Chapter 1

Harry Grimes had stopped in at the bar because he’d remembered it as it used to be.

Several years before, he’d stopped there regularly on his way home from work, moving past the bar and its stools, deep into the coolness of its dark interior where he would rest his eyes from the glare of the Texas sun while a shot and a beer eased the stress from his forehead. Thirty minutes of rest in the soothing cavern-like depths and he would be ready to face the freeway again.

“Shannon, you’re a lifesaver” he’d tell the bartender, and away he’d go, half his journey home completed, fortified for the rest of his evening commute.

But then he’d gotten married, and his drinking every night had bothered her, and he’d have done anything for her, so he’d stopped.

For three years it had been fine and glorious and wonderful and they’d fucked like wildebeests-on-ecstasy and that was it and it was forever and nothing could ever change it, and one day he came home early and her car was in the driveway and what was she doing home from work and who’s car was that next to hers and “what the fuck do you think you’re doing with my wife” and “why didn’t you tell me you felt this way, we could have gone to counseling” and “I’m sorry you think it’s too late for that” and so they were separated, and when Harry wasn’t lying to himself he was pretty sure the only reason she held out the hope of reconciliation was to let him down a little easier.

All in all, after six months of separation, it seemed a pretty good reason to start having a drink on the way home from work every night.

So he’d pulled in at the Pearl, tucked in-between a head shop and an adult newsstand, parked the car and headed in, expecting Shannon to be tending bar with his usual bemused smile on his face, the decor to still be just one step up from ‘Texas Beer Joint Casual’, the radio to be playing classic rock, but not too loud.

He didn’t notice the head shop had become ‘Fist of Love Tattoos’. He didn’t notice that the adult newsstand was now a club called ‘Vortex Void’. He was too busy seeing things the way they used to be and squinting from the glare of the sun, even behind his sunglasses, to notice little changes like that.

The inside of the Pearl hadn’t changed much; the decor had moved up some, it was right around what he would have called, in his youth, ‘Punk Club Normal’. The music was a little more contemporary and the bartender was a bit more extreme; lots of tats, lots of piercings. He was friendly enough, said his name was Ruben and he was quick with the drink order.

And after one shot and a beer, Harry couldn’t think of a reason he shouldn’t have another. And Ruben helpfully brought him a menu from the small kitchen, and so it was a basket of fried mushrooms and cheese sticks and another round.

Harry still couldn’t think of any reason to go home, so another round was in order.

When the music from the club next door started to pound through the walls, the radio was turned off. Harry barely noticed. When the bar started to fill up with people, all of them younger than him, sitting in small groups and talking, Harry barely noticed. He sat there drinking and thinking and thinking about drinking and searching for a reason to go home and his booth in the back of the Pearl really started to feel like home and that friendly Ruben brought by another basket of fried mushrooms that he wasn’t sure he’d ordered but they sure were good and somewhere in there this curvaceous little girl in a black dress and interesting makeup, like a ghost or something, had showed up at his booth and had talked him into changing his drinking rhythm. Two big glasses of water, then a shot and a beer, then two more big glasses of water, and he was pretty sure he’d been talking to her about Angie and their marriage and since she was listening he’d bought her a round, or maybe two, and definitely something to eat, but mostly she was drinking water and she was a real good listener and he might have cried some, he wasn’t sure and then he didn’t remember anything at all for awhile.

He was riding down the freeway with his head out the window, not feeling sick, but the wind moving across his face felt good to him. He wondered who was driving.

And he was moving up the walkway to his house and he wanted to list to the left but he couldn’t because there was this little obstacle in his way.

He was sitting on the end of his bed with his underwear and one sock on. The little girl from the bar was making him take four, or five ... maybe six aspirin, one at a time, chased by big gulps of water.

He came half awake in the middle of the night, his bladder urgently calling him to the bathroom. He felt alright, but upon sliding out of bed he found that his body and his mind disagreed on just how alright he was.

And she was there, a small figure in a white t-shirt way too large for her, helping him into the bathroom. She lifted the lid and set him down on the seat.

“I stand up to pee” he said through a fog of confusion.

“Not tonight Harry. Tonight you sit down to pee. And while you’re sitting down to pee, you take two more aspirin and drink more water.”

So he did and she helped him back to bed and he slipped back into sleep, wondering where the little elfin creature went when she wasn’t helping him.

He surfaced through the layers of sleep again at someone tugging on his arm.

“Harry, I found your business card in your wallet, who do I need to talk to at your office? Who’s your boss?”

Her questions confused him and answering them seemed to be the best way to make them, and the confusion, stop.

“Karen Pinard. Talk to Karen Pinard.”

As he lay there, floating on the surface of sleep, he heard her talking to someone. She had dropped the tone of her voice ever so slightly, sounding more mature.

“Yes, Ms. Pinard please? Thank you. Ms. Pinard, this is Carol Riley, I’m an old friend of Harry Grimes. My husband and I met him for supper last night and he took sick, some sort of stomach ailment. We got him home and I’ve stopped by to check on him on my way to work this morning. I’m afraid he won’t be in today. Yes ma’am, he made sure to have me call you, it was the first thing on his mind. Yes, I may well be taking time off this afternoon and taking him to the doctor if he isn’t better by then. Why yes, of course, I’ll pass that on to him. Thank you so much Ms. Pinard. Good bye.”

She hung up the phone and leaned down next to his head, kissing him on the cheek.

“Harry honey, it’s ok, go back to sleep, your boss says you’re all caught up, so they can afford to be without you for a couple of days, you just get to feeling better.”

Harry drifted away again.

He came partially awake with a start, hearing the shower running.

“Oh, it’s just Carol” he thought to himself and went back to sleep, not thinking it odd that he was comfortable with a woman he’d only just met, and didn’t really know at all, being loose in his house.

He came to once again to a sensation he hadn’t had since childhood. Someone was bathing him.

He lay there with his eyes closed as the warm wet washcloth traveled across his face to his neck, a brief pause as it was re-moistened, then around his neck, and on the back of his neck.

He marveled at a feeling of paralyzation as he lay there, seemingly unable to move as she washed his chest and arms, stopping as she approached his groin to move down to his feet, there to begin cleaning her way up his legs. He realized that it wasn’t that he couldn’t move, it was that he didn’t want to move, had no real reason to move. For the moment, he felt drained of the pain of his problems with Angie, purified of the poisons that had been building up to toxic levels in his mind as he kept his feelings about the separation inside. He felt as if some infection had been washed away from him and although the thought of his and Angie’s probable impending divorce still saddened him, it was a sadness of acceptance.

As if she could read his mind, Carol said softly “So, I get the feeling you haven’t talked to anyone about what’s going on with you and your wife, have you?”

“No” he murmured, afraid to speak too loudly and break the mood.

“You sure said a lot last night Harry. When I sat down I could tell you were hurting, but I had no idea you were that bad off. She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”

“I guess she did. I don’t think she meant to though” Harry said, somewhat defensively.

“No, no I’m sure she didn’t” Carol responded, “roll over. But she did nonetheless. There, that’ll let me get started on your back.”

The silence, a comfortable one, returned as she gently washed his back and then the backs of his legs.

“Stay right like you are” she said, “I need to get some more warm water.”

And so Harry lay there, feeling as if he was in some state of emotional shell-shock, detached from himself and where he was, slightly amused to find that he was only just then realizing he was naked.

Carol returned and began to tenderly wash his ass, starting with the cheeks and then holding the cheeks apart with one hand as she slowly and carefully ran the washcloth in-between them with the other.

Harry lay with his eyes closed, wondering at his willingness to let this stranger clean him, trusting her as if he’d known her for years.

“So Carol, I gather I’ve told you a lot about me” he said quietly, “why don’t you return the favor?”

“Fair enough” she replied, “but it’ll have to wait until I get back with more water and a fresh washcloth. Roll over again.”

Harry did so and Carol returned to begin cleaning his balls, slowly and, it seemed to Harry, lovingly.

“Well Harry, I don’t have what you’d call a normal story, I suppose. I’m property. I’m a pet, a slave, a submissive, a sex toy.”

Harry’s eyes popped open and he stared down the length of his body towards Carol. The bedroom drapes were drawn, but enough ambient light crept in around the edges so that Harry could see her clearly. No smile on her face, no sign she was joking.

He examined her for the first time that he could remember. Dark brown hair, short in the front and on the sides, ran midway down her back in the rear. She had a darkish tan complexion, vaguely Hispanic, with an oval face, full lips, brown eyes, smile lines around her mouth. She looked maybe 18. From what he could see through the t-shirt’s tenting effect, medium-sized breasts and if the thighs coming out from the t-shirt’s bottom were any gauge, she’d have a devastating ass. He vaguely remembered from the night before that she had seemed a bit plump, not a problem for him, and very shapely, but he wasn’t at all sure how much he trusted those memories.

She was watching him closely, as if to gauge his reaction to her statement.

He closed his eyes, forced his mind to calm, his body to relax. “That’s an interesting line of work, so to speak. How’d a nice girl like you...”

“End up like this?” she said. Harry could hear the smile in her voice. “Well, I’ve known I was submissive since I started having sex, back in junior high. I was in college, working towards my theater major when I realized just how deeply my submissive streak ran, just how much I wanted to be owned, be controlled. It’s not that I can’t take care of myself, or even that I don’t want to. It just really fulfills me, body and soul, not to. To hand that responsibility over to some one else, to pledge my life and my service to them; Harry, I can’t explain it to anyone who doesn’t feel the same way, or at least I haven’t been able to so far, but for me, it completes me. It makes me happy. Well, most of the time at least.”

Harry realized that while he’d been listening to her talk, she’d begun cleaning his dick and between the conversation and her cleaning, it was standing at attention. She continued to clean it, smoothly running the warm washcloth up and down the shaft, almost, in fact, moving from cleaning him to stroking him towards climax.

“So who,” Harry semi-choked out, “who owns you now?”

“A real shit-head named Rick Cox and I probably need to be getting back to the apartment here before too much longer. He’s going to be pissed as it is, but he’s the one who kicked me out last night. He doesn’t like me around when he discusses business so I got dressed up and went to Vortex Void. It was dead, so I ended up in the Pearl and there you were, in a lot of pain.”

Carol put the cloth down

“Lift up your legs Harry. There, that’s it.” She slid in-between his legs, sitting cross-legged on the bed, his knees propped across hers. “Just relax Harry. Let me take care of this for you.”

Harry opened his eyes to see her opening an old bottle of massage oil that had been left in the bedside table since he and Angie were together. She sniffed the open bottle mouth.

“Roses ... nice.”

She began to pour a thin stream of the oil on to his erect cock, watching it trickle down the sides, disappearing into the mat of his pubic hair.

“You have a very pretty cock, Harry. Nice size, nice shape, good bend to it, no funky knobs or knots or warts or running sores.”

“Are you always this romantic?” Harry asked, laughing.

“No Harry, this isn’t romantic, this is a hand job.” And with that she began to massage his nut sack with one hand, while slowly stroking the shaft with her other. “Trust me, romance is a whole different proposition ... one you’re probably better-versed in than I am.”

Between her legs, Harry could make out a trimmed, but un-shaved, bush, and a hint of wetness glistening between the lips of her pussy.

“Would you mind taking the shirt off” Harry asked, his mind slowly fogging over with the sensations from his crotch.

“Yeah Harry, I’d mind ... I’d mind a lot.”

“Carol, take the shirt off, now.”

She looked at him, startled, her hands ceasing their efforts. She grasped the bottom of the t-shirt with her oily hands and slowly began to lift it over her head like a curtain rising on a Broadway show. But what Harry saw revealed was no show, and he never would have paid money to see anything like it.

Bruises, a lot of very bad bruises, black and purple and green and yellow, coating her torso and abdomen, large bruises and small, in some places blurring together until he could hardly differentiate between them as they seemed to blend into one large massive bruise.

She returned to stroking his dick, with both hands now, her eyes downcast, refusing to meet his.

“So,” he asked, “that Rick’s handiwork?”

“Yes.”

“Is it the same on your back?”

“Worse, from what I can see in the mirror.”

“Would you like to stay here? Not go back to him?”

She looked up from her efforts, her eyes shining with hope.

“Because you’re welcome to if you want to.”

And the hope in her eyes died.

“That’s just not the way it works Harry.”

As her left hand continued to swirl up and down his prick, her thumb running firm circles around the nerve junction on the underside near the tip, he felt her right hand move under his ball-sack and towards his ass. He felt himself building towards an explosion as he looked at her, beautiful in spite of the bruises, stroking his cock; her shoulders slumped with the weight of her situation.

She felt him beginning to tense and eased off. “Not so quick Harry, I want this to be special. You know, normally, I’d be sucking you off, and I’d be swallowing it all like a kitten with a bowl of milk, but you’ve been under way too much stress, and you drank way too much last night. If you came in my mouth - and I’d want you to come in my mouth - I’d swallow it no matter what and I don’t feel up to the bitter taste you’re going to have. Sorry.” She smiled at him. “Now, let’s just let things cool down a little, then we’ll build back up to a climax again.”

Harry felt his orgasm back away and as he lay there watching her, he could see that she was studying the reactions of his dick very intently. When his cock gave a tiny shudder, she smiled to herself in satisfaction and slowly began to stroke again.

As he relaxed into her rhythm again he asked, “So, you come into the Pearl, and there I am, in a lot of pain. Why’d you sit down? Why not leave me alone?”

“I couldn’t, Harry. Not the way you were screaming. Oh, not verbally, not audibly. But in every other way; your posture, your facial expression, the number of empties on the table, the look in your eyes, the way you were murmuring to yourself. You were like an animal, trapped in a cage, going mad and biting itself constantly, just gnawing at its own limbs. I had to see if there was anything human left to save. And if there was, was there anything I could do to help. Now, enough talking, it’s time to let me make you feel good.”

Harry closed his eyes, felt the quickening pace of her firm, smooth strokes, felt the fingers circling his asshole, felt the soft, smooth plump skin of her thighs beneath his legs. He opened his eyes once more and, ignoring the bruises, gazed at her tits, finding them to indeed be medium sized, full and beautiful, her nipples erect, and the skin crinkled all around them. He closed his eyes again. His mind started to turn on the issue of her, and her future, and he shut it down, calming himself, relaxing into the experience when he felt his balls tremble as they released another load into the system, to make its way up and out.

He opened his eyes, watching her as she watched his cock, varying her rhythm and studying the effect upon him. It seemed that her hand was barely touching his prick, that it was swinging free and that in that swinging she was reading some message as to where his orgasm was, then guiding her hand to barely brush his dick in a few certain places, just enough to bring the orgasm on a little further. The air of the bedroom smelled of sex, and of her, for looking between her legs he now had no doubt of her excitement. It smelled of him, and sweat, sweat with too much alcohol in it on his part, and over all of that the smell of roses, a smell he had associated with Angie for so long, but now he was sensing new associations being forged, and roses would forever be associated with this odd young girl who would stop to help a stranger in need.

He didn’t know if he loved her, he didn’t know if he truly needed her, but he knew that he wanted her. And with that thought, his orgasm passed the point of no return.

Chapter 2 »