*****
They walked through the city as the sun bathed it in pre-evening light. A group of children darted between the pedestrians, screaming It-It, and then tagging each other. Daisy and Dorian weaved through the ever-growing throng and found a coffee shop a few blocks from work. Daisy ordered a latté – as a sort of homage to Dorian’s misjudged joke – and Dorian ordered a coke. They sat at the window and for a few minutes simply watched the world go by.
“So,” Daisy said, mind always racing, pouncing, never satisfied to sit still. “So, Dorian, what’s your favorite book?”
Dorian shrugged. “It’s hard to pick just one,” he said. “Do you read a lot?”
Daisy sipped her latté. Oh, how sophisticated I feel! “Yes,” Daisy said. “To be honest, I’ll have to give away some books soon. My apartment is getting a bit cluttered.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
“The Beautiful and the Damned,” Daisy said.
“Oh,” Dorian said. “Did you study literature, then?”
Daisy nodded. “Before I became a phone drone, I was an assistant professor at a pretty well-known college. But I got kicked out after my second divorce because he was a professor there, too. And then when I tried to move colleges I found that he had a pretty wide network of contacts – it’s crazy how academics keep together like that – and no one wanted to hire me. Of course, they always claimed they couldn’t take on new English professors. In the end I just thought screw them, and I found something else.”
“And you must work out,” Dorian said.
“Sometimes. It’s a good stress reliever.”
“Your body shows it.”
“Well, thanks,” Daisy said, awkwardly.
They sat in silence for a minute or more before Dorian reached across the table and put his hand atop hers. It was an innocent gesture – nothing sexual or depraved about it at all – and yet Daisy felt a surge of heat within her: a tingly heat that moved through her body. Calm down, babe, she heard Angela say. It’s just a hand. It’s not like he just slapped his cock out and started rubbing it all over the table. And yet she did feel the heat, and the strength of his hand on hers. He just stared into her eyes, and she stared back into those ice-water pits. Behind those eyes was all human existence, all love and pain and hate and loss and joy, and for a moment Daisy could not look away, feeling as though something in the eyes were pulling her in. Then she laughed and withdrew her hand.
“You really know how to make a girl feel uncomfortable, you know that?”
Dorian grinned. “It’s one of my gifts. How about a walk?”
“No,” Daisy said, and finished her latté. “I think I’ll be going.”
She said her goodbyes and left the café. The sun was still shining, though with a lesser orange glare. She was at the door to her apartment building when Tooth emerged from the shadows, that blank animal-stare on his face. He slinked over to Daisy and stood before her, looking her up and down. He was wearing a jogging vest and shorts and running shoes. He looked ready to fight and fuck at the same time.
“Can I help you?” Daisy said, trying and failing to keep a tremor out of her voice.
“I hope so,” Tooth said.
Now Daisy did feel scared. She looked for somewhere to run. There was an alley opposite her building which led to a busy street. She could dash through that and sprint into the street – after all, she was a fair runner – and then start screaming. Someone would come and rescue her and then this madness would be over. Why was it, then, that she just stood there, staring at him?
“Are you going to hurt me?” Daisy said.
“No,” Tooth said.
Then he did something strange. For a moment Daisy actually believed she had been transported to a medieval drama. He kneeled before her, right there in the street, and took her hand (the same hand Dorian had taken). He looked up under the bridge of his eyebrows, his white-blue eyes peeking. “I swear, on the moon, that I will never hurt you, that I will protect you. I will only hurt you if you give me permission.”
“Why…” Suddenly she was short of breath. “Why would I give you permission to hurt me?”
Tooth just shook his head. “I will not hurt you without your permission,” he said, and then released her hand and rose to his feet.
“Why are you here?” Daisy said.
Wait, what? Do you actually trust this guy now, Daisy? Is that seriously what you’re doing? It doesn’t take a nice guy to kneel in the street and say some pretty words. He hasn’t proved anything except that his knees work. And yet she found part of her – a larger part than she wanted to admit – did trust him. He gave off a—what? Energy?Vibe? She hated that new-age stuff, and yet she could think of no other term to describe the way he made her feel: like she was safer with this stranger than with a room full of police officers. It was crazy, of course, and yet, and yet—
“I’m here to see you,” Tooth said. “And to offer you a proposition.”
“What proposition?” Daisy said.
And Tooth told her. Then he sauntered back down the street, like he didn’t have a care. Daisy should have been appalled, offended, disgusted, outraged. She should have been repulsed, she should have been sickened, and yet, as she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she was excited.
She lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, she thought. And then: What’s happening to me?
It was a fair thought. She really had no idea.
*****
All that day at work Daisy was asking herself what the hell she had agreed to: why she had agreed to it; what mad fit of inhibition had made her agree to it. She didn’t know what to think of herself, but of course all those words kept coming back into her head, like unwanted dinner guests who drank all the wine, ate all the food, and then refused to leave until midnight, oblivious of all subtle hints. Slut, whore, hussy, and yes, even, Jezebel. She didn’t dare tell Angela or Jessica. What would they say? Would they understand?
And yet, under this fear and tinge of self-loathing, another emotion emerged. She began to feel a building excitement, like the lurch that comes before the drop on a rollercoaster. She began to feel a heightened sense of things, and a strange joy. The sunlight slanting into the office seemed brighter, and even the most annoying customers could do nothing do break her from her blissful mood. Dorian smiled across at her, and there was more in his eyes than icy water today.
After work, Daisy walked from the office building, two blocks down the street, to the park where she had agreed to meet Tooth. All the while, something was singing in her head: Turn-back, turn-back, turn-back. She ignored the voice, ignored it in favor for the increased fervor with which her heart tried to burst from her chest. She walked into the center of the park and there they were: Tooth and Dorian.
Dorian walked over to her and said: “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Daisy nodded. “But nothing else. Just—just what we agreed.”
“Of course,” Dorian said.
She knew how stupid she was being: how everyone would say she was asking for it. But she couldn’t turn back. She watched herself follow Dorian and Tooth into a secluded section of the park blanketed in shrubbery. Her hands were perspiring heavily now, and she hoped neither of them tried to touch her sweaty fingertips. She leaned back against a tree, and then stared at the two men.
They moved like animals towards her, circling her, and then walked up to her. “The safe word is Wolf, if you want to stop,” Tooth said.
“O-okay,” Daisy managed to mumble.
Then Tooth put his hand on her breasts, over her shirt, and squeezed and massaged the flesh. Daisy let out a half-stifled moan. Dorian put his hand on her inner thigh, and began to move it up towards her vagina, towards her burning, aching, yearning clit. He moved his hand higher, higher, and then Tooth’s hand was in her shirt, under her bra, rubbing her nipples. She told herself she would stop it soon. Meet me and Dorian. Let us make you come. That is all I ask. And she had said: Yes.
Dorian pulled the tops of her tights down to her knees, and then pressed his middle finger down on her clit over her underwear. Tooth pulled her shirt down and exposed her left breast. He grabbed the flesh and then sucked the nipple, licked it, tweaked it. Daisy had always had sensitive nipples, and now they were hard and sent reverberations through her body. Dorian moved his hand quicker, side to side, on her clit. She heard a woman moaning, far too loudly, and then realized it was her moaning.
She felt Dorian’s hands pull down her underwear as Tooth nibbled on her skin: lightly biting her neck and her breasts and her shoulder, nuzzling into her. Dorian sucked his finger and then slid it inside Daisy, pushing it deep into her vagina, all the way to her sweet spot. She was wetter than she had been in years. The finger slid in easily. She bit down as he circled her sweet spot with the tip of her finger. Tooth had exposed her right breast now. He sucked the left nipple and tweaked the right nipple between his forefinger and thumb.
She clamped her hands down on them both, one hand on Dorian’s shoulder and the other on Tooth’s, almost rising from the floor as her body gyrated in pleasure. The heat became intense inside of her, until any individual movement was lost on the mad rush to pleasure. Her nipples were tingling and fire-hot. She closed her eyes, bit down, moaned, and then—the orgasm surged through her body, causing her to lurch forward. Tooth – or was it Dorian? – braced her against the tree. Dorian rubbed her sweet spot quicker and with more determination. Daisy pushed herself down on his finger, and then the orgasm passed and she was panting heavily. She leaned forward onto Tooth’s shoulder. He held her until she could stand unassisted – your legs are actually shaking – and then she pulled up her tights and did up her shirt.
Dorian and Tooth stood back, regarding her. She could see their cocks, pushing against their pants. And—oh, why not? She walked towards them, hands outstretched, and was about to touch them when they jumped back. “No,” Tooth said, though he looked pained to be saying it. “This was for you.”
“It’s okay,” Daisy said. “I don’t mind.”
Dorian smiled like a politician. “It was for you, Daisy,” he said. “We’re alright.”
“Um, okay,” Daisy said, confused and a little offended.
They walked back through the park – no one was watching, thank God – and towards the street. They walked her to her apartment. Daisy could feel the wetness between her thighs. She would shower when she got in, she decided, but for now she was happy to let the wetness stay there, as a reminder: the only thing that told her that had actually just happened.
At the door they both kissed her on the cheek, an oddly chaste and sweet gesture considering what they had just done, and then walked back down the street.
After showering and changing, Daisy lay on her bed. She thought about calling Angela or Jessica, but didn’t feel up to it. Instead, she lay on her back with a book held before her eyes, trying to lose herself in a fictional universe. But all she saw was Tooth and Dorian.
*****
It was around eleven a.m. that Daisy realized Dorian wasn’t coming in to work. She looked for him all morning. At first there wasn’t any urgency in her looking. She simply wanted to see his ice-blue eyes and that white-toothed smile. But the more she looked – and the more her look was met with nothing more than an empty chair – the more she began to worry. She hoped he wasn’t sick. It was strange, imagining that big, strong man curled up in bed with a cup of lemon herbal tea and bad TV playing in the background of his coughing fits. But it was possible. He was human, after all.
She kept looking for him all day. By Friday, she stopped expecting to see his face in the office. That night she and Angela sat in a bar having a couple of drinks and talking idly. Daisy felt obliged to wade through the small talk before she got stuck into what she really wanted to talk about. After half an hour, she blurted: “Where the hell is Dorian?” (She didn’t mention Tooth, though she hadn’t seen him, either.) “He hasn’t been into work all week. Has he quit?”
“Not that I know of,” Angela said. “Ray the Superman Supervisor seems pretty angry with him because he hasn’t come in all week and has said nothing about it. So I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe he skipped town.”
Angela meant it as a joke, Daisy knew, and yet she found it hard to laugh at the very real prospect. Maybe he had skipped town, just flown into the Nothing or the West or wherever men went to lose themselves. Maybe he was now surging along at one-hundred miles per hour towards the coast, not a care in the world, joking with Tooth about the girl they’d tricked into—into what? Into giving her an orgasm? If it was a trick, she thought the joke was on them. What had they even gotten out of it?
“I have to tell you something,” Daisy said, and told Angela about the Park Incident.
Angela listened politely, though her ever-lower jaw, dropping almost to the floor, couldn’t hide her shock. Daisy blushed and shrugged. “It felt good,” she said. “I don’t know—it isn’t me—but I was so horny and they were so hot and I didn’t really think about it. I just did it. Do you know how rare that is for me, to just do something? It felt pretty awesome.”
“Babe,” Angela said. And Daisy waited for the rebuke, for the judgement, for the words of hatred and unveiled hostility. But all Angela said was: “It sounds awesome.”
Daisy giggled like a teenager and then finished her drink. She finished three more before Angela had to get back to her family. In the taxi home, Daisy kept thinking about Dorian Sykes and Tooth. Daisy had already tried to look Dorian up on the internet. All she’d gotten for her troubles was page after page of unrelated content. It was impossible to look up Tooth, of course. She couldn’t exactly write Hunky Guy Who Calls Himself Tooth into the search engine.