“You’re serious? You want me to pay you by…what…having sex with you?”
The completely serious expressions I received in response told me I’d gotten it right. We were seated in their kitchen at a round wooden table with mismatched chairs. Glasses of cold water were placed between us. They’d left the back and front doors propped open, allowing the dogs to wander in and out while a blessedly cool breeze swept through the house.
Vincent had joined us, or rather, we’d joined him. He’d already been at the table when we came in, groggily consuming a bowl of Fruity Pebbles cereal.
He looked significantly more awake once I asked my question.
“It’s not all about sex,” Manson said. He was looking at me with single-minded focus, as if no one else in the room existed. “It’s about submitting. No more running, no more teasing, no more bullshit. You give us what we want, we give you what you need. You’re ours until your debt is paid, simple as that.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I’m yours? Please. This sounds like the plot for a bad porno. Which one of you is playing my stepbrother and where’s a washing machine I can get stuck in?”
“You can call me big bro,” Vincent said, winking at me as Jason rolled his eyes. Jason was sitting closest to me, and in my peripheral vision, I could see him watching me, bright blue eyes unnervingly focused.
What was he looking for when he stared like that? Weakness, fear, excitement? He was too observant, and it made me feel like I was under a microscope.
“We’re not made of money, Miss Martin,” Lucas said. He was sprawled in his chair, one arm slung over the back. His body language said “boredom”, but his expression was far too hard for that to be true. “Frankly, it’s pretty damn generous of us to offer this. These special funds of yours can’t pay the rent.”
“Obviously there will be boundaries.” Manson was having none of the banter. He was all business, elbows on the table as he leaned toward me, my outrageous invoice sitting in front of him. But there was a gleam in his eyes, tension in his stance. He was thoroughly enjoying this. “Your safeword ends anything and everything. If you agree to the deal, we can start working on the car. We have to wait for parts to come in, shipping an engine takes time. I’d say we’ll have it fixed in five, maybe six weeks. In the meantime, you’ll be paying off your debt.”
“By doing what exactly?” I said. “Being your on-call Fleshlight?”
“If that’s how you would prefer to think of it.” Manson wasn’t giving an inch and I hated it. This calm, perfectly controlled side of him made me irrationally frustrated.
“You’ll be doing whatever pops into our sick heads,” Jason said. “We can’t give you a schedule ahead of time, princess. We’re busy, you know. But if you’re walking around town and one of us happens to snatch you up, you’d better be ready for it.”
“Free use,” Lucas said. “Whenever and wherever we want.”
My insides tightened, squeezing like there was a band low in my belly. It was a scenario that sounded good in fantasy — so damn good. But actually following through with it? Submitting myself to them, using sex as payment? Letting them fuck me whenever and wherever they wanted? That wasn’t exactly subtle. It wasn’t easy to hide.
If I’d thought one night as Manson’s slave was wild, then I couldn’t even imagine what something like this would mean for me.
My palms were sweating. My mouth was too dry, and I paused to take a long drink of the water. It seared a cold trail down my throat, and I shivered as I set the glass down.
“It’s your choice, Jess,” Manson said. “You have options here.”
Yeah. He kept reminding me of that, dangling it in front of my face like he hoped I’d choose something else. But I knew better than that. Manson wanted me to agree just as much as the rest of them, but he wanted me to choose. He didn’t want me to relent out of desperation.
He wanted me to acknowledge that I wanted it too, even if I didn’t fully understand why.
I could go somewhere else. Another shop, another mechanic. I could ask my parents for money and they’d give it — but I also didn’t want to deal with my mom holding it over my head, and I knew she would.
In a few months, I didn’t plan on being in Wickeston anymore. I planned to have a career, to move somewhere better than this. Somewhere nobody knew me, where there were no expectations and no grudges. Somewhere I could start over.
Until then, maybe…maybe I could indulge myself.
“Fine,” I said. I folded my arms, smiling smugly when they all looked at me in surprise. “What? Did you think I’d chicken out?”
“I knew you’d agree,” Jason said. “You never could back down from a challenge.”
“Damn right,” I said proudly, shoving myself back from the table. “So when do we —”
“Sit back down.” Manson’s tone brooked no argument. The words felt like a physical force pulling me back, and I plopped myself into the chair instantly. “We’re not done here. We need to go over your limits.”
I blinked rapidly as I stared at him. I’d spent enough time watching BDSM-flavored porn and reading kinky erotica that I’d encountered the idea of hard limits — boundaries around what one was willing to do in a scene. There were soft limits too, things one was cautious about trying, but was willing to do under the right circumstances.
But I’d thought my one and only real-life encounter with all this had come and gone. Messing around for one night had led to the establishment of a safeword, but beyond that, there had been no further discussion.
The fact that we were having one now felt strangely serious.
It felt intimate. Too intimate.
“Is that really necessary?” I tried and failed not to squirm in my seat. “Let’s just keep it open for discussion.”
“It’s always open for discussion,” Manson said. He was sitting directly across from me, and I was finding it impossible to look away from him, despite the uncomfortable intensity of his gaze. “But if one of us wants to throw you in a trunk or tape up your mouth, we need to know ahead of time if that’s something you can handle.”
“Do you have any health problems? Or blood circulation issues?” Vincent said.
“What about allergies?” Jason added. “Do you have any problems with silicone? Vinyl? Latex?”
“Are you on birth control?” Manson said, his eyes boring into me like he could extract the answer from my soul.
“I…uh…” This shouldn’t have been difficult, but I was stumbling over every word I tried to get out. I was a big girl. There was nothing wrong with what I liked. So why the hell did it feel like there was? “I’m not…against…the trunk thing.”
Lucas’s mouth twitched. Vincent muttered something that sounded very much like, “Thank you, Satan, I’ve finally been blessed.”
“I don’t have any allergies and I don’t have any other health issues either. And of course I’m on birth control. I have an IUD,” I finished. Manson nodded.
“Okay, those are the basics,” he said. “Now we need limitations.”
Everything that came immediately to mind sounded like a good idea to me, but I tried to tamp down on my excitement. “Is there such a thing as no limits?”
“No.” Vincent’s response was blunt. “That’s not something we do. Everyone has a limit, and knowing what they are keeps all of us safe.”
“It keeps Lucas from catching a murder charge.” Jason chuckled, despite Lucas’s glower.
I nodded, but I still was unsure of what to say. Where could I even begin? “I mean, I…I don’t want any broken limbs. In case that wasn’t already obvious.”
Vincent snorted. “Damn, there goes my torture scene idea. I’m kidding!” He laughed harder when he saw my expression. “We’re not that intense, Jess, relax.”
“I know it can be intimidating to start,” Manson said. He sounded surprisingly understanding, sympathetic even. He got up from his seat. “Hang on, I have something that will help.”
He left the room, going up the stairs. The four of us sat in silence, staring at each other like we’d begrudgingly negotiated the end of a war. Lucas wasn’t looking at me, instead staring at the tabletop in front of him as if it held the answers he was looking for on its worn surface.
“Whose idea was this?” I said, looking between the three of them. Jason raised his hand with a cocky grin.
“That would be me,” he said. “I’m admittedly a hard ass when it comes to being paid for my work, and you have certainly caused us a lot of work. Seems like fair compensation.”
“Being your plaything is fair compensation?” I tried and failed to sound skeptical. Instead, my voice hitched and Jason’s grin turned cruel.
“Honestly, Jess? Last night wasn’t enough.” He leaned closer toward my seat, one hand spread on the table beside him. I looked at his black-painted fingernails and thick rings and imagined that hand wrapping around my throat. Despite the brightness of his smile, his voice was dark. “I have plans for you, just you wait.”
“We,” Vincent clarified. “We have plans for you. And we’ve had plenty of time to think of them.”
They’d had years of time. Years of arguments, bullying, lust, close-encounters…plenty of fuel for whatever sadistic fantasies they had involving me.
When Manson returned, he had several pieces of paper in his hands that he slid across the table toward me.
“This should get you on the right track,” he said. A quick glance told me that it was a list of fetishes, each with a series of questions next to them: my interest level on a scale of 1-5, whether or not I’d done it before, and whether or not it was a soft or hard limit. The questions repeated twice, both for my interest in experiencing the activity myself or inflicting it on someone else.
Blindfolds…caning…fisting…orgasm control…oooh boy, I needed to rein in my thoughts. Looking at this list while they all sat right in front of me was a recipe for embarrassment.
I folded the paper and slipped it into my bag. “I’ll look it over. I can’t guarantee I’ll be done by tomorrow though.”
“If you can’t finish it in time, then you need to give us a timeframe of when you will,” Vincent said. “It’s all about communication. Give me your phone.”
I handed over my cell. It made me nervous to have Vincent poking around on my phone, especially since Lucas was leaning over and very obviously watching the screen.
“Is there something on here you don’t want me to see, Miss Martin?” Lucas eyed me like he could read my mind. “Should we check out your photo gallery?”
“Or how about your search history?” Jason suggested.
“No!” I said quickly. “That’s a hard limit. No going through my search history.”
“All right.” Vincent held up his hands innocently. “No snooping, I promise.”
The last thing I needed was them realizing the accounts I looked at most often were their own.
“I added you to a group chat with the four of us,” Vincent said as he handed back my phone. “All our numbers are saved, so if one of us contacts you, you’ll know who it is.”
“He fixed my contact name for you,” Jason deadpanned, and my cheeks heated. His name in my phone was still set to “Homework Dispenser,” a remnant of one of my more shameful moments in high school. I could have done without him finding out about that, especially with the way he cracked his knuckles. Something told me my ass would be paying for that later.
“There’s one more thing,” Manson said, leaning back in his seat. “We need to go over the rules.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What rules?”
“If you’re submitting to us, then you follow our rules,” Vincent said. “Don’t worry, they’re not hard.”
“But the consequences for disobeying will be.” Lucas sounded far too excited about the consequences part, and I shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair. Any time they mentioned punishing me, I felt the same odd amalgamation of terror and excitement — like I was about to jump out of an airplane and parachute to the ground. I both wanted it and dreaded it.
“Okay,” I said. “And the rules are?”
“If you want to get off, you need our permission,” Manson said, smiling as if he knew how frustrating that would be for me. “No touching yourself, no using toys, and no allowing anyone else to get you off either, unless one of us explicitly says you can.”
I grit my teeth. There was no way they could enforce that. They couldn’t watch me twenty-four hours a day. But I would know if I disobeyed, and the thought of blatantly defying them wasn’t very appealing even if they would never know I did.
“Jessica.” Manson’s firm tone snapped me out of my thoughts. “Do you understand the rule?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, I understand.”
“That leads us to rule number two,” he said. “And that’s how you address us. In this house, when you answer, you say yes, sir and no, sir. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” I said, then caught myself and quickly added, “Yes, sir.”
Goddamn it, my pride was taking a beating. I was struggling against it, trying to keep my head high and humble myself at the same time. Maybe this was going to be harder than I thought. I’d never done well with rules — pretending to follow them was far easier than actually doing it.
But I couldn’t pretend here. I couldn’t fake obedience to them.
“And the final rule…” Manson’s fingers tapped on the back of his chair. “You will always communicate with us openly, honestly, and respectfully. Regardless of what it is. If we tell you to do something and you don’t think you can, tell us. If something frightens you or hurts you, say something. If you don’t want to continue…”
“Say something,” I repeated. “No ghosting.” They all nodded. “Okay. I can do that.”
I had no idea if I actually could. How could I be completely honest if I wasn’t sure of my own truth?
Lucas was looking at me strangely, and I wondered if the uncertainty was obvious on my face. I tried to keep my expression neutral.
“All right then. Get the questionnaire filled out,” Manson said. “Then we’ll be in touch.”
He made it sound like this was a shady deal we’d agreed to in a dark alley, instead of in broad daylight sitting in their kitchen. My hands were shaking as I shoved my phone into my pocket.
“What happens after my car is fixed?” I said. “What then?”
“You go back to pretending we don’t exist,” Vincent said, staring up at the ceiling almost wistfully. Then, with a dismissive shrug, he added, “Or keep playing.”
I wanted to tell him we couldn’t play forever, but that was far too scary a declaration to make. Part of me wanted to dive in head-first and forget all the shoulds and should-nots that I’d spent so long hung up on. Part of me wanted to cling to this, hold this dirty little secret close.
Another part of me wanted to run away again, because running was easier than introspection. It was easier than acknowledging that maybe I’d spent years forming and adhering to my own lies about myself and who I was.
“Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll pay my debt. I’ll play the game. Until the car is fixed, I’m yours.”
