Once Upon a Dream

by Sierra Simone

  To that end, he supposed it had clarified another thing: there was no way he could reveal the truth to Purkiss now. It was a complicated mix of protectiveness and attachment and conscience that Cal didn’t care to examine too closely as he lay in his bed and watched the sun start creeping through his blinds. He’d told himself after his divorce that he was done with relationships for good, done with all their cryptic obligations and nuances of bitterness.

  But he wasn’t done with Tamsin. Not even close. And he couldn’t deny that the thought excited him as much as it scared him.

  Either way, it meant something needed to be done about Purkiss and this job. He slept for a few fitful hours, woke up to eat and make a couple phone calls, after which he showered and dressed.

  Then he drove himself to Purkiss’s ballet school.

  The club was busy tonight, once again. A Saturday night in the warm summer heat; the rooms overflowed with people hungry for the kind of high they couldn’t get anywhere else. Cal kept his eyes moving as he pushed his way through the crowded rooms, looking for any sign of pale gold hair or pink ballet shoes. He hadn’t dared to go near the ballet school after ending things with Purkiss, since Cal’s presence would only undo the lie he’d tried so carefully to spin. But it meant that he couldn’t be sure the dancers would be here tonight. There was a chance, of course, but he couldn’t be sure.

  And there was nothing of Tamsin’s presence, not even a sign of her friends, and for a moment, Cal allowed himself to register the ache of disappointment. The plumes of smoky worry that his plan hadn’t worked and that, even now, Purkiss was venting his anger at his daughter.

  He scoured the entire club—the private playrooms excepted—and then in a fit of moody indulgence he rarely allowed himself, ordered a shot of bourbon at the bar. He hoped the girls were safe from Purkiss, that his little scheme this morning had built shelter enough for them to hide in for as long as they needed. He hoped that one day he’d find Tamsin again, although he doubted it. Sometimes you met people that stirred you up like a storm and then you never saw them again. Life didn’t owe anyone shit, and Cal Dugan of all people should know that by now.

  “Rough night?” the bartender asked as he pushed the bourbon Cal’s way. “Or not rough enough?”

  “Something like that,” Cal muttered, taking the drink in one swift motion and standing back up. He’d go home. There was no point in moping alone in the bar when he could mope alone at home for free.

  A cool hand brushed his arm as he stood, and goose bumps raced up his skin as he tried to swallow down the hope that swelled in his throat like a balloon.

  He turned to look down into Tamsin’s exquisite face. It was like every feeling he’d ever had in thirty-nine years rushed through his blood and heated him up when he looked at her.

  “Can we talk?” she asked in that floating, faraway voice, and Cal nodded mutely, all his words incinerated in the reality of her here, now, in front of him.

  “I got a room,” she said, taking his hand to lead him, and the shyness that colored her voice was almost too much to take. He wanted to cup her neck and kiss her until she whimpered, he wanted to cradle her in his arms and take her someplace far, far away from every care except taking the pleasure he wanted to give her.

  All of this before his mind really registered her words and anticipation flipped in his belly.

  He allowed her to lead him, her slender fingers wrapped in his large ones, through the crowd and down the hallway of private rooms. She let go of his hand to reach for the key, giving him a smile. “Mistress Hell let us have her room for the night.”

  Well then. Mistress Hell had been very busy today.

  And us?

  His suspicions were confirmed as the door swung up to reveal eleven ballerinas, all completely naked except for those maddening shoes. He felt their physical presence like a clench low in his groin, a heat of blood and tightness all along his dick.

  “Girls, this is Cal,” Tamsin said, like they were at a cocktail party. “Cal, this is Mary Grace, Louisa, Isabella, Lael, Yasmine, Ling, Ellie, Daneice, Nina, Devorah, and Nanami.”

  Each girl smiled or fluttered fingers or did a curtsey as they were introduced. It took every fiber of Cal’s considerable self-control to keep his eyes on their faces. Not only because it felt polite, but because a fledgling sense of duty to Tamsin compelled him to make it clear he wasn’t interested.

  Even if that wasn’t entirely true.

  But Tamsin smiled. “Cal. It’s okay. We’re all here to say thank you.”

  He turned to Tamsin, since she was clothed and nominally his and therefore safe to look at. “You got my note?”

  “Yes. And we are so thankful to you and Mistress Hell for fixing this.”

  He nodded. “Glad to hear it.”

  He was more than glad, but he didn’t have the right words for his relief and his happiness and his fervent wish that…that something. He didn’t even know what. He hadn’t known when he called Hell this morning to ask her for help. He hadn’t known when he stood in Purkiss’s office and told the man that the girls were sneaking off to an influential ballet donor’s house to use her private studio at night. And he hadn’t known when he left Tamsin a short note in her tote bag explaining the lie— that Purkiss had bought it and that Hell was there to back up every part.

  If he had to call it anything, he might call it a willful daydream. There was nothing more between him and Tamsin now, and yet he could not let go of this idea—this sweet illusion—that there might be. That she might look at his older, scarred body and see something she wanted more of.

  “Cal,” Tamsin said. “We want to thank you now.”

  “Okay,” he said, trying to look at the rest of them without actually looking at them. “You’re welcome.”

  One of the ballerinas—Ellie, maybe—giggled.

  Tamsin came up to him and slid her hands up his chest, lacing her fingers around his neck. She went up easily on the toes of her shoes to do it, and the small act was so erotic that he had to close his eyes. The brush of her belly against the semi-hardness of his erection was undoing him, turning his cock to full stone.

  “Tamsin,” he said, opening his eyes. It was maybe a plea or an admission, but it wasn’t a command. She had all the power tonight and she knew it.

  “I want to play another game,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to play any kind of game that might—” he paused, not wanting to reveal too much of his own feelings. He couldn’t say, that might ruin anything between us. There wasn’t anything real between them. She was young and unattached and had her whole life ahead of her. She didn’t need a washed-up soldier like him pestering her with unwanted advances.

  She pressed her soft lips to his jaw, and he fought the urge to close his eyes again. “I want you to be with all of us. Please.”

  He kept his voice low, gazing down into her silver eyes. “It’s not nothing, watching someone you’ve fucked fuck other people. There’s no coming back from something like this.”

  “Good,” she replied, kissing his jaw again. “I don’t want there to be.”

  I’m afraid there won’t be a future for us if I let it happen, was what he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t, couldn’t bring the weight of his daydreams to bear against her, and yet he also couldn’t consent to this. It was a stalemate.

  Until, that is, Tamsin reached down and pressed a slender hand to his cock. Even through the thick denim of his jeans, there was no mistaking how hard he was. He pushed his hips into her touch with a low grunt, and she smiled.

  “Come on, Cal,” she coaxed. “You can say stop when you need to stop.”

  The idea of him needing saving from a bedroom full of agreeable ballerinas was ludicrous and almost pulled a smile onto his face. But not quite. He was still too preoccupied with Tamsin, despite the whispers and sighs of the waiting dancers around them.

  “But I’m worried about you needing to stop,” he told her quietly. “I’m worried abo
ut you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is this some kind of male thing where you think I won’t get anything out of this? Or that my feelings will be hurt by seeing you fuck someone else?”

  “No to the first,” Cal answered. “And yes to the second. I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you’d get something out of this, but I would feel selfish if I agreed. Selfish and unthinking. I don’t want to be that around you.”

  She ran her palm along his length, up and down, up and down, until he could hardly breathe. “This is fun for me,” she said finally. “I like this. What I get out of it is the same thing I got out of last night. My feelings are only going to be hurt if you stop us from enjoying something we both want—just to be noble.”

  Noble. That was a word he hadn’t used to describe himself in a very long time. Maybe ever. “Dammit, Tamsin, I’m not trying to be noble,” he said, as if his rock-hard cock left any doubt about that. “I just want you to still like me after the night is over.”

  “Oh Cal,” Tamsin murmured. She pulled away to look at him, and the loss of her touch on his dick had him nearly gnawing at his lip in agony. “I already so much more than like you.”

  Jesus. Her words bit him where he was vulnerable.

  “Take a leap and trust me,” she continued, still looking up into his eyes. “Join me in my dream.”

  It felt like that was all he’d ever wanted to do since the day he was born. He wrapped his hands around her jaw and pulled her face close to his. “Okay,” he whispered. And then he kissed her, trying to pour every last feeling and fledgling hope into his kiss, so that she knew that she’d somehow become the most important person in his life over the course of a week. He couldn’t tell her that, he couldn’t act on it, he felt guilty even hoping around it. You didn’t watch a girl through a camera lens and fall in love, you didn’t play blackmail games with her and like it, you didn’t fuck a girl once and wish for more unless you knew she wanted it too.

  And yet.

  He’d been kissing Tamsin so thoroughly and so deeply that he hadn’t been aware of the other dancers inching closer until a hand brushed against his back. And another hand. And another. Too many hands. His entire body sang with hunger, but the knot in his chest necessitated that he refuse to respond. Instead he murmured against Tamsin’s lips, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Trust me,” she said.

  And he took a deep breath and joined her in her dream.

  The first thing that happened was the kiss to his shoulder. He turned to see one of the ballerinas—Latinx, dark-eyed, Nina was her name—smiling up at him. It had been so long since he’d fucked a woman before Tamsin, and now the idea of fucking several women at once was almost laughable. Like he’d actually tripped and fallen into fairyland for real.

  Tamsin stepped forward and took his hand, pressing it hard against Nina’s small breast with its dark, erect nipple. “Don’t be shy,” Tamsin said to Cal. “We all want this. Do you?”

  He did. Whichever that made him, man or monster, he wanted it.

  Tamsin kissed him again, her tongue teasing at his lower lip until he opened to her, and then, with his hand still on Nina’s breast, he slid his other hand around Tamsin’s waist and pulled her tight against him.

  “I want you close,” he said against her mouth. “You be here with me, do it with me. Got it?”

  She nodded, and he gave her a final rough kiss before he turned his attention to Nina. She purred as he thumbed her nipple and then lowered his mouth to her neck. She tasted different than Tamsin, who was all rose and delicacy. Nina was lavender, elegant, more grown-up smelling somehow, even though Tamsin was the oldest.

  More like a woman.

  And just as the thought breached his mind and sent a surge of blood to his already painful dick, hands were under his T-shirt, sliding warm and searching over the scars on his back, over the hair-dusted ridges of his belly.

  “Off, off, off,” a few of them chanted, pulling the cotton up over his head. He allowed this, allowed the giggling exploration of his back and chest after, the coos when they reached his scars, the oohs when they traced his muscles.

  “With me,” he told Tamsin, taking her hand and putting it to Nina’s other breast, so that the two of them mirrored each other. A large bronze hand and a small white one, both flat against Nina’s barely-there chest, both kneading and massaging and pressing. Nina moaned, her head lolling to the side, and Tamsin looked fascinated by the contrast and symmetry.

  “With me,” he repeated, and then bent to Nina’s neck. Tamsin bent to the other side, and together they bit and licked until Nina was moaning against them. He guided Tamsin’s hand down to where the naked ballerina was wet and waiting, and together he and Tamsin explored Nina’s most secret place, rubbing her until she whimpered.

  “You’re hogging him,” Ellie complained from somewhere beside him, and there was a resounding chorus of agreement. Before he could object—or indeed, even really understand what was happening—he was pushed and herded towards the large bed in the center of the room, herded with hands and shoulders and sighs. And then pushed so that he fell onto his back, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. It was like being attacked by a cluster of butterflies.

  But he kept Tamsin close to him, so that she lay next to him on the bed, nestled against his side. He wanted this and he wanted her, and he didn’t know how else to show her that he’d meant what he’d said. There wasn’t a fucking Emily Post book about what to do in this situation.

  The dancers came over them like a cloud. He found himself kissing a pretty black woman named Daneice, pulling her on top of him so that Tamsin could embrace her just as easily. The three of them shared a searing kiss, messy and breathy and wet, while hands started tugging at his belt. He hadn’t felt someone else’s hands on his belt since before his divorce, and for a minute he had to stop everything and just feel it. The novelty of being wanted as much he wanted in return. The now-unfamiliar feeling of different fingers fumbling on the buckle, yanking the leather through the loops. The slide of different skin under the waistband of his boxers. The grip of a different hand around his erection.

  He groaned into Daneice’s neck as an eager hand stroked him.

  “You’re so big,” a ballerina cooed.

  “So big,” another echoed.

  “I want to use him first!”

  “I’ll be next!”

  “Oh fuck,” he mumbled, feeling something wet and hot close over the hard tip of his cock. A mouth. A warm mouth with a fluttering tongue and soft lips. There were more giggles as he tried to lift his hips and push more of his shaft into that willing warmth, and then he felt other mouths. Pulling his jeans all the way off and kissing his thighs, working their way around his hips, nuzzling at the seams between his groin and his legs. More dancers came up on the bed, crowding around him and Tamsin and Daneice, their hands and lips everywhere.

  He tugged at Tamsin’s leotard, wanting it off, and she obeyed, even as she was just as busy kissing and squeezing and rubbing as he was. The mouth on his cock took him deeper and deeper, working him hard, until it was replaced by another mouth, and then another, and another.

  Somehow, he worked his way up higher on the bed, making enough room for all thirteen of them to be arranged comfortably, if intimately, because there was no flesh not touching other flesh; the entire bed was a lacework of long, lithe limbs and smooth skin and silken pointe shoes. That pink silk was the only stitch of clothing any of them now wore, shocks of cool ribbons against all that hot skin.

  There were too many kisses, too many hands, too many needy mouths and rubbing thighs to keep track of who was where and doing what, but Cal kept track of Tamsin beside him the whole time. With me, he’d said and he’d meant it.

  With me, he said as Nanami rolled a condom down his dick. With me, as Mary Grace swung a leg over his torso and sank down his sheathed cock. With me, as he guided a pretty head between Tamsin’s legs to make her feel good, as Devorah straddled
his face and he held her hips as he sucked on her clit. With me, as they all fucked each other in a tangle of fingers and tongues. With me, with me, with me.

  “We want you to ruin our shoes too,” Lael said into Cal’s ear. She was currently rubbing the swollen bud of Ling’s clit as Ling rode him. He was getting close to the edge—Ling was the fourth ballerina to fuck him until she came—and Cal felt like he had no self-control left. His entire body was stretched tight, his toes digging into the sheets and his thighs so tense they ached. His cock almost hurting with the need to release.

  Next to him, Tamsin had already come twice, once from riding his face, another time from Louisa’s clever fingers. “Oh yes,” she said, “you have to. Just like you did for me.”

  “Happy to,” Cal said. “Might take more than one time though.”

  “I think we can make that happen,” Lael purred, and then Ling came with a series of wracking shudders, her little mouth parted in an O of surprise. Cal gritted his teeth and endured the feeling with as much restraint as he could manage, but once she was finished, he gently lifted her away.

  “Gonna come,” he grunted, and with the same kind of grace and quickness they had on the stage, they arranged themselves in a little row on the bed. He managed to get to his knees and rip off the condom before it happened, and with a sharp wave of release, he emptied himself over several pairs of ballet slippers. With grunt after grunt as he stroked the semen out of his cock. He came so hard he could feel it in the soles of his feet and at the top of his scalp. And when he was finished, still-hard cock in hand, he saw that he’d only stained about half the shoes.

  Which meant…

  “More,” Tamsin said firmly, pushing him back down on the bed and rolling another condom down his length after a few strokes to keep him at full mast. “You’ve still got more shoes to ruin.”

  And so he let the girl he’d started to care for guide pussy after pussy down on his cock, his face, his fingers. He fucked every girl in that room, more than once, he fucked them hard and soft, fast and slow, until the night grew old and blue at the edges, until they were all too sated and tired to do anything other than hum and snuggle and yawn.