“Because the rest of the world lets you get away with murder. Don’t deny it. If you committed an actual murder, would you spend the rest of your life in prison? Or would your handlers cover it up, buy you the best attorneys and get you off scot-free?”
“I’m not a murderer. I’m a nice guy.”
“I don’t care how nice you are. No matter how nice you are, you can’t be as nice to the world as the world’s been nice to you. How much money are you worth?”
“That’s kind of a personal question.”
“You asked me if I have sex with my clients and me asking you your net worth is a personal question?”
“Point taken. I’m at about 97 million at the last audit.”
“Good. Now are you 97 million dollars worth of nice to the world?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know if anyone could be that nice. That’s a lotta nice.”
“You really need 97 million to get through the night? How much does your fucking hair gel cost?”
He laughed out loud then and ran his fingers through his hair.
“It’s pricey shit.”
“Wonder what brand of hair gel that homeless guy in the parking garage uses?”
“You’re giving me shit because I haven’t given all my money to the homeless?”
The Mistress took a step toward him and stared him right into his hazel eyes. He started to glance away, but she took him by the chin and forced him to meet her gaze.
“I’m giving you shit because no one else in this wide world would dare to. Right?”
Slowly he nodded his agreement.
“I can’t help it,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You get to the level of fame and money I’m at, and you’re surrounded by nothing but yes-men.”
“That’s why women like me exist.” She flicked the end of his nose hard enough he flinched. “We’re the antidote to yes-men. Come on. I’ll show you my dungeon. You’ll like it.”
She pulled on his shirt, dragging him behind her down the hall.
“Hey, this shirt was expensive,” he protested at her rough treatment.
“So is my time. You don’t hear me bitching, do you?”
At the end of the hallway she stopped in front of her dungeon door and pulled out a key.
“‘We’re all mad here?’” Dante read the words on the door.
“Cheshire Cat,” she explained. “Alice in Wonderland. You should read it. It’s trippy as fuck. Better than LSD.”
“I don’t do drugs.” She heard a note of pride in his voice.
“I’ll get you a medal. Now...welcome to my Wonderland.” Throwing open the door, she took a step back and let Dante in first. Newbies to the dungeon were usually a little surprised at the sight that greeted them. Dante was no different.
“This doesn’t look like a dungeon. It looks like a bedroom. A nice bedroom.” He nodded his approval at the king-size, four-poster bed, layered in red-and-gold brocade sheets and pillows, the oil lamps, the erotic art on the walls. “No whips and chains?”
“Plenty of whips and chains. That’s behind door number two.” She led him past the bed and into the second room of her suite.
“Oh, fuck.” His eyes went wide as dinner plates as he took in the view.
“I don’t fuck on the clock,” she said, giving him a sly wink. “That’s a St. Andrew’s Cross. I put people on there to flog and whip them. Among other things. I’ve got the hospital bed over there for my medical fetishists. That’s a rack. The throne is a lot of fun for bondage.”
“That’s a coffin, right?” Dante pointed to the far wall.
“Yeah, I have some clients into sensory deprivation. I don’t even think it’s sexual for those guys. I think they just want to be left alone. Anyway, they come in, I put them in the coffin, I sit and read a book. They get out an hour or two later, happy as clams. Easiest grand you could ever make.”
“Nice. I don’t get the pain thing. I mean, I’m covered in tattoos but they hurt like hell and no part of me was turned on during the process.”
“Well, you’re not a masochist. People like pain for a lot of reasons. I have clients who suffer from chronic pain and getting a good full-body flogging helps their body produce more adrenaline and other pain-fighting hormones. I have some clients who can’t get aroused unless you hurt them first. One’s a cop. One’s a doctor. Takes all kinds.”
“I guess so. I mean, it makes sense. I know some musicians who really can’t perform unless they’re on drugs. They need the rush.”
“I’m a lot easier on the body than coke. Not all my clients are into pain, though.” She turned off the lights in the dungeon and returned to the bedroom. “I have some male subs who are nothing but subs. They just want to take orders from a woman. They come here and worship my feet and fetch things for me and masturbate for me.”
“So you can be kinky and not like pain?”
“Oh, yeah, I know a lot of female subs especially who love submitting but don’t hurt. Their Masters or Mistresses will tell them go suck some stranger’s cock and you’ll think they just won the lottery. You get a flogger near them and they curl up in the fetal position and cry.”
“Weird. I thought all kink was, you know, the whips and chains.”
“Not all of it. This world is much bigger than that.”
“Hmm...” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the bedpost. “Maybe I am kinky.”
She raised her eyebrow at him as she sat in a large, ornate chair and threw her leg over the arms.
“Do tell.”
“I...it’s kind of weird.” He grimaced. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“I lost my virginity to a Catholic priest, and that’s one of my least weird sexual encounters. Trust me, I’ll believe you.”
His eyes went wide again and she could only smile. She loved shocking the newbies.
“Okay...here’s the story, and it’s all true. It’s gonna sound like something out of Penthouse Letters. But it happened.”
“Try me.” With all the wild sex that surrounded her on a daily basis, his story would have to involve alien anal probes to get her to question his soliloquy.
“I learned to play guitar pretty young. Natural musician. Guitar and piano. Bass, too. I was really shy, though, so I didn’t play much outside of the house. My older sister, Cate, she was super popular. Like no one in our high school even knew we were related because I hid in the background so much and stayed quiet. Cate had these three friends—Polly, Amie and Mona. They’d been best friends since they started high school. They were their own clique.”
“Pretty girls?”
“Gorgeous. And nice, too, believe it or not. Nice to me. Cate and I got along great at home. Our dad died when we were pretty young and Mom dated a lot. My sister and I sort of stuck together. She was protective of me. And her friends liked me, too.”
“Oh, this is already getting interesting.” The Mistress grinned at him.
“Just wait.” He took a ragged breath. “I was a sophomore, sixteen years old. Cate and her friends were seniors. Mom was staying over at her new boyfriend’s house. Cate had the girls over for a sleepover. She wanted to sneak out and stay with her boyfriend, too, and her friends were helping cover for her. So it was me alone in the house with these gorgeous girls. We got into the liquor cabinet and drank a little. But none of us were drunk. Just buzzed. Happy. Talkative. Amie asked me if I had a girlfriend, if I’d ever had sex before. I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed in my life. But I told her the truth which was no. The girls all looked at each other...then they looked at me....”
“Why am I hearing porn music in the background?”
“Exactly. So Amie hears that I’m still a virgin and she leans over the coffee table and kisses me right in front of the two girls. Amie was the ringleader. Wherever she went, the other girls followed. So then Mona kissed me and then Polly. I nearly came in my pants. But it wasn’t just kissing. Amie stood up and crooked her finger at me, motioning me to follow her. She brought me to my own bedroom and...”
“Fucked you? I’m guessing she fucked you.”
“She fucked me. And it was amazing. Amie was very take-charge. She was all ‘kiss my nipples, suck my clit, put your fingers in me....’ She liked giving orders and I loved taking them.”
“Then what happened?”
“She kissed me good-night and left the room. I thought that was it. I was just lying in bed naked and smiling at the ceiling and thanking God for inventing women. But then the door opened. Mona’s turn. Amie must have told her how well I took orders because she was just as bossy in bed. After that, Polly came in.”
“You fucked three girls in a row the night you lost your virginity?”
“I was sixteen. I could have fucked twenty girls that night. Anyway, after that, sleepovers at the house got a lot more interesting. After Cate fell asleep, at least one of them would sneak into my bedroom. The girls had all dated jocks and jerks. And yeah, they ignored me at school, acted like I didn’t exist. But it was for the best. I loved being their little secret. Amie told me one night I was the only guy she’d been with who could make her come. I loved going down on them. Loved it.”
“Powerful memories.”
“Very...” He exhaled, his skin flushing with remembered desire. “The girls...they never called me by name. They always called me Rock Star. ‘Hey Rock Star, come play a song for us....’ I would have done anything they told me to. Anything.”
“Rock Star, that’s cute. You loved being used as a fuck toy by three older, beautiful girls.”
“God, yes. I don’t get that anymore. Backstage the fans, they worship me. The women are too nervous just being around me to give me any kind of order. They lay there in bed like it’s some kind of honor to be fucked by me. I remember what it felt like with my sister’s friends. I was the nobody they’d deigned to fuck. I loved worshipping their bodies. That’s what I was into. Not being worshipped. I get enough of that shit every time I walk out the door.”
“So let me get this straight.” The Mistress stood up and came over to him. “You love worshipping the female body, being treated like a sex toy to be used for a woman’s pleasure and pleasuring multiple women in one night? You don’t want to be worshipped. You want to be treated like an object, a sex slave, a piece of property who exists only to give women pleasure?”
Dante didn’t answer at first. He couldn’t even seem to look in her eyes.
“I fantasize about it a lot. About being with women who own me so much they won’t even let me come.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Is that weird?”
“No,” she whispered back right into his ear. “It’s sexy, it’s erotic and it’s so not vanilla.”
“I always felt weird about it. Unmanly. It’s not very manly to want women to...I don’t even know the word.”
“Top. You feel weird because you want women to top you. And there’s nothing unmanly about giving a woman orgasms and putting her pleasure before yours. Nothing wrong with being a male sub. You don’t have to be a chest-thumbing alpha to find the clit.”
“Trust me, I know where the clit is.”
“Now that is the sort of thing that would win you a medal down here. Want your medal?”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “Sure. I’d love a medal.”
“Are you clean?”
“Clean?”
She gave him a pointed look.