Page 11 of After Dark
Her mind whirled at that, as it was meant to. But there was only one answer, so she gave it. “Yes, sir.”
“That means you and I have an hour to catch up,” Arlo said with a deeper sort of satisfaction in his voice. “Widen your thighs, please. I want to see more of that cunt.”
She did as he asked, settling back on her heels. And every little movement was sex. It was all charged and hot. Even the way she gripped her own wrist behind her back was erotic.
And so of course she shivered as that gray gaze of his moved all over her pussy, like its own caress.
“Tell me who fucked that pussy—my pussy—over the past eighteen months,” Arlo said, almost conversationally.
Josette let out a breath. Or really, it left her. In a rush.
“And I’ll remind you,” Arlo continued before she could speak, “no lies, Josette. You know that I’ll know.”
“I do know,” she whispered. She cleared her throat. “I went back home to North Carolina. You know that.”
“Wilmington, North Carolina. A resort town for some. But for you a townie for generations, something a little more rough-and-tumble, I believe.”
That was a remarkably concise way to sum up the life she’d gone to such lengths to leave behind, then had returned to when she didn’t know where else to go.
“I missed you,” she said, though maybe she shouldn’t have. But not saying it would have felt like a lie. “It was like losing a limb.” He wanted to bite back at that, judging by the look on his face, but she was telling the truth. She knew he could see it. “So after I caught up with all my kinfolk, who were exactly the way I’d left them in the first place—and some of them quite a bit worse—I decided that I should try some of the clubs.”
“Random sex clubs,” Arlo said, the disapproval clear.
“I would’ve used the Club app, of course,” Josette told him. “But I thought you would track me. And I didn’t want that.”
The Club app that she knew was a lifeline to people with sexual needs and desires like hers and would have been a lifeline over the past year and a half. The Club app that was all over the world now, a brainchild of Master Frederick, who by this point she thought had to be close to opening up the first real life version. Right here in Oakland.
But that was not the story she needed to be telling right now. “I found one in Raleigh. It had strict rules and I liked that, because it felt safer. I joined. Did a few scenes.”
“How many scenes?”
“Ten or so, I think. I went every weekend for a few months.” She kept her gaze on his, because she knew that he was doing that thing he did. Peering deeply into her soul whether she liked it or not. “Two women. Six men. The women were cruel.”
“You must have liked that.”
Josette nodded, and nearly winced at the memory. “I did. It felt like penance.”
“Especially because you couldn’t possibly have gotten off the way you would have liked. No matter how you tried.”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I didn’t. They took that as a challenge, of course. But they hurt me, and that was what I wanted from them. Two of the men fucked me in the ass. Another one didn’t fuck me at all, because he was playing with electrical currents. The other three were more prosaic. Whips and chains and a good, hard fuck.”
Arlo smiled at that. “You didn’t come, did you?”
“With one of them I did,” she told him, but she scrunched up her nose as she said it. “But it was… headachy and small. Like a little bump. Depressing, really. The other two I faked.”
He shook his head, though his gaze was amused. “Shocking behavior.”
“Each time I hoped that they would notice and punish me for it,” Josette said, like this was a confession. She guessed it was. “But they didn’t.”
“So what did you gain from your experience in a random North Carolina sex club?” he asked her, lounging back in his chair. “I assume that’s why you were there. For a learning experience.”
“I decided that I was going about it all wrong. That allthe sex stuff was weird and leaning into what was wrong with me wasn’t going to make it any better.”
“Ah,” Arlo said. “Of course. Did you go back to church? Daringly hold hands on a monitored walk beneath the gimlet eye of a jealous pastor?”
Josette laughed. “I didn’t grow up in Amish country, Arlo. I did not go to church.”
He looked at her. She stared back at him. Somehow, between them, it was like a bubble rose up—until both of them were laughing.
