faire l'amour

by Jessica Gadziala

  But, what's more, I couldn't seem to care as the cups of my bra were ripped down, my nipples tweaking tight exposed to the cool air, as Preston's finger traced the curve underneath each of them, making my breath catch.

  "Take my clothes off," he demanded, voice full of just barely contained need.

  My hands fumbled, trying to pull off sleeves without removing cufflinks, awkwardly trying to figure out how to loosen his tie.

  He didn't try to help, but didn't laugh either as I finally got his jacket and shirt off. My hands were working on his tie when his fingers found my nipples, twisting, pulling. A warm sensation flooded the peaks, making them both somehow ache and demand more at the same time.

  "I didn't say to stop," his voice rumbled, a soft rebuke as my finger pushed the prong out of the hole, freeing both sides to slide out of his belt loops. "Arms up," he demanded. And without thinking, without even dropping the belt, my hands rose over my head, my belly turning liquid at the idea of him pinning them to the wall with one hand while torturing me with the other.

  His hands rose too, pulling the belt from my fingers. But not to discard it. To loop it quickly, but expertly around my wrists in some pattern that made it possible for him to again hook the prong into a hole, imprisoning me.

  He said nothing.

  And neither did I.

  The only sound in the room was my labored breathing, something that made his gaze move downward, focusing on my breasts for a long moment before unhooking my bra, getting rid of it, then yanking my tank top back up and off.

  "Tourner-toi." Not understanding, I stood there dumbly, arms raised, eyes on his face. "Turn around," he growled, whipping me around to face the wall, moving his hips inward, pinning me there, letting me know he wanted me to stay before pulling away. I heard a swish I took for him removing his pants and boxer briefs, then the trace of a tongue down my spine, pausing at the line of my skirt. His hand rose, pulling the material - and that of my panties - down over my hips, ass, letting them glide down my legs to pool at my feet. Then his tongue continued down, over my ass cheek, underneath.

  My body stiffened for a moment, unsure, before his tongue traced down my sex toward my clit, sucking it deep into his mouth, making my hips buck outward, shamelessly begging for more.

  But even as my body craved it, he denied it, moving away, landing a soft smack to my ass, not even hard enough to smart.

  But before I could even register disappointment, his cock slammed deep inside me, making my breath suck inward on a gasp.

  There was nothing slow, sweet, tentative.

  He fucked me, plain and simple.

  One hand held my wrists to the padded wall. The other held my hip outward, angling my body how he wanted it.

  Just when I felt my walls tightening, he pulled back out, grabbing me, pulling me with him toward the oversized, low bed, turning me once again, tossing me backward, making my belly drop as I fell, nothing meeting my back for what felt like an excruciatingly long moment before my back met the mattress, bouncing up off it once before settling.

  I had barely sucked a breath in before he was on the bed with me, kneeling at my feet, spreading my legs, yanking me toward him by the ankles before thrusting them up straight in the air, settling them on one of his shoulders as he thrust back inside me. The new position and the tightness of my thighs pressed closed together making me feel him in a new, more intense way.

  One arm went up, anchoring my legs to his shoulder. The other moved down to press flat against my lower belly, giving me another new sensation as his thumb moved down to press over my clit as he thrust, harder, faster, more recklessly, utterly losing control as each moment passed, as he drove my body upward, pushed me to the edge.

  Then threw me over before I could even prepare for it.

  My breath held as the first few spasms of pleasure gripped me.

  But when I found my voice again, it cried out his name. Over and over until the waves stopped crashing.

  I was vaguely aware of his body burying deep, thrusting upward, coming with a quiet curse, but wasn't fully aware of him again until I felt his hand on my wrists, working them free, rubbing the newly sensitive skin.

  "Sorry about the marks," he murmured softly, sounding truly regretful, making me pull my oddly heavy arms down to see the thick red bands laced around my wrists and up my arms a bit.

  "They'll fade," I told him. "I get marks easily," I added.

  "I noticed," he agreed, finger moving to trace down my neck where I must have had the reddened patch of beard burn judging by the way I was acutely aware of the soft glide of his fingertip. "When are you free again?" he asked, suddenly pulling out of me, making me do that newly familiar self-conscious pressing of my thighs together as he moved away, turned, walked over to turn off the cameras, go to the back table where he found wipes, cleaning himself off, discarding them, then slipping back into his boxer briefs, pants, shirt, leaving it open, before grabbing my clothes, and the pack of wipes, moving back toward me. "Rosie?" he asked, kneeling at the edge of the bed, watching me with furrowed brows.

  "Um... any weeknights after seven."

  "Tuesday night then. Seven-thirty." It was both a question and somehow also a demand as he pulled out the wipes, went to grab my legs to pull them apart.

  "No!" I shrieked. "I mean... I can..." I rushed to cover in a less urgent tone.

  "Shush," he demanded softly, pulling my thighs apart, making short - but delicate - work of cleaning me before handing me my clothes, and letting me dress as he moved away, finding his tie, cufflinks, jacket, getting himself back together again.

  I rushed to do the same, my clothes feeling oddly scratchy on my skin as I reached up to get my hair back together.

  "You're sure about Tuesday?" he asked, unlocking and opening the door after taking the cards out of the cameras, tucking them into his breast pocket.

  "Ah, yeah. Tuesday works."

  "Something a little different, I think," he said as he closed the door behind us.

  Different.

  All of this had been, at its core, different for me.

  "Different?" I asked, the sound a croak.

  "Mhm," he agreed. "Something you haven't done before but are open to," he added, patting the side of my butt.

  Oh.

  It was like the first time all over again. The act that took me wholly out of myself followed by the aftermath where I crashed back down into this new, foreign reality. Where things like my first time trying anal sex were up for sale, were going to be experienced with someone I didn't know, didn't love, wouldn't look back on warmly.

  "With me," he clarified, seeming to interpret the anxiety cording its way around my throat.

  And as much as I maybe hated to admit it, that was all it took. To untangle the cord, wrap it back up where it belonged.

  Preston was becoming a security blanket for me. Familiar even though he was new, practically a stranger. And that wasn't smart. It was only ensuring that when the day came for the security blanket to be ripped away, and I had to start starring with an endless parade of different men, it was going to be an even harder new world to adjust to.

  "Come on," he said, touching my elbow to steer me toward the office. "I'll grab Coop for you to square up and set up the next appointment," he said, pulling me over toward Coop's office, but ducking back out himself.

  --

  Preston

  "Don't," I growled at Merrick who seemed to be standing around in the office for no other reason than to smirk at me.

  Like he knew something.

  Like he was excited to share it with me.

  "Don't what? I'm just standing here. Watching things. Seeing things..."

  "You don't see shit," I told him, frustrated that he maybe did, that he might have been interpreting the situation in a way that I didn't want him to. In a way that gave him even a small bit of truth to work with.

  "Poor thing," he mumbled, smile falling, eyes going a little sad, looking past me, making me turn t
o find him looking at Rosie as she moved into the hall outside Coop's office with him, a smile pulling at her lips as she looked down at the paper in her hands.

  "What?" I asked, brows furrowed.

  "Smiling at her check," he specified. "She needs money. From the sound of things, a lot of it."

  Right.

  Of course that made sense.

  Everything about Rosie said she was not the kind of girl who woke up one day and decided to be a porn star. Sure, she had some buried fantasies she maybe barely even knew existed. But that was true of many - if not most - people. It didn't ring true for a girl like her to act on them by becoming an adult film actress.

  Of course she needed money.

  "A lot?" I asked, watching as she carefully tucked the check away, gave Coop a smile, then headed out toward the door, offering Merrick and I a small wave before disappearing.

  "Yeah. She said she'd be doing this for a couple months. So it's clearly not some small bill that needs to be paid. The girl needs money." He paused, sending me a smirk as he moved away. "You sure you got the stamina to last for several months?" he asked.

  Because he knew.

  Of course he did.

  He was the closest thing I had to a friend in the whole world.

  He knew what was happening.

  Even if I didn't want to admit it to him.

  Hell, even if I didn't want to admit it myself.

  That something was different here.

  I waited for him to disappear before rushing out, a new idea tugging at my mind. Something decidedly unhealthy, sure, but there nonetheless.

  I had to jog up to catch her before she started her car and drove away, giving her a spiel I had given to countless of other girls before. But this was the first time I had a stake in her answer. Even if I already knew she was going to say yes. Because if what Merrick said was true, then she had no way to say no.

  And wasn't I just an absolute fuck to prey on that, to delight in that?

  But all I knew was she agreed and I told her I would have some people at her apartment the following evening to set it up.

  The webcam equipment.

  Plenty of the girls had a webcam service - something they dug their heels in about since we limited their other outside potentials to make money. People had to pay to have access and the company got a cut of that. But the women could also accept gifts from the men - money into their Paypal accounts, virtual gift cards, etcetera. And they got to keep that entirely.

  It was a great way for them to make extra money, bank on their popularity, but still remain loyal to the company.

  I knew before asking that she'd say yes.

  Because she needed more money.

  And I, well, I just needed more.

  More of her.

  For reasons I couldn't even begin to understand myself. In a possessive way that was not like me.

  Because, sure, she was getting her webcam set up. And it would be connected to the service just like anyone else.

  But I was going to be the only one who knew her screen name.

  "Fuck," I hissed, realizing how screwed up that was, how manipulative, how unfair to her.

  Not because she would get less money. I'd give her money. Gift cards. Whatever the fuck she needed. If I could just get a little something. A little more. Maybe enough to satiate this unexpected hunger, this drive to have more than a taste, a couple orgasms.

  Maybe if I got my fill of her, I could move on, things could go back to normal.

  Even as I tried to make myself believe that, though, something within me knew otherwise.

  Something inside said the more that I got, the more I would want.

  Until I had it all.

  Until I had her.

  SIX

  Rosie $3,000

  I rushed out of work to get home to meet Preston's crew - both of whom were familiar to me because they had been there on my first filming day, but had been excused.

  I couldn't help but wonder as they pushed my small desk up against the wall in my bedroom to set up a new computer, film equipment I would have to study to know how to use, a microphone with a fluffy cover on it I was told to leave on because it would help mute the sounds of my neighbors who were, admittedly, not the quietest of people.

  A half a dozen sticky notes were on my desk, telling me various things about how to sign into the company site to start talking to clients, to how to add filters to my videos if I wanted.

  In the end, my head felt like it was spinning. Though, to be fair, that might have had a lot more to do with the fact that I had barely eaten anything all day. And a meal was simply going to have to wait as I saw the men to the door, inwardly worrying over if I was supposed to tip them or not, then grabbing a granola bar, and rushing back out of the house, finishing the fifteen-minute drive in thirty-five thanks to traffic.

  Mayville didn't exactly look like what it was.

  Mayville Psychiatric Hospital.

  I guess that by living so long on the East coast, having driven past numerous abandoned mental asylums when I left the city with friends, I had very specific ideas of what one of those facilities would boast. Barred windows, brick fronts, high gates.

  Mayville looked, instead, something like a very nice house for a very rich person - three floors of lime-washed brick, black shuttered windows, a sprawling bluestone driveway leading up to oversized glass-paned doors, gorgeous bright green landscaping despite the heat, the relentlessly pelting sun.

  I worried my car might leak some fluid - as I did every time I visited - locking the door, rushing up to the main entrance, knowing I only had two hours at best.

  "Miss Page," Lizzy, the receptionist at the unassuming large white desk inside the front doors greeted me. No security guards, no locked doors leading to the wards. Just Lizzy. Who, at maybe only five-foot-two, definitely didn't stand a chance of fighting anyone off. "How have you been?" she asked, her brown eyes warm, with only a hint of the sympathy that used to practically leak from them when she saw me.

  "Crazy," I said, then winced. "Sorry. That wasn't meant to sound, you know, that way. I meant crazy busy. I feel like all I am doing is running around."

  "It can't be easy having to start all over again. Especially with such little notice," she added, nodding as if she understood though she had been born and raised in this town.

  "It's definitely been an adjustment," I admitted, taking a deep breath, feeling a shiver move through me as the cool air chased the sweat off my skin from my long ride. "Is he in his room?" I asked, watching a woman walk around the sitting area to the left, watering the abundance of greenery that really did help the space feel more homey.

  "Let me just check," she said, clicking around on her computer. "Yep. He had art and a walk through the trails earlier, but should be in his room or up in the common room now," she told me.

  "How has he been?" I asked, the words almost feeling like a betrayal, like I shouldn't be asking someone about him, I should merely be seeing it for myself.

  "He's been about the same," she told me.

  It was silly to feel disappointment, though there was no denying that there was a twinge of it. Despite years of knowing better, I still had a bit of a girlish hope for a change, for a recovery.

  "Go on up so you can visit. Then get yourself something to eat. I can hear your stomach growling from here."

  "Thanks," I said, giving her a smile before making my way to the elevator, riding it up to the third floor.

  The second floor was for short-term patients, those who were going through a rough patch, needed a little more therapy than they could get in a typical therapist's office.

  The third floor was for permanent residents.

  Like my brother.

  Michael.

  Most of my memories of Michael were time-soaked around the edges, almost so faded that it was hard to remember that they were real, not dreams at all.

  Michael was three years younger than I was. And I remembered him in our ch
ildhood as a blond-haired barrel of endless energy, literally banging off the walls as he ran around the house on lanky legs that hadn't quite know how to work right yet. His room had been next to mine, floor riddled in a Lego minefield. He used to climb out of bed at night and climb in his closet to knock on my wall, making me fall out of bed, press my ear to the wall, and listen to some joke he had made up that day that had no actual punchline, but I pretended to laugh anyway.

  When friends were few and far between, he was there to jump on the trampoline with me, build snowmen with me, watch movies with me.

  The older we got, the more we grew apart. After all, what did a fifteen-year-old girl have in common with a twelve-year-old boy?

  When I had told him I was going across the country for college, his response had been he'd been waiting years to have the bigger room with his own bathroom.

  We hadn't been close.

  We didn't even stay in touch on social media when I finally packed and left.

  The guilt of that now was oppressive, was something I didn't let myself think on too much because I knew it would crush me under its weight, would make it hard to force my limbs out of bed in the morning.

  Because it wasn't even a full year after I left that he first started showing symptoms.

  But my parents had overlooked them a first, chalked it up to second child syndrome, a lack of motivation, being a teenager.

  He didn't hang out with friends much anymore. His grades slipped. He was moody and not sleeping well. He had some strange aversion to taking care of his basic hygiene needs.

  It wasn't for a long couple of months before my mom convinced my father that it was more than your typical teenager nonsense.

  From what my mother told me about their first visit to the psychiatrist, Michael had perched on the couch like a catcher at a baseball mound.

  That was when I started to worry, thought something must be really wrong.

  It took another couple of months for the rest of the symptoms to show up.

  Delusions.

  Hallucinations.