by Lauren Rowe
She beams a smile at me that stops my heart. “Okay, well, um, let’s start with my captive fantasy.” She looks giddy. “Well, I’m held captive by a horribly dangerous man who captured me in order to make me his sex slave. But then, after taking me—sensuously, not violently, by the way—he winds up falling desperately in love with me—and then after a while another bad guy comes to kidnap me, also intending to make me his sex slave, of course, and my original captor fends him off in a sword fight—”
“A sword fight?”
“Yeah, my fantasy kind of toggles between present day and a kind of historical-fiction-locked-in-a-dungeon kind of thing.”
“Interesting.”
“Anyway, when the second bad guy is finally dead, my original captor unties me and says I can go, because now he cares about me too much to keep me as his prisoner. It’s like if you love something, set it free, you know? But I don’t want to go—in fact, all I want to do is stay and fuck him for hours and hours—so that’s what we do, only this time, without the bondage, because now it’s my choice to stay and that’s what makes it so sexy.”
I’m in a daze listening to her, completely shocked.
There’s a beat.
I suddenly realize she’s not talking anymore.
“So, that’s it,” she declares, filling the silence.
“Wow,” I say. “That was quite a bit more... detailed than I was expecting.”
She shrugs. “I fantasize in Technicolor—what can I say?”
I laugh. “It’s like a mini-porno.”
“Exactly. Yes. A mini-porno starring me.”
“And you’ve got more of these mini-pornos bouncing around in your head?”
“Tons.”
“And who are the guys who play opposite you in these pornos?”
“Well, depending on the mini-porno-fantasy, it could be any number of fantasy-guys—Channing Tatum gets cast a lot; Charlie Hunman makes appearances quite frequently; this hot married guy who works at the bank.” She blushes. “But that was all before I saw you standing in that hallway in your wet briefs. Lately, there’s only one star of all my imaginary-mini-pornos: Joshua William Faraday.”
I smile and so does she.
“So you think my captor-fantasy would work with your saving-the-girl fantasy?” she asks. “Or is it too weird to mix and match?”
“I think that would work just fine.” I shift again. My cock is throbbing in my pants. “And what about the bodyguard fantasy? Is it pretty detailed, too?”
She smiles from ear-to-ear, clearly excited by what she’s about to say. “Okay, so in this one, I’m a world-famous singer and my life is in serious danger because some stalker is after me. So a gorgeous bodyguard has been hired to protect me—a really serious, no-nonsense kind of guy, like a former Secret Service agent. And, one night, I’m performing a concert in a beautiful, sparkly outfit, like a kind of space-age-y-looking thing? Or maybe I’ve got a beautiful headscarf around my head and I’m looking really somber, sitting on a chair. It just depends what song I’m performing. But either way my bodyguard gets spooked by something he sees in the crowd and he rushes onstage and swoops me up to protect me from an assassin and he literally carries me away from harm, and even though we’re not supposed to do it—because my bodyguard’s a true professional and takes his job really seriously—we just can’t resist our off-the-charts attraction and we totally get it on.”
There’s a long beat before I’m able to speak without laughing. “So you’re saying you’ve got a porno-version of The Bodyguard that plays inside your head?” I say evenly, trying my damnedest not to laugh.
She makes a face. “You’re making fun of me? I’m telling you my deepest, darkest, hottest fantasies and you’re laughing at me?”
I can’t contain myself anymore. I burst out laughing. “No, I’m not making fun of you, I swear. I’m sorry, babe. Continue. I’m loving this.”
“I’ve seen The Bodyguard like twenty times, okay? And I’ve always wanted to be Whitney. Stop laughing at me.”
I bite my lip, trying to stop laughing. “It sounds amazing. What else?”
“Well, I’m not gonna tell you now.” She crosses her arms over her chest in a huff. “You’re supposed to be making me feel safe enough to disclose my innermost thoughts, Josh—you know, luring me into some kind of emotional intimacy—not making me feel like a complete weirdo.”
I laugh. “I should have warned you—I suck at emotional intimacy.”
“Obviously,” she says. But there’s a gleam in her eye.
I touch her chin again. “I’m sorry, PG. Please forgive me. I’m a dick.”
She pouts.
“Tell me more, babe. Tell me every last thing that turns you on. I wanna know. Don’t hold back.”
“No. You’re just gonna laugh at me.” She sticks out her lower lip.
“Never. Well, okay, I might laugh. But that doesn’t mean anything. I laugh at everything. That’s just who I am. I love hearing your fantasies, I swear.”
“I have a lot of ’em, you know,” she sniffs. “A lot.”
“Are they all as elaborate as the ones you just told me about?”
She considers. “Yeah, pretty much. I have an extremely active imagination.”
“Come on, babe. Tell me everything. I might laugh, but only because I think you’re so fucking adorable.”
“I’ll tell you if you answer one honesty-game question for me.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Why did Emma call you a sick fuck?”
My stomach instantly clenches.
“I don’t get it,” Kat continues. “Did you ask her to do something beyond what you wrote in your application? Because the stuff you wrote is kinky, sure, but not enough to make a girl call you names and run off with a guy wearing an ascot.”
I exhale. “It’s complicated.”
There’s a long beat.
“What’s complicated about it?” she finally asks.
“I’d really rather talk about you and your mini-pornos. I’ve totally moved on from Emma. I really have.”
“But I want to understand. Just answer this and I won’t beat a dead horse, I promise. Did you ask her for something beyond what you wrote about in your application? Is there something else you fantasize about that you didn’t write about—something you haven’t told me yet? Because I want to know it all.”
I shake my head. “What I put in my application is pretty much it. And it’s what I told her about—well, actually, just the savior thing. I never even told her about the threesome thing. I’d planned to tell her that, too, but once I’d told her about the bondage-savior fantasy, it became clear there was no point in telling her anything else.”
She twists her mouth. “But why? I don’t understand. Was she really conservative or something? Was she a virgin?”
I take a long time, figuring out what to say. I breathe deeply and finally decide there’s no way, other than to just say it. “Emma’s sexuality was complicated.” I exhale. “Everything about Emma was complicated, actually. She’d been brutally raped as a teenager and she was deeply traumatized by the experience.” My stomach is turning over. “Understandably. So she needed a lot of extra tenderness... I mean, sex was just really tricky for her because she was really... you know, like I said, traumatized. So... yeah.” I exhale. “I was always really patient and gentle with her and... we were together a really long time, and I wanted to try to help her, and then I just started to... you know... the reality was I started to have needs and she wasn’t meeting them. And I felt really guilty about that, considering what she’d been through... But she kept pushing me to be honest with her... accusing me of wanting more than she could give me... and when I finally decided to open up and tell her everything about my past, and my mother, and about my fantasies, and I finally told her what I wanted to try, just to see if maybe the experience would maybe somehow quiet the raging voices in my head. Well, that shit didn’t fly with her. In fact, nothing about me worke
d for her in the end. Nothing.” I run my hands through my hair. “I’ve thought about it a lot—why I was so attracted to her when we were obviously such a mismatch. Being with her was like banging my head into a brick wall, day after day. But I just wanted so badly to take care of her.” I pause, thinking. “I sometimes sit and think about why the fuck I get turned on by certain things other guys probably don’t. And when I analyze myself, I realize, yeah, I really am a sick fuck. I mean, getting off on the shit I do, when you think about what happened to my mom, it’s pretty demented.” I stop myself. My face is hot. I put my hands over my face, collecting myself. Fuck.
There’s a long beat.
“I really am a sick fuck, Kat,” I say simply. “I know I am. After what happened to my mom, I have no business incorporating bondage into my sexual fantasies. That’s just sick. Emma was right. There’s something deeply wrong with me. And telling a girl who’d been raped about it and asking her to try it with me to help me was also deeply fucked up. But what she didn’t get was I was all about saving the girl, you understand? That’s what gets me off. I just want to be the savior.” I’ve got a lump in my throat. “Just once.”
Kat nods.
I exhale. There’s a goddamned lump in my throat that won’t go away. “It’s still sick, though,” I say, pushing through my emotion. “Not to mention obvious and stupid.” I swallow hard and the lump recedes. “It’s some sort of twisted... I dunno. I guess I don’t have the best imagination.” I take a deep breath. “And, shit, I guess I should tell you something else, as long as I’m telling you the whole truth.” I exhale and roll my eyes. “You might as well know just how obvious and stupid and deeply disturbed I really am.”
Kat’s sitting on the edge of her seat, her blue eyes fixed on me without blinking.
“My mom was blonde,” I say. “Just like you. Just like Emma. Just like all the girls in my Sick Fuck folder. And she was gorgeous, too. Everyone always said she looked just like Grace Kelly.”
Kat grabs my hand. “I figured.”
“You did?”
She nods. “What did your dad look like?”
“Like me, pretty much. I have his dark hair.” I squeeze her hand, grateful for her reassuring touch. “I look like my dad and Jonas looks like my mom.”
Kat chuckles. “But you and your brother look so much alike, other than your hair.”
“No, Jonas is the one who looks like my mom, and I’m the one who looks like my dad. My dad always said so. Maybe that’s why my dad could never even stand to look at Jonas.”
She blanches.
There’s a long beat.
“If Jonas looks like your mom, then you do, too, Josh,” she says softly. “Just with darker hair. You two look so much alike.”
I shrug.
Kat strokes my arm with her free hand. “So. Okay. Fine. You’re a sick fuck, Josh. Your mom made an indelible impression on you. You’re obviously deeply traumatized by what happened to her. And you probably feel all kinds of guilt—totally misplaced, by the way—that Jonas was there and you weren’t.”
“But, Kat. It’s pretty fucked up that all I wanna do is fuck beautiful blondes and my mom was a beautiful blonde. Emma thought that was really sick.”
“Fuck Emma. You were seven when she died. Where else were you gonna get your idea of female beauty other than from your mom—especially if she happened to look like Grace Kelly? Growing up, that standard of beauty must have gotten reinforced for you everywhere you looked. Magazines, movies. It’s everywhere.”
I stare at her for a long minute, not saying anything. I’m too blown away to speak. I’ve never had a conversation even resembling this one before. Not even with my childhood therapists.
“Josh, the bottom line for me is that the stuff you wrote in your application turned me on.” She squeezes my hand. “Look, I totally get what you’re saying—and I agree you’ve obviously got some deep-seated issues that have influenced your sexual fantasies—you’ve definitely got some sort of complex relating to what happened to your mom and you’re searching for some sort of therapeutic release, some sort of... what’s that word?” She snaps her fingers and scrunches her face.
“Catharsis?” I offer.
“Yes. Catharsis. Exactly. As an adult, you’re using sex as some sort of catharsis or redemption or whatever. Okay, I get it. But so what? We’re all perverts in one way or another, if we’re being honest—it’s just that people are so rarely honest when it comes to what they like behind closed doors. Well, I say let the doctors figure out your diagnosis if ever you’re in danger of harming someone or yourself—but until then, who cares? All I know is that you make me soak my panties every time I’m near you and when I read your application, I started dripping down my thighs.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Oh,” I manage to say, but it’s all I can muster.
The subtlest of smirks dances on her lips. “All I know is that whatever you did to those women in The Club, I’m turned on by the idea of you doing it to me, too, exactly the way you did it to them.” The smirk she’s been suppressing takes over her mouth. “I want you to pretend I’m one of the women in The Club and show me exactly what you like, without treating me any differently than you treated them.” She lowers her voice to barely above a whisper. “I want you to treat me like your high-priced whore.”
I’m rock hard right now.
Her eyes are blazing. “Actually, that happens to be one of my top fantasies.”
My heart is absolutely racing. I swallow hard. “Well, but...” I sputter. “Kat, as it turns out, the women in The Club actually were paid hookers. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but in retrospect, there’s a very good reason they were all so ‘uncannily compatible’ with me and eager to please.”
She makes a face like I’m saying something nonsensical.
“So,” I say, feeling the need to explain myself further, “unlike them, you might have, you know... limits.”
Her eyes darken. “Don’t piss on me. Don’t crap on me. Don’t hurt me. That’s it.”
She’s taken my breath away. “I have no interest in doing any of those things,” I say.
“Other than those three things, do whatever you want to me,” she says. “Literally.” Her eyes flicker. “In fact, I want you to.”
I have never been more attracted to a woman than I am right this very minute. I clear my throat. “Please tell me you’re not fucking with me right now.”
“I’m not fucking with you,” she says, heat rising in her cheeks. “I often fantasize I’m a high-end call-girl. It’s what I imagined when I gave you that blowjob in the shower.” She licks her lips. “I can’t begin to tell you how much that turns me on.”
My dick physically hurts, it’s so hard.
“That’s why I came when you did—because I was fantasizing I’d just given you your money’s worth.”
“Oh.”
“So I guess I’m a sick fuck, too,” she says. “Is that okay with you?”
I nod. “That’s very okay with me.”
“Good. Then let’s just agree once and for all we don’t give a shit if we’re sick fucks. If we are, then so what. Fuck Emma. She’s a bitch.” Her eyes blaze. “Yeah, I said it. Fuck her. And fuck anyone else who has a problem with what turns us on. We’re not screwing goats, right? We’re gonna screw each other—and maybe one woman-to-be-named later, too.” She snickers. “Fuck anyone who makes you feel ashamed of what you like, Josh, including Emma the Bitch.”
I feel like I’ve entered an alternate universe. A fucking awesome alternate universe.
Kat smiles broadly and touches my face gently. “We’ll fulfill each other’s fantasies, right down the line. It’ll be the honesty-game, sexual edition.” She skims her fingertip over my lips. “Are you in?”
“I’m so fucking in.”
She drops her hands from my face. “I should warn you, though, most of my sexual fantasies are gonna require you to role-play. You’re gonna have to be all-in—assum
e your part.”
“No problem.”
“And if we’re really gonna do this, then I wanna go big or go home.”
“That’s my motto.”
“I thought YOLO was your motto.”
“I have several.”
“It’s not the particular sex act that gets me going, it’s the scene—the scenario. I don’t care what you wanna do to me, as long as you set the right scene for me and let me lose myself.”
My heart is racing. “Good to know. Name it, we’ll do it. I’ll make it happen for you exactly like you want it.”
“But, wait. Think about it before you commit. Getting the scene the way I fantasize about it might take some planning on your part—and I can’t be the one who arranges stuff. It has to happen to me, you know?—as if it’s real. That’s what’s gonna let me lose myself completely. It’s like The Wizard of Oz. I wanna see the giant, talking head of Oz the whole time—I don’t wanna see the man behind the curtain.”
I grin. “Babe, I’ve got this. Tell me all your fantasies, in detail, just like you told me the others, and I’ll make ’em all come true, to the letter. I’ll be your own personal Make-A-Wish Foundation.”
She smiles broadly. “My own personal Josh Faraday Club,” she corrects.
I wink at her. “Yours truly.”
“Oh my God, I’m so excited.” She wiggles in her seat. “When would we do this fantasy-exchange thing?”
“As soon as humanly possible,” I say, my cock straining.
Her eyes are absolutely smoldering. “I wish we could start right now.”
“Well, yeah, but unfortunately we gotta save the world first.”
She snaps her fingers. “Damn it. Saving the world always gets in the way of acting out mini-pornos.”
I laugh. “I tell you what. Right after we’re done saving the world, we’ll get started on our fantasy-fulfillment extravaganza that very night—right here in Vegas. We’ll take a couple days to decompress, just you and me, before we have to return to our real lives for a bit. How ’bout we do my fantasies first here in Vegas and then we’ll conquer yours the first chance we get in L.A.—because it sounds like yours are gonna take some advance planning.”