the board of a well-heeled nonprofit and consulting for the Met’s acquisitions committee. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient statuary and the kind of Upper West Side apartment that smelled like old books and expensive wine. Sex with him wasn’t bad – he tried, which counted for something, and she’d told herself she wanted this. Wanted slow. Wanted vanilla. Wanted to prove that constantly chasing darker thrills was warping her, ruining her capacity for anything that didn’t come with safe words and aftercare.
The fundraiser had been his idea. Spring benefit for some youth arts initiative, the kind of event where the wealthiest pretended to care about culture while really caring about being seen caring. Bronwyn had worn emerald silk that Harold said brought out her eyes, and she’d smiled through the cocktail hour, through the seated dinner, through the first seven auction lots while Harold occasionally squeezed her hand and whispered earnest commentary about the importance of supporting young artists.
And then she’d seen Barbara Glenstone.
The grande dame of uptown cool, trying harder each year to maintain relevance, barely bothering to hide her dalliances with the downtown art scene. Everyone knew she and her husband hadn’t shared a bed in years. Barbara was holding court at a nearby table, surrounded by four young painters who looked equal parts thrilled and terrified to be in her orbit, and something about the performance of it – the way Barbara touched their arms, the calculated bohemian drape of her vintage Halston – made Bronwyn’s attention catch and hold.
The fantasy arrived fully formed, the way they always did when she stopped trying to edit herself. Barbara in a halter-top latex bodysuit, crotchless, with a blind hood covering that imperious face, her wild shocking red hair pulled through in top ponytail. Wrists bound in sheepskin-lined cuffs, suspended from the vaulted ceiling in the drawing room of that brownstone Barbara had just shown off in Architectural Digest. Her athletic, sexagenarian body stretched taut, Bronwyn’s own face inches from Barbara’s slick tufts of neatly-trimmed pubic hair, every inch of her latex-covered skin trembling, and Bronwyn’s hand –
She should have stopped there. Should have tucked the image away as mental entertainment for later, or saved it for a private session where fantasies were safe, contained, hers alone. But the auctioneer’s voice droned on about some emerging sculptor’s work, Harold was absorbed in the program, and Bronwyn let herself sink deeper into the fantasy. Let herself imagine the sounds Barbara would make, the way that carefully cultivated poise would crack as she begged for more. Bronwyn’s fist, slick and impossible, working slowly into Barbara’s sex while the older woman writhed in beautiful, lustful agony.
It happened without conscious choice, it slipped out, past the prohibition. One moment the fantasy was private, the next she felt the familiar crackle of power sliding through her – the telepathic gift that shouldn’t work in the purely human realm, that she’d thought was safely dormant outside Netherlust’s threshold. Maybe the portal magic had changed something in her when she accepted the Vice-Chamberlain’s keys. Made her more in ways the Summer Court hadn’t warned her about, that could be a problem.
The image projected outward like a shout. Direct into Barbara’s mind, vivid and undeniable and utterly violating.
Barbara’s head whipped around. Their eyes met across the room. Barbara’s face flushed deep red – not embarrassment but the involuntary physical response to arousal she hadn’t chosen, to seeing herself in that scenario with perfect clarity – then went absolutely bloodless as understanding crashed through: this wasn’t her fantasy, someone put this in her head –
She swayed in her seat. The fainting happened almost in slow motion – Barbara pitching forward, her forehead cracking against the white tablecloth with a sound that made Bronwyn’s stomach drop, the four young artists erupting in shrieks and chaotic motion, bouncing up like startled animals, desperately trying not to be accused of anything.
Fuck. Bronwyn’s own hands were shaking. She’d just committed exactly the kind of psychic assault the Summer Court regulations were designed to prevent. But how could she have used magic, in the human realm, outside of Netherlust’s walls? If anyone found out – if Barbara remembered enough to report what she’d felt –
“Are you okay?” Harold’s hand on her arm, his voice tight with concern. “Bronwyn? I’ve been trying to get your attention for five minutes – “
“Let’s go.” She stood abruptly, already reaching for her clutch. “Now.”
“What? But the – “
“Now.” She caught his wrist, pulled him to standing, murmured generic apologies to the table while using the chaos erupting around Barbara’s collapse to slip toward the exit. Harold stammered questions she didn’t answer, and then they were outside, and she was flagging a cab with the kind of imperious gesture that made taxis materialize.
In the yellow cab heading west, Harold tried again. “Bronwyn, what’s wrong with you? What happened back there?”
She couldn’t explain. And she already knew this was it. Instead, she reached around to the back of his neck, fingers sliding into the shaggy scruff of his hair, and pulled him toward her for a kiss that was harder than he liked, more demanding than he was ready for. She forced his mouth open with her tongue and felt his whole body go rigid with surprise and uncertainty.
He wasn’t ready for this. He never was. She didn’t blame him, exactly – some people were built for slow and careful, and Harold was one of them. But God, she needed something more right now. The fantasy of Barbara hadn’t left her mind. She could still feel the phantom sensation of her, the pulse and clench around her wrist, the power of reducing someone so controlled to desperate need.
Her hand found Harold’s inner thigh. His legs snapped closed instinctively. She pushed them open again, held them there, felt him relax by increments. She leaned close to his ear, let her breath ghost against his skin.
“I’m going to your place,” she whispered. “I’m not staying the night – I know you have work in the morning, I don’t care. When we get there, I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to sit you on that long white elegant couch of yours and take you in my mouth until you come apart. Then I’m going to take you to the bedroom, tie your hands above your head, and have my way with you.”
She felt his heart hammering against her palm, felt his breath quicken, felt him hardening against her wrist where she still held his legs apart.
“Bronwyn, I don’t think – “
“Shhh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “Don’t say another word.”
She had him on every flat surface in his modest apartment. The couch, the kitchen counter, the bedroom floor. He tried to keep up, tried to match her intensity, and to his credit he didn’t ask her to slow down. But she could feel the gap between them widening with every touch – she was chasing something he couldn’t provide, she was trying to set him up for a big let down. Trying to outrun the guilt of what she’d done to Barbara, and what she’s going to do to Harold, by drowning in sensation that remained stubbornly superficial.
Afterward, while Harold slept with one arm flung across the pillows, Bronwyn dressed in the dark, fished her black patent heels by The Row from under the coffee table, slipped the green silk dress quickly over her head. She found a notepad in the kitchen, uncorked the half-finished bottle of Frog’s Leap Cabernet on the counter, and poured herself a glass while she wrote.
Harold –
This was our last night together. These past weeks have been wonderful, but I need space. I’ll be at the Guggenheim event on Thursday with another date. Let’s be friends. I’ll send my housekeeper at 10am to straighten up your apartment.
I’ll cherish the memory of last night. It won’t happen again.
– B
She left the note propped against the wine bottle, slipped on her heels, and rode the elevator down in silence. The doorman in the lobby gave her a look – not quite judgment, more like weary recognition of a scene he’d witnessed a thousand times before. Her driver was waiting at the curb in one of Netherlust’s fleet of matte-black Audi A8s. She slid into the back seat without a word.
“Home, Ms. Ashford?”
“Netherlust,” she said. “I need to check on something.”
She didn’t, of course. But in the two days since she had been anointed the 10th Vice-Chamberlain of the House of Netherlust, it had become the only home that mattered. She’d been considering the position for months – Valmont had been pushing her to refuse it, which made her want to accept it more – and sitting in the back of the car at 2am, still tasting Harold on her lips and feeling nothing, she knew the decision was already made. That night would be her last. The vow of abstinence would take effect at dawn, and she would spend the next four years – longer, perhaps forever – bound to celibacy as the price of power.
Four years later, Bronwyn stands in the empty corridor outside the Pressure Chamber, remembering. Remembering Harold, remembering Barbara’s collapse, remembering the reckless certainty of twenty-nine and the conviction that giving up sex would somehow make her more rather than less.
Tonight, she needs release. The memory of that last night has been circling all day – Barbara’s face and Harold’s confusion and her own younger self’s arrogance. Four years of watching others find pleasure in Netherlust’s rooms while she walks the corridors alone, checking on clients, managing crises, facilitating every conceivable desire except her own.
But the vow only prohibits touch with another person. Solo exploration remains permitted – necessary, even, or she’d have gone mad years ago. She has access to every room in Netherlust after hours, can experience anything the club offers as long as she experiences it alone. The Mirror Gallery shows her only herself, multiplied and idealized but always solitary. The Oubliette stretches time into endless isolation. The Wild Room offers transformation without a partner to share the animal self with.
Tonight, though, she wants the Pressure Chamber. Wants the membrane that responds to her will alone, that can touch her everywhere at once without requiring human hands. Wants sensation divorced from connection, pleasure that asks nothing of her except surrender to her own control.
She opens the door. The membrane suit is already laid out, waiting.
It’s not the same as having someone else. It never is. But four years in, Bronwyn has made peace with substitutes.
