Chapter Two — Callum
We’re seated at a table, eating an expensive meal, when I hand her the piece of paper. I waited until we were halfway through the meal, knowing it would put her on edge.
“Your choice, sweetheart,” I say, as she scans the list I just handed her.
“Really?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
Once again, I’m struck by how beautiful her eyes are. I try to shake the thought.
I’m not used to noticing these small things about a girl. Of course, I notice when a girl is beautiful. I mean, every girl I fuck is. But usually it wears off after a few times of meeting her. Beauty isn’t exactly rare.
I watch as her eyes scan the list. I notice her cheeks flush, and I wonder which line she’s reading.
Tie you down to my bed and fuck you until you scream?
Give me head in the parking lot? I can’t help but smile as she bites her lower lip, scanning all the items. Fuck.
I’m starting to regret my decision to let her choose her punishment.
Part of my modus operandi has always been to let the woman choose the first punishment from a list of options. It makes them feel like they’re in more control than they really are. It keeps them around longer. I know that eventually I’ll scare them away, but I want to have my fun while I can.
I put a few crazy items on the list. For example: Sex with multiple men in public and Make a sex tape and post it online.
Options I know the woman won’t pick. I add these outlandish choices because of a psychological concept called anchoring.
If I put down a few wild options, when the woman gets to the real options — the ones I’m expecting them to choose — they’ll think, this isn’t so bad.
In fact, they’ll be relieved. Grateful, even.
So grateful they’ll jump at the chance to complete any other item on the list.
It works every time.
Alex looks up at me, her hazel eyes tingling with a mix of excitement and fear. Exactly how I like them, I think to myself.
“Number six,” she says softly.
“Oh? Which one is that?” I ask, widening my eyes before taking a sip of scotch, pretending to be surprised.
Alex looks down. “You know,” she hisses.
“Oh, so you’re shy all of a sudden?” I ask, teasing her.
I have to say, Alex has been funner than most women so far. She’s kept up the defiance longer than most of them do. It’s frustrating, but fun. I love a challenge.
Still, I’ll break her eventually. Just like I break all of them.
“You know,” she mumbles again.
“No, I really don’t,” I say, feigning ignorance and taking a longer sip of my drink. The earthy liquid spills down my throat and warmth fills my chest. “Tell me, sweetheart. Unless… you’re embarrassed?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. Like me, Alex is proud. And I’m going to use that against her.
She looks at me, and her pretty eyes narrow. I love it when she’s mad.
“Fine,” she hisses. “Option six is ‘wear whatever outfit you want’.” She quickly picks up a glass of her Sauvignon Blanc and downs at least half of it.
I can’t help but notice how slender and pretty her fingers and wrists are.
All of a sudden I’m imagining tying those dainty wrists to my bedposts, while I have my way with her.
I shake the thought from my head. I’m getting distracted.
She’s unusual for me. Of course, I like to think about my women. Fantasize about them. But I like to be in control. I don’t want to get carried away when I’m with them. I need to be in the moment, controlling every aspect of the situation, and she’s throwing me off guard. I’m not used to it.
“Good choice,” I say, nodding slowly. I’m not surprised. I’d say the majority of women, maybe seventy or eighty percent, choose option six.
It seems like a safe choice, but what they don’t know is what I have planned for them. I expect them to pick this option, so I always have an outfit picked out for them ahead of time.
I vary it slightly from girl to girl, but it’s almost always the same: short red dress—red is my favorite color on women.
High heels. No panties. The dress is short enough that the women feel self-conscious.
I want them to feel like if they bend over, they might expose themselves.
They won’t, but it’s short enough that it puts them on edge.
I get their measurements beforehand, so I tailor the dress perfectly to achieve this effect.
I pause and study Alex carefully, watching as she tucks a strand of brown hair behind her ear. For some reason, I feel like I want to do something slightly different for her. She’s special.
I think I feel like partly because she lied to me.
A surge of anger and pride comes back as I remember her little deception.
It took me longer than it should have to notice she’d given me a fake name.
Of course, I did a background check on her right away, and nothing came up for Lola Rose.
Normally, that would have prompted me to dig deeper, but I’d been having a busy few weeks, so I let it slide.
I should have known.
What really tipped me off, though, was our poker game. I went into that thinking it would be a walk in the park, that she hardly knew how to play. She’d been setting me up all week by sending stupid texts, reinforcing my prior (negative) assessment of her intelligence.
She played me like a fool. And I ate it right up.
I cringe even thinking back to it, how well she deceived me. She knew that I thought she was dumb, and she ran with it. And I played right into the palm of her hand.
God, she must have felt so satisfied with herself when she pulled one over on me like that.
In a way, a part of me respects that. Game recognizes game, after all. She set me up perfectly. Her whole little ruse — from pretending she didn’t know the rules of poker to feigning exaggerated expressions when she got a certain set of cards — was executed flawlessly.
And looking back, she almost certainly let me win that first round of poker.
Purposely calling and matching my bets all the way to the end, knowing that I had a better hand, knowing it would lead me to solidify my view that she had no idea what she was doing.
It made me relaxed, comfortable, so I stopped paying attention, and then she cleaned up when my guard was down.
She even managed to negotiate a good deal for herself ahead of time, leveraging her clothing for more chips. She knew that I’d agree to the favorable terms because I didn’t think she’d be a challenge. She knew that I’d be willing to give her an advantage because I underestimated her.
It was smart.
She was smart. Is smart.
In fact, I’m somewhat disturbed by how sharp she is. A few of the girls who’ve participated in my games have been smart, but none have come even close to my level of intelligence. Alex is the first girl that’s ever made me doubt myself. After she beat me at poker, I started questioning myself.
Of course, that doubt only lasted a second.
Still, it was significant. Because it’s never happened before.
I’m sure I could have beat her if I’d been focused.
But I have to hand it to her — she beat me fair and square.
As much as I admire her cleverness, it also annoys me.
Every time she gives me that same damn smug smile, my blood runs hot, and all I can think of is pinning her down and fucking her until it’s wiped right off her face.
But I know I can’t do that. Yet. I have to escalate slowly. Besides the fact that it’s explicitly written into the contract that the punishments escalate with each game the girl loses, there’s also the psychological element. If I go from zero to a hundred, I’ll scare the girls off.
One thing’s for sure, though: I’m not going to be losing any more games.
I want to get to that point with Alex as soon as possible.
It’s almost all I’ve been thinking of the last few days.
It’s been hard to focus at work, because I’ve just been thinking of her.
I’m chalking it up to the fact that this is new for me, coming across a woman who could really give me a run for my money.
I need to put her in her place and get this out of my system. Then I can be on to the next girl and back to my normal life.
“Are you sure, though?” I ask, catching her eye. “About choosing option six?”
Questioning her on her choice after she’s made it is a mind game, obviously. I know she won’t change her mind. A woman as prideful as her never would. But it makes her second-guess herself, wonder if she’s made a bad move.
And she has.
But she doesn’t know that yet.
Alex inhales sharply, and I notice her chest flutter. I smile. She can pretend as much as she wants that I don’t affect her, but we both know better. She nods and stays silent.
I have to hand it to her, she’s maintaining composure. She still hasn’t asked me about how I found out that her name isn’t really Lola. Not confronting her on it is killing me, but I can’t be the one to bring it up first. She has to.
I take another sip of scotch and study her. I notice her look down at her plate again. Prolonged eye contact makes her nervous, so I’m trying to do as much of it as I can. I like watching her squirm.
“Eyes on me, Lola.”
She looks up. Her entire face is flushed red.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” she asks.
“What — Lola?”
“Yes. You can drop the act,” she says, exasperated.
“What act?”
“I know you know my real name.”
“Oh, and remind me what that is again?” I say, taking a bite of my steak.
“Stop it,” she hisses.
“Stop what?”
“Stop with the whole innocence act. Can we just drop the charade here?”
“I’ll drop it as soon as you stop pretending like you’re not nervous.”
“Maybe I’m not nervous,” she says, taking another sip of wine.
“Sure, sweetheart. Keep telling yourself that.”
Her little fists clench, and I smile. Her face gets redder, and I smile even wider.
This is making up somewhat for my earlier humiliation during poker. Riling her up like this is much more satisfying that I would have thought. It’s reminding me that I’ve still got her under control. And more importantly, it’s reminding her who’s really in charge.
“Fine. I lied about my name, okay? We both know that. You can just call me Alex. Now can we just move on from this?”
I take a slow sip of my scotch, studying her. She starts to fiddle with her silver necklace — a small green gemstone on a silver chain.
“No, I don’t think we can ‘just move on from this’, Lola,” I say. “Not until you tell me why you lied.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asks.
I raise my eyebrows, prompting her to continue.
“I don’t know you,” Alex says. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I have to look out for myself. My own safety. I’m not an idiot like all those other girls, okay?” She says the words quickly and defensively, before taking a sip of wine.
“That makes sense,” I say.
The words are coming out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying, which is unlike me. I’m usually very composed, considering each word before it comes out.
But something about her makes me feel more at ease. Maybe it’s the sense that I’m talking to a girl who’s more on my level — compared to the other women, at least.
“It does?” she asks, narrowing her eyes as if she’s expecting a gotcha.
But there isn’t one.
“It does,” I respond. “You’re a smart girl. And I underestimated you. But you know that, right?”
She smiles shyly and twists her necklace again.
“You must have felt very pleased with yourself after our little poker game, didn’t you?”
She shrugs coyly. “Maybe.”
“As impressed as I was, you know I have to make you pay for your little stunt, don’t you? What you did could almost be considered cheating.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. I didn’t cheat. It’s not my fault that you thought I was stupid. You’re a misogynist, and I just played into your bias. That’s not cheating.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh really? I’m a misogynist? Go on, then. Tell me more.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not obvious to me,” I say.
“Well, you consistently pick dumb women to humiliate for your own sexual pleasure. You lure them in with the promise of a million dollars, but you never pay out. Seems pretty blatantly misogynistic to me.”
“Oh really? If I’m so misogynistic, then why did you agree to this scenario?” I ask.
“Because I’m going to win the million dollars.”
She looks at me and takes a slow sip of wine, maintaining eye contact the whole time. Her eyes are on fire, and I feel a mix of admiration, anger, and lust. For once, she’s not fidgeting with her necklace. She’s calm. Self-assured. Almost arrogant. She reminds me of myself.
Damn. She really believes that. She really think she’s going to win the million dollars.
I almost feel sorry for her. As smart as she may be, she’s still no match for me. But I don’t want her to know that. Not yet. For now, I’ll entertain her delusions.
“Maybe. I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Cheers,” I say, raising my glass.
She looks at me for half a second, wondering if this is some sort of test.
“Come on, sweetheart, don’t leave me hanging,” I say.
She exhales and raises her glass, clinking it against mine.
“Cheers,” she says.