Chapter 16 Nik
NIK
Why did I want her to stay longer?
Cruelty would be an easy route here.
I could tell her I am wondering that myself, because why would I want to spend more time with a woman who cries while my fingers are inside of her?
Why would I want to prolong this situation, which has so obviously crossed a line?
I cannot bring myself to be cruel to her, though. This is not her vocation; she is not a professional. She has not learned to guard herself, to not let the sexual gratification be anything more than the simple act of giving and receiving pleasure.
However, in these past weeks, while I have purposely learned little about her, I cannot say that I have guarded myself well either.
I’ve thought of her too many times.
Every week, I tell myself this is just an escape. But when the hour ends, I still crave her voice, her touch, the sweet scent of her skin.
“I look forward to this every week,” I finally say, after a long pause. “I think about it more than I should. And… today, an hour didn’t feel like enough.”
“Why?”
I exhale through my nose. “There are things that complicate my life,” I say. “On the ice and off. Normally, I can manage it. But this week… I was just angry. Frustrated.”
She hums, soft and amused. “So you woke up and chose violence.”
“I don’t understand the humor?” I mean for this to be a statement, but it comes out as a question.
Ana giggles in response. “It’s a social media thing? Like, a meme?”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “I don’t really have time for that kind of thing. But it’s meant to be funny?”
“Yes. Usually.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I did. Choose violence, that is. I’m sorry. Truly.”
“I—” Ana pauses for a moment. “I like your darkness, Nik. I like what we do in here. And I don’t mind…I don’t mind that you push me outside my comfort zone. You know I don’t have a lot of experience. I don’t know what I like, not really, so you’re kind of…teaching me.”
“But you did not like what we did tonight.”
“I think I didn’t like the intention behind it. You wanted to hurt me. It hasn’t felt like that before.”
“I see.”
She is right. I have been full of rage all week, out of control from it, honestly. It’s not a good thing. And tonight…I let it bleed into her.
However, this is not a place for romance. This room is for pleasure and pain with consent. It is not a place for sweet sentiments, for feelings.
There’s a reason I contain my proclivities in this room.
I am not sweet.
I am not kind.
I am not romantic.
I don’t have room for those illusions.
I will not marry.
I will not have children.
I cannot offer that to anyone.
My life is tangled in too much blood, too many secrets. It barely belongs to me, how could I give it to someone else?
How could I ask someone to ignore the fact that I don’t just choose violence, but sometimes I enjoy it?
Ana is good and sweet and innocent, and she doesn’t belong in that life.
But.
“I like hurting you,” I say quietly, “but only for pleasure. I like making you come. That’s become my favorite fucking pastime.”
She doesn’t respond.
I don’t know what I expected, maybe a laugh, a gasp, a witty remark. But her silence tells me something I don’t want to admit.
She’s disappointed.
Good. Let her be—better than false hope.
“Why do you do this?” she asks after a beat. Her voice is quiet, but not timid. “Why sit in this dark room with a mask over your face? Why be blind to the person you're pleasuring? Why hold yourself back every time?”
“My life is very controlled. It feels like a tightrope walk some days. I work hard all the time. I go to the arena, and I work hard. I go to the gym, and I work hard. I manage my businesses, my family’s business, and I work hard.
There is no time for anything else. When I come here, it’s an hour a week where I can shut everything out and just feel.
And the goal in here is never to find a cheap thrill.
Do you understand that? I am a professional athlete, and if I just wanted someone to fuck, I could walk out of the arena and find someone willing and waiting.
Some of my teammates take full advantage of that. ”
“I bet,” Ana says with a breezy laugh.
“People want to be around people with money or status or whatever. I want…something else. I want to make a connection without it being about my name, my celebrity, or my perceived power. I want to be here and have no one know any of those things about me. Here, I am no one. What happens in here isn’t about anything other than having a moment to feel and touch and smell and taste. ”
“I guess that makes sense,” Ana says. “Did you care about the woman who used to dance for you?”
“In the sense of caring for her overall well-being, yes. But otherwise, no.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Yes. Many times.”
“Do you miss her?”
“No.”
“Would you miss me if I didn’t come back?”
I should say no. I should not indulge this false hope she seems to harbor that this could be anything other than what it is. I should, but my mouth is a traitor. “Yes.”
“Why do you deny yourself a climax? Why can’t I touch your body the way you touch mine?”
“You can. It’s just that it brings me pleasure to please you.”
“You didn’t answer the first question.”
“I did. I like making you come. My climax is less important to me in the short time we have together.”
“So I'm staying later tonight. Is that so you can…”
“Perhaps. If we hadn’t spent the whole night talking.” I feel my lips twitch in an almost-smile.
She snorts, then I hear her hand slap over her mouth.
Then she is on the floor in front of me, unbuttoning my shirt. She’s running those small hands over my chest, skin-on-skin. She’s running them down my stomach, audibly thanking God for “washboard abs.”
She unzips my pants, pulls them down, and without hesitation, takes my cock into her mouth.
The desire to take off the mask is almost overwhelming. I want to see her. I want to know what color her hair is.
I want to know how her lips look when they curve around my cock.
I want to see her hands as they fold around the shaft, as they cup my balls.
I want to see her perfect, pink tongue as it circles the tip of my cock, as it laps up the precum that beads there.
“Fuck, Ana. Fuck. Yes.”
She might be innocent in some ways, but this is not one of them.
She drags her teeth along the shaft, just enough pain to be pleasurable.
Her nails rake gently over my skin.
She takes me deeper, gagging slightly but refusing to stop.
Focused. Ferocious. Fucking perfect.
I come hard, groaning as I spill into her mouth, across her lips, her face. She takes it all and moans like it turns her on.
I want to fuck her badly. In her pussy. In her ass. In her mouth again. I want all of her. I want her to forget her own name by morning.
I hear her pull the light fabric of her silk nightie over her head, then she lies back on the floor and tells me to finish what I started.
“Finger me,” she says.
I stretch out along her length. She’s so much smaller than I am, and yet we seem to fit together perfectly.
This is the first time she’s been fully naked, so I explore her body with my hands, tongue, and teeth.
I nibble at the sensitive spot below her ear.
I lavish attention on her pert nipples. I bite at her hip bones, and she arches for more, a shocked noise of pleasure erupting from her lips.
By the time I acquiesce to her demand, two fingers sliding into a dripping-wet pussy, she is ready to explode. Her hips grind against my fingers, my hand.
I grin and tell her to hold for one second, and her responding noise of desperation nearly makes me laugh out loud.
I take a few quick steps to a side table, pull out a vibrator.
Back at her side, I spread her pussy lips wide and found that oh-so-sensitive nub. I turn on the vibrator with a click and then hold it to her clit. She cries out, hips jutting wildly. I can’t help but smirk with satisfaction.
“Stay still,” I say. “Be good.”
Her hips flex into the feeling of intense vibration, and I hold the toy steady as my other hand resumes its task. In and out. Two fingers, then three, spreading her wide. She moans and squirms and pushes her hips up.
Her noises are exquisite. A slow build of moans, each higher-pitched than the one before. And when she falls from the precipice, she loses her breath.
She goes board-still, every muscle tense as her sweet cunt crushes itself around my fingers.
It feels endless. And then, suddenly, it feels too short. She sags against me, chest rising and falling as her body fights to catch its breath, and I keep my hand moving. I don’t ease up, because I can’t let this moment end.
She reaches out and takes my cock in her hand. Strokes it, matches my pace. I’m so hard, so ready again, and it feels so good to be touched.
This time is slower. Just touching, just stroking. But it’s enough. When she comes again, I’m already on the edge. I move over her, aching to bury myself for these last seconds in that tight pussy.
When I finally let go, it spills across her belly and chest. She murmurs, “Yes…more…” and when it’s over, we collapse side by side on the floor, bodies warm, hearts racing, just breathing, letting the quiet settle around us.
Eventually, she yawns and says, “I should get home. I have class tomorrow morning.”
Class. Oh, yes, I think I do remember Vasiliy telling me she’s a college student. Our first encounter was the result of a dare.
Knowing this small thing about her, that she is in college, should be enough. I should not want to know more. I don’t want her to care about me. I don’t want to care about her.
But we may both be slightly past that boundary, my traitorous mind thinks.
“What do you study?” I find myself asking.
“Oh, now you have questions?” She’s smiling. I wish I could see it. “Business.”
“Really?”
“You’re surprised? Please don’t tell me you’re some chauvinist who thinks women can only be, like, teachers or something.”
“No,” I say. “Not that. I don’t know what I thought you would say. Perhaps an artist. You seem to have a free spirit.”
“About some things,” she says. “I like to take risks, but I think it’s because I feel kind of…I don’t know…trapped?”
“How so?”
“My dad wants me to take over the family business. I don’t really want to, but he’s not the kind of person who takes no for an answer.”
“I can relate,” I say.
“I know you can.” She shoves up, finds her feet. “I really do need to go.”
She shuffles around, finds her chemise, and pulls it on. Says, “Thank you,” as is customary now.
But before I hear the door open, she says, “Vasiliy says I can set my rate for staying, but I need you to know I’m not a whore.
I’m not a sex worker. I wandered into this room by accident, and I danced for you that first time out of curiosity.
I don’t work here. I just…came back…for you.
I just needed you to know that. I’m not a whore. ”
And then she is gone.
Curious, I pull off the mask and find a robe hanging near the door. I step out into the hallway, following silently as she makes her way down the corridor and into the women’s lounge.
I press my ear to the door. Water running and then, crying. She’s crying again, but why?
I want to wait until she comes out the door. I want to pull her to me, to let her see my face. I want to kiss her.
Gods, how many times have I wanted to kiss her deeply and properly?
“Sir?” I hear from behind me.
I turn and find Vasiliy, unflustered but wearing a concerned expression.
“She’s just…I think she’s crying.”
He arches a brow.
“Will you ask her to come back for a moment?”
“Is everything okay with the service?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I just…I need to speak with her.”
“Masked?”
I have a moment of panic. I want to be unmasked.
I don’t want to be unmasked.
“No,” I say. “I’ll go put the mask on.”
“Very well,” he says.
I pad back to the room and pull on my mask, then my clothing. It feels like hours that I wait, though it’s probably only fifteen minutes.
The door opens. “Nik?”
“Ana,” I say, oddly relieved to hear her voice. “I thought you were…were you crying again when you left?”
She sighs. “I’m fine,” she says. “It’s just been an emotional night.”
“Am I to blame?”
“A little,” she says, almost shyly. “But I, too, have a complicated life and thinking about my family…it’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
“It’s a story for another time. Maybe. No, probably not. It’s not sexy.”
“Well, yes. I understand.”
“You’re right,” she says. “This should be a safe space for you. A place where nothing matters but feeling good. I’m sorry I ruined that for you tonight. Goodbye, Nik.”
Before I can answer, I hear the door quietly click closed again, and I am alone, left wondering if I will ever see her again.