by B. B. Hamel
“That’s right,” he grunts. “Ride that fucking cock, Aria. Show me how badly you want it.”
“I want it,” I pant, working hard. “I need it. God, Ethan, I need it.”
“I know you do, pet,” he says softly. “I want to feel you come on this cock. I want to watch your face while you do it. And then I’m going to fucking fill you.” He grabs my hair and pulls me down, kissing me hard.
I keep riding, not letting up, working his cock. I should be thinking about pleasing him, about making this a good experience for him, but I can’t. I should be thinking about being his escort and not his pet, but I am his pet and I know it. All I can think about is working my hips, getting pleasure, getting more.
He grabs my ass then slaps it hard, pulling me down and thrusting into me. He rocks hard into me, the sweet slap of his cock slamming into my pussy filling the room. He grunts and keeps at it, fucking me rough, like a fucking animal.
“God damn,” he grunts, and pushes me off him. He gets onto his knees, grabs my hips, and turns me around. I spread my legs wide for him, ass in the air, as he thrusts deep into my pussy.
“That’s right,” he grunts. “This is what I wanted. This round ass sliding down my fucking cock. You know how perfect you are?”
He fucks me and I rock my hips back against him, slamming back into his thrusts. Sweat drips down my skin as he slaps his hand into my ass cheek, sending tingles of pain and pleasure rolling down my spine.
“Do it again,” I moan, surprising myself.
I can hear the grin in his voice. “Beg for it.”
“Please,” I say, tossing my hair aside and looking at him over my shoulder. “Slap my ass harder.”
He lets out a groan and does it, slapping my ass hard. I toss my head back in pure pleasure as he slams into me deeper. I work back harder, fingers curled into the sheets and pressing into the mattress.
“Again,” I say. “Please. Again.”
He slaps my ass again, palm flat into my skin. He does it again, and again. And I know there’s a bright red handprint on my cheek. He grabs my hair and pulls my head back, slamming into me mercilessly, and I can feel the orgasm building.
He slaps my other cheek, nice and hard, before reaching around my hip to find my clit. I writhe back against him, working along his thick cock, as he works my clit while he fucks me.
“That’s it,” I moan. “Ethan. I’m so close. Please, let me come.”
“You want to come on this cock?” he asks. “You want to come for me, you dirty fucking girl? You’re my pet, Aria. You’re my fucking pet with your tight little pussy and your perfect fucking hips. Beg for my permission.”
“Please. Oh god, please. I need it. I need it so badly. Please let me come.”
I can feel it building. He’s not slowing down, just keeps fucking me, working my clit. I know I’m going to come and there’s nothing stopping it.
“Oh fuck,” I moan nice and deep.
“Come for me,” he grunts, fucking me, working me.
I come hard, the orgasm exploding through my mind. My body tenses and releases, pleasure rocking through my skin. I don’t know how I can even stand it, there’s just so much pleasure rolling along my spine, and I think I black out for a second.
Not long after, or maybe it’s forever, he’s still fucking me. He releases my clit and grabs my hips, slamming deep into me. He’s relentless, and it feels so fucking good.
“God damn, girl,” he groans. “I’m going to fill this cunt up. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” I groan, working my hips, getting into it. “Come inside me. Go ahead. I want it. I want to feel it.”
“Fuck,” he grunts, and I can feel him. He comes deep inside my pussy, and I keep moving, working my hips, sliding along his length. I want him to come hard, and his hands dig into my flesh.
Finally, we collapse into the bed together. He wraps his arms around my body and pulls me tight against him, breathing into my hair.
“Fuck, girl,” he says softly. “You are my pet.”
“I am,” I say, nuzzling up against his chest. We’re naked and sweating and this is where I want to be, the perfect place to be. He holds me tight, and our breathing synchronizes.
I lose all sense of time with him there, and it’s perfect. We’re one together, floating in the post-sex haze of orgasm, and I can’t believe how content I feel.
I’ve never felt this way before, not with anybody. I don’t know how Ethan makes me feel this way, but he does, and it’s incredible. It’s also a little terrifying, but I’m not thinking about it too much. I don’t want to think about what happens after this month, or really about what happens five minutes from now. I just want to enjoy this moment, perfect and right and good. This is all I need or want.
17
Ethan
I breathe in her smell and feel like I’m going to pass out. I’m so tired, so exhausted, and I feel so content and comfortable lying in bed with her, still covered in sweat.
I didn’t plan this. Frankly, I didn’t know what I was going to do when I saw her. Part of me wanted to throw her out and never see her again, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not really, not even in my deepest anger.
This issue with Richard isn’t going to go away, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t take it out on Aria. I never told her that we had to be subtle and quiet. I told her that I was going to spoil her and that she could do anything she wanted, more or less, and then I neglected her. I deserve what I’m getting, but I won’t make that same mistake twice. I won’t take this out on her, because she doesn’t deserve it.
I run my fingers down her back and she shivers. “That feels good,” she says softly.
“Yeah?” I softly rub her back. “What else feels good?”
“Everything,” she says, laughing, and looks up at me. “Why are you here?”
“Decided to take off work today.”
“Oh,” she says. “I’m glad you did.”
“Me too.” I laugh lightly. “I didn’t plan that, you know.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “I didn’t mind.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. But I’m usually more...”
“In control?” she finishes.
“Exactly. But with you, it’s different.”
“Why?” She sits up and looks at me, hair spilling down around us.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
She smiles and looks away. “That makes me happy, either way.”
“I want to get to know you.”
“What do you want to know?” she asks.
“Your childhood.”
“Not much to say.” She shrugs a little bit. “I grew up with my dad. Mom died when I was really young.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I never knew her. But I did know a string of nannies.”
I laugh softly. “You were rich?”
“My father is. When I ran away from home, I left all that.”
“Why did you leave?”
She frowns and lies back down in my arms. I wrap them around her and pull her tight against me.
“You’d understand if you knew my father. He’s a hard man to be around.”
“I know something about hard men.”
She glances up at me. “Was that a penis joke?”
“Not at all,” I say, laughing. “I have more tact and better timing than that.”
“Sure you do.” She looks skeptical and we laugh together. She lays her head back down on my chest. “Dad meant well I think, but he pushed really hard. He’s a little famous in the city, actually. I’d rather not say who he is, but that fame was part of it.”
“Part of what?” I ask softly.
“The pressure. To be perfect. He wanted me to take over his business one day, but I had no interest in it. And then when I ran away and got into drugs, that basically killed him. He disowned me, not exactly, but more or less. I don’t see or speak with him anymore. An
d I don’t want to.”
I grunt, understanding. I can see how having a father like that would be very, very difficult. I can also see why maybe she turned to drugs. It was a rebellious thing at first, but also a way to feel good. When you’re rich, it’s hard to really feel things, because everything is taken care of for you. Maybe she was trying to find a little bit of that, but went way too far.
“Do you ever want to see him again?” I ask.
“Not at all. He was... abusive,” she says.
“Abusive?”
She looks at me again. “I don’t want to be that cliché hooker with daddy issues, okay? It’s just, he didn’t hit me, but he tortured me. He was merciless and cutting, and I had to get out of there. So no, I don’t want to see him ever again.”
I kiss her softly on the forehead. “Thanks for telling me that,” I say.
“It’s weird. I haven’t talked about him in a while.”
I smile and kiss her again. “I’m happy you feel comfortable talking about it with me.”
“You’re supposed to be a client...” She trails off, shaking her head.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you this stuff. The Syndicate, they gave us some, I don’t know, training. I’m supposed to be mysterious and alluring for you.” She laughs lightly. “How am I doing?”
“Perfect,” I say. “You’re perfect.”
“My last name is Taylor,” she says. “I don’t know why I wanted you to know that. I just did, I guess.”
I grin ear to ear, and have no clue why that makes me so happy. I kiss her again, not sure what else to do, and hold her tight.
I want to know her, and having her open up to me makes me happier than I would have guessed. It’s strange, sharing this sort of intimacy with someone that I supposedly own, but I don’t feel like I own her. Not right now, at least.
Her guard is down and I believe everything she’s saying. I believe that she feels something, maybe something like what I feel, although I’m not exactly sure what that is yet. I believe she’s a good person and wants to do right.
And I know I’ve seduced her. All of that, it was real. She wanted it as much as I did, if not more. She wanted me to fuck her and to make her come and she would have done it, money or no money.
I should feel good that I won my game, but I don’t.
I just feel like there’s another game coming, and this one might be even better.
18
Aria
”Play it again.”
In my dream, he stands over me like a phantom. His eyes are a furious red like I always imagined them to be, though I know they’re really just brown. His brows knit as I raise the violin to my chin again and prepare to play it all over.
In my dream, I know that I’ve been standing there and playing for hours. My fingers are bloody and torn to shreds, but daddy doesn’t care. I’m nine years old and I should be a prodigy by now, but I’m not. According to daddy, if I’m not the best at what I do, I’m not worth anything.
And so I play it again. I go through the notes, playing as best as I possibly can considering blood runs down the strings, but that doesn’t matter to him. He simply sits there, smoking a cigar and watching me. I don’t look at his face, because I know what I’ll see if I do.
When I finish, he stands and walks over to me. He slaps the violin from my hands and growls.
“Pathetic,” he says. “What the fuck am I paying these teachers for if you can’t play right?”
I cower away from him, waiting for him to hit me, but the blow never comes. It never does. He hit me once, out of anger, but not since then. Still, he threatens it all the time, and I believe he’ll do it if I give him a real reason to.
“I’m sorry, daddy,” I whimper.
“Sorry isn’t going to make you better, girl,” he says. “How the fuck are you going to take over everything I’m building if you can’t even master one instrument? It’s not even a fucking hard one, for fuck’s sake.” He stalks away and I collapse onto the floor, sobbing.
He stands by the bar with a glass in his hand. He always has a glass in his hand. He’s a drunk, a mean stupid drunk, and I hate him. In the dream, which is also a memory, I know that he’s a piece of shit but I can’t do anything about it.
I’m just a little girl and I still love him. I barely see him anymore, and when I do, it’s always painful, but he’s still a towering figure in my life. I want to live up to him. I believe everything he tells me. I believe every bit of pressure he puts on me. I feel it weighing on me every night, and every night I cry myself to sleep because I’m such a disappointment.
“Maybe I’ll leave you too,” he sneers at me. “Just like your mother left you. She knew you were pathetic garbage. Do you want me to leave you?”
“No!” I cry out, terrified.
“Good,” he says. “Play it again.”
I stand up and retrieve the violin. One of the strings is broken but I know I can’t say anything about it. I retrieve my bow and stand before him, ready to play. He nods and I raise my instrument.
He loves it. I can see through him in my dream, into his mind, and I know he loves this. He loves pushing me, prodding me, seeing how far he can go. Threatening to leave is his favorite little game, especially when he gets to tell me how my mother thought I wasn’t worth being around. It’s impossible to imagine what that does to a little girl, the sort of incredible heartbreaking sadness it instills inside of her. It’s the sort of madness that she’ll turn to drugs to numb when she turns into a woman.
But for now, all I know how to do is play. I strike the first note as my father advances on me, grinning his evil grin, stinking of gin and looking to humiliate me some more.
I wake up sweating and he’s there in my bed. I swat at him, trying to get away, terrified of him. He’s coming and he’s going to keep making me play.
“Aria!” His hands gently catch my wrists and I’m breathing so fast, but that’s not his voice, and I’m not a little girl.
I’m an adult woman. I’m in Ethan’s home, in his bed, and I’m safe. I’m far away from my father.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Shh, it’s okay.”
Ethan takes me in his arms and pulls me against him.
“Ethan,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s very okay.” He holds me and rocks me until my trembling slowly subsides.
“I heard you screaming,” he says once I’m calmer. “I came in to check on you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m fine though.”
I pull back from him and wipe the hair from my face, trying to smile. He doesn’t need this sort of thing in his life, not with the kind of stress he’s under. He doesn’t need some pathetic girl with horrible scars screaming in the middle of the night and waking him up.
The dream lingers and part of me thinks I’m still that pathetic little girl destined to fail. But I know that I’m not. I ran away and tried to destroy my demons with heroin, but that only made the demons so much worse. In the end, I’m destroying my demons through hard work, but they’re not all gone. Not yet at least.
“Do you have nightmares often?” he asks
I shake my head. “Not for years. I... I used to.” I laugh softly. “I’m sorry. I’m really embarrassed.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “Really. For a second there, I thought you were being murdered.”
“I’m safe and sound,” I say more for myself.
He nods and studies me for a second, putting his hand on my face. It’s warm and feels good. I lean into it, smiling.
“Can I ask you what the dream was about?” I look at him, a little surprised. He quickly goes on. “That’s helped me, in the past. Talking about the horrible dreams.”
“You have nightmares?”
“I used to. Back when my company started growing faster than I was ready for. I was under a lot of pressure back then.” He laughs a little bit. “I used to dream about dro
wning every night. My peers and employees would be standing outside of a giant fish tank, laughing as I drowned. It was pretty bad.”
“Sounds awful,” I say.
“If you want to tell me about it, I’ll listen. I understand if you don’t.”
I pause, thinking. I’ve never told anyone about the dreams before. I’ve woken others up with my screaming, but I always just make some excuse and pretend like it’s no big deal. I thought I was past this, but apparently not.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No,” I say. “I want to tell you.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod and take a deep breath. “I played violin when I was a little girl. My father, sometimes he’d get drunk and watch me practice. Once he made me practice for hours, the same song over and over until my fingers bled. He would tell me that I’m a disappointment and that’s why my mother died. I dream about that afternoon sometimes, and in my dream I know that my father wants to humiliate me and destroy me, but I can’t help it. I’m a little girl again.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “Is that true?”
I nod. “It’s true. It happened. It’s... part of why I ran away. Why I turned to drugs.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says softly. “That’s horrible.”
“I think he meant well at first. But as the years passed, he became bitter, and started taking it out on me. I was just a little girl so I didn’t understand. My father was a towering figure in my life. He was everything to me. When he said I was a failure, I believed him.” I look away from Ethan, trying not to cry. “I stopped playing violin after that afternoon. I refused. He never hit me, but he yelled a lot. The yelling was worse.”
“I can relate to that.”
I look at him, surprised. He pulls away and lies down next to me, hands behind his head, looking up at the top of the canopy.
“My father thought computers were for sissies and pussies,” he says. “His biggest dream in life was for me to join him working at the police department.” He glances at me and grins. “My father is a cop, by the way.”