“Is that so?” he murmured. A couple walking past glanced down at them, and Cal stroked a warm hand on the outside of her thigh to maintain the illusion that they were just a couple snuggling up for the show. She was only in a leotard, and it was bare skin he was touching, sending goose bumps rippling everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
She was hardly able to stand it, the feeling of that calloused hand so possessive on her skin, the solid wall of his chest big enough that she could curl against it. Never had she felt like this, never had she imagined a man could be anything stronger or harder than the ones she’d already met. But those men barely qualified for the label of man, not after meeting Cal, who seemed like he’d already lived three lifetimes in the time it took most people to live half of one.
“You used to be a cop or something?” she asked. It was out of nowhere in terms of their conversation, but not of her thoughts—she had to know what made a man like him. What scars and horrors added up to the hulking mass of raw danger he was now.
“Soldier,” he corrected, still stroking her leg. “Iraq and Afghanistan. Left a few years ago.”
Suddenly she wanted more. More contact, more of his face and his voice. She twisted in his arms and he allowed her, watching her with that same expression of aloof suspicion that he watched everything with. She turned so that she was straddling him and facing him, her pointe shoes tucked delicately under her folded legs, her center resting directly against—oh.
He was hard.
He watched her face as she realized this, as her lips parted and her face flushed.
“Go on,” he said, and there was a hint of lazy admiration in his voice. “Sit on it.”
She hesitated. If she went any further, she was pushing this conversation past the casual—or whatever passed for casual in their situation—and into the territory of the sexual. She’d be admitting she wanted him. She’d be acknowledging that he wanted her.
Suddenly, there was nothing she wanted more than just that, to push them into something glittering and sweaty and raw. She sat on it—on him—feeling the impossibly thick, impossibly long ridge of him flush against her center. Through the thin fabric of her leotard, she could feel every seam of his jeans, the line of his zipper, the exact width and heft of his penis. There was a part of her—a big part—that wanted to rub against it like she’d rubbed against Hell’s riding crop last night. To grind down until she worked off some of this tension that he knotted inside her.
He seemed to read her mind. “Go ahead, princess. Make yourself feel good.”
“It seems wrong,” she said, even as she started swiveling her hips against him.
“This is a club full of wrong, sweetheart.”
It was different, surely he saw that. “But you’re old enough to be my father. That’s bad to like.”
A flash of teeth in the dim light. “Very fucking bad.”
“And you could ruin my life if I didn’t do as you said. It’s wrong to like that you have that power over me.”
His hands brushed along her waist, slowing to explore her navel through the leotard. “But you do like it?”
She couldn’t explain it, she didn’t even want to try. “I do,” she admitted.
“You like bad things.”
“I wanted…I’ve wanted bad things for a long time. But it’s never felt bad here, just safe. Not until you.”
She couldn’t believe she was confessing all this and yet the thrill she felt when she saw Cal’s stubbled jaw relax in understanding was worth it all.
“I think I get it now,” he said, leaning back in the chair, as if to enjoy the view. He idly plucked at a nipple through her leotard, and she nearly had a heart attack. The pleasure shot to her center like a lightning bolt.
“Get what now?” she whispered.
He stared up at her. “Why you close your eyes when you dance.”
That’s not at all what she expected him to say, and she slowed the motion of her hips as he continued. “You close your eyes so you can pretend you’re not alone.”
Her breath caught.
“And,” he said, his hands settling on her hips. “You close your eyes to dream that someone will take care of you.” He flipped her around with those large hands, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. Settling her so she sat in his lap again, facing the stage, her legs open and hooked around the outside of his knees.
“And I bet you thought you’d be taken care of here,” he said, one hand holding her hip steady as the other reached around to stroke along the lines of her inner thighs. “Isn’t that right, princess? Find other people who liked the same kinds of wrong?”
She nodded. It was all she could manage. He was right, of course, so very right. If there was anything she thought Persepolis could promise, it was that there were people here just like her, lonely and hungry for the same things she wanted. But it was all so predictable here. Pain and bondage. No one cared about the grittier kinds of power exchange…like being spread open and touched by a man twice her age. Like fantasizing that he was making her do it or else he’d tell her father everything.
God, she was fucked up. But she already knew that. What she didn’t guess was that there was a man like Cal around who would see it so clearly.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me the kinds of wrong you are thinking about right now.”
She squirmed in his lap but couldn’t make the words come out.
“Don’t worry,” he said gently in her ear. A pair of blunt fingertips skated up her center, skimming across the fabric stretched over her pussy, and she tried to move closer to them, closer to the pressure, but they moved back to her thigh. “I’m going to take care of you, sweetheart. I promise. But first I need to know exactly the kinds of bad, wrong things my little ballerina is wanting.”
So she told him. About the age difference and how it turned her on. Her blackmail fantasies. And more things too—how she wanted to be forced to crawl across the floor like a pet, how she wanted to look down and see a man’s bare feet next to the pale pink of her ballet slippers, how much she wanted to watch him fuck her friends, every single cheap and tawdry way she wanted to be used and see others used around her. When she finished, she became aware of how much harder he was underneath her now, how the probes of her breasts and cunt had gotten harder, more insistent.
“You are so brave telling me such bad things,” Cal whispered in her ear. “And brave girls get rewarded.”
His fingers nudged along the crotch of her leotard, pushing underneath, and she almost came, she was that worked up, but then his fingers moved to her soaking wet folds, and she knew for sure she wasn’t going to last long. His other hand moved to her breast, kneading the small curve of flesh as his other hand began exploring her in earnest now, dipping just inside her wet hole, rubbing up to her clit, which was swollen and hard.
“Oh, little ballerina,” he groaned in her ear. “It’s been so long since someone’s taken care of you, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.” It came out as something like a whine.
His voice was soft when he asked, “How long, princess? Since you’ve had what you need?”
She tried to think. “I’ve fucked a couple people here at the club—”