Chapter Twenty-one – Jack #2
Francesca had thought of everything—the showers were just as nice as the rest of the rooms here, except for the rooms that were disgusting on purpose of course.
I thought they might be for employees, then realized it was possible people wanted to enact assorted shower-scenes like they’d watched in porn.
I opened a fresh bar of soap and scrubbed up.
I’d read somewhere once that ‘Mood’s a thing for cattle,’ meaning that one ought to always be in control of one’s self. Self-aware adults don’t always get the luxury of feeling out of sorts—or headachy, as the case may be. And tonight, neither did I. I turned the water off, and reached for a towel.
Franny had put out a blood-free outfit for me to wear, much like the one I’d lost—jeans, T-shirt, white this time, and another black leather jacket. The shirt and jeans didn’t really fit, too small and too big in turns, but the jacket—I ran a hand over the smooth leather after I put it on.
“Exceptional. As always,” Fran said, coming into the room she’d led me to.
“This is what I’m wearing in their fantasy?” I found that hard to believe.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to stay on long.”
A bed occupied the center of the room, neatly made with nice sheets, a nightstand on each side, and a leather chair sat in the corner.
“Is that where he’s going to be?”
“No. I’ve arranged the cameras for him.” She pointed at the ceiling, where small red lights shone.
“Is he up there already?”
“Ready and waiting.”
I strode over to the chair, sat down, slung a leg over an arm, and looked up at the nearest camera. “Thanks for letting me fuck your wife,” I said loudly.
“Jack!” Franny protested.
I gave her a bemused look. “That’s what he wants, isn’t it?”
“You are incorrigible.” She put her hands on her hips, surveyed the room, and then nodded to herself, satisfied. I was glad one of us was. I watched her walk out.
Living in Vegas I was well aware of all the different ways that sex could be transactional, from the brothels far outside of town, the card-clickers on the corners creating litter, to the vast abyss of the internet.
Anything from a blow-job to an orgy could be bought here, including, apparently, me.
I was slouching into the chair, trying to look like I did this sort of thing all the time, when she walked in.
She was as tall as I was, thin and angular like a ballerina, her chest almost flat.
Her hair was in a flapper-ish dark brown bob—all the better to be out of children’s sticky hands.
She had on khaki trousers and, I swear to God, a mint green sweater set, pearl buttons clasped all the way up.
There was a ring on her finger, and her thin lips were pulled into a worried line.
She stood just inside the doorway, and I could feel her judging me.
Time to cut to the chase. “Is this really your idea of a good time?” It was easy for me to act like I didn’t care, because I honestly didn’t—after the bleeding I’d taken Franny had tanked me half-a-pint up.
Her lips quirked and her eyes narrowed. “Is it yours?”
I tilted my head and let my eyes roam her body.
Everything about her said control-control-control.
Her hair was precise, her clothing the kind that old money wore, her children likely headed to Ivy Leagues.
To break a woman like that—let it never be said that I shirked a challenge.
“It could be.” I unslung my leg, but kept myself relaxed.
“So what’ve you and he negotiated? What’s he want to see down here? ”
“Me. Being with some other man.” Her jaw clenched a little, and she glanced at the floor, before remembering her pride and glaring back up.
“That’s it?”
She swallowed and nodded.
“There’s a lot of some other men in the world. Which one would you like?” I hadn’t moved a muscle, nor was I going to, until I’d sussed her out.
“I—I don’t know.”
I made a thoughtful noise, then played for the camera.
“Then let’s talk about that. Because I do like the idea of him up there, watching helplessly, as I ravage his beautiful wife—the one that no one would ever imagine cheating on him.
But if she were ever going too….” I let my voice drift and kept watching her intently.
“Should I be a man who picked you up someplace plain? Like the grocery store? You and I, standing in different isles with a pile of apples between us, and we both look up. Something electric happens then, a charge carried by our eyes, something physical or chemical. You know that I want you, and worse yet, that you want me. You try to ignore it, but you can’t.
You look away, but you still see me in your mind.
When you look up, I’m gone, but that night you touch yourself, imagining me—knowing, hoping, that somewhere out there I’m stroking myself to my memory of you. ”
I had more than enough blood on board to whammy her, but apart from the fact I wouldn’t have—I didn’t have to. I could tell she was falling under the spell of the rhythm of my words, see her breathing change to match the pacing of my story.
“Or do we meet at a cocktail party? Maybe one your husband’s also at?
It’s very fancy, a celebration, everyone’s in tuxes or satin.
I’m not invited of course—I’m working, anonymously.
But I brush past you, bringing out more champagne, and for a moment I touch your hip, just to warn you that I’m there.
You gasp, surprised, and whirl, but I’m already serving other guests—except that I look back at you.
The place I touched you somehow burns—the same way my gaze rolling over you makes you feel all over.
You’re conscious of my place in the room and everyone else in it, and know that your husband’s not there, he’s off talking some sort of drab business with a friend.
And so you crook your finger at me, and like a good servant I follow. ”
She was breathing harder now, imagining herself. I felt her flush more than saw it, read the patterns of heat of her rising blood.
“We go into the first empty room we find. It’s a child’s room….”
She gasps like I hoped she would. “I would never do that!”
“How can you be so sure?” I say, with utter confidence and a wicked smile. “Is there nothing you’ve ever wanted in your life so badly that you had to have it now?”
She doesn’t answer me, she just rocks back and forth a little—but the heat of her blood doesn’t fade.
“You push me to the ground,” I go on. “I know what you want and I’m willing to give it, and you stand over me with your shiny short skirt and kneel down, reaching between your legs to set me into you as I take your shoulders with both hands and thrust up.
The shadows of everything lit by only a night light are strangely beautiful across your body and my face.
You ride me wildly, ferociously, knowing that somewhere out there your husband is milling, possibly even now searching for you, asking if anyone knows where you went.
You know you have only moments to keep feeling this alive—and you’re smart enough to not even kiss me, because that would mess your make-up up.
You just want now, and this, and this, and this. ”
Her mouth opened a little as her jaw dropped.
“Or perhaps I could be some other-other man? Did you go with him on a business trip? And then walk down the wrong alley? Have I spotted you, like some kind of prey? What if I grab you there and make you feel me? Have I kidnapped you and now all my mercy depends on how well you suck my cock?”
At this, her breath caught. I still hadn’t moved, I was still waiting for her—and then trembling hands went to the top of her sweater.
That was my signal. I stood up and came over to her and picked her up, throwing her onto the bed, following her instantly.
Our clothed bodies pressed together as my mouth met hers and I kissed her hard.
She stiffened in surprise—but then began to kiss me back.
Hands that were still trembling began to touch me, searching up under my shirt and on top of the denim of my jeans.
I reared up to throw my jacket off, and then set to work on the tiny pearl buttons, snapping the threads of as many as I managed to open, and then helped her shuck the camisole underneath off.
Her bra was a lacy thing, no wires, no cups—I pushed it up and took her small breasts into my mouth, one by one, almost whole, like I was eating them.
She moaned at this, running her hands through my hair—and then sending them down my back to claw my t-shirt up.
I rose again to pull it off, and she gasped again at seeing me.
Sometimes I forgot that my skin’s somewhat of a spectacle.
I watched her reach out a tentative hand to touch the skull that lay on my chest, down my stomach, and lower.
Somehow, I doubted that her husband looked like me, and who knew the last time she’d touched another man.
I waited and when her hand was already low, I took it lower, planting it on the outside of my jeans against my cock.
Did he, whoever he was, ever want her like this? He did in a theoretical sense, seeing as he was watching. But was that his whole thing? Did he close his eyes when he fucked her, imagining watching someone else doing the deed, him peeking through the slats of a closet door?
I looked down at her, half-naked, sheets of the bed already wrinkling. I knew what I wanted her to do with her hand next, but first I reached down and touched her ring-finger with its oversized diamond.
“On, or off?”
She swallowed, as if this one thing made it all real.
“Off,” she said, taking it off, setting it safely in a pocket. Then I took her hand back and slid it into my pants and her fingers obligingly wrapped around my cock.