My Pretend Sex Slave 07

"Okay," Jett nodded, "here or..."

"My room," Lisa said.

Jett peeled herself off the table. Dark red lines across her hips, where her body had dug in to the edges of the wooden desk.

"No," I said.

"It isn't up to you," Lisa said.

Jett walked toward the door.

"Stop," I said.

"You don't control me or my art remember?" she said. "You going to start now?"

It wasn't an ultimatum, but it might have been worse. Telling her no would wound her more than a whipping. It sucked.

"Please don't," I whispered.

Jett walked past me to Lisa's room. Lisa didn't budge. It was my turn to feel angry. She was always interfering in my life, every encounter hurt worse than the one before. No more.

"I won't let you hurt her," I said.

Lisa watched me. She looked so unbelievably sad. There weren't tears in her eyes, but that didn't make it better. It felt like a battle she had lost already, lost so many times that she didn't bother to feel outraged. Lisa looked numb.

"She's already hurting," Lisa said, "and you're making it worse."

I was on the verge of tears.

"I won't leave her alone," I said, "not again."

"Okay," Lisa said. "I'm sorry you have to see this."

I stood in the hallway and watched the two of them make preparations. Lisa focused all of her attention on Jett, as if she was looking for hesitation, silently confirming each second that Jett wanted to keep moving forward.

Lisa bound Jett's wrists together, then looped the rope around the small hook in the ceiling. She turned Jett's body away from me, so I could only see Jett's perfect back and ass, and her sweaty auburn hair.

I didn't think I could watch Lisa hit her, but I was absolutely certain I couldn't stand to see Jett's face.

"Please..." I whispered.

Lisa swung the crop, landing on Jett's tight shoulders. I flinched. Jett didn't budge.

Lisa paused for a moment, waiting for feedback. Receiving none, she hit Jett again.

It hurt me in a visceral way, almost like a migraine, a dull ache so bad it made me nauseas, but I could manage.

When the first red welts started to form on her back, I dug my fingers in to my hands. It wouldn't last forever, and when it was over, Jett would need me. I wasn't running this time.

Her first groan was difficult, but I put it out of my mind. Another swing. Three welts became five. The groans got more intense.

"Red," I said.

Lisa struck again.

"When a safeword--"

"This is not for you!" Lisa said. She turned to me, furious. "It's not about you Brett."

I saw Jett's neck go limp, waiting for my outburst to be over, waiting for Lisa to continue.

Lisa turned back to Jett. Another swing, this one landing directly on a red welt on Jett's ass.

Jett screamed.

I took a step toward Jett. Lisa stepped between us. She put her small hand on my chest.

"You have to go," Lisa whispered, "I'll take care of her. I love her too, just different. We're almost done."

Lisa took a deep breath.

"I... I care about you," Lisa said. "And watching you suffer like this, it hurts me too. So please, just go. Thirty minutes tops. Go."

Lisa and Jett were not the same. When Jett whipped Lisa, she crackled with sexual energy, the transformation an aphrodisiac. But not Lisa. She wasn't enjoying this.

Somehow that made it okay.

I nodded at Jett. "Can I?"

"Yes," Lisa said.

I walked around Jett's naked body, trying to avoid seeing the impact points on her back.

Jett's face was puffy, and her hair and neck were covered in sweat. She looked up at me but didn't speak.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Me too," she said.

Then I kissed her. She kissed me back, comfortable, like we were breathing for each other more than kissing.

I left. Lisa had the good sense not to whip Jett until I was out the door.

--

Winter arrived on the tail of that storm. The rain had slowed down considerably, but it was officially cold. The rain wasn't quite snow, which made it more miserable.

Even with a coat I was cold, and as I walked, as the water soaked through layer after layer, I grew more so. Being cold was a misery I could manage.

--

Lisa was in the kitchen when I returned. The electric kettle was running, and she was knocking a packet of hot cocoa against the counter.

"Where's Jett?" I asked.

"Home," Lisa said.

"You shouldn't have let her go. She shouldn't be alone," I said.

"You're the reason she left," Lisa said. "She's afraid of hurting you."

The apartment was warm, maybe normal heating, but it felt stifling. My fingers were stiff, and the clothes under my jacket were damp. I felt the weight of warm air pressing on me.

"I know you don't understand--" Lisa started.

"Help me," I said.

Lisa stared at me. I think she saw the pain on my face. I was imagining Jett beat up, whipped and sore.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"Try."

"Okay," Lisa said. She collected her thoughts. "What happened at dinner tonight?"

"Lisa, I need--"

"I'm trying!" she yelled. "Dinner. Tell me about it."

"Her dad is an asshole," I said.

"I gathered that, what else?"

I tried to replay the events from earlier that night. It was not so many hours ago, but so much had happened. Almost like it happened to other people.

"I was angry," I said.

"What about Jett?" she asked.

Her dad, belittling her art. Talking to me like Jett wasn't there. Threatening to cut her off, using money as leverage to send me away, to leave her alone. Defenseless.

"She..." Why did I leave her alone? Fuck money and family. "She was devastated. Fuck."

I didn't know I could feel worse. I let this happen. Why did I keep letting bad things happen?

"It's not your fault," Lisa said.

"Sure," I said.

"She's new at this," Lisa said, "and I can't pretend to know her every emotion--"

"Guess," I said.

Lisa shot me an angry look, like she was close to cutting the conversation off. I nodded in apology.

"We all live with emotional pain. Guilt. Shame. Whatever..." Lisa trailed off, searching for words.

I didn't rush her this time. I waited.

"And it can get so bad, that it begins to swallow you, and you can't even imagine the pain ever going away, and you feel like you are going to die, and the only way to survive..."

She trailed off.

"You can't stop it, but maybe you can control it," she said, "just long enough to breathe again, to imagine living..."

Lisa took a long pause. Her eyes were wet.

"So you ask your friend to beat you, not because you want it but because you need it. You need to experience the worst thing you can imagine, because when you survive that, maybe you can survive the other things too."

My heart was racing. She wasn't just talking about Jett. Maybe she wasn't talking about Jett at all.

"It's about control," I said.

"Yeah," Lisa said. "Or the illusion of control. You taunt the thing you dread. When you survive that moment, you can convince yourself that you might just survive the next hour or day or year."

My heart was pounding. I was starting to recognize the signs of... something. A panic attack?

Jett's behavior made a kind of strange sense. Mask emotional pain with physical pain. Survive the moment.

I shut my eyes. I was so close to something. It was all in front of me, but I couldn't connect it.

"Is that what you were doing? What you and I were doing?" I asked. My hands were shaking.

"The spanking?" Lisa sounded so tired. She was talking about the afternoon where I tied her up and spanked her, not stopping until she dared me to fuck her.

"No," I said.

That moment was important, but the spanking wasn't it. Something was floating beneath the surface, bigger than one afternoon. I felt blood pounding in my neck and chest. Enlightenment was swimming right in front of me, but I couldn't grab it.

I took a deep breath. This wasn't about a spanking, or a threesome, or pretend sex slavery. It was all of it, a pattern.

"No," I said again, "This was about taunting the thing you dread."

I flashed back to a hundred interactions. Nipples and smooth skin. Tiny panties and winks. Lisa naked and on her knees, my pretend sex slave. The spanking, daring me to fuck her, needing me to push past her boundaries. The blow job, angry at Jett, finally giving Lisa what we both wanted.

That was when I found it, the melancholy that had been crawling between us for weeks and weeks.

"Oh fuck," I said. My body put together the pieces before my conscious mind did. My stomach revolted. I reached for the sink, vomiting. Violent, not sick, disgusted, throwing up the last remnants of digested steak and asparagus.

Lisa never wanted to fuck me. Had never wanted it. She wasn't daring me to fuck her, she was testing me.

My stomach heaved again, but nothing came up this time, only bile.

Lisa moved in at the beginning of summer. We barely knew each other. I was her roommate, but also an acquaintance. And I was a man. She needed me to be safe. Lisa had been afraid. She needed to be able to sleep without fear, to take showers without a predator lurking. She didn't trust her judgment or my character. So Lisa tested, relieved each time I treated her like a human being, but never really believing it for long.

She was right not to trust me.

I heard Lisa asking if I was okay. Her fingers on my shoulder helped.

I ran the faucet. Wash it all away. My throat was raw. My eyes watered.

I thought about our weird interactions, Lisa questioning whether I was fucking her or Jett. It made a kind of sense, telling herself that I was safe, that it was Jett and not me.

I slid down to the floor in a heap. Lisa towered above me. She looked as tired as I felt.

"You're scaring me," Lisa said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked. My voice sounded as wretched as I felt.

"Tell you what?"

"All of it," I said. "That you never wanted me, that you just needed--"

"Stop Brett," she said.

"No," I said. "I have to know. You never wanted to fuck me, you were just trying to prove something. Testing me. Making sure I was different than someone else. That you were safe."

I looked up and saw tears in her eyes.

"Is that what you think?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "But I wasn't though. Safe."

I wanted her to tell me I was wrong. She didn't.

Her silence in that moment broke me. I started sobbing.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

Lisa stared down at me as I sobbed. I pulled my knees up against my chest and buried my face.

"Me too," she said. Her voice quiet.

I looked up.

"But why Jett?" I asked. "Why keep going back?"

"I need it," Lisa said.

"But not from me," I said.

"No," she said. "I needed something else from you."

I was part of the pain she was trying to control. The male friend she could trust to see her naked and tie her up and not take advantage, not fuck her.

Until she couldn't.

I leaned against the cabinet and closed my eyes. I had nowhere to go that the pain wouldn't find me. There was no point in running, no point in moving at all.

"Brett..." Lisa started.

I waited for Lisa to say something that could help, that could cut through the layers of guilt and shame.

No words could make this right. She didn't even try. Eventually Lisa left.

I sat in the kitchen for hours. There were moments when I could control my emotions, when I could keep the pain from erupting to the surface.

Those moments were followed by longer ones when I couldn't.