Go: A Surrender (5 page)

“Save some for the rest of us,” called out another.

“Yes,” said Jack, “maybe you should,” and the man’s mouth
was removed from my clit, and I couldn’t help it—

“No,” I said, “please—”

“Next,” said Jack, and the next man’s mouth was on my
nipple, squeezing my tit like a water balloon.

“No,” I said, firmly.

“Next,” said Jack.

A new man rolled my nipples between his fingers and spoke to
me softly, “I’ll finger you,” he said, “Just tell me to do it. I’ll finger you
and I’ll tease that little clit with my thumb and I’ll give you an orgasm
that’ll make you believe in God above.”

“Stop talking,” I said, and I took his hand and I plunged
his fingers into my vagina myself. I was vaguely aware of a few men laughing. I
laid back on my elbows so I could spread my knees even wider.

“O-kay,” he said agreeably, thrusting his fingers in and
out. He expertly thumbed my clit, too, just as advertised. “Like this?”

“Yes,” I gasped, “just like that.”

“You,” I heard Jack say, “Come play with her tits if you
want,” and a moment later my nipples were being tweaked as I lifted and
wriggled against the first man’s hand. I felt the first deep twinges of my
orgasm building, and my cries grew louder, more urgent.

“Good,” said the man whose hand was inside me, “that’s a
good girl. That’s a good, good girl.”

I could hear the wet sounds of his fingers moving in and out
of me. My muscles tightened—I felt it happening, the glorious eradication that
only an orgasm in someone else’s hands could be. It built and built, and then
it crested, and there was not a sound in that bar except for my screams as this
capable hand plunged into me deeper, and then deeper, and then pressed gratifyingly
against my throbbing clit as my climax slowly subsided.

“Okay,” said Jack, and the man withdrew, and I didn’t move,
just lay there, legs still spread wide, feeling the spreading puddle of my
sweat and wetness beneath me on the bar.

I was utterly spent.

The music came back on then. Conversation resumed. Still I
didn’t move from where I was. I had no desire to.

Then Jack’s voice was in my ear.

“Do you want to know who it was?”

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, helping me to sit up and then lifting me
down from the bar, still blindfolded. I felt my dress hanging over his arm. He
draped the coat over my naked shoulders and I clutched it closed. Then he
untied the blindfold.

The men had returned to their tables, their beers. Still,
some watched us. Would the man who had just done that to me be watching, or
looking away? I was curious, but too self-conscious to look at them long enough
to search their faces. And anyway, like I’d told Jack, I didn’t really want to
know. Or, as before, I both did and did not.

So we walked out. A moment later, back in the car, I found I
couldn’t look at Jack. I was overcome with something—shyness, I suppose, or
maybe it was shame. And yet I wanted to see his face. I glanced over at him sidelong.
What was I ashamed of? I asked myself. I was no kind of moralist, and it would
seem that neither was he. Then what?

Then I located its source, and immediately wished I hadn’t,
because it frightened me: I was ashamed because I’d come so hard for that man,
and I was afraid that someday, when I finally slept with Jack, my orgasms with
him wouldn’t seem as special.

Which meant I was starting to care about him. Starting to
have some fantasy about “someday.” About “special.” I felt like a fool even
thinking those words.

Then again, what was happening wasn’t like anything else
that had ever happened. I was off the map, but still afraid of encountering the
same old hazards. I should fear new hazards, I tried to tell myself—and stop
worrying about the ones that had tripped me up before.

I’d been silent since we got in. “Are you alright?” Jack
asked, interrupting my quiet geography metaphor.

“I think so,” I said, “I mean, I should be, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “should you be?”

“No, I mean, it’s not like—there’s no reason to be upset, is
there?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know you, Sylvie. Are you
upset?”

I was afraid to confess it.

“It’s okay if you are. I mean, I hope you aren’t so upset
that you regret what just happened—”

“No,” I said, “I’m really… I’m fine, I think. Just a little…
I feel a little weird.”

A little too
visible
, it came to me, but I didn’t say
it.

“It’s okay,” he said.

He held out his arm and gestured for me to come closer, and
I scooted over to him, and he put his arms around me and kissed my ears, my
cheek, the corner of my eye where I refused to let another tear slide out and
betray the feelings I was starting to have for him.

He smelled of light, expensive cologne—like some dry, Mideast desert. I wanted him to hold me like this for hours, just like this, quietly,
safely.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked.

“Stop what?” I said, my elevator heart dropping out. I
didn’t want to lose him, not yet. He was lovely, perfect promise. And…

“The game,” he said.

The game
. Of course. But. I was curious about what
came next. “No,” I said, “Not yet.”

“Okay then,” he said. “Just don’t forget, you can. We’ll
only do this as long as it’s fun.”

“It’s a little scary,” I said.

He looked at me with concern. “Scary scary, or scary-fun?”

“Scary-fun,” I conceded.

“Okay then,” he said again.

I was wondering. “Those guys. Did you tell them I was a
prostitute?”

“What? No.”

I was glad, somehow. “Then what did you tell them?”

“I told them you’d lost a bet.”

I giggled. “Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s hilarious,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “particularly since it seems to me you’re
winning.”

Was he suggesting what I thought he was? Was he the prize? I
moved back and searched his pale eyes for the answer. They were soft and
gentle, but still inscrutable. I searched and searched, moving from one back to
the other and still coming up blank.

“Yes?” he said finally, a little smile crinkling the corners
of those eyes.

“Nothing,” I said, and settled myself back into his shoulder
for our ride.

The hotel we finally were delivered to was back in the
old-looking downtown. I tossed my coat down and took a long, hot shower. Then I
emerged, exhausted and eager to sleep.

He was on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. Still in his
suit and coat. I approached him, wrapped in the plush white hotel towel.

“You’re not leaving me again, are you? I’ll start to think
you have a wife.”

He didn’t laugh. Maybe I was testing.

“I don’t have a wife,” he said quietly, “or a girlfriend, or
a concubine, or any of the other things you’re afraid I have. Okay?”

He didn’t say
don’t bring this up again
, but I
certainly felt it implied.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s fine,” he said, “perfectly reasonable. Though in a
court of law, it might be pointed out I’ve hardly touched you.”

“Yes, well, I was hoping that might change if you stayed
over.” I took his hand in mine, then pulled loose the tie on my robe and placed
it on my hip. He feathered his fingers over my belly and up the center of my
sternum, coming to rest—deliberately? I wasn’t sure—over my heart.

“It could, if you want. Or we could continue with the game.”

“It can’t be both?”

“We’re barely met,” he said, “I don’t want us to sleep
together too soon. The sexual bond is strong,” he added, “but as you surely
know, it’s often misplaced.”

He was saying he wanted to get to know me better. But an
unusual getting-acquainted exercise it was.

“Suppose I said I quit,” I suggested, “that I only want
you.”

“Then I’d say you were being greedy and more than a little
unwise.”

Greedy, perhaps. I wanted the whole cake at once, it was
true. The titillation of strangers. Jack’s gentle assurance. But it wasn’t cake,
after all—it was sex, and it was passion, and it was tenderness, and having
them all in a night didn’t promise to make me sick.

But then he clarified. “It’s not a moral consideration, you
know. It’s that you don’t know me. I’ve seen you vulnerable, so you feel like
you do, but you don’t.”

It made such frustrating sense. But the game seemed designed
to give him the upper hand. And so I lost my temper a little, like any child
denied cake. “How am I supposed to get to know you, then, if the game is just
about flying me around to fuck strangers?”

“For starters, we’ll have conversations like this, and
you’ll realize how infuriating I am.”

He was half teasing me, half quite in earnest.

“I want you to stay the night, then,” I said. “And in the
morning I’ll decide about the game. We don’t have to do anything until then
except relax and talk.”

“Okay,” he said, “but may I offer one final consideration?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You might want me now, but remember, you also want to know
where the game goes. That’s what I saw in your face last night. A hunger, a
need to explore that is more than in other women. That’s why you’re restless and
always have been. I’m giving you the chance to exercise it and stay safe in the
process.”

He was right about all of it. I listened as he continued.

“You already understand that’s what the game is. Why walk
away from the table at the beginning of a winning streak?”

“Because a streak is only that. It could change at any
minute.”

“But that’s life,” he said, “there are no sure bets. Love,
least of all.”

It hurt, hearing him say that, but it was true.

I went and sat on the bed. He came and sat down beside me,
took my hand in both of his.

“I take my promises very seriously. And here’s what I can
promise you in this moment,” he said. “I’ll respect your boundaries, and I’ll
keep you safe. And—”

“And?”

“I’ll enjoy what you enjoy. Truly. Don’t think this is
purely altruistic.”

He paused a second, retreating into thought. I waited.

“It’s gratifying to see you getting exactly the things you never
permitted yourself to want,” he concluded.

As he said that, for the first time, there was a tiny crack
in his composure—an edge of hoarseness in his tone. I guessed he was aroused.
Once again, I searched his eyes—did he want me to end this? Couldn’t we just
fuck?

“Go to sleep; I’ll join you in a moment,” he said, with
great finality, and he stood and went into the bathroom and I heard the shower
turn on. I drifted off and only woke slightly when I felt him climbing in
beside me, warm and damp. He scooted closer and we slept curled around each
other, the silk of his pajamas pressed against my bare skin.

In the morning, when I felt his erection against my ass, I
was seized with desire. I clambered down in bed and mouthed the head of his
cock through the silk and he, half-awake, moaned as he grew harder.

I pulled down the waistband of his pajamas and for the first
time I saw him, his organ finely proportioned and straining for my touch. He
was fully awake now and watching me, saying nothing.

I wanted to see all of him at once, so I unbuttoned his top.
He was trim but not overly muscled. Soft, tightly curled hair spread lightly across
his upper chest and in a sweet little line down to his navel. There were grays
in it, I noticed, but I found that endearing.

Looking at his cock I began to salivate—and I’d been wet
from the instant I felt its hardness through the fabric against my tongue. I
knelt above him, bent to kiss him on the mouth.

To my surprise he did not turn or evade me, and for a long
moment we were locked in a deep, hard kiss, our tongues moving against each
other as my heart skittered in my chest. Finally I broke the kiss and arched
back, bringing my pussy just a hair’s distance from his cock. He looked
intently into my eyes.

I lowered myself a fraction of an inch, so the head of his
cock parted the slick lips of my pussy and then slipped up against my clit. He
closed his eyes as I repeated this movement twice, a third time. His hard cock
twitched and seemed to align itself with me all on its own, like a compass
oriented exactly toward the center of me.

He was right at my entrance. All I had to do was lower my
hips and he’d be inside me. I was shivering with how badly I wanted that. But
once I did it…

“Is this your decision?” he asked, eyes open again. He
reached for my breasts and gently rubbed my nipples until they grew hard. “Because
I’m glad I offered my counterarguments last night.”