All that, while straining against my bonds, trying but unable to get free.
“Yes,” I finally manage with a gasp. “I think I’d like that.” And I would try anything just so she lets me stay near her.
“It probably won’t be… Once I find someone, I can check with them, but it mightn’t be like that.” She dips her head towards my phone. “It might be rough, but I doubt anyone’s in the mood to playact quite that way.”
I tilt my head back, my eyes feasting on her lush mouth. “You don’t do stuff like that?”
She shrugs. “Some people might but there’s a big difference between playacting something when you’re sharing a private moment and hiring someone to do it. There has to be a lot of trust to perform CNC because we’d both be relying on each other to read the reactions and listen for safe words or safe gestures. If we’re not on the same page, we might take it too far or hold back too much.”
“What’s CNC?”
“Consensual non-consent. Agreeing to a rape fantasy that doesn’t stop just because someone says no.”
I try to visualise it. Someone forcing her in front of me. As the image forms, my ears rumble like they’re blocked with cotton wool, my pulse picks up speed. Even in my head, creating the montage from thin air, I have to stifle my reaction.
The mix of desire, of lust, tempered by the idea of someone touching this beautiful girl, this girl I want to make mine… the confused rush of duelling emotions smothers me until I gasp for breath.
“You’ll have a safe word, too,” she adds, clocking my swing in temperament. “You’ll have just as much control as either of us.”
“Okay.”
“It will—” She breaks off, looking embarrassed and I grasp the thought.
“I’ll pay. Anything you need. Take my card and go wild.”
She chuckles softly at the idea. “That sounds dangerous.”
The possibilities of what she’s offering consume my attention so much it doesn’t occur to me until the next morning that her bill is probably going to be part of the service. She’s only trying to help me because I forced my help on her.
A strange gratitude but I understand its origins and I don’t want to fool myself into thinking it’s something it’s not.
No matter how my thoughts like to play with the idea that she’s my girl, to her I must be just another client.
The idea knocks some shine off my day, but I soon rally.
If this works, if it opens another avenue to release, then it doesn’t matter what we label ourselves or how Rosa thinks of me. She’ll own a piece of me forever and it doesn’t matter the cost because I’d give it to her ten times over.
I’m grateful that when she could have kept telling me no, sending me away, she turned me into her special project instead.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
ROSA
I’mnervous shuffling through the doorway of the prostitute’s collective on Thursday afternoon. Not of the office, I’ve been here enough times to be familiar with the layout and the array of pamphlets offered from every available surface, but of the mission.
I’ve never worked with a partner to enact a scene before. I’m not sure how to vet applicants or even how to word the ad.
The noticeboard has a variety of positions available, the website a tonne more. There’s a PUMP leaflet—pride and unity for male prostitutes—on the side table and I collect it while I examine the current jobs on offer.
My stomach tightens like it does when I submit an online essay. A weird sensation like I’m about to be judged, but that’s ridiculous. If I’m the one placing the recruitment ad, I’m the one in the judge’s chair.
“Hey, Rosa,” a man calls out to me from the entrance.
I turn, then frown, not placing him, although he’s vaguely familiar. His face is oddly bland, the lack of distinguishing characteristics its only claim to fame. Mid brown hair, mid brown eyes, skin tanned in the sun but not so much that he’s instantly placeable as a surfer or a labourer.
“Hey,” I say back, then return to scouring the board.
He gives a soft laugh. “That’s okay. I wouldn’t remember me either. It’s Andy. I helped with your coworker Ceecee on an occasion a month back.”
