They say that a woman is responsible for her own orgasm. I’d realized during the sex with Dax that it was all a lie, and that the men saying that were probably chauvinistic pigs who only cared about getting off themselves and didn’t worry about what happened to the woman.
I came twice, almost three times, during the sex we had.
Dax rode me good and proper. There was no other way to describe it. He knew exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it, and he made sure that he got it in a way that didn’t make me feel like a piece of ass that was just there to give him what he wanted.
That was, until he was finished and he slid out of me. He found his clothes and got dressed and then he went on to hand me mine when I started to feel like maybe he’d used me after all. What a gentleman. Not.
When Dax walked out, telling me that the sex had been thanks for helping him save his dog and I could see myself out, I realized I was completely right, just not about what. Maybe a woman wasn’t entirely responsible for her own orgasm, but men were clearly pigs who didn’t give a shit what happened to the women they used.
He hadn’t once asked me to stay, asked me how I was feeling, asked me anything at all. He handed me my clothes and then walked away like I was some whore who had been dismissed. I had half a mind to follow him and demand money for my time if he was going to insist treating me like paid entertainment.
I didn’t do it. I wasn’t in the right state of mind to march up to him and chew him out for treating me the like shit when he’d made me feel like a goddess. Because the truth was I was shocked to my core. It took me ten minutes, standing in the massive room, just trying to figure out what had happened.
I’d known what was coming when he’d kissed me like that outside and then asked me to come to the house with him. I’d known that I was willingly going to give my body to him. A man like that, with eyes that managed to pierce my soul, was someone I wouldn’t have been able to say no to. At least, when I hadn’t known yet what an absolute asshole he was.
If I’d known beforehand I wouldn’t have let him do any of it.
I wasn’t sure if that was completely true, though. The sex had been beyond anything I’d ever experienced before. He’d given me the time of my life and he’d done it all making me feel like I was delicate. I might still have agreed. I just would have been better prepared for how I felt afterward.
Because the honest truth was I felt empty and hollow, like a part of me had been ripped open and I was bleeding out on the floor. And that part that was torn wasn’t my heart, either. I wasn’t in love with the man. It was something between dignity and pride that was damaged. Something that made me question my self-worth.
I didn’t usually waste my time wondering what men saw – or didn’t see – in me. I didn’t think I was particularly pretty, so I assumed that if men spoke to me – which usually happened at work where brain power was noticed and praised – it was because I was smart and good at my job and funny, when I wasn’t being accused of running over someone’s dog. When Dax was attracted to me, I hadn’t thought that it was just about my body.
I felt hurt and rejected in a way I hadn’t felt before. Previous boyfriends had made me feel stupid and unworthy of their time, sure, but never used.
It was a new sensation. And I didn’t like it.
I got dressed and glanced around the living room. The whole thing was surreal. Maybe the true offense and pain would hit me later, when reality kicked in and the events were still true. The living room was huge. The ceiling was double volume with drapes hanging from the top all the way down. The color of the walls was something warm I couldn’t place in the darkness, and everything had a rich feeling to it – the presence of a lot of money. And no feeling. This had all been bought because of the price tag. There was no life in this house, nothing that showed passion or feeling or love or… anything else for that matter. They were all just things.
And with Dax having left the room and the awkward way with which it at all ended it was… empty. The whole house felt painfully empty. I wondered if Dax felt it too. In light of what he’d done to me, I wondered if the emptiness was something he chose to feel and chose to dish out.
I opened the front door, flicked off the hall light like I was the last one leaving the house, and closed the door behind me. The darkness outside seemed lighter than the darkness inside. A breeze picked up and rustled the leaves in the trees at the edge of the garden. Stray leaves blew over the grass. I walked toward my car.
His motorcycle stood under the carport to the left of the garage. I walked toward it. It was an amazing piece of work. Where the whole yard was a mess, this thing was polished until it gleamed. The chrome caught glints of moonlight and reflected them back into the night. The leather was shiny, the faint smell of polish in the air, but the bike had been well-used. Dax definitely used this machine, and often.
Just like he rode me. I wondered what the difference was in pleasure. Where did I rank in comparison to his bike? Because he sure as hell had discarded me like I was an emotionless machine.
I was suddenly furious. Paid back from driving him around? Was that the price for getting a seat all bloody and being rude on top of it all? Was this universal currency that I wasn’t aware of? Anger bubbled through me, heat under my skin. My cheeks and my ears burned the way they did when I blushed, but this was a hell of a lot different. I hadn’t been this angry in… well, forever, actually.
Dax had to be glad he wasn’t out here with me. If he had been, I wouldn’t have been so angry, of course, because that would have meant that he had a sliver of decency. But that wasn’t the case and I was alone in a strange driveway, angry to the point of spontaneous combustion.
I kicked the bike tire. For a moment I had terrible images flash through my mind about slashing the leather with a knife. I had something sharp in the medical kit under my seat, didn’t I? I wanted to ruin this piece of pride and joy. I wanted to scratch all the chrome up with my car keys and make it look as ugly as he had made me feel. How ironic was that? He’d treated me like I was the most beautiful thing until he was done with me. All the physical compliments in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that he’d discarded me like I was yesterday’s newspaper.
I wanted to ruin him the way I felt he’d ruined me. Defiled me. Taken what was sacred and threw it on the ground. But of course, that wasn’t who I was. And I couldn’t do to him what I wanted to so badly. I couldn’t ruin the one thing it seemed he actually had some kind of feeling for.
My anger with myself almost matched my rage toward Dax. He was an asshole. Absolute, motherfucking asshole, and I couldn’t even do what he deserved. I couldn’t hurt him the way he had hurt me. I kicked the tire again, feeling like a sad excuse for a human being. I lacked the courage to avenge myself.
One more kick. I caught the bike at the right angle this time and the bike wobbled, straining against the little stand that kicked out at the bottom. For a moment everything froze as I watched the bike hover between falling and standing as if it was trying to make up its mind. I watched it, as if in slow motion, as it toppled over. Metal scraped on concrete and it made a crashing sound. The bike lay on its side.
I clapped my hand over my mouth and back toward my car. I glanced up at the windows of the house. They were all dark. Where was Dax? Was he already sleeping? I hoped to God he hadn’t heard any of this. I yanked open my car door and jumped in, closing the door as quietly as I could behind me. My breathing came in hard gasps and my fingers trembled. My body was on fire, embarrassment rushing through me.
I fumbled with the ignition and managed to turn on the car after the second try. I had to focus not to floor it out of there just in case he really had been watching. Or someone else had. I looked all around me, peering through all the tinted windows, but the street was deserted.
I pulled out of the drive slowly and turned into the road. I drove like a model citizen, signaling at turns until I was out of the neighborhood. I drove the other way around, not through the horrible neighborhood Dax had directed me through when I’d driven him home. I had the idea he’d done it as some sort of test. Or maybe he’d just been playing games. He was completely unpredictable. As soon as I felt I’d put enough distance between me and him, I put my foot down and the turbo kicked on, taking me home as fast as I was allowed to go this time of night.
I made it all the way home in record time, and parked in the garage underneath my apartment building. When I got out, I was breathing as hard as if I’d run all the way home.
I grabbed my handbag out from the foot well where it had gotten stuck after work and caused all this fucking mess. It had a drop of blood on it as well as a trickle of dried, soapy water. Thank God it was just my old purse, not the Coach I was planning on rewarding myself with after my next few paychecks at my new salary.
But still, it was a hell of a souvenir for a good deed. I walked to the elevator and rode up to the second. Now that I was finally calm I had time to think. I ran through every event since I’d nearly run over that damn dog. I hoped that the animal lived, honestly, because Dax really seemed to care about him. Maybe Joker was the only thing that Dax cared about in this world.
But just because the man had been able to show compassion for an animal he had obviously invested a lot of time and emotion in didn’t mean that he wasn’t an asshole. He’d treated me like shit and I wasn’t going to let go of that in a snap. In fact, I wasn’t going to let go of it, ever. These were the things that got us through life, the mistakes that taught as how to act. That was valuable, I told myself. Anything to make it seem less terrible than it was.
The sex had been consensual, as much as I was furious with him now. I’d wanted him just as much as he’d wanted me. I had a different idea of how it should have ended, but maybe it was just me. He was so damn unpredictable in every other way that it would have made sense that he saw sex as a sole act and not part of something greater. I took a deep breath.
Unpredictable.
That was what got to me about him. As nice as he was, as charming, deep, and funny as he came across, he’d been completely mercurial, switching between emotions like he was spinning a dial in his head. It had been unnerving and hypnotizing all at the same time.
The elevator doors pinged open on my floor, and I stepped into the hallway that ran down past two doors before mine. I unlocked and pushed the door open into a cold and dark apartment. The joys of living alone. I still missed the warmth and the smell of cooked food and the happy times I always seemed to walk in on when I had been living back home. I would have liked that for myself one day. It just was starting to look like it was going to happen.
Certainly not with men like Dax running around the streets of LA. I had grown up in a small town all my life where people still had things like morals, ethics, and compassion. Money was a poor substitute for those things, but it was in ample supply around here. Plenty of people seemed to think that if they threw enough money around, then common courtesy was optional at best, and a sign of weakness at worst. After all, this was Hollywood, where stars were born and the rest of us just had to live in their shadows, trying our best not to get in their way.
My cat, Mittens, jumped onto the counter with her white feet. She stretched out her black and white body.
“Good thing you spend so much time inside. You really don’t need any kind of male in your life.” I stroked her head, but after a bare moment of accepting my worship, she ducked out from underneath my hand and paced to her food and water bowl. All empty. Right. When I was having fun with assholes, real life carried on and responsibilities needed to be held up. I had to make a point of apologizing to Krista about blowing her off. It had been a good idea all the way up until he’d told me to leave. In retrospect, I should have taken her up on her offer instead.
I would have felt full, rather than empty.
“Do you like it here?” I asked Mittens while she ate. I scratched her between her ears. She shook her head. Don’t bother me while I’m eating. Right. I turned around, leaned against the counter and sighed.
Looked like it was frozen dinner for me again tonight. What was the point? I wasn’t even sure why I was watching my figure. Or anything else for that matter. It was amazing how quickly a man’s reaction toward me could make me doubt myself. Was that really what it had come down to? Was my perception of myself really dependent on men’s perception of me?
Because, honestly, I was irritated by it. I had been happily single for a while now. Having a career, making my own money, being independent, these were all things that I thought important. But this feeling now after a man had done me wrong? I hadn’t realized I still cared.
I shook my head as if I could shake the thoughts loose. I shouldn’t care. It was as simple as that. I took the food out of the freezer, stabled the plastic with a fork and put it on defrost. It was time to carry on with my life now. Men were a waste of time. Better to get on with it.
Me, myself, and I, right?
Sure, we’d go with that.