Huffing a laugh, I try with the tug of war rope. He doesn’t bite into it.
But when I finally sigh and take a seat beside him in defeat, he promptly climbs into my lap with a tired exhale that only dogs are capable of.
I smile and scratch behind his ears. “Oh yeah? That’s all you wanted?” When he curls into a ball, he’s positioned so his cheek is on my thigh, gazing up at me with his tongue lolling out and a happy smile on his face.
“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I murmur, stroking his head.
For minutes, we just sit there, me petting him and him staring up at me with the sweetest lovesick puppy eyes I’ve ever seen. Eventually, his eyes close when he falls asleep, but that smile stays on his face.
I keep petting him. Even when my back cramps and my legs start to itch from the fake grass, I can’t look away from him.
He wanted nothing from me. Nothing but love and attention.
If only life was that easy.
I was raised to believe a woman’s value is in what she can offer a man. That I was only lovable—if love was even real—if I wasworthloving. If I was attractive, if I lessened my man’s stress, and if I provided in the way women were meant to provide. Only then would I be worth loving.
But this dog…even with this being our first meeting, he loves me already. For no reason. Nothing I gave him, nothing I did for him. He just met me with love.
I wish it wasn’t just dogs.
Nico’s face flashes before me.
Beyond those first few dates when he hired me for company, I don’t think he’s wanted anything from me. He’s been trying so hard to get to know me, to make me comfortable enough to open up to him, and he’s asked for nothing in return. He even took sex and intimacy off the table so I couldn’t “pay” him in the way I’ve always understood my worth.
He's wanted nothing from me but me.
He’s theonlyone I’ve ever felt that with.
My thoughts are interrupted by the front desk lady appearing before me. “You two seem cozy,” she says.
“Oh, uh, yeah, he fell asleep pretty much instantly. I feel bad, I didn’t really do anything for him.”
She gives me a warm smile.
“Oh, honey. You gave him a safe space. You did everything for him.”
I get ready for my date tonight on autopilot.
I see Mr. Clarke every six weeks like clockwork. I show up in his favorite red dress, we chat until something I say makes his dick hard, and then I pull the top of my dress down and he jerks off on my breasts. He never touches me. He just has a thing for degrading women with his semen.
I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience when I knock on his hotel room door. I haven’t felt in control of my actions since I started getting ready. It feels like my brain is trying to separate from my body.
“Daisy, it’s so nice to see you,” he says when he opens the door.
He’s a nice enough man, I guess. I manage to return a smile.
“Hi, Mr. Clarke. How have you been? I’ve missed you.”
Autopilot. Everything is on autopilot.
I listen to him yap about his job for twenty minutes. I think he’s an executive at some technology company, I don’t know. I’ve never been able to care that much. They don’t want me to listen, anyway; they just want to talk.
Nico wants to listen.
By the time Mr. Clarke unzips himself, I can only stare at his dick, suddenly clueless about how I ever didn’t run screaming from the sight of it.
“On your knees, Daisy,” he says in a rough voice.
