for two months he just waved me through. every friday, same door, same bored lift of his chin at the velvet rope, like i was a piece of furniture he’d decided he liked. i’d come in a silk slip dress, the emerald one that stops mid-thigh and shows the lace under it, patent heels that click on the stairs, and he’d unhook the rope without even glancing at the list. never once cover. never once a word past “evening.” i told myself it was a courtesy thing. i told myself a lot of things.
the cover is twenty dollars on a friday. i’ve decided it’s the most expensive thing a man has ever not charged me for.
i’m not going to pretend i didn’t clock him. six foot four, shoulders that fill the doorframe, a black suit that looks like it was cut around the idea of him. he watched me the whole time i was in the building. not in a creepy way. in the way you watch something you’ve already decided belongs to you, just to see how long it takes it to figure that out.
the first few weeks i thought it was a fluke. then it was every week, and the other bouncers started noticing too. the blond one with the clipboard looked at me once like he was about to say something, then looked at the man who’d waved me in and decided it wasn’t his business. the girls at the bar noticed. one of them asked me, not unkindly, whether i’d made a deal with the devil, and i laughed and said i’d made a deal with the lace.
i kept coming back in the lace. black one week, a nude one that was basically a rumor the next, the matching garter belt under the slip because i wanted him to know i’d thought about it. i’d bought it on purpose. i’d bought all of it on purpose. every friday i walked past him with my shoulders back and my heels loud on the stairs, and every friday he said “evening” in the same flat voice, and every friday i went home and didn’t sleep until i’d thought about it for a while.
by march he knew what i drank. he never brought me one. he just knew, the way he knew the regulars’ faces. and once, when i came in with the strap of the black slip slipping off my shoulder, he reached over and put it back — one finger, a half inch of correction, like fixing a picture frame that had gone crooked on the wall — and said “evening,” and that was the whole conversation. i went to the bathroom and looked at my own shoulder in the mirror for longer than i’m going to admit anywhere else.
and i studied him right back, which is the part i don’t usually admit. i learned his tell. every friday, right as i passed the rope, he’d take the night’s outfit in — one slow audit, chin to heels, the same way he checked IDs — and there was exactly one week he looked twice. the nude set. january. he looked at my thighs through the slip for a half-second longer than the job required and refiled me in whatever system he keeps, and the next friday i wore it again. and the next. i’m not proud of the science. i’m proud of the results.
last friday the room emptied out around two. the bass cut, the lights came up, the bartender was counting the till with his back to us. i was at the end of the bar with my last drink, slip riding up on one thigh, and when i looked up he was already watching me from the bottom of the stairs.
i went to the coat check for my wrap. he was there, leaning on the counter like he’d been waiting all night.
“you’ve never paid cover,” i said. “i’ve been meaning to ask why.”
he didn’t answer right away. he looked at my heels, then my mouth, then the slip dress, the whole length of it, unhurried, like he was reading a menu he’d already ordered from.
“you look exactly like what i want,” he said, like it was an explanation, which it was.
i should have said something smart. instead i said, “what, here?”
“back office.” he turned and walked, and i followed, because my heels were already clicking after him before i’d made any kind of decision.
the office was small. a desk, a leather chair, a mini fridge humming to itself, a window with the blinds pulled down, a rug that had seen better decades. he shut the door behind me and turned the lock, and the sound of the bolt went straight through my stomach. he didn’t touch me. he went around the desk and sat down in the chair, leaned back, and just looked.
“come here, pretty thing.”
so i went. my heart was going so hard i could feel it in my wrists. i stood between his knees for a second, close enough to smell the cologne and the cigarette he’d had on the back step, and when he didn’t say anything else i realized he wasn’t going to tell me the rest. the silence stretched until i got it, and then i sank down onto the office carpet in the slip, the silk bunching at my hips, my bare knees pressing into the rough pile. the carpet was cold. my knees are pale enough that i could see them in the thin light coming under the blinds, two white circles on a dark rug.
and then he got up — i thought maybe i’d done it wrong — and i heard him behind me, folding something, and his suit jacket landed flat on the carpet between my knees, thick wool, still warm from the chair, and he sat back down like nothing had happened.
“the floor’s for people who won’t be back,” he said. “you’ll be back.”
i put my knees on his jacket and felt my whole chest arrange itself around that sentence.
“look at you,” he said. “my pale little thing on her knees in my office.”
his hand came down and lifted my chin with two fingers, turning my face up to him, thumb running along my jaw. his hand was huge, dark against my skin, and he held my face like he was checking how it fit. he didn’t squeeze. he didn’t have to.
“you know what i’m going to do,” he said.
“yes.”
“say it.”
“you’re going to put that in my mouth.”
“mm.” he undid his belt slow, the buckle loud in the small room. “that’s right. my dark hand in your hair. my cock down your throat. you going to take it for me, sweet girl?”
i nodded, which made him smile. then he was free and i had to look at it, and i’m going to be honest about what i saw: it was bigger than i’d let myself picture on the friday walks home. thick, heavy, the head flushed and already wet, the veins running up the length of it like something under pressure. when he took it in his fist and stroked once, slow, i felt my own breath catch and my mouth go wet without me asking it to.
“open,” he said.
i opened. he pressed the head against my lips and waited, and i licked it, tongue flat under the ridge, tasting salt, and he made a low sound that went straight down my spine.
“good girl.” that was the first time he’d said it, and it landed like a hand on the back of my neck.
i took the head in. i worked it with my tongue, hollowing my cheeks, and when he rocked forward i took a little more, a few inches, and then i had to stop because the stretch of my jaw was already doing the burn that means you’re going to feel it tomorrow. he let me set the pace for maybe three breaths. then his fingers went into my hair and tightened, and he said, “slow,” and i went slow.
down, a few inches. pull back. a few more. he was so thick that every inch felt like it was pressing a new part of my mouth open, and my jaw ached in a way that made my eyes water, and when i got to the halfway point the head bumped the back of my throat and i gagged once, spit sliding down my chin onto the lace.
he didn’t let me pull off. his hand held me there while i recovered, then eased me back an inch. “breathe through your nose,” he said. “you can do it. take a little more.”
i took a little more. the size of him was obscene, the way he filled me up, my lips stretched wide around him, and when i finally got to where my nose was pressed against him and my throat was completely full, i made a sound i’d never heard myself make before. he groaned and his hips came up off the chair an inch.
“there it is,” he said, hushed, almost to himself. “that’s what i’ve been watching walk past me for two months.” his thumb stroked my temple. “every friday. all that lace under that dress. you thought i didn’t know what you were doing.” a beat. “i’ve been charging you nothing all winter, sweetheart. i want you to think about what that makes you.”
i thought about it. i thought about it with my throat full and my eyes streaming and i came to a conclusion i’m not going to write down, and he watched my face arrive at it and was pleased with the result.
then he really started. he set a rhythm, one hand fisted in my hair, the other flat on the desk for leverage, pulling me down onto him and holding me there, then letting me come back up for air, spit running, eyes streaming, knees grinding into the wool of his jacket. every time he pushed deep my jaw locked and my throat clenched around him and he hissed through his teeth.
halfway through, the radio on the desk squawked — the blond one from the door, calling up to ask where the manager kept the spare key. he answered with his hand still full of my hair, voice flat as ever. “cabinet. second drawer.” the radio said “copy,” and he went back to it without missing a stroke, and somewhere in the building a man was opening a drawer and having no idea, and the danger of it went down my spine like ice water and settled somewhere low and warm.
“hear that?” he said, when the wet sound filled the room. “that’s you, sweetheart. that’s what you sound like on my cock.”
he let me work for it a while. my tongue flat up the underside of his cock, my lips dragging the ridge, my mouth doing the thing it does when it stops belonging to me — he was so thick that every pass stretched the corners of my lips wide and left them wet and shining, and he watched it happen, head tilted, like a man watching a machine he owns run. when i took him to the base his balls sat heavy against my chin and he pushed one slow inch more, and my throat clenched and gagged and swallowed around all of it at once, and the sound he made was worth every hinge in my jaw. then he pumped into my mouth in short, easy thrusts — throat, tongue, lips, all of it stretched around his cock — and i licked and swallowed around the length of him while my eyes streamed and spit ran down my chin onto the lace. he pulled me off by the hair one more time and stroked himself against my cheek, the head of his cock leaving a wet line across my mouth. “look at that,” he said. “made for it.”
i couldn’t answer. i just went back down.
“why do you think i don’t charge you,” he said, out of nowhere, mid-stroke, tone like an exam question.
i came up just far enough to talk, wrecked, spit strung from my lip to him. “because you want me.”
“wrong.” he pushed me back down, slower this time, unhurried, letting me sit with the answer i hadn’t found. “cover’s for people who might walk back out the door. you paid me the first friday, in that dress, and neither of us has said it out loud since.” his hand tightened in my hair, easy, certain. “you’ve been paid up for two months. that’s the whole reason you don’t get charged.”
he got close fast after that, his breath going ragged, his hips driving up into my mouth now with no pretense of control left in them. “that’s it. take it. good girl, my good pretty girl, look at you choking on me like you were made for it.” he pushed my head down one last time and held me deep, and came in three hard pulses, groaning, his hand locked in my hair through every one.
i swallowed around him, throat working, until he went soft against my tongue and his grip finally let go. i sat back on my heels on the cold carpet and cleaned my chin with the back of my hand, and he looked down at me like he was still processing it. the lace was ruined. the slip had a wet dark stripe down the front that was never going to come out. i didn’t care. i’d known it would be like that since the first friday.
“cover’s still twenty at the door,” i said, because i wanted to hear him say it again.
“not for you,” he said. “settled.”
he got a bottle of water out of the mini fridge and set it on the desk by my knee, and got his jacket up off the carpet, shook it out, and held it out to me without saying anything about it, which is how he says everything. that’s the thing i keep, out of all of it — not the water. the jacket. it’s dry-clean only and it’s mine now, and it hangs in the back of my closet like a fact.
“same time next friday,” he said. not a question.
then he stood, tucked himself back in, and unlocked the door. it was almost two-thirty. the club was empty except for the bartender stacking chairs, and he walked me to the front with one hand at the small of my back, and held the door open to the street like a gentleman in a movie i wasn’t watching. the bartender, for the record, didn’t look at either of our faces. that’s professionalism, and i hope he gets a raise.
the walk to the cab was four blocks and i did it barefoot on the sidewalk, heels in one hand, his jacket over the ruined front of the slip. a guy outside a taco truck whistled and i didn’t even turn my head. my mouth tasted like him and i wasn’t going to brush it out.
i got in the cab and gave my address and thought about one thing the whole ride home, and it wasn’t the office or his hands or even the radio call. it was the strap of the black slip, the half inch of correction back in march, his one finger on my shoulder like he was fixing a picture frame that had gone crooked. next friday i’m paying cover. i want to watch him not take the twenty, and i want him to know i did the math and paid it anyway.
i’d already started counting the days.
