Page 41 of Violent Possession

His hand, that pianist’s hand, closed tightly on someone’s shirt fabric. His knuckles white with force.

Maybe I should’ve tried my luck. I should have punched him in the face just to see. Just to feel his jaw open, to see if expensive blood is really blue. Would he fight back? Or would he send his dogs? I like to think he’d hit me back, his hand slipping awkwardly, clumsily, but still hitting, his tie loose, his hair out of place. All control gone to hell.

I can see it—him trying to punch me, and me laughing, holding his arm, hitting him back. Him pushing me against the wall, and I’d bite him like the fucking dog he thinks I am. Arm, neck, anything. Just to see his face lose its goddamn control.

Would he bite me back? Maybe. With those white porcelain teeth, maybe he’d even chip his twenty-thousand-dollar dental work. If he bites me, if his arm intertwines with mine, my body responds on its own.

His tie coming loose, his hair messy, his shirt tearing. The smell of sweat and his expensive perfume mixed together. I’d have the taste of his blood on my tongue. I’d lick the corner of his mouth just to disgust him. But I don’t know. I don’t think he’d be disgusted. I think he’d slide his hand to my stomach. I think his belt buckle would be as cold as his eyes. I think he’d let me undress him. I think, maybe, he’d evenorderit. The control would excite him. And who knows, maybe I’d obey then—but fuck, wait. You don’t do that in a fight.

Holy shit. Since when did my imaginary fight turn into grabbing Alexei Malakov’s dick?

I only now notice that I have a hand on my waistband. There’s a pressure, a heat curling beneath the fabric.

Seriously. What the hell was that? I always knew I had a bad taste in fucked-up people, but aMalakov? This is a whole new level of trouble.

What a shitty reaction.

The goddamn problem is still here, hard and insistent under my pants. And it’shisfault. Every inch of this unwanted reaction was fabricated by him, in that room, with that fucking look.

Fuck it.

If it’s his little game that made me this way, then it’shismoney that will solve it.

I pick up the black card. I know what to do.

The differencebetween a whore and a “luxury escort”, I discover, is mostly the price. And the vocabulary. One calls you “hot”, the other calls you “fascinating”. One charges fifty bucks in an alley, the other charges five hundred dollars an hour on a nameless black card your psycho boss gave you. But it’s the same goddamn transaction: paying someone to pretend they want you around.

The luxury one, I also discovered, doesn’t smell of cigarettes. Not that I care. It’s some French or Italian perfume—as if I know about perfume—and this one has a degree in art history that she uses to make conversation before taking off her panties. Nice performance. Instructive. She talks some shit about the Renaissance, or Baroque, and I remember my old Literature teacher, from before I ran away with Seraphim, breaking a wooden ruler against my hand. Literary schools and all that. Times when I felt the wood cracking in my right hand. I don’tthink it was the same subject the whore talked about. Artistic movement, or something like that.

She compliments the apartment’s “minimalist” decor. She tries to convince me a little that theintellectual connectionbetween us made her wet. She talks about Caravaggio’s existential crisis for five minutes, and now she wants me to believe her soul is in tune with mine.

She calls me “fascinating”.Alexeicalls me “fascinating”. We’re all whores in the end.

Alexei. I hope he likes blondes. He paid.

Her hand rests on my arm, tracing the outline of the metal over my shirt sleeve. She whispers something. Intensity and blah, blah, blah.

I turn to her. Amber, Ashley, whatever. I pull her to me. I could go to an expensive motel, pay over a thousand dollars for an hour in a room with a city view—dirty mafia money—and make everything impersonal, but in a thousand-dollar motel, Alexei’s cameras aren’t there. Iwanthim to see this.

See this, you sick voyeur.See me defile your clean nest. See me use your money to bring the gutter to your door.

The woman smiles. “You’re intense,” she whispers.

This is the fucking show. I push her against the door and kiss her.

I imagine him watching, impassive, and I want to break that calm. I want him to see me and feeldisgust. I want him to see his “property” being used by someone else and feel the fucking possession being violated.

I slide my hands under her dress, moving up slowly, and project the scene I want to see. Alexei, alone. Annoyed. His jaw clenched, his knuckles white as he grips his whiskey glass. I want to imagine him angry, pissed off that I’m not the tamed puppy he expected.

But what if you’re not angry, Alexei? What if you’re enjoying it?

I bet you can’t look away. Inside that expensive suit of yours, your goddamn starched perfection tightening. I imagine your hand. The hand that signs death warrants, that moves millions, that guided mine… I imagine it sliding down, undoing the expensive belt, with a slow, dirty need, seeking relief as it watches its property display itself.

And what if you donothing? What if you justwatch, impassive?Even better. I would move harder, faster, until I sweat, until I bleed, if necessary—just to see if I can break your fucking composure.

What do you note down, boss? The frequency of the thrusts? The number of times I bite my lip? You study me as if I were a graph, but deep down, you have your hand on your fucking dick, don’t you?

What a joke. This wasn’t supposed to affect me, wasn’t supposed to give me chills like this. Still,fuck.