Chapter Text
He’s hard again. The councilman who has taken it upon himself to buy so much of her time is slumbering soundly in her bed, and he is hard again. She feels the tent of his arousal bump up against her back as he sighs in his sleep. The arms that are crossed around her tighten, worsening the stifling heat of him against her and making the desire of his unconsciousness that much more evident. His face is buried in the crook of her neck, and the brush of his hair tickles.
She debates whether to wake him. How she should go about it. Pull his cock out and suck him off? Or slide it into her and ride him until he’s moaning awake?
Some men have preferences. Most men would enjoy it either way.
Not this man, though.
This man is giving her trouble like no other client before or after—not that he allowed her to have anyone else while he’s retained her services. It’s not even a matter of being ridiculous about hygiene. A clean whore is an oxymoron by itself, but she does have a clean bill of health from the doctor that sees to the establishment (a euphemism for whorehouse on this side of the river), whatever that counts for.
No, things like being free of venereal diseases don’t matter to this man. Because despite it having been a week already of spending the night in a whore’s bed, he still hasn’t fucked the whore. Won’t let said whore spread her legs for anyone else, either. Is willing to toss away money hand over fist to see it that way.
If she were a younger, more naïve creature, perhaps she would have given this possessiveness the name of love. But this is a whorehouse and she is not a girl, so she cannot call it love; what man comes to a brothel looking for anything as silly as that?
But she can’t say this possessiveness is from ownership either. There is no triumph in his eyes at owning her so completely; only that all-encompassing darkness, which she has come to fear will swallow her whole.
Perhaps she reminds him of a dead lover. That would explain the gentleness. The tender treatment. Looking after her as though she’s some weak, budding rose. (He had insisted on being the one to bathe her instead of the maids, and hadn’t even reacted when she dragged him into the tub. Water had overflowed, but passion had not—much to her utter confusion.)
A dead lover, she muses. A past flame. Someone dear to him that he had missed out on, and here she is, a way to reconcile that oh-so-terrible tragedy. But if that’s the case, is he expecting her to play along too?
Men were like that, she decides. Always needed tending to, and the more powerful they are, the more fragile their egos. Likely he couldn’t stand the thought that he had to pay for his pleasure, and so tried to dress it up with romance. That’s why he won’t fuck her.
So if she feigns interest, if she curls her mouth in a guileless grin and fawns over him, would he want her body then?
The dilemma is still there, regardless. Her mouth or her cunt? Which is better to take him in? Which would please him more, be less work for her?
She shifts, and it’s as though the rough edges of her thoughts have brushed up against him and dragged him away from the quicksand of slumbers, because he blinks awake. She knows this because his breath hitches, as it always does when he comes to himself, and his taut body shudders like he’s trying to buck off the sleep of death.
The councilman takes a deep inhale, nuzzling her head to scent her hair. When he speaks, his voice is a rumbling murmur. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she says. “Just thinking.”
He falls silent at that, and his quiet bemusement irks her. What’s there to be so puzzled about? And despite all that, his dick hasn’t gone soft at all. God, she can’t understand him at all.
“What, is a whore not allowed to think?” she says. She flips herself over, slipping out from where he’s trying to spoon her into his embrace, and pins him under her instead. She sits astride his lap and grinds her hips down, rubbing herself over the tent in his shorts. The grunt that he makes is almost enough to mollify her—almost. “Or is it that she should be doing things other than thinking?”
The councilman puts his hands on her hips to stop her. His fingers are long. Could span the entirety of her waist, and they do. He holds her still, and just settles her there over him, thumbs curled over her hipbones in so commanding yet gentle a touch. “You shouldn’t call yourself that,” he chides.
“What else would I call myself?” she says. “Streetwalker? I don’t walk the streets.”
Not anymore. It’s gotten too dangerous around these parts for that. The madam doesn’t send her girls out anymore, not when there’s mauled bodies newly-discovered to be drifting along the river on the daily. Praedators have become more active, but the madam doesn’t deal with Praedators. It makes for poor business. Praedators don’t pay for their girls; not the ones they fuck, and not the ones they kill either.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “Not in this kind of place.”
“You’ve said that more than once, councilman,” she says. “Is it a compliment? Should I be blushing?”
The councilman smiles wryly. Under the thin needle of moonlight that’s pierced through the crack between the fluttering curtains, he remains illegible. “Caleb,” he says. “You can use my name, you know.”
“That’s not what you’re paying me for,” she says.
Using a name implied attachment. She can’t—won’t let her guard down so easily. He’ll slip a knife through any vulnerable opening she leaves, and she can only bleed so much. She’s already lost her past. Woke up with nothing except a headache and the clothes on her back and the taste of a lingering sweetness she would come to recognize as “apple” later on. Which left her here, as she is now: a sliver of who she used to be. A ghost of who she could have been.
“Is everything a transaction to you?” he says.
“You tell me, councilman,” she says. She braces her hands over his forearms, and circumvents his attempts at trapping her by using him as leverage so she can rub the seam of her underwear under her nightdress over his cock. He’s still aroused. Has been aroused this entire time. “Politicians always have their own tricks to play, don’t they?”
“Stop it,” the councilman demands as he manhandles her into falling onto the bed again. She lands on his chest with a soft, protesting oomph, and he wrestles her under him until he’s got her spooned to him again, but this time she’s facing him. The whole ordeal is anticlimactic, not sexy or titillating at all. Locked in position by the stiff cage of his arms, she can’t do much of anything except grumble and squirm. He’s treating her like some misbehaving child.
“Go to sleep,” he says.
“It’s kind of difficult,” she says. Relaxing against a wall of muscle isn’t very easy. “You’re too hard. And I don’t just mean what’s down there.”
The councilman seems to be ashamed by her mention of it. The silver of his necklace catches her eyes even through the dark, the tags meeting in a soft clink when he clears his throat. “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” she says. “For someone like me, it’s a compliment. Means there’s a way to keep a roof over my head.”
He becomes silent again. Seems to struggle with something within himself, because when he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
“Go to sleep,” he repeats, lips landing a soft kiss upon the crown of her head. She almost wishes he could be violent with her instead; that would be less unpredictable. She wishes he would hurt her. She wishes she could split his ribs down the middle to reveal his heart, crack his skull open to peer inside, just some way of understanding what he wants her to do for him. What he’s really paying her for. The uncertainty is cold in her stomach, slippery as an eel and twice as twisted.
It can’t be only to warm his bed. With that kind of face, there must be girls aplenty in the Northern District who’d love a romp in the sheets with him—if not a ring and wedding bells altogether.
Through the unsettling quiet, she tries to find her way. Focuses on the peeling wallpaper over his shoulder, the yellowing paint against the white glow of moonlight. There’s a crack running vertical the wall that spiders when it reaches the ceiling, splitting into a web of tangled, jagged lightning. It was supposed to have been patched up long ago, but it hasn’t been a concern that’s urgent enough to be addressed so far. No one’s taking notice of such imperfections. Not when there’s a warm, writhing body beneath them to indulge in.
She wonders if the councilman has ever noticed it. That crack, along with every other flaw in this room. If he has, he hasn’t mentioned it. This house is better off than many other places in the Southern District, and its clientele is on the upper end of things—but it must not compare to the cozy penthouse suite he has waiting for him back in the north. On the other side of that shining river, where the buildings glimmer like tinsels of silver and gold.
Instead of crossing the bridge and sleeping in what must be a more comfortable bed, this rich councilman and his wily tongue has chosen her bed to lie in. He doesn’t know that there’s a slight creak to its frame when things go bump in the night. Not yet, likely not until she’s simpering and putty in his hand, an illusion of wants and needs and past love made fresh and new again.
The councilman is an oppressive warmth against her, the heat of him making it hard to breathe. His cock still hasn’t softened. He’s got a leg slung over her, and she feels the insistence of his erection up against her stomach. And yet, despite how painful it must be, he makes no move to relieve himself, not even a little. Like his desire doesn’t matter. Like nothing she does will faze him, affect him enough to take action.
He won’t fuck her. She is sure of this now, and she doesn’t know how to feel about it. What was the point of all this? What does it mean?
“Why me?” she asks. Her voice is small and thin, muffled by the slip of blanket he had tugged over her shoulders.
“Why not you?” he counters.
The first time he saw her, she had been in a lineup of women, waiting to be picked like ripe fruit off a cherry tree. Among his cohorts, his eyes had immediately zeroed in on her. He had flashed in front of her and grabbed her arm. Said roughly, What do you think you’re doing here?
To this day, she still doesn’t know what he meant by it.
“You say I shouldn’t be here,” she says, “but I could say the same to you.”
At that, he tenses even more. “What do you mean?”
“You should be on the other side of that river, shining bright,” she says. “What are you doing in my bed instead, councilman?”
The councilman lets the silence run until she’s been bled dry. His voice is soft, a dagger’s sigh over her. The syllables crack open on her skin, spilling confession: “I wish I knew.”