Tainted Rose

by Abby Weeks

  She took a hold of the zipper on the front of Bill’s overalls and unzipped it, from his neck all the way down to his waist. He looked at her like he couldn’t believe what was happening. This wasn’t the way private dances usually went. The girl never undressed the man, even if it was just an overall zipper. If the customer was wearing a thick suit like the one Bill was wearing, then he had to try and enjoy the dance, and get as much sensation from the girl’s body grinding up against his, as was possible through the thick, padded fabric.

  Rose pulled the overalls down over Bill’s shoulders and helped him get his arms from the sleeves. He had a black T-shirt on underneath it. She could smell the stale sweat from Bill’s body. It was a strong, musky smell but she ignored it. She was here to pleasure Bill, not the other way around.

  She stood up on the sofa and took a hold of the bar that crossed the ceiling. This let her dance right in front of him without there being any danger of losing her balance. She moved her hips, twisting her groin and torso in front of Bill’s face. Her body was just inches from him. He was looking at her crotch, at her black, lace panties.

  “Go on,” she said, “take them off.”

  He looked up at her again but this time there was less doubt in his face. He knew he was getting something special tonight. Rose moved back and forth with the music and kept her legs close together so that Bill could slide her panties down around her ankles. Usually, he would have been expected to sit on his hands or keep them straight down by his sides. Tonight, he was able to let his fingers glide over the smooth, soft skin on her thighs as he slid her panties down her legs.

  Rose stepped out of the panties and pushed them off the sofa onto the floor. Then she moved her crotch back and forth in front of Bill’s face. Her pussy was so close to him that she could feel his hot breath on it. She moved back and forth, closer and closer to his face until she could feel the spiky tufts of stubble from his mustache and beard touching against the smoothly shaved lips of her vagina.

  Bill closed his eyes and pressed his lips together and let them graze against the lips of her pussy. He was getting more than any man could expect from a lap dance. For a dancer to actually touch a man’s face with her pussy was a big deal and he knew it better than anyone. There was a quiet smile on his face that moved Rose. She knew her life was hard, in many ways it was a lot worse than Bill’s life could ever have been, she was a captive after all. She was here by force. He was free to leave whenever he chose. And yet, she felt such sympathy for him. She could feel the weight of his immense loneliness. She could feel the dark, cold, pain of his heart.

  “Taste it,” she whispered.

  Bill gasped. It was as if he’d never heard such beautiful words in all his life. He glanced up at her and she caught his gaze. Then he opened his mouth and pressed it against the soft lips of her vagina. His lips moved so gently, his tongue entered into the mouth of her pussy so slowly and softly, that it was as if he was having his first kiss. He slid his tongue into her pussy, over the flaps of pink skin, as if he was a teenager making out with a girl he loved. He put his mouth over her clitoris and sucked on it softly. Rose exhaled. She hadn’t expected this to feel so good. She was used to men roughly eating her out like dogs lapping from a dish. She hadn’t been expecting Bill to take such pains, to be so careful and delicate. His tongue moved over every inch of her skin, deep into the opening of her vagina, and slid again and again over the skin of her clitoris. She looked down at him but his eyes were never open. He had been transported into a world of his own, a world created by his own mind, far away from this desolate place.

  Rose wondered where he was, where his mind had taken him. She wished she could escape to that place too. She was painfully aware of where she was. She couldn’t forget that. She felt that she would be here forever, that she would never escape, that she would never know what it was like to be back in civilization again, to be free, to be master of her own destiny. All she could see were the black, plastered walls of the tiny room she was in, the cheap speakers in the corners by the ceiling pumping out top forties hits incessantly, the grimy mirrors on the wall reflecting every move she made, the fifty-watt lightbulb that hung from a loose wire above her, painted red.

  Bill said something.

  Rose stepped down from the sofa so that she could hear him better.

  “Thank you,” Bill said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she whispered.

  She got down on her knees in front of him. He could hardly believe his eyes. He couldn’t understand what was happening. It was like all his dreams were coming true. This was a man who had never known what it was like for things to go his way in the world and now he had this beautiful, delicious woman on her knees between his legs.

  “What are you doing?” His lips mouthed the words but his voice made no sound.

  “Shh,” she whispered.

  She pulled the zipper on the front of his overalls down even farther and tugged at them. He lifted his weight off the sofa so that she could pull the overalls down from his waist. She pulled the heavy fabric down to his ankles and then pulled his navy blue boxer shorts down too.

  Bill looked almost ashamed when he gazed into her face. This was a man who’d made it a habit to visit strip clubs at least twice a week for the last fifteen years, and here he was, suddenly ashamed.

  The first thing that Rose noticed was the smell. It was clear Bill hadn’t showered in a while, probably since he’d left the lithium mine. He smelled like dirty laundry, old socks, moldy towels. Rose tried not to notice. She reminded herself that this was about him, this was all for his pleasure, not hers.

  Bill’s penis was firm and erect, anticipating a pleasure that it probably hadn’t felt in some time. Thick veins wrapped around the shaft like purple vines. The foreskin was peeled back, revealing a deep red tip. Rose tried not to think about what she was doing, about where she was, the person she had become. All she thought about was the fact that she could bring some pleasure to this man’s life and that in doing so, she would feel less lonely.

  She leaned in over the penis, looking down at it.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Bill grunted.

  It was a strange moment, she thought. Here was Bill, a man who had probably imagined this a thousand times, and now that it was actually happening he was telling her that she didn’t have to do it. She could tell that he was ashamed. He knew he was dirty. He knew he was old. He didn’t take care of himself. He didn’t wash. He didn’t eat right. He drank too much.

  “Shh,” she whispered to him, soothingly.

  Then she leaned down and lowered her open mouth over the penis. Her tongue connected to it, sliding along the underside of the shaft. The tip rose up into her throat as if it was reaching up into her. She slid her tongue along the length of the shaft and then sucked on the tip.

  Bill let out a long, pleasured sigh.

  Rose lowered her head down on the cock until her face was pressed into Bill’s pubic hair, her forehead against his flabby belly. His cock was so far back in her throat that she thought she might gag but she didn’t.

  “Oh my God,” Bill gasped.

  She kept her face down on his groin as long as she could and then came up for air.

  “Thank you,” Bill whispered.

  She didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see the gratitude, the weakness, the need. She was pleasuring him but that didn’t mean she had to look at him while she did it.

  She sucked on the bulbous tip of his cock and felt a throb pulse through it. His cock was filling up with blood and semen and whatever else the body pumped into a penis before it ejaculated.

  Rose blanked out her mind. She didn’t want to remember the details of this. She didn’t want all of it to be ingrained on her memory if she could avoid it. She tried to just go through the motions without fully experiencing them, if that was even possible.

  She brought her mouth up off of Bill’s penis and bent down, taking his scrotum in her mouth. She sucked on h
is balls, allowing him to experience the thrill of anticipation, delaying the moment of climax. She ran her tongue over the hair covered skin of his scrotum and licked every bit of it.

  “Oh my God,” he said again.

  Then she came back up. It was time to bring him over the edge.

  Bill looked down at her. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, weakly. “I can finish myself off if you want.”

  She knew he was ashamed. She knew he was already feeling the embarrassment that would come when he realized that her mouth was full of his filthy, slimy semen. She knew she could stop right now and he would still thank her till the day he died for what she’d done. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t stop. She needed this to happen just as much as he did.

  She plunged down over the penis, bringing her face back down into his pubes, pressing her forehead into the flabby fat of his belly, allowing the pulsing head of his cock to lodge itself deep in the back of her throat.

  She didn’t know what it was that prevented her from gagging. She thought she would, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was and waited. It felt like a minute passed but really it was just a few seconds, then she heard Caribou Bill cry out, almost as if he was crying in pain.

  “Oh God,” he cried, and his hands came down on the back of her head and pushed her down even farther onto his throbbing cock.

  The semen squirted into her throat, first one gushing release, followed by another and another. He was pressing her head down hard on his cock and she tried to come up for air but he didn’t let her. It seemed, in the ecstasy of his final throes, he’d forgotten himself. Rose pushed up hard, trying to get up to breathe. Bill held her head down firmly in place. His cock gushed stream after stream of semen deep into her throat.

  She swallowed everything. It went down her throat in a second into her stomach. It reminded her of a time when she was younger, before any of this had happened, when she’d once tried oysters. The sensation of the slimy morsel slipping down her throat into her stomach was exactly the same.

  When he was finished, Bill let go of her head and she could finally come up for air. He didn’t make eye contact with her. He seemed remorseful for what had happened, as if he was ashamed. He knew he was filthy and old and had no business squirting his load into the throat of a young girl in her twenties who had no choice but to be here with him.

  He said quietly, “You swallowed.”

  She nodded.

  He looked at her for a moment. There was something about the way he was looking at her, something meaningful. She wondered what it meant. In that moment, her mind jumped at a single conclusion, that he might be willing to help her.

  She looked at him. His eyes seemed wet. He wasn’t exactly prince charming, in many ways he was just as repulsive as Murdoch was. But if there was a chance that he might help her, if there was a chance that he could get her out of this place, get her away from here and back to the life she had known before, or any life that wasn’t here, she had to take it.

  “Would you help me?” she whispered.

  He looked at her so deeply, so intently. She was certain that the look he was giving her was one of love.

  “What?” he said. She’d spoken so quietly he hadn’t heard her.

  It took an effort for her to say the words. She could still taste him. She spoke a little more loudly, and she was scared even as she said them.

  “Would you help me?” she whispered. “Would you help me to get out of here?”

  The look on his face didn’t change. It really was love. She was sure of it. Could this really be the moment when she might get out of this awful situation, when she might finally free herself?

  He reached out and touched her cheek. There was such softness in his touch, such compassion. And then, suddenly, he reached back and slapped her across the face. What had just happened? She was stunned. Why had he hurt her?

  After what she’d just done for him, why wasn’t he willing to do something to help her? She wanted to cry but she was determined not to. She could still taste the virile, salty flavor of his semen.

  She couldn’t believe it. How had she been so stupid? Her cheek stung with the smarting pain of the slap.

  “Why would I help you?” he said. “You’re right where I want you to be?”

  V

  ROSE WAS STUNNED. She should have known better. How could she have been so stupid? How could she still be so naive. Even after all the terrible things that had happened to her she was still making stupid, foolish mistakes that could get her in a lot of trouble. If Caribou Bill ever told Murdoch or even Serge that she’d asked him for help she would probably be hospitalized from the beating they gave her. Now Bill had something on her. If she ever refused to do what he wanted, he’d be able to hold this over her.

  She had to be smarter. She had to be stronger. If she was ever going to survive in this place, if she was going to live in this cold, dark, heartless world, she would have to be tougher. She would have to steel her heart against the weakness, the kindness, the loneliness that had led her to do what she had just done for Bill.

  She sat on her knees and watched as Bill did up his overalls. Then he reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He threw a twenty dollar bill at her and then got up and left. She waited, sitting on the floor of the little booth, the incessant music playing from the crackly speakers overhead.

  She tried to hold back the tears but she couldn’t.

  *

  WHEN SHE WENT BACK OUT to the bar, Bill had already left. She was relieved to see that. She prayed he hadn’t mentioned anything to Murdoch about what had happened in the private room. One look at Murdoch though, and she knew that he was mad about something.

  “Bill gone?” she said.

  “You whore,” he said from behind the bar.

  “What?”

  “I know you sucked him off, you little slut.”

  “Murdoch!”

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  She looked at him. She knew he was jealous. How did he know what she’d done in the back room? Had Bill told him? Was there a spy hole into the room?

  “How do you know what I did?” she said.

  “What difference does it make?”

  He was right. It didn’t really matter how he knew. What mattered was that he didn’t seem to know she’d asked Bill for help. If he’d overheard that he might have killed her. This jealousy she could deal with. If he ever found out she’d asked for help, that would be worse. That would be a lot worse.

  She went over to the bar and sat on a stool.

  “I sucked him off, so what?” she said. “I don’t know why I did it. I just did. I felt like it.”

  Murdoch shook his head. He was jealous because she always resisted any of his own attempts to get amorous with her. He’d tried hundreds of times to get in her pants, sometimes he’d succeeded, sometimes he’d failed, but every single time, she’d resisted. He didn’t like that. Why was she resisting him but giving it out so freely to a deadbeat customer like Caribou Bill, someone who so obviously had nothing to offer her?

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She wasn’t sure why she was apologizing to Murdoch. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like what it implied. It made her feel like she owed him something, like he had some sort of claim over her. The only claim he had over her was the claim he forced upon her from time to time. She had a feeling tonight might be one of those nights.

  She never should have been so stupid. She wished she hadn’t fooled around with Bill. And she wished even more she hadn’t asked him for help.

  “You’re going to fuck me tonight,” Murdoch said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t have to fuck you, you know I don’t. If I tell Serge you’ve been giving me trouble he’ll kick your ass, Murdoch.”

  She looked at Murdoch. He was leering at her with such a lecherous, ugly sneer that she wanted to throw her glass at him.

  “You�
��re going to fuck me and you’re not going to tell Serge anything about it.”

  She finished the vodka and coke that was in her glass from earlier. The ice had all melted and the drink was watered down.

  “And you’re going to do a lot of other things I want too, you little slut.”

  She knew he had her. If he told Serge what she’d done with Caribou Bill there was no telling how he’d react. He might not give a shit or he might go into a jealous fit of rage and beat the crap out of her. She couldn’t take the risk.

  She nodded almost imperceptibly at Murdoch. It was enough for him.

  “That’s my little slut,” he said.

  Rose put on her robe and then leaned heavily on the bar. Caribou Bill’s truck was long gone and it didn’t seem like there would be any more customers for the night.

  “You might as well give me another drink,” she said to Murdoch over the bar.

  He was cleaning the grill and looked up at her.

  “And make it strong,” she said.

  *

  ROSE FINISHED HER DRINK AND got up from the stool. She almost tripped as she hopped down. The vodka had gone to her head and was making her a little dizzy.

  “Careful, there,” Murdoch said.

  “Careful, shit,” she said. “I’m going home. No one’s coming in here tonight.”

  Murdoch didn’t protest like he usually did. He knew he was going to be getting a little something from her later and maybe that made him feel more generous.

  She went out to the changing room and pulled on her jeans and sweater and snow boots. She had a pack of Du Maurier cigarettes in her jeans and lit one. She sat on the bench. Fuck, she said to herself. She knew she was in a bad situation. She’d given Murdoch something he could hold over her and she had no doubt that that was exactly what he had a mind to do.

  *

  “SEE YOU AT HOME,” SHE said as she pushed through the back door and out into the darkened parking lot.

  She hated how those words sounded in her ear. It was as if Murdoch was her husband. She was going home to wait for him and he knew it. She was his woman now, and all because she’d stupidly allowed herself to feel sympathy for that asshole, Caribou Bill.