“No. We’re not done. Sit up.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to, but he reached down and grabbed the tie that bound my arms behind my back, and forced me to sit up again.
“What did he do to you?” he asked, standing over me. His cock still glistened with my saliva.
“What? Who?”
“Your boyfriend. Tell me the fucking truth, Chere.”
“Nothing. It wasn’t…” I clamped my lips shut. Too late.
“It wasn’t your boyfriend? How interesting.” He yanked the tie tighter when I tried to turn away. “Who?”
“No one.”
“We’re supposed to be exclusive,” he barked.
“We only went to dinner!”
The fury in his face hardened to disgust. “Fucking liar.”
“It’s not a lie.”
He walked away from me, zipped up his pants and stalked across the room like he couldn’t stand to be near me. I wiped my face on the edge of the bed and tugged at the tie holding my elbows. I hoped to ruin it, like I’d ruined the last one.
“Cheating on your boyfriend?” he asked from the window.
“It wasn’t a date. He didn’t even stay for the whole dinner.”
“A client?” He turned back to me, his brow dangerously arched. “Taking a little work on the side?”
“He wasn’t a client! He was just someone I met, nothing to do with work.”
“What’s his name? What’s this fucker’s name?”
My lips trembled in indignation. “I’m not telling you.”
He came at me and I shied away, panicked. I tried to get to my feet and failed. He ignored my flailing, lifted me and set me forcefully on the edge of the bed.
“I’m not telling you his name,” I insisted, doubling down. What could he do to me that was worse than the violent blowjob? “It doesn’t matter anyway, because nothing happened. I met this guy, okay? He was friendly and nice, and he lived close to me, so we went to dinner. As soon as he learned what I do for a living, he said he had to go to the bathroom and he never came back. He ditched me there in the restaurant and left me with the bill. Does that make you happy? Once he found out the truth about me, that I was an escort—”
“The truth about you?” W scoffed, interrupting my tearful tirade. “There’s no truth about you, Chere. Just girly, emotional shit, and a bunch of lies holding it all together.”
I turned my face away from him. “Please close the window. My eyes…”
“Is the sun bothering you? Too much exposure? How about some darkness?”
He yanked the drapes closed with a snap. In the dim light bleeding from beneath the edges, he seemed a menacing shadow standing over me.
“Better?” he asked.
He walked away again. I felt relief, but at the same time I was afraid of the dark, and the darkness in him.
“What do you care about any of this?” I asked, raising my voice. “You said last time that you didn’t care about me at all, that we’re just escort and client. So why do you care if I lie? Why do you care what I do when we’re not together?”
He stripped off his clothes, his shirt and pants thrown across the same chair as my dress. “I care because I just had my bare dick in your mouth. I care because I’m paying you to be exclusive with me. Do you understand what that means? No one else, Chere. No one gets a shot at your pussy but me.”
I scoffed at that ridiculous assertion. “As you pointed out earlier, I have a boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend?” He gave a mocking laugh. “That fucked-up, narcotic-addicted failed artist you live with? If he can get it up with the amount of chemicals in his system, I’d be amazed.”
Fucked-up. Narcotic-addicted. Failed artist. I stared in shock at his dark silhouette. “How could you know all those things?”
“You think I don’t investigate the whore I’m sleeping with? You got your fucking STD test. I’m allowed to get my information too.”
“You had me investigated? You had people spy on me? Is that even legal?”
“It’s as legal as prostitution.” The darkness hid his expression, but his voice dripped with contempt. “Are you going to file a police report? Because I can file those too.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said in a fury. “You get to investigate me, but I don’t get to know anything about you, not even your name? That’s not fair.”
“You know what’s not fair? Paying for a whore to be exclusive to you—”
“I’m an escort, not a whore,” I yelled, as he went around turning on lights.
“And then finding out your exclusive whore is going to dinner with some fucking jackass.”
I blinked as the bright bedside lamps illuminated his irritated expression. “Nothing happened.”
“You think he didn’t want to get into your panties, Chere? Men only want one thing from women who look like you.”
“Shut up.”
“If you think otherwise, you’re a fucking idiot.”