He’s there, as always.
Waiting.
The mask covers his face and eyes. His shirt is black tonight, sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing those powerful forearms that make my breath catch. His pants are unbuttoned. Unzipped.
A belt lies on the floor beside his chair.
My pulse stutters.
I push the button to start our session, though I know now that it will end, but we will just try it again.
I stayed for four hours last week. He sent me home with twenty thousand dollars. I almost didn’t accept it. I don’t like feeling like a whore, and he knows that.
Still, a plan is forming in my head, and it will require significant resources that my father can’t track. So I accepted it, a pile of bound bills that I added to the money already stashed in a box in my closet.
“Hello,” I say softly, even though I know he heard the handle turn, the door open, the faint click as it shut behind me.
The slow, sensual music fills the room like a breath.
“Ana,” he answers.
I close the space between us, eager to get to him.
He reaches out for my hand, pulling me close. I straddle his legs as he puts both hands on my back, lips finding my neck. He inhales deeply.
“Have I ever told you how much I love this smell?”
I feel heat rising to my cheeks at the compliment. “No, you haven’t.”
“Well, it drives me fucking crazy,” he nearly growls. “I dream of it. I look for you whenever I smell something even close. I wonder,could this be her?Could this be my Ana?”
His Ana.
My core goes molten at this idea, at the thought of belonging to this man.
And I know, pragmatically, that it’s not love he feels.
Not really.
It’s ownership, a sense of control.
I only dance for him. He pays me to be his.
Even if things had been different, if we hadn’t met this way, if this hadn’t tainted our experience, it could never have worked for either of us.
My useless, inexperienced heart, however, lurches at the thought. It doesn’t want some man my father vetted and deemed acceptable.
It wants Nik.
Aloof, strange, enigmatic Nik.
Nik, who clearly has a dark side.
Nik, who seemingly never stops working.
Nik, who raised his teenage sister when he was barely a teenager himself.
Nik, who told me just last week that he barely showed up for school some years, said he was so angry at the loss of his parents. There was nothing for his adoptive family to do but give him hockey as an outlet.
