We’d been off and on, for sure, but I thought it was the distance and how dedicated I was to school and charity, and fuck, I’m crying now, I’m so sorry. I’m not even sad about it, I’m just pissed still, that I’d given so much time to this asshole, and then when I was feeling so low about everything, he had the nerve to show up at the club.
I assumed he was in town for a business meeting and that maybe a potential client had brought him to the club for a little extra wooing—not an uncommon scenario where I worked, especially when it came to the private rooms in the back. And of all the girls that could have been working that particular room that night, it was me.
It was fucking me.
I had on six-inch heels and a bright blue wig and he still knew me the moment I entered, just as I’d known from one glimpse of his profile that it was him.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, his words carrying like a poisonous melody over the throbbing music. “Is it really you?”
I stood in the door, having no idea what the fuck to do. I knew I could go find Mark, explain to him that I knew the client and couldn’t dance for him—Mark would understand. But even three years after he’d dumped me via wedding invitation to another girl, I still couldn’t force myself to walk away. Or stop listening when he started talking.
He said he couldn’t believe it—everyone had thought I’d absconded off to Europe or someplace exotic and all the while, I had been here . He gestured to me, to indicate the skimpy outfit I wore, to indicate all the things that came along with here , the dancing and the alleged disgrace, but I saw the moment he was done making his point, the moment his pupils dilated and he took in my nearly naked body.
He’d married Fucking Penelope but he was here and he was here for me , and fuck it all, I wanted that. That moment where he chose me over her. No matter how wrong it was.
“Come inside,” he said, and I did.
Will God forgive me for that? Because I could have left. Without any consequences. I could have found another girl and left the club without another moment spent with Sterling Haverford III. But deep down, I wanted to stay. Deep down, I wanted what I knew would happen if I stayed.
I closed the door behind me and crossed my arms, and then told him exactly how much of an asshole he was. To his credit, he didn’t deny it.
He asked me to come closer. It was a command, and Lord help me, I’ve always responded to commands. I walked over to him, and he ran a hand up my flank to where my skirt hung just below my ass. His wedding ring glinted in the low neon light of the room. His fucking wedding ring from his fucking marriage to Penelope Fucking Middleton.
I tried to pull back, but he reached up and grabbed my arm.
And then he said, “You know why I didn’t marry you, Poppy?” He was caressing the inside of my thigh now and I couldn’t help it, I took a tiny step to the side, just to widen my legs the smallest bit.
He smiled and went on. “It’s not because I didn’t want to be married to a Danforth. God knows that with your family and your money and your brains, on paper you would have been the perfect wife. But we both know better, don’t we, Poppy?”
His fingers finally found what they were looking for, my lace thong, and he curled his fingers around the fabric and ripped, the flimsy material tearing easily, granting him access to my cunt.
“Deep down,” he said, continuing his earlier train of thought, touching me, touching me so much now, “deep down, we both know that you’re a little slut. Yes, with a perfect background and a perfect education, but you were made for being a whore, Poppy, not a wife.”
I told him to fuck off, and then he said, “Do you think I just showed up here accidentally? I’ve been looking for you for three years. You’re mine or have you forgotten?”
How could I be his when he had a fucking wife? I asked him that.
And he responded that he didn’t give a shit about her—which is probably the truth. But he told me he married her because he needed someone proper, someone he wouldn’t worry about his clients wanting to fuck.
And then he said that wasn’t me. Said I screamed sex with my tits and my mouth, and not only did I always want it, but I always looked like I wanted it. And he couldn’t have that in the precious Haverford family portrait.
The worst thing was, I knew he wasn’t saying it like an insult. Those were just the facts. People like us weren’t supposed to be this way. We were supposed to be reserved and cold. Thin and bloodless. Sex was either a necessity or a calculated affair. And now Sterling wanted me to be his calculated affair. I had loved him and he wanted to keep me as his pet mistress, in a box that had no place for real love or a real future.
But while I was thinking all of this, he was unzipping himself, and he was so hard, so mouthwateringly hard, and I couldn’t help it—I knew he was married, I knew he was an asshole, but it had been so long, too long, and I had loved him once…
Are you judging me right now, Father Bell? Are you thinking about what a dumb bitch I am? I know you aren’t, you aren’t like Sterling and me. The words “dumb” and “bitch” have probably never even come out of your mouth in the same sentence. But I was thinking it then, just like I’m thinking it now. I was stupid. But I was also lonely and heartbroken and so fucking wet it was dripping down my thighs.
Then I let him fuck me. Because he was right, I do like it, I do always want it. And as he slammed into me over and over again, I told him to tell me the fantasy, this life he was offering me. And he did, goddamn him, and it all sounded so perfect coming from his lying businessman’s mouth. He told me about the lazy afternoons we’d spend together, the expensive restaurants he’d take me to, the orgasms he’d give me on top of smooth Egyptian cotton sheets. He told me about the flowers and jewelry and vacations in Bora Bora and expensive cars and everything else that would fill up our illicit life together, all while I ground myself on his cock, ground myself towards the best orgasm I’d had since college.
He was cursing by this point, folding me over the bench and driving into me from behind while he pressed my face against the leather and I felt the cold metal of his wedding ring against my hip. It was degrading and terrible and I came almost immediately.