by Violet Blue
“I have money,” I said.
With that, the bartender disappeared into an adjoining room, a curtain of plastic strips clattering lightly as he passed. I waited, wondering if the drinkers could see the ice tonguing my skin; if they could see me at night, water coursing over my flesh; if they could see how I tried to kill the heat of my longing, failing as the ice melted away and I climaxed once again.
I felt they could and it troubled me. On the counter, a wedge of tortilla sat forlornly under a plastic dome. I could hear the bartender on the phone in the adjoining room. All this for some ice? When he returned with my jug blissfully full, I asked how much I owed him. Before he could reply, Big Nose interrupted, addressing the bartender in Catalan, a language I wasn’t yet familiar with. The bartender poured a large brandy, then set it in front of me.
“Gratis,” he said.
Unwilling to risk offence, I accepted the drink while trying to convince myself it left me under no obligation. So bloody English of me. Why couldn’t I decline the brandy, pay for the ice conventionally and leave?
“Graçias,” I said, turning to the customer, but I didn’t smile.
He nodded, lips tilting in wry amusement. The brandy was rough, its heat scorching my throat and blazing inside my chest. The nape of my neck was wet with sweat, my hair damp. I was concerned about the ice melting in my jug and wished I could sip the ice water. The ceiling fan clicked faintly. Nobody spoke and I was relieved. It could simply be this guy was silently extending the hand of friendship. If so, I would silently shake it then shoot off home. The brandy was difficult to drink though, fire when I wanted ice.
“Ay, qué calor,” said my new friend at length.
“Sí, qué calor,” I replied.
Hot weather. I sipped my brandy. I could feel him watching and his passive interest bugged me. After a couple more minutes, wanting to escape his gaze, I asked for the lavabos and was directed down a flight of rickety stairs. I descended toward a basement with scruffy, dark crimson walls, toilets at the far end and a swinging door with a small, dirty window lined with wire mesh. Halfway down the stairs, movement below caught my eye. I paused, looking over my shoulder at the corridor behind me. Beyond an open door was a guy on a chair and a woman on her knees, her head bobbing in his lap. I clutched the banister, immobilized by fear and a sudden, pornographic lust.
My cunt swelled and swelled, blood throbbing there. Oh, Christ, what a picture. The guy’s mouth was slack, his head tipped back, as the woman, her chestnut curls fanning over his thighs, dipped up and down, up and down. Had they heard me? Hell, I hoped not. I needed to watch. Until that moment, I hadn’t known how much I wanted cock; hadn’t known how much I’d missed it since dumping the guitarist; hadn’t known that stab of raging desire. Because while I could fuck myself with cock-shaped objects (cool as a cucumber), nothing could ever come close to the overwhelming sensations of a deep, dark, blinding mouthful. I stared, hardly daring to breathe.
The guy was young and lean, a tumble of ink black curls giving him an air of flamenco passion. Transfixed, I watch him grow fiercer, pulling the woman onto him, his fingers snarled in her hair as his pelvis rocked either to meet or defeat her. In her kneeling position, the woman kicked at the floor, squealing in muffled protest, her hands flapping. My yearning for cock was knocked for six by a second wave, a shocking urge to be claimed and used in a myriad of filthy ways.
My cunt flared to a cushiony mass of need, so sensitive I fancied I could feel the warp and weft of cotton in my underwear. I wanted to be where she was, at the mercy of a wild stranger who regarded me as nothing but an object for his pleasure, insignificant and disposable. I wanted to be all body and no mind, a thing made of cunt, mouth and ass, wide open and ready to receive.
Face aflame, I turned, intending to hurry back to the bar. I would put it from my thoughts, pretend nothing had happened, pretend I hadn’t seen either the couple or the grubby depths of my desire. Was this because I hadn’t had sex for so long? Was I craving the basest sort of action as compensation for those months of lack? Feeling shaky, I clasped the banister, mouth dry as a bone.
My stomach somersaulted. To my horror, at the head of the stairs stood the big-nosed guy from the bar. He grinned, descending in slow, swaggering steps. Panicking, I glanced down to the room. The guy in the chair was looking right at me, smirking as he slammed the woman’s head between his thighs. My knees turned wobbly while blood pumped in my ears, roaring like seashells and high fever.
Big Nose was at my side, his forehead gleaming with a film of sweat. He tipped his eyebrows at me. “Cuatro miles pesetas,” he said.
Outrage spiked my fear. Four thousand pesetas! He thought I was a whore, thought I would blow him for a nasty brandy and a handful of notes!
“Déjame paso!” I snapped, attempting to sidestep him. He mirrored me, blocking my path. I grew more afraid then, trapped between these two randy cucarachas, and yet my groin was pulsing as hard as my heart.
“Cuatro miles,” he repeated, nodding toward the basement room. Then in Spanish he added, “Take it, go on. It is a good price. You know you want it.”
And I understood at once that I was to pay; that I was the punter not the whore. I didn’t know whether to be more or less insulted. I stared at him, incredulous. He actually thought I was so desperate for cock I would pay to suck off a stranger in a sleazy, backstreet bar!
“Move,” I said, no longer bothering to speak his language. Despite being on a lower step, I tried shouldering him out of the way but with swift skill, he jostled me backward. I cried out to realize I was now sandwiched between him and the wall, his chest pressing against my breasts, my arms trapped in his hands. For several seconds we stood there, our breaths shallow and tense.
“No me molestes,” I said, a Berlitz phrase I’d never had to use before.
The guy laughed and with good reason. My demand sounded so pitifully insincere I may as well have said, “Molest me.” He crooked a finger, resting it in the hollow of my throat, and I turned aside, looking past him to the room below. The woman was watching us. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and laughed, white teeth flashing. I was relieved to see she wasn’t in trouble but, more than that, I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only woman keen on skirting so close to danger.
I turned to face Big Nose with renewed bravery but he trailed his bent finger up my neck. My skin tingled to his touch, tiny shivers of pleasure rippling through my body’s heat. I tried defying him, tried steeling myself against his advances, but I caught the sadistic brightness in his bitter chocolate eyes and I melted a little more. I pressed my head back to the wall.
“No me molestes,” I repeated, my voice soft and tremulous.
He laughed quietly, his breath tickling my face. I wanted him to touch me in horrible ways, to stick his hand between my thighs or paw my breasts. But he didn’t. He just reiterated his price. When I didn’t reply, he ground his crotch against me, rubbing his hard-on above the swell of my pubis. The pressure of him there distilled to my cunt, making my lips part and pout.
“Qué barato!” he said. A good price.
The basement was hot as hell. Sweat prickled on my back, cotton clinging damply. He knew he was turning me on and every rock of his body was sweet torture, twisting me with what I didn’t want to want.
In Spanish, I said, “I just came for ice. I need to go home now. Release me, please.”
“You will not sleep,” he replied. “It’s too hot.”
“I have ice.”
“You don’t want ice,” he said. “You want cock.”
I felt the color rise in my face. He placed his hands either side of my head, caging me loosely in his arms, his biceps forming swarthy little hillocks on the edges of my vision. A waft of sweat, earthy and masculine, surged into my senses and I wanted to bury my nose in his armpits and inhale him.
“There’s cock here,” he continued. “Take it, guapa. We are not expensive. Take what you want then go home.”
His eyes were such a deep brown I could barely distinguish pupil from iris.
“I don’t have much money on me,” I said.
He chuckled and I flushed deeper to realize I’d betrayed myself.
“Then go get some money,” he said. “There’s a cash machine—”
“No,” I murmured.
“Yes, stop resisting yourself. Do you agree it is a fair price?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, and I genuinely didn’t. It seemed an amount I’d pay without too many qualms. But fair, good? There was no market value for this; it flew in the face of the usual sexism dictating the flow of supply and demand: women give, men get. Without a scarcity of clean men with hard cocks, why would I pay? And what in the world would prompt a cock-drought? Guys were always up for it. But here and now in the early hours in Bar Anise, they’d changed the world, creating both a need and a scarcity. Demand outstripped supply. A fair price? The thud in my pussy insisted it was a bargain.
I swallowed. “I have money in my piso,” I said, deeply ashamed. “I live across the street.”
He stepped back. “Vete!” he said, gesturing up the stairs.
I wasted no time, striding through the bar, head held high. At that point, I was unsure if I would return. I thought I might come to my senses but the night was sultry and weighted with the city, its heat wrapping me in strange enchantments where Bar Anise’s subterranean secrets seduced me away from the prosaic. The man’s voice echoed in my mind: Stop resisting yourself.
Gone was the Barcelona I knew where the metro whisked me to work, sunshine poured on mosaic lizards, plane trees shimmered and cathedral spires and scaffolding stabbed a flat blue sky. Instead, lust conspired with magic and menace to lead me as if in a dream to collect money from my apartment and scurry back to the bar.
Stop resisting yourself.
I downed the brandy still awaiting me on the counter and crept downstairs, my sordid hunger flaring at the wine-dark walls and scents of sweat and semen lingering in the shadows. All I’m doing, I told myself, is buying sex much as men have done for centuries. Nonetheless, I felt myself less an empowered consumer and more a desperate, greedy slut, a woman shameless enough to slake her desire in this masculine habitat of beer, cigarettes and sullen, perceptible misogyny. But I liked that these guys probably didn’t much care for me except as an object to fuck. The feeling was mutual.
No one was about in the basement so, nervously, I entered the room I’d seen earlier, an underused storeroom with drums of olive oil lined against a wall, boxes under a large wooden table and four towers of orange chairs stacked in a corner. Big Nose was sitting spread-legged on a reversed chair, arms folded on its back. Behind him on the table sat his flamenco-looking friend, one leg swinging back and forth. My heart was going nineteen to the dozen.
“Who takes the money?” I asked.
Big Nose held out a hand. Feigning confidence, I gave him the notes. Stretching, he passed them to Flamenco who bundled them into his jeans pocket as if he were the pimp. There was a brief exchange in Catalan and I understand only that it was about money and that Big Nose was called Jordi.
“Graçias,” said Flamenco, relaxing his posture to suggest his work was done.
Jordi stood and spun the chair to face me. Still standing, he said, “On your knees.”
I glanced at Flamenco who was making no moves to leave. “It’s not a floor show,” I said.
Jordi grabbed my face with a broad hand, forcing me to meet his gaze. He squeezed my cheeks. “On your fucking knees.”
His nastiness sent shards of arousal to my groin. I felt bullied and debased, even more so because of our audience, and it was everything I wanted but would never have dared ask for. I fell to my knees, the scuffed hardwood floor briefly cooling my skin. Ahead of me, the fly of Jordi’s jeans undulated over his boner, the faded denim at his crotch reminding me how much of a stranger he was, the rhythms of a life unknown imprinted on fabric concealing the cock I was about to blow. With a clink of metal, he unbuckled and unzipped, rummaging to release his erection.
My heart gave a kick of joy at the sight of his hard-on raging up from the wiry thicket of his pubes. I’d forgotten how obscenely aggressive hard cocks are and his was a brutish beauty, the color suffusing the head with such intensity I fancied it might seep through his skin to stain the air with a blood violet hue. He gripped himself, fingers thick around his girth, the sea blue vein on his underside peeping as he gently jerked.
“It’s a good price, no?” he said.
Doing my best to forget about Flamenco, I opened my mouth to take Jordi but he stilled me with a hand on my forehead. “It’s a good price,” he repeated sternly.
His balls were tucked up tight and they lifted as he worked his shaft.
“Sí, sí, claro,” I replied.
He clasped my head and drew me sharply onto his cock. The sudden fullness of my mouth made me splutter and he held me there, forcing me to inhale his humidity and that smell I’d forgotten, the smell of men, a smell reminiscent of depths and of things discarded, of dark oceans, forest floors, dereliction, old tires and knives left out in the sun.
“Así me gusta, nena,” he said approvingly as I withdrew to his tip.
He held my head, adding a slight pressure as I began slurping back and forth, making it seem as if he were the one leading. Perhaps he was. That seemed at odds with me being the paying customer but I enjoyed him taking the upper hand, so perhaps the incongruity was superficial.
“Qué bonita,” said Flamenco. How pretty.
Those watching eyes inflamed a shame that fueled my lust. I swallowed Jordi as deep as I could, my appetite provoking him to greater force. He began fucking my face, driving into my instinctive resistance, making me whimper and cough as my saliva spilled and my eyes watered. I felt sluttish and used, at the mercy of these callous brutes, and it was bliss. My swollen cunt was so fat and rich it barely seemed to have room between my thighs.
“Hey, Àngel,” said Jordi, addressing his friend. “Why don’t you give her a free fuck? You would like this, nena? Es gratis!”
He withdrew from my mouth to let me speak.
“Sí, sí, fóllame!” I croaked, gazing up at Jordi through a veil of tears. He sat heavily in the chair, lowering my head to his height. I dropped onto all fours, engulfing his length again while hoping the free fuck would be as hot and rough as the free brandy.
I heard Àngel cross the room. Àngel. What a perfect, preternatural name for this other-worldly scenario. Taking position behind me, Àngel flipped up my skirt and yanked down my underwear. I groaned around Jordi’s cock and his answering groan echoed in my ears. I heard Àngel unzip and I shuffled my knees wider, groaning again when he teased me by slotting his cock to the length of my folds. He sawed to and fro, the upward strain of his erection pressing into my wetness and making me ache for penetration.
Àngel spoke to Jordi in Catalan, tight hard words muttered under his breath. Jordi replied, throaty and urgent. With a sound like an expletive, Àngel slammed into me, hissing as he lodged himself high. He was meaty and solid and he clasped my hips, gripping hard as he began driving into my hole. Every thrust jolted my body, jerking me forward onto Jordi’s lap. I felt skewered all the way through, my mouth and cunt both stuffed to capacity. The two men worked together, fucking, pushing, grunting and groaning. Occasionally they exchanged words I didn’t understand and once or twice there was amusement and faint laughter.
They had me. They well and truly had me. And when Àngel reached for my clit, I knew I was lost. My climax raced closer and I bleated with nearness. Àngel hissed in Catalan. Jordi growled.
“Sigue, sigue,” he said. He grabbed fistfuls of my hair, his cock swelling to its absolute limit in my mouth. I was a rag doll between the two men, so close to coming my limbs seemed to have lost their bones. With a hoarse cry, Jordi came, flooding my mouth with his bitter silk, and the sound of his release tipped me over the edge. I came hard, disoriented and
dizzy as pleasure clutched and stars exploded in my mind.
Moments later, my body began to drop with exhaustion but there was no letup from Àngel. He kept fucking me like there was no tomorrow and my pulpy walls, swollen with sensitivity, clung to his thrusts. I held Jordi in my mouth, gasping on his dwindling erection until Àngel’s hammering became so frenzied I fancied he wanted to destroy me. He peaked with a long, low groan, wedging himself deep, and I moaned around Jordi’s cock, wishing I could melt clean away.
The three of us held still until Jordi stroked my hair, a tender gesture that took me by surprise. Àngel caressed my buttocks. For a minute or two, we rested in silence and in those moments, I felt we shared a tacit understanding and mutual respect. We had all got what we wanted and were grateful.
But I didn’t want to stay. I had nothing to say to them, nor them to me. Conversation would have made us awkward and I wanted to leave it there, pure and perfect, a moment out of time devoted entirely to pleasure. Àngel slipped away and I tidied myself up. Jordi asked how I was. I told him I was fine just as Àngel returned with my jug, full to the brim with ice. There was no one in the bar when I left and all the lights were off. Jordi unlocked the door so I could leave.
“Graçias,” I said.
“De nada,” he replied with a smile. “Y graçias.”
Back in my apartment, I tipped half the ice into a freezer bag, stashed it in my ice compartment, and took the remaining ice to bed. I thought I would do my usual routine of rubbing cubes over my skin to cool me into sleep but I must have crashed out at once. In the morning, my jug contained only water and my mind was a fog of lust and filth. Where had I been? What had I done? Did that actually happen?
I slipped on a T-shirt, rolled up my shutter and stepped out onto my balcony. It was early morning but already the heat pulsed like the midday sun. I rubbed my eyes. Below, the street was coming to life, the baker’s window lined with breads and pastries, people heading to work, a woman on a Vespa turning left. I could see a couple of bars were open but not Bar Anise. It looked as if it hadn’t been open for years, its facade concealed by chipboard, graffiti and tatty fly posters. Of course. Hadn’t it always been derelict, just another dump waiting to be spruced up before the Olympics?
