Well.
The more likely scenario was that I didn’t trust myself.
Price
I closed the drapes of my hotel window. I had no binoculars, because there was no Chere to look at. I was in Beijing, in a skyline hotel I’d designed three years ago, just before I met her. The grand opening had taken place today.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony had gone well. My speech on behalf of Eriksen Architectural Design was duly translated into Chinese by a doe-eyed young national, and seemed well received. That translator hovered near me all through the following banquet, the hunger in her eyes unsettling me. She was beautiful, gorgeous, but she was no Chere. She would have broken into pieces when I got her alone. She wouldn’t have fought back, not like Chere. She wouldn’t have had those moaning, struggling orgasms that looked more like pain than anything else.
I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my suit, and tossed my cufflinks on the desk. I got naked and sat at my laptop, and opened the most recent email from Beacon Investigative Services. I browsed through photos of Chere going to class, photos of Chere going food shopping, photos of Chere returning home. Andrew wasn’t in any of them. They were apparently still on the outs.
There was another set of photos. Last weekend. Chere was dressed up, heading into the subway toward Meatpacking. Back to the BDSM clubs again. I didn’t like that she went, because I worried for her safety. Sometimes I followed her, sometimes I let other people follow her so she wouldn’t be alone, especially on the subway afterward in her tight dress and sexy black boots.
Jesus Christ, Chere. She looked gorgeous…and available. Her quest for closure weighed heavily on my mind. I massaged my hardening cock and clicked to another photo, this one of Chere inside Studio Valiant. She hid in the balconies there, as she hid in the corners and dark spaces everywhere else.
I jacked myself harder, gazing at her pretty face. She looked sad. Lost. My fault? It was horrible to stalk her like this, but I had to watch her and know about her, and it turned me on to look at photos of her going about her day. It was a little like having her, even though I couldn’t have her.
I slouched back in the chair and closed my eyes. It was so quiet this high in the air. It was so cool, and I was so hot. Why hadn’t I taken advantage of the corporate courtesan they offered me? She’d been even prettier than the interpreter, with a round face-fuck mouth and a long pretty neck.
Fuck, who cared about her? It was Chere I fantasized about as I came in a gasping mess. Cum oozed down over my fingers and dripped onto the designer wool carpet. Why wasn’t she here? Why wasn’t she with me?
Because you want what you shouldn’t want.
When I jacked off, I usually thought about hurting Chere. I fantasized about binding her and torturing her, and fucking her ass without lube. I imagined raping her and making her cry. I never thought about why, or how, just the tears and her agony. If she were mine, in my apartment, in my dungeon, I’d find a way to make her cry every day. I’d make her come every day too, covered in my marks, covered in my cum, covered in my protection.
It was nice fap fodder, but it wasn’t happening. I wouldn’t let it happen, because you couldn’t take a bright, ambitious person in the midst of a personal renaissance and make her your slave. You couldn’t lock her in a dungeon and keep her there for your pleasure. Even if you wanted to do that very, very much.
I went to clean myself up, and returned to click through the last of the photos. They were grainy, covert, long-distance shots. I wished for the thousandth time that I was standing right in front of her, holding her in my arms. I’d stroke her velvet cheekbones, lick her freckles, kiss her pert nose. I’d hurt her and then I’d make everything better, and then I’d put her in a luxurious cage where she’d be safe until I wanted to hurt her again.
Holy fuck. What the fuck?
I stopped on the photo, enlarged it so I could see the man sitting beside her on Valiant’s balcony. I clicked back to the email, scanned to the bottom. Conversation with male, middle age, not identified. Subject went home alone.
Fucking Jesus in hell, she better have gone home alone. As for the male, middle age, I didn’t need any identification. I knew Martin Cantor, not just because he was one of Chere’s professors, but because I’d attended Norton with him back in the day. I’d seen him at fetish clubs around the city, drawing in women with his sage, caring-Dom thing. I’d never liked him. He was a smarmy jackass with more ambition than talent, and the last thing in hell he needed to be doing was hitting on Chere in a club.