“Yeah, they were pretty mad at me, so were my brothers and sisters. I mean, I get it, they had no money and they thought they were going to get heaps from selling this place and then they didn’t get any. I understand.”
“Still, that’s really shitty, Middleton, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, picking at a small scratch in the couch. “Aunt Rhonda must have known it would happen. She put aside money to defend her will. Everyone’s claims were dismissed, and I went from being a student with two pairs of shoes to owning this place.”
It was a happy ending but there was no note of triumph in her voice. Ty watched as she pulled her knees into her chest and felt a hot burst of anger toward her mother and father. What kind of people begrudged their daughter the break of a lifetime? Money talked, he got that, but wasn’t the point of being a parent to take pleasure in your kids’ victories? Ty reached out to rub Middleton’s arm, then pulled back as though she were an open flame. Some inner metronome told him if he held her now, it would fuck everything up. He grabbed the blanket on the back of the couch and wrapped it around her, tucking the material into her sides so that only her head remained uncovered.
There, he thought. Much better.
Middleton peered out at him from her blanket-y confines. “Erm, Mr Hender—Ty. Why am I wrapped in a blanket?”
“You were shivering. Anyway, I’m glad you got this place in the end.”
Middleton smiled at him, painfully adorable in her swaddling. “Thanks. I hope you don’t think I’m ungrateful. Getting this apartment changed my life. I could intern while I looked for a job instead of waitressing. It was probably the only reason I got hired at GGS.”
Ty didn’t want to talk about GGS in any way shape or form. He was almost done with his beer and knew he should think about leaving, but now that she was smiling again, all he wanted to do was kiss her. Whether it was a distraction or his body had just hit its peak recovery time, he could stand to get laid again.
Middleton caught his eye. “What’s up?”
“Just thinking about what we did.”
“Oh.” She ducked her head. “I thought you might be mad at me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got a very stern face.”
He put a knee on the couch and leaned toward her. “Really?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s intimidating.”
“Do you like it?”
“I…maybe?” She looked away and just like that, they were playing again.
Ty moved closer, crowding her body with his own, much larger one. “Are you going to do what I want or do we have to perform the whole seduction song-and-dance, again?”
“Please,” she said softly. “You said it would just be once.”
“We both know I was lying.” Ty tugged the blanket from her body and she cringed, covering her breasts with her arms.
“Uh-uh,” he said, pulling them away. “Daddy needs a little something, sweetheart, and you want to make him happy, don’t you?”
Her brown eyes narrowed. “You’re not my—”
Ty kissed her, cutting her words off at the source. Her mouth was sweet with spiced rum, and he found he much preferred the flavour when he was sucking it from her lips. He also found more evidence that kissing was to Middleton what blow jobs were to him; she couldn’t get enough. In a couple of minutes of kissing she was as squirmy as she’d been when his dick was planted firmly inside her. When she was good and needy, he asked if she wanted more and she said yes.
“You okay with rough again?” he said. “Nothing from before turned you off?”
“Not at all,” she said with an eagerness that was as hot as it was endearing.
“What’s your safe word?”
“Roses.”
“Good girl.” Ty kissed her, taking it deeper than he had before, glorying in the feel of her lithe body shuddering against his. His cock was hard as a railroad spike, slightly sore but more than willing to go again.
“Let’s get something straight,” he said when he came up for air. “When we play like this, you’ll call me Daddy, understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
She looked down at her hands. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good, because we’re going to play like this a lot.” Ty pulled her onto his lap, arranging her legs so she was straddling him. “I need pussy like most men need water and your new job is making sure I never get thirsty.”
“Why don’t you find someone else?”
Ty seized the front of her leotard with both hands. “Because other girls aren’t half as sweet as you, baby and they don’t live with me, either. Trawling bars takes time, and I’m not a patient man, now hold still.”
He braced his hands and as he’d hoped, the material gave beneath his fingers, exposing her from tits to hips. She gasped and tried to cover herself, but he shoved her hands away and pressed his mouth to hers, all but forcing his tongue between her lips. She fought him, but within seconds she was moaning again. He played with her cunt through her leotard, rubbing her folds without giving any particular attention to her clit. In a few seconds she was panting and after a few minutes, her hands had tightened around the collar of his t-shirt.
“What’s wrong, Katie?” He teased. “Getting turned on?”
She shook her head.
“Well, if that’s the case….” He withdrew his hand and she whimpered. The neediness in her voice made him laugh. “Sorry, sweetheart, should have said yes when you had the chance. Now, get on your knees in front of me.”
“But—”
Ty lifted her up and placed her on the floor in front of him, a tangle of smooth limbs and bare skin. He grabbed her now-battered plait and wound it around his hand in a way that made her eyes go wide. “Let me make something very clear, baby. I let you give me attitude when your mother’s around, but you do that here and I’ll spank your ass raw. I don’t let little sluts talk back to me and when they do I find ways to occupy their mouths so I don’t have to listen to it, understood?”
She nodded and Ty opened his jeans one-handed, and pulled out his cock. Middleton—god bless her—eyed it like she’d never seen one. “It’s so big.”
Ty grinned. He’d heard that before, but women telling you that you had a big dick was one of those things that never got old. “Ever sucked one?”
She shook her head, her eyes the size of planets.
“Then today’s your lucky day. This is part of me showing you what men like. When I’m too tired to fuck, or you’ve got something to apologise for, you’re gonna take me into your mouth and suck me, understood?”
She looked down at his feet. “Yes, Daddy.”
She was nervous, he could tell. She’d done this to him before, but he imagined it was different in the dark, thinking it was Buddy’s teenage cock she was sucking on. Ty picked up the bottle of rum she’d left on the coffee table and pulled the cork. He took a swig, then held it out. “Open wide, baby, it’ll help you relax.”
Middleton hesitated, then opened her mouth. He poured a little rum between her lips, and watched her visibly relax. It wasn’t the alcohol, Ty knew, it was the order. She liked him exerting power over her, liked him being a prick. That was good, he was more than happy to be a prick. He took another swig from the bottle, then cupped the back of her head and pulled her face towards his lap. “Time for your lesson, sweetheart. Suck me.”
“But I don’t—”
“Just open your mouth and do it. And keep your goddamn teeth out of the way.”
Middleton bent her head and began exploring him with suckling kisses and tentative licks. Ty groaned his satisfaction, slumping back into the couch so he could watch her lap clumsily at him. Considering how competent he knew that mouth to be, he appreciated all the more what a good little actress Middleton was.
He let the blowjob go on for much longer than he normally would,
tugging her hair out of its loose plait and playing with it as she tongued him. He tried to memorise the way her mouth looked stretched over his cock, the way her eyes pleaded with him to take her again. She was horny, he could tell from the way she was rubbing her thighs together, but a little suspense never killed anyone and he was busy fulfilling a fantasy he’d had ever since he first laid eyes on her. He stopped meeting her gaze, instead he drank rum and pretended to be watching TV. Intense pleasure-pain glazed over her eyes whenever she caught him and she sucked harder, as though determined to earn his attention. She had a big old taste for humiliation, something Ty was more than willing to work with.
“You enjoying this?” he asked.
She moaned her ‘no’ onto his cock.
“Glad to hear it.” He tugged her hair hard, pulling her mouth deeper onto him. “See, you’ve got a lot of making up to do for all the prick teasing you’ve put me through.”
Her protest hummed down his shaft.
“It’s true, sweetheart. If Daddy let you keep going until you paid off your debt, you’d be sucking his dick until the end of the year. Now blow me harder.”
She made a garbled angry sound and he laughed. “Forget what I said before. You can talk all you want while you suck my cock. It feels good in my balls.”
Her look of hungry mortification was so satisfying Ty barely wanted to come, but that was hardly fair to Middleton’s jaw. After a few blissful seconds, he fisted her hair. “Time to get me off, sweetheart. Put your mouth around as much as you can and suck like you’re getting paid for it.”
She obliged, taking him deep into her mouth. Her delicate fingers wrapped around the base of his cock and began to gently tug.
“Harder,” Ty grunted. “Jerk me harder and stick your ass out, so I’ve got something to look at besides this stupid fucking TV show.”
She glowered at him, but the excitement in her bright brown eyes was evident. Ty tilted his hips towards her and prepared to finish when he realised he was wasting a golden opportunity. He loved blow jobs, but who knew how many times he would get to sleep with Middleton? He should be making the most of it. He pulled her hair. “That’s enough.”
Middleton released him, wiping a hand over her swollen lips. “Did I…? Was I bad at it?”
Ty had to fight the urge to smile. She really was a fucking dream come true. “No, baby, I wanna put it in you again.”
“Okay.” She bit her lip. “I, um, don’t know if I can finish again.”
“Why don’t you let me decide that?” Ty tugged another condom from his pocket and patted his thighs. “Come sit up here.”
Ty was glad she’d told him she was struggling to get off the first time. He’d paid a lot of attention to what worked and what didn’t, and it paid off handsomely. A little licking here, a little grinding there and Middleton was shrieking like a madwoman, babbling a stream of compliments, disbelief and prayers to the lord above. By the end he was hardly doing anything, just watching her bounce up and down in his lap screaming his name. She should have been calling him Daddy, but he felt like he owed her a pass. He didn’t know who the fuck she’d had sex with before now but it was clear they weren’t worth a wank in a sports sock. She looked like she was tapping into another dimension.
“Does it always feel like that?” she asked, when she was done.
“With me, it will,” he told her. “On your back.”
He fucked her in missionary, her ankles up by his ears, her tight cunt spasming around him. “Know what you are?” he snarled.
“Yes.”
“Say it out loud, bitch.”
He’d never come as hard as he did when she whispered that she was a whore, a dirty, filthy slut, Daddy, so do it harder, please do me harder.
When they were done, Ty went to the bathroom and realised he was too drunk from all the blowjob rum to even think about riding his bike home. Middleton offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted. She brought it out along with a tray of homemade French vanilla slice. Ty ate three huge slabs of it and probably would have eaten more if he hadn’t asked Middleton to put it back in the fridge under the guise of giving a fuck about bacteria.
They watched some more of the idiotic British TV show. Ty had never seen it before, but high on rum, sugar, and pussy, he found himself enjoying how ridiculous it was. A few episodes passed like the blink of an eye and he stopped laughing at the fabricated drama and instead started noticing how good Middleton looked in her tattered leotard. He was out of condoms, and she didn’t have any—a fact he tried not to take pleasure in—so they just messed around. He fingered her and she gave him a long sloppy blowjob. After he came he must have fallen asleep, because he jerked awake at an unspecified time to find Middleton watching a documentary on the mysteries of the ocean. She was wearing pyjamas. They were pink and covered in cartoon hedgehogs because of course they were.
“Unicorn onesie in the wash?” he asked.
She gave him an adorable mock-scowl. “Be quiet.”
“You know I’ve never heard you swear. Not when you cut your finger on the slide-ruler, or when that client said you were incompetent for the project he fucked up. I thought that was weird but now I know you don’t even swear when I’m balls deep in you.”
“Yes I do!”
“No you don’t. You say ‘do it harder, Daddy’ not ‘fuck me harder, Daddy’.”
She blushed pink as her pajamas. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Depends.” Ty tilted his head at her. “If I was to, say, kick in your TV, would you tell me to get the fuck out? Or would you just say ‘oh golly’ or something?”
Middleton screwed up her face. “F-Fuck off.”
Ty laughed, actually laughed deep from within his belly for the first time in…he couldn’t remember how long. It felt like a rainbow refracting from his torso. His laugh made her laugh and then they were both rolling on the couch laughing until Ty felt tears welling up in his eyes. He wasn’t stupid, he knew it was a side effect of the incredible sex, but he didn’t care. It felt too good.
“Do you want another cup of tea?” Middleton asked when they were done laughing.
Ty knew he should have said no. “Yeah, and can I eat more of that slice?”
They wound up watching the deep ocean documentary together, talking about how Middleton was terrified of lobsters because one had nipped her on the ankle when she was a kid. She was different here, in her home. Sweet but slightly left of centre. Her hands flailed as she talked, and she had a habit of tapping her temples and fidgeting with any object that was close to hand. Again, Ty thought of Ritalin and came close to asking her why she took it but knew it wasn’t his place to ask. People had a right to keep their shit to themselves. Besides, he didn’t need to hear something that would make him feel even more dangerously tender toward her than he already did.
When the documentary ended, they started watching the next one she’d recorded—Secrets of the Amazon Jungle. They were halfway through it, when Ty noticed the light peering through a crack in Middleton’s curtains. He checked his phone for the first time in hours and was blindsided to discover it was seven in the fucking morning. He was due at work in less than an hour and he didn’t even feel tired.
“You’re not coming in today,” Ty told Middleton as he pulled on his jacket. “Have a nap or a swim in your enormous tub or something.”
She stuck out her tongue at him.
“That’s an order,” Ty said, working hard not to smile.
“An order from my boss or my daddy?”
“Both.”
He felt different, his barriers worn thin by hours of drinking, sex and her sweet, uncomplicated company. As she walked him to the door, Ty pulled her into his arms and kissed her again. It could have easily led to more sex but he tugged her to her bathroom and began to run the water in the big claw-foot tub for her. He left her paddling in warm water, knowing the memory of her naked and wet and happy would power him all through the day.
The sun was still rising when he left her building and it was such a beautiful morning Ty decided to walk to work. He had a change of clothes in his office, and he could use a coffee, something that was impossible to carry while steering through Melbourne’s laneways on a motorbike. He stopped by Gordano’s and found the usually thriving café pleasantly empty.
“You look a bit worse for wear, mate,” Rick, the skinny barista said as he foamed the milk for his latte.
“Yeah,” Ty said, thinking about Middleton spread beneath him, the hot clench of her cunt, how cute she looked all wrapped up in her blanket, beaming at him like he’d hung the moon.
“Like to meet the woman who put that smile on your face for the first time in about a million years,” Rick said, placing his coffee in front of him. “Must be a hell of a girl.”
Ty remembered then. Remembered how everyone at GGS came here, how everyone knew Rick. “You ever meet Charlize Theron, you let me know.”
The barista rolled his eyes.
Chapter 9
A song was stuck in Kate’s head. She first heard it on Spotify the day Ty told her to take a day off work; directly afterward it moved into her brain and refused to go away. It was a dizzy little pop number called Electric Love. Everywhere she went, she hummed it under her breath, whispering lyrics about lightning and explosive lust. She woke up with it and went to sleep with it and she didn’t even care. According to her phone, she’d listened to it seventy-seven times.
Why she liked the song was obvious, as obvious as the loose bottles of Pepperwood Ale she kept buying and drinking with her dinner, but as uncool as both of those things made her, Kate didn’t care. She sang her song, she drank her beer, and she was dizzyingly, stupidly happy. For the first time in her life, she had a secret about a man—or at least one that didn’t make her hate herself.
She and Ty had hooked up twice since their first night together. The second time had been more of the same role play; Ty found her in the kitchen ‘doing her homework’ (finishing some reports. Why not incorporate your excellent work ethic into your sex life, particularly when you were screwing your boss?) and placed a big bottle of lube on top of her notebook. “I need to relax before your mother gets home,” he told her. “Take everything off except your panties and meet me in the lounge.”