Chapter 11
Calvin is stunning: his tux perfect, his form lean and muscular, his hair slicked back and debonair. The restaurant is beautiful: the service impeccable, the food glorious, the string quartet flawless. This would be my life — wined and dined by glorious gentlemen and surrounded by luxury and extravagance.
So, why do I feel like this? Like I don’t belong. This is what Kaden has been training me for.
“The soup is to your liking?”
“Yes, thank you. All of your selections have been superb. I’m so glad you ordered. I wouldn’t have known what to do.” The flattery comes easily.
Calvin smiles to himself with smug self-satisfaction. A sinking feeling registers behind my sternum as our waiter halts in his passing to top off our champagne glasses from the bottle Calvin ordered. He legitimately buys the act. I miss Kaden’s twinkle — that spark in his eye that lets me know it was all just a game and that my overextended flattery was play acting. I hadn’t expected that detail to matter — or that it would bother me.
Or the way he looks at me.
I have become accustomed to the affectionate familiarity in the gaze Kaden sends over me — like I have something he wants. Calvin — his eyes reflect that whatever I have is his for the taking. And that is the reality of my situation, isn’t it? What Kaden has been telling me — that the client’s wishes are mine to fulfill.
Calvin reaches across the table, and I mechanically move to meet his fingers. They feel foreign. The waiter leaves, and Calvin gives me a smile — one that says he is undressing me in his mind — a careful inspection of his goods. I swallow and force a sweet smile to my lips.
He leans forward for a more confidential tone. “I am tempted to have the waiter hold our meal. You are so beautiful, and I want to see what it is Kaden has taught you. I’ve booked a room for the night as well. Perhaps, we can run off, and you can relieve the tension building down here.”
He taps at the table with his free hand — at the space just above where his crotch would be underneath. Immediate dread sets over me at the prospect of being alone in a hotel room with this man. I keep a smile on my face and reach for the champagne to buy myself some time, averting my eyes in faux shyness. I just need to get over it. The only reason I’m with Kaden is to train me for this. I am nothing more to him. I am a project. A woman he is training to be with other men.
I take a small sip of my champagne and then let the goblet dangle over the table top before I set it down. I push back my reservations — this is something I need to do. I lean in, elbow on the table, fingers at my lips. Calvin’s eyes go there, and Kaden has taught me well. “You want your dessert before your meal?”
He speaks in a whisper. “I want those lips around my cock. I promise you, I am just as well-endowed as your current master.”
His words are hollow and yet make my skin crawl. They are meant to arouse, but I don’t care about the size of the man’s endowment. This is the world I am entering into. The world where I will not receive those sparkling looks or knowing smiles from a man who has come to know me. This is a world in which a man will boast about his sexual prowess to a woman he is paying to sleep with him. And yet, this is why I am here — this is what I signed up for.
I buy myself another moment by closing my eyes and sliding my fingers down my jawline and along my throat. As I trail my fingers down closer to my collarbone, I think of Kaden. I think of kneeling between his legs — of laying on his bed — of his skin underneath my fingers and his hardness between my lips. I think of his fingers in my hair and the way his breath catches in mid-groan when I hit that spot. I feel the memories doing their work as a wetness takes residence between my thighs.
I open my lids to a man with dark eyes who is waiting for the expert words of a woman who has been trained to arouse him. “You must be a big boy. There’s nothing I enjoy more than sucking on hard, fat cock.”
The darkness remains, and smile creeps over his features. “Oh, he has done well.”
Calvin stands, still holding my hand, and he moves for the exit. I push out my chair and turn precariously in my high heels, speeding to keep up. Heads turn as he races me out of the restaurant and into the lobby then around the corner and to the elevators. Panic sets in as he hits the up button. It glows as Calvin looks up to the numbers above the door.
His phone goes off, and Calvin pulls it out of his breast pocket, performing a quick check.
“What was that?” I allow a slight flicker of hope.
A hint of annoyance shades the dark lust permeating his being. “Just the perimeter detection on Excalibur. It goes off at least a couple times a week.”
“Anything you need to check in on — just to be sure?”
The elevator dings and opens. Calvin doesn’t respond; he just pulls me in behind him and then punches at the instrument panel, closing the doors behind us. They haven’t shut before he turns on me and backs me up against the wall, his massive bulk pinning me in. I don’t like it. I don’t feel romantically pursued; I feel trapped.
“Tell me, what has Kaden been teaching you?”
My voice comes out more timid than I would like. “How to pleasure a man.”
The smile is gone – replaced by an egotistical smirk. He seizes my upper arms and spins me, planting me into the wall of the elevator. Calvin kisses my neck from behind, his hot lips giving me cold chills. He lets go of my arms, his hands running down my sides and around my ass then to my thighs. His fingers work at the fabric, bunching up my dress in his fists. The fabric rises over my calves and to my knees.
He sucks at my neck, pressing his body against me and his erection between my ass cheeks. “The things I could do to this ass.”
He takes his lips from my neck, creating space between his chest and my back, but pressing his stiff shaft even harder against me. He continues to bunch my dress in his hands, making it rise up, and I feel the air conditioning pumping into the elevator hit the back of my thighs.
He begins to move, grinding his erection into the cleft of my ass. “I’m tempted to claim your first servicing myself. But, I think the payday will be even sweeter. Doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun sampling the goods.”
Calvin lifts the dress up to my ass, bending his knees and settling his cock against me. He thrusts over and over, and there is no question what will be taking place in the privacy of the hotel room. My chest is tight, the panic welling up inside of me. Kaden had prepared me for so much, but he did not prepare me for this. I had felt wanted with him — aroused and pursued. Now, I feel used. I allow myself to become mad at Kaden — mad that though he prepared me with words, I am still taken aback to feel like an object for a man to play out his fantasies with.
A series of chimes sound from behind me, and Calvin growls and takes his hands off me. Immense relief floods through me, and I wasted no time shuttling my dress back down my legs as the elevator doors open. I spring on the interruption. “What is it? Something you need to attend to?”
Calvin looks perturbed, but he stuffs his phone back into his breast pocket. “No. Just the proximity alarm. Someone’s probably looking through the windows or testing the locked doors.”
He grabs my hand, agitated now, and guides me wordlessly down the hall into the room he has booked for us — no — for him. As he fishes out his plastic card and waves it in front of the sensor, I wonder if I should call for the nuclear option and cancel. But, Kaden had filled me in — that three bidders are now in town with each setting a five hundred thousand dollar beginning bid. Even if that is all I get, that’s a quarter of a million dollars to begin a new life. Minimum. I can do even this for that much money. One short moment of my life.
Calvin swings open the door and lets go of my hand, gesturing behind his back for me to follow him. I close my eyes for a moment, thinking of the apartment I can buy — the apartment with a room for each of my siblings and the tuition to private schools and for college and a good meal on the table every night.
I step in and shut the door behind me.
I watch — numb and frozen — as Calvin walks into the room, unfastening his belt as he goes. The man wastes no time. He turns as he unzips himself and pushes his pants and boxers alike down his thighs.
He is fully erect, and he beckons to me with an impatient gesture as he sits on the bed. “Come on.”
I stare at it, my feet moving mechanically to draw me nearer. His is only the second penis I have ever seen in real life — one of what will be many — it doesn’t give me the feeling I have come to associate with the thing. With Kaden, the site fills me with expectation and desire. Kaden — waving me toward him as he strokes his erection — has brought me a sense of joy. All I feel now is dread.
Calvin takes himself by the base and points his cockhead toward me. I know what he wants, and I know how to do it. I walk forward one last step and kneel in my elegant evening gown. I have to place my hands on his thighs for stabilization as I descend. That dark smirk matches his eyes.
You can do this. I run my hands up his thighs, ever closer to something I am quickly realizing I do not want. No — not entirely true. I just don’t want his. Just once. For a quarter of a million dollars, you can do this just once.
Above me, a screeching alarm wails, and my heart leaps to my throat. I lurch backward as his hand darts to his breast pocket. “Shit!” He digs the phone out of his coat, but I can tell he knows what’s going on before he looks. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Calvin rockets from the mattress, stuffing himself back into his pants before he’s even fully standing. His momentum spills me onto my ass, and I hit the floor hard. I scurry backward and out of his way as he storms toward the door. He’s gone without a look back, the door slamming behind him, then his running footfalls audible down the hallway.
I sit stupefied, and then it forces its way out. I don’t know if it’s the relief or the tension or the sense of horrified outrage, but I begin to cry. I gasp and shutter, trying to keep it back — trying to keep my lips from trembling — but it’s of no use. The tears trickle down my cheeks, and I crumple onto the floor, balling in on myself and grabbing my knees. I gasp again, holding my breath, trying to keep from sobbing when my phone rings.
Not just any ring. A crescendo of a piano and violin duet. The classical music which greeted me that first night we ate together. Kaden’s ring tone. I fly for my purse, needing his voice.
Before I can speak around my attempts to control my crying, I hear, “Are you okay?”
I can identify the tears now. Relief and happiness and belonging. “Thank God. His phone. Was that you?”
For a moment, all I can hear is his breath over the line. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Scarlett.”