by Olivia Myers
And he looked angry.
"What," he said coldly, "am I doing here?"
His question made no sense. She looked around wildly. "Where is Jackie?"
"How should I know?"
"She booked you. She was just here a minute ago. Did you see her?"
"I've seen no one. The door was open. I came in. Eight o'clock. On time. And what the hell do you think you were doing, hiring me? And at the fucking last minute? You were lucky I'm even on site."
"What, me? I didn't hire you. Jackie did. I told you, she booked you. She wanted you." Natalie bit her lip.
His golden eyes pierced her. "You look lousy. You're green."
"Yes, I..." She swallowed. "I had a drink. It was a stupid thing to do. Why did you think I booked you? You know I'd never do that."
"Oh, yeah? I thought I did. But it's your name here. See?"
She tried to focus on the schedule he called up. The lines and numbers swirled around. She winced at the effort.
"Something hurt?"
She nodded. Standing so close to him like this made her miserable and elated at once. She peered up at him. He wasn't looking at her. Probably he'd forgotten their night. Everything that had happened between them. After all, she was just one in a long line of...her stomach churned.
"Natalie?"
"I don't know why my name is there. Jackie said she wanted to book you, but she couldn't find you in the roster. Then she said she did find you. She made the reservation just now. A few minutes ago. She said it was our last night here. She said," Natalie’s voice broke, "there's no point wasting time."
"She… ah. Right. Now I understand. You didn't book this. As before, your friends butted in." He looked grim.
"Well, I don't understand."
He hesitated. "After our date, I took myself off the rotation. I needed a break." He shot her a dark look. "But I had to give myself an active status, because all agency employees have to be active if they're paid, even me. So I put myself on conditional."
"What's conditional?" Her head was clearing slowly. Maybe the liquor was moving through her system more rapidly than she'd expected. He'd taken himself off the rotation? Did that mean...?
"It means I only accept clients that meet certain conditions."
"What conditions?"
"It doesn't matter. I just threw in whatever was in my mind at the time."
"Can I see?"
He seemed reluctant, but moved aside to stare out the window. She focused hard. "Clients must be named Natalie?" she read, confused. "But that doesn't make sense."
"No," he agreed, turning to face her. "You were never going to hire me, because I'm never going to be your escort again, as I told you. So it was a nonsense condition."
"How can you just take yourself off the rotation like that?"
"It's not hard, except for the database problems, as I said. I do own the agency."
"You own the agency?"
"You didn't know that?" He frowned. "That explains some things you said. I keep forgetting. Your friends were the ones who orchestrated this whole scheme, weren't they? Even this time."
"This time? No, you have it all backward. Jackie wanted you for herself. She said—excuse me." Natalie dashed into the bathroom. Heaving didn't help this time; there was nothing left to eliminate.
"You don't hold your liquor well."
His voice came from right behind her. She shivered.
"I keep telling people that. But they don't seem to believe me."
"So...how are you, Natalie?"
She turned and found him inches away. She stepped back so she could look up and see his face, and almost fell over the toilet backward.
"You do that a lot, you know." His hands steadied her.
"You startle me a lot."
He cupped her face in his hands. "You're leaving tomorrow? I wondered when you were going."
"Did you? So you do remember me."
He scowled. "You're being an idiot again."
"You keep calling me that. Well, why am I an idiot? What don't I understand?" She could hear her voice rise, but couldn't stop it. "You tell me you're never going to be my escort again. Then you tell me I'm your lover, not a client. Then after the most wonderful night of my life, you leave and I never hear from you again. It's pretty clear. I'm a pain. I belong far away. Somewhere away from this pleasure planet. You like your sex to be separate from your friendships. I understand everything."
She was practically shouting now. He was staring at her as if she were some bellios that just broken loose.
"Right," he said. "Except for one thing."
"What?"
"You need me. You don't seem to get that. Everyone else gets it but you."
"What?"
"Everyone else gets it b—”
"No, no, I heard you. But what do you mean? You think I need you?"
"Need me, love me, whatever you call it." He waved his hand around. "You're not exactly subtle. Your sex drips for me as soon as you smell me. It's pretty obvious."
"You are the most arrogant man I've ever met! I can't believe you!"
He frowned. "Arrogant? What are you talking about? It's not something you can hide from a Katarian. We're attuned to it. No point in being extrasexual if we can't detect like kind, is there?"
"So you just go around detecting all the women that fall in love with you..."
"There are none. Just you. Just like I'm the only man who's fallen in love with you. It's pretty easy. Pretty basic. I'm surprised you're so unaware of it, though."
Her hand flew to cover her mouth, but she had no words.
"I see now you had no idea I owned the agency. Natalie, it takes weeks to sell a business, even a successful one. But anybody with half a brain would have..." He gripped her arms. "Did you honestly think I left you? As in, forever? After I told you how I felt?"
"You didn't tell me anything of the kind."
He shook his head. "You and I need to work on our communication. Strenuously. I claimed you, Natalie. Over and over."
Claimed? She snorted. "You've had sex with lots of women over and over—”
"Not with sex. Not half an hour after meeting you, I was telling you that you were mine. I don't think you were listening. I continued to tell you. I've never doubted it. You were the one that wasn't ready to understand. You've been very thick. A complete idiot. And I had to be careful. You were not ready for everything I'm capable of. I don't know if you are even now. I was prepared to wait a long time. At best, weeks. At most, years. But I'm not really that patient. I wish I were."
He was right, she thought dimly. About everything. She was beginning to get it—finally. And comprehension was too much for her. Her knees gave way. He caught her easily. "You really are kind of green. Why don't you try to vomit again?"
"So romantic," she choked out, but complied. Nothing came out this time, either. But after the heaving convulsions, he gathered her back to lean against him. His hands came around her and cupped her breasts.
"So is everything clear now, Natalie? No more wild assumptions?"
She nodded. "I think so. You may be right. I'm not the most self-confident person. I didn't understand why you even wanted me. I missed you awfully when I woke up and you were gone."
His hands squeezed. "If it makes you feel any better, while your heart was breaking, my cock was in constant torment, with no relief anywhere, except from my own hands—and they're not a tenth as delightful as you are."
She stifled a laugh.
"I'd have come to you every day if I thought you could handle it. But you have a very narrow comfort zone, Natalie. And I strain the limits of it constantly. Which in turn drives me absolutely mad. I'm not going to be satisfied until I have you where I want you."
"Where is that?" she asked.
"See? You're uneasy even now. Where I want you is wherever you want to be. I'll follow you, sweetling. Why do you think I'm selling the agency? If your friends hadn't been matchmaking, I'd have tracked you down as so
on as I broke free here. But I like this better." He thrust his hips against her buttocks and shuddered.
But Natalie was distracted. "Matchmaking? Matchmaking? You mean—is that why—were they really—why, those—”
"Remind me not to serve liquor at our wedding," he whispered in her ear.
The End
Licked by a Vampire
If Imogen had her way, the girls of St. Nocturne’s would be more like her. Shy, modest, polite, gifted. After all, it was a college for the arts, where lovers of poetry and music and art could go to pursue their interests far away from the rude interruption of the world. This was at least the intention of its founders, who three hundred years ago had built the college, a small series of fairy-tale turrets and buildings, on a hilltop nestled in the wilderness. For a while it had been that kind of place. An isolated place, devoted to the pursuit of the good and the beautiful.
A crumpled wad of wet paper came whirling through the air, slapping the back of Imogen’s neck like a bee sting. Any other girl would have turned around to see who the attacker was, but not Imogen. She already knew. This was the bad part about St. Nocturne’s, and chief among the bad part was the group of girls sitting behind Imogen.
They called themselves the Golden Girls, and for Imogen they represented everything that was wrong with the college. There were four of them—prissy, self-entitled girls with too much money but not enough to buy even an ounce of manners or kindness. The Golden Girls didn’t think they needed manners. They were the hot shit. They were the foxy mamas of St. Nocturne’s: the girls strutting the hallways between lectures, linked arm-in-arm like a battering ram subduing lesser girls who wouldn’t get out of their way. The clacking of their heels on the parquet could be heard all the way from town. Their perfume—Chanel, Yves Sainte-Laurent, Gucci—could be smelled from the top of the mountain.
Supposedly, the Golden Girls were at St. Nocturne’s because they studied music. A few of them sang and played the guitar. One girl was rumored to play pretty decent piano.
But anyone who spent a long enough time at the university knew that their real art was in torturing the smarter, more intelligent girls. Imogen did not know why they even needed to study. They were already masters of their craft.
“Did I hear something?” Miss McReddy, the classics literature professor, adjusted her thick glasses and turned her questioning glance to her class. Her gaze rested on Imogen. The girl was a favorite of the professor and it was no wonder—Imogen lived for literature, for romance and for poetry. In this field, she was Miss McReddy’s chief ally. Now she knew that a response was expected from her.
“No, Professor,” Imogen said, still wincing from the pain of the spitball.
“Well, good.” The professor’s pumpkin face broke into a wide smile. “And now that I’ve found you, Imogen, perhaps you’d like to contribute something to the topic?”
Imogen cleared her throat, embarrassed. She’d been distracted by her tormentors and hadn’t heard what the discussion was covering. “Err, professor?”
Helpless giggles broke out behind her. Imogen felt her cheeks turning red.
“Our topic, Imogen,” the professor said. “We were discussing Catherine’s visit to the Tilneys’s estate. What do you think Austen is doing in this chapter?”
“Austen?” said Imogen, still trying furiously to focus herself and forget about the laughter increasing behind her.
“Jane Austen,” the professor said, annoyed. “The book is Northanger Abbey, Imogen. Did you do your reading?”
“Yes—I mean, well—yes,” Imogen fought out. Had she done the reading? The book sitting open on her desk stared up at her awkwardly, like a stranger she’d accidently made eye contact with. She picked it up like she didn’t know what it was, scratching pages aside furiously, trying to find her place.
The professor leaned her elbow against the wall and waited. “Well?”
“The visit to the Tilneys,” Imogen repeated. At last she found her place. “Yes—okay. Well, it’s the place in the book where Austen makes the most obvious distinction between reality and romance.”
“Reality and romance,” it was the professor’s turn to repeat. “How do you mean?”
“Just that up until this point, we’ve seen everything through Catherine’s eyes and she’s been treating her whole life like a gothic romance. And everything prior to this moment at the Tilneys’s has sort of been the kind of thing that she’s read about. When she gets to the estate, she expects that it will all come together and she’ll become like one of the heroines she’s been reading about.”
“And what does she find?” the professor asked. Her annoyance was gone.
“That it’s not the case,” Imogen said. “All of her romance is pushed aside by reality. I mean, that there aren’t really any dead bodies to be discovered or horrible family secrets. It’s as though Austen is offering a critique of the genre by anticipating the reader’s expectations and then saying that reality is more powerful. And if we ignore the reality, we sort of just wind up looking like idiots.”
Miss McReddy’s pumpkin face was smiling again. She closed her book. “Very good,” she said. “Spoken like a scholar.”
The giggling behind Imogen had subsided, although she was still flushed. She was already regretting having said as much as she did. The Golden Girls wouldn’t like it. She knew she’d be hearing from them after class. Silently, she prayed that the professor would continue the lecture so that she could avoid the confrontation. Oh please let it go on.
But the girls were gathering their packs, even as Miss McReddy attempted to make a last announcement. “Class! Class! Don’t forget—art and literature competition in just two weeks! Enter any piece you want, be it essay or song or dance, and you’ll have the opportunity to perform it for the entire school!”
But whether anyone was paying attention to the announcement was difficult to say. Imogen heard it but she was packing her own things and trying to hurry out of the class as fast as possible. She kept her head bowed to avoid eye contact with anyone, as though she were fleeing a room on fire.
She made it as far as the stairwell before a voice stopped her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
That voice. Imogen knew it well. But unlike other girls, when she heard it her heart didn’t stop in terror. Instead, it beat at double the rate, as if it were trying to sever its connection to her body. Imogen went hot. Her fingertips turned wet. She was filled with terror but her terror held a stronger, more passionate emotion. Desire.
Before Imogen could turn around, the backpack was yanked painfully off her shoulders and thrown aside. “Are you even gonna answer?”
It was now or never. She turned slowly and confronted the chief of the Golden Girls herself: Cassandra. Golden-haired Cassandra with the soft blue eyes and the delicately rounded face that old artists would have killed to paint. Cassandra of the pillow-soft lips. Cassandra and her chameleon mouth which could twist effortlessly to form such favorites as the Fuck-Off Smile, the Twisted Grin, the Smoldering Curl, and countless others. The other Golden Girls followed her in suit but it was Cassandra and no one but Cassandra that Imogen saw.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Imogen said quietly.
“What was all that shit about in class?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The shit about Jane Austen. Do you think you’re smart or something?”
Imogen bowed her head. She didn’t want Cassandra to see how much the anger excited her, how much she desired to be abused like this.
“No,” she whispered.
“No what?”
“No, I don’t think I’m smart.”
Cassandra had scored a minor victory but she wouldn’t stop until she had more.
“Well then, what are you?”
“Nothing,” said Imogen. The Golden Girls bubbled again into giggles.
“Nothing?” Cassandra smirked, before shoving Imogen in the shoulder. Im
ogen weathered the blow like a tree but the human contact made her skin tingle. Oh God, please let her go away soon.
“Nothing?” Cassandra repeated. “You don’t feel like nothing. You’ve got a bony shoulder. And you don’t look like nothing. You’ve got that short, inky rat-hair.”
More giggles. The noise seemed to fuel Cassandra. “Hey, I think we’ve found a name for you. Our little rat. Our little rat-a-tat.”
“Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat,” the Golden Girls chanted. Imogen blushed, not for her own shame but for the Girls’. The name sounded hopelessly stupid coming from their little singsong voices. But it sounded different in Cassandra’s voice.
The chanting might have gone on for ten minutes, but it was clear that Cassandra was losing interest and that Imogen’s little torments would be short that day.
“All right, Rat-a-tat,” she said. “No more of that Jane Austen shit. The next time you open your mouth, you better shut it pretty damn quick unless you’d like us to do it for you. And keep that down,” Cassandra barked, forcing Imogen’s head back down. The Golden Girls, still pealing with bright giggles, swept down the hallway with a chorus of clacks. Imogen didn’t hear them. She was thinking about the sensation of Cassandra’s hand on her head. She would remember the feeling for the rest of the week.
***
In the waning light of spring dusk, Imogen tramped down the stretch of road that led into town, past the ugly square apartments that always looked to her like large rectangles of moldy, grey cheese. She came to Main Street, and from Main Street she continued down until she arrived at another square building that could have been mistaken for a bomb shelter were it not for its flashing name: “The Corner Shop” and its illuminated, pink and yellow graphic of a pole dancer jiving on the letter “P.”
Imogen’s mother Helena was a veteran at the strip club. She’d worked as a dancer for years, using the money to help Imogen through St. Nocturne’s. Because her mother had always been open about her profession, Imogen respected her and did not think anything strange of dropping by, whether simply to say hello or, like tonight, to deliver a change of clothes that Helena had forgotten.