Void (8 page)

My mystery client.

The fire in his touch. The graze of his fingers along the swell of my breasts. The expert way he made my body come alive as if awakening me from a deep slumber. All of those things encompassed with the sensations I got to feel with intimacy were nearly too much for me. Then there was the fact that Sinclaire was watching the entire time, instructing me on how to move and what to do, and it only made the night that much more intense. I was turned on not only from the man who was physically manipulating my body, but also by the man watching him do so.

“That won’t be necessary. We are both adults. What goes on in the privacy of our personal lives doesn’t have to affect our professional relationship, Sinclaire. But my question is this, if you have this fabulous job here, why do you work for…whoever it was that sought the services of my agency last night?”

One hand brushed against the small amount of stubble that graced his jaw, while his other tapped a rhythmic cadence against his coffee cup in front of him.

“I help a
friend
who needs my assistance to satiate his desires. A friend who has difficulty when it comes to the opposite sex.”

“What kind of issues?” I asked, trying to gain more knowledge about my client. I still hadn’t responded to his request for my services over the span of the upcoming twelve weeks. Lexie blew up my phone last night with a thousand text messages telling me how important it was to the agency to remain on this client’s good side. She stressed the importance of how I needed the income as well as the guaranteed
release
I would have on a weekly basis. All of those factors worked together in a case that was damn near difficult for me to want to turn down.

“I’m afraid I cannot discuss that with you. Patient-doctor confidentiality.”

“So he’s a patient of yours?”

“I guess you could say that. Now, how about we talk about you.”

Here we go. The same shit. The same conversations that I always have when someone knows about the trait in which I suffer.

“You look like you’re aggravated,” he noted, arching an eyebrow as if asking a question instead of making a statement. That was something that both the therapists before him did. They would tell me about an emotion or feeling that they “thought” I had to help me try to identify those emotions.

“I guess. It just feels like the same conversation that I have had for the last twenty-four years.
Tell us about you, Nicola. How are you feeling? What does this make you feel?
It is the same thing over and over again, so if aggravated is what it makes me
feel
? Then yes, I guess I am aggravated.”

“Then you should know that as your doctors, we try our best to help you recognize those emotions so that you become more familiar with them, in hopes that you will recognize them when you feel them yourself.”

He crossed his fingers underneath his chin as he rested his elbows on his desk. I watched the fabric of his coat stretch across the muscles of his broad shoulders. The things I recognized the most were the motions of the body. I could tell if someone was turned on by a look in their eyes, or a way in which they presented themselves. The way Sinclaire kept fidgeting and changing his sitting position, told me he was uncomfortable. The deep smolder of his navy eyes told me that he liked what he saw in front of him. But it was how my body felt at that moment that was different to me. Usually I had to have some sort of physical contact in order for my physical emotions to turn on, but with Sinclaire I was turned on just by the way he looked at me.

It was amazing. Something that I have never had the pleasure to experience before. I looked away, glancing around the familiar room. I tried to look everywhere but directly at him as the wetness between my legs began to form, signaling my growing desire. It was then that I saw the documentation of his doctorate degree.

Andris S. Gunn.

“You told me your name was Sinclaire.”

His eyes followed my gaze to the certificate on the wall behind him.

“You told me your name was Jericho. I guess we both have secrets, don’t we?” He asked, tilting his head to the side before running his hand through his hair.

“I guess we do. So the “s” stands for Sinclaire?”

“Yes. Why did you choose Jericho Lane?”

“I didn’t want to be associated with my mother and father.”

The people who left me with nothing
. I thought silently. He nodded, as if seeming to understand my reason that no further explanation was warranted.

“I know some of this may be repetitive, Nicola, but instead of focusing on the emotions that you don’t feel, how about you tell me the ones that you do recognize in others as well as yourself.”

I smoothed out the invisible wrinkles in my dress pants, letting my palms slide across the smooth and perfectly pressed fabric.

“Pleasure. Physical contact.”

I looked up to find his eyes upon me, narrowing in assessment. This therapy session was completely different from all of my others. First off, the psychiatrists were old and had no inclination of my profession. Second, they didn’t affect me the way the man sitting before me did. It was damn near impossible for me to sit still in his presence, especially when he was moving his dexterous fingers across the flesh of his bottom lip, as he was presently doing. It was hard for me not to stare at his beauty or to control the need for him to fuck me on his large antique desk.

“You saw exactly everything I do feel last night.” I pointed out to him. A small surge of energy ran through me as the memories from the night before came flooding back to me. The desire to know more about the man in front of me as well as the mystery man who physically touched me while Andris’s voice filtered through my ears was becoming more prominent with each moment.

He rose from his desk, stalking in my direction, quietly assessing me the entire way. It was something I should have been used to by now; being assessed was something that occurred every day in my life. People always wondered why I was broken, why I had no filter, or why I was distant and uncaring. But being under the scrutiny of Andris Gunn was different. It created reactions within me that no other therapist, or acquaintance in my life, had ever brought out in me. It was also quickly becoming my new addiction.

He sat on the edge of his desk with his arms crossed over his chest. My eyes trailed down to the dark leather of his belt before following the lines of his muscular thighs hidden by the expensive material of his pants.

“So I did. But what I want to know is how it made you
feel
.” I smiled coyly at him. This is where the no-filter, don’t care, Nicola got to come out. He wanted to know how it made me
feel
? Then I would tell him, and maybe feed him with the desire he had created in me.

I licked my lips, coating them in moisture as I looked towards the floor briefly before I batted my eyes up at him. He continued to sit on the edge of his desk in front of me, his position giving him height over where I sat in the chair. His demeanor and posture displayed an air of control or dominance. I brought a hand up towards my neck, letting it rest on the skin exposed from my button down blouse, before trailing two fingers down towards the swell of my breasts.

His reaction didn’t go unnoticed. The small hitch in his breath. The way he shifted himself on the desk, and the way the arms crossed over his chest came down to grip the edge of the desk, causing his knuckles to whiten.

“He made the room warmer, just from his presence, creating a static charge. When he touched me, it was like a jolt, a sharp zap that made my stomach feel like it had bottomed out. You know, like the feeling you get when a car goes over a hill too fast? Well, I felt like that car, the incline steadily increasing pressure until it crested over the top and free fell towards the bottom,” I replied crossing my legs, trying to suppress the ache I felt between them from the memories.

“I felt hyper-aware of him, focused one hundred percent on the man I couldn’t see, yet my brain felt foggy at the same time.”

He shifted again as I brought my fingertips to my lips.

“When his lips pressed to mine, it was like I couldn’t get enough. My heart was beating wildly in my chest, the pulse felt all the way down…” I said stopping to nibble on the pad of my thumb.

Andris cleared his throat and I opened my eyes to look up at him, my vision cloudy with desire. I noticed the slight flush to his face and the way he had his jaw tightly clenched.

“Please, continue,” he instructed. Taking a deep breath I did.

“My palms began to tingle. I ached to touch him in return; to pull him closer to me when my body sought for some part of him to be between my legs. It was a rush of adrenaline when he bound me to the bed, leaving me open and bare to him. I felt him stake claim in ownership of my body with each caress, each touch.”

I was chewing on my lip now, amazed at how turned on I was with my mystery man not even in the room. It was new, welcomed, and completely
euphoric
. My body buzzed to life and it made it hard to sit still in front of Andris. I felt the bite that my teeth made into the flesh of my lip and I licked them, tasting the metallic presence of blood. Instantly, his hand cupped my jaw and the pad of his thumb brushed across my bottom lip.

“You’re bleeding.”

He got up from the desk and walked out of the office, closing the door behind him. I lifted my hand to my lips and pulled it back to find the pinkish red hue of blood on the tips of my fingers, rubbing it between them. The door to the office opened and Andris reappeared carrying a towel and walked right up to me before lifting the towel and placing it on my lips. Even though he wasn’t touching me with his skin, I could feel the heat through the towel making my lips pulse in accordance.

Gently, he patted the warm compress and the red soon became pink and then nothing as the bleeding stopped. I couldn’t help but look into the deep blue of his eyes, noticing how vibrant they were up close. From far away, they looked dark and brooding, but up close, I could see the tiniest of gold flecks around his pupils.

“I think it stopped.” He said, still standing dangerously close to me. It was the same surge of energy I felt when I was with him and my client last night. How was it that after nearly thirty years of vacancy, my emotions were beginning to open up and all because of two men; one I have seen, the other still mysterious and secret.

“Keep this with you in case it starts again.”

I felt drained as if my body had just run a marathon in a sprint. The new things that were taking place inside of me did something that I also wasn’t used to.

Being overwhelmed.

I watched Andris take a drink out of the coffee cup that sat on his desk before setting it down and reaching for a pen. He flipped open my folder and jotted down a few notes, all the while I was trying to bring my body back down to a level that wasn’t threatening to make me explode from the inside out.

“So pleasure, you feel. Pleasure, you understand,” he stated just before leaning in and whispering like we were accompanied by other people in the room.

“Is this why you do what you do? Is that why you are an escort?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He seemed taken aback by my answer, an almost angry look in his eyes. “I have homework for you for our next session.”

“What? I’m back in high school now?” I asked.

“It is to help you, Nicola. That way you don’t have to sell your body in order to feel things.”

“There is nothing wrong with what I do.”

“Other people beg to differ.”

“Well, I don’t care what others think.”

He took a long breath, running his hands through both sides of his hair, leaving a messy, disheveled look in the wake of his actions.

“I want you to keep a journal. Expressive writing can be beneficial in helping to stretch your ability to detect emotions. You need to do it every day, but write beyond just the events of the day. Include observations, things that you think you are feeling, even if you aren’t sure. It may be hard at first, but the overall goal is to broaden your observations within and outside of yourself.”

He opened a drawer to his left and pulled out something wrapped in white tissue paper. Peeling it back, he revealed a beautiful leather bound journal. Reaching over, he handed it to me and I ran my hands along the smooth surface of the leather.

“Use this.”

I opened the pages to find them stark white, something ironic since on the inside, I was black. Vacant.

“You don’t have to be a whore, Nicola. You can do this on your own, and I want to help you do it.”

A stabbing pain hit me in the chest and gut and the journal fell from my hands and landed with a thump onto the dark hardwood of the floor. My breath temporarily left me in a rush as if I had been sucker punched, and as quickly as it appeared, it left me. Bending over, I reached for the journal and my purse before standing to my feet.

What the hell was that? My blood felt like it was boiling in my veins, like a caldron sitting upon a fire. I didn’t say anything to Andris as I made my way over to his office door, afraid of the things that were happening to me. My legs wobbled slightly as I walked and I just prayed I had made it out the door before they gave way from underneath me.