The Dark Collector (2 page)

“Fair enough.” He nods. “Gags? Fisting?”

I shudder.
Fisting?
I had done it more than once with Jeffrey. One of his most famous paintings was of my ass with his arm buried inside. But that was Jeffrey.

“It’s been a long time…” I meet the dark collector’s eyes. “I’m okay with gags as long as you don’t cover my nose or otherwise restrict my breath. Fisting…maybe.”

“I’ll respect your safeword.”

I take a bite of the chicken, the lemon flavor subtle and bright at once. It’s delicious. “This is wonderful.”

“Thank you. It’s one of my favorite recipes. It’s nice to cook it for someone else.” A flash of something soft in his face then before the impassive mask returns.

“Finish your dinner. When you’re done, take off all your clothes.” He points to a small door in the wall. “That’s a laundry chute. Put them in there. You can have them back on Monday morning. Put your dishes in the dishwasher. Then meet me in the living room. On your knees.”

He walks out of the room, leaving me to stare after him. I’m fully hard now, turned on by the idea of submitting to this cold, handsome man. Aroused, but ashamed of my arousal, which makes it somehow hotter but also bitter. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed putting my pleasure in the hands of another. I’ve missed sex, and I’ve missed submission.

As delicious as the meal is, my curiosity has killed my appetite faster than the proverbial cat. I can’t finish my supper. I clean up as best I can, and then I strip and put my clothes in the laundry chute. I take a deep breath and will my shaking body to still.

I get down on my knees and I crawl.

****

I keep my eyes down as I make my way across the plush carpeting to where he waits for me. In my peripheral vision I can see he is fully dressed, reading something on a tablet. He ignores me.
Okay, I know this game.

I bow my head, hands clasped behind my back, and I kneel for him. I don’t speak.

A faint whir of air conditioning and the buzz of electronics wind through the air. No other sound breaks the silence in his home. Occasionally, as he reads, he crosses or uncrosses his legs, and the sound of fabric rustling, a sound I’d never notice normally, is violently loud.

Sweat trickles down my spine, even though it’s cool in his apartment. My knees start to ache, and they burn deliciously from crawling to him across even such soft, expensive carpet. I focus on that burn, on the thousand ways it reminds me for the next three nights I belong to this stranger. My cock swells. It’s been a year since I’ve belonged to anyone.

“How old are you?”

The question is a jolt to my senses. Startled, I cast about for the answer, but before I can speak, his hand cups my jaw, tilts it so I have to meet his gaze.

“I asked you a question, pet.”

“I’m twenty-six, Sir.”

“You were twenty when you started modeling for Kuyper?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So young to be in such an intense relationship.”

“Yes, Sir.” I’ve heard it before. I don’t care. I loved Jeffrey with my entire self.

“Suck my cock now.”

“Yes, Sir.” My own cock is hard and already dripping a bit. Is this a betrayal? I can’t tell. I slide my hands up his legs, the fine wool of his trousers soft and slightly prickly under my palms. He groans and spreads his legs a bit. I smooth my hands over his thighs, feeling their strength and the tension making them tremble just a bit. He doesn’t rush me or shove my face into his dick. Jeffrey would have, sometimes. Jeffrey could be rough with me, and it was okay because I needed that from time to time. Needed to know I was his.

I tug the zipper down on his trousers, reach inside and pull out his cock. It’s fully erect, the head standing proudly out of the foreskin. His skin is a deep bronze color, but here it’s rosy too, copper. Will he taste like a copper penny? Metallic and tangy? I touch the tip of it with my tongue and his back arches off the couch.

He tastes salty. Clean and delicious. I wrap my lips around him and suckle him, and I’m rewarded with a heavy moan.

“Yes, pet, take my cock.” He begins to rock into my mouth like he can’t help but move. It’s hot, this super-controlled man coming just a bit undone like that. I fist my hand around the base of his cock and begin to jerk him while I lick and suck at the tip. I slide his foreskin around, nibble at it, slip my tongue under it.

“Fuck! Yes, that’s right. Oh, God, yes.”

I shove my hand into his underwear, find his balls and squeeze just a little, not to hurt, just to give him some sensation there too. He thrusts deep into my throat. I’ve nearly trained my gag reflex away, but it’s been a year since I’ve sucked a cock, and I gag a little, tears coming to my eyes. I pull back to catch my breath, then take him in again.

I lose myself in this taking and giving, the rhythm and motions of sex. The scent of arousal, his
and
mine. Sex and longing, urgency and a restlessness, my hips rocking in imitation of his because
I need this too.
It’s so easy to get lost in this, easy in a way life after Jeffrey has no right to be
.

His hands are all over my shoulders and my head, stroking and petting me as I try to take him even deeper. When one tugs at my hair, I feel the jolt all the way into my balls, and I can’t help the moan that slips out around his cock. He seems to really like that, because he fucks my face in earnest then, a little rough. He’s claiming my mouth, and it’s so sexy it rips another moan from me. I’d give anything for a hand on my dick right now, it wouldn’t take much, I could…

“I’m coming.” He sounds surprised. He shoves me off his dick and begins to jerk himself. I look up then,
really look
at his face for the first time since I crawled to him.

His eyes are closed tight, his head thrown back. He’s the perfect image of sexual abandon. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows back on some sound too intimate to utter, but then his mouth drops open and frees that sound, a gasping, groaning sob. Come splashes on my chest and face, hot and slick. My cock twitches in empathy of his orgasm, and jealousy too, because it’s been so long for me, and I’m turned on and
wanting
. I stare and I groan—he’s just so fucking sexy.

His eyes open, and I’m caught staring. A smile steals across his lips and he slides his fingers through the splatter of come on my cheek. They gather it up and slide into my mouth, and I suck his come from those fingers. My eyes roll back a bit, and I groan. I would have gladly taken him in my mouth, but him feeding it to me is sexy in a different way, a playful way I didn’t expect.

“Eat this mess, pet, clean yourself up and I’ll reward you,” he croons, sweeping it from my chest and into my mouth until I’ve taken it all, licked it from his hands. “Good, pet.”

“Thank you, Sir,” I whisper.

“Why are you thanking me?”

“Thank you, Sir, for making me suck your beautiful uncut cock. Thank you, Sir, for marking me with your come and feeding it to me.”

“Such a polite pet. You’ve earned a reward.” He helps me to my feet, and places my hands on the back of the couch. “Wait here.”

So I wait, naked, erect, my ass shoved out, bent over the couch, as he leaves the room. He doesn’t make me wait long before he’s back, but I can’t see what he has in his hands. A cool finger slicks lube on my hole—I press back a little, but the finger moves away. I feel something different then, not a cock, silicone. A plug. I groan and push back. I want it. I want that plug filling me and putting pressure inside me. It’s big, but not as big as some I’ve used. There’s a stretch and a burn and I gasp a little at the widest part. His hand rubs a soothing circle on my back as he presses just a bit harder and it settles into my ass just right. I moan. So full. It feels good, but I’m still so hungry. I want to be fucked. A plug isn’t the same. Even so, it turns me on that he gets to choose what he does to me. I need this, need to be owned.

“Shhhhh. It’s coming, pet.” He reaches around me, grasping my cock in one bronze hand. It’s slick with lube and feels warm and hard against me. I groan into my shoulder as he jerks me off slowly. Too slowly. I can’t come like this, even though it feels good. I need rough. I need something harder and dirtier.

“Please, Sir.” My voice is a low whine.

“Please what?”

“Please, Sir, I need to come.”

“You will.”

Still maddeningly slow. I try to hurry him, thrusting with my hips, but he doesn’t take the hint. Instead he prods at the plug in my ass, making me jerk a bit as it slides across all those nerve endings.

“Hold still.” One hand still jacks my cock too fucking slowly to make me come, but the other starts playing with the base of the plug, tugging it and shifting it. Oh, it’s fucking intense, having something inside me, moving but not
thrusting,
teasing, never settling into place.

The need to come is welled up in me, blocked by his slow hands, blocked by his refusal to find a rhythm, and I can’t reach the orgasm—until the first sob wrenches from my chest. Then, incredibly, as hot, shameful tears start spilling from me, the hand on my cock speeds up and I’m coming and crying, flying out of my skin as I spill my come all over his leather couch.

He’s whispering to me, rubbing my back and soothing me. He eases the plug from my ass and sets it aside, then he grabs a blanket from the back of the couch and throws it over my spend. As I sob into my hands, he tugs me down onto the couch with him. He cuddles me to his shoulder and I sob there instead, so lonely, so fucking lonely for my Jeffrey even in this other man’s arms. Eventually the sobs slow.

“You’re so beautiful, pet.” His words are clearer now that the fog of my grief is lifting. “Shhh, don’t worry, I’m not angry with you. You needed that. Do you feel better now?”

I nod, because I do, but the ache in my chest is growing. I just came from a handjob from a stranger, and it was the most intimate act I’ve experienced in over a year. Me, who had been an artistic symbol of decadent, raunchy sex, crying over a handjob?

“You’re sad—about Kuyper?”

I nod into his shoulder, snuggling close, aware I’ve gotten snot and tears all over his crisp white shirt, but taking this comfort because it feels good to be held and he doesn’t seem to care about the messy side of my grief.

“It’s okay, pet. Just rest here and let it out. You loved him. Was this…am I the first since…?”

I nod again, my eyelids growing heavy. I yawn around a little sob, and he holds me tighter.

“Go ahead and sleep,” he murmurs. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

****

I wake on the dark collector’s couch, wrapped in a blanket, naked and aching. Morning light spills through floor-to-ceiling windows as I sit up and stretch. I glance around, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

I don’t have his permission to go wandering the apartment, but I’m antsy, so I do anyway. I find the restroom and relieve myself, then explore. I tell myself I’m looking for him, but the first open door I come to leads into what appears to be his personal gallery. I recognize Jeffrey’s work, of course. He’s also got a breathtaking Mapplethorpe. I wander from one image to the next, stopping in front of one of Jeffrey’s.

Me.

An older—I guess the appropriate term is “early”—portrait of me. He’d made me up, painted me like a doll, and laced me into a corset. He’d bitten my shoulders and my neck until I was covered in his bruises and bites, and he’d photographed me like that. He’d painted from that photograph, but instead of photorealism, he’d made me some fey
thing
with pointy teeth, black eyes, and cheekbones so much higher and more prominent than my own.

Yet the look on my face, that haughty challenge, that had been real enough. Being dressed up, made up, it made me feel like an object. Like his boy, his doll, his thing. I’d loved feeling owned like that. It made me proud; it made me feel alive. When he showed me this painting the first time, I told him he hadn’t painted my face, he’d painted my spirit, as only he had ever seen it. He’d made love to me so tenderly that night, we’d both cried.
Hell, Jeffrey, how will I ever live without anyone to see this wild thing inside me?

“That’s my favorite.”

I jump at the sound of his voice. I turn warily, caught somewhere I probably shouldn’t be. Will he punish me? He comes and stands beside me, wraps a possessive arm around my waist and nods at the painting.

“You look so wild here. It’s a departure from his usual style. You couldn’t have been more than twenty-one when he painted it. You had started influencing him already. I started getting into his work more when he started painting you.”

I nod, a lump forming in my throat. “He called me his muse.”

“No pressure.” The collector’s lips twitch in a little smile.

I laugh, the lump in my throat dissolved by the unexpected humor in his voice. “No, it was never like that. I felt…exalted.”

“You deserved to. You inspired one of the most talented artists of a generation. You deserve to be exalted.” He turns to face me, grips the front of my neck in one bronze palm. “But you made a mess of my couch last night. And now you need to clean it up.”

I come alive. My face heats and my cock hardens. His hand is as good as a collar there against my throat, holding this buzzing, fey thing inside me even as it claws its way to the surface.

“Yes, Sir.” I lower my eyes. What would be the most humiliating way? Would he even let me? “Would you like me to lick my come off your couch?”

He ponders that for a long moment, measuring me with his eyes. “No, I think just a wet cloth will do.” Disappointment washes through me until he adds, “If you’re a very good pet, I’ll let you lick your come off the floor later.”

Oh.
I shudder, suddenly desperate to be his very good pet indeed.

“Come on, pet. I’ll show you where to find the cleaning supplies.”

While I clean his couch, hard and blushing, he makes coffee and breakfast, whistling to himself in the kitchen. I scrub every inch of the leather with the soft cloth, making sure it’s as clean as possible. When I finish, I kneel beside it and lower my eyes.

“Beautiful.” His voice catches as he comes into the room. Was that for me?