Nick
NICK
I SWEAR TO God I have good reason for creeping down to Zo?'s room in the middle of the night.
That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway, as I step quietly down the stairs and hesitate in front of the apartment door.
The muffled sound that woke me up is definitely coming from the apartment, but it’s not voices, as I first thought. It’s music, playing much too loudly.
I assume it’s Tate, come home in the night, and it’s a worrying thought given the close interaction I had with Zo? this evening in the kitchen. I wasn’t thinking. If Tate had walked in when I had her pressed against a wall, it would have been impossible to explain.
If it had gone further, he could have walked into something that would change everything between us forever. I’m relieved I managed to stop myself before I went too far because I was so close to losing control that, for a moment there, I didn’t know if I could restrain myself.
It’s not like me to be so volatile. So rash. Even now, I need to consciously brush aside the memory of Zo?'s body pressed against mine as I stare at the doorknob. The idea that Tate may have returned home is a stark reminder of how much I need to regain my self-control.
That’s the funny juxtaposition of being a Dominant by nature and a so-called control freak. My composure is only a thin veneer—under the surface, my blood boils and spits like lava. There’s a wildness inside of me that always threatens to break through and spill over. It’s a mastery that takes constant work, but in the chaos of the world outside and the world inside, self-control is the only solid thing I can hold on to.
I remind myself that this is a fact-finding mission and nothing else, and soundlessly turn the doorknob and push the door open.
If Tate is home, I need to know. I need to be prepared before I run into him, and I need to think about what I want to say and how I want to act.
The lights are off, the apartment still, and it’s a relief that Tate and Zo? aren’t sitting on the couch, catching me creeping in. The wall of windows at the back of the house lets murky, grey moonlight into the room that makes it easy to see. I walk softly around a low shelving unit to get a view of the bed, half afraid of what I might see, but there’s only one sleeping form in it—Zo?, curled up on her side, one small bare foot peeking out of the covers.
The fact that she’s alone floods me with relief. I should want my son to be home, but it’s less complicated this way. I don’t have to think about how to deal with Tate just yet.
I reach for the bluetooth speaker on the dresser and lower the volume way down, cringing as the button beeps with each touch. But if Zo? can sleep through this music at full volume, surely a few beeps won’t wake her up.
My mission complete, I turn to leave… and then hesitate. It’s too tempting to take a moment to look Zo? over as she sleeps. The thin veneer of my self-control falters and cracks, and I turn back, letting myself indulge in the illicit pleasure of standing unseen in the dark, running my eyes over the shape of her hips, the arch of her foot, the softness of her closed eyes. It’s almost like touching her, this invisible watching. My gaze is a soft, probing caress trailing tenderly over her neck and jaw, stroking the slack line of her lips, luxuriating in the intimacy of this secret examination.
It doesn’t surprise me when my cock stirs, and the electric crackle of arousal makes the hair on my arms stand. This is my kryptonite, watching unseen, so the results are predictable.
She’s more beautiful than ever like this, the worries of the world lifted from her brow, and all her stage makeup washed off. She looks as young as her twenty-two years, and it fills me with tenderness.
I tell myself it’s with well-meaning affection that I sit down on the easy chair at the foot of the bed instead of walking out of the room.
She’s young to work so hard, to be so driven. She’s the opposite of my lazy, privileged son, and for the first time, I really let myself think about what a bad match they are. She’s the kind of girl who would give herself readily over to him, throw herself into caring for him, only to be taken for granted. In fact, it’s already happened.
There’s such a beauty to her—not just the glowing skin of her cheeks or her thick, wavy hair tossed over the pillow, but in the way that she is . Her hard work, her creativity, her sense of humor, and her passion. Fucking Salomé , the strangest and most erotic stripper I’ve ever met.
I lean back in the chair, enjoying the spread of warmth through my core, and unabashedly let myself get hard.
There’s no one to see or judge, and it feels harmless even though I know exactly how wrong it is.
But I’m not touching her. I’m not doing anything worse than what I’ve already done.
I’m letting myself imagine how warm and wet her mouth would feel when one green eye opens and looks right at me, giving me a jolt of adrenaline. My pulse jackhammers under my skin.
I’m caught.
A fucking dirty old man watching her sleep. But then she closes her eye as quickly as she opened it, an almost imperceptible smile on her lips, and doesn’t move.
I stay frozen in place. Is this a game? Is she feigning sleep because she wants me to watch her?
I know I should get up, leave, walk away… but the small, knowing smile on her face has me chained to the chair. And when she sighs and gives a little feline stretch, lifting one knee over the cover so that her bare ass is exposed in the moonlight, I can’t do anything but stare.
Pervert is what Rebecca had called me once, tired of the way kink threaded through our sex life. The way I wanted to spank her or tie her up. Mild stuff, really, but I had never been able to be my true self with Rebecca because I knew she wouldn’t accept it.
She was right, even though she never knew the half of it. For as long as I can remember, my needs have been outside the norm. Maybe that’s why they feel so powerful—they rarely get fully expressed. And it’s that perversion inside of me that keeps me rooted to the spot now, my entire focus locked on my son’s girlfriend’s ass as she slides her knee upwards, tantalizing me with a shadowy glimpse of her pussy.
The scene has changed. What was a secret thrill for me alone has now become a game between us, and I don’t know if she knows the rules, or how far it will go. For now, I can only watch, my breathing shallow and my cock throbbing between my legs.
Even though it’s deliberate, her ruse of being asleep is just as much of a turn-on as when I thought I was spying on her. The same power dynamic is at play, only now, instead of being powerless, she’s serving my needs.
I tell myself that her body is nothing I haven’t seen before. Nothing that hundreds of men haven’t seen before, really. And that as long as it’s dark, and Tate’s not home, and she’s pretending to be asleep, it’s innocent enough. But when she rolls herself up onto her knees and leans back, sliding her hand between her legs and wordlessly spreading her pussy with her fingers, I have to stifle the small groan that rises in my throat.
All thoughts of what I should or should not be doing go out the window as she lifts her ass in the air and starts fingering herself. Every urge I’ve suppressed, every inappropriate thought I’ve had, comes roaring to the surface. Despite myself, I have to run a hand over the bulge in my pants, squeezing my shaft through the fabric.
I’ve already gone too far. I should never have faltered, never turned to watch her sleep, never sat down. Now I’m hard and breathless, a rhythm of need pulsing through me that demands release.
The sight of her finger stroking her clit, and the glistening velvet of her pussy spread wide for me, chokes me with an urgency I have to give in to. I pull the waistband of my pants down and free my straining erection, pure hot desire washing through me.
My breath comes in short and fast as I jerk myself, eyes fixed on her wet slit and moving finger. There’s a clenching inside of me, raw and rough, and all I can think about is grabbing her hips and thrusting my cock deep into her hole. I know I need to come, fast, before I lose all control.
And then she sucks in a high-pitched breath, and a tremor goes through her, and I’m transported right back to the VIP booth—the way she shivered, the way her cunt felt under my fingers—and suddenly I’m coming too, moaning involuntarily as my cock spasms, cum running over my fingers, my heart hammering against my rib cage, throwing my head back and gasping for air.
In a moment, it’s over. She collapses on the bed, her face turned to the side, breathing heavily and eyes still closed, and I’m sitting in the chair with my slackening member in my hands, sticky with cum. I hardly know what happened.
As if on cue, the music ends, and silence descends on the room. All I can hear is my own heart beating hard in my chest. Zo? wriggles slightly, pulls the covers over herself, and nestles into the pillow without looking at or acknowledging me.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say or do something, but after a minute, it becomes clear that she’s continuing to pretend to be asleep. I pull my waistband back up, wipe my hand on my pant leg, stand up, and quietly slip out of the room.
* * *
David, my best friend for almost forty years, can read me like a book.
It’s not just that he knows me so well. He’s shrewd. He didn’t build his empire simply by being a sex-loving guy who’s up for anything. He built it on sharp business acumen, knowing how to read people and understand what they want, and his perceptive relationships with his investors.
That’s why my guard goes up the next day when he asks me if my son’s found out I’m in love with his girlfriend yet. There’s no hiding anything from David.
“Well, ah…” I scratch the back of my neck and search for my words. “Actually, Tate’s moved out.”
His mouth drops open in a pantomime of shock. “And the girl?” His dancing eyes tell me he’s already guessing at the answer.
“Still here, but,” I add quickly, “it’s his fault.”
I fill him in on the spectacle of Tate’s cheating and explain that I don’t think she should have to leave because of Tate’s actions—and leave it there for now.
“Dude.” He eyes me with glib, suspicious knowing.
“Yeah.” I nod, pretending I don’t notice the way he’s looking at me like he’s inviting me to confess. “It’s complicated.”
It’s a beautiful summer night, and we’re sitting on my back deck drinking beer. David takes a long sip of his, looking up at the sky with that smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth, and I know he’s pretending to bite his tongue when he isn’t going to. I pretend I don’t notice and look up at the sky too, looking for the faded pinpoints of stars, here and there, so difficult to see against the glow of the city lights.
Finally, David puts his bottle down, rests an elbow on the table, and points a finger at me.
“You are fucking her.”
I’m shocked to hear the words come out of his mouth and draw my chin back in feigned outrage, but the mere suggestion sends blood rushing to my dick, just like every thought about Zo? seems to make me hard. I draw my brows together in a frown as if I disapprove of what he’s implying and say severely, “For God’s sake, David, she’s Tate’s girlfriend.”
My friend knows me too well to be fooled by my show of indignation. “Ex-girlfriend.”
I shake my head. “Christ.”
Still smiling, he takes another sip of his drink and says nothing.
“Oh, fuck off, David.”
“You are going to fuck her,” he predicts with absolute certainty. “And that,” he says, grinning widely, “is fucked up.”
It’s hard to hide the truth from someone who knows you better than you know yourself. If there’s anyone I can tell about my feelings for Zo?, it’s David. I know he won’t judge me. I’m only reluctant because once I tell him, it’s out there—it’s real. But there’s no denying it anymore, anyway. It’s already real.
“I can’t,” I confess quietly.
For once, he doesn’t speak. He waits for me to explain myself.
Of all the things that have bonded David and me—an interest in running, a phase of drinking craft beer, a love of science fiction movies—the deepest bond is our shared interest in kink and sexuality.
We can’t talk about these things with our group of friends, who find the fact that David owns a sex club titillating enough on its own.
But certain experiences have taught us that we can be fully open with each other in this arena—or maybe, considering the way David lives his life, it’s only me who had to learn that I could trust David with the secrets of my sexuality. He doesn’t make any secret about his own.
It started when we were twenty, drinking in a dorm room with the one girl we both liked. She drunkenly stated that she wanted to fuck both of us, there and then, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to agree. The fact that it turned me on to watch David fuck her more than the feel of her mouth around my dick confused me, but David was so cool about it the next day. There was no discomfort or shame.
“We should do that again,” I remember him saying.
And I wholeheartedly agreed.
It became easy for us to talk about sex and proclivities. The deeper my kinks went, the more interested he was—as if he were a sociologist, feverishly logging a mental list of kinks he hadn’t even considered yet.
He was interested in my voyeuristic tendencies to an almost academic degree, determined to understand and help fulfill them. In our fourth year of college, we set up an elaborate scene where he seduced the girl I liked and let me hide in his closet while he fucked her. It was counterintuitive, but watching her with someone else was ten times more erotic than being with her myself.
As the years went on, we learned to be more ethical in our collaborations, and, until I married Rebecca, David and I had our fair number of threesomes and participated in more role-playing than any of our friends could ever guess at. At one point, my kink of voyeurism dovetailed nicely with David’s girlfriend’s kink of cuckolding, and on several occasions, I participated in their sex life by sitting in the corner and watching them fuck. Not something the other guys in our group—already settling down with wives, kids, and Costco memberships—could have even dreamed of. Not something a lot of guys could have dreamed of, period.
“I can’t get her out of my head,” I admit, staring straight ahead and not looking at him. “There’s something about her that’s really gotten under my skin, and boundaries are getting blurred. But I can’t touch her. It’s fucked. She’s Tate’s girl.” I squeeze my hand around the neck of the bottle, wondering if I could crush it with my sheer strength. I’m so tense with pent-up desire and frustration that it almost seems possible.
“Okay,” he says slowly, like he’s noodling over a problem to solve. “And now Tate’s gone, and you’re alone with her. So… what’s the plan?”
A plan is the last thing I have, but as I sit here under the night sky with my closest friend, some alternative solutions start teasing my thoughts. What if there was another way to satisfy my obsession with Zo? without betraying my son?
* * *
The lack of structure in my life is messing with my sleep habits—at least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m still awake when Zo? comes in the door at two a.m.
The TV is on, my laptop is open beside me on the couch, and my phone is in my hand, but nothing can hold my attention. I’m mindlessly looping through all three, restless and dissatisfied.
She leans in the doorway and gives me an unreadable smile, looking sexy as fuck in a loose shirt over leggings and heavy, black platform boots. Her hair hangs in loose waves, and her eyes are lined with black. She looks older and wiser than the innocent girl I watched sleeping the night before, but everything about her still grips me with that immediate, ferocious longing.
“Come hang out a minute,” I suggest, gesturing to the chair across from me.
Zo? unzips her boots, and steps out of them and then accepts my invitation, pulling her socked feet up onto the chair and tucking them under her butt, wrapping her arms around her knees. A low ache is snaking through me as my eyes flit down the back of her thighs and over her hips, remembering the show she put on for me last night, knowing she heard me moan when I came.
My preference is not to speak about it, to leave the indiscretions of the night where they lay—partially to keep the fantasy intact, partially to keep what remains of my boundaries intact.
“How was work?” I ask.
She eyes me thoughtfully before answering, unknown calculations happening behind those green eyes.
“It was good,” she says at last. “Lots of lap dances tonight.”
We’ve never talked about how we met, and there’s a defiance to how she brings it up now. She’s daring me to address it, and why not? Tate is gone, and we’re left to our own devices, trying to navigate the weirdness of our circumstances. Most of my good intentions have already gone by the wayside.
So I don’t insult her by playing dumb. “That’s good. Right?” I say levelly. “For the money?”
“Yes.” She tilts her head, flashing heavily lined eyes at me. “For the money, and… I like giving them.”
Until that moment, for some reason, I had never really thought about all the men she gives lap dances to—countless and different men, night after night. Zo? arching and bending and rolling her nude body on strangers’ laps while they paw at her and stroke her flesh and enjoy the privilege of having access to her. Men who, like me, go home to their normal lives afterward, tight with craving for her, and jack off in bedrooms and showers and cars while clinging to the memory of her in their hands. It’s the first time it’s occurred to me that she’s been with so many men like that, and the mental picture of it is breathtakingly hot.
“What do you like about it?” I ask, hoping for a neutral tone, but there’s a hoarseness to my voice that belies the dark, lascivious longing pulsing through me. I want to hear her describe it, to get turned on by her words, already at war with myself over what I’m asking her to do and my resolution to put space between us.
“It turns me on to be objectified. To simulate sex with strangers. Does that shock you?”
“No.”
“You’re the only one I’ve ever let touch me… like that.” The girl who just told me she likes to simulate sex with strangers blushes. “Normally, it’s just dancing.”
“I liked touching you like that.” The words come out before I can think them through. “And I liked watching you touch yourself last night, too.”
A small smile curves her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was asleep.”
The moment is a line in the sand. A decision point I can turn and walk away from—an exit she’s giving me.
But I don’t take it.
“You played that loud music to lure me down there.” I close my laptop, put it aside with my phone, lift the remote, and turn off the TV. “That turns you on, too, doesn’t it? Exposing yourself and getting a reaction out of people. Did it make you feel powerful to get my attention like that?”
The flicker of confusion that crosses her expression warms my blood.
“No,” she answers, a note of uncertainty in her tone, like she’s not sure if she’s in trouble.
She is— because if we’re going to play games, I’m going to be very clear that they have to be according to my rules.
Voyeurism, like domination, takes its pleasure in power.
“It did,” I counter. I rise from the couch and approach her chair, placing both hands on the armrests and leaning forward until I can smell the shampoo fragrance of her hair and the coconut-scented body spray she wears when she’s working. “And you liked it, didn’t you? Knowing that I was watching you. Knowing that the sight of your sweet, tight little pussy got me so hot, it took everything in me not to pin you down and take you right there.”
“Yes, okay,” she answers in a small, brave voice. “I liked it.”
I move in until my mouth is almost against her ear. “Little girl, you can’t imagine how much I want to be deep inside of you. How much I crave you. But let’s get super clear on something. I cannot touch you. I will never touch you again. You fucked my son, and you are off limits to me, do you understand?”
“Yes,” she answers in the same small voice. A tone laced with subservience and willingness. A tone to get my dick hard.
“Certain lines have already been crossed, though. It’s too late to go back. But if you want to play little games, they’re going to be on my terms. Now, you tell me right now if that’s what you want to do, and if not, that’s fine. You go down to your room, and we put all this behind us. We never talk about it again. But let’s be very clear that you don’t make the rules. I do.”
There’s a split-second pause before she speaks, a fraction of a second that feels like hours while I wait to hear her response to my proposition.
“I do want to play little games,” she answers finally. “Sir.”
Since puberty, my sexuality has existed within me as a kind of beast or demon I can barely control. Always threatening to become unleashed. A growl of satisfaction rises up when Zo? calls me Sir , the implication of her willingness a kind of signature on a pact between us. She’ll play. And if I make the rules, then maybe I can control this thing between us. Find ways not to cross the line… too far.
“Good.” I lift my hands off the chair and straighten up, my mind already racing with possibilities. “I’m glad we cleared that up. Now be a good girl and go to bed, and do not fucking disturb my sleep tonight.”
There’s disappointment in her eyes as I move away from her—a thwarted longing I know I’m not imagining. But re-establishing the balance of power is satisfaction enough for the night. Exerting control will be all the more gratifying, knowing that I will use this time to think of ways to fulfill my needs within set boundaries.
After all, creativity has never been a problem for me.
Only restraint.