It was fine, I told myself. I could use this as an exercise to be hard and unreachable. I wouldn’t let him get in my head or my heart this time. I would use him for money, turn the trick, and get out. I didn’t even mind strapping on the damned black leather eye mask because I didn’t want to know what he looked like. I didn’t care anymore. Who fucking cared?
I knocked on the door and let him pull me inside. I held my bag against my chest as he kissed me, remembering his betrayal of trust last time. I hadn’t brought anything this time, just extra clothes and some emergency money, and my phone, which was now locked with a passcode. He tugged it away from me in order to zip-tie my hands behind my back.
I let him bind me once again, because that was what he liked to do, and I was the prostitute he’d hired. I smelled his familiar smell, the cologne I knew by heart. If not for that smell, it could be anyone kissing me. I hardened my lips and my body. He could kiss me, but I wasn’t kissing him back.
As soon as I stopped responding to him, he stopped pawing me and led me across the room. He turned me around and sat me on the bed.
“How did you like the poem?” he asked.
“What poem? The two lines you wrote last week?”
“You didn’t plug them into a search engine?” he said acidly.
“I didn’t have to, Mr. Cumming,” I replied just as acidly. “Although I have to admit, it’s the first time a client’s ever written poetry for me.”
“I’ve made it my mission to bring a little poetry back to the world.” I flinched as his hand touched my cheek. “Back to your world anyway.”
“Whatever floats your boat. I don’t have much use for poetry in my line of work.”
“Oh, you loved it. You memorized it by the second day. Repeat them, the words I wrote for you.”
I wasn’t in the mood for games. “You didn’t write them for me,” I said. “E.E. Cummings wrote them for some chorus girl he liked, and poetry memorization isn’t one of the services I offer.”
He opened my legs. I felt him stand between them, right against my front. “You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, you fucking whore.” He stuck his thumbs in my mouth, pried it open. “Speak.”
I jerked my head away. “Fuck you. I’d rather suck you off.”
“I don’t want you to suck me off. I want you to repeat the words I wrote for you.”
“I can’t. I don’t remember,” I lied. “I didn’t memorize them.”
“Yes, you did. You still have the piece of paper under your pillow, or in some fucking scrapbook, don’t you? You read it every day.”
I hated his hubris, and the fact that he was right. I had looked at that piece of paper daily. “I only know the words because I knew that poem. I knew it before.”
“No, you didn’t. It’s obscure, one of his earliest works.”
I knew the whole damn poem by heart, and to irritate him, I recited it, word for word, up until the last two lines he’d written out for me. I wished I could have seen his face. Was he smiling? Did he find it funny? Was he irritated? Angry?
“That poem means something to you,” he finally said.
I didn’t answer. I refused to even acknowledge his speculative musing. If he wouldn’t give me his name, he wasn’t getting my story about that poem. Some hurts were best kept locked up in your heart.
“So, I’m pissed today,” he went on, when my response wasn’t forthcoming. “I wanted to see you two days ago, but you had an appointment with some other asshole.”
“You’re not the only client I see. Sorry.”
He grasped my shoulders and shoved me back on the bed. He pulled off one of my shoes, then the other, and pushed up my skirt. I’d put on an old fashioned garter belt and beige stockings to match his classy beige dress. He ran his hands up the back seams.
“Trying to seduce me?” he asked.
I wasn’t. It was only that I needed the power of feeling pretty. I needed to feel sleek and sexy like Miss Kitty.
So much for that. He had the clasps popped in a heartbeat, and the stockings down over my feet. Once he had them off, he knotted one around my ankle. I kicked at him, but not hard enough. He tied my ankle to the bottom of the hotel bed frame, and no matter how hard I pulled, I couldn’t break away. I rolled across the bed, but he only grabbed my other ankle, knotted it with the other stocking, and bound it too. I flailed helplessly, and then I stopped because I figured I was only turning him on.