Shit, shit, shit. This was spinning out of control. He was not getting paid to jerk off to his employer’s teenage daughter and her friends. He needed to get out of there.
Just as he stood up, Mistress Hell’s show ended and the dancers rose gracefully and exited the stage. The lights to the playroom came on—the shows were over for the night. The rest of the playing would happen privately. And even though he hated himself for lingering to check, he couldn’t stop the urge to know. Would they play more? Was Mistress Hell going to take them back to her room and make them lick her pussy? Would they split up amongst themselves and go with other members?
That seemed to be the case. Two or three girls with a man, a girl with a mistress, another girl with a master, three with a genderqueer Dominant named Jackson. By ones and twos and threes, they were all claimed by hungry club members and taken away, tulle and pointe shoes and all.
All except for Tamsin.
Tamsin stayed in the playroom until all of her friends were squired away to be fucked, and then she began to head for the staircase. Cal stepped into the shadows, cock still throbbing, and waited for her to pass by.
And then he followed her.
Up the stairs she went, through the bar, not pausing to say hello or glance at the river or anything. And then she walked through the front door. Cal gave it a moment and then followed.
Outside in the warm night air, Tamsin walked slowly down the path to the riverside, her head tilted back, as if she expected to catch raindrops on her tongue, only it wasn’t raining. If Cal could have seen her, he knew her eyes would have been closed. It was the same way she danced, chin up, eyes closed, moving inside of a dream. It pulled at something inside him, that habit of hers. Empathy maybe. Nostalgia for the kind of loneliness the young feel, still so free of the jaded anger of the old.
She moved nearly as silently as him, but even in her pointe shoes he could hear the whisper of her tread. He’d learned to walk quietly in Fallujah, in heavy boots walking through rubble. It was easy to be quiet on a flat river path.
Finally, she stopped and sat on a bench and began to untie the ribbons around her legs.
A fucking shame.
He should go now, he knew that. But he also knew that he should have been gone forty minutes ago and yet he was still here, still unable to detach himself, still having dangerous kinds of thoughts.
She’s nineteen. She’s your client’s daughter. You’re a stranger to her.
It was her sigh that undid him, finally, and the way she slipped off her ballet shoes and cradled a foot in her hands. Even from the safe distance of several yards, he could see the tape and bandages holding her poor feet together. Jesus Christ. Was that what all their feet looked like under those sweet shoes?
Why he did it, he couldn’t later recall, but he knew that sigh and the sight of that bruised and bloodied foot was part of it. But only part. The other part was submerged somewhere deep inside of him, a loneliness and a lust that had been denied for too fucking long.
“Tamsin,” he said, stepping out of the shadows.
To her credit, she didn’t jump at the sound of her name. She didn’t act frightened. Cal had to wonder how many older men approached her in the dark if she was this casual about him being here. It was just the two of them on the riverside, and Persepolis was the only light and safety for miles. She should feel all kinds of unsafe and it worried him a little that she didn’t. He kept his distance from her bench, kept his hands open and outward facing to show her that he meant no harm. That he wouldn’t advance any closer.
“Who are you?” she asked curiously. Her voice was as dreamy as he’d thought it might be from watching her. Floaty and a little reserved, like she was in her own world. Like she was lost inside it with no one to show her the way out.
“Cal Dugan. Your father hired me.”
She didn’t seem surprised by that at all. “Of course he did,” she murmured, looking back down at the river. “What for?”
“To follow you. To find out why you and your shoes look like shit in the morning.”
She smiled at that, but only a little. “I should have guessed.”
That surprised him. “Really? You should have?”
“My father only wants one thing from me—to see me become a principal dancer—and he’d do anything to see it happen. Have me followed. Threaten me. Take away things I love. I’m used to it.”
She hugged her legs up to her chest, propping her battered feet on the seat of the bench. She leaned her head on her knees and looked at him, golden bun shimmering in the moonlight. She looked like a Degas painting, unreal and gauzily elegant. There was no approaching her, no reaching her dreamy soul through the paint. Forever untouchable.
“What will happen if he finds out about Persepolis?” Cal asked, even though he shouldn’t. It was none of his business, and worse, the more he knew, the harder it would be to do his job. And he wasn’t in a place where he could walk away from six hundred dollars and feel good about his month.
Tamsin lifted her shoulder in a gesture like a shrug, keeping her head on her knees. “He’ll be angry,” she said, voice blank.
It’s none of your business, Cal, none of your business. Don’t go there, don’t even ask—
“Does he beat you?”
Cal didn’t consent to the question leaving his mouth, it just did. But he suddenly needed to know, with gut-twisting urgency, whether Purkiss was hurting Tamsin. He couldn’t afford to lose the money…but he didn’t know if his conscience could afford six hundred dollars subsidized by this girl getting the shit kicked out of her by her teacher-dad.
Tamsin didn’t answer the question, just unfolded her long limbs and stood, grabbing for her pointe shoes. “Don’t worry about me,” she said shortly. “I’ll survive.”
“Tamsin.”
Her eyes flared in the dark and she stepped closer to him. In the daylight they were a soft gray, but now they were shimmering pools of silver. “Why are you so worried about it?”
Cal didn’t have a ready answer for that. Only the truth. “I don’t know.”
She studied him for a moment longer, silver eyes scorching across his face and down his neck to his body and back up again. He was fit, he knew that much, but it had been a while since he cared what a woman thought of the way he looked. And so it was like a gift when she met his eyes again and her face was flushed.
“Goodbye, Cal,” she said and left.
Cal watched her go with a clench in his chest that he hadn’t felt in years. He would be back tomorrow night, he knew that much for certain, but what he didn’t know was whether it was to do his fucking job or whether it was to screw this job altogether.
He only knew he couldn’t wait to find out.
Night Two
Tamsin