Void

by Cassy Roop

  “Yeah. I walked in on him and Cardinelli in a heated argument once. Apparently your uncle tried to pull out and Cardinelli wasn’t having it.”

  “Really? That’s news to me. I always assumed that he wanted the arrangement.”

  “Partially, but I think that after he saw how deep he got, he knew it was a bad decision.”

  “Yet he still pushed me to keep the relationship with Cardinelli.”

  “I think that was more pressure from Cardinelli himself than your uncle.”

  I contemplated what he said for a moment. It was strange to think that my uncle, who in a vast amount of ways, reminded me of my father.

  “Seems to me, that isn’t the only thing you are troubled about. How many times have you called on Link lately?”

  It wasn’t a shocker for Bradley to discuss Link with me. I had confessed my need to have Link in my life with Bradley before, and he knew Link was my way of hiding behind my so-called imperfections.

  “Several. Although you will be pleased to know that I am now seeing someone without hiding behind Link and the blindfolds.”

  He arched his eyebrow at this, and at first I thought it was in surprise, but then he smiled and I knew he already knew. Of course he did.

  “It wouldn’t be that beautiful blonde whose file you sent my way, would it?”

  A vision of Nicola flashed into my mind, particularly the look on her face as she climaxed while I drove into her over and over. I could even see the trickle of sweat that developed on her brows and the way her mouth fell open in ecstasy.

  Bradley snapped his fingers in front of my face, bringing me out of my sexually induced daydream.

  “You got it bad, man.”

  I could only nod. There was no sense in denying what I already knew was happening.

  I was falling in love with her.

  If my jealous actions this morning over her employment were any indication, I’d say I was already there. It was both a blessing and a curse, because not only did I have a shitty amount of baggage, but Nicola had her own as well.

  “Does she know about Link?” Bradley asked me.

  “She does. She’s met him. She slept with him before she ever did me.”

  “I see. Is this something you and she have discussed? Is she okay with it?”

  “We’ve talked about it to an extent. She doesn’t know the full truth.”

  He rose from his chair, and placing his hands on the desk, leaning in closer towards me.

  “Nothing good has ever come from secrets, Andris. If you truly feel anything for this girl, and if your face is any indication, then I know you do, you need to be honest with her. She has her own demons that affect her. Hell, she is a patient, and one I’m glad that you handed over to me. The last thing you need is a malpractice charge or an ethics issue. You are a very talented doctor, Andris. Have faith in that, but be honest in every aspect of your life, not just your professional one.”

  I rose to shake his hand. I had the deepest respect for Bradley. Losing his wife to cervical cancer several years ago could have ruined him, but he still remained calm, collected and professional. Any man who could go on living after the love of their life had passed on was a hero in my book.

  “Thank you for the talk, Bradley. I appreciate it. I trust you to take care of Nicola for me in the absence of my care. You are correct about my feelings for her.”

  I followed him across my office and just as he reached the door, he turned around and cupped my shoulder.

  “I know your old man never treated you right. It simmers down to the way his old man, your grandpa, treated him. I’m not making excuses for him, Andris. Even though you might disagree, I know he is looking down on you and is proud of you. I know I am.”

  Then he walked out. It wasn’t the first time that Bradley had said something similar to me before, but for some reason it sucker punched me in the gut a little more this time than to any other times prior.

  He was proud of me.

  For what? For still being under the thumb of the Cardinelli clan? For falling for a woman who didn’t deserve to have to deal with all of my issues, and one I had to lie to on a daily basis?

  My feet felt like lead as I walked back to my desk and picked up the file containing my next patient’s information.

  I didn’t believe Cardinelli one second when he said that he didn’t need me. These kinds of regulated drugs were hard to come by and were in limited supply on the black market. He needed me more than he thought he did, which made me wonder what he was really up to.

  My phone vibrated on my desk and I picked it up to reveal the alarm that indicated my next appointment would be here soon. The stress of the day and the weight on my shoulders were starting to take their toll on me. As much as I wanted to lose myself in Nicola tonight to rid my mind and body of the relief, I just didn’t know if it would be enough. They say old habits die hard, and they couldn’t be more right. As much as it hurt my guts to think about her with anyone besides me, I knew that a session tonight is just what I needed.

  Nicola wasn’t the only one not ready to let Link go.

  HIS HANDS SKIMMED gracefully, yet possessively over my body. His mouth made my skin feel as if it were on fire. A soft sheen of sweat had developed, coating my body as he explored each of my erogenous zones. I was wound up beyond comprehension, and each second he delayed my gratification drove me further to the brink of insanity.

  “Link thinks you are fucking gorgeous like this, Jericho.”

  Whispered words of encouragement rang through the headphones on my head. Andris guided all of my movements with his words as Link guided my body with his hands. I was strapped down, unable to move, and the only thing that supported me was the bench-like contraption that I was bent over. My ass was poised in the air, my thighs spread apart, and my hands bound at the wrists in front of me.

  Once again I was left to the darkness behind the blindfold as one, two, three strikes landed on my ass. I could feel the heat begin to rise on my cheeks from the impact, the evidence of my arousal growing between my legs as a result. Andris’s breath could be heard through the microphones as he watched me submit to the man behind me.

  Breathing in, I sought comfort in the smell of leather and arousal. It turned me on even more to know that Andris was aroused as well. Even though he had told me he didn’t like the idea of me being with Link, there was no hiding his own arousal at the sight of it.

  My bi-weekly sessions with Link have almost become an addiction, just as my lovemaking with Andris has. With Andris, I loved that I got to experience something new. I got to actually feel the emotions that he had so easily stirred within me. With Link, I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to analyze or make decisions. All I had to do was fall victim to the pleasure, the euphoria of the moment.

  Link had yet to enter me, but I was so close to coming. All it would take would be one or two more touches and I would be cresting over the edge. With Link, it was like climbing a mountain. It was a steep grade of indulgence. My calves burned, my thighs burned, and the higher I climbed the more my legs would quiver. It wasn’t a quick build-up, but more of a long and torturous crescendo that bordered on pain and pleasure. He drove me mad, more insane that I already was on a normal basis, but he had a way of making my thoughts nearly non-existent.

  “Keep still, Jericho, or Link won’t let you cum. Your submission turns him on. Your willingness to display your own control is fucking beautiful to him.”

  I tried to keep my body as still as I could, but the closer that Link’s hands came toward my pussy and the clit that was now violently throbbing between the lips of my sex, the harder it was for me to control myself.

  I bit down hard on the strap of leather that Link’s hand placed in my mouth, my teeth sinking into the skin of the hide. I wanted to cry out for him to touch me. I wanted to beg for him to slam his cock into my aching pussy, but I knew if I did, he would remove his hands from my body.

  I wanted to ask Andris to join him.
I wanted to feel the hands of both of my lovers on my body. I wanted the feelings that each one of them gave me to merge, creating a pleasure in me so cataclysmic, I could denigrate.

  Fingers plunged into the wetness of my core, hitting the sensitive spot in my inner walls. My body jolted from the multitude of the sensation. I could feel Link’s body as his thighs connected with mine, and his dick laid heavy and thick on the top of my ass. If I had the ability to push into him, I would have, but being bound in the position I was in, I couldn’t move.

  I was so close. Chasing for something that was always just outside my reach. The pressure was building and my body trembled violently from what was just below the surface. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of ecstasy, falling deeper and deeper into the dark end of a pool.

  And all I wanted to do was surface.

  “God, Nicola. You are so fucking sexy.”

  I paused in the midst of pleasure. My orgasm slipped further and further from my grasp as I realized what Andris just said. He called me Nicola, not Jericho. As long as I had been having these sessions with them, wherever the fuck it was that he always brought me, did he ever say my real name.

  Without notice, Link slipped his cock inside of me, burying himself to the hilt. I was very wet, which made him glide in with ease. From this position, I felt full and all thoughts of Andris saying my name melted away. Link was unforgiving, pumping in and out of me with such fervor, that I had no doubt I would have bruises on my legs from the force. His hands gripped at my ass as he continued his assaulting rhythm. It wasn’t long before my body began to soar once again and I felt myself gliding through the water of my pleasure to reach the surface. I could see the light glistening just overhead and my body swam faster. I was fearful for what would happen when I climaxed, never having felt this enormous amount of pleasure before. But I was also fearful of what would happen if I didn’t. Would the pressure keep building to the point that I couldn’t handle it anymore?

  A sharp, yet welcome pain flashed through my clit as Link reached around and pinched it between two fingers. It was the spark that ignited the flame and I cried out in a muffled voice with the leather still in my mouth. My eyes, although still shielded from the blindfold, were wide open and for a moment I felt like the world actually stopped. My heart seized in my chest, my breathing paused, being held hostage in my lungs.

  It was perfection in the highest form, the hit of heroin that relaxed me after a five-day drought. Link collapsed onto me, the slickness of our two bodies combined into one as I felt his chest rapidly rising up and down. It was almost like he was embracing me, yet hiding it in some way. Normally, whenever Link came inside of me, he withdrew himself almost as quickly, but this time he lingered. My heart swelled, thinking that maybe, just maybe, some of the feelings I had for him were being reciprocated.

  And just like that it was over and I was left cold, missing the warmth of my lover’s body. If Andris had witnessed the little interaction, I didn’t know. All I heard was shuffling of clothing and then I was unbound from the bench before being lifted up and carried off. I left the headphones over my ears, not having had permission to remove them.

  It was several minutes before I was placed on a soft bed, one that I had been placed on many times before. The sheets cooled my skin as I fumbled around in the darkness of my blindfold to position my naked body underneath the covers. I didn’t realize how incredibly tired I was until my head hit the pillow. The headphones were removed from my head and the blindfold as well, yet I was still in the pitch blackness of the room, unable to see anything. A hand gently caressed my face. Calloused hands, familiar hands stroked my cheeks with tender care before I felt him rise from the bed and heard the footsteps cross the room, growing more distant with each step that he took away from me. When the door opened, a small soft light cast a shadow over my lover, silhouetting him through the darkness. I couldn’t tell if it was Andris or Link.

  I laid there for what seemed like hours, tossing and turning in the soft sheets. One minute I was cold, the next my body felt on fire. I was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come for a long time, because tomorrow was a day I wanted to skip. Tomorrow was going to alter not only my own life, but the life of the man I loved. I wanted to talk to him desperately, but knew that there was no possible way that I could, not being permitted to leave the room.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Andris took me to my condo on his way to work. There was something different about him on the ride downtown, but I left it to the fact that it was my first session with Link after Andris and I decided to be a couple. It did feel awkward fucking another man while I was in a relationship with someone, and suddenly I felt the enormity of how all the women at home must have felt when I was fucking their husbands. My sins never bothered me before. I never cared. Never even wanted to, but now they weighed heavily on my shoulders.

  Damn emotions.

  My talk with Lexie went as I thought it would yesterday when I told her that after my contract expired with Link, I wouldn’t be returning to the agency. After pitching a fit, she reluctantly accepted my resignation and even offered me a job scheduling for the other girls in place of my last position. As great of an opportunity that it would have been for me to accept, I knew that I needed something legitimate if I was sincere about my relationship with Andris.

  Like it would really matter, though.

  There was a small café not too far from where my condo was. It had a great little deli section, an enormous menu of coffee and drink options, and a fun yet laid back atmosphere. The owner was an older Italian woman with more wrinkles on her face than cracks in a dried up riverbed. Her Her Her smile was contagious, but she was stubborn and hard headed.

  I loved her immediately.

  I had noticed her help wanted sign in the window and decided that it was probably something I could do. I mean, after all, I was previously employed in the service industry. Instead of serving my pussy on a platter, it would be a hot, steaming meatball sub and chips.

  Letta had a thick accent. Her hair was always pulled back tightly into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she was never seen without an apron on that contained remnants of flour from her homemade bread. This woman could run circles around the teenage girls she had employed.

  “You want work here? Why?” She asked in her heavy Italian accent as she sat a steaming cup of café latte in front of me before joining me at the table.

  “Well,” I began, “It’s close to home, I need a job, and this place has some of the best damn bread in the city.”

  She tried to hide the hint of pride in her smile. I didn’t lie though, she made some kick-ass bread.

  “Ah, you know way to my heart,” she replied as she patted her aging hand on top of mine. “You need eat more. Put meat on you bones. The men, they lika the curvy women. No skinny.” She winked at me and we chatted for several more minutes before she retrieved some paperwork for me.

  I got the job.

  I filled out all the information, using my real name for the first time in ages. After that was all completed, she showed me around the back of the shop before grabbing me some employee shirts and told me to come back tomorrow for my first shift.

  I sat in my condo for hours after meeting with Letta. Even though my body was still, my heart and mind raced at a million miles an hour. I had my appointment with the new doctor that Andris had arranged to take over in his place, and I was nervous about even going to the clinic at all. The text messages have been flooding my cell today to the point that I finally had to turn it off. Cardinelli’s goons were waiting outside of the café when I had left. They didn’t speak to me, didn’t have to. I knew why they were there.

  Intimidation.

  Cardinelli wanted to make sure that I was still following through with his request and sent his little men to ensure that I wasn’t trying to renege on the agreement.

  My leg began to bounce unceremoniously in rapid rhythm as I gazed up at the clock. The second hand was the most torturous thing in the w
orld as I watched it tick closer and closer towards what I was ordered to do. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get enough air in, suffocated by my impending iniquities.

  I couldn’t help but think about Link. How would all of this affect him when the shit hit the fan? If I didn’t do this, Andris would suffer, but it also meant that Link would suffer when Andris finally lost his shit with me.

  And then I would lose not just one of them, but both.

  For the first time since Andris and Link ignited the flame that switched on my vacant emotions, I hated them. I’d give anything to be able to go back to that vacant, cold-hearted human being I used to be. I wanted my mind to feel blank, my heart to not feel every beat, and for my conscious to take a fucking hike.

  Rising from the couch with dread in my stomach, I walked over to where I had my phone charging and switched it on. Within seconds, a thousand notifications flashed before my eyes. Most of them from Cardinelli, making sure I was going to go ahead with the plan today. But there was one that nearly broke me. One that nearly stole the very breath from my body.

  Andris: I can’t wait to see you.

  THE CLINIC WAS RELATIVELY quiet when I arrived. I really wished it wasn’t. I wanted noise, distraction, anything that would take my fucking mind off the shit swimming around in it. The lobby smelled like him, as if his scent left a tiny breadcrumb trail to where he was. I felt how close he was as I approached Laura Lee at the reception desk. The hairs on my arms stood on their ends and the faintest of shivers ran down my spine. My body tingled as it remembered his expert hands on me. It came alive as it reminisced about how wonderful it felt, as his cock filled me so completely. My heart remembered just how much I cared for him.

  All from his fucking scent.

  “Hello, Miss Forbes. Dr. Chambers will be with you soon. Dr. Gunn, however, has requested that he see you prior to your appointment,” she said, winking at me before placing a stack of folders into a pile. She buzzed the door that led to the offices and on unsteady legs I made my way toward Andris’s office.