“How about if I touch your pussy for you, naughty girl? How about if I spank it, because you’ve been so bad?”
I slapped her between the legs, right over her clit. Her reaction was instantaneous, ball-busting, gorgeous. She arched and sobbed, clenching her sphincter around my dick.
“You want more?” I asked. I was barely holding back, and she was so wet, so messy and juicy. “You want me to spank your pussy some more?”
“Please. Yes. Please!”
“
Please, Sir.
Use your fucking manners.”
“Please, Sir,” she cried. “Please spank my pussy.”
I spanked the shit out of her pussy. My fingers were coated in her juices, and she was coming apart at the seams.
“Don’t you dare stop hurting your nipples.” I pinched her clit between my nails to refocus her. She yelped and obeyed me, tugging at herself, giving her ass and pussy up for me to hurt to my heart’s content. It was too much. It would never be enough. This visit would never be enough, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the both of us.
“Come, damn you,” I growled. “Before I kill you.”
Before she killed me. My mind, my body, every part of me was focused on one thing...living inside her. I wanted to devour her. I wanted to ravage her. I wanted to feel her come.
I wanted to lock her in my dungeon and never let her go.
She spread her legs wider for her pussy spanking, arched up and sucked in a breath. I drove deep just as she came. Her ass clamped around my length in pulsing contractions, wresting my orgasm from the pit of my balls.
Jesus. God. Holy Jesus Fuck Shit.
I shouted expletives, half of them nonsense. Chere said nothing, only writhed and gritted her teeth. She let go of her nipples and pulled her arms up beside her, then covered her face.
Let her be ashamed. My little anal whore. I leaned over and stuck my tongue in her mouth, tasting her, licking the inside of her teeth. I kissed and savored her because I didn’t dare bite her, not in my current mood. I would have drawn blood. I was still inside her ass, rigid and hard.
“Don’t leave me,” she said, and I didn’t know if she meant her asshole or her life. She reached out to me. She was crying, not sexy crying, but the emotional kind.
I lowered myself over her, gathering her in an embrace. “Don’t cry,” I whispered, moving shallowly inside her. I brushed back her hair and kissed her forehead, and gazed into the confused, hazy depths of her eyes. “Don’t cry, starshine. It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t all right. I was bad for her, and now that she was back in my clutches, I wasn’t sure I could summon the willpower to leave her again.
My body woke before my brain started functioning. I turned and stretched, and winced. Why did I hurt? Why did I ache all over?
I stared out my window at the late-morning winter sun, and slowly things came back to me. A hand over my mouth. Shouting and fucking. More fucking, a shower. Kissing, more kissing, more fucking, a collapse on the bed. I felt a fingertip move along my thigh.
Oh God. W was back, and he was beside me.
No, not W.
Price.
I could feel his weight and sense his heat behind me. The fingertip crept up to my waist and then he pulled me back against him with a quiet groan. His stiff erection poked my ass.
“No,” I protested weakly. “I can’t.”
“You can.” His voice rumbled beside my ear, gravelly with morning roughness. “But we can’t. I don’t have any more condoms.” He chuckled and tugged at a lock of my hair. “Unless you’re hiding some of those in your nightstand too.”
I put a hand over my face. I felt the strangest impulse to cry, to weep until my pillows were soaked. In the two months I’d worked as his escort, I’d never woken up with him, not once. This was new and unfamiliar ground. I’d never spent more than a couple of hours in his presence. We’d shared finite scenes, sessions with clear beginnings and endings. It befuddled me to find him beside me, even though I’d cuddled up next to him just a few hours earlier, when we finally ran out of energy for fucking and decided to sleep.
Price.
As in a sum or value, something to be paid.
“You won’t look at me,” he said in the quiet. “You don’t want to look at me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know why. I just knew that I didn’t have the courage to turn to him, not now, not in the morning’s bright light. My scrapbook of his poetry was hidden under my bed, the poetry I’d obsessed over and cried over and seethed over when I came to understand he was never coming back.
But he was back. He was beside me, but he wasn’t W, he was Price, and he’d let himself into my apartment and fucked me all freaking night. He’d simply waltzed back into my life and taken me, no apologies, no explanation.
I let out a breath. I wasn’t ready for this. Now that the sex was over and my body wasn’t full of his dick, I didn’t know how to feel. I was afraid to turn and see him there,
right there
, blond and strong and domineering and larger than life.
I pulled away from his embrace and sat on the edge of the bed, then catapulted up to run to the bathroom. I didn’t have to pee. I just had to get away from him. As I scurried past his side of the bed, I could see him in my peripheral vision. A ghost, a blur. A specter. No, a real man. I still couldn’t believe he was here, even after all the ways he’d defiled me the night before.
“I’ll be right out,” I muttered, shutting the door. My finger hovered over the lock. It was only a courtesy lock, so people didn’t barge in while you were pissing, or undressing for the shower. It wasn’t a lock for keeping out someone like W, not if he wanted to come in.
No, damn it. Not W.
Price.
I left the door unlocked.
I went in the little partition that Andrew called the “shitter,” closed that door too, and sat on the toilet with my head in my hands. I wanted to rage at him, to kick him out, but I’d already let him fuck me. I’d fallen to his daunting ability to control me. I’d forgotten how easily he could short circuit my brain. But before, when I was his escort and he was my client, I knew he would eventually leave.
Now, I wasn’t sure he would leave. I was kind of terrified that he might stay and fuck me until I died.
Shut up, Chere. You’re being ridiculous. He’s just a man, like any other man.
When I opened the door, he was there in the bathroom, as I knew he would be. He leaned against the marble countertop, his arms crossed over his chest. His cock, even soft, looked too large and threatening. Too masculine. Too male. Too big.
Price.
Price who? I still didn’t know anything about him. He studied me with a guarded expression, his lips turned slightly down, his ice blue eyes both alert and assessing.
“I feel better now,” I lied. At least I’d finally managed to look at him, even if I was cowed by what I saw.
He brushed past me and pissed in my toilet with the door open. I suppose it was really his toilet since he’d bought this place for me. He had a key. All this time he’d had a key. He’d pretty much admitted that he’d been watching me, monitoring my activities. Perhaps he’d even snuck into my apartment while I was in class, or while I was sleeping.
I shivered and hurried into my fleece bathrobe and started brushing my teeth. I stared down at the counter, at the toothbrush I’d given him last night. He picked it up and brushed too, like a man, noisy and fast, spitting just after me.
“I want the key,” I said. “The key you used last night. I want you to leave it with me.”
He didn’t answer, just grabbed me and drew me into a kiss.
It wasn’t a tortured kiss like the one he’d given me while we were shouting at each other in my living room. It wasn’t a rough kiss like he gave me after he fucked me. No. It was a soft, warm, gentle kiss that felt way too perfect and cozy there in my bathroom, with our toothbrushes lying next to each other.
I can’t. I hate you.
I don’t know you.
I’m not sure.
Maybe he wasn’t sure either. Maybe he had no intention of spending time with me ever again once he walked out my door. He’d left me before, and he didn’t impress me as someone eager to form enduring relationships. But this time now, and this kiss, felt different from our previous carnal sessions.
“I want the key,” I whispered when he finished.
He pressed his cheek to mine, ran a hand up and down my back, and then yanked a handful of my hair. “Don’t fucking boss me around.”
*** *** ***
He made toast and eggs for breakfast, while I washed fruit and piled it on a plate. I didn’t have a coffee maker. He promised to punish me for it later, and I didn’t think he was kidding. He stood at my stove cooking breakfast with no shirt, and his tailored pants riding just below the dimples of his ass. The eggs were scrambled, like my thoughts, but they were cooked just right, sprinkled lightly with cheese. He was so fucking competent at sex, and now this.
I wanted to be strong and independent. I wanted to be pissed that he’d come here and taken over me so easily, but when he put a plate down in front of me, I said thank you and started to eat. The eggs tasted wonderful. I hated that they tasted so wonderful.
“So, who’s going to talk first?” he asked.
“What?”
“What do you want to say to me? You seem...” He waved a hand. “Angsty.”
He’d disappeared for two and a half years, materialized out of nowhere, and now accused me of being “angsty”? I frowned and squished a piece of egg into a puddle.
“Am I supposed to be glad you’re back?” I said. “Am I supposed to be happy?”
“You seemed happy last night when my cock was in your ass.”
I couldn’t deal with this. I wasn’t prepared. “Do you know what this is like? Seeing you again? Having you come at me and…and…”
“And what?” He grabbed a handful of grapes and popped one in his mouth. “You’re lucky I came back in time to warn you about Cantor after you were stupid enough to get drawn in.”
“I wasn’t drawn in by Cantor,” I lied. “We just talked about some stuff.”
“That’s how he works. He talks. He flirts. He tells you you’re interesting, at least until someone else interests him more. He uses women. I didn’t want that for you.”
“You want to fuck me instead.”
“Chere.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked, ripping the crusts off my toast. “You haven’t answered me.”
“I left because you decided to stop escorting. I wanted to support your decision.”
“You disappeared because I decided to go to school? I told you I would have kept seeing you!”
“I know you would have kept seeing me.”
He took a drink of water. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
“Why to everything. Why wouldn’t you tell me your name? Why did you give me this apartment, then take off? We could have had a relationship, even while I was in school.”
“Not the kind of relationship I wanted.”
“And what kind of relationship did you want?” I scoffed. “Considering how easily you left me?”
“You don’t want to know.”
His low, taut words were accompanied by a jeopardous stare. I’d forgotten what it was like to be at the mercy of his pale blue gaze.
“Stop,” I said.
“Stop what?”
“Stop being that way. Stop trying to fuck with me and scare me. I’m never letting that happen again. I don’t want this weirdo shit between us. I’m different now.”
He laughed, and it wasn’t a nice laugh. “You weren’t different last night.”
I stood, snatching up my plate and silverware with a clatter. “Last night is over. I regret it now. It was a mistake.”
“Last night was fucking magical, and you know it.” His sharp retort jolted me, made me pause on the way to the kitchen, then flee like a coward. He followed me, grabbed the plate out of my hand and tossed it on the counter with a bang. He stood against me.
Too close. You’re too close.
He stood so I couldn’t move, pinning me against the cabinets.
“Admit it,” he said. “It was magical.”
“It wasn’t magical. It was the opposite of magical. It was desperate and impulsive and I regret it today.”
His lips curled. His nostrils flared. “Get off me,” I said through my teeth.
“You’re not the one in charge here.”
“This is my apartment!”
“This is my apartment.” He pointed to the table. “Mine.” He slapped a palm against the counter, rattling the dishes. “Mine.” He swung an arm toward the living area. “This is my apartment, you ungrateful little bitch.”
“You gave it to me. It’s my apartment now. I signed the papers your lawyers sent.”
“Did you read them first? Did you hire someone to look over them?” He smiled, a slow sadistic smile. “Do you really think I would have signed it over to you completely without some means of getting it back?”
I didn’t know if he was fucking with me again. My body hurt and my brain hurt. I turned away and he put his hands on either side of me, daring me to move. I didn’t.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
After a moment of mulish resistance, I lifted my chin to meet his gaze. I heard his fingers tap on the counter beside me.
Tap, tap, tap.
“What do you think it would be like, Chere, to be in a relationship with me?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Consuming?” he suggested. “Difficult? Hurtful? Ultimately heart-breaking?”
“Yes,” I said in a rasp. “All those things.”
“And you wanted that? You wanted me to stay and give you that, when you were taking all those steps to make your life better?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked away from his intense line of questioning, only to have my chin dragged back.
“I left you as a kindness,” he said, holding my face between his fingers. “I know you’re ungrateful for everything I’ve ever done for you, but you should at least be grateful for that. I left you so you could go to school and get your degree and start your new life where you would be happy.”
I wet my lips, which had gone as dry as my throat. “But now you’re back.”
“I came back to stop you from making a mistake,” he said quietly. “But a relationship with me would also be a mistake.”