Summer
Chapter Five
SULLIVAN
Adrian’s estate is gated and sprawling. Bloomfield Hills is an affluent Detroit suburb, and it’s beautiful, home to old, old money and a fancy country club. For the first time since I’ve been coming to this place, I feel like exactly what I am when I arrive.
A whore.
Adrian can dress me up and put me in a fancy car, but it doesn’t change the purpose I serve, or the way my stomach sinks when I pass through the gates.
This time of year, everything is in bloom, and the grounds smell like fresh-cut grass, peonies, and money.
I’ve never asked, but I have to assume Adrian is a nepo baby.
There’s no way an orchestra conductor can afford all this on a city salary.
His wealth shocked me the first time I came here. Now, I only feel complicit in it.
He looks displeased when he opens the door. “You’ve lost more weight.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
With a grimace, he steps aside to let me in, taking my rolling suitcase as I pass into the elaborate foyer.
Without another welcoming word, Adrian says, “Go upstairs and undress. I’d like to know what else you’ve done to yourself.”
I nod. These inspections have been a regular thing since the weekend I spent here over Christmas break when he saw I’d pierced my ears. I bear it because I learned quickly that resisting it is pointless.
Not that I’ll escape punishment, but the punishment is worse when I fight it, and the threats escalate. It becomes more difficult to keep him happy, and if I serve one purpose on this earth these days it’s keeping Adrian Frazier happy.
Maybe happy is the wrong word, I think as I climb the stairs with a straight back and my chin up. Reassured fits better.
There’s only one change besides my weight that he’ll find, and I think he might actually like it compared to some of the other things that have pissed him off over the school year.
Freshman year of college was a sort of fever dream of self-discovery.
Or attempts at it. I can’t shake the feeling I’m still searching for something.
What I have learned, more than anything, is that this so-called relationship between me and Adrian is not what I hoped it was.
It’s something much viler. It’s wrong, and I’m in too deep to make it right.
When I arrive in the room designated as mine, I go into the en suite and take off my shirt.
Avoiding my own reflection, I take off my pants and underwear, too.
I run the shower as I study my newest tattoo.
Covering the inside of my left forearm is an abstracted version of my first violin, including the crack around the f-hole I superglued on my own.
I still have the violin at home. It makes the shittiest sound, but it reminds me of a time where music meant freedom and good, beautiful things.
I’m too far gone to reclaim my innocence, but I can remember it.
Adrian will give me time to shower. He’ll even give me time to dry and style my hair the way he prefers it. He needs the time, I think, to compose himself. To settle into the character he plays for me. Or, if not that, to remove the mask he wears around everyone else.
I’ve never been sure which it is. It doesn’t matter.
I have the version of him I have.
And he’ll make me wait, too because he likes my uncertainty. He wants me on edge.
I have a text from Chelsea when I get out of the shower.
Chelsea
Did you make it home safe?
I tap out a quick reply.
Me
Home. Mom’s making roast.
Chelsea
Rude.
Me
I’ll call you tonight.
Chelsea
K. Love u!
Me
You too
Obviously I didn’t tell my girlfriend that I’d be spending the first week of my summer with the man who owns me. She and I are supposed to live together next semester, so I have an illusion to maintain and a relationship to take care of even if I still have mixed feelings about it.
I dry my hair, putting it into the high bun Adrian prefers. Well, he prefers it not to be long at all, but since it is, he wants it out of my face.
These little rebellions, he calls them.
The hair, the piercings, the tattoos. None of those bother him the way my weight does.
The weight loss started when I stopped eating meat. At first, I only wanted to see if I could be a vegetarian. Every ounce of muscle mass I had melted away like it was only visiting in the first place.
I didn’t love that, so worked to correct it, but I was determined to steer clear of meat.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of vegetables, but I like celery and cucumbers.
And candy. For protein, I usually eat something like celery and peanut butter, or cucumbers and yogurt.
I eat only enough to keep me from passing out, though.
That only has to happen once in a public place to learn the lesson.
I got lucky that it happened in the campus gym with Deandre on a weekend.
He didn’t make a scene or call an ambulance. He just pulled me over to a mat, waited until I came around, made me drink a bottle of water then got me back to our dorm room. There was a lecture involved, but I was too out of it to remember much. I’ve timed my meals better since then.
Working out and eating more regularly helped because I was able to get some definition back, though none of my old clothes fit anymore. That will change this week. Adrian will re-outfit me. He’s wanted to since spring break, but I refused him then.
I am allowed to refuse some things. Or maybe not refuse but reschedule.
Adrian is a forty-five year old man in an open relationship with a younger man named Quinn. Quinn is a concert pianist who travels nine months of the year. Quinn is also the only man who’s ever stuck his dick in my ass.
This, of course, was done at Adrian’s behest.
It’s happened a handful of times. I would count them, but I’m always out of it when it happens.
Loose and pliant enough to consent but not present enough to be aware of anything but the physical sensations.
The morning after regrets are potent enough for me to understand that I never want to experience those interludes—those acts—with a clear mind. I’d be scarred for life.
I laugh.
As though I’m not already destroyed.
I’m sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed in the corner room looking through the windows at the trees swaying slightly in the wind. The bright green of new growth against the electric blue of the sky is almost too much. Too optimistic for a summer I’ve dreaded.
Next week, I’ll go home, try to find a summer job, listen to my mother complain about how hard her life is, and debate whether or not I want to go through the ordeal of seeing my father. And in four weeks, I’ll be back here. Continuing to pay my debt.
The door latch clicks, turns, and I stand.
Adrian isn’t a particularly handsome man.
He’s plain. Unremarkable. He has a receding hairline and straight blond hair he wears slicked back.
His eyes are brown. He has pale, white skin and thin lips the same color as the rest of his face.
What makes him stand out isn’t any of his features.
It’s the way he carries himself. He exudes wealth, influence, and dominance from the Patek watch to the Armani pants he wears casually at home on a weekend.
His shirts are almost exclusively silk. The one he’s wearing today is gray and matches his pants exactly.
He clocks the tattoo immediately.
He holds out a hand as he approaches. “Let’s see.”
I hold up my arm, the tattoo displayed for him.
He examines it closely, as though he’s most concerned about the quality of the lines than the fact that it’s marred my skin. “Mediocre work,” he says, proving me correct.
“I like it.”
“No one ever praised your eye for art, darling. What’s next?” he asks. “A sleeve? More piercings? Where will you put them?”
Wherever I want. “We’ll see.”
He sighs, letting go of my arm to take a look at the rest of me.
The instant his fingertip makes contact with my breastbone, my body breaks out in chills.
Not from pleasure or excitement. His hand is cold, and his touch has become repellant.
As he traces a line down the center of me, I shift my gaze to the trees again.
His fingers move to my side, bumping over one rib at a time. “I miss your sweet baby fat.”
I inhale deeply. Exhale. I say nothing.
I was sixteen when I met Adrian. A fresh sixteen. He flattered me and paid such special attention to me. At first, I thought it was because I’d played so well in the competition he was judging, and I do think that was part of it.
It’s my fault anyway for introducing myself to him. The conductor for the largest symphony orchestra in Michigan? Of course I wanted to meet him. I wanted him to know my name and remember me. I wanted his fucking business card.
I got a dinner invitation and my first ever private violin lessons instead.
He moves around me now, using the palm of his hand to touch every inch of my upper body.
He brushes my callus—the rough skin beneath my left jaw where my violin rests.
Some people call it a violin hickey. Adrian doesn’t.
He likes it rough and raised. It proves to him I’m still playing as much as I ever did.
He checks my fingertips, too, to make sure they’re still tough and thick.
And then he kneels.
Both his hands wrap smoothly around my ass cheeks as he presses his nose to my groin and breathes deeply.
This may as well be choreographed. A ritual. The tip of his nose moves over my limp dick, and he breathes the other side in as his hands move down the backs of my legs then up the front as he smells his fill.
The first several times he did this, I was hard.
My body wasn’t used to being seen or touched naked.
My nervous system reacted with excitement, although I wouldn’t call it arousal.
It took me a while to realize it wasn’t, though.
It took me until that night in the woods with the future quarterback of the college football team to realize what actual arousal felt like.
That night nine months ago feels like it happened a decade ago.
As Adrian lifts my dick from my sac and licks broadly at the tip, I put my hands on his shoulders and shut my eyes.
I try not to feel the fine silk of his shirt. I try imagining the firm muscles of Knight’s chest. The way he whimpered at one press of my lips on his.
I do have a girlfriend. I do fuck her when the need to come or forget becomes too urgent. And I do get off with her. But when I’m alone, it’s always, always Knight I’m imagining because that was still the hottest moment of my life.
My dick, of course, is sensitive, and Adrian is no amateur. It isn’t long before I’m erect, and he’s moaning around my length as he takes me deeper and deeper.
I wish I were the one on my knees. I want to be the one with a cock trying to force its way into my throat. I’d love the chance to try swallowing that massive dick of Knight’s again. With as many times as I’ve visualized it, I think I could do better.
I mean, maybe any dick would do, but Knight’s was nice. Appropriate for someone of his size. Long. Meaty. Thick.
A groan escapes me as I remember the feel of it on my tongue a little too well. To be fair, I’ve made no effort to forget it. It’s my entire spank bank, so I like to keep the memory as vivid as possible.
It took a few weeks after the incident in the woods for Knight to be able to look me in the eyes. We didn’t see each other often, didn’t run in the same circles. If he and his friends still go to The Front, I have no knowledge of it.
While the guys in my dorm maintained a natural ease with each other, we separated into our separate groups as expected when classes started.
Deandre slept in our room and stayed friendly with me, occasionally forcing me to go to the gym with him, but that was about it.
Knight and Rodrigo’s room really did become the fun room, but I never hit them up to use the air fryer or play a round of darts or Wii boxing.
I got closer with the guys at the other end of the hall who perfected smoking weed in their dorm room without the smell getting into the hallway.
That type of fun was more my speed anyway.
JT and Shannon didn’t have a Wii, but they did have a Switch and an excellent ventilation system.
My knees buckle when Adrian sucks me into his throat, his lips closing tight around the base of my cock.
He has a thing he does—something like a cough, that never fails to bring me to the brink.
Since all I want is to move onto the next part of this thing we do, I let the orgasm build, doing nothing to hold it back.
I warn him it’s coming with a strong press of my fingertips and a soft moan.
He prepares himself to take my load, making sure every drop of it hits his tongue. Apparently I taste sweeter now that I’ve stopped eating meat. It’s the one thing he hasn’t complained about since I left for college.
It’s made him hungrier, though. Needier when I’m here. I used to be able to count on one blow job a day. Now it’s two to three.
I refuse to let that make me change my diet. It’s not like I have to do anything more than stand here and bear it. It’s the easiest job in the world as long as Quinn isn’t in town.
With my cock still in his mouth, Adrian jerks himself to a finish.
He’ll have put his hand in his expensive pants at some point during all that and gotten himself close while he waited for me to come.
He’s touch averse and allows the grip on his shoulders to keep me standing, because this is how he prefers to give head.
On his knees like he’s hooking up in a bathroom stall.
An odd perversion for a man of his importance.
When we’re both done, I let him go, locking my knees as he lets my dick fall from his mouth.
He takes a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his lips and then his hand before he puts his pants back together. I don’t have to watch. I know it by the sounds.
“Dinner in an hour,” he says as he stands. “Wear the blue.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I can’t wait to catch up, darling.”
I force a soft smile onto my mouth. “I’ll be down soon.”
He brushes his thumb over my cheekbone, but I can’t look at him anymore. My eyes flutter shut. “My darling boy.”
I swallow bile as I suppress the shiver that wants to turn into a full shudder. I freeze my smile into place.
“Definitely the blue,” he says. Finally, he stops touching me. I wait until he’s out of the room before walking to the bathroom and turning the shower to hot.