by Reed, Zelda
His hand was balled in the back of my wig as he fucked my mouth, his cock bouncing against the back of my throat as he asked, “You gonna let me cum down your throat?”
Yes. The answer was yes and I moaned it around his dick.
His muscles tensed and hips stuttered as he came down my throat. He tasted sour and hot but I swallowed it all, pulling off only when he was completely finished.
I was still wearing my dress, my underwear on the floor near Chace’s shirts. I rose from my knees, my tongue lapping at my lips.
Chace glanced up at me. “Give me five minutes.”
Time was up when he patted the mattress, eyes open as he stared at me and said, “Come over here and sit on my face.”
A rush of pleasure filled my stomach as I hiked up my dress and said, “I would love to. But I think your mask might get in the way.”
Chace didn’t hesitate to remove it. He flung it across the room and ran a hand over his nose, a thin film of sweat having pooled beneath it. Mask-less, I couldn’t ignore that I was about to be eaten out my boss. My boss I hated. My boss I was sure hated me. My boss whose taste was on my tongue and, minutes before, had flooded my mouth.
“I showed you mine. You show me yours,” he said, referring to my mask.
I smiled and turned around, both legs resituating until I was straddling him, my ass towards his face. I threw him a look over my shoulder. “Not a chance.”
He didn’t object. Chace’s hands found my ass, grabbing two handfuls before he spanked me. Hard. My body jerked forward, a small cry ripping from my throat. I felt the heat of his chuckle brush against me, my hips wiggling as I moved back, lowering my hips when my clit was over his mouth.
I knew it wouldn’t take me long to cum. A pool of wetness had formed between my legs from sucking Chace’s dick and imagining his thick cock pumping inside of me.
Unlike the boys I knew in college, who messily went down on me and didn’t watch their teeth, Chace knew exactly what he was doing. He flicked his tongue enthusiastically, matching a rhythm in his head before slowing down. My hands gripped his thighs, my back arching as he pulled my clit between his lips, a gasp rippling through me.
A string of moans fells from my mouth as he slapped my ass again and again, like he was punishing me for not taking off my mask. I felt dirty for loving it, leaning into the heat of his hand as it came down and struck me again.
I rocked my hips back and forth, grinding down against his tongue. Needing to cum.
His tongue slid inside me and all at once I felt my orgasm build and explode in the pit of my stomach. It spread to my thighs, my body freezing up as they locked around his head and I rode out my orgasm.
I collapsed beside him, my feet near his head, and my head near his feet. My breath moved through me like a storm, the smell of us suffocating the room. I was covered in sweat, drops it falling from the inside of my wig and into my mask, where more collected beneath the plastic. I needed relief but I couldn’t pull it off until I was away from Chace.
His touch was light, his fingers curling around my ankle like pulling your foot through a bracelet. He held it there for a moment, the two of us regaining out breaths, my dress still hiked up on my waist and his cock still exposed.
“You’re very small,” he said.
I stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your frame. Your stature. You’re very short and thin.”
“I’m five two.”
He released my ankle. “Like I said, you’re very small.”
I sat up. His hands were folded on his chest, eyes to the ceiling before he looked at me. His nose and his mouth were covered in my juices but he’d made no move to clean them off.
“Are you going to fuck me?” I asked.
“Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
He sat up. “Because I’m not going to fuck you while you’re wearing that mask and wig.” A light flush of red crept across my cheeks. “I want to see your face,” he said, “when I first slide my cock inside you.”
I was almost positive I was overreacting, that he didn’t know it was me hiding behind the mask and wig.
“And who says I want to meet again?”
Chace laughed. His hand crept up my thigh, squeezing the widest part. “You might be different from the rest of the women I know, but you’re not that different.”
I pulled myself onto my elbows. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m allowed to be.”
“Of course you are, Nick.”
The inflection gave away the fact that I knew he wasn’t who he proclaimed to be. Chace didn’t flinch.
I stood up from the bed and tugged down my dress before pulling on my underwear.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked from his spot on the bed. I shook my head. “My name’s Chace.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, smiling.
“And you are?”
A raw moment of bravery flashed before my eyes. My wig flying off my head, the mask falling to the floor. But no amount of blowjobs could contain Chace’s rage when he realized it was me.
“Veronica,” I said, leaning forward, holding out my hand. “My name’s Veronica.”
Thirteen
Chace and I made plans for Saturday night but when eight o’clock rolled around I was lounging on my couch watching Netflix with the twins. For hours my cell phone buzzed in my purse, rattling against my lipstick and wallet before it abruptly stopped.
I couldn’t face Chace without a mask or wig and I didn’t want to. I’d gotten what I wanted out of him, a few moments of pleasure, even if he didn’t fuck me.
My phone started buzzing again around midnight, non-stop until four am. Around ten, Sunday morning it drummed up again and Laura, who was sitting across from me at the kitchen counter, demanded I pick it up.
I refused to glance at the pop-up messages from MatchU as I unlocked my phone and scrolled through my texts. The worst thing about working for Chace (aside from the obvious) was that I never had any time to make friends, or keep the ones that I had from college. The only new texts were from Laura (looking at your phone yet?) and Chace.
My stomach leaped into my throat when I saw his name, a cold sweat breaking out against the back of my neck as I scrolled through his messages. Since Saturday night he’d been sending me drunk and angry messages, demanding Chinese food and for me to fetch his laundry. Being stood up made him furious and he was going to take it all out on me.
The messages stopped around noon but started again around six o'clock. A string of them spit out, one after the other. The annoying alert bounced against our apartment walls but I was determined to ignore it in favor of burying my nose in a book.
After a solid hour my sister stormed out of her bedroom, hands on her hips as she said, “I can’t fucking take it anymore.” She picked up my phone and showed me the screen. I looked away. “You’ve got two options,” she said, tossing the phone on my lap. “You can either call Chace and tell him the truth, or you have to delete that app.”
Laura hovered over me as I made my decision. Book in one hand, phone in the other, my fingers flew across the screen as I unlocked my phone and, without hesitation, deleted the app.
I set my phone back on the coffee table.
“It’s done,” I said with a proud nod.
Laura let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god.”
Fourteen
I woke up to the sound of pounding on my apartment door. The covers fell from my head as I rolled towards my nightstand, where my cell phone was charging towards the edge. It was four in the morning. The sun had yet to rise and my bedroom was flooded with the light film of darkness that came with living in the glittering lights of New York. I was delirious, my eyes squinting at the light of my phone before I tossed myself back on my bed and bang, bang, bang, there it was again.
My niece began to cry, her voice like a snap in the
dark. Sudden and bright, loud enough to shake the walls of my sister’s bedroom. Bang, bang, bang. I could almost hear Laura, throwing back her sheets and jumping out of bed, trying to quietly calm her daughter before her brother rolled over and started crying too.
Bang, bang, bang.
I pulled myself from my bed, one hand wiping my eyes as the other opened my bedroom door. Bang, bang, bang. My sister poked her head out of her bedroom, my niece propped against her hip, still crying, as she walked over to me.
“Don’t open the door,” she said quietly.
Bang, bang, bang.
“I have to,” I said. “I don’t think they’re gonna stop.”
In a bucket near the front door, where we kept the umbrellas and two pairs of rain boots, was a metal baseball bat Laura bought for protection. My fingers wrapped around it, pulling it close to my side as I unlocked the apartment door and pulled it open, just a crack.
“Finally,” the man on the other end said, pushing the door open.
I stumbled backwards, my arm stretching to the left, the bat blocking off his entrance to the apartment. I wanted to shout but I knew from the smell of him that it was Chace.
He closed and locked the apartment door behind him, shoving his hands in the pockets of his khaki’s as he said, “You were going to leave me out there to get killed.”
“What are you talking about?”
He scrunched up his nose. His eyes ran across the peeling wallpaper in the foyer, the close proximity of my sister’s bedroom to the front door, our miniscule living/dining/kitchen space, and the stumpy hallway that led to the single bathroom across from my bedroom.
“This place is a shithole,” he said matter-of-factly. “Did you know there’s a bum passed out on the steps?”
My niece was shrieking in the background. Laura wandered from the living room to the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of formula she tried to stick in my niece’s mouth. She wouldn’t take it, her small hands swatting it away in favor of throwing her head back and screaming.
“See what you did,” Laura said, her teeth grinding against one another as she stormed towards Chace. “She was sleeping. We were all sleeping. Do you know what fucking time it is?”
Chace glanced down at her, unbothered. “Three? Four?”
Laura glanced at me. Her jaw was tight and her eyes were as small as slits. “Get the fuck out of my house,” she said, turning her attention back to Chace. When he didn’t move, she stepped close enough for her nose to almost press into his chest. “Now.”
The angrier she became, the louder my niece’s cries grew. In the bedroom I could hear the creak of the second crib. Bobby was slowly awakening and it wouldn’t be long before he was standing and crying, desperate to climb out and join his sister in her hysterics.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Chace said to Laura, although he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the red face of my niece, her fat cheeks wet with tears, mouth open as she cried.
I thought he was going to snatch her from my sister and throw her against the wall, but Chace lifted her from my sister’s hip - “What the fuck are you doing?” - and placed her against his, lightly bouncing her up and down before he said, “Hey. Hey, look at this.” He twisted up his face, eyes crossed, and tongue out. All at once she stopped crying and stared at him as if it was the oddest sight she had ever seen.
It was certainly odd for me. I’d never seen Chace smile at a child, nevertheless play with one. He was the type of guy to scowl whenever he was in the presence of a child and demand I do something to make them go away.
He made another face, then another, bouncing her up and down, talking to her in a voice that was playful and light. My niece's eyes softened and soon she was chuckling, her mouth widening to a smile, her small hands clapping joyously together.
From Laura’s bedroom came a small noise. She turned her head and said to me, “I need to check on Bobby.”
“Bobby?” Chace said, the second Laura was out of the room, my niece's hands reaching for his face. “There are two children living here?”
I could hear the judgment in his voice. How irresponsible he must’ve found the pair of us. Raising two kids in an environment where a single adult shouldn’t even be.
“Yeah there are,” I hissed, snatched my niece away from him. She reached out her arms for him and he gave her his finger. Her small hands wrapped around it.
“Are they yours?” he asked.
“No. But it’s not like that’s any of your business.”
Chace scoffed before my niece stuck his finger in her mouth. He pulled it away instantly and finally his face scrunched up in the way it always did when he was around kids. A cross between disgust and fear. My niece made a noise like she was going to cry again and I pressed my mouth to her temple, humming softly to calm her down.
“Do you have a sink in this place? Or a bucket where I can wash my hands?”
I rolled my eyes. “The kitchen is literally right there.”
I threw the bat back in its bucket and passed off my niece to Laura, in her bedroom. Her eyes were still narrow, jaw tight as she said, lowly, “I know you value your job, but get rid of him. He cannot come into my house like this.”
I nodded. “I promise I will.”
Chace stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing his hands with dish soap, the water hot and steaming.
“You’re gonna burn yourself,” I said, watching his skin turn red beneath the spray of water.
“I’m fine.”
I didn’t know why I cared. If he burned himself he would be in for a trip to the hospital, and out of my apartment.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.
He turned off the sink, drying his hands with the spare cloth hanging near the stove. “I need a break from this city.”
My eyebrow raised. I wondered how much this had to do with Jennifer and how much of it had to do with me standing him up last night.
“Did you come here to fire me?” I asked.
Chace rolled his eyes. “If I was going to fire you, I wouldn’t give you the courtesy of a home visit. Especially knowing where you live.”
My eyes narrowed at his words. “Yeah, well, not all of us can use daddy’s money to buy property on the Upper East Side.”
His lips tightened as he shot an icy glare towards me. “Don’t make me regret the fact that I’m not here to fire you.”
My back straightened, Chace’s words rendering me silent. He crossed his arms over his chest. He was wearing a t-shirt. An honest-to-god white cotton t-shirt. He looked casual enough that I probably wouldn’t have recognized him if I passed him on the street.
“I’m going to stay with my parents for a while and I need you to come with me.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Your parents live in the Hamptons.”
“That’s right.”
“And you want me to come with you, to the Hamptons?”
His arms tightened around his chest. “You know I hate repeating myself.”
Laura stuck her head out of her bedroom. Eyes widening as if to say - why the fuck is he still here? I turned my attention away from her.
“How long?”
Chace sighed. “Two weeks. Maybe more.”
My head started shaking on its own accord. “I can’t leave here for two weeks. I have to help my sister with the kids.”
Chace glanced over his shoulder. My sister was standing near the door, her hands on her hips as she watched the twins hop up and down in their cribs.
“Your sister can’t help herself?”
“No,” I spit out. “She can’t. She does work.”
Chace shrugged, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine that my sister had a job. “Alice’s sister!” he called out.
Laura walked to the threshold of her bedroom, arms crossed as she leaned against it. “My name’s Laura. Although I’m sure Alice has already told you that.”
“No she hasn’t,” he said.
“I have. At least a hundred times since I’ve known you.”
Chace rolled his eyes. “Laura. I need your sister for two weeks. So tell me how much would it be to hire a babysitter for that length of time.”
Laura’s gaze flickered from Chace to me. “I don’t take handouts,” she said.
Chace filled his chest with air. “Consider it a loan.”
“I don’t do loans either,” said Laura. “I like not being in debt.”
“Well, you’re going to be shit out of luck without your sister for two weeks, then,” Chace said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I never said I was going with you.”
“You have to go with me,” Chace said. “Or I’ll be forced to find someone else.”
The two of them watched me with expectant looks. Laura, with her eyebrows raised to a point, Chace with his mouth twisted smugly. He had my sister and I backed in a corner and he knew it.
I looked at Laura with softened eyes and a softened mouth, hoping she could hear my silent words. I need this job. We need this job. She rolled her eyes in response.
“Whatever,” she said, shaking her head disapprovingly. “Do whatever you need to do.”
Her feet slid across the hardwood floors as she stormed into her bedroom, the door slamming shut behind her. I jumped at the noise, Chace’s shoulder reaching all the way to his ears before he looked at me and said, “She doesn’t seem pleased at all.”
“Five thousand dollars,” I said, staring him straight in the eyes.
“Excuse me.”
“That’s how much money it costs for a safe and reliable babysitter in this city.”
Chace spit out a humorless laugh. “You’re shitting me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. You leave my sister five thousand dollars or,” I swallowed a thick, nervous lump in my throat. Ready to gamble, to throw two unpredictable dice on the table. “Or you can find someone to put up with your shit.”
For a long moment Chace was silent. He pushed himself from the kitchen counter and wandered around into the living room where one hand cradled his chin. He glanced back at me, then to my sister’s closed door where, behind it, she started to softly sing.