Chapter Eleven
The Gansevoort Session
I knew W better now. I knew his face, if not his name, so I felt a little more relaxed as I walked from Times Square to the Gansevoort Hotel on Park Avenue. It had been a week since our last date, a wonderful, relaxing week with no other clients, thanks to our exclusive arrangement. He was literally paying me not to see other men.
It felt nice to be wanted that way.
It felt so nice that I’d dressed up for him. I’d bought my outfit with his tastes in mind: a classy little black dress with a matching garter belt and stockings, and gorgeous black velvet stilettos. I thought it was pretty safe to spend the money, since he hadn’t cut anything off me in a while. We’d had a pretty bad scene last time around, but we managed to salvage things between us. I had looked into his eyes and seen a man there, a man who cared about me, for all his rough edges.
Now that we were exclusive, I imagined a comfortable closeness developing between us. Well, not comfortable. Sex with W would never be comfortable, but I imagined us moving to something more…intimate. Or affectionate. I imagined longer, more playful sessions, culminating in even better orgasms, for him, for me, for both of us. Now that we were exclusive, I could focus all my energy and attention on him.
And he deserved it. Thanks to him, I had free time now to nap, to primp, to go shopping, to wander around Central Park and bask in the sun. Thanks to him, I didn’t have to accept dates with men I didn’t like that much.
There was only one date—him—and I actually found myself looking forward to seeing him, because he had chosen me. He liked me enough to want me to himself. I didn’t even have to put on the simpering, airheaded Miss Kitty act, because W was the first client in ten years who didn’t want to sleep with Miss Kitty. He wanted to sleep with me. Chere. He’d yanked my name out of me within the first minute, and he still used it every session.
The fact that I didn’t know his name didn’t deter me in these escalating fantasies. I traipsed into the Gansevoort Hotel fully believing that our exclusive arrangement meant that he cared about me. I should have known better after all my years in the business.
I took the elevator upstairs to the room number Henry texted me. I knew something was off as soon as W opened the door. He didn’t smile at me in welcome, didn’t take me in his arms and kiss my forehead the way I pictured. He frowned down at his phone and pointed me to the bed. I sat on the edge of it and awaited instructions. I’m not sure he even noticed what I was wearing. If he did, he didn’t seem to care.
Whatever, Chere. Don’t be vain. Don’t worry about it.
The brightly colored, modern room decor made my head hurt. I studied him instead, trying to figure out his mood. In a way I still felt blindfolded. I mean, I recognized his golden blond hair, his piercing blue eyes, his fine body and sculpted features, but that was all I understood about him. I looked out the window, at the view of the Empire State Building.
“I’ve never been at this Gansevoort before,” I said. “Only the one in the Meatpacking District.”
He didn’t answer, just threw his phone down beside the room key and went to the table to pick up a drink. He wasn’t drunk—he seemed too sharp and irate to be drunk—but he was still drinking, and he didn’t offer any to me. When he turned around, I crossed my legs and did my best to look enticing.
“I was glad you finally called Henry,” I said. “Have you had a busy week?”
“Yes. Not that it’s any of your business.”
His gaze traveled up my legs. No smile. No kisses. I would have put on the blindfold again, if he would have kissed me. Maybe he was already getting bored with me. Maybe we already knew too much about each other to suit his tastes.
He finally came over and stood in front of me. I smiled, even if he didn’t.
“Now that you have me to yourself, I thought you’d take advantage of me more often,” I flirted.
His scowl deepened. “Stop talking and open your fucking mouth.”
He unzipped with one hand and held my head with the other. As for me, I kept my lips clamped shut. He was supposed to wear a condom.
“Fucking bitch. I said open your mouth.”
He pushed me back on the bed. My arms flew up, but he wasn’t coming at me. He was taking off his clothes and ripping open a condom.
“With what I pay you, you should at least suck me off without a condom,” he said. “What the fuck kind of diseases do you think I have?”
“I don’t know. It’s company policy—”
“Shut the fuck up about company policy. Take off that fucking piece-of-shit dress and open your fucking legs.”
I didn’t know if this was more kinky games, or if he hated me, or if he was only acting like he hated me. I didn’t dare get up off the bed. I just twisted where I lay to unzip the dress I’d bought for him, which he’d so coldly dismissed as a piece of shit. I didn’t expect to get a better reception for the garter belt and stockings.
“Do you want me to take these off too?” I asked.
He climbed onto the bed between my legs and shoved my hands away from my body, and forced them over my head. He stuck his cock in me like he was sticking it in some inanimate hole. That was the level of warmth I received from my “exclusive” client. I blinked my eyes, determined not to look upset. It was really hard. He wasn’t raping me this time—he had my consent—but somehow it felt worse than being raped.
While he drilled me with absolute detachment, he fumbled at the garter belt clasps, and the tops of my stockings.
“You don’t have to wear all this shit,” he said. “All I care about is what’s between your legs.”
I tried to help him, only to have my hands pushed away.
“What the fuck did I tell you?” Two smacks on the cheek, hard enough to hurt me. I put my hands back over my head and let him struggle with the clasps. Asshole.
When he couldn’t get them open, he tore the stockings free instead, then unhooked the belt from my waist and flung it across the room. The pushup bra was next, unhooked and discarded like it was something disgusting. I guess I should have been grateful he didn’t use the scissors in his current mood.
“Are you acting like this because I wouldn’t blow you without a condom?” I said. “You’re being a dick.”
Some mayhem flashed in his gaze, to complement his cruel expression. “At least I’m not a whore.”
I didn’t know what kind of sick scene this was supposed to be, if I was supposed to go all meek and limp while he abused me. It wasn’t happening. I slapped him way harder than he’d slapped me, and it felt good to hurt him. I drew back my hand to slap him again but he arrested it midswing.
“Don’t fucking dare,” he said, taking me with steady thrusts. “You’re not in charge here. I dish it out, you take it.”
“I never agreed to that.”
“You take my money, I take your body. That’s our contract.” His fingers dug into my wrists, and the more I fought him, the harder he fucked me. “You’re so wet,” he mocked. “If you didn’t like this, you wouldn’t be here. You’ve had ample chances to say goodbye to me.”
“Chances I should have taken.”
“Simmer the fuck down or you’ll be sorry.”
I didn’t know how I could possibly feel more sorry than I felt at that moment. I felt hated and abused, and mocked. I wanted him off me, and I wanted to hurt him. I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to knee him in the groin. Women doubtless tried to do that all the time. I did manage to pry my wrist free and smack him again, square in the face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he growled. He used force and body weight to manhandle me onto my stomach. “You’re a stubborn little bitch, you know that?”
“Get off me. Get off!” He was holding me down with all his weight. I could hardly breathe, but I used the breath I had to try to buck him off me. A moment later, he hooked his right arm around my neck.
“Stop fighting,” he said. When he clenched his muscles, blood roared in my brain.
You’re the one who needs to stop, I wanted to cry. You need to stop being mean. You need to stop hurting me. I could feel his cock hard and thick between my legs. My vision blurred, from tears or panic, or lack of blood flow.
“Don’t kill me,” I whispered.
“I’m not going to kill you. I’m trying to get you under control.” His arm loosened but stayed where it was, a hug and a threat. His weight crushed me, and his rough voice rumbled in my ear. “I know you’re all pouty and hurt because you didn’t get enough attention, because I didn’t fawn over your pretty dress and your fucking lingerie. You’re not getting what you want, are you?”
“I want you to get off me!”
“And I want you to let me fuck you without all the feelings and drama.” His voice was sharp as a sword, stabbing through me. “You’re nothing to me,” he said. “You’re my prostitute. You don’t get kisses and compliments unless I feel like giving them to you. You don’t get to look pretty. I don’t want you to look pretty. I want you to open your mouth when I tell you to open your mouth, and open your legs when I tell you to open your legs. Do you understand?”
I managed to yell “I hate you” before he tightened his arm around my neck again. I pressed back into his chest, trying not to pass out. I understood what he was saying. I understood that he was paying me, and that I was his whore, and that this was his show, but I didn’t see why he had to be so obnoxious about it. One of my shoes dropped to the floor with a thunk. I kicked off the other one, not caring where it landed.
He spread my legs wider with his knees, and shoved a hand between my thighs, gathering moisture from my pussy. I was so wet, and I was afraid it was because I liked this. I didn’t want him to be right.
“Now,” he said, “you’re going to take it in the ass where it hurts, instead of your wet pussy where you want me, or your whore mouth where you could have had me.”
I shook my head no, but I knew he didn’t care. He was already pushing inside me, using only the slickness he’d gathered from my pussy. I groaned and squirmed but his knees had me open so wide, splayed on the bed. One of his hands trapped my wrists under my stomach, and the other, of course, was still wrapped around my neck.
He gave a long, low sigh, made a guttural, animal sound of pleasure as I trembled under him. My ass hurt, pried open once again by his oversized cock. But there was nothing I could do. I was literally held down from top to bottom, and from inside where he impaled me.
“I know you don’t want this, but it feels so good to me,” he said. “You’re so tight, and it feels like fucking heaven when you fight me.”
I didn’t want to fight, not when he’d enjoy it, but when he started moving in me, it was like I had no choice. Fight or die. Fight, or admit that I liked being held down and brutalized this way. I clenched around him and he growled.
“That’s right. Do I hurt inside you? That’s what I want. You don’t get what you want. That’s how this works. You don’t get to come today, bad girl. You’re just gonna lay underneath me and get fucked, and fucked, and fucked.” He punctuated each word with a balls-deep thrust.
“Please stop,” I said. “I don’t like this. It doesn’t feel good.”
“That doesn’t matter, does it? If you don’t get to come?”
His scent surrounded me, the scent I had come to equate with W and sex and terror. I dreamed about the smell of him, sometimes, in sex-soaked reveries and nightmares. I hated that he would probably find that funny, or pathetic. I dreamed way too often about the feeling of him fucking me and hurting me.
When all the fight went out of me, when I’d been fucked just that long and hard, he finally released my wrists. He unwrapped his arm from my neck and used it to brace himself over me. I didn’t want him over me. I wanted him closer to me. I needed comforting. I needed to be touched and given pleasure as he reamed out my ass, so I slid my hand down and fingered my pussy. I was still so wet.
“Don’t you dare make yourself come,” he said. “Not today.”
“I want to,” I whined.
“No. I’ll beat you into next week if you make yourself come after I told you not to.”
I didn’t hear what he was saying, or maybe I did and I just didn’t want to believe him. I was so hot by now, so wrought up with anger and lust. His pounding thrusts had driven my clit against the bed over and over, and I felt like a big, seething volcano of need.
“Don’t,” he said once more, but he didn’t pull my hand away, and I couldn’t stop rubbing my clit. I wanted to come with him inside me, while I felt so full and used. I could feel him start to come. I heard it in his breathing and I sensed it in his jerking thrusts. I thought he wouldn’t notice if I climaxed at the same time, if I was really, really quiet. Oh God, it felt like heaven when I let the orgasm come. I clenched around his cock, gritting my teeth to stay silent. Everything inside me clenched and vibrated, and if I could have, I would have cried out with pleasure.
W pulled out of my ass while I was still pulsing through aftershocks. I didn’t care. I’d already floated away. I might as well have been wearing my blindfold, I was so lost in my little world. My hand curved over my pussy, petting it, soothing it.
“You don’t understand yet, do you?”
Uh-oh. He sounded angry. His fingers wove into the hair at my nape, and he wrenched my head to the side.
“Don’t hurt me anymore,” I said. “Leave me alone.”
“What the fuck did I tell you?”
“Not to come. Not today.” I yowled as he pulled my hair harder. I was starting to regret that orgasm I’d stolen, shattering as it was. “I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.”
He got up off the bed, grabbed his pants and pulled the belt from the loops while I ran toward the door. He caught me and shoved my face against the wall.
“Please don’t,” I cried, as he yanked my wrists behind my back. He cinched them together with the belt, and dragged me toward the bed with the tail. When I resisted, he wrapped an arm around my waist and carried me. I kicked and wriggled, but his arm was like a steel band. I wasn’t escaping him.
There was an orchid in a medium-sized pot by the window, staked to a long bamboo rod for stability. With his free hand, he yanked the rod out of the pot as we passed it. The bamboo was at least as thick as my finger.
He threw me face down over the edge of the bed, so my ass was in the air. I tried to yell no, and help, but he solved that problem by pressing my face into the covers until I stopped.
“Are you done fighting me?” he asked. “Because we can go again.”
“Fuck yo—” I tried to yell, at which time my face was shoved into the covers harder. This time he held me there until I ran out of breath, and I had to kick and struggle to be released.
“I told you very clearly not to come, didn’t I?” he said. “And you did it anyway. Stop fighting, because you earned this punishment.”
He yanked my hands up and braced his knee on the small of my back. The bamboo rod landed with a thud across my ass cheeks.
Owwww. Ohmygod. My legs kicked up as a sizzling line of heat exploded across my flesh. Before I could come to terms with the agony, another stroke landed above it, and a third stroke below. He stifled my howl of pain in the blankets, pulling my hair again. No, no way, the orgasm wasn’t worth this. If I knew I’d be getting this, I wouldn’t have done it.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The throbbing lines of torment built on top of one another, as he whacked a lattice of hell from the top of my ass to just above my knees. The blows came one after the other, and the only thing that kept me bent over the bed was his kneecap wedged into my back. I scratched at his leg, whenever he gave the belt enough slack for me to do it. “Please, stop,” I gasped.
“Beginning to regret that orgasm now?”
“Yes! I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry.”
“Next time I say no orgasm…” He gave me the hardest whack yet, so hard I couldn’t even find the breath to scream. “Then I mean no orgasm. I’m not into games, Chere. Remember that next time.”
He left off, went back over to the orchid and jammed the bamboo rod into its former place. I watched this with a kind of traumatized wonder. No one would ever guess, looking at that potted flower and stake, that it had been used to cause someone so much pain.
“Oh, the tears,” he said, throwing up his arms. He went back to the table and downed the rest of his drink. I took the opportunity to finally curl up into that ball. My hands struggled within his belt.
“Let me go,” I sobbed. “Undo my wrists.”
“In a minute.” He came to lie beside me, and stroked a hand up and down my back. “You need to calm down first.”
“I can’t. My ass hurts. And you’re not supposed to mark me! My other clients—”
But I wasn’t seeing any other clients. Now I understood why. It wasn’t because I was special, or because he couldn’t get enough of me. It was so he could leave all the marks he wanted on me without ruining some other man’s date.
“Stop crying,” he said. “You’re the biggest fucking baby.” He turned me to face him and looked at me a moment. I must have appeared a mess. I must have looked like I wanted to murder him, but that didn’t seem to matter. He tugged me closer and kissed each of my cheeks, slowly, lingering over the moisture of my tears.
After that, he finally reached behind me to undo his belt. He had to lean over my body to work the buckle. His cock was flaccid now, and his skin slightly damp with sweat, a post-sex man, not a monster. I had to restrain myself from seeking comfort in the curve of his neck.
“Finally,” I said, when he released me.
He ignored my irritated exhortation, pulled my hands in front of me, and inspected my wrists. They were red, but the skin wasn’t broken. He lifted them and placed my palms against his stubble-roughened cheeks.
He stared at me, and I stared back at him. What did he want? Why did he think it was okay to go from flat-out rape and torture to these post-sex gazing sessions? These gentle caresses lying beside each other on the bed?
“Something’s wrong with you.” I spread my fingers over his cheek where I’d slapped him earlier. “You’re a horrible person.”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t frown. He only covered my hands with his. “I know I’m a horrible person. Do you want those kisses now?”
Damn him. Yes, I wanted them, and I hated myself for wanting them, because he wasn’t nice. He was horrible. I know you’re all pouty and hurt because you didn’t get enough attention, because I didn’t fawn all over your pretty dress and your fucking lingerie. It was all true, and I hated that he said things like that to my face, that he called me on all my faults and insecurities. He made me feel awful.
And then he held me and kissed me like this.
His fingers eased along my neck, gentling me, collecting me as his lips played over mine. When I responded to his caresses, he pulled me closer and upped the violence, nipping me, biting my lower lip.
I opened my hands on his chest, needing this closeness and connection, even though I knew it for a lie. He was so handsome, so sexy, and he could sweep me away so easily if he wanted to. It wasn’t fair. Every session, he tormented me and tied me into emotional knots, and then kissed and caressed me afterward, like that took away everything he’d done to me. It didn’t.
His kisses weren’t sweet, or passionate. They were lies. I turned my head away so his lips ended up on my cheek. I closed my hands and drew them away from his chest.
“What?” he said.
“I don’t want to kiss you.”
“I’m paying you, and I want to kiss you.”
“You’re mean to me.” I hated how childish and whiny I sounded. He made me feel childish and whiny and ridiculous and desperate for his small gifts of affection.
“I don’t understand you,” he said with mock annoyance. “Last week you were mad because I raped you. Now you’re mad because I choked you, beat you, and sodomized you. I don’t know how to make you happy.”
“This isn’t a joke. It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not funny. It’s sexy. You enjoyed everything we did today.”
I moved to get up and he pulled me back down. I fought, hitting out at him, but as usual he was one step ahead of me, deflecting and trapping my hands.
“You need to stop hitting me,” he said in a stern tone. “I mean it. I’m paying you. Show some respect.”
I gazed into his eyes, trying to see the humor, the irony. Trying to understand. “Are you for real right now?”
“I’m very real, and I’m very honest. Why won’t you be honest and admit that you like these scenes we do together? The world won’t end because you lose yourself in a little rough sex. I don’t hurt you. I don’t really hurt you,” he qualified, when I gave him a look.
“You hurt me every time.”
“Sexy games. I’m a sadist. It’s what I like.” He touched my cheeks, dragged my face up to his. “And I like you because you fight me,” he murmured against my lips. “Even when you submit, you fight me. That’s a hard thing to find. Do you know how happy I was when I found you, Chere? After our first session at the W, I went home and masturbated so hard I almost injured myself, and then I called your pimp and set up our next date. I couldn’t wait to see you again. You made me so happy that day. You make me so fucking happy every time you struggle and fight me.”
I gazed into his intent blue eyes. His sadistic blue eyes.
“What’s the reality?” I asked. “The way you hate on me when we have sex—”
“I don’t hate on you.”
“Or this now, this kindness and sweetness? What’s the reality between us?”
“There’s no reality between us. You know that.”
I turned away from him in a huff. He turned me back to him and this time he didn’t look sweet.
“Okay, here’s the reality,” he said. “You excite me. You push the right buttons for me. But you need to remember something, starshine: you work for me. I don’t want to deal with any of your girly, emotional shit. Do you like me or do you hate me? Who the fuck cares? I pay you so I don’t have to deal with that.”
“By ‘girly, emotional shit,’ do you mean crying when you’re anally raping me?”
He leaned his head on his hand, like I was so misguided and unreasonable, and had to be set straight. “You weren’t crying from the assfucking,” he said. “You were crying because you dressed up for me, and I didn’t care. Because I don’t want you to dress up for me. That’s not our dynamic. I’m not your lover or your boyfriend or your best pal or anything like that, and I never will be. Please remember all this, so we don’t have to go over it again.”
Oh, I was going to remember every word. I was going to remember that he was a megalomaniac and an asshole, and that I shouldn’t have warm and fuzzy feelings for him. Maybe I’d read a little too much into his kindness at the end of our last session. He was probably just being nice so I wouldn’t call the police.
“I think you’re giving yourself a bit too much credit,” I said coolly. “I was a prostitute for a good decade before you came along, and I’ll still be turning tricks when you’re no longer my client. You don’t mean as much to me as you think. I dressed up to please you as a client. I’m friendly and conversational because most clients like that. Please remember all this, so we don’t have to go over it again.”
Ha. I mentally dropped the mic, but he didn’t react to my sassy comeback. He was staring at my lips.
“I’m paying you a lot of money for your exclusive service. I want oral without condoms,” he said.
“I can’t. That’s against company policy.”
“So is exclusivity. Anything can be bought.” His head was still propped on one hand. The other hand traced lazy trails up and down my thigh, occasionally meandering over a sensitive welt. “What do you want in exchange for full access to your warm, wet mouth?”
“Your name,” I said. “Your real name.”
Irritation twisted his features. He gave me a look.
I shrugged. “I’d need an STD test, and that would have your name on it.”
“You don’t need an STD test. For fuck’s sake, I’m as concerned about protection as you are. I’m clean.”
“If you’re so concerned about protection, why do you want to have oral without condoms?”
“Because I know you’re clean, and I’m clean.”
I glared at him. It was the principle of the thing.
“Okay, fine,” he said in exasperation. “I’ll show you a clean test, but it’s not going to have my information on it. Your pimp promised me privacy.”
“Weekly tests, if you want to keep doing it.”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Chere. I’m only sleeping with you at the moment.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because I’m too self-centered to bother with lies.” His fingers moved up my side and caught my right nipple, and pinched it. “That’s all you want? A clean bill of health? What kind of whore are you? Name a price,” he prompted. “Something reasonable.”
It felt unbearably icky to haggle with him, to talk about money and what I would do for him for money. I felt like a scrabbling stripper again, willing to gyrate my ass as hard as necessary to make the next rent check.
He waited. I waited. I wasn’t going to name a number and he wasn’t either. The truth was, he was already paying me too much.
“Bring me some test results,” I finally said. “And we can go without.”
“Swallowing too, right? No spitting, or I’ll lose my fucking shit with you.”
“And how would that be different from any other session?” I blinked at him, once, twice. “If you want me to swallow your cum, then you’ll just have to force me to do it, won’t you?”
He pinched my nipple again, so hard I pushed him away, which only resulted in a grasping struggle. Of course I lost. He laid over me, still pinching me, still hurting me. “You little flirt.”
I wasn’t the flirt. He was. He was stroking me, kissing me, flirting with me when he was the one who’d just lectured me about client-escort boundaries.
He stood up then and went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. He’d gotten what he wanted—oral without condoms, pending his test results. No need to lie beside me and pretend to be nice anymore.
“Are you coming in?” he yelled over the water.
Hell no, I wasn’t “coming in.” Boundaries, you asshole. I’d shower after he was gone, because if I went in there now and got in the shower with him, he’d start kissing me and being lovey-dovey and I’d fall for it hook, line, and sinker, which would only give him the chance to mock me again.
I must have fallen asleep to the sound of the shower. By the time I woke, the room was dark and silent. Empty.
I sat up, feeling grungy and unsettled. He’d left the key for me on the table. He always left the key so I could stay if I wanted, but I was looking for something else. My poetry. Why hadn’t he left me any poetry?
I was disappointed enough to turn and look at my back in the mirror. When I didn’t find any words, I inspected my entire body, as if I wouldn’t have woken up while he was writing on me. No. Nothing. Nothing but a bunch of ugly bamboo welts.
Well, this had certainly been an ego-bashing session. I thought he’d at least leave me with some poetry, something he’d picked out especially for this fucked-up moment between us, but he hadn’t, and I was left feeling small and ridiculous again. Ugh.
I took a long shower and tried to summon the glamorous, sexy Miss Kitty from the depths of my despair. Men paid a lot of money to spend time with me, to sleep with me. I had clients who paid just to take me out to dinner and have conversation. I was worth something besides fucking. I was kind and caring. I cared for Simon, who was a mess, and I didn’t complain about it.
I tried to build myself up, tried to avoid pitching into a depressive spiral. I felt a little better once I dried my hair and put my dress back on. It was a gorgeous dress, and it looked good on me. If W didn’t like it, he could go fuck himself. Someone would like it. I decided that I needed to be around people tonight, happy, uncomplicated people who didn’t know me as Miss Kitty, or Chere, or anybody.
I wasn’t a huge drinker, but tonight, I was going to the Gansevoort bar.