A Rose by Any Other Name

Steve Welker hated his job. He had learned quickly that the promise of a good job after college was a myth that fooled the 1.5 million graduates each year. Fortunately he had received his degree in accounting, which gave him far better prospects than the poor bastards graduating with a degree in History or English. Still, it could be better; recruited by a mid-sized auditing firm, and with no other options, he had settled for life as a "floater." After a year at the head office, which gave him enough time to pass his certification exams, they sent him on the road. He bounced from office to office, filling in where extra help was needed and occasionally flying out to meet clients alone.

Their financial logic was sound, if not a little harsh; since he spent 230 days out of the year on the road, they cut his pay significantly. Steve had always thought it was supposed to work the other way around, but was desperate enough for a job that he didn't fight it. Instead of trying to maintain an apartment on his meager salary, he simply slept wherever he could when not on the road: at a friend or family member's place, or in a hotel if he had collected enough chain loyalty points or frequent flyer miles to swing it without too much of his own money.

When the plane touched down in Dallas, he sighed and collected his carry-on from the overhead apartment. Making his way through the crowd towards the baggage collection area, he waited for his small suitcase to come around. Tucking both straps over his shoulder and smoothing out his suit jacket, Steve walked outside and turned. The dusty, humid air hit him like a wall; pulling on a pair of sunglasses, he could already feel a thin layer of sweat forming on his forehead. Stepping away from the crowd jostling for taxis, he moved down the line and nodded to a driver leaning against his hood smoking a cigarette. Tossing his bags into the backseat, he shut the door and felt the car rumble to a start.

Steve surfed the web on his phone while the cab rambled south on 360 towards Arlington. He settled on a La Quinta Inn, figuring that the $49.99/night rate plus tax would fit into the $60/night accommodations budget that he was allotted. Usually, if he got away from the airport and closer to the edges of town, there were plenty of chain motels that would fit into his price range. Giving the cab driver the address, he kept his eyes down and scanned through the emails he had received while on the flight.

"You here on business," the cab driver asked with a glance in the rearview mirror.

"Mmhm," Steve mumbled.

What gave it away, he wanted to ask. Flying in to hell's hotbox in a fucking suit?

Dallas, in his experience, was an exceedingly boring place. When anyone thinks of Dallas, the immediate next step is the events surrounding JFK...and when a presidential assassination is what you're known for, all bets are off. One of his first trips on the road had been Dallas, nearly a year ago, and he had spent what little free time he had exploring it with gusto. His second visit to the city had been a little less exciting...the third had bordered on mundane, and he expected the fourth to be no less than agony.

When the cab swung into the hotel parking lot and stopped, Steve pulled out his wallet and handed the cab driver $40.

The front doors to the hotel were closed, he hoped in an effort to keep the inside cool against the stifling heat outside. The second set of doors was propped open by a stack of phone books; Steve suspected that they were broken, the hinges probably worn from years of disrepair. Stepping up the desk, appraised his selection; as expected, the lobby had the smell of cleaning solution; everything seemed clean, if not a little worn. Between the front desk and elevators was a small seating area, comprised of mismatched furniture that had probably been purchased in the 90s, and already used at the time.

Seated on one of the small sofas was a rather thin woman, texting on a pre-paid cell phone and kicking around a small bag at her feet. She glanced up, her lips curling back in a smile that displayed an unfortunate set of crooked teeth. She probably wondered what someone like Steve was doing in such a place; he had stopped asking that question months ago. Her dark hair was lusterless and unkempt, her clothing as new and well-cared for as everything else in sight: a shirt that seemed one size too large, and a pair of cotton and spandex pants that hugged her pockmarked body and had seen better days. She certainly wouldn't win any beauty contests, but it was nothing a few hundred dollars couldn't fix.

Already feeling out of place in a suit, the desk clerk's faded and cigarette-burn covered "uniform" shirt did little to ease his apprehension. Having gone through the check-in process countless times before, he let his mind wander while the clerk booked him into a king-sized room with a desk.

Taking the small card-sized folder she offered him with "507" written on the outside, Steve picked up his bags and walked towards the elevator. He took another look at the woman seated on the sofa, wondered what she was doing, and immediately forgot about her as he rode up to his room and dropped his bags at the foot of the bed.

Changing into a t-shirt and shorts, he flipped open the hotel guide and looked at the list of nearby restaurants. Killing nearly an hour by slowly rereading the guide, and figuring that no one ever went wrong with Applebee's, he retraced his steps back outside and down the street.

After a salad and a beer, he sat and nursed another draft to postpone returning to the hotel. Finally squaring up the bill, he headed back to his room. The walk felt like one he had taken a hundred times in a hundred different cities: the sound of a nearby interstate, the smell of exhaust fumes, and the occasional bit of garbage that blew across the dusty sidewalk in front of his feet.

As he padded down the silent hall, thumbing his keys, the woman from the lobby came into view. She was leaning against the small alcove by the room across from his.

"Hey baby," she said with a snaggle-toothed grin, slurring her words a little.

Shifting from one foot to the other, she hooked her index finger into the collar of her shirt and pulled it aside, exposing a few inches of equally pale skin and the edge of a small tattoo.

"You look like you could use some company."

There it is, he thought to himself. It was one of the two phrases he had come across too many times to count. "You look like you could use some company" and "Are you looking to party" were virtually interchangeable, both putting forth the same statement: I'll fuck you if you pay me.

He had been with his fair share of escorts, usually one every few months when he was in the mood and couldn't pick someone up at a local bar. But the streetwalking type he had avoided, each reason for doing so as good as the next. He didn't bother to question whether she was at the hotel to actively seek out clientele, or if she just decided that she could use a few extra dollars and saw him as a potential candidate.

With a chuckle, Steve shook his head and turned to go into his room. He heard her step across the hallway, but didn't have time to turn before she pressed into his back. Reaching around, she grabbed at his crotch.

"Come on baby, I'll make you feel real good."

"Yeah, I bet," he said with an uncomfortable smile as her hand fumbled down the inside of his thigh.

Shrugging his shoulder to try and get rid of her, Steve opened his door and walked in. When he turned to shut the door, he found that she had pushed her way over the threshold. Shutting the door, he turned and watched her walk into the room. Staggering away from him, each step more unstable than the last, her hands reached back to bunch up her hair in a poor attempt at seduction. When he had followed her past the end of the bed, she turned and smiled at him.

"My name is Rose," she whispered.

He could smell alcohol on her breath, and lots of it.

Curious as to whether she would ask his name, and already scrambling to come up with a fake one if she did, Steve watched as she reached out and hooked her hands around his neck. The feel of her fingers playing with the back of his hair made him a little uncomfortable. Licking her lips, she looked up at him.

"So what are you interested in, baby? You want me to suck your cock?"

What the hell, he thought. She can't want more than a few bucks. He figured that he would be able to get rid of her with the $10 bill in his wallet, provided he didn't let her see the rest. He also thought that it would be more trouble than it was worth to try and get rid of her now, and assumed that was part of her modus operandi.

Steve grunted a response, and she took that as a yes. Rose pushed him lightly on the chest; feeling the bed hit the back of his legs, Steve sat down.

"I bet you got a huge cock," she whispered, running her hands down his chest and over his thighs.

Proposition, seduction, and flattery; she had tried the three-step process, failing miserably at each. Turning around, she dropped down onto his lap. He instinctively flinched as soon as he realized that she had flopped down without any care to look at what she may be landing on. Grinding his teeth, he adjusted her as she started to grind. He had to admit that, if nothing else, her ass was at least firm. There didn't appear to be a shred of fat on her body, no doubt finely tuned by a steady diet of crack.

Gripping his knees, she rubbed her ass back and forth on his crotch in what he assumed was an attempt at a lap dance. It wasn't until he reached up to grab at her small breasts and maneuver her body in the right direction that it had any effect. Finally, after nearly ten minutes (a period that he liked to think would have been much longer if not for the two beers he had consumed), he began to grow stiff under her. Unable to miss the feeling of his shaft prodding and pressing into her, Rose pushed herself off and turned to face him.

Reaching towards the foot of the bed, Steve dug around in his bag and found a condom. Pushing Rose off of his lap, Steve felt along the edge for the small indentation that he could use to open it.

"You don't need that, sweetie," she said, reaching to take the condom from his hand.

Yeah, right, he thought to himself. Lifting it away from her grasping fingers, Steve tore open the wrapper. Holding the rubber disk in one hand, he lifted himself off of the bed and pulled the front of his shorts and boxers down together. Centering the condom over his shaft, he carefully rolled it down the length of his cock until the tight ring was snug against his sack.

Leaning forward, Rose took the first half of his covered member between her lips and started sucking. Without fail, she disappointed him yet again; her mouth moved too fast to tease, but too slow for anything else. It was nothing short of an uninterested, monotonous, "I'm just trying to do this and get the fuck out of here" act that took away any fleeting pretext that she was after more than money. Steve let her hair fall into her face, partly because he didn't want to look at it and partly because he couldn't be bothered to sweep it aside.

After several minutes, Steve grew bored; he knew that at the rate she was going, it would be hours before he came...and that was if he could at all. The likely outcome would be him finishing himself off. Fuck that. I might as well get what I can out of her.

Reaching down, he put his hands on the back of her head. In one fluid motion, he thrust off of the bed and stood up; his shorts hit the floor, pooling around his feet. Rose gagged as his cock hit the back of her throat, her eyes widening in surprise. Her neck tried to pull back, but his hands kept her lips pressed snugly against his loins. Slowly pulling his hips back, Steve watched the head of his cock drop from her lips. She took a deep breath, then sucked in the saliva that had crept out onto the edges of her mouth.

"What are you..."

Before she could finish, he pushed his length back into her mouth and began to move her head back and forth on his shaft. Every time he thrust her head down on his cock, either a choking sound or groan of protest would emanate from her lips. She looked up at him with red eyes, her makeup starting to smear a little. Rose brought her hands up, bracing them on his thighs and trying to slow down his pace. Realizing that his progress towards an orgasm was almost as slow as it had been when she was left to her own volition, Steve let her spit his cock out.

Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he turned and pulled her to the edge of the bed. While her lips sucked in lungful after lungful of air, he dragged a pillow from the headboard over to where her face met the comforter; in the event that Rose tried to make any unnecessary noises, he could shove her face into it to muffle the sound.

Reaching down, Steve lifted his shirt up and off of his body, leaving him completely naked. Tossing it over the desk next to the bed, he stepped towards her and bent down. His hands roamed over her legs, ending at the waistband of her pants; hooking his fingers under the elastic, he roughly snatched them over her ass and down to her thighs, then down and off of her legs. Nestled between the cheeks of her ass was a thin ribbon of dark blue material; seizing the waistband of her panties, he pulled them down to her thighs. He briefly toyed with the idea of taking them off and pushing them into her mouth, but decided it wasn't necessary at the moment. Cocking his head to the side, he could see her exposed pussy.

Dry as a damn bone, he thought. Fortunately, the condom sheathing his rod still glistened with her saliva.

Lifting her up until her waist was bend around the edge of the mattress, he put his hand in the middle of her back and squatted down. Spreading her legs with his feet, Steve used his free hand to guide the head of his cock between the lips of her pussy. Raising his hips and thrusting forward, she gasped as he buried every inch of his length inside of her. Planting his feet on the floor and holding on to her waist, he began to thrust. Her arms began to flail, trying to swing back and make contact with him. When she finally did, her fist weakly slapping against his thigh, Steve stopped and raised his hand.

Bringing his arm down sharply, Steve's palm hit her exposed cheek; she gasped, recoiling from the slap. Her skin flushed a little, and he gave her ass a light squeeze. After waiting to see if she continued resisting, and seeing her stretch her arms out across the bed, he resumed.

Reaching down and hooking his hands under thighs, he lifted her ass up off of the bed. Thrusting his hips forward and pulling her back into him at the same time, he quickly fell into a steady rhythm. The steady sound of their skin slapping together grew louder and faster, celebrating the state of her flesh pressed firmly into his loins and his cock buried deep inside of her. She continued to squirm, signaling her vexation but not enough to warrant another cuff; still, he raised his palm and brought it down firmly on her ass. The strike made her lurch forward, his shaft slipping from her entirely.

Reaching down, Steve slipped his arm under her throat and lifted her off of the bed at a forty-five degree angle. His other arm held her stomach, holding her in place to receive him. Bending his knees, he let his cock find its way back to her entrance and thrust upward.

As his hips bucked back and forth, Rose lifted her hands up to the arm around her throat and gripped it tightly. He was unsure as to whether or not she was simply holding on, or struggling to breath. Assuming the latter, he loosened his hold on her without relinquishing any control. He continued to plunge into her for what seemed like an hour, her moderately used walls failing to have a significant effect. Finally, he began to feel his loins tingling. Nearing the end, he shoved her back down onto the bed and reached for her knees.

Picking up her legs and holding them back in a "V" shape with her feet pointed straight back, he pushed forward into her. It didn't take long for the feeling in his groin to return, and then spread up his spine and out to his extremities. His entire body was burning, partially from physical exertion and the rest from his rapidly approaching orgasm. His rhythm became less regular, nose-diving into downright sporadic in the quest for complete release.

With a grunt, Steve arched his back and thrust forward one last time. The head of his cock erupted, his heavy balls draining as wave after wave of his sticky seed pulsed into the condom. When he was sure that it was over and his member began to soften, he carefully pulled out of her and stood up.

Dropping her legs, he heard her gasp when her knees hit the corner of the mattress. Stepping out from between her legs and sitting down next to her, he slowly peeled off the condom and tied the top into a knot. Dropping it next to her head, he watched at her eyes slowly glanced over at it.

"I'll bet you would have loved for me to shoot that load deep inside of you," he whispered.

His hand wandered over her lower back, index finger slowly stroking the indentation above her waist.

"But if you think I would waste a drop of cum on a whore like you, you're wrong." With that, he brought his hand down again on her reddening cheek.

She whimpered in response, a tear streaming down her face and staining the pillow. Steve stood up, and pushed her up onto the bed. She instinctively curled up, sobbing quietly. Pulling his boxers back on, he picked up the condom; carrying it into the bathroom, he flushed it away and watched as the repository swirled, quickly disappearing down the pipes.

***

Steve was sitting at the desk, pecking out an email when he heard the bedspread rustle. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Rose squirming against the bonds he had placed her in while she lay asleep, just after he stripped off her remaining clothing and piled it in the corner. His belts, one casual and one dress, had each been looped around an ankle and hooked through the bed frame, keeping her legs spread as wide as possible. A pair of socks had sufficed to bind her hands; they were dress socks, and held enough elasticity to securely tie her hands down on the other side of the bed. Glancing at the clock, he calculated that she had been asleep for 2 hours.

"Well, look who's awake."

Standing up and striding over to the bed, he reached back and brought his palm down on her rear. She bucked against her restraints, whimpering when he struck her.

"And I'll bet you're just dying for round two, aren't you?"

His fingers gripped her ass, spreading it apart far enough for him to see what he had already decided would be his next undertaking.

"Please," she whispered with a sniffle. "Please let me go. I swear I won't tell no one."

"Tell them what? That you were selling ten-dollar blowjobs, and I got a little rough? No one is going to believe a crackwhore like you."

Standing up, Steve walked over to his bag and dug around in the side pocket. The sound of glass clinking together filled the air as he fished out two small, single-serving mini bottle of vodka. Unscrewing the lid on one, he walked around the bed and sat down next to Rose's head.

"Especially when you can't blow under the legal limit."

He forced the mouth of the bottle past her lips and teeth, tipping the contents into her mouth. He watched her throat ripple as she swallowed, a small cough escaping her lips. Unscrewing the second bottle, he held it up; she tried to turn her head, groaning negatively. With a sigh, he reached down and firmly pinched her nostrils shut. After a few seconds, her mouth opened with a gasping sound. He dumped the contents of the second bottle into her throat, and held her nose until she swallowed again.