The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

“I thought you liked horror movies,” Emanuel teased.

  I’d grabbed his left arm to use as a blindfold so I wouldn’t have to see the gory death of the latest victim. We were sitting on a small couch in the corner of our bedroom, one we’d put against the wall tonight for the sole purpose of watching this movie’s rough cut. The director wanted the new Avert song for the title sequence.

  “This one’s too scary.” I peeked above his arm. He’d paused the movie, and the freeze-frame of the victim’s contorted death mask was blurry, therefore emotionally neutral. I was safe. I hugged Emanuel’s arm to my chest, just in case. “I like zombies and demons and scientifically implausible space parasites. Not the guy next door who flips out and sticks a fork in your eye. No thanks.”

  “I don’t know the genre well enough to predict success, but the movie seems well made.”

  “The Avert song’s going to be awesome. It’ll be like ‘The Man Comes Around’ was for the Dawn of the Dead remake, a super killer opening.”

  He turned the movie off. “Good.”

  I wondered if I’d ever take it for granted that my opinion mattered to him, if I’d ever stop feeling surprised in a joyful way. It was a weird feeling, but I liked it. “Is there anything else you need to watch, you know, for business?”

  He pulled his arm away, then wove it behind my back and shifted me onto his lap. He had boxers on, but I was naked, and suddenly very aware of it. “You could practice guitar.”

  I’d been nervous about starting, because when could I ever play at anywhere near Emanuel’s level? Then I realized it wasn’t about reaching any kind of level. Playing could be a process, not a goal. He liked to teach me. I liked to learn. I’d never have to play in public and inflict my stubby-fingered, clumsy chords on an audience. This was only for the two of us.

  I nodded.

  The inward-sweeping curve of the guitar rested over my thigh. The wood wasn’t as warm as I expected, so I shivered, and Emanuel held me closer, a wall of warmth at my back. By the time I remembered the right pattern and twisted my fingers over the frets in C major, the wood had conformed to my body temperature.

  “Is this right?”

  “Strum. Listen.”

  I sent my right thumb sweeping across the strings. The result was jangling noise. I resented it for drowning out the echoes of his voice, so close against my ear and so deep and rich.

  He linked his larger, longer fingers between mine, maneuvering them into the correct position. It hurt, how the strings pressed into the balls of my fingers like dull little knives. I strummed again. The chord worked. The sound was sweet this time. C major made me think of a door opening, or the sun rising, the beginning of every journey.

  “Perfect,” he murmured.

  I wriggled and shifted in his lap, partly out of simple happiness, partly out of evil intentions. I got some nice friction from the cotton of his boxers, and a barely audible growl. “Am I distracting you?” I asked sweetly, a C major of a question, full of promise.

  “No. I could teach you these chords even if you were bouncing up and down on me. I’m impossible to distract.”

  “You’re very focused.”

  “I’m tempted to show you.”

  “I believe you,” I whispered, feeling him thick and vital below my thighs, straining against the cotton. The light hardness of the guitar pressed down on me from above, and I felt soft in between.

  “But you wouldn’t remember what I taught you, then.”

  “No...”

  He released my fingers against the frets. The sudden lack of pain registered as an interesting kind of pleasure. I moaned, and shifted my thighs, and shifted again, needing more friction, more touch, more everything. My fingernails bumped against the taut guitar strings and rang out faint, skittering ghost notes, halfway between desire and reality.

  He’d already taken me once tonight. And as soon as the last note stopped vibrating, my cunt was just as wet and ready as the first time. Oh God, he had to know, had to feel—

  “We’ll set the lesson aside for now, I think.”

  I wanted to show him how grateful I was, and happy. Had I ever been this happy? “You can still teach me about C major.”

  He laughed, pulled my head back, kissed my throat, laughed some more. His breath tickled over my collarbone. “That took me a second, your joke.”

  “I couldn’t help it. It’d be funnier if the chord was a D.”

  “You, you, you.”

  He set the guitar aside, swiveled me around and spread my legs across his lap. There were echoes of laughter in his smile and in his calm blue eyes, and knowing that I pleased him was the best of all. He kissed my forehead, the tip of my nose, my parted lips, and ran his callused fingers lightly over my other lips, sending thrills up through the center of my body. I writhed against his fingers, moaned against his mouth.

  “You feel like a peach, cariño.”

  “I haven’t waxed in a while.”

  “Mostly velvet, a little prickly. And, of course, very juicy.” One of his fingers sank into my slit, parting me ever so slightly. “Do what you want with your pretty pussy.”

  “You don’t like it better when—” A gasp stole my question as he shoved two fingers deep inside me, rough enough to hurt if I hadn’t been wet and begging for exactly what he gave me.

  “Shh. I tell you what I like.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  His other hand went to my throat. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I whirled away into a private darkness. He wasn’t even squeezing, the magic in his hand was that strong. I swallowed and made a mewling sound that came from somewhere primitive, where fear and power and pleasure melded into one.

  “This is good for you,” he said, his voice sounding far-off and dreamy, his brutal, clever fingers twisting inside me. “I think I know why. You need a collar.”

  I was feverishly quick to nod. I wasn’t the kind of girl to dream of a white wedding, but giving myself to Emanuel in a more private way...yes, a thousand times yes. I wanted that loving pressure at my throat. I wanted to wear his mark.

  His hand left my throat, but he gave me something even better, grabbing my thighs so that I straddled his cock and fell down onto him, hard and hot and splitting me open. Gravity kept me down to the limit, absorbing him fully.

  I opened my eyes, looked down. There were flushed colors where we joined and slick sounds, filthy and amazing. I rode him helplessly. He fucked me like I was a boneless doll, as if he fucking owned me already, no need for a collar.

  I still wanted it. God, I wanted it.

  He sucked his fingers and shared the taste with me, tongue tracing my teeth. So hungry. So perfect.

  So happy.

  * * *

  “That was a good couch for sex,” I told Emanuel once we’d moved to the bed and the less violent pleasure of lying in each other’s arms.

  “What’s a bad couch?”

  “When the leather’s so slick your ass slides around like a puck in an air hockey game.”

  He provided just the right sound effect: Fsssh. We laughed together, too pleasantly worn out for much else.

  “There’s nothing like that on screen in my stuff, but believe me, it’s happened in outtakes.”

  “I never realized how important it must be to keep a serious face.”

  “I worked with this one guy, I had to threaten to put him on my blacklist because he made me laugh too much.”

  “So there were good times too.”

  I ran my palm across his chest and rested my cheek against his shoulder, relieved at how relaxed he felt. He wasn’t angry at me for talking openly like this, or jealous of anyone in my past, or disgusted. “Definitely. It’s just that there were more bad times than good times toward the end. I regret some of the shoots I’ve done. I felt lik
e I had to do them at the time, to prove something to myself, but I really didn’t.”

  “You can tell me, if you’d like.”

  “There was one where the concept was that I’m trying to get into porn and it’s the casting couch, and the director promises me a contract if I fuck him, and I fuck him, but he doesn’t give me the contract and calls me a stupid whore at the end.”

  He tensed at that, muscles thickening alarmingly.

  “Don’t worry. It was scripted. All fake. I faked being angry and humiliated at the end. I was getting paid anyway, and everyone on the set knew that. But then later on I figured out that a lot of the men who saw that video, well, they didn’t believe it was scripted. They were jerking off because they thought the scenario was real, that I really got ripped off at the end. Raped, basically. That fucked me up. I never should have done that. I crossed a line and I can’t take it back now.”

  “Could they have done that to you, in reality?”

  “I’m pretty sure it would’ve been illegal.”

  He sighed. “You don’t have to go back to that. You’re with me now, cariño.”

  I let the satisfaction show in my voice and hugged him closer. “I know. It’s so good. And it’s good I don’t have to hide who I am, with you. I can close the door on all of it, but I don’t have to lock that door and pretend it doesn’t exist. I don’t have to treat my movies like plutonium.”

  “I saw one I liked.”

  That meant he didn’t like all the other ones he’d seen for his research, but he was being diplomatic, which I appreciated. “Was it in the Vicious Flower series?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have good taste, then, but I knew that already. Once you get past the stupid name, the production value was decent, and the dom really knew what he was doing.”

  “Was it real, when you came? I’m curious.”

  “No. The funny thing was, I came once near the beginning, but it didn’t look dramatic, so they had me fake it a few times near the end, and that’s what made it onto the video.” I took a deep breath while I thought about what I wanted to say next—wait, I was going to say it anyway, natural as a river flowing, why bother thinking? “You can do anything you want to me—I mean, anything you saw there. I’d like it even better the second time around. No lights, no camera, just action.”

  “An appealing proposition.”

  “I was hoping you’d look at it that way.” I was too tired for tingles and thrills to be racing up and down my body, but they wriggled lazily in my mind, making me feel nice and warm and fuzzy around the edges.

  “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow,” he said in a tone that managed to be decisive and sleepy at the same time.

  I kissed his shoulder and settled in against him. I knew I’d sleep well tonight and maybe even dream of sex, that strange kind of pure sex that you didn’t need a body for, that felt like flying and only happened in dreams.

  I drifted toward sleep on a cloud of contentment.

  The door slammed open.

  Light spilled in from the corridor, blinding me. A second later shapes came back, and I reminded myself I wasn’t really blind, but Emanuel would be, if he opened his eyes.

  The shapes let out a volley of Spanish words. I only caught Miles.

  And gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We gathered in the outdoor kitchen where delicate gray moths circled the harsh overhead lights. We needed those lights on full blast. Xiomara was doing something complicated with Emanuel’s phone in order to track Miles.

  Miles had borrowed a phone from Fausto, then wandered off. He hadn’t been seen since dinner.

  “I’ve locked in to the signal,” Xiomara announced. Like me, she was wearing a thin cotton nightdress, and the night breeze was cool. She passed the phone to Emanuel and hugged herself. “The phone’s GPS location is showing as that way, down by the beach. This app should lead you to it. And it’s not moving. He’s probably just communing with the ocean or some shit like that.”

  “Stay here, please,” Emanuel said to Xiomara and me. “I’ll call you as soon as we find him.”

  “Be careful,” I said. The flashlights El Tigre and Fausto were carrying could blind Emanuel and make him stumble, but I’m sure they knew that already. Fausto nodded solemnly as if to confirm.

  Emanuel kissed the top of my head and left with the other two, heading out into the darkness where the stairs led down the cliff.

  “You’re right,” I told Xiomara. We sat down together at the table. “He’s probably just down there staring at the ocean, and he turned the volume off or forgot about the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  Both of us looked straight up at the little moths and their whirling snowflake dance, even though we were facing each other. The silence was getting awkward.

  “He said if he ever went out like that, he wouldn’t want people to get traumatized looking at his dead body,” she said. “There’s a rip current out there. It’s not strong, but it’s there.”

  “There’s a stronger one half a mile down the beach.” I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “Fuck me, I shouldn’t have said that. Everything’s going to be all right. He doesn’t have a reason. He was doing fine.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you.”

  “How did you guys break up?” It was a terrible question, and she’d probably tell me to mind my own business, but I was desperate for anything to break the chain of thoughts that led to suicide.

  She laughed. “It’s sad, but it’s funny too. Straight out of a melodrama. I’ll tell you.”

  I leaned back in my chair and sighed in relief as we finally made eye contact. Chain, broken.

  “We got together at the failed reunion. I was most of the way to where I wanted to be. Had this done—” she rubbed the smooth hollow of her throat where an Adam’s apple could have been, “—and some other things, and all the legal changes. But I still had the original plumbing. It can go a lot of different ways with us. I have girlfriends who are fine with keeping what they have, but I was the exact opposite of fine. And I was about to go off to college too.”

  “So you were really young when you met Miles.”

  “Nineteen. Younger than you are now. And I didn’t have a lot of experience.”

  “I’m sure Miles did.”

  She laughed again, a little rueful laugh, not a big bitter one. “God, yes. I wasn’t the first pre-op girl he’d been with, and it was...well, it was as good as it could have been. We had a crazy connection. I couldn’t think of anyone else but him.”

  “Was he sneaking around behind Emanuel’s back?”

  “Yes. Emanuel found out after a few weeks. He told me I had to go to college, I wasn’t going to drop out and follow the band. He’d kill the whole project otherwise. That came too close to telling me who I could and couldn’t sleep with, or love, and I didn’t like that. I told Emanuel to fuck off. It was a mess.”

  “So he did kill the reunion.”

  “He doesn’t make empty threats. But he pulled Miles aside and gave him one chance, first. If Miles put me down easy, they could try to keep the band together. And he sold it to Miles as being for my own good. I was too young, too vulnerable, had a great future ahead of me if I could keep my life on track, and the last thing I needed was a relationship with a rock star teetering on the edge of sobriety and sanity. So Miles broke it off with me.”

  I winced. “Yeah, that sounds pretty messy.”

  “I lost it. I mean, I didn’t fall apart, but I wouldn’t accept the reason he gave me. ‘It’s not you, it’s me’—fuck is that? It felt so patronizing. I said, ‘It’s because I’m trans, right?’ And at first he said no, but then he ran off and got high, and then he said yes. Then he took it back and said he really didn’t mean it.” She tossed her head
rhythmically from side to side, play-acting the agony—a pleading smile to the right, a snarl to the left. She was a gifted mimic. “We screamed at each other over the phone until I almost lost my voice. Two weeks later I swallowed my pride, drove to college and did my best to forget him. A month later I found out he’d gotten married.”

  I couldn’t help thinking that Emanuel had done the right thing, even if he’d been overbearing.

  But I saw the frightening parallels with our own relationship. If Emanuel ever decided that being apart was better for me, he’d cut me off in a heartbeat.

  I had to show him I was strong. That despite my age, I wasn’t vulnerable. The talk we’d had about collars filled me with hope that he saw me as an equal capable of making my own decisions, acting in my own best interests. Someone like Emanuel wouldn’t get into a power exchange with anyone who didn’t have their own power in the first place, because, well, that was just abuse.

  “Did Miles apologize?” I asked. “I mean, did he apologize this time, when you met again?”

  “Yes.” She looked much more peaceful now, no smiles or frowns, her face relaxed and vaguely thoughtful. “I accepted the apology. I’m different now. More centered. Coming from a family like mine, all saints and devils and madmen and musicians, I know all about the wild side, and I don’t want to walk it for the rest of my life.”

  My phone hummed. We both startled. She watched me nervously as I read Emanuel’s text.

  “They found Fausto’s phone,” I told her. “It was by some rocks. They’re still looking for Miles.”

  I didn’t tell her everything. Miles had downloaded a picture of his daughter onto the abandoned phone. The first picture Miles had ever seen, as far as I knew.

  Shouldn’t that make a man want to live?

  “Amy,” Xiomara pleaded. “Go on talking.”

  “I’m not too good with stories. Not like you guys are. But I’ll tell you a story my—that someone in my family told me. There was a Japanese general who looted treasure from all over Southeast Asia and buried it in a cave in the mountains, and a Filipino treasure hunter who went to look for the treasure and found a giant Buddha made of solid gold.”