9. Dylan

CHAPTER 9

DYLAN

Honestly, fuck Alex.

That’s what I said to myself over and over when I scrolled through the dozens of unread messages from other men who wanted to pay me for sex.

Fuck Alex, and I would call my own fucking cars.

I picked a random message from the list. His picture wasn’t anything more than a muscular torso with some strong arms in the frame. He had pictures of his cock, carefully hidden behind a pair of tight white briefs that left little to the imagination. Judging by the outline, he wasn’t thick as Alex, which would be a relief. I hadn’t fucked anyone since him, and the bruises he’d spanked into my skin had long since faded. He hadn’t messaged me, and I was thankful because I didn’t know if I’d be able to say no to him if he did.

I hated the way my body reacted when I thought about him. Hated that I still jerked off thinking about cleaning his stupid floors, folding his clothes. All of those things shouldn’t turn a person on, shouldn’t turn me on. But every time…

Every fucking time.

The torso on the app told me his name was John, which I didn’t believe, but it didn’t matter. I went to his studio apartment in Manhattan and he fucked me for six minutes before he came.

He paid me a hundred dollars.

I didn’t get off, but it didn’t really matter. The money was better than the orgasm, so I answered another message the next night, and another the night after that. Keeping my bank account in the black was suddenly a possibility, and the best part…Tate was none the wiser. He was falling more in love with Alex’s friend every day, and I was absolutely not going to ruin that for him with my bad decisions.

I was halfway through a shift at Tryst when my phone vibrated in my pocket, another message on my app. My heart skittered around my chest, part nerves and part excitement. I couldn’t lie, the edge of fear that came with all the random hookups definitely helped get me hard most of the time. Even though it was all transactional, it was a huge boost for my ego. My parents had told me I was worthless, yet here were all these men who proved otherwise.

They saw me and they wanted me.

Some of them even wanted me more than once, but I said no. I learned that lesson with Alex, and I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of repeating that confusion all over again.

I checked the message and found it from a generic profile that didn’t even have a profile picture. The message had the content, though, a picture of a long cock hanging half-hard below a soft belly, a thick hand wrapped around the shaft. I would have judged him to be a construction worker based off the size of his fingers and the callouses around his knuckles. He sent me an address and a dollar amount, and I answered him back with a time.

I finished up my shift at work and plugged the address into my phone. It was a seven minute walk from the bar so I enjoyed the fresh air up until the moment I buzzed for entry into the building. That was when the nerves started to take over, my palms started to sweat, my heart rate spiking.

He’d also said his name was John, and his apartment door was cracked open when I got there. It was a nice enough looking place, even if it appeared the furnishings came straight out of a college dorm dumpster. Alarms blared in the back of my head, a feeling I hadn’t had any of the other times I’d hooked up with men on the app, but then he was in front of me, impossibly tall and broad.

“Never—” I started to call the whole thing off, and he shoved a handful of crumpled bills toward me.

“It’s double what you asked for.”

“Why?” I asked, voice shaking. I jammed the bills into my pocket, not bothering to check.

“Because I like it rough.”

I swallowed, blinking slowly and mentally working through the options available to me. I could try and run, bolt out the door with or without the cash. Or I could make the best of the situation. Alex liked rough sex. I liked rough sex. Maybe getting tossed around by the wall of a man in front of me would be enough to shake Alex out of my head forever. If not…there would always be another one.

And anything was better than crawling back to my parents.

I shrugged my consent and he pushed me down to my knees.

His cock was as big as I’d imagined it, and in the back of my throat he tasted like soap and skin. It was far from the worst cock I’d ever sucked, and he fucked my mouth so aggressively, I started to cry. Tears streaked down my cheeks, mixing with the spit that he’d fucked out of my mouth with the force of his thrusts.

This was fine.

Honestly, better than fine.

But it wasn’t long until the look of hooded arousal on his face shifted to something darker and far more menacing. He pulled his cock out of my mouth, spit on my face, and yanked me up by my hair. It happened so fast, the biting pain in my scalp didn’t even have time to register before he turned me and shoved me against the door.

“Only pussies cry during sex,” he growled.

Ah. I understood what was happening now.

He changed hands, holding me against the door by my throat so he could get my pants down. Somehow, he managed to get a condom on, which was the only saving grace of the whole thing, and then he pushed his entire erection into me with one sharp pump of his hips. There was so much force behind it, it lifted me onto my toes, my fingers scrabbling at the his around my throat, but he was steadfast.

He came in less than a minute, pulling out of me and letting go of my throat at the same time. I slumped down to the floor, mind racing and somehow blank at the same time.

“You’re disgusting,” he said, stroking his cock over the condom. He was still hard, still angry.

I scrambled to my feet and ran out of his apartment, doing up my pants on the stairs. I waited until I was halfway home to pull the wadded up bills out of my pocket. He’d made good on his word at least, paying me double what I’d asked for. I couldn’t even be mad about it. He told me he wanted it rough, and he took it rough. He paid more than what I’d agreed on and I was in and out in under ten minutes.

I was still shaking when I got home, thankful that Tate was at his boyfriend’s house so I didn’t have to explain. Sitting down on the couch, I smoothed the hundred dollar bills out with shaky hands, lining them up on the coffee table and tracing the edges with the tip of my finger until they laid flat.

“You’re fine,” I said to myself, frowning at the money and reaching for my guitar.

The sound that came after the first strum of the strings sounded as off key as it had the first time I’d played. Taking two deep breaths, I twisted the keys, checking the result until everything sounded closer to normal. By the time I’d finished, my heart had stopped playing an accompaniment, and I softly hummed my way through the beginnings of a new song.

Three hours later, the bills on the table had curled up again at the edges, but I had a chorus and two verses, scribbling the words down onto the back of our water bill. Another hour after that, I’d forgotten John entirely, the lyrics and the crescendo of the bridge enough to sweep me out of my life and into a better one. A life where I didn’t have to rely on my parents for anything, where my music was good enough to pay the bills, where I could go to Juilliard and stay living with Tate and have the life I wanted.

It was nearly eight in the morning, and I needed to go to sleep, but I was so close to being done with the song. With a yawn, I set the guitar down, my body protesting as soon as I stretched my legs out. I was sore from sitting so long, sore from being fucked against a wall without any prep and barely any lube. I stood and shuffled into the bathroom to piss and shower, hoping the blast of tepid water would be enough to keep me going until the afternoon.

Flipping on the lights, I reached behind me and grabbed my shirt. Rucking it up over my head, I tossed it onto the floor and then blearily blinked at my reflection. The man who stared back at me had my blood running cold. There was no way that was me.

That…

Slowly, I lifted my fingertips to my throat and craned over the sink to get closer to the mirror. My neck was bruised, my throat…those calloused, thick fingers having done more to me than his cock had managed in either of my holes.

“Shit.”

The bands of purple wrapped around the side of my neck, and there was no way to pretend they were anything other than exactly what they were. I had work at The Black Door later, a gig in a couple of days…I couldn’t do any of those things with a handprint around my neck, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

What if Tate came home?

What would I tell him?

“Just rough sex,” I said to my reflection. It was a lie, but it was also the truth and it would have to do. But the dichotomy of the situation wasn’t enough to stop me from pulling my phone out of my pocket and scrolling through my contacts. My finger hovered over my dad’s number. All I had to do was call him and apologize. Tell him he was right and I was wrong and ask for a job. He’d probably make me sell my guitar, which would be more of a punishment than anything Alex had ever done to me.

More than anything I’d done to myself.

Before I made a mistake, I threw my phone into the sink and climbed into the shower. It wasn’t until the water was burning the top of my head that I realized I hadn’t taken off my pants.

I should have called my dad.

Getting out of wet work pants with an asshole that felt like I’d ridden a two-by-four was the hardest thing I’d done in weeks, but maybe that was just the exhaustion setting in. I finally kicked free of them and my underwear, and I washed myself as gingerly as I deserved, then I curled up on top of my soaking wet clothes and cried until the water ran cold above me.

Then I dried off, wrung out my clothes, tucked the money into my wallet, and finished writing the song.

Life kept going, and I needed to do the same.