The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

  Emanuel and I drove to a condo in Venice Beach. We’d have exactly three hours. Three hours to find out what we could build or tear down between us.

  Because of his vision, in order to legally drive he wore amazing baroque glasses that made him look like a steampunk lord descended from an airship. They had telescopes attached. I spent the ride wishing I could have a pair for myself, and a tiny bit scared that he was actually using these things on Los Angeles roads.

  Otherwise I wasn’t scared at all, only glad to be near him.

  He made me feel safe.

  When we parked in front of the low, genteel building, he took off the amazing glasses and let me try them on. Of course they didn’t fit and I couldn’t see anything and I had to take them off before I got a headache and oh...

  “Perfect vision,” he said, low voice rumbling. “Perfect girl.” He traced the line of my jaw with the backs of his fingers, a gesture of achingly pure approval that made my throat thicken. I swallowed down a whimper.

  Was it time for our first kiss? Kisses were a mystery, their meanings encoded in a language I’d never been taught.

  Teach me.

  Maybe I was a romantic after all.

  He didn’t kiss me, not yet. We stayed there in the car for a long time, breathing each other’s breath. The touch of his hand was sweeter than any kiss I’d ever had. He touched my chin with his fingertips, swept his hand slowly upward to cover my cheek with the warmth of his palm. I leaned into his hand. I was on the verge of crying out of happiness. All the intense emotions that warred with each other and ripped up my mind were just as intense in his presence, but he absorbed them, channeled them, gave me ease.

  When he spoke, he whispered. I was tuned in to him like a radio station, so I heard him loud and clear. “What do you want me to do to you, Amy?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever you want. As long as...” As long as you do it with love, I wanted to say, but that was a step too far and I was suddenly frightened again.

  “Take your time. Consider.”

  My heartbeat raced faster. He still had his hand touching my face, easing me. When I spoke, my lips moved against him. “I’ve said my limits so many times. Gone through checklists and everything. But I feel like I don’t know them anymore, with you. I’m sorry.”

  “Then we’ll find them together,” he said, and gathered the hair from my face, and touched his forehead down to mine.

  “I want to please you.”

  “You will.” His hand tightened in my hair. The pressure pulled my head back, baring my throat to him, and drove me halfway crazy.

  “Yes,” I hissed. The fight-or-flight chemicals burned in my bloodstream, but the last thing I wanted to do was run away. I wanted to run into him, writhe against him, fall at his feet.

  “I’ve seen you every day, coming and going. I let you slip through my fingers again and again. No more. I’ll tie you down to the bed.”

  My wrists trembled. “I love that.”

  “I know. You won’t have to move, or say a word. I’m going to come inside you over and over again, every way I can.”

  I spasmed, jerking my body forward in the car seat like a wave had slammed into my back. Fuck. The thought of him pumping into my mouth, my pussy, my ass—I moaned with shameless need.

  He’d seen me used and fucked on film. He’d seen what I looked like after a room full of men had taken their turns. And it made him feel competitive.

  “I called in a favor last night, Amy. I can show you my paper.”

  “So that’s where you went.”

  He let go of my hair, reached into his suit pocket, began unfolding. I didn’t examine it too closely. I trusted him.

  “You’re good,” I said. “And I mean that in a lot of ways. So good to me. You don’t have to prove anything. Those movies...I liked what happened sometimes, what they did to me, but it wasn’t real, not like with you.”

  “Do you want it to be real?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, crooked and charming, the planes of his impossibly handsome face tilting into a delightfully new expression. “Then I’ll make it real. I do want to prove something—that you are mine. I can’t imagine a more enjoyable test than coming inside you three times.”

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “Not unless you beg for it. I’m too impatient for pain today. I’d rather spend the time in you.”

  I’d beg for it, eventually. It meant something important, connected with Miles and my own strange brand of jealousy. Emanuel wasn’t the only competitive one. I could take the same pain, I thought with a sulky pride. Or maybe even more.

  “I’m here for you,” I moaned into his hand. I’d leave it at that for now, because I wanted him in me as well, very badly. My legs ached to wrap around his chest as he pounded into me. I could hardly imagine walking the short distance from the car into the building.

  He let go of my head and got out of the car. I missed his touch, but at the same time, the air around me seemed to carry his impression, the ambient noise of the city singing in my ears, the echo of the car door closing like a rhythm. I felt like a leaf whirled down a river to meet the sea. Dreamy. Flowing. He opened my door and led me out with a gentle but firm hold on my shoulder.

  “This waiting feels so funny,” I mused. I could say anything at all to him. I was safe. My knees were weak and wobbled, but if I fell, he’d carry me. He was so big. I couldn’t see all of him when I was this close. That was all right. His touch, his smell—ocean, a trace of musky cologne, something complex but not unpleasant that must be his sunblock, raw pheromones—overpowered my senses. “You smell good. You know, if I don’t like the way a man smells I have them take a shower on set first. I don’t want you to do that...am I babbling?”

  He took me along with him, through the door and up a set of quiet, carpeted stairs. “Yes. Like you’re drunk. It’s charming. Keep saying whatever comes into your mind. It pleases me.”

  That was all I needed to know. My priorities were becoming wonderfully simple. Please Emanuel. Yes. I didn’t have to worry about sounding smart or sophisticated or like a normal woman who’d learned about love from the normal kind of movies, a woman I’d never be.

  I gave up that chance when I signed my first contract.

  Sometimes I regretted it. But not today. I wouldn’t have come here any other way.

  He had the key. The studio apartment was sparse, clean and dominated by a massive four-corner steel bed hung with shackles and leather straps. One wall was exposed brick, and the opposite was almost all windows, sunlight pouring in and leaving no doubt what kind of space this was.

  Designed for pleasure and torment.

  Emanuel drew the curtains. They were thick blackout curtains that turned the harsh morning into a sensuous shadowy twilight. He glowed against their backdrop. I didn’t think of him in separate terms anymore, as either art or human or demonic or divine, but everything at the same time, indistinguishable. He wasn’t rare and freakish in any way, he just...was. He was himself. He was entirely himself.

  “I like the way you look at me,” he said, as his hand left the curtain cord and he began to unbutton his jacket. “Hungry. You need so much, Amy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Although you’re patient. Ready to wait for my word. I like that too.”

  “Would you like—”

  “Shh.”

  He didn’t even have to lay a finger across his mouth. The hushing noise undid me. I dropped to my knees on the polished wooden floorboards.

  “Don’t ask me what I want,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a reprimand or even an order. More like guidance. Showing the path, lighting my way. “I’ll tell you. Now is not the time to set yourself aside. Not yet.”

  I nodded mutely, my hands trembling and twisting at my s
ides. He shrugged off his jacket and walked toward me, laid his hand on the crown of my head. The gesture sent a storm of pleasure rolling down through my body, down through my forward-arched hips, taut thighs and strained knees. “This feels right. So right.”

  “You’re doing very well, Amy. Take your clothes off for me, and tell me your safe word.”

  I unbuttoned my blouse, then wriggled down my skirt and hopelessly sticky panties, black satin and shiny-wet on the inside. In my old life I’d think I was dirty for this, contaminated with lust—the shame was distant, though, a flickering candle flame almost drowned out by the rich sweet darkness.

  I bowed my head to him, and his hand followed, maintaining that steady pressure that gave me such a sense of rightness. “Cut,” I whispered.

  “Have you used it?”

  “I’ve never called off a shoot all the way, but I’ve used it for breaks. Cut, and house words too.” Proud of putting so many words together, a slow smile stretched the corners of my lips. He slipped his hand down to my chin and tilted my face up. He loomed far above me, formal and remote in his crisp white dress shirt, his face unreadable.

  “Has it always been respected?”

  I nodded again. My heartbeat pulsed in my throat, thudding through the hidden vein he held his thumb against.

  “Good.”

  Men had been cruel to me, but not like this, not when the rules were made clear. I’d never felt safer than with Emanuel in this moment.

  “Touch yourself. Cup your breasts. Trace your body.”

  The direction was comforting and familiar. I cupped my breasts and raised them, sliding my fingers back and forth over my peaked nipples, stiffening their arousal. The space between my index finger and middle finger felt soft and tight in all the right ways, just right to press against. I spoke without thinking. “Is it okay to imagine what you want? Right now, a part of me...I’m standing outside myself. Imagining how I look for you.”

  “Of course. Nothing you feel is wrong in this moment. Nothing.” There might have been a trace of that impersonal rage in that last word, directed at...I don’t know. I just knew it wasn’t for me. “Touch yourself for both of us. Sink into your body or drift away from it, wherever you want to go.”

  I scissored my fingers open, flicked my gaze down from Emanuel’s hypnotic eyes to see my nipples tightly budded and cinnamon brown. And then I looked up again to glorify myself in the approval of his heavy-lidded gaze. I liked the sound of sinking into my own body. Me. This is mine. I am enough. I ran my hands down over my stomach, traced the triangle of my hipbones inward toward my vulva, veered away the last moment to massage the insides of my thighs. Smooth muscles under soft padding, a hint of soreness from swimming reminding me of how much I loved to test my body, to match myself against the ocean, or against men like Emanuel.

  What was he really like, though? I had no model for him, not really. He was dominant to the bone, handsome as sin and claimed me for his own. Everything else was a mystery I’d trust him to reveal in time.

  “I could watch you looking at me for hours,” he said. “Though it would be cruel to tease you like that, sweet girl...cariño, sometimes I like to play that way.”

  A sound of protest welled up within me. No. Don’t make me wait. But waiting on his command was its own twisted reward, so I tightened my mouth and swallowed down the sound.

  With my right forefinger I traced upward, circling around my vulva and then drawing down again right at the center of my slit, where the slickness trickled and made me feel heavy with sex, my cunt craving touch. I closed my eyes and stretched up so I could feel his hand press tighter against the top of my head. I was a tree, and he crowned me with flowers in spring. God, I was so close to gone. Inside my body or out, he sent me.

  “Can you make yourself come for me, cariño?”

  Cariño. Caring itself—not just a woman that he cared for, but all of his caring, all of it. I loved that more than love. “Like this, on my knees? I can try.”

  “Yes. Try. If you can’t, I’ll make you myself.”

  I could fail without losing. And either way, he’d gain knowledge and power over me. I’d never been dominated with such depth and tenderness. I nodded and slid my finger down between my lips to press against my wet throbbing clit. The pleasure was insane. “Nnn—”

  “Good girl.”

  It wasn’t easy for me to come with just my own hand. I usually had to be flat on my back, thighs rigid, body positioned in an exacting way. Maybe this new configuration—the firm pressure of his hand squeezing down, the floor pressing harshly up against my knees—could unlock my orgasm and release my screaming nerves. I stroked up and down, tentatively at first, then faster, little cries slipping out between my clenched teeth as I melted inside.

  “I can’t decide which is more beautiful, your face right now, or your perfect obedience. All of you pleases me.”

  I rubbed my clit fast and fucking hard, really feeling it, rocking it between my stiff finger and my pubic bone. I fought myself. Fought for release. Fought for him, for the words of praise that filled me more than a big cock ever could.

  Soon I wouldn’t need to choose. He’d give me both. “Oh God oh God oh God—”

  The ecstasy surged and raced through me, all raw and jagged-edged. Like instead of opening a door to come, I’d smashed a window and stolen the pleasure. My right hand shook with the strain of how wrong it was. Wrong and good. And then the warmth of his hand weaving through my hair took all the wrongness away, sending me to a place where everything was right and good, and I was—

  I was cared for.

  His hand left my head, but almost before I noticed the absence he lifted me to my feet, held me close, lifted me even higher and kissed me fiercely. Every inch of me welcomed him. Our first kiss. And even if we never had another, I’d remember it for the rest of my life, his mouth greedy, tongue parting my lips and tasting me as I tasted him. My mind melted. I let it go. Thinking only slowed down the surge of sense messages, taste and touch surging the highest and hardest. I lived through my lips.

  He crushed me against him, the cool, slick fabric of his clothes rubbing against my fevered skin, and worked his hand between my legs. I had two of his fingers thrust inside my wet pussy before the shock of the kiss had faded, and I might have screamed into his mouth if he hadn’t been kissing me so passionately, swallowing the sound down into his massive, strong form.

  Touch me everywhere inside.

  Take me.

  I rode his hand and opened for his kiss.

  I trusted him to unleash himself on me.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Do you like to fight against the ropes, cariño?”

  I hummed and nodded as I tested the strength of the smooth cotton cord that bound my hands together. He’d picked me up, laid me down on the bed, then pulled my arms back and above my head with the same gentle firmness that made my heart sing whenever he touched me.

  He kissed me again, softer and sweet. A sharing kiss. Sharing breath, sharing the delicious feel of my lips sliding against the tip of his tongue.

  He took his clothes off as I watched in a daze of joyful anticipation, shrugged the jacket off his shoulders and unbuttoned his crisp white shirt. The machete scar rippled across his chest diagonally, and he had other marks too: a smaller line above his right hip, a vicious asterisk at his left shoulder. I memorized the marks. It was all right. I was allowed, on the deepest level. He liked the way I looked at him. Nothing I felt was wrong.

  “You’re with me now,” he said. “No one else is in this room with us.”

  “No one,” I echoed, like a magic spell. As if by saying it, we made it true.

  The harsh lines of his muscles were barely softened by his skin. The way his forearms flexed as he unbuckled his belt—oh God, I was tied down to a fucking steel bed so why
was I whirling, spinning, floating?

  Anchor me.

  His belt slithered loose, a sensual leather hiss of friction that didn’t help my vertigo, not in the slightest, although it made my pussy throb with need.

  “Do you want me to use this on you, cariño?” He sounded amused and totally in control again.

  “You know I do.”

  “What kind of pain do you like?” He looped the belt in his fist and traced the underside of my bound arm, sending shivery-warm pulses up and down both my sides. “Fast or slow? Sharp or heavy?”

  “Fast, very fast. Not for long. Hard. Sharp.” I tried to slow my shallow, rapid breaths so I could speak properly. It worked. I wasn’t just a passenger on this ride, entirely passive—I was the copilot. That was the way he wanted me.

  So good. So right.

  He didn’t strike me. He slipped the belt under my arched back and buckled it loosely around my hips. When the metal prong rang against the metal frame it rang like music, but then, everything he did seemed like music, a song that never ended.

  The leather pressured without biting. The belt helped anchor me. I didn’t feel like I was floating anymore. I was here, exactly where I needed to be, enjoying my own body and inviting him to enjoy me. He wrapped his hands around the belt on either side of me and lifted, tightening the leather and increasing the thrill of the pressure.

  Oh God, he’s going to lift me up and fuck me hard.

  I moaned and lifted my head, straining to see all of him. Naked, he was stunning, the muscles of his stomach rippling downward, pointing the way to his thick hard cock.

  “You’re just right,” I said, sounding slurred to my own ears, drunk with sex. I could take bigger, but it was all grim work then and an aching cervix afterward.

  “I know.” Total control, no shame and a wickedly amused, killer smile that reminded me of someone.

  Miles.

  I didn’t want anyone else in this place with us. Not Miles. Not the other selves I’d slipped on for the camera. I let the thought pass through my mind, not rejecting it but not holding on to it either, which was easy when he crossed my ankles and began tying them together, sparking new and interesting sensations. The more he restricted my motions, the more freed I felt inside, unfolding like a flower.