Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35304 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
I catch Anna staring at me from the other side of the room, smiling with a little head nod of encouragement. Jeremy is standing a few feet to her left, a red ball gag in his mouth with black leather straps holding it in place.
He just winks.
Daddy.
Rye.
Identical twin of my father.
“I’ll go with yes.”’ I announce toward the man with the black hair. The crowd offering murmurs and controlled applause as my uncle pinches the top of my ear between his teeth.
I tense, my spine goes stick straight as his lips brush lower and he releases an exhale, then, “Good girl. We’re going to have some fun.
Shit.
I think I just came a little bit.
“You are fucking lucky I was here tonight.” Rye turns as the man running the evening moves on to the next name. My uncle’s, voice takes on a harder, stern edge as he steps in front of me. His body blocking my visual field as I squeeze my core muscles, the slick warmth down low a constant reminder of the secret fantasies playing out in vivid Technicolor in my head. “What were you thinking coming here?”
“I wasn’t. This was Anna’s idea. It’s her bachelorette party.”
“You could have refused.”
“You try refusing Anna and Jeremy. Anyway, maybe I’m tired of thinking everything through, ad nauseam. Maybe it was a chance for me to not be Little Miss Perfect for once.”
I visualize my life, summed up in a series of perfect pliés and straight A’s. The sudden hardness of my answer is not necessarily directed at him, but this strange and unusual place has given me a dark freedom that emboldens me.
Rye rakes his open hand down the front of his face, his eyes eating me from my head down to my feet, then back up. “I don't think you understand what a girl like you looks like to some of these men.”
“What do you mean, ‘what I look like’?”
“You look fucking lost. You look like a girl...” He hesitates, nostrils flaring on a breath. “No, not just a girl. An offering. An innocent, who doesn't know what she does to men.”
“And what do I do to men, Uncle Rye?” I meet his eyes, daring him to say it. “What do I do to you? You are a man after all, tell me, what. Do. I. Do?”
He growls. “I’m going to show you a little bit of it right now. But you agreed to the dare, so from now on, I’m Daddy, now, follow me.”
He spins on his toe, one hand darting back to pinch at the fabric of my dress at my waist, dragging me stumbling behind him. The brace on my shoulders digs in, turning my shoulders in order to move through the crowd without knocking someone in the face with my helpless, outstretched hands.
I’m wildly off balance, which, as a classically trained dancer, hasn’t happened in longer than I can remember.
What does it say about me that I like it?
Rye receives nods and respectful smiles from a lot of the other mentor guides in the crowd as we pass, and yet still none of them put even an eye on me.
It's all as though I am simply an extension of him. It should annoy the hell out of me. It smacks of sexism, but somehow it doesn’t feel like that. It feels safe, like being next to him is some sort of shield.
Or honor.
I could be stark naked, and only one man in this room would be looking at me.
“Do you worry about all the girls that come in here like this?” I ask.
“No. That's not my job. They come in here willingly, and if they don't know what they’re agreeing to with a lot of these men, that's not my problem.”
He leads me to the back of the cavernous club, where there are several doors along a dark wall. Large windows look inside small rooms as an enormous, black-suited man nods at Rye as he approaches one of the closed doors.
Uncle Rye swings it open, tugging me inside as it closes behind us with a hard click.
I’m panting from being paraded through the crowd with the arm bar and collar in place. The sudden vacuum of silence inside this small space leaves me with just my own heartbeat as he turns, reaching to the back of my neck, working the snaps of the collar, then unclipping the cuffs on my arms, and within a minute, I am free again, my arms falling to my sides, my chin dipping to my chest my body feels warm and pliant, moldable almost.
As my eyes dance around the room, I notice in the corner a short wall forming a boundary around what I can only call a ball pit, like at one of those pizza places where all the kids come for their birthdays. There’s a mirror above it, but no windows.