Morning came the way it always came in this apartment — not with light, but with the sound of Denise moving through the flat like she owned the air in it. Tim woke to the smell of coffee and cigarettes and the ache in his jaw, His knees were swollen under the sheets, the skin tight and hot, and when he tried to sit up the whole length of him complained — ribs, hips, the raw place inside him where every woman in the line had left a mark.

"Up," Denise said from the doorway. She was already dressed — emerald silk, hair set, a cigarette between two fingers. "You've got work."

He got up. It took him three tries and a hand on the nightstand, and she watched all three without offering to help. The shower was scalding and he stood under it longer than he should have, letting the water work at the knots in his shoulders, watching the pink polish on his toes go soft at the edges. When he came out she had laid clothes on the bed — not lingerie this time. A black maid's dress, short-sleeved, with a white apron and a little white cap. Folded stockings. Black heels with an ankle strap.

"Put it on," she said. "Apron last. I want to see you tie it."

The dress was cheap and stiff, the kind of thing you bought online for a costume, and it fit him like it had been chosen for a smaller person. It pulled across his shoulders and rode high on his thighs, and the apron strings crossed at his back and he had to reach behind himself to tie the bow, and Denise stood in the doorway and watched his arms strain and his face go red and said nothing. The heels added two inches and made his aching knees scream, and the cap sat stupid on his blond-and-pink hair, and when he looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser he didn't recognize the person looking back.

"Breakfast," Denise said. "Eggs. Toast. Coffee. Don't burn anything."

The kitchen was all cold stone and stainless steel, and he moved through it on heels that clicked and slipped, one hand on the counter for balance. He cracked the eggs and the left one went in with a piece of shell and he fished it out with a spoon, and his jaw clicked when he swallowed the coffee he stole from the pot. The bacon spat and caught him on the wrist and he bit down on the sound he wanted to make. When he carried the plate to the table his hands were shaking and the coffee sloshed over the rim, and Denise looked at the spill and then at him and said nothing at all, which was worse.

She ate slowly. He stood where she'd left him, by the end of the table, apron tied, heels sinking into the rug, and watched her fork move and her mouth close around each bite. She set the fork down on the rim and the plate slid an inch and she lit another cigarette and the smoke curled up past her eyes and she said, "go on then, pretty girl, finish it," and he took her plate and ate what she'd left, the eggs gone cold and the toast buttered on one side and the bacon stiff with grease.

Her hand came down flat on his backside and she said, "move. The laundry's in the basket by the bathroom. Everything. Ironed and hung. And the floors want doing. And the bathroom wants “scrubbing. You've got until noon."

He worked. The iron was heavy and the steam kept fogging his face and his knees gave out twice and he had to kneel on the floor to press the sheets flat, and kneeling hurt worse than standing, and the maid's dress rode up and the apron strings cut into his back. He hung Denise's blouses on wooden hangers in the closet and he counted them — fourteen — and he thought about the closet full of clothes that weren't hers, the red skirt and the heels, and he didn't know why that was the thing that made his throat close. The bathroom took an hour. The floors took two. By eleven his back was soaked through the cheap black cotton and his jaw ached every time he turned his head and the pink polish on his nails had chipped at the corners.

At noon Denise came to the doorway of the living room and looked at him on his knees with the scrub brush in his hand and the bucket beside him and the sweat running down his temples under the stupid white cap. She stood there a while. Then she said, "Come here."

He stood up too fast and the room tilted and he crossed to her with the brush still in his hand and she took it out of his fingers and set it on the side table and looked at him — the wet dress, the cap askew, the chipped pink nails, She reached up and straightened the cap on his head, slow, deliberate, and her thumb brushed his temple and he flinched and she smiled at that, small and satisfied.

"You look like something I bought," she said. "Which is what you are." She let her hand fall to the apron string at his waist and pulled it loose, one tug, and the apron came open and hung off him, and she put her palm flat on his chest through the dress and pushed him back against the wall. "Knees," she said. "You've been on them all morning. One more time won't kill you."

He went down. The heels made it awkward and his knees hit the hardwood hard and the pain shot up both thighs and he made a sound he didn't mean to make. She undid her slacks and stepped out of them and stood over him in the emerald blouse and nothing else, and she took his hair in her fist and pulled his face in against her cunt and held him there, and he opened his mouth and worked his tongue into her the way he'd learned to, slow at first, then faster, and her grip tightened and she ground down against his face and said, "That's it. That's my good girl."

She came with her heel braced on his shoulder and her fist in his hair and her breath going rough through her nose, and when she was done she held him there a moment longer, his mouth slick and his jaw screaming, and then she let go and stepped back and looked down at him on the floor with the apron open and the dress rucked up and his cock hard against his thigh under the cheap black cotton. She looked at it. Then she looked at his face.

The doorbell rang at half past twelve and Denise didn't move from the chair she'd settled into by the window, one leg crossed over the other, cigarette going in the ashtray. She tipped her chin at the door and said, "That's mine. Go get it."

He went. The heels clicked across the hardwood and his knees burned with every step and when he opened the door there was a kid on the stoop in a delivery cap holding a brown paper bag and a cup carrier, and the kid looked at the maid's dress and the white cap and the pink-tipped hair and the chipped polish on the hand Tim held out for the bag, and the kid said nothing, just handed it over and took the bill Denise had left on the hall table and walked back down the steps fast.

He carried it in. The bag was heavy and warm and it smelled like garlic and butter and something roasted, and his stomach turned over hard because he hadn't eaten since the cold eggs on her plate that morning. He set the bag on the kitchen island and unpacked it the way she'd taught him — the container of soup first, then the salad in its little plastic clamshell, then the main dish, a slab of salmon with the skin crisped and a lemon wedge on top, then the bread, then the cup carrier with her iced tea sweating through the cardboard.

"Plate it," she said from the doorway. "The good plates. The ones with the gold rim."

He found them in the cabinet above the sink, three of them, and he set one down on the counter and laid the salmon on it and spooned the sauce over the top and put the lemon wedge on the side and carried it to the table and set it in front of her chair, and then he went back for the soup and the salad and the bread and the tea, and by the time he had it all laid out his hands were shaking again and the sweat was running down the back of his neck under the collar of the cheap black dress.

She sat down. She unfolded the napkin and laid it across her lap and picked up the fork and cut into the salmon and put the first bite in her mouth and chewed, slow, watching him over the rim of the plate. He stood where he'd learned to stand — two steps back from the table, hands at his sides, weight on the balls of his feet so his knees didn't lock — and he watched her eat.

"You're hovering," she said.

"I'm not—"

"Stand still. Don't fidget. And don't watch my mouth like a dog." She cut another piece. "Look at the wall if you have to."

He looked at the wall. It was a pale gray wall with a single framed print on it, something abstract, and he stared at it and listened to her fork scrape the plate and her tea slosh in the glass and the little sounds she made when she swallowed, and his mouth kept filling with water and he kept swallowing it down. The salmon smelled like lemon and butter and the bread smelled like yeast and the soup smelled like cream and he stood there in the maid's dress with his cock half-hard against his thigh from nothing, from standing, from the smell of food, from the ache in his knees, and he hated his body for it.

She ate half the salmon. She ate the whole salad, or most of it, and she dipped the bread in the sauce and ate two pieces of it, and she drank the tea down to the ice. Then she set the fork down across the plate and pushed the plate away from her an inch and leaned back in the chair and lit another cigarette and looked at him standing there against the wall.

"Come here," she said.

He came. She looked at the plate and then at him and then at the plate again, and she said, "Finish it. The rest of the fish. The bread. The soup's cold, leave the soup."

He picked up her fork. It was still warm from her hand and there was a smear of sauce on the tines and he put the first bite of salmon in his mouth and it was the best thing he'd eaten in weeks and he had to stop himself from making a sound. He ate standing up, hunched over the table, cutting the salmon into pieces and dragging them through the sauce and tearing the bread with his fingers, and Denise watched him the whole time with her cigarette going and her eyes half-lidded and a small smile at the corner of her mouth that never got any bigger.

"Slow down," she said. "You'll make yourself sick."

He slowed down. He finished the fish and the bread and he wiped the plate with the last crust and ate that too, and when he was done the plate was clean enough to put back in the cabinet and his stomach was full for the first time in days and he stood there with the fork in his hand and the empty plate in front of him and he didn't know what to do with his face.

Denise stubbed out the cigarette and stood up and took the plate out of his hand and set it on the counter and put her palm flat on his chest through the black cotton and pushed him back against the wall, and she leaned in close enough that he could smell the smoke on her breath and the jasmine under it, and she said, "You ate my lunch. That's a debt, pretty girl. You'll work it off this afternoon."

She didn't wait for an answer. She took him by the wrist and walked him down the hall to the bathroom, heels clicking, and turned the shower on herself — cold first, then hot, her hand held under the stream until it went the temperature she wanted. "Get out of it," she said. "All of it."

He peeled the maid's dress up over his head and it caught on his chin and the cap came off with it and he stood there in the black heels and the apron strings and nothing else, his cock half-hard against his thigh, and Denise took the dress out of his hands and dropped it in the hamper and looked at him standing there. "Those too," she said, and he bent and unbuckled the ankle straps and stepped out of the heels, and his bare feet on the cold tile made him feel smaller than the heels ever had.

She put her palm on his chest and pushed him in under the water and stood outside the glass with her arms crossed and watched him. "Wash," she said. "Hair too. I want it clean." He worked the shampoo through the blond and pink and the water ran down over his face and he kept his eyes shut and his hands moving, and when he opened them she was still there, watching, and he turned his back to her and soaped his chest and his stomach and the soft hairless place between his legs, and the water stung the raw skin inside him and he bit down on it.

She cut the water off herself. Tossed him a towel. He dried his hair and his shoulders and his back and she watched him do it and then she said, "Bedroom," and he followed her down the hall with the towel around his waist and his wet hair dripping down his neck.

On the bed was the costume. Not the maid's dress — something else, laid out flat and waiting. A black satin French maid's outfit, the real kind, cut low and short, with a tiny white apron and a frilled white cap and a black choker with a little bell on it. Black stockings. Garters. Patent heels with a strap. Denise sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the stockings first and held one out to him. "Sit this is nicer."

He sat. She rolled the stocking down over his foot and up his calf and over his knee and up his thigh, slow, smoothing it flat with her palm, and then she did the other one, and then she hooked the garters to the tops and let her thumb drag along the welted skin at the back of his thigh where Dana's belt had landed. "Arms up," she said, and he raised them and she pulled the satin dress down over his head and it slid over his skin like it had been made for him, and she reached behind and zipped it and the zipper went up his spine one tooth at a time and the dress pulled tight across his chest and rode up high on his thighs. She tied the apron at his waist, the bow small and neat at the front, and then she fastened the choker around his throat and the little bell settled against his collarbone and rang once when he swallowed.

She put the cap on his head and tucked his wet hair behind his ears and stood back and looked at him, and something moved across her face that wasn't the smile. "There," she said. "That's better than the cheap one." She handed him the heels and he put them on sitting down and stood up and the patent leather pinched and the little bell rang against his throat and he caught himself in the mirror over the dresser and stopped. Black satin. White frill. Pink-tipped hair under the cap. The bell. He looked like something off a website, something you paid for, and his cock was hard under the satin and he hated that most of all.

She took him by the back of the neck and walked him out to the living room and sat him down at the little desk in the corner — the one with the laptop and the printer and the neat stack of paper and the pen cup — and she pulled a folder out of the drawer and set it down in front of him. "Letters," she said. "You're going to type them. All of it this afternoon. Clean. No typos. I'll be checking."

She sat down in the chair by the window with a book and a fresh cigarette and crossed her legs, and Tim opened the folder and read the first page and put his hands on the keyboard. The bell rang every time he swallowed. His knees ached under the desk and the garters pulled at the tops of his thighs and the satin rode up every time he shifted in the chair, and he typed, and typed, and the afternoon went slow and bright outside the window and Denise turned pages and smoked and said nothing at all.

Around four she stood up and came over and read the screen over his shoulder, close enough that he could smell the jasmine and the smoke on her, and she reached down and straightened the cap on his head and let her fingers trail down the back of his neck and said, "Keep going. You're not done."

He typed for another hour. The bell at his throat rang with every swallow, and he'd stopped swallowing, or tried to, and it hadn't helped — the bell rang when he breathed too hard, when he shifted, when he reached for the mouse and the satin pulled across his shoulders. The letters were dull things, invoices and confirmations and a reply to a supplier about a shipment , and he typed them clean because the folder said clean and because she'd said no typos His wrists ached. His eyes had gone sandy. Outside the window the afternoon had gone the flat white of four-thirty, then five, and the light on the wall print had slid off it and left the frame in shadow.

At five-forty he saved the last file and sat back and the chair creaked and Denise didn't look up from her book. He waited. She turned a page. He said, "I'm done," and she turned another page and let the silence sit on him for a count of ten before she closed the book around her finger and looked at the screen over his shoulder.

"Print them," she said. "Stack them. And then you can make me dinner. Nice a simple pizza there is one in the fridge and a salad"

He printed them. The printer spat them out warm and he stacked them square and set them on the corner of the desk and stood, and his knees came up stiff and the patent heels pinched at the strap and he walked to the kitchen with the bell ringing at his collarbone.

The fridge held the boxed pizza, the expensive kind, and he slid it into the oven and there was lettuce and tomatoes and peppers and olive oil and while the pizza cooked he tore the leaves and sliced the fruit and the peppers into rings and shook the oil over the bowl and by the time the timer rang the salad was done. He pulled the pizza out and set it on the wooden board with the knife and the fork and carried the board and the bowl to the table. and set it down in front of her chair. She came and sat and looked at it and then at him and cut a slice and lifted it and the cheese stretched and she folded it over and ate it standing over the board, and then she sat down and ate three more slices, and he stood two steps back with his hands at his sides and watched her mouth and the grease on her fingers and the way she licked her thumb.

She ate half. She pushed the board away and wiped her hands on the napkin and leaned back and looked at the remaining half and then at him, and she said, "Come here."

He came. She tore a slice off the board and held it up and he bent his head and took the end of it in his mouth and the cheese was hot and the crust was crisp and the grease ran down his chin and she watched him chew and swallow and the bell rang and she tore another piece and held it up and he ate that too, standing over her, bent at the waist, and she fed him the rest of the half a slice at a time, and the last one she held a little too far and made him lean in for it and her thumb came up and wiped the grease off his chin and went into her own mouth and she sucked it clean and looked at him the whole time.

"Good girl," she said. "Now go lie down."

He didn't understand. He stood there with the taste of her thumb on his tongue and the satin tight across his chest and she tipped her chin at the hall and said, "Your bed. On your back. Don't take anything off and don't touch anything. I'll know." And he went down the hall with the bell ringing and the heels clicking and lay down on the bed , and the satin rode up and the garters pulled and the cap dug into the back of his skull against the pillow and he folded his hands on his stomach the way she hadn't told him to and stared at the ceiling.

The crack was there. It ran from the light fixture to the corner of the room and it had been there every night he'd slept in this bed and he'd never once looked at it in daylight, and in daylight it was longer than he'd thought and there was a second one, thinner, branching off it halfway along. He counted the rings in the light fixture. He counted them again. The house went quiet around him — Denise moving in the living room, a drawer, the tap, the sound of her settling back into her chair with a book — and the light through the window moved across the wall an inch at a time and he lay there and the bell rang whenever he swallowed and he swallowed less and less and his jaw ached and his knees ached and the patent heels pressed into the mattress on either side of his feet and he did not take them off.

An hour went. He knew it was an hour because the clock on the nightstand had a face and he watched the minute hand climb and fall. His back started to cramp under the satin. His hands on his stomach had gone numb at the fingertips and he flexed them and put them back. He wanted to turn onto his side and he didn't. He wanted to pull the garters off his thighs where they'd started to bite and he didn't. He lay there and the room went from white to gray and the second crack got harder to see and he thought about the pizza and the way she'd fed him the last slice and the way her thumb had tasted of grease and salt and the way she'd said good girl, and his cock was hard under the satin and he did not touch it and he did not move.

The clock said seven-forty and then it said eight and then it said eight-forty and the light was gone from the wall entirely and the room was blue and the house was quiet and he heard her stand up in the living room and the floor creak under her and her heels come down the hall, and she stopped in the doorway and looked at him lying there in the dark in the black satin and the white apron and the little cap and the bell at his throat, hands folded, heels on, exactly where she'd left him, and she stood in the door a long while without saying anything at all.

She crossed the room without turning on a light. The mattress dipped when she put her knee on it and the little bell at his throat rang once as he swallowed, and she reached down and found the zipper at the back of the satin dress and pulled it down his spine, one tooth at a time, slow, the way she'd done it up. "Sit up," she said, and he sat, and she peeled the satin off his shoulders and down his arms and left it pooled at his waist, and then she undid the garters one by one, the little metal clasps clicking, and rolled the stockings down his legs and off his feet and dropped them on the floor. The cap came off last. She set it on the nightstand, brim up, like a hat on a hook.

He was naked on the bed except for the choker and the heels, and she stood at the foot of it and undid the emerald blouse button by button and let it fall, and stepped out of the black lace panties and kicked them aside, and then she climbed onto the mattress over him and settled her weight down across his hips. Her cunt was still wet from the hallway and it slid along the underside of his cock, and his cock jumped against her and she felt it and smiled down at him in the blue dark.

"Sore, isn't it," she said. She rolled her hips once, dragging her cunt the length of him, and he made a sound through his teeth. "All that standing. All that kneeling. All that typing." Another roll. "You've been hard half the day and you don't even know why anymore."

She leaned forward and took his wrists and pressed them into the pillow above his head and held them there with one hand, and her breasts came down over his face, and she said, "Open."

He opened his mouth and she fed him her left nipple, and it was warm and heavy and tasted of salt and smoke and the jasmine she wore at her throat, and he closed his lips around it and sucked and she exhaled slow through her nose above him. He worked his tongue over the hard point of it and drew it in and let it go and drew it in again, and she shifted her weight and pushed the other one against his mouth and he took that too, and the little bell at his throat rang every time he swallowed, and she laughed at that, low, and said, "Good girl. Keep it up."

He kept it up. He sucked her nipples until they were stiff and shining and she was breathing harder, her hand tight around both his wrists, her thighs braced on either side of his ribs, and then she pulled her breast out of his mouth and sat back up and slid forward on her knees until her cunt was over his face. She didn't ask. She came down on his mouth and ground herself against it and said, "Tongue," and he put his tongue out and she rode it.

She rode it slow at first, her hips rolling, her cunt spreading over his mouth and her clit dragging across the flat of his tongue, and he licked up into her and found the hard little knot of it and worked it, and she made a sound that came up out of her chest and her grip on his wrists tightened until his fingers went numb. The wet ran down his chin and into the collar of the choker and the bell rang with every stroke of his tongue because he couldn't stop swallowing her.

He didn't stop. His tongue ached and his neck was bent back at an angle that made his throat raw, and he kept his mouth open and his tongue moving because she was grinding down harder now and her breath was coming in short pulls through her teeth. She came with her thighs clamped on either side of his head and her cunt clenching against his mouth and a long low sound that wasn't a word, and he licked her through it until she pushed his head away with her palm.

She sat back and looked down at him — mouth slick, chin wet, hair plastered to his forehead, cock standing straight up off his belly and leaking onto his stomach. She looked at the cock a while. Then she said, "Again," and leaned forward and put her breast back in his mouth.

He sucked it. He sucked both of them again, slower this time, the salt and the smoke and the taste of her skin, and she watched his face while he did it and touched his hair and told him he was good, and then she slid back up and put her cunt over his mouth a second time and rode him there again, harder, her hands braced on his chest, her hips working fast and short, and he licked her through that too and she came again with her nails dug into his ribs.

She slid down off his face, the heat of her still burning on his mouth, and took his cock in her fist. She held it up against her cunt, pressed the length of him against her slick, swollen flesh, and looked at him. He was hard—achingly, brutally hard—but the soreness was a raw, deep throb that shot through him when she squeezed, and she felt the flinch ripple through his belly. She laughed, low and dirty, and let him go, the loss of her grip a sudden, hollow ache. “Not tonight, my pretty girl,” she said, and the words were a wet promise against his skin, the sting of denial sharp and sweet as she pulled away, leaving him trembling and wanting.

She got off the bed and stood over him and said, "Shower. Now. Cold at the end — I want you clean and I want you awake."

He walked to the bathroom in the choker and the heels and nothing else, the little bell ringing against his collarbone with every step, and he heard her behind him in the hall, not following, just listening to him go. The tile was cold under his bare feet. He turned the water on and stood under it and soaped himself head to foot, his hands moving fast because she was waiting somewhere behind the wall and he could feel the waiting like a hand on the back of his neck. He washed his hair twice. He rinsed the last of her off his chin and his mouth and the collar of his throat, and then he turned the cold on and stood in it until his skin went tight and his nipples ached and his cock had shrunk to nothing, and he shut the water off himself because she hadn't told him to leave it running.

He dried off with the towel she'd left on the hook and did not put anything back on. The choker he kept, because she hadn't said to take it off . He walked back down the hall naked and wet with the bell ringing at his throat, and the bedroom was lit now — the lamp on the nightstand, low — and she was sitting on the edge of the bed with the nightie laid out across her lap.

Pink. Baby-doll pink, the kind of thing that came folded in tissue paper with a ribbon around it, thin straps and a little bow at the center of the chest and a hem that would barely cover the tops of his thighs. Clean, too — washed and dried and smelling faintly of the same detergent as everything else in this apartment, which meant she'd had it ready, which meant it had been in the closet with the red skirt and the heels all along, waiting for him.

"Arms up," she said.

He raised his arms and she stood and pulled it down over his head and it slid over his damp skin and settled and the straps found his shoulders and the hem hung at the crease of his ass and the bow sat centered on his chest like something she'd tied there herself. She reached behind him and adjusted one strap and smoothed the fabric flat down his back with the flat of her hand, and then she stepped back and looked at him, and her mouth did the thing it did when she was deciding something.

"Turn," she said.

He turned. The nightie moved with him, thin as breath, and the bell rang once when he swallowed, and he stood there with his back to her and felt her eyes go down the length of him — the still welted skin on his bum, the pink polish on his toes, the choker, the wet hair drying pink at the ends where it wasn't blond. She let the quiet sit long enough that he started counting the rings in the light fixture again, and then she said, "Stop. Look at me."

He turned back. She'd sat down on the edge of the bed again, one leg crossed over the other, and she was looking at him the way she'd looked at the pizza — like something she'd made and was deciding whether it was done. "The pink suits you better than the black," she said. "I should have known that sooner." She reached out and hooked one finger under the strap at his shoulder and let it snap back against his skin, light, and the sting went through him and his cock twitched under the thin pink cotton and she saw it and did not smile.

"Lie down," she said. "On your back. Hands above your head, wrists crossed, the way I taught you. And keep the nightie on."

He lay down. The sheets were cool against his showered skin and the nightie rode up his stomach and he crossed his wrists above his head on the pillow and the bell rang against his throat and he lay there in the pink and the choker with the lamp on and her sitting over him,he waited, and she did not move to touch him. She just sat there and looked at him lying in the pink, and let him wait.

She let him wait until the waiting had its own weight, until his wrists had gone numb above his head and his shoulders had started to burn and the little bell at his throat rang with every swallow he couldn't stop making. Then she moved. She came up off the edge of the bed on her knees and swung one leg over him and settled her cunt down onto his mouth, no ceremony, no warning, just her weight coming down across his face and her thighs closing warm and heavy at his ears.

"Again," she said. "And this time keep your tongue flat and let me use it."

He opened his mouth under her and she pressed down and started to rock, slow, her hips finding the drag of his tongue against her clit. She was still wet from riding his face before, and she tasted of herself aand she ground down and the wet ran along his chin and into the collar of the choker. Hismouth ached again and his cock stood straight up off his belly under the thin pink cotton, swollen and sore and leaking, and she didn't touch it and she didn't look at it. She had one hand braced flat on his chest through the nightie and the other fisted in his wet hair and she rode his mouth like it was a thing she'd bought and paid for.

"That's it," she said, and her voice had gone low and pleased. "You've got a mouth on you, girl. I'll say that for you."

His tongue found the hard knot of her clit and he worked it the way she'd taught him to, flat and steady, and her breath started coming in short pulls through her teeth and her grip in his hair tightened until his scalp burned. The bell rang with every stroke because he couldn't stop swallowing her, and she heard it and laughed, low and mean, and rolled her hips harder, driving her cunt down over his open mouth until he couldn't breathe around it, until his nose was pressed into her and the whole of him was the taste of her and the ache in his jaw and the sore throb of his cock he wasn't allowed to touch.

She rode him through it and past it. When the clench let go of her she stayed seated on his mouth a beat longer, weight settled, letting him feel how much of her there was, and then she lifted off and swung her knee back over his chest and sat down on his sternum with her cunt still slick and open against his skin.

"Look at that," she said, and she reached down and took his chin between her thumb and two fingers and turned his face to the light. "You've gone all pink around the mouth." She wiped her thumb across his lower lip, slow, smearing her own wet up over his chin and into the corner of it, and then she put the thumb in his mouth. "Clean it." He sucked her thumb clean and she watched him do it with her head tipped, the way she watched the crossword. When she pulled it out she wiped it dry on the shoulder of the nightie, leaving a damp print on the pink cotton. She stayed on his chest a while longer, knees bracketed at his ribs, and let him lie there and breathe under her weight with his cock standing up off his belly, hard as a nail, She looked at it the way you look at a bill you've already decided to pay later. Then she leaned forward and flicked the tip of it with one fingernail, light, and his whole body came up off the mattress and the bell rang and he made a sound he tried to swallow.

"Good girl." She swung off him and stood, and the mattress came back up under his spine, and she walked to the dresser and took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it and stood there naked in the lamplight with the smoke going up past her face. She smoked half of it looking at him on the bed in the pink nightie and his cock hard and she did not offer him anything and he did not ask for anything, and the ash went into the little dish she kept on the dresser for exactly thiis

She told him to take the choker off, and she watched his fingers go up to the clasp, watched him hesitate there for a second with the little gold catch between his thumb and forefinger, and then it came undone and he pulled the leather strap away from his throat and laid it on the nightstand like it was something that might bite him if she moved too fast.

She told him to close his eyes, and she told him to keep his hands off himself and that come morning he’d thank her for keeping him unsatfied.

She smiled, and Tim watched the shape of it in the dark, that slow curl of her mouth like she was tasting something sweet and sharp all at once. Then she said, “Tomorrow, little boy-girl,” and the word hung there between them, that hyphen a little knife she turned in the air, “you can come with me and the girls to my secluded country house for a nice long weekend of fun. Well, fun for us.”

She let the pause stretch, let him feel the weight of it settle in his chest, in his half-soft cock, in the space where his hands were still pinned at his sides. “We can really work your feminine side,” she said, and her voice was low, almost a purr, the kind of sound that made his skin prickle and his mouth go dry. “And you can meet a whole bunch more of women.”

She didn’t say anything else. She just watched him, and he lay there, the sheets rough against his thighs, his heart beating a slow, thick rhythm against his ribs, and he knew she was letting him wait, letting him feel the shape of all those women, all those hands, all that time stretching out ahead of him like a road he couldn’t turn back from.

Tim lay there in the dark for a while, and then sleep took him under.