Degradation

by Stylo Fantome

  Jameson wouldn’t let himself think about her body, or he’d have to pull over the car and ease the tension between them, right then and there.

  She was fighting against him, and it just turned him on even more. When she had started pulling down her panties, in the middle of that room, with all those people …, it had taken every bit of restraint he had not to dismiss everyone and fuck her right then. The old Tatum had been fun to play with, cute. This Tatum, he wanted to own. He wanted to break her down, bend her to him. She seemed a worthy adversary, and Jameson loved a good fight.

  “Do you always start work this late?” he questioned, pulling up in front of a kind of dive looking bar. She shook her head.

  “No, I’m filling in for someone, I normally work weekends. Thanks for the ride,” she said before leaping out of the car. He got out right behind her.

  “Oh, I’ve gotta see this place. I’m fascinated by your life. Good girl goes bad. Is there piss on the floor?” he asked, holding the door to the bar open. She gave him a smile full of sweetness.

  “You have such a sexy way with words.”

  Then she elbowed him and strode through the door.

  She made a beeline to the bar, ducking under the partition and heading in to a back room. Jameson planted himself on a bar stool and ordered a bourbon. Neat. The woman serving him was wearing a pair of tight leather pants and a string-bikini top, and wore them well. It made him curious as to what Tate would be wearing, wondered if it would be as slutty.

  He wasn’t disappointed. Fifteen minutes later, at ten o’clock on the dot, she reappeared. His tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth. She was wearing a tiny pair of jean cut-offs. He had wanted to see her ass, and now his wish was pretty much granted. When she leaned over the back of the bar to grab something, he could see the bottom swell of her ass cheeks.

  On top she was wearing a t-shirt with some sort of baseball logo on it, but she had ripped off the bottom half of it. It stopped just beneath her breasts, and when she lifted her arms, he could see a gray, lacy bra. The shirt also show-cased her stomach, with was tone and flat. The girl took care of her body. She had leather boots on her feet, almost combat like, but with the tops folded down. They should have looked at odds with her sexy outfit, but they worked some how.

  “Is this how you normally dress for work?” Jameson asked when she made her way towards his end of the bar. She glanced down at herself.

  “No. Sometimes I wear less,” she replied, and he laughed.

  “Less? So if I come in here on the weekend, you might be serving people in a bikini?” he had to shout to be heard over the music and the rowdy patrons. It had been pretty full when they’d walked in – now it was standing room only.

  “Only if it’s a game day.”

  “Hot. But those shorts, I think they have to go. Sometimes less is more, you know,” he teased. Tate raised an eyebrow.

  “You think they’re too short?”

  “Yes.”

  She whirled away from him and took long strides to the other end of the bar. She picked something up and then headed back towards him. It took him a second before he realized it was a blow horn. She smirked at him and then lifted it to her lips.

  “Everybody! Hey!” she shouted. There was a roar of cheers and the music was turned down. “This man here thinks my shorts are too short! What do you all think!?” She pulled the blow horn away, lifting her arms up in a questioning gesture.

  The place went nuts. The crowd had to be seventy-five percent male, and all of them were hooting and hollering at her. Tate smiled, and winked, biting the tip of her tongue between her teeth. It was clear that she knew what she was doing, knew how to work the crowd. She turned around and bent at the waist, shaking her ass a little. The roar grew to a deafening level. She finally stood up and turned back around, waving everyone away. Then she turned to Jameson.

  “I didn’t say you looked bad,” he pointed out. She shook her head.

  “You’re ridiculous. If you don’t like what I’m wearing, leave,” she suggested before prancing back down the bar to wait on customers.

  “Not until you agree to talk with me, Tatum!” Jameson shouted over the din. She glanced at him while she expertly twirled bottles in her hands, throwing liquor in to glasses.

  “I still don’t know what it is we have to talk about!” she yelled back, twirling two shakers at once. She was very good at her job.

  “The way you talk, the way you dress, your makeup, your ass!” he replied. At the word “ass”, some idiot next to him cheered.

  “Best I can tell, not one of those things is any of your business!” she laughed, cracking open one of the shakers and letting a blue concoction pour in to a martini glass.

  “I’m making them my business. I want to get to know you,” he said.

  “But not date me,” she clarified, pouring the second drink.

  “Don’t be fucking stupid,” Jameson laughed.

  Tate made her way back to him and then planted her hands on the bar, spreading her arms wide. She leaned close to him, very close, her breath hot against his lips. Her loose shirt hung forward and he had a perfect view down her cleavage.

  “What do you want, Kane?” she asked in a low voice. He dragged his eyes away from her tits and stared her in the eye.

  “Call me that name again, and I will punish your mouth,” he warned her. She chuckled.

  “Don’t make promises you won’t keep,” she retorted.

  Oh my, I may have met my match. This should be interesting.

  “Who says I won’t? I have big plans for that mouth,” Jameson said, pinching her chin between his fingers. She rolled her eyes.

  “Not gonna happen, Kane. Not any part of me, is going to touch any part of you, so you had better get used to that idea,” she informed him before pulling away.

  We’ll see about that.

  “Alright. But we are going to talk,” he said. She heaved a sigh.

  “Fine. Fine. How about we make an appointment? Say, tomorrow? One o’clock? Does that work for you, my lord and master?” she taunted. He took out his phone.

  “I’m marking it down. Meet me at my office,” he told her. She snorted.

  “Fine, whatever,” she grumbled at him. He glanced up at her.

  “You had better show up. If I have to come get you, you won’t like it,” Jameson warned her. Tate laughed.

  “Talk, talk, talk. In my experience, men who talk as much as you, have very little action to back it up,” she said. He laughed as well.

  “You’ve experienced me in action. And there wasn’t very much talking.”

  She rolled her eyes and then grabbed his glass, drinking the rest of his bourbon in one shot.

  “You put too much emphasis on the past, Kane. It was one time, one time. The great Jameson Kane is hung up on a one night stand? It was nothing, it’s long gone. We’ll talk about whatever you want tomorrow, and then it’s goodbye,” she informed him before walking off. He smirked at her.

  Twice. She called me by my last name twice. Now she really owes me.

  5

  Tate sat in a chair in an anteroom outside of Jameson’s office. She had thought about blowing him off, but she didn’t want him showing up at her apartment again. How had he known where she lived, anyway? And he had said he was scared of it – Mr. Prissy Pants had probably never been in a low-rent building.

  Asshole.

  She had no clue what was going on between them. He challenged her, she played his games. She could have walked away from him – the moment he entered that conference room, she could’ve walked out. When he touched her leg, she could have slapped him. Could have screamed and acted like a scared girl.

  But something about him still got under her skin. There was truth to what Ang had said, her night with Jameson had greatly affected her. It not only set about a major change in her life, but had helped her discover a new side to herself. Tate liked to be treated roughly. She liked to be talked dirty to, liked to be pushed ar
ound. Of course, only on her terms, and only by men she liked. She didn’t like Jameson Kane, and nothing with him was ever on her terms. He made her nervous. Her made her hot. He confused her.

  “Ms. O’Shea?”

  She snapped out of her daze. It was obvious that the secretary had been standing there for a while. Tate smiled and got up, following the woman in to a large office. Jameson didn’t spare any expense – large windows with amazing views. Mahogany furniture. Impressive credentials in frames. Was that a real Mark Rothko on the wall!?

  “I figured you would stand me up,” Jameson got out of his chair as the secretary backed out of the room. Tate shrugged and walked forward, flopping in to a chair across from his desk.

  “As cute as stalking is, I figured I’d better nip this in the bud,” she replied. His eyes traveled up and down her form.

  “You look different today. Every time I see you, it’s like a different person,” he said. She glanced down at herself. She was wearing wide legged suit pants, ballet flats, and a blouse with puffed, cap sleeves. All black.

  “I’m temping for an upscale salon today. What do you want?” Tate got to the point. He smiled at her.

  “So impatient. How’ve you been? Did you finish school?” he inquired, taking his seat again.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. He said he just wanted to talk, but then he would make comments about punishing her mouth, and other things. He said he didn’t want to date her, but he seemed borderline obsessed with getting to know her. He made her mind spin in circles.

  “I’ve been fan-fucking-tastic. I dropped out of school right after I left Harrisburg. Is that it?” she asked, surging to her feet.

  “Sit down,” he commanded in a stern voice, and she immediately did so – shocking herself a little.

  “What do you want, Kane? Let’s not beat around the bush. You don’t know me – you never cared to know me before, so what’s the big deal now? If I disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect your life,” Tate pointed out.

  “Maybe not. But I’m kind of used to getting what I want, and like I said, you intrigue me,” Jameson replied. She scooted to the edge of her chair.

  “Okay, fine. My life story – I left home after the night I slept with you, didn’t look back. My father called me, told me he wouldn’t pay my tuition anymore. I told him to fuck off. My mother called me and told me I wasn’t welcome in their home anymore. I told her to fuck off. Ellie called me and told me I was the biggest whore she’d ever met. I told her to go fuck herself. I dropped out of school. I got a job at a Chili’s. I moved out my apartment. Got a second job cleaning motel rooms. Moved to a shittier apartment. Got my job at the bar – moved in with Rusty, to an even shittier apartment.

  “But you know what’s crazy? I was happy. I got to be me – I never got to be me, before I left. It was awesome. I drank a lot, I did a lot of drugs, I had a lot of sex, and it was all awesome. Now you’re pretty much caught up to speed. Can I go?” she said it all rapid fire, speaking as fast as she could. Jameson leaned back in his chair.

  “Do you still do drugs?” he asked. She rolled her eyes.

  “Pot sometimes. I’ve tried ecstasy, and coke. Acid once, but not really in to all that stuff anymore. Never did anything super hard core,” she replied.

  “Scandalous. How many guys have you slept with?”

  “Too many to count,” she responded. Now it was his turn to roll his eyes.

  “Stop being cute. How many?” he asked again. She shrugged.

  “I don’t keep count. A lot, but not, like, astronomical.”

  “Any as good as me?”

  “A couple.”

  “Doubtful.”

  Tate stared at him for a minute. Was he really insecure about how he stacked up? Seemed ridiculous. He’d probably been fucking his way through the Ford Modeling Agency. She knew there was no way she could compare to the women he must have slept with since their time together. She let out a deep sigh.

  “Is that what you really want to know about? You can just ask,” she told him. “I’d had sex with one other person, before you. What you and I did was …, intense. Probably not right on more levels than I like to acknowledge, but I liked it. It took me a while to admit that, you know. That I liked it. I thought something was wrong with me – you were a complete dick, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  “Then a couple months after I moved back here, after I moved out of the apartment Daddy had rented, I went to this party. Got a little drunk. This guy was hitting on me, really laying it on, and it was like the old Tate kept whispering ‘ew, you can’t stand here and listen to this, it’s inappropriate! You’ll get in trouble!’, but another side of me started going, ‘who cares? He’s hot, you’re horny – just fuck him, you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself’ – and it was like something in me changed. I could do that, if I wanted to. No parents to worry about upsetting, no reputation to really care about, none of that stuff. Turned out the guy was horrible in bed, a total waste of time. But it helped me realize something – I like sex. I like having sex, I like being sexy. I like being single. I like being me, and fuck anyone who doesn’t like it,” she finished.

  “So, you couldn’t stop thinking about it, huh? Do you still think about it?” Jameson asked. Tate groaned.

  “You are the most self-obsessed asshole I’ve ever met,” she told him. He laughed.

  “You may have done a one-eighty, but I’m still pretty much the same guy – just sharper claws,” he warned her.

  “No, I don’t think about it,” she answered his question. “I didn’t even recognize you at first, in that kitchen. Took a while for it to click.”

  “What about what happened in that conference room? Are you okay with that?” he asked. She blinked in surprise. He shifted gears so fast, completely dominated the conversation. If it could even be called that – she felt like she was being interrogated.

  “Which part? You tricking me in to a job? Or feeling me up in front of a bunch of suits?” she asked for clarification. He smiled.

  “I already know you liked it when I touched you, so how about when you took off your panties? I didn’t make you do that – pretty bold move, I didn’t expect it,” he said.

  “Probably because you don’t know me. Maybe that’s an every day thing for me, not bold at all,” she pointed out. Jameson laughed.

  “I don’t think so. I challenged you. You didn’t like it. You stepped up to the plate. I admire that,” he commented.

  “Yeah, and I knocked it out of the park. Game over. I win. You lose,” Tate replied. His eyebrows shot up.

  “You didn’t win shit, the game isn’t over yet. How far would you be willing to go?”

  “I’m not playing games with you, Kane.”

  “You started them. If you can’t handle it, just say so.”

  “I can handle anything you can dish out.”

  They stared at each other for a minute, the tension thick in the air. She didn’t know what was going on between them – she should get up and walk away. But it was like that night in his apartment all over again. What Tate should do, and what she was going to do, were two very different things. He fascinated her. She usually intimidated men, or was just a good-time girl to them. Rarely did she banter or spar with them, and if she did, she had no trouble ripping them a new ass hole. Jameson, though, was unrippable.

  “I want to hear about the best sex you’ve ever had,” he switched the subject again. Tate laughed.

  “Are you sure? It’s not you,” she teased. It was a complete lie, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Let’s hear it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. She thought for a second, leaning back as well.

  “It was probably with my friend Ang, like two years ago or something. I had a boyfriend, but he found out that I had slept with his best friend. It was before we had started dating, but he didn’t care. Totally freaked out in a club, started screaming tha
t I was the biggest slut he’d ever met, just a huge whore. He kept shouting it to anyone who would listen,” Tate started. Jameson sighed.

  “So your friend Ang came to your aide after a nasty, embarrassing break up. Comforted you, wanted you to feel good about yourself,” he tried to fill in the story. Tate threw her head back and laughed.

  “Not so much. Ang dragged him outside and beat the shit out of him. Pretty hot. We fucked right there in the alley. Ang bent me over a staircase and explained to my boyfriend, in graphic detail, what a good fuck he was missing out on by dumping me,” she finished.

  “Wow. That was the best sex you ever had?” Jameson asked. She shrugged.

  “Easily in the top five. Most of those are Ang,” she supplied.

  “Must be an animal in bed.”

  “Yeah – he also has a huge dick.”

  She was trying to shock him on purpose, now. Tate was very comfortable talking about sex, and in her experience, men tended to get nervous when confronted with a woman who talked the way she did. Not Jameson Kane, however. He nodded at her comment, showing all the interest of someone listening to a weather report.

  “That does help. Are you two still together?” he asked.

  “We were never together. We’re just friends who happen to sleep together, when the mood strikes us,” she explained.

  “And how does one become a friend like that to you?” Jameson inquired. Tate snickered.

  “Why, Mr. Kane, do you want to be fuck buddies with me?” she laughed.

  “Leave out the buddy part,” he responded. She leaned forward in her chair.

  “Not be you. Is that what this is really about? You want to have sex with me?” she asked.

  “Of course I do. You can lie to me all you want, but I have no problem admitting that you are still, to this day, probably the hottest pussy I’ve ever had,” he said, his voice casual.

  Tate inhaled sharply and choked a little. Ang was pretty blunt with her, but very few other men ever talked to her quite like that – it did something to her blood pressure. Hearing Jameson say it, did something to her. She rubbed her thighs together and took a deep breath.