Torment Me (Rough Love Part One)

by Annabel Joseph

  “Now, Chere,” he said quietly, “now you’ve been spanked.”

  “You hurt me!”

  “I’m going to hurt you every time we get together. That’s sex for me...hurting you, watching you squirm.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Don’t judge.”

  Glib motherfucker. This wasn’t funny. My ass hurt so much my legs were shaking. He stroked my throbbing cheeks a minute or two longer. He wouldn’t let me lie down or relax. I had to kneel there with my ass in the air, waiting for more punishment. Please, no more punishment. I’d be submissive as hell if that’s what he wanted, just no more spanking.

  He put a hand on my back as if to settle me. His palm slid up and down my spine and I understood that he wanted me to stay where I was. Yes, Master. The bed dipped as he rolled off it. Rummaging noises. Condom wrapper. He parted my sore cheeks and I was one big cringe under his fingers. A wild sob escaped.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “The whole point of that spanking was to get you ready for my cock.” He slid the head up and down my slit. “You’re so wet, Chere. You loved that spanking. It made you feel alive.”

  “No.” I whispered my denial into the sheets, not wanting him to hear. Because it was a lie. I was so unbelievably wet, and my ass was so unbelievably sore. He jammed his fingers inside me, pistoned them in and out and rubbed my wetness up toward my ass.

  “I don’t even think you need lube,” he murmured.

  “I need lube!”

  “Not yet.”

  He slid into my pussy. I didn’t know if I was turned on, or my body was just so stimulated from the spanking, but it felt like heaven. Every inch felt like heaven. My hips bucked without intention, it just happened. I wanted more of him, all of him. He made a soft, satisfied noise and pulled out of me. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded a bit desperate.

  “You want more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, Sir. Be polite, Chere.”

  The last thing on my mind was manners, but I felt so empty, so needy that I complied. “Yes, Sir. Please fuck me.”

  And he did. He eased back into me, slowly, so I felt him everywhere. My breasts tingled, my ass clenched, my toes curled. Yes, it was like that. But I soon remembered that he was a sadist, because every time I got in that perfect rhythm, or found that perfect spot, he stopped, or moved, or twisted my nipples and unbalanced everything.

  “Oh, please,” I would whine or protest, and he would laugh.

  I wanted to come so badly, but the teasing went on, accompanied by lots of filthy talk about what a whore I was, and all the depraved sex acts he planned to commit on my body. I’d almost come eight or nine times when he shifted his weight and teased the head of his cock over my asshole.

  I cringed. I did anal, sure. I was great at anal, but I didn’t usually do anal with sadists.

  “Don’t be too rough,” I begged.

  He seemed to take offense at that. He spanked my ass, smack, smack, each cheek, as hard as before. “Why don’t you fucking trust me?” he asked.

  “Because you hurt me!” The lingering fire in my ass cheeks was proof of that. “And because I can’t see you, and you won’t tell me your name.”

  “So little trust,” he said. But he did use lube, smearing it in and around my asshole, which was good because he sported a pretty hefty girth. My legs shook. My whole body shook. It was partly because I was tired of holding this ass-in-the-air position, and partly because I was scared of the upcoming pain.

  “Come here.” He lay me down on my side, cradling me against the front of his body. My bound hands made fists between us, and his cock jutted through my legs until he reached down to point it at my ass.

  I braced as he pushed forward. I couldn’t help tensing up. He jammed his cock into my ass anyway, wedging the head inside. I moaned at the usual feeling of stretching and discomfort. Anal was sexy to me in theory, and I loved watching it in porn, but God, it hurt when you first got started.

  “Please go slow,” I gasped, leaning my head back against his chest.

  “Hush.”

  And in that “hush” I heard your ass is mine, and I’m going to do this, so deal with it, and you don’t want another spanking, do you?

  He pressed deeper, assisted by the lube. My ass spasmed around him, trying to impede the invasion. He didn’t stop until the entire length of his thick cock was buried balls-deep. I counted the inches. Remember, I still hadn’t come.

  I didn’t expect to come now, because assfucking was sticky and painful and awkward, and anal thrusting didn’t feel that good. A monster cock quickly became a minus when that monster cock was sliding in and out of your very sensitive asshole.

  “You’re so tight,” he murmured against my ear. “I love fucking women in the ass. Since you sucked me off earlier, I’ll be able to fuck your ass a long time. A long, long time.”

  That brought another moan from me, and a chuckle from him.

  “Do you really not like it, or are you pretending not to like it to make me happy?” he asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it,” I said, which was true. “It’s just that it doesn’t feel very good.”

  “How masochistic of you, to want something that doesn’t feel good.”

  I almost corrected him, reminded him that I didn’t say I wanted it. I mean, he was the one who wanted it. If not for him, this wasn’t happening right now. He could still be in my pussy, almost-but-not-quite making me come.

  “You know why anal feels so good to me?” he went on in that mesmerizing whisper. “Because I have all the power in this. I could wreck your body right now if I wanted to. I could hurt you so bad. You’re trembling and arching to me, and accepting all this because you don’t want me to hurt you.”

  I let out a breath. Was his voice mesmerizing because of his words, or because he was sliding inside me again, prying me open, and yes, threatening me with the thick, hard weapon between his legs? “Please don’t hurt me,” I whimpered, and I think I did that to turn him on.

  “I won’t,” he said, so gently, “as long as you’re a good girl and let me do what I want.”

  We were on our sides, lying in bed, but there was nothing comfortable or relaxed about the way he drove into me. When I tried to push his body back with my hands, he yanked them high against my spine. My shoulders ached. My ass was stuffed full, and he seemed like he could go on another hour. When I tried to squirm away from the hard, repetitive thrusts, he reached around and spread his fingers across my pelvis. I was his hole to fuck. He wasn’t letting me escape even an inch of his invasion.

  It occurred to me that fighting him probably made him want to prolong it. If I surrendered and lay there—like a fuck hole—maybe he’d lose interest and finish faster. I stopped resisting and relaxed my tense muscles. Miss Kitty had become Miss Fuckhole. Okay, fine. I got paid plenty of money to be a fuckhole.

  But as soon as I surrendered and stopped participating in my anal subjugation, he was ready with something new. More stimulation. Damn him, I didn’t want it. The hand anchoring my pelvis slid down. One probing fingertip settled atop my clit, setting off a stuttering throb of sensation. I gasped. It felt so good. I wanted to come so badly, even now. All that unfulfilled tension from earlier was still there, aching and teeming.

  “There’s my girl,” he said. I could hear the amusement in his voice, but I didn’t care. I needed more touching, more stroking. He rationed it out to me, the lightest brushes, engineered to keep me simmering right at the edge. He teased my nipples, making me tremble and cry in frustration. This went on for an ungodly period of time. No one had ever fucked my ass—or kept me on the edge of orgasm—for half this long.

  “Please let me come,” I begged. He’d long since stripped me of my pride, another thing no client had ever done. No. Client. Ever. “Please, I can’t bear this.”

  “You’re bearing it,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

  He licked behind my ea
r and tapped my clitoris again. It was torture. No, it was amazing. No, it was evil. He must have realized I’d really had enough, that I was about to check out in the very real sense of losing my sanity, because his thrusts quickened, and his fingers stayed on my clit. They played between my pussy lips, holding me open in the same way he held my soul open, via this sodomy session from hell. If he left me unsatisfied now, I would have disintegrated.

  But he didn’t leave me unsatisfied. He toyed with me and urged me on until we climaxed together. I didn’t know what his orgasm was like, but mine was so intense that it was painful. The apex of it was literally painful, but once the pain softened into something I could process, ohhh. It felt really good. Throbbing, melting, singing, shuddering, super-extended orgasm good. And after the initial, incredible minute-long orgasm, there were still aftershocks that rippled inside me for seconds at a time. My spanked cheeks didn’t hurt anymore. My reamed ass didn’t hurt. Everything felt amazingly perfect.

  His orgasm couldn’t have been as good as mine, but he was silent and shuddery for a long time too. In fact, he stayed in my ass until he was almost completely soft, and even then, I could sense his reluctance to draw away. He got up and went to the bathroom. I didn’t trust myself to walk so I stayed where I was. I couldn’t clean up, anyway, until he released my hands.

  He came back and I felt the bed dip. I was nudged onto my stomach. He slapped my ass again. “You’re nice and red, Chere. You might have a few lingering bruises. A souvenir until you see me next time.”

  “If there’s a next time.”

  He turned me back over and kissed me, tasting faintly of the scotch we’d had earlier. “Oh, there’ll be a next time.”

  “Not if you don’t stop blindfolding me. I can’t stand it.”

  “I know you don’t like it. I won’t do that to you forever.”

  His fingers traced over my face. I wished I could do the same to him, just to know anything about him, but I couldn’t. It frustrated me so bad.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I’ve got to go soon.”

  “Go then,” I said, turning my face away from his touch. “You pay for these sessions. You can leave any time.”

  He rose, and I felt bad I’d been so snippity to him after what we’d just shared, after the orgasm he’d just given me, which eclipsed even the orgasms he’d given me last week, which used to be the best orgasms of my life.

  “I wish you’d tell me your name,” I said. “Even just your first name.”

  “The E’s stand for Edward and Estlin.”

  “You’re not E.E. Cummings, and it’s wrong that you use E.E. Cumming for your fake name. So wrong.”

  “He’s one of my favorite poets. At least I left off the ‘s’ so there wouldn’t be any confusion.”

  “I bet you don’t know one thing E.E. Cummings has written.”

  I jumped when he grabbed my hair. Shit, I never saw him coming. He yanked it once and tilted my head back, and kissed me hard this time, like a punishment. “You’re a sassy little girl,” he said against my lips. “If we weren’t out of time, I’d punish you for that sass. Sex dolls should be seen and not heard.”

  Ugh, he was a disgusting pig. A sexy disgusting pig, which was so much worse.

  “If you won’t tell me your real name, at least let me see what you look like,” I said. “If you won’t let me see what you look like, I’m not coming back.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  That did it. His smug, self-satisfied “I’ll miss you” had just driven the final nail into his coffin. I wasn’t going to see him again. No. See how smug he was then. Asshole.

  “You’re not going to miss me,” I said, “and I’m not coming back. Here’s a tip. There are a lot of high-class whores in New York who specialize in BDSM. Maybe you should look into it.”

  “Shut your mouth and be quiet.”

  I clamped my lips shut, not because he told me to, but because he was an asshole not worthy of any more words. Ten minutes or more went by. I had no way of knowing if he was getting dressed, or primping, or just sitting there staring at me. I thought I heard a pen drop on the desk, and a rustle of paper.

  “I brought you another skirt and blouse,” he said. “You can take them when you leave.”

  I wondered what he’d done with my old skirt. I wondered why he told me to bring extra clothes when he hadn’t cut my clothes off this time. I wondered why I cared.

  He lifted me off the bed. I heard the rustles and noises and smells that were already so familiar to me in my enforced blindness, and the scissors against my wrists.

  “You can stay here all night if you like,” he said, slicing through the zip ties. “If you don’t want to go home to your asshole boyfriend. But don’t dare bring him here.”

  I stood a moment in shock, long enough for him to squeeze my hand and leave. The door lock engaged with a click. How could W have known I had a boyfriend? Maybe it was just an assumption. But then why had he called Simon an asshole? He is an asshole, Chere, even if you won’t admit it.

  No, W couldn’t know about Simon. I stood there rubbing my wrists like an idiot before I finally reached up and unbuckled the mask. The first thing I saw was my bag on the table by the window. I’d dropped that bag by the door, so W had picked it up at some point. Had he gone through it? My phone screensaver was a photo of me and Simon. My asshole boyfriend.

  Jesus Christ, he could have gone through everything in my phone. He might have pawed through my wallet. He might have all my credit card numbers, my phone numbers, my home address. I felt sick. I dug for my wallet and counted my money. But no, he wouldn’t have stolen my fucking chump change. He had plenty of money.

  No, he’d only stolen my privacy and peace of mind.

  How dare he go through my bag and my wallet, and possibly all my phone contacts, when he wouldn’t give me the first piece of information about himself?

  I was so angry, I almost didn’t notice the replacement skirt and blouse hanging on the back of the chair, or the note pinned to the plastic overlay, written in his rough, blocky hand.

  Her heart breaks in a smile—and she is lust

  Mine also, little painted poem of God.

  I stared at it a long time before I placed it, and then my throat went tight. He knew at least one E.E. Cummings poem. It happened to be the one with the most power to make me cry.

  In Between

  When I met Simon, I was working at a strip club. I believed I was a piece of shit. People treated me like a piece of shit. I worked with many, many pieces of shit, most of them my bosses. This felt normal to me, after being raised by a piece-of-shit mother, and being regularly abused by her piece-of-shit boyfriends.

  But Simon was the first person in my life who refused to accept this piece-of-shit view of myself. We didn’t have a lot in common, except that we were both very sensitive souls, and I thought, finally, someone who understands me. He came to see me at my strip club, even though it was gross and seedy. He supported me and tried to pump me up when I tore myself down. He talked me out of a dozen spirals, and then he gave me a copy of A Chorus Girl by E.E. Cummings, and brought me to his studio.

  “Look,” he said. And I hadn’t had any idea what I was looking at. It was a huge, rough-edged canvas with scarlet blurs and pink splotches, and big swirls of paint. “It’s you,” he said when I didn’t respond. “I painted this about you. About the poem. See?”

  And God, I didn’t see, but I changed during that moment of shock and confusion, because someone had made a painting about me. Not just any old someone, but a real, legitimate artist who had done a show and started a mailing list and whom followers and critics labeled as an up-and-comer.

  If I was truly a worthless person, a piece of shit, he wouldn’t have made a painting about me. That painting was acquired by the Louvre in Paris a few years later and hangs there to this day, in a great, white, airy, climate-controlled atrium. It was called Heart-Lust, and we became a couple, and I graduated from stripping to wor
king for the most exclusive escort agency in the city, because I was too good for stripping. I was not a piece of shit.

  Even if, most days, I felt like a piece of shit.

  W couldn’t have known any of this. Even if he snooped through my bag, even if he downloaded everything on my phone, he couldn’t have known about that evening Simon pulled me into his studio and showed me that painting with a huge smile on his angelic face.

  How happy W would be if he knew how much that snippet of poem messed with me, how long it had taken me to stop sobbing in the Viceroy hotel room. Fuck, fuck, fuck him.

  I finally pulled myself together and headed home, red-eyed and exhausted. Simon wasn’t at the loft, which was probably a blessing, since I didn’t think I could have looked at him tonight without dying of grief. How had things changed so much between us? Why was he strung out on drugs now, and struggling to make art? Why wasn’t I enough for him? What had happened, where had I fucked up?

  I went to our bedroom and knelt beside the bed, and pulled out the decoupaged box from underneath. The Chorus Girl was in there, amongst the other sad, lingering detritus of our relationship. Simon had handwritten the whole poem for me in his arching, spidery hand, so different from W’s square, bold lettering. There were pictures from our trip to Paris, and other trips we’d taken. Dried flowers. Show tickets. Invitations to weddings we’d attended, although the subject of marriage never came up between us, even after ten years.

  I closed the box and leaned my head on the edge of the bed. Fuck. There was no love between the two of us anymore, only co-dependency. I needed to be in a relationship to prove I wasn’t a piece of shit, and Simon... Simon needed a caretaker. He needed monitoring and money. He barely made art anymore, and drugs cost a lot. A fortune. An entire world.

  I heard the hum of the elevator, heard Simon come in and bang the door shut. There was a time I would have run out there and flung myself into his arms. He would have kissed my temple and my hair and my lips. He would have said, “Hello, gorgeous,” and looked at me with his artist’s eyes that were always bright and curious, and approving. He used to adore me. Now he adored the drugs more, and his artist’s eyes were hazy and unfocused.