Taunt Me (Rough Love 2)

“I don’t want anyone.”

He made an impatient noise and let his fingers drop. Our heads touched as we stared up at the same patch of wispy clouds. The music swirled around us, wistful, slow, melodious, as complex as our feelings and the general screwiness of life. Don’t think about him.

Not Simon. It wasn’t Simon haunting me.

I’d rather have the want of you, the rich, elusive taunt of you…

“You know what I want?” said Andrew, breaking into my thoughts.

“What do you want?” I replied in a soft voice.

“I want someone to love me for me. With all my faults and shortcomings, with my skinny body, my personality flaws. I’m tired of trying to be someone better, someone worthy. I just want to be me. I want someone I can be honest with, someone who’ll accept me as I am.”

Tears gathered in my eyes at the tortured longing in his voice. He was so innocent, so sweet, so sure that his true love was out there. It made me sad.

“The thing is, people are so shitty,” I said, my voice trembling. “No one loves. No one cares. No one is faithful. Everyone is cruel and fucking awful.”

The song changed to a rock anthem. My face ached with the effort not to cry, but some tears squeezed out anyway. Andrew scooted closer to me, until his head rested against my shoulder. His hair tickled my cheek but I didn’t move my head. I realized he was crying too. The music was rough and hypnotic, twanging guitars and words I couldn’t understand. Maybe the paint fumes were making both of us a little high. I stared at the black night through the windows as Andrew lay beside me, my partner in misery, my stalwart friend.

“I’m sorry I’m so down on love,” I said. “It’s just difficult for me. I could tell you things about my past…”

“What kind of things?”

“Nothing. Stupid things I want to forget. I’m sorry I made you cry.”

“I’m crying because you’re crying.” He wiped my eyes with the edge of his sleeve, a gesture that was so gentle and normal it made me start bawling again. “No one should be down on love, Chere. Our purpose in life is to love.”

Was it? Maybe that was why my heart felt so black and dead and decrepit, and so numb. I felt so numb I thought I might disappear completely, without touching anyone or anything. That was disappearance, pure and simple, the opposite of being alive. Which meant I was dead.

His hand touched mine and I gathered my courage, and closed my fingers around his. In the dim fluorescent light, with our shoulders touching, I decided to tell him everything.

“You want to know a secret about me? I used to be a prostitute,” I said. “A high-class escort. I used to see three or four clients a week.” I paused for him to freak out, but he didn’t. The lack of reaction gave me the fortitude to forge ahead. “And just before I got out of the business, there was this guy…”

Price

When I first met Chere, I was pissed. I’d told her pimp—excuse me, her agent—that I wanted a beautiful, natural blonde. Chere was beautiful, yes, but as far from a natural blonde as you could get. Her hair was fake on purpose, the kind of sex-kitten, Marilyn-Monroe blonde that broadcast “I’m a sex object.” Beneath her fake-blonde hair and Lanvin suit, she was pure guttersnipe, with old New Orleans features, dusky skin and freckles. Her body was strong, not elegant. She wasn’t what I wanted at all.

I almost sent her away, but there was something about the tilt of her chin that compelled me. I’d bound her instead, with cheap hardware-store zip ties. I did everything bad to her that first session. I insulted her, I called her a bitch. I slapped her face and made her call me Sir. Worst of all, I didn’t let her see me or know my name. All these awful things were done to her by a nameless, faceless stranger who had complete control.

She was hysterical and fake that day, but something clicked for me by the end of our date, clicked as it had never clicked before. I wanted to fuck her so hard and so rough by the end that I probably could have fuck-killed her if I was that kind of guy. But I wasn’t. I didn’t harbor any psychopathic desires to maim or kill women. I only wanted to feel something honest, and there was nothing more honest than a woman going batshit crazy because of the shit you were doing to her. I throat-fucked her—hard—and I pussy-fucked her—hard—and she submitted to it with such delicious ambivalence. She didn’t want it, but she did.

I can’t explain my fetishes…why I need women to want it and not want it. I can’t pinpoint where my force-driven fantasies came from, or recall the moment sex and suffering crystallized, for me, as a necessary combination. I’ll only say this: I never met a woman who wanted it and didn’t want it with the same intensity as Chere Rouzier. The second time I slapped her, the hardest time I slapped her, it triggered a monumental orgasm for her.