“You’re wet,” I reply, accusingly.
“No, I mean,” he chuckles. “There was a towel in there to dry yourself with, wasn’t there?”
“I didn’t see one.” Even if I had, I wouldn’t have used it. Nudity means very little to me. My clothes have been stripped from me more times than I can count in life. They can’t experiment on you with clothing in the way.
“You’re dripping everywhere,” he says, getting up and coming over to me. I arch myself toward him as he comes past, hoping he’ll touch me, but he moves past, grabs my hand and leads me back to the bathroom where there are a stack of towels.
“Here,” he says. “Get dry.”
I am disappointed. I never liked it when my handlers looked at me with lust, but I want Tom to look at me that way. I want to be desired, not talked down to. I don’t want to be told to dry myself. I want to be told to take my clothes off. I want to be attractive to him, and I am suddenly aware that he might not see me that way, even after my orgasmic experience over his thighs, I might be nothing but a job to him.
“Do you have a wife?”
“I…” he pauses. “No. Why do you ask?”
“Why do you hesitate?”
“I was married a while ago,” he says. “It didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she left me.”
“She must have been fucking insane.”
“Opinion varies,” he says with that calm smile of his. “But really, why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering why you’re so eager for me to cover up.”
“Because you’ll be getting cold,” he says. “And because I wasn’t sure you knew how to…”
“I know how to shower,” I interrupt him. “I was obviously trying to seduce you.”
“Were you,” he says in a tone I can’t quite place.
“Stupid, obviously. I’m not intellectual and towel knowledgeable enough to be with a man such as yourself.”
He laughs. “You’re adorable,” he says. “I’m going to grab a shower too.”
Adorable. What does that even mean. I don’t want to be adorable right now. I want to be something more than that. I want to be a lot more than that.
“We need to see about getting some more clothes here,” he says. “It’s not normal to wear leotards and joggers every day unless you’re Russian.”
I look at him blankly. I think he was making a joke, but I don’t get it.
“I’m just saying, we’ll pick out some new clothes. Maybe you’d like a dress.”
“Maybe you’d like a dress,” I snap back. “Dresses and skirts are what the Head wears, and she’s a total bitch.”
“Mhm.” I know he wants to lecture me, but he refrains. “I’m going to get cleaned up and then we’ll do some online shopping, I think. Head’s paying. May as well spend.”
He disappears into the shower room, leaving me alone in this weird facsimile of what he tells me is a real place real people live. I distract myself from what I’m pretty sure was my first experience of sexual rejection by walking around, touching things, wondering why people need so much space. If there’s eight billion, they could all live in little cells and save so much room.
I wonder how big the world is. I know there are different countries, because I’ve been there to kill people. And I know that not all houses and places look like this one. I’ve been in embassies and palaces where everything is covered in gold and servants scurry around. I’ve worn all kinds of clothing to fit in those places.
My version of the world is as a series of rooms. I’m usually not allowed to see where I am until I am on site. I have been on endless planes, but never seen one. They tell me they fly through the air, but I’ve barely seen the sky.
Tom has been gone what seems like a long time. In a flash of paranoia, I wonder if he has been taken from the shower. The Head can do that. Nothing in her realm is truly real. Walls aren’t walls, rules aren’t rules, freedom isn’t free.
I crack the bathroom door a little, just to make sure this hasn’t all been some horrible mind fuck. He’s there. I can see a flash of arm. It’s not quite enough to reassure me, so I open the door a little wider, push my head in a little further.
Tom is covered in a sheen of water. His body is strong. Not overly muscled, but powerful anyway. I can see everything, including a thick pelt of dark hair at the apex of his thighs, and below that, a thick rod of flesh dangling. His dick. Holy shit, he’s huge.
“Oh my god.”
He wipes the water out of his eyes, seems surprised to see me, then tries to hide it.
“Hey…there,” he says with that smile. “Are you… okay?”