“You’re awake,” I say, my voice small.
He doesn’t say anything.
“West left.”
Blue just watches me.
It makes my heart pound. I feel myself slipping, sliding into that familiar skin. I don’t have heels and lipstick, but that’s okay. I knew about sex long before I learned its trappings, and I show that to him now, fingering the hem of my silk nightgown. I let it catch the faint moonlight from the window, let him pant for the pussy he already knows so well.
He’s a monolith. I can’t see if he’s turned on, if his dick is hard. I can only feel my way around him, moving my body as I pull the silk over my head. Then I’m naked, and I drop to my knees.
It’s safer here.
I crawl to him, shoulders high, ass tilted up. I find his legs bare, coarse hair over hard muscle. I find his cock hard, straining against the fabric of his briefs. The material catches underneath his weight, and for a second I think he’s not going to help me. He’s not going to let me take his cock out. Not going to let me do the only thing I know how to do.
Then he shifts, and I pull his briefs to his thighs. His cock springs up, hard and damp at the top. I grasp him in my hands, sliding both fists up and down before kissing the tip. I’m determined to please him, as determined as West was to leave. I’m not even sure why I’m so desperate for this. What battle am I fighting? It’s like I’m apologizing for his friend leaving.
Like I’m begging Blue not to do the same.
“So much guilt,” he murmurs, voice low and expansive in the dark. “So much shame.”
Heat rises to my cheeks, because he’s right. Guilt and shame and a deep, unrelenting dread. I don’t know how to keep a man. I’m almost afraid to try. The only thing I had going for me was the sex, and now that I’m no longer a stripper, it feels like I’m losing that too.
“I don’t know what to be,” I whisper.
If he could just tell me, if I could just follow his orders, it would be okay. He tells me what to do in the bedroom, but not anywhere else. And I’m floundering. I’m failing, everywhere else.
“I never asked you to change,” he says, stroking my cheek, trailing after a tear.
That’s true. He never did. But how could he want me? I have nothing to offer him. Nothing but a striptease and a hard fuck. Maybe it’s not a blowjob I need.
God, even West knows I’m not enough.
He pushes his hand into my hair and tightens his fist. “You still think I’m going to let you go?” he asks, his voice ominous. “You still think you’ll…what? Do something wrong and I’ll throw you out? Is that what you think?”
It’s what happened at every foster home. They’d use me for the small monthly support payments—or use me for something worse. And when they got tired of me, they’d kick me out again. Why wouldn’t that happen again? “No,” I whisper.
His cock stands hard and proud in front of me. I can almost feel it throbbing. I could make it so good, but he holds me still, my mouth an inch away. I lick my lips, and he groans.
“I’d kill them,” he mutters. “Every single fucker who ever touched you and made you think that’s all you were good for. I did that too, didn’t I?”
I try to shake my head no, but he’s
got me tight in his grip. I only succeed in pulling my hair. A small sound of pain escapes me. It makes him hold me harder—he gives me a little shake.
“I’m still doing it,” he murmurs.
Then he’s lifting me, pushing me toward our bedroom with the leash of my hair.
This room is the darkest, the curtains drawn tight, leaving no light at all. The fronts of my thighs hit the bed, and he bends me over, leaving my ass in the air, exposed and vulnerable. The first hit is a surprise, his palm on my sensitive skin. I yelp, and the burn spreads over my ass and between my legs.
“You want someone gentle?” he asks, breath warm against my temple. He’s leaning over me, the ridge of his cock against my back. “Like West? Someone to bring you flowers and worship you?”
“No, no. I need you.”
He laughs shortly. “You need me to mark your beautiful ass? To make you black-and-blue?”
My pussy clenches. “God, yes. Please.”