Chapter 4
L iza tolerated his kinks but didn’t share his enthusiasm for them. He could sense her pulling away as the games grew more and more elaborate; he was rich but there were other rich men she could cling to. Like an attractive barnacle, slurping and sucking nutrients off the side of multi-million-dollar yacht.
He parked the car near the grocery store, bracing for the moment she would start complaining. It would start with some exhalation of air, then a question, then a searing complaint.
They’d been having these fights for some months now, and he was quite tired of it.
She huffed. Her long leg stretched in front of her, knees knocking against the glovebox of the sleek sports car that seemed built more for short European men than tall supermodel goddess women in thousand-dollar heels. She regarded their surroundings, mouth twisting in displeasure. “I thought you said we were doing something fun. What is this?”
Barret knew what she expected. A trip to a sun-soaked beach on a private jet, dinner on minimalist white plates with red sauce on the side of overpriced rare fish with deserts that looked plasticky in their presentation. Food made to be looked at rather than eaten. Afterwards, a brief cruise on his yacht until the sun set fully, where she’d lead him back to his room and they’d have brief sex where she purposefully made him cum as quickly as possible.
This was their trade. He treated her like a princess; a haughty, vampirically-chill princess while he got to have her on his arm, towering over him, drawing every glance, a breathtaking ornament hanging from his branch.
The sex was the tiniest effort for her, because a slight tilt of her slim hips and a hand on the back of his neck was enough to destroy him.
It wasn’t enough.
He wanted to dominate her. Break the chill facade and have that sense of control, that sense that he, Woodrow Barret, had claimed this woman by force of his cock. He could have anything with all this money, yet this woman acted as though he was nothing.
Perhaps this kink would scare her off. The other ones hadn’t; well, they may have if they’d gotten that far. If he brought one up, she’d agree quickly and so enthusiastically that by the time they actually got to the act, she’d simply describe it to him while pulling him close, the hand would go around the back of his neck, and he would be done.
Once, he even finished in his pants.
The rage over that incident caused him to purchase and level a low-income residential area.
It was a gated subdivision now.
Abe Shah reported a healthy return on investment.
Now, though, this thing was likely at its end. He had his eye on Gertrude, someone he sensed could fulfill Liza’s role with much more passion and authenticity.
“Why are we here?” Liza prodded. She was glaring at their meager surroundings with such distaste that Barret found it attractive. He’d asked her to dress cheap; she’d refused. She still wore the heels, the earrings, the off-shoulder pink blouse over black leggings that easily cost four, maybe five grand. He wondered if they’d be robbed; the thought was thrilling.
He could picture her reaction to his idea; her revulsion at the cheapness, the filth of it. It wasn’t even that bad, an off-kilter roleplay, but to have someone like Liza, who graced magazine covers and had every stray curve, hair, pimple and blemish blasted away by lasers, creams, and laxatives…
There was pleasure in breaking the facade. In getting people to tremble. Men were easy; give them money or a little power and they became fiercely loyal dogs. Abe Shah was proof of that. Women, though… with their shrewd gazes that tore him apart… sometimes money wasn’t enough. They held themselves lofty and above him, and he couldn’t stand it.
They needed to be brought down to his level.
Barret reached into his wallet and handed her a wad of cash. He was unsure how much things actually cost at the grocery store. Milk was probably twenty dollars. “We,” he said, smiling, “are going to fuck like poor people.”
“What?” She’d taken the money reflexively, palming it with the smooth ease of someone used to being handed whatever they wanted, but his words made her pause, frowning. This wasn’t a trip to Belize, a cottage in France, or a gilded penthouse in New York.
They were at a dingey grocery storein Massachusetts. The car, as sleek and shiny as itwas, couldn’t hold back the encroaching reality. A homeless man shuffled by the tinted windows, pushing a baby stroller stuffed with clothes. A car backfired, squealed, and roared by. The store was rundown, the bricks in need of a wash, the sidewalk cracked, with weeds growing out like hair. The air smelled of fried food, weed, and motor oil.
Barrett watched Liza think. She ran a calculation in her head; would it be easier and faster to go along with his plan, or would it be better to find another (less wealthy) suitor she could control?
“Fine,” she said. “What am I buying?”
***
The woman in the pink blouse and black leggings was standing in line, a cart teeming with brightly colored groceries, diapers, paper towel rolls, ice-blue sports drinks. Someone with a knowing eye could tell that it was clearly the shopping cart of either the deranged, a newfound lottery winner, or someone who’d never shopped for groceries in her life. The random assortment of goods had no harmony—no sense of pantry. It was a store where the name-brands that cost four dollars extra for no real reason lingered on the shelves until the cheaper, blander store-brand was bought out. Yet the woman had name brand detergent, name brand diapers—all the companies that could afford commercials on TV, companies synonymous with their products.
Just as one could be new-rich, one could be new-poor. She clearly had not learned the ways yet. Her cart was not separated roughly between the food and the hardgoods, because anyone in this game for a second knew the food stamp card wouldn’t swipe for the paper towel, the soap, any of the scaffold products of everyday life.
Still, it was an illusion good enough for the role play. The rich man could pretend, in the dim, yellowed lighting of the grocery store with the scuffed dirty white tile that the supermodel could be a down-on-her-luck young woman; a newly single mother or a college dropout facing the music of life for the first time.
He was a higher being, standing in line behind her. Something superior. The aura of poverty and desperation that circulated this place like gas pumped into a room couldn’t touch him. His custom suit repelled it. His shoes gleamed so brightly it warded off the encroaching darkness. He held a single bottle of water in his hand; to make it clear that he was temporarily inconvenienced and would never fully shop here.
He was a superhero.
Gucci made his cape.
His Batmobile a Ferrari.
The line edged forward. A lone, harried cashier in a wrist brace fumbled to scan and bag the treadmill of groceries trundling towards her. The woman glanced back at him and smiled.
Of course she did.
He was a high value man.
He watched her stack the contents of her cart onto the counter. The bill rang higher and higher; he could see the digital readout of the monitor. $66.09, $83.70, $99.02. She scanned the milk, the detergent, the eggs. The bill jumped over one hundred, then came the cereal and paper towel, $191 flashed and she wasn’t done yet. The scanner beeped; the scanner booped. The grocery total grew plump.
Barret had given her two hundred dollars in a horrid mismatch of fives, tens and ones. He’d traded with one of the maintenance guys working on the elevator in his building to get those flimsy, soft greasy bills instead of the crisp, fresh ones he normally received.
The final frozen dinner was scanned and placed in a plastic bag. “$308.24” the cashier reported.
Barret gazed at Liza’s ass while she struggled to count out the money. The bills were wadded, folded into each other, and when she smoothed them down next to the card reader, they sprang back into their crumpled form, obscuring their value, making her lose count.
Someone behind Barret sighed in annoyance. The cashier clucked her tongue, eyebrows raised. The supermarket lights grew hotter. Liza gave him a furious look, but all he did was smile sympathetically.
He wanted to hear her say it.
They’d rehearsed a bit in the car, and she kept saying “you’re so weird,” but she seemed into it, even suggesting that he walk around the store while she fake-shopped so that they would cross paths every so often, building the tension. Whenever they were in the same aisle, she’d find a reason to bend over to grab something from the bottom shelf, angling herself towards him while making a concentrated effort to ignore eye contact.
Until she was in produce and caught his gaze while she let a pomegranate drop from her hands, so she could sink to her knees and look up at him, sticking her tongue out slightly.
A bit of dirt was still on her knees, he noticed, openly and brazenly looking her over.
Finally, after long, furious moments of social agony, Liza said: “I don’t have enough money.”
The cashier was nonplussed. “Okay,” she said. “We can put some of this back, it's not a big deal.”
Liza’s expression towards him was acidic in its venom. The embarrassment was getting to her, even through the role play.
The facade was breaking.
Cue the soaring, triumphant music. The fanfare, the trumpets. Woodrow Barret was here to save the day. He leaned forward. “Excuse me,” he said loudly. “How much was it, total?”
They both answered, neither of them sure who he was speaking to. “308” said the cashier.
“308-twenty- four ”. Liza added.
It was hefty production getting his wallet out. He opened the inside of his suit jacket and reached for the billfold bound in the skin of a gorgeous extinct creature and pulled out four hundred dollar bills. His type of money. Crisp. Sharp enough to give you a papercut. “I’ll cover all of it,” he said graciously.
“Wow, that's so nice of you!” the cashier said, beaming.
“It is just so nice,” Liza said, a bitter touch of sarcasm in her voice that was meant only for him.
“Of course.” He handed them over and smiled at Liza. “Can I help you take them to your car?”
“That would be wonderful, thank you.” Her voice took on the false over politeness of lawyers and salesmen.
He handed his water over to be scanned and was delighted to receive many ratty ten-dollar bills in return. The cashier blushed and stammered thanks when he selected another hundred dollars out of his billfold and handed it to her, telling her it was their secret.
Liza was at the end of the counter, throwing her bags into the cart, glaring at him.
Barrett decided he would stuff the money in her mouth while she bounced on his cock later.
***
They left the groceries in the parking lot, the cart alone and full between the yellow lines of an empty space. They drove quickly back to his building rushing to get back to the penthouse suite, to enjoy the sudden contrast from the filth and the dirt to the airbrushed, lofty heights only money could bring.
Once out of the elevator, he stopped her in the hallway, shoving her against the wall. She giggled, draping her arms around his neck, sliding against the wall so she was lower than him, looking up. Their foreheads pressed together, his fingers hooking in the elastic of her leggings.
“That really got you going, huh?” she teased.
“Shut up.”
“When you pulled your wallet out, did you think it was your dick you were pulling out? Were you going to slap it down on the checkout counter and tell me to suck it, right there in the store?” Her hand snaked into his pants, her fingers encircling the tip of his cock and squeezing.
He seized her wrists and pinned them above her head, slamming his waist against hers. Liza’s eyes widened with interest, but the playful smile didn’t leave her lips.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “It won’t work this time.”
She licked his chin. “No? What if I said I was just a poor single mom and you really, really helped me out? And that I will do anything to repay you?”
He growled, seizing her around the waist and throwing her over his shoulder, her long legs kicking frantically as she continued laughing at him. A heel flew off, landing with a clatter on the gleaming floors. Barrett swung his hand up and smacked her ass.
“Ow!”
“You’re lucky to even be in here. A poor slut like you really should be fucked in the car and sent home.” He carried her down the long hallway to the bedroom. One of her bare feet slid against his stomach, downward until the back of her arched toes dragged over the bulge in his pants.
“Please,” she whispered. “You can tear my cheap panties off with your teeth. Just fuck me in your fancy bed, mister. Make me cum on sheets that cost more than my car.”
He spanked her again. “You don’t own a car.”
Liza laughed. “Oh you want me dirt poor, huh? Should I be barefoot and pregnant, too?”
They were at his bedroom now. He slipped the other heel from her foot and laid her on the bed. Looking at her, he licked the inside of her shoe. “We’ll start with the barefoot part.”
He grabbed her ankle and stuck her toes into his mouth, tasting the salt and tang of sweat. Her big toe had a callus on it that he nibbled with his teeth like it was a bit of cartilage on a chicken wing and he wanted every morsel of meat.
She kept massaging him with the other foot, propping herself up with her elbows, watching him with narrowed eyes. "I have bad credit," she whispered.
"Fuck."
"My rent is late."
"Yeah? How late?
" Months. "
"Just a poor, little slut, huh?"
She withdrew her delicious feet and sat up, leaning forward on the edge of the bed. Her hair was still too nice; too shiny, too clean. He wondered if he could get her to work in a factory for a few shifts, get really greasy to make it authentic. That's how it had been his first time; when he was nineteen and a worker at one of his father's factories had taken his virginity. She'd smell like sweat and chemicals and wore non-slip shoes, and no one in his social class had been able to match the way she grabbed him and fucked his brains out.
Liza tugged his trousers down and flicked her magazine cover eyes up at him. His cock sprang out like a jack-in-the-box. She'd never sucked it before; he never lasted that long. "I qualify for food stamps," she murmured against it, each syllable hitting the tip gently.
A squirt of milky, over-eager pre-cum flicked out of his penis, spattering against her chin.
"You can't—" he panted, "you can't qualify for a loan can you?"
Liza slid a hand down to her pussy, rubbing her fingers against herself, pouting. "I need a cosigner. Can you do that for me, daddy? Can you help a poor girl like me?"
A visceral horniness clutched him like a hunger craving. He jumped on her, tearing at her too-expensive outfit, his hand diving into his jacket to rip out another wad of cash. She helped him out of his clothes, until they were tumbling around the ocean of a bed. She wound up on top, her hands around his throat as she sank down onto his cock. "Is this what you wanted?" she asked.
He took the opportunity to shove the money past her lips. She gagged on it before spitting the sticky wad onto his chest. She scooped it up and slapped it against his face. She began to ride him, angrily, and there, there it was! That feeling! The rawness of his first time, even though this super model smelled of perfume and luxury. It was enough; her face was streaked with spit and a thin glean of sweat, giving her a feral look. Her hands were too soft, too delicate but they still gripped his throat as her pussy devoured his cock.
"This is the last time," she said breathlessly. "I'm done with your shit." She said it through a groan, because he grabbed her hips and helped slam her down to the hilt of his dick. He kept her there. He was about to cum already, but didn't care. He felt himself release in a gushing torrent, and smiled.
"But who will cosign for your loan?"