Torment Me (Rough Love Part One)

by Annabel Joseph

  As for W, he made a sound like the one he’d made earlier, another animal-trainer cue, only more intense. He held my shoulders as he came, then his hands crept up to my neck and gripped me there. It made me clench him harder, everywhere, all over. I moaned, choking. Don’t hurt me anymore. I can’t take anymore.

  He was gone in a flash. His hands gone from my neck, his cock gone from my ass. I was afraid he’d deserted me completely, but then I felt his weight dip the bed beside me. A moment later, his fingers ruffled my hair, touching, teasing. I fought the urge to turn my body toward him for more contact. I didn’t want to need him. He was too rough, too cruel. I absolutely wasn’t going to see him again.

  He rose a moment later and went into the bathroom. I heard water. Not a shower, a bathtub. I drowsed to the sound of the bubbling water until he touched one of my ankles. Snip, snip through the stockings. Him and his damned scissors. The gag came off next. I opened and closed my mouth, waggled my tongue. My chin was coated with drool.

  “Let’s go take a bath,” he said. “You’re a fucking mess.”

  I let him lead me into the bathroom, not sure if he intended to bathe me or drown me.

  “My arms ache,” I said, my mouth still stiff and awkward. “Please unbind my wrists. I’m afraid to be in the water with my hands bound behind my back.” No response. “I won’t try to take off the blindfold, I promise. I don’t care what you look like.” Huge lie, but I really was scared.

  I guess he heard enough fear in my voice—not the sexy kind of fear—to take pity on me. He cut off the zip ties but kept hold of one of my wrists. He guided me to the tub and helped me get in. Oh, God, it felt so warm, perfect temperature. He climbed in too, settling me in his lap. I leaned my head against his shoulder and thought I could fall asleep right here, cradled against his body with his muscles sliding under my skin. I was too tired to even care that I was blindfolded. My eyes closed behind the leather mask, and my body relaxed against his.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” he said, and I perked up again. “We need to talk, remember?”

  “Talk about what?”

  He started washing me, using the Park Hyatt’s fragrant soap, and a soft washcloth to sponge the drool from my chin and neck. “About an exclusive arrangement,” he said.

  “Why? Why do you want me to stop seeing other people?”

  “So I can see you whenever I want. And because I want to fluid bond with you. Bareback.”

  “I’m not allowed to do that.”

  “Says who?”

  “My boss.”

  “When you’re with me, I’m your boss.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I need to work at least four appointments a week.”

  “For what? For money? I’m offering you money.” He named an amount that was four appointments worth of cash, plus extra. A lot of extra. It scared me. What would he demand for that kind of money?

  “The thing is, I have a life,” I said. “A home. A boyfriend. I can’t be at your beck and call, no matter how much you pay me.”

  “I don’t want you at my beck and call. I’d be reasonable. I just don’t want you seeing other guys.”

  “Why?”

  He ran a hand down between my breasts. “Because I don’t like to share.” He laughed softly. “Your fucking boyfriend. He puts up with your job?”

  I wasn’t going to talk to him about Simon, or my personal life. It was bad enough he was asking me to be exclusive. “I can’t bareback with you, ever,” I said.

  “Okay, but you can stop seeing other people.”

  “Did you talk to Henry about this?”

  “Yes, I’ve talked to Henry. He said it was up to you.”

  W was washing me so gently. I didn’t think he was even washing me anymore, just stroking me. Don’t do this, Chere. Don’t be swayed by how good he makes you feel. By this body, his scent, the rumble of his voice...

  “The thing is, you’re not my only regular client,” I said. “Those johns will move on when I’m not available. When you’re finished with me, when you’re finished doing...whatever this is we’re doing together, I’ll need to build up my client list all over again.”

  “You’ll have enough money to coast for a while. And I don’t think you’d have a whole lot of trouble finding new clients. You’re a good lay.”

  His fingers delved between my legs. He stroked me until I couldn’t hold back the noises, the need. His cock was hard, jutting up between us, and next thing I knew, I was sliding along the length of it, sloshing water back and forth in the tub.

  “Are you on the pill?” he asked, stilling me with the tip of his cock against my entrance.

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, you can’t.” I reached down to block him. I was on the pill, but he wasn’t coming inside me without a rubber. No.

  “I’m clean, Chere. I’m a very responsible person.”

  “How do you know I’m responsible?”

  That laugh again. “Because you’re too much of a bitch to be careless. I bet you don’t even let the boyfriend in without a condom. If you really have a boyfriend.”

  There was a shift and a splash, and the sound of a condom wrapper, and then he was back again. I checked with my fingers and yes, he was sheathed. Yes, I was a bitch when it came to protection. Yes, since the drugs, I hadn’t let Simon near me without a condom, although the truth was, we hadn’t had sex for months.

  “Be mine, Chere, just for a while.” He surged into me. I was primed, even in the water. He teased my still-hurting breasts and filled me oh, so perfectly. “Be exclusive with me. It won’t be that long. Just a few months. I’ll probably get bored of you by then.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “I never said I wasn’t.”

  “I can hardly get up the motivation to see you from week to week, much less be exclusive with you,” I said. “You’re cruel and full of yourself. There’s nothing about you I like.”

  He manipulated my clit, just to prove me a liar. My hips bucked, rebelling, arching for more. “Nothing you like, huh?” he said in that bemused tone of his.

  “And I don’t know anything about you. You act like your personal information is some holy grail that no mere mortal can look upon.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Your fake name.”

  A pause, just long enough for me to realize how cranky and pathetic I sounded.

  “You like me that much, huh?” he said, pressing me down on his cock. “You’re crazy about me.”

  “No.”

  “You are. You want to know all about me. It’s killing you that you don’t know my name, my favorite color, my birthday—”

  “I don’t want to know anything about you.” Jesus, if only he wasn’t such a good fuck, even now, in a bathtub, when I was pissed at him for being a jerk. “You know, if you want to build up an exclusive arrangement with an escort, zip ties and blindfolds aren’t the way to go about it. Or hard anal, tied to a bed.”

  “You love hard anal, tied to a bed.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Admit that you do, or I will take you back, tie you down again, and prove you wrong.”

  I was silent a moment. He said, “Okay,” and started to get up, cock inside me and everything.

  I grabbed his shoulders in a panic. “No. Please. Okay, I admit it.” I couldn’t go through that again.

  “You fucking idiot,” he said. That was his only answer to my capitulation. That, and renewed bathtub intercourse. He hit my G-spot like magic. I hated him for it. I hated him for making me feel good when he was such an asshole.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “You don’t, but I don’t mind if you pretend.”

  “I’m not pretending,” I said with more fire.

  “I like design, Chere. I like chocolate cake. What do you like?”

  I committed these small and pointless details about him to memory, and hated myself for it. “You’re giving me tidbits of information about you, what, as some form of apology f
or being an asshole?”

  He ignored my vitriol. “What do you like, Chere?” he asked in a tone that demanded an answer.

  “Seeing people who are fucking me.” That was my answer, and I felt like crying, and I still hated myself. “I like seeing the person whose cock is inside me. I know that sounds crazy and unreasonable.”

  His fingers tightened on my arms. I waited for him to drown me, or throw me out of the tub, but he did neither. Instead he said, “If you want to date me without the blindfold, you have to be mine. Exclusive.”

  Fuck. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to throw him out of the tub, but he felt so good inside me. He reached down to massage my clit.

  “You can see me, starshine. You can see all of me. Just agree not to see anyone else for a while.”

  Oh God, the temptation. I really wanted to know what he looked like. I couldn’t bear to never know, to never see him. “Fine,” I said in a huff. “I’ll be exclusive with you for a few months. Will you take off the blindfold now?” I wanted to see him so badly.

  He gripped my wrists. “No, next time. Next date.”

  “Why next date? Why not now?”

  “Because I said so. When I set up our next date, Henry will tell you which hotel, and what time to be in the lobby. If you recognize me when I come in, we’ll have our date. If you don’t recognize me, too bad. No date, no money, no tip. No seeing what I look like.”

  “How am I supposed to recognize you? Magic?”

  He took my wrists and pulled my hands up, and flattened them against his cheeks. “Feel me. Learn me. You’ll be able to recognize me.”

  Oh, God, I was touching his face. It felt so sudden, so intimate. I tried to think how he looked from the contours I felt. His cock was still inside me—I knew his cock. I knew it well. But everything else, I was feeling for the first time. He moved inside me, fucking me as I raped his face with my sense of touch.

  Stubble. I knew there would be stubble. Soft eyebrows, taut cheekbones, a masculine nose, not too pointy, not too prominent. At least I didn’t think so.

  I traced his lips next. They felt firm and rough, and warm under my fingers. He opened his mouth and bit me, just above the knuckle. I laughed and felt his cock buck inside me. I’d never recognize him, but this was wonderful. I reached up to explore his scalp, and the texture of his hair. It was short, a little prickly. Cropped close on the sides, but a little longer on top. Much longer near the front.

  “What color is your hair?” I whispered.

  “That’s cheating,” he whispered back. “Are you going to come or not? The water’s getting cold.”

  He made me come about thirty seconds later, because he knew how to do that, and the whole time I groped his face, trying to picture him.

  “Talk to Henry,” he said as he drained the water from the tub. “Tell him you agree to be exclusive. And find me next time we meet. You know enough by now to pick me out of a crowd.”

  I didn’t think I did, but perhaps I’d recognize him by some internal lust-meter. How could I not recognize the man who’d given me so many orgasms? I’d give it a try. At least I wouldn’t have to wear this damn eye mask anymore.

  He threw a towel over my shoulder, and we dried off. Afterward, he led me back into the room. “Sit,” he said, and I sat when he forced me down, trusting a chair would be there. “Did you bring extra clothes?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, Sir. Use your damn manners.”

  “Yes, Sir, I brought extra clothes.” I hoped I didn’t sound too sassy. He put a hand on my back and shoved me forward in the chair. Oh, Jesus.

  “Be still,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  I felt a weird, tingling sensation on my back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. I finally realized he was writing on me. Too much to hope for, that it wasn’t permanent marker.

  “What do you do, that you have so much money?” I asked while he scrawled across my back.

  I didn’t think he’d answer, but he said, “Design.”

  “What do you design?”

  “None of your business.”

  High fashion? Web design? What kind of designer made enough money for Park Hyatt call-girl sessions?

  “I thought you might be an Ivy League English professor, with all the poetry,” I joked.

  He did a flourish with the marker against my lower back. “Poetry is just another form of design.” I heard him cap it and zip his briefcase, and then begin to dress. My hands were free. I could have unbuckled the blindfold and looked at him before he could stop me. I could have finally seen what he looked like, and satisfied my curiosity. Of course, I also would have lost his trust, and possibly the ability to see him again. My whore hands stayed curled in my lap.

  “There’s a pool here,” he said. I heard the whispery sound of him sliding on his shoes. “Did you bring a bathing suit?”

  “No.”

  “Next time, bring a bathing suit. Will you stay here tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can if you want. I won’t come back and bother you.”

  It was almost sweet, how he wanted me to stay in these ritzy hotel rooms after he left me. Like he wanted to spoil me. More likely, he knew I’d think about him the entire time I was here. While I was on the bed, I’d think about him. While I was in the bathroom, I’d look at the tub and remember his skin against mine, and the smell of the soap, and the soft, scratchy loveliness of his hair. If I wasn’t so chicken, I could know the color of that hair.

  I would know the color of that hair, next time. Did that mean he trusted me now? I got a sickly, nervous feeling in my stomach at the idea of him revealing himself. Mere eye contact would feel like a crazy-scary level of intimacy after the way we’d begun.

  He stroked my back and tugged a handful of my hair. “Goodbye, Chere. You can get up when you hear the door close.”

  “Bye,” I said.

  I heard his footfalls across the room, heard the door open and close. I wondered if he still felt pissed, or if he felt better now. My feelings had run the gamut since I arrived.

  I took off the blindfold and stuck it in my bag, even though I knew I wouldn’t need it again. I tried to wrestle the halves of my stockings off the bedframe, but I couldn’t undo the knot. Oh well. I was sure the staff had seen everything in this kind of hotel. I collected the pieces of my dress and garter belt—he hadn’t taken them with him this time. I tried not to read anything into that. He’s weird, don’t try to understand him.

  And it was weird that it took that long to remember I had poetry on my back. I went into the bathroom and twisted around to try to read it in the mirror. No dice. I had to use my camera timer to take a photo. I swiped at the screen to enlarge the black words written on my skin.

  Oh drink me up

  That I may be

  Within your cup

  Like a mystery

  I didn’t know if it was a whole poem or part of a poem, written by him or someone else. I typed the words into my phone’s search engine and got the answer: Mystery by D.H. Lawrence. I lift to you my bowl of kisses/And through the temple’s blue recesses/Cry out to you in wild caresses.

  I had cried out at his wild caresses, that was for sure. Well, as much as I could cry out when he gagged me. I touched my wrists, remembering the feeling of the zip ties, and then I touched the insides of my thighs, studying the pale pink marks from his belt. Talk about mystery...why the hell was I getting hot and bothered remembering that beating? Fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, drink me up...

  I sprawled back on the rumpled bed, masturbating and reading the words over and over, searching for meaning, or maybe the answer to a question I didn’t know how to ask. When I finished with a shuddering orgasm, I stood and crossed to the window to look out at the city. W always picked the higher floors with the best views. Beautiful, so beautiful.

  Maybe I would stay here tonight and gaze out at the vibrant cluster of New York City’s lights. This room was so white and clean and br
ight, nothing like the loft I shared with Simon. Our loft was dark and claustrophobic, with no view at all.

  In Between

  I met with Henry a couple days later, at a quiet, private cafe in midtown. The first thing he did, after air-kissing both of my cheeks, was look into my eyes with deep concern. “How are you, Chere?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Talk to me about this exclusive arrangement with Mr. Cumming. Two dates ago, you were calling me to complain about him. You said he was an asshole.”

  “He is an asshole.”

  He waved to the waitress, and when Henry waved, women always came running. When she scurried over, he asked for a seltzer, then turned his attention back to me. “You know, you don’t have to be exclusive just because he asked you to.”

  “I know. But I’ll make more money by being exclusive, right?” I didn’t want to admit the real reason I agreed...so I could see what the asshole looked like. “Not just more money, but less work.”

  “Less work now. More work later, when you have to build up your client list again.”

  “That’s where you come in. You always find more perverts to send me. I assume that’s not going to change.”

  Henry smiled at me, his friendly, handsome smile with his white, handsome teeth. “I’ve got your back, love. I’ll always have your back.” He turned to the waitress and gave her the same drop-dead smile as she handed him his drink. “Thank you, Jessica,” he said, reading her name off her tag. “I appreciate it.”

  Jessica practically curtsied as she backed away from the table. Ridiculous, his effect on women. I was glad he was my agent and not my boyfriend, not that Simon didn’t turn a certain type of woman weak at the knees. But Simon was artsy-beautiful. Henry was beautiful-beautiful.

  “One to two times a week,” he said, turning back to me. “That’s your contractual duty. And those are two-hour sessions, not overnights. It’s a great arrangement, Chere. If you’re willing...” He shrugged. “Why not?”