Ty sat back in his chair. Eight million people? Eight million fucking people who knew they weren’t alone. Eight million people free to date perverts who found their needs not only tolerable but hot? Jesus fucking Christ. When Ty was twenty-five, so much as hinting at his desires on a first date would have resulted in a face-full of wine and a suggestion he get sterilized. Now people were free to wave their freak-flags from the turrets of websites like these. Ty thought of all the young men like him, who instead of stashing niche pornography and staying virgins out of fear would grow up having interesting sex with girls who wanted what they had to give. His mouth was suddenly as sour as an old lemon.
If he’d been born twenty years later his whole life would have been different. He would have grown up regarding his kinks with Middleton’s wary acceptance. He’d have spent his twenties and thirties dating like-minded women, maybe married a girl who regarded big purple bruises on her ass as nothing more traumatic than love bites. The realisation was a bitter pill to choke down on what had already been a fairly average Friday evening.
Ty closed his laptop, walked out to the staff kitchen, and got himself a glass of water. He drank it, trying to swill the acidity from his mouth. As he did, he caught sight of himself in the darkened window and was shocked as always by how old he looked. He gave his reflection a weary smile.
“It’s over,” he told himself. “You’re the age you are and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll have to start now.”
He returned to his laptop and scanned Middleton’s profile one last time. He noticed she had multiple pictures linked to it. Clicking on them he saw they were sexy in a non-explicit way; Middleton in a flowy white dress, Middleton in one of those half t-shirts girls wore, then an image that almost stopped his heart: Middleton in a pair of denim cutoff shorts and roller skates.
“You bad little girl,” Ty whispered. How many times had he imagined her in roller skates and the whole time she’d had this picture up on the internet where any Kinkworld asshole could see it? He scrolled down and began to read the comments. Some of them were pure idiocy: ‘you’re like a rai of sun5hine, wanto come to my palce and fck?’ written by the cartoon avatars she’d requested not to contact her. Other comments were more troubling. Young men in expensive suits saying things like ‘you’re exquisite, I promise I can give you everything you’re looking for and more. Inbox me.’
Those comments made him seethe. How could a man claim to give Middleton everything she was looking for, let alone fucking more? They didn’t know who she was. They hadn’t met her, smelled her, watched her for two years imagining exactly how they’d make her beg for mercy before they made her come.
So do something about it, asshole.
Ty stared at the purple ‘message’ button, pressed it and began to type.
Middleton, you want to do this, these are my rules:
At work we don’t talk, we don’t have lunch, we don’t so much as look at each other if it’s not relevant to our jobs. In bed, you’ll do whatever I want. You’ll get a safe word and a chance to tell me your limits, and then everything else is in my hands. We’ll go into specifics if you agree to what I’ve laid out. You’ve got twenty-four hours to respond or I’m deleting this account.
He wrote his name, swore, deleted it, and then signed off ‘Your boss.’
Chapter 7
It had been a year since Kate had gone on a date. Not, she kept telling herself, that Ty coming over was a date. In truth it felt more like she’d hired an escort to show up at her door, screw her, then leave. At least she assumed that was what was going to go down. Ty’s messages had been sparse, nothing but the barest bones of details.
I’ll be at your apartment at 7 pm tomorrow. Be on your couch watching TV. Wear something girly, something you don’t care about ruining. I read your limits, that’s not a problem, none of those things interest me.
Kate had breathed a sigh of relief of that. She’d hated every second of typing ‘blood play, needle play, scat, urine, weapons of any kind, fisting of any form, vomit and breath play’ but it had been worth it to know he didn’t want to put his hand in her butt and wee on her.
Pick a safe word and send it to me. You say that word, the show stops. You don’t say it, I’m gonna take every little plea out on your ass.
Kate had sent him a safe word—“roses”—and proceeded to spend the next forty-eight hours alternating between hot flushes and cold sweats, barely able to eat and constantly checking the time. After work she’d cleaned her aunt’s apartment, mopping the hardwood floors and wiping down every surface until it shone. This was followed by a freak out because the place looked and smelled like a hospital so she tried to mess it up a bit by burning candles and leaving used tea cups everywhere.
At 6 pm she showered, rubbed on cocoa butter, and put on her chosen outfit. It had taken her most of the night before to find something cute that didn’t mind dying for the cause but she thought her final choice, a velvet leotard in dark plum and a pink skirt, was a good one. The colours brought out the golden tones in her skin and the material was worn enough that she didn’t care if Ty tore them off her.
Ty had no opinions on hair or makeup, so she pulled her hair into a high ponytail, dabbed pressed powder on her cheeks, and painted her toenails rose-pink, waving her hair dryer over her feet so it would dry quicker. After a consideration of the temperature, and the crookedness of her pinkie toes, she threw on black knee high socks and Mary Janes. She re-did her ponytail into a loose plait which she slung over her shoulder. Usually, this kind of pedantic frippery would have taken her an hour, but she was so wound up she still had twenty minutes until Ty arrived.
She put on Patti Smith. She turned off Patti Smith and put on Beyoncé. She turned off Beyoncé and tried to listen to an audiobook on successful living. She turned the audiobook off. She forced herself to eat half a peanut butter sandwich then brushed her teeth again.
As she re-examined herself in the bathroom mirror, Kate thought she looked like a dorkus extraordinaire. She fiddled with her plait and tried not to think about how Dutchy once described Ty’s ex-fiancée as ‘Scarlett Johansson with better tits.’
She couldn’t compete with that. The only celebrity she’d ever been compared to was Kate Middleton and no offence to the Duchess of Cambridge, but if men were offered a choice between her and Black Widow, everyone knew what the answer was going to be. She applied mascara and added a touch of gold eye shadow to her lids, and dark powder to her brows. She covered her waterline in white eyeliner and was just contemplating her hair curler when she forced herself to step away from the mirror. No amount of bathroom trickery was going to make her face look like Scarlett Johansson’s face. She needed to stop before she went full Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus. Her phone beeped, telling her there were ten minutes until he arrived.
Her palms sweating freely, Kate unlocked her front door. For Ty’s proposed role play to work, he needed to be able to let himself into her apartment. It wasn’t a risky move. There was a security desk on the ground floor, and you needed a code to use the elevator. Still, knowing the door was unlocked made Kate feel unexpectedly vulnerable. She texted Maria to let her know Ty hadn’t cancelled, and their sex date was going ahead.
Maria texted back right away. Good luck, munchkin. Remember to use your safe word if you need to and take a bath afterward and call me. Enjoy this experience for what it is! xx
“What is this experience?” Kate asked herself.
Unable to answer that question, she sat down on the couch and turned on her aunt’s TV. Ty wanted to interrupt her while she was watching something, but as she flipped through shows, she was confronted with the one decision she hadn’t analysed to death: what to watch. She didn’t want anything that would distract her or ruin the mood, but as she scrolled Netflix all she could find were sexy Viking shows and period dramas. Nothing that fit the bill. Panicking slightly, she turned over to regular TV and on one of the secondary channels found
a reality show about young Brits living together. Kate remembered versions of this show from when she was a teenager; it had no plot aside from the sexy cast members getting drunk and talking crap about each other. It was perfect.
She lay on the couch with her feet dangling over the arm the way she had when she was a kid, and watched the cast prepare for “the most epic night out of all time, motherfuckers!” She felt a bit sad. When she’d been stuck at home with no friends and no partying prospects, this show had made her feel both better and worse. Tonight she let it take her back, let it make her feel small and helpless and young.
I’m home alone, she told herself. I’m home alone and he’ll be here soon .
Ty hadn’t given her a much of a role play backstory—in fact he’d barely given her an abstract, but Kate had fleshed out her character in the manic hours that passed since Ty said he was coming over. She was Katie, an only child living with her mother in the heart of Melbourne. Her parents were divorced, and she attended a hoity-toity grammar school. Last year, her mother had left her to go to Morocco with her friends and returned with a tan, a suitcase full of designer clothes, and a brand-new husband.
Katie didn’t like him. He drank too much and was so big it felt like he was in every room of their apartment at once. She didn’t think he was that handsome, but all her mother’s friends raved about him. He was—Kate decided after some consideration—a lawyer, a big shot lawyer with a rakish smile and fancy suits. She’d seen him in a towel once and been shocked by the hard lines of his body, the hair that covered his chest. Thinking about it made her feel odd, all tingly and heavy in her belly. Sometimes she felt like he knew that. He had a habit of smirking at her when they were alone, staring as though he could see all her secret thoughts. Katie wished he would leave. Just go away and leave her and her mother alone, but he never did.
As she rehashed her backstory, goosebumps broke out on Kate’s skin. Ty had set the stage for this fantasy but it had everything she liked: corruption, violation and of course, a man she could call daddy. There was only one thing she wanted that Ty hadn’t specified; aftercare. The thought of being held by him was almost as erotic to her as the thought of sex, but it was very hard to type that out in purple letters on a Kinkworld correspondence. She’d decided to play the situation by ear. Maybe a post-sex Ty would cuddle her of his own accord? Who didn’t like cuddles?
Kate crossed her legs, trying to dull the throbbing sensation between them. It felt like she had an extremely warm butterfly in her pants. Ever since she’d walked into Ty’s office, excitement had made a hormonal teenager of her. She was changing her underwear three times a day and still feared strangers and dogs would smell her increased arousal and know what a skank she was.
“Mary, I swear to fookin Christ I’m gonna fookin hurl!”
Kate refocused on the TV to find one of the girls puking violently onto a street corner. She wrinkled her nose. Maybe this show wasn’t the best backdrop for her first encounter with Ty, but the thought of finding another one this late in the game filled her with panic. She needed time to smooth the fabrication-life over reality like laminate paper, to do it so perfectly you couldn’t see the bubbles.
Her phone beeped again, informing her it was seven in the evening and Ty would soon arrive. She exhaled, trying to control her panic. She wasn’t afraid, but she felt emotionally naked, exposed to the bones of who and what she was. She pressed a finger between her teeth and bit down, willing the pain to keep her from passing out.
Minutes passed like hours as she watched the TV without seeing a thing. A few times she thought she heard footsteps, but it was only the beating of her frantic heart. She tried to calm herself with breathing exercises but when she well and truly heard someone striding toward her front door she yelped like an anxious Chihuahua. She had just enough time to arrange her features into some version of normalcy before her front door swung open and Tyler Henderson was inside Aunt Rhonda’s apartment. She guessed he was wearing motorcycle boots. What else could make his tread so ominously heavy? There was the sound of a bag hitting the floor and a loud masculine groan, as though Ty was stretching his back.
“Katie?” he called out in his molten stone voice, and she shivered, wetness welling inside her folds. Hearing him speak inside these familiar walls was more exciting than she’d thought possible. If he left this would still be the most sexual she’d ever felt with another person.
“Erm, hi,” she said, her voice hoarse from hours of silence.
Her pulse spiked as he strode toward her, his footsteps like hammer strikes. He was behind her, Kate could feel his eyes on her body, examining, inspecting. She chewed her knuckle, trying to keep her eyes on the TV where two of the British girls were pole-dancing in a bar.
“There you are.” His voice was a low rumble, cultured and amused. “Have you had a good day?”
“It was okay,” she said around her finger.
Ty made an impatient noise and, to her complete shock, strode off. She listened as his footsteps headed toward the kitchen, as though he’d been inside her aunt’s apartment a million times. She heard the fridge door swing open and then the distinct twist-hiss of a beer bottle. Ty must have brought his own. She didn’t have anything in her fridge but apple juice and milk.
“Where’s your mother?” Ty called out.
Another shudder rippled through her. “She’s working late.”
That didn’t seem like enough, so she added, “She said I can get Thai for dinner.”
“Did she now?” There was a sound of a zipper being undone and material being hefted onto Aunt Rhonda’s marble bench—Ty’s motorcycle jacket, Kate was sure. “Did she say when she’d be back?” he asked.
Kate pictured her fake mother, so different from her real one with her long carefully maintained hair and high, botoxed forehead. “Not until late. She’s having dinner with someone from work.”
“Right.” A shadow fell over her as he leaned across the back of the couch. “You didn’t answer my question before. How was school?”
Kate’s belly drew tight. It felt as though she were at the zoo and a tiger had paced toward the unbreakable glass. You were safe, but you couldn’t tell that to the part of your brain that was screaming Tiger! Tiger! It’s gonna eat me!
“Are you going to answer me?” Ty asked.
“I’m fine,” Kate managed to squeak around her knuckle. “How are you?”
Ty chuckled, his shadow juddering across her body. “You’re still scared of me, aren’t you, Katie?”
Kate forced her finger out from between her teeth. “Why would I be scared of you? You’re just some guy my mum married.”
He laughed again, raising his shadow arm to take a drink from his shadow beer. “That’s all I am, huh?”
“Yes.” Her knuckle had returned to her mouth as though pulled by magnetic force.
“Katie.” Ty’s voice was soft. “I thought your mother talked to you about putting your fingers in your mouth when you talk. It gives people the wrong idea.”
Blushing, she immediately removed it. “S-Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Ty’s voice was edged with a severity that made Kate think she’d been right to pretend he was a lawyer. “Just try to understand what it does to men to see a pretty girl sucking on her fingers.”
Fear and revulsion washed through her, even as more warm wetness soaked into the panel of her leotard. She half raised her hand to her mouth then lowered it again. Ty chuckled. “Good girl. Now, are you going to turn around and say hello?”
Kate inhaled, then rolled over to look at him. Oh my gosh.
She’d chosen a lawyer, but perhaps a biker would have been more appropriate. There was nothing refined about Ty’s beauty tonight. His hard jaw was unshaven, his eyes lit with malicious need. It sharpened his handsome features, making them blunt and menacing. His black t-shirt displayed every muscle in his powerful chest. This man wasn’t the handsome protector she’d unwittingly cas
t him as—he was a beast capable of bad deeds and brute force. Adrenaline spiked through her body, and though she’d wanted to say “hello,” she found she couldn’t say anything at all.
Ty smirked at her, revealing a pointy incisor. “I asked you a question before. Are you scared of me?”
He leaned closer and Kate wriggled back into the couch. Funny how just a few inches was the difference between respectful distance and an invasion of space. “No. I’m not scared of you.”
It sounded like a lie.
“Good.” Ty leaned down over her and kissed her on her cheek. The skin where his lips touched her burned. She could smell expensive cologne mingled with leather and sweat. Her whole body prickled with the delicious violation of it; a tender kiss from a man who was much, much too close.
“There,” Ty said. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”
Kate shook her head, resisting the urge to rub her now tingling cheek.
“Glad to hear it.” Ty’s gaze scraped over her chest. Kate wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipples were spiking up beneath the velvet. Her hands fluttered uncertainly again, wanting to cover her breasts or her mouth.
Ty’s incisor flashed at her. “You know Katie, part of the reason your mum married me was because she wanted you to have a male role model. I was hoping you’d start thinking of me as your dad.”
“You’re not my dad,” she whispered. Her voice was trembling. It was from excitement, not fear, but the effect was good. “You’re my stepdad.”
Ty leaned closer, his presence heavy as a tonne of bricks. “I’m more than that. You need men in your life, Katie. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I have men in my life. I hang out with boys at school.”
“The key word there is boys. You don’t know the first thing about men. What they like, what they want.”
Act Your Age Page 12