Chapter 27
Daniel
Mikey once told her humans were incapable of understanding the universe’s biggest truth—that every last molecule was constantly changing. That nothing stayed the same for even an instant.
When Daniel asked why that mattered, people seemed to be doing pretty well watching Survivor and eating chips, Mikey gave her a pitying look. “When people don’t understand change they think they can prevent it. That is the source of all misery.”
Daniel had forgotten about change. Trapped in a cell, that felt more like a warm luxurious bubble these days, she’d forgotten that things were always morphing into something else. Coal into diamonds, dormant volcanos into death snares, friendships into…more than friendships. Into complicated, possessive, destructive things that she had never, ever been good at.
She thought about relationships, annihilation and change as she stared at the tray of blueberry muffins someone had left on the kitchen counter. Well not someone—Seb. Daniel knew it was Seb because he’d left a note. Hey beautiful, gone surfing. Can’t wait to see you later! Seb xxx
Colt was with him. She knew that because one of the muffins was gone. Also he’d written on the note. Surfing as well. Great work last night. Colt PS. Don’t listen to the tapes without me xxxx
He always had to go one kiss better than Seb. He always called the Harry Potter CD’s ‘tapes.’ She and Seb had teased him about how old it made him sound so he’d dug his heels in and refused to call them anything else.
Daniel stared down at the too friendly, too intimate note. They were both trying to tell her something without actually saying the words and she wasn’t a fool, she knew what it was. She just didn’t know what to do about it. Her only plan thus far had been to take both by the ear and scream ‘What’s wrong with you two? I’m not some arts graduate you can just “love.” Also have you forgotten what this is? Who I am? For fuck’s sake, pull yourselves together.’
Everything was always changing, every molecule, every feeling, and when Daniel wasn’t looking, wasn’t controlling it, she, a commitment-phobe who’d never had a boyfriend found herself with two men who very much resembled the definition of that word. Who, instead of annoying her with their demands and whining about her sex drive and complaining about her sleep patterns and general grottiness they just sort of…liked her and made her eggs and swore about how Snape treated Harry.
It was very weird. Sinister even.
She’d expected the wall of problems bearing down on them (Espionage! Middlebend! Subjecting two extremely straight dudes to a polyandrous relationship! The apocalypse!) to kill their friendship within a week, but that just wasn’t happening. She planned instead to escape while they were all still on good terms, slip away and become one of their happiest memories. Every day she vowed she’d use her NEMP and leave Castle by the Sea but then she was getting laid, or eating spaghetti, or rolling back and forth, cuddling Colt and Seb at will, and it just didn’t feel like the right time.
Tonight, she told herself as she gave in and picked up a muffin. Tonight when she woke in the chilly pre-dawn darkness she wouldn’t burrow herself against Colt’s big hairy chest and fall back to sleep, she’d get up and use the NEMP.
Although she wouldn’t. She knew that even as she told herself she would. The front door snapped shut, making her drop her muffin. She’d gotten so used to company she’d forgotten how ominous small sounds could be when you were all alone. “Hello?” she called. “Seb? Colt?”
“No.” John strode into the kitchen, his face set. “It’s me.”
Daniel paused in the act of retrieving her muffin, staring wordlessly at him.
“Relax,” he said.
Daniel didn’t relax. In fact, she did the opposite. “What are you doing here man?”
She hadn’t seen John since he’d jerked off all over her tits. They’d not spoken, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she could occasionally hear him rustling around the surveillance quarters at night she might have thought he’d vanished, but he was still there, still watching. The thought often occurred to her while she was sandwiched between Seb and Colt and it usually resulted in a body-shattering orgasm.
They both refused to talk about John. Whenever she asked how he was they grunted ‘fine’ and changed the subject. She’d come to assume, with more than a drop of self-pity, that he was done with her. He was waiting out the rest of their contract, the one Colt and Seb refused to talk about and then he would take back his friends and get as far away possible.
She tried to think about it as little as possible, but even with two men to occupy her time it was hard. She liked John, she always had. She liked his surliness and his tinder-dry sense of humor. She still thought he was beautiful. And now he was here, in her kitchen.
Maybe he’s come to apologize, Daniel thought excitedly. Maybe he realizes how rude it is to ejaculate on someone then treat them like dry rot? “What’s up?” She asked.
John folded his arms over his chest, bouncer style. “We need to talk.”
So much for an apology.
“Sure,” she said. “About what?”
John’s gaze flicked down to her bare legs, she was wearing one of Seb’s t-shirts and nothing else. “You want to get dressed first?”
“Nope.” Daniel mimicked him and folded her arms across her chest so her T-shirt rode up higher on her thighs. She saw a muscle in John’s jaw twitch and gestured to the counter. “Fine can we just sit down?”
“Sure,” she said again. “Do you want a coffee?”
“Yeah.” He walked up to the kitchen counter and took a seat. The very same seat where she’d ridden Colt as Seb kissed down the back of her neck, two of his fingers in her arse. She wondered if John knew that. If he’d seen that. She gestured to the espresso machine. “How’d you have it?”
“Black.”
“Surprise, surprise.” The machine gave its usual loud grinding whir as she turned it on. It was a sound she usually enjoyed but for some reason today the noise felt as ominous as the slamming door. “Um, so what can I help you with?”
John studied her. While as magnetic as ever he didn’t look well. He was pale and there were shadows under his eyes as dark as the stubble blackening his jaw. “It’s about Colt and Seb.”
Daniel’s heart began beating unnaturally fast. She’d been expecting this. “Elkin doesn’t want me to see them anymore?”
“No.” John stared straight in her face. “Worse.”
“Sharks got them?”
John didn’t smile and neither did she. “This is serious,” he said. “You might need to brace yourself.”
Again his words had the opposite effect. Daniel’s palms grew slick with sweat and the familiar bubbling urge to laugh surged. “Should we be talking about this in front of the cameras?”
“I’ve turned them off,” John said. “Fixed it so it looks like a glitch. We’ve got seventeen minutes.”
“Shit.” Daniel glanced up and saw the red blinking light was indeed gone. “Okay, so it is serious. What’s wrong?”
“We need to leave. Me and Colt and Seb. If not today then tomorrow.”
Daniel’s face went numb. Everything changes, she told herself. Everything changes, everything changes.
“Why?”
John exhaled. “Did you ever think it was odd that Middlebend were so eager to pay us to surf, eat lobster, and be in here with you?”
Daniel rubbed a thumb over her lips reflexively trying to hide her smile. “The thought did cross my mind.”
John stared at her, his hollow eyes unblinking. “Well, as my old man used to say ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ I think I’ve figured out where Middlebend is picking up the check.”
Daniel felt her mouth stretch wider and turned her back so John wouldn’t see her horrible smile. She pulled two coffee mugs from the shelf behind her. “What do you mean?”
“It came to me last night, what they want out of us. Why they hired us in the first place. It never made a lot of sense you see, that they were willing to give us this job and once we were here, let us see and talk to you all the time. First I figured they just wanted us to keep you milked so you wouldn’t think about escaping—”
“You don’t have to make me sound like a cow,” Daniel protested, recalling his greedy piglet comment. “Why do you keep comparing me to farm animals?”
“Sorry, I’m a little ragged,” John said, his voice rough. “Can I please have the coffee?”
She turned around and placed the mugs under the espresso button and they watched as the hot black liquid drained into the dishware below. She topped them both up with hot water and shoved a cup toward John. “Here.”
“Thanks,” he said and took a deep swallow, his tongue apparently immune to blistering heat. “Our contract’s due to end in two days and Elkin’s offering twice the money for us to stay for another month.”
Daniel swallowed, hating that her first instinct was excitement and fresh hope. “But you don’t want to stay, right? You want to bail?”
“Not for the reasons you think.” John put down his coffee mug and sighed. “Schwartz, I know we’ve had our…issues.”
Daniel recalled the warm spray of his come striking her skin. “Sure. Issues.”
Maybe it was a trick of the light but she was pretty sure John’s cheeks went slightly pink under his stubble. “I don’t hate you,” he muttered. “I don’t want to get you away from Colt and Seb. But something is seriously wrong here. When I told Elkin we might not be able to stay on for another month she offered me a million dollars.”
Daniel’s stomach clenched. “Hooray?”
“It’s not a legitimate offer,” John said. “I can feel it.”
He pressed a hand to his abdomen; he seemed barely aware he was doing it. “Elkin’s stalling, trying to keep us here long enough for something to happen. I think we’re all being watched more closely than any of us thought and— Can you please stop doing that?”
Daniel had unknowingly been tapping her foot hard and fast against the floor. She pressed it hard against the marble. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I don’t think we were hired to watch you,” John said. “I think we were hired to…connect with you.”
Daniel frowned at him. “Connect me with me?”
She was genuinely confused but John scowled as though she was making fun. “Think about it. They hired three relatively young, relatively single guys and set us up in a house that’s so nice you can’t help but think of it as a fancy hotel not a prison. The three of us were given all the leeway we needed to develop emotional and physical connections with you.”
“No you weren’t!” Daniel protested. “I went days without speaking to any of you and if I hadn’t fixed the intercoms I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you at all.”
John shook his head. “The cracks are more evident from our end. Think about how easy it was for you to reconnect the intercoms. I asked Elkin if I could tear them out and she refused. When you kissed Seb she brushed it off. She was always on me about having Colt train you in the gym. She wanted us engaged with you, talking to you. At the time I thought it was just unprofessional but if they were trying to push us together we’d have felt it, they gave it enough time for the relationships to happen organically. Or as organically as they can in a situation like this.”
Daniel remembered a line she’d read somewhere about how people were only as faithful as their options, that was why so many secretaries became mistresses. She wasn’t a ‘love and marriage’ girl, she liked sex and she liked men but she’d never had a boyfriend. And yet, she thought with chilling clarity, she’d met three men in this place that she’d liked enough to grow close to and that was either a huge coincidence, or it had never been a coincidence at all.
She had the sick, swooping sensation that she was falling, falling down into nothingness. “Fuck.”
She squeezed her brain tighter as thoughts rattled through her head like machine gun fire. “Fuuuck. Psych testing.”
“What?” John asked.
“In the military you’d have had crazy amounts of psych testing, wouldn’t you? Especially for Special Forces?”
John nodded blankly.
“So, Elkin or Middlebend or whoever, hires someone like me to collate data on private security guys. They’re restricted to a certain age, a certain background; like you said youngish, singlish, no mental illness and when they find a few they like then they go deep. Sexual interests, hobbies, past relationships. You three must have looked like prime rib to a data collector, I bet Uncle Sam has bibles full of shit on you.”
John’s face grew pale. “They hired us purely on the basis of how likely we were to wanna fuck you.”
“Yeah, I mean…” Daniel screamed with nerves and fresh discovery. “They brought me here! I never knew why they brought me here! Fuck, why didn’t I realize this sooner?”
“What?”
“They flew me to California for you. Middlebend’s based in Germany! Elkin’s from the fucking UK, where I was! They brought me here for you lot. I bet if they offered to fly you to London for a random surveillance gig you’d have been seriously apprehensive.”
“I was apprehensive that they flew us to the west coast. Why not keep us in New York?” John pressed.
Daniel, now shivering with adrenaline, was leaning on the counter to keep herself steady. “That’s your home. You have other friends and family. They wanted you off guard in new surrounds because it would—”
“—force us to bond.” John scrubbed a hand across his shaved scalp. “Basic training one-oh-one. How could I have been so fucking stupid?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said, her head throbbing. “I was stupider.”
“I suspected something like this as soon as Elkin told me we were free to come and meet with you whenever we wanted,” John said. “But I got thrown off because they hired all three us. I thought if they wanted us to fuck you they’d have only sent one. We wasted weeks getting in each other’s way.”
Daniel’s mind, as though overcompensating for weeks of slackness immediately presented her with the answer. “There’s not a lot of information on me. My parents were hippies, massive anti-government, anti-therapy types. I’ve never been psychologically evaluated. Middlebend didn’t know exactly what kind of men I like…”
“So they gave you more options.” John’s nostrils flared. “This really is like the fuckin’ Bachelorette.”
“Except I took all the options like some greedy fuck at a soft serve bar.” Daniel gripped her hair tighter and moaned. “This is all my fault.”
“No it isn’t,” John said sharply. “You said it yourself, we were basically fucking programmed to find each other attractive.”
In spite of everything Daniel found herself sincerely smiling. “You think I’m attractive?”
John’s eyebrows drew together. “Daniel…”
“I’m sorry. Inappropriate. It’s just…never mind. What now?”
John stood up, seemingly restless. “I assume you know why Middlebend wanted you falling for us?”
“Leverage. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Agreed.” John stroked his buzzed hair again. “So you know it puts the three of us at huge personal risk when Middlebend decides to cash in on your…feelings for us.”
Daniel chose to ignore that he said ‘feelings’ like he meant ‘rotting seal carcass.’ “I don’t get it. Why aren’t Middlebend trying to cash in on my feelings now? Why re-hire you for another month?”
“I think they’re waiting for…” he sucked his full lips into his mouth. “I believe that they’re waiting for one of the boys to say they love you.”
Daniel glanced back at the muffin note, her insides squirming. “I don’t think that’s far away.”
“Me neither.”
But it wouldn’t be real love, she thought. Just maths, just an algorithm. This whole time I thought we found something real but I was winning stuffed toys on a fixed carnival game.
“There’s a job in Arizona,” John said, his voice taking on the rough edge of someone who knows their news will offend, even harm. “Some pastor on a bible thumping tour wants someone to watch his house. It starts in three days. I’ve spoken to our lawyer. We can claim a grace period and if Middlebend tries to stop us we’ll sue.
“So what’s the problem?” Daniel urged. “Do you need money?”
John shot her a bemused look. “No. Colt and Seb won’t leave without you.”
“Oh. Right. Fuck.” Daniel pressed a hand to her forehead. “What if you explain the situation? How they were basically conned into wanting me?”
“They still won’t leave. They’re not faking their feelings, Schwartz. They won’t be able to function knowing you’re still in here.”
“But if you bust me out you’ll have to go on the run. You’ll be criminals.”
“Yes,” John said, his gaze fixed on hers. “We will be.”
“And you can’t stay.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Then I’ll break up with them,” she heard herself say. You let this happen, you couldn’t fuck off when you damn well had the chance.
John’s face sagged, though with relief or fear Daniel couldn’t tell. “You mean it?”
Everything changes, everything changes. “Yeah. I’ll do it when they get back. Then all three of you need to get the fuck out of here.”
John shot the dead-eyed camera another glance. “We can help you escape from the outside. We’ve got contacts and—”
Daniel held up a hand. “I can escape on my own.”
“Middlebend aren’t going to bring in other guys to seduce you—”
“I don’t give a fuck about other guys, I have a way to escape. I have for days.”
“Then why haven’t you left already?”
A lump rose in Daniel’s chest, hot and thick. “Because I was happy here.”
John’s face tightened. “Schwartz…”
“Don’t. Please don’t be nice to me. It’ll make everything worse.”
John gave her a small smile. “Okay.”
Daniel stared at him as he drank more of his coffee and wondered if he would miss her, this green-eyed asshole. This pillar of man pain. “How long until the cameras start up again?”
John checked his watch. “Nine minutes.”
She hesitated. “Once you’re at your new job a while and everything’s died down will you tell Seb and Colt something for me?”
A shadow seemed to pass over John’s face and he looked like he desperately wanted to say no. “What?”
“Can you tell them…” Daniel remembered how they’d looked last night at dinner, laughing at each other’s jokes and flirting with her over the steak and salad Seb had made and her voice broke, the sound as unexpected as a bird flying into a window. “Oh Jesus.”
John jerked forward as though he meant to grab her hand, then stopped, his hand flat in the air. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah I’m fine,” she said, pressing her palm to her mouth. “Can you just tell them I want them to be okay? And promise that I’ll be okay too.”
John stared down into his empty coffee mug. “Right. I’ll uh, pass that along.”
She felt a surge of irritation at the pathetic response. “Yeah, fuckin’ cheers. You know I really do like them and even though you clearly regret everything we did together and you have the worst man pain of anyone I’ve ever met, I like you too, you fuck.”
There was a short silence.
“I know,” John muttered.
“What?”
John glanced up at her, his features as soft as they’d been in the wake of his orgasm. “I know you like me Schwartz.”
She was so stunned she said what she always said when people rebuffed her information with ‘I know.’
“Yeah you know,” she said. “Because I just fucking told you.”
John smiled. Actually properly smiled. It made a dimple pop in his right cheek, adorable as a basket of kittens. Then he cleared his throat “I should tell you that I-I really regret what happened between us…that night.”
“You mean when you jizzed on me and left?”
“Yes,” he said with a touch of his usual wryness. “It wasn’t about you, it was about me and what I…” He cleared his throat again. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” Daniel said. “It’s just a shame you’re not more onboard with your kinks. They’re fun.”
And just like that, goodbye sharing happy time was over. “What kinks?” John asked in a voice like chilled steel.
Daniel rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, this isn’t like when you pretended not to have a hard-on. You don’t have plausible deniability after what we’ve done together.”
“Plausible deniability about what?”
Daniel laughed, because she always laughed when things got tense. “Well seeing as this is goodbye, you clearly like watching women get defiled by other men. And I know you’re still watching through the cameras.”
John’s cheeks went pink. “I’m not.”
“Yeah, nah, I’m pretty sure you are,” Daniel said. “I can feel it.”
“I’m not,” he repeated, but not like he meant it or even wanted her to believe he meant it.
“It’s fine,” Daniel said. “I like you watching. I like everything we did and for the record I don’t think you’re giving me, or other kinky women enough credit, Heathcliff.”
John looked too wound up to register the reappearance of his unwelcome nickname. The one she’d promised, under threat of orgasm denial, not to call him anymore. “What I want…it’s…disgusting.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped, partly because of his look of utter revulsion, partly because he was offering her personal information. “Seriously, you think you’re disgusting?”
He nodded, his jaw tight.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you,” Daniel said, outraged. “Seb is one thing, but you didn’t grow up in some nutbag town where everyone thought fossils were stuck in the ground by god to test us. What consenting adults do together is nothing to torture yourself over. Unless you’re into that,” she added as an afterthought.
“You don’t understand…”
“So tell me. Tell me what you like and I can decide for myself if I’m too traumatized to do it or not.”
“Fine.”
Daniel opened her mouth then closed it again. She’d been expecting a lot more resistance. “Really?”
“Yup,” John said, draining the last of his coffee. “Fuck it, you’re leaving anyway, right?”
He was the one who was leaving, but Daniel didn’t want to correct him. “What do you like then Heathcliff?”
There was a small beat in which Daniel knew John was thinking about her promise to call him by his name. A faint gleam appeared in those mystical green eyes. “I like pretending I’ve kidnapped you,” he said. “Kidnapped you and turned you into my whore.”
He said all this with a completely straight face. As though he was doing nothing more shocking than admitting that yeah, he liked the spicy kind of Doritos better than the regular ones. Daniel knew he was trying to provoke her with bluntness and kept her face deliberately relaxed. “And the watching?”
“I imagined other men paid me to be with you. And you wanna make me happy so you fuck them while I supervise.”
Daniel thought of her dream of being tied to a table and taken, not necessarily against her will. Heat bloomed between her legs. She licked her lower lip. “That sounds…manageable.”
John laughed. “Don’t fuck with me, Schwartz, it’s sick.”
“Have you ever actually hurt a woman? Held her against her will? Made her do things she didn’t want to do?”
“No, but that’s not the—”
“Of course it’s the point. If you really were a sick fuck you wouldn’t be exploring your fantasies in consensual threesomes, you’d be googling ‘human sex slave auctions where I can buy my own sex slave.’ Kinks are kinks, man, and sure yours is weird and a bit rapey…”
John scowled at her. “Thanks.”
“…but it could be a lot worse.”
At first Daniel thought he’d refuse to answer, he certainly shifted as though he was going to leave but then he seemed to think better of it, glancing up at her he grinned, the smile loaded down with misery.
“What’s worse than wanting to humiliate the people you fuck? The women you care about and wanna protect. What’s worse than that?”
Daniel could tell the question cost John a great deal. She knew he’d probably wrestled with it his whole adult life, turned it over in his head after he got off to things in his heart he thought were perverse. She understood that he thought no one could give him an answer, which was why she was so relieved that she could. “You could want to shit on them.”
For a moment, John just stared at her like she’d grown horns. Then he pressed both hands against his eye sockets and groaned. “The fuck’s wrong with you, Schwartz?”
“I’m not joking!” she said earnestly. “My friend Beth dated a guy who was into that, shitting on people, and it was a nightmare. She could never have sex with him again. I mean, even statistically speaking I know like a hundred girls who would let you fake-own them and zero who would let you shit on them. Or shit on you. Or involve shit in any aspect of their sex lives.”
“Yep. Okay, Schwartz,” John said in a voice filled with pure unadulterated horror. “Thanks for that. Now please just—”
“And look at Fifty Shades, millions of women bashing it out to the idea of being owned, meanwhile how many bestsellers have there been about getting shit on? None. Literally none. And there never will be.”
With a loud thump John banged his forehead on the kitchen counter. “Please stop talking.”
Daniel grinned. “But you feel better now, right?”
“No,” John said into the table. But she could tell he was smiling.
“Is that why you don’t like touching me?” she asked, hoping to move the topic along. “Because you want to pretend like I’m scared or something?”
“Not really,” he said, raising his head to reveal endearingly flushed cheeks. “I’ve never been the most touchy-feely guy—”
“Get out of here.”
“Ha-ha,” John said. “It’s hard for me to be with anyone new. I was okay before I got divorced but—”
“Holy bejeezus, you were married?”
“Ages ago. I was nineteen and it didn’t last a year.”
“Jeez.” Daniel tried to get her head around the idea of John as someone’s husband. To her surprise it kind of fit. She’d always suspected under his steely resolve and self-flagellation lay a romantic. It was why he reminded her of Heathcliff. “What split you guys up?”
“We were too different,” John said uncomfortably.
“It wasn’t the no-touching thing?”
He looked unnerved, as though he’d expected her to have already forgotten about that. “No, that kinda came after. It’s…complicated.”
Daniel rolled her eyes. “Well, don’t try to be too fucking mysterious about it or anything, Heathcliff.”
John exhaled. “I…Okay, so…”
She waited as the seconds ticked by until finally John exhaled. “I haven’t had sex with a woman one-on-one since my ex and I split.”
“And that was in…?”
His mouth quirked. “2002.”
Daniel’s first instinct was to cry out ‘What the fuck?’ But thankfully she managed to suppress it. “So…what happened?”
John was avoiding her eyes again. “Not totally sure. What I like in bed was always a bit twisted but after I got divorced my wires were all…tangled up. Whenever I was with a girl, having her touch me, having her watch me come it always just made me feel….”
Vulnerable, Daniel thought.
“Uncomfortable. Like she was peeling off my skin with her eyes or something.” He shrugged with unconvincing casualness. “Eventually I stopped trying. It was just easier for me to pair up, like I do with Colt.”
“How is it different?” Daniel asked, fascinated.
“Girl’s attention isn’t just on me. Plus, it feeds into my…What I like.”
Daniel had a shivery recollection of John ordering Colt to go down her. “So you do it with Colt a lot?”
John gave her a steely sort of smile. “I’ve done it with a few guys, sort of came to be known for it. Anyone’s girlfriend wanted a three-way I was the one they asked. But yeah, Colt and I are a team. He knows what I like. At least some of it”
“I doubt he’d care,” Daniel said. “He’s filthy as fuck. Zero inhibitions.”
John smiled down at the table. “Yeah.”
“So what if you can’t get anyone to team up with you?” Daniel asked. “Surely you haven’t had three-ways every weekend for the last thirteen years?”
John made a face. “Fuck, that sounds like a long time. I guess I watched porn. I jerked off.”
“Didn’t you get sick of it?”
“Yeah, but what could I do? I couldn’t handle casual sex, and there was never enough time between deployments for me to connect with anyone. I got a blowjob every now and again but I always felt like shit afterward.”
John looked at her and flushed, as though he’d said too much.
“Escorts?” Daniel asked already knowing the answer.
“I…I’m not proud of it. It was…easier that way.”
“I’m not judging you. I’m sure you were a great J—” Daniel clapped her hand to her mouth.
John stared at her in exasperation. “Did you just realize that men who pay for sex are called Johns and my name is John?”
“No…” Daniel said, biting a knuckle.
“Sure.” He shook his head, smirking. “To think you were actually making me feel better.”
“I still am,” Daniel said around her finger. “Admit it.”
“Fine,” John said in a low voice. “You are.”
Daniel’s chest felt oddly swollen, as though it had been soaking in hot water. They smiled at each other and she was shocked by how different he looked. It was as though he’d been wearing a pair of sunglasses the entire time they’d known one another and he’d just taken them off. She wished they had more time. If they did, maybe they could talk and look at one another until he was familiar enough with her that she could touch him. She’d love to touch him.
John looked up at the clock and swore. “The boys will be back soon, I should go.”
“No you shouldn’t.” Daniel moved around the counter, blocking his path to the door. “You know, as soon as I got here I started having a dream about you and Colt and Seb. You were all in uniform and I was tied down to a table. You were in charge. You said I was a reward and you made Colt and Seb take turns fucking me.”
John paled. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I never had dreams like that until I met you. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
John shifted uncomfortably against the counter. “What else would it be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe my brain was tapping into your fantasies. Finding the part of me that wanted to experience what you did and waking it up.”
John’s eyes darted from her face to the door. “We’re a little late Schwartz.”
He moved to step around her as though that was the final word. Daniel moved with him so that they were again face to face. He wasn’t that much bigger than her, five eleven maybe, but his presence made him seem a lot taller than his height suggested. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice thrumming with tense authority she’d come to know him for.
“I want to give you a blow job.” The words came out of nowhere but as soon as she said them she knew they were true.
John’s jaw tightened. “You can’t be serious?”
Inwardly Daniel celebrated, knowing that the fact that he hadn’t outright said ‘no’ meant she was in with a chance. “I am. I know you don’t want to touch me and that’s fine but if you could let ladies of the evening go down on you, I feel like you could let me.”
“I’d be fucking my best friend’s girl. Twice over.”
“I’m my own girl,” Daniel said, moving around the counter. “Besides, after what happened in my bedroom that night, you know this won’t be cheating.”
John’s gaze flicked back up to the cameras. “They’ll be back on, any second now.”
“I don’t care if some Middlebend nerd watches me blow you,” she said. “I don’t care if anyone watches, I want this. And I want you to be as mean as you want while I do it.”
John raked a fist across his head. “Don’t tell me that.”
“You can. I don’t care about what you say. And I think you know by now I’m immune to criticism.”
Another blast of that swoon-worthy smile. “Schwartz….”
“Please?” She was begging again, the way she had tied down in her bed. “I just want to touch you, at least once before this ends.”
John ran his tongue over his lower lip. “So you just…you wanna suck me?”
“Yes.”
John paused, drawing his gorgeous lips into his mouth once again. Lips Daniel realized she’d probably never kiss. He made a face as though contemplating a long and complicated job then his expression changed. It became cool and smooth as stone. He sat back down on his kitchen chair and pointed to the marble floor in front of him. “Kneel. Right here.”
Daniel knew it would be cold and uncomfortable but she guessed that was the point. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her bare thighs and approached.
“No turning back,” John said, yanking down the zipper of his jeans.
Daniel didn’t reply. She’d already decided to try and act worshipful and demure but in the face of all this male imperiousness it wasn’t all that hard. The boss, she thought as she knelt down, taking his due from whatever girl’s around to service him.
He tugged down his briefs and extracted his cock, red and angry as it had looked that night in her bedroom. She inhaled, smelling the raw scent of his manhood, trying to commit it to memory alongside Seb and Colts. Then she reached out and licked him, her tongue catching on the dry head of his cock. John let out a hiss like he’d been burned and a thick pearly drop leaked out of the eye of his penis. She licked at it, tasting what he’d refused to let her have before.
“Schwartz that’s enough,” John said coldly. “Suck. Now.”
She leaned in, opening her mouth then closed it again.
“I’m waiting.”
She inhaled. It’s the last time, she reminded herself. Say it. “Will you hold my head? Put your fingers in my hair?”
John paused and she was sure she’d gone too far. Then cold fingers plowed through her scalp, making her whole body tingle.
“Okay,” he said in a low rasping voice. “Now suck me like your goddamn life depends on swallowing my come.”
A feeling, not quite nausea, not quite excitement bubbled in Daniel’s chest. “I will, I promise.”
But before she did she looked up. John had closed his eyes, tilting his head up to the ceiling. He was surrendering, she realized and so was she.