“Never had an audience before,” Rachel says. “Felt a little weird at first, knowing you were listening. But then...” A shrug, dismissive.
“What?” I can’t help asking. “But then what?”
“But then I forgot. Well, sort of. I was sort of distantly aware that you were there, but that only made it even better.” She giggles. “God, I had no idea I’d like being spanked so much. When I was a hooker, things was straightforward. They wanted me on my back, or doggy style. Caleb... he’s kinda weird about positions, though. Only likes it doggy style or from behind. Bent over, standing up facing a wall, you know? Like that. Never face to face. Talked to the other girls about it, and he’s the same with them.”
The same is true for my own experience. I don’t offer this, though. “Hmmm. I wonder what Caleb has against face-to-face sex?”
Another shrug, which is a signature expression, I’m realizing. “Oh, probably commitment issues, you know? Guys like him, it ain’t just control, right? Or not control overus, the girl he’s fucking, but control over himself. Face-to-face, you see the other person’s eyes. You see their expression. Makes it more... personal, I guess. And with us, for Caleb... it ain’t personal.”
“It’s sex, Rachel. How is it not personal?”
An expression of utter befuddlement. “We’re just apprentices, you know? Nothin’ but girls to be trained. The clients, when they get their match, they expect the girls to be... perfect, basically. Educated, well-mannered, and good in bed.Everyone is always like, ‘Oh, I wanna bang me a virgin,’ but virgins ain’t any good in bed. They’re clumsy, too quick, no fun in ’em. Boys and girls both. Girls is worst, I hear, because a girl virgin, she’s got the pain to deal with. You gotta specially train them, I’d think. A gentleman is coming to Indigo Services for a trophy wife, he wants a woman who knows how to please, who knows what to do with his dick, you know? Who knows how to work it all night long. A virgin cain’t do that. Those guys who’re shopping the Bride pool, they don’t want to have to train their wife to fuck ’em like they want to be fucked. They want to be fucked by an expert. And you don’t get to be an expert at fucking except by fucking.”
“So Caleb... fucks you until you’re an expert.” The vulgarity both feels and sounds foreign and awkward on my tongue.
“Right.”
“Eight of you at a time?”
“Well, not all at once. Not like,ménage à... whatevereightis in French.”
“But you’re aware he’s having sex with each one of you apprentices?”
“Well, yeah. He’sCaleb.” Like it’s something obvious, like,duh.
But I understand it. There is something hypnotic about those dark eyes, that commanding presence, utter confidence of primal male sexuality, something entrancing in total dominance.
“Does it bother you?” I ask.
“Not really. I hear it, when it’s him and Five, next door. She’s a screamer. He’s always trying to get her to shut up, but as soon as he’s got her going, she starts howling like a damn cat in heat. Annoying as hell, you ask me.” Rachel stands up, walks with an air of confidence in her nudity.
I follow her. Some carnal curiosity has me looking at her backside; her buttocks are still pink, and I see a glistening smear on the insides of her thighs, low, a trickle of seed seeping out of her.
I am equally repulsed and aroused. Not at the sight of postcoital drip, but at the memory of my own walk from bed to bathroom, the memory of delicious ache, a sense of... satisfaction, almost, at the feel of the wet warm stickiness on my skin.
And then, as fast as the sensations roll through me, they are replaced by disgust, and hatred.
Revulsion.
All of it aimed primarily at myself. At my blindness, my gullibility.
At my twisted thoughts. At the fact thatanypart of me found pleasure in what I overheard.
I hear the shower running, splashing, quickly shut off. Rachel emerges with a towel around her torso.
“You’re the problem, ain’tcha?” Her voice is sharp.
Her poor grammar and twanging accent and propensity for cursing lends a false sense that she is somehow unintelligent; she is not.
“The problem?” I pretend to not understand her meaning.
“Don’t play coy with me,Madame X. ‘Find her,’ he said. You’re running away from Caleb.” The last is an accusation, blatant.
I sigh. “Yes. You’re correct.”
“He’ll find you.”
“I know that.”
