Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Read Free Book Online

lunged forward as Helen shouted instructions.
    â€œEdgar, please take us to Regent Street. To Verrey’s,” she ordered.
    Dorian’s eyebrows rose. Verrey’s was one of London’s more expensive restaurants. And it was miles away.
    â€œCertainly you’ve been there?” said Helen.
    â€œNo,” Dorian said quietly. “No, not yet.”
    â€œHmm, curious. You know, I really am dying to know your situation. It’s clear from your dress and manner that you’re hardly a beggar.”
    Dorian eyed her suspiciously. “If you already know, why do you ask?”
    â€œTo know better,” said Helen, stripping off her gloves. She nestled beside Dorian like a loving sister and grasped his hand. His mouth went rigid in a frown. “I’m really quite common in that I always like to hear the bad news first. Dorian, tell me about your mother.”
    Dorian sighed and looked with deep thought out the window. “She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman,” he said at last.
    â€œI imagine her nothing but,” said Helen.
    â€œThe bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, I’m told. She could have married anybody she chose, and plenty of rich and handsome men were mad after her. She had a husband here, in England. They had a daughter together, but she died, I’m told. I don’t know. I never met the husband or even learned his name. He loved her more than she loved him, though, of that much I am certain. A true romantic, she left him, and fled to America, which is where she met my father—a penniless young fellow, a mere nobody. He was killed in a duel a few months after I was born. It was an ugly story, one that was never fully divulged to me, but I have picked up scraps of details growing up. I believe that her husband—to whom she was still legally bound—got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult my father in public, paid him to do it, and that the fellow did away with my father as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed up, and my mother soon fell ill and died. My Great-Uncle Kelso arranged for me to be brought to London. Ultimately, he did the right thing by me, and when I came of age, I had a pot of my mother’s money waiting for me.”
    So that was the story of Dorian Gray’s parentage. Crude as it was, it stirred Helen by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude, and the tyranny of an old, loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It made him more perfect as it were, because behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Helen was overcome with the urge to possess and dominate him, to make this wonderful spirit, this son of Love and Death her own.
    She smiled and clutched Dorian’s hand tighter. He looked to her for what to feel next. There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To convey one’s temperament into another as if it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume—there was a real joy in that.
    â€œDorian,” she started. “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. When you—”
    And here Dorian interrupted Helen, leaping up and kissing her on the mouth. His breath was hot, his tongue was searching. She’d never been kissed with such intensity. Usually, men went through such political steps—they sought the right moment, a certain expression in the damsel’s eye. They were careful not to be rough, and fumbled for momentum. They saved their real kisses for whores.
    While kissing her, he climbed on top of her, his thumbs digging into her shoulders, pinning her beneath him.