MARCUS STARES AT the screen. That was it? The chat’s over? He moves the mouse, presses “YES”; the screen returning to the home page, a grid of moving bodies framed in usernames and prices. His cock softens against his hand, and he pulls back his sweatpants’ waist and stuffs it inside. He glances at the upper-left-hand corner of the screen, where his balance, which had previously lit bright green with the figure of three hundred dollars—now had yellow font. $76.32. Hmm. Not bad. Cheapest orgasm he’d had in two years. Cheapest female orgasm. The prison ones had all come from his hand or from men, the explosion slightly sour in its delivery. It was hard to come while staring at a male mouth wrapped around his cock. Even if they did suck better, did understand where to focus their attention and where to ignore. Josh had been his favorite. A young kid, twenty years old with a flop of hair that almost covered his green eyes. He had been taken early, Marcus shoving down on the boy’s shoulders while explaining clearly the way that the power structure in this prison worked. Better treatment. Full canteen balance. Protection from the thugs that roamed those halls. All in exchange for fifteen minutes of his mouth. The boy had complied, his eyes tightly squeezed shut, a skinny stream of liquid weakness running down his cheek as he had gagged on Marcus’s cock. But that was the first time. Eight months later, Josh had a taste for it. Was sucking off half of C block, and living the life of a king.
In there, with nothing but masculinity surrounding him for almost two years, the female guards worse than the men, Marcus had almost felt himself slip into fag territory. Had jacked off to the thought of a cock once or twice instead of a *. So it was good to know, well worth two hundred bucks, that * still turned him on. That girl, Jess Reilly, had more than done the trick. The high-def camera had told him exactly what he was missing, had made him feel like a man again, and he wanted more of it. To know how she breathed, to feel the pant of her around his cock, how tight her ass was and if it got hot when it was fucked.
But she had ended it, her expression changing slightly, becoming more guarded when he had asked the simple question of her location. She was a whore; surely it’d be good for business to leave the camera behind and really have the client. Money would convince her. It always did. He’d throw a few thousand on the table the next time, and she’d sing a different tune. They all fell for the allure of cash, whether it be physical bills or diamond earrings. Sluts are sluts, and when they’ve been fucked enough, giving it up one more time means nothing.
He spins in his chair, turning away from the computer, and stares out the large window that comprises the back wall of his office, at the far-off twinkle of city lights. The dark break between them hiding the fruit trees. Half a grove of Florida’s finest, fifty of the most valuable acres in the state displayed before him in a dark sea of green. The hours of the night stretch before him, empty hours with nothing but time to think. It is always the empty hours in which the devil lies. He had raped his first girl during empty hours—an eighteen-hour bus trip, the maddening minutes stacking upon each other, each stop bringing aboard fresh trash and making him only more aware of the teenager beside him. He’d spent the first six hours fighting it. The seventh hour devising a plan. The eighth, ninth, and tenth hours gaining her trust. The twelfth hour muffling her screams as he took her virginity in the fifteen minutes of a stop. He’d left her, bloody and crying, on the ground behind the convenience store and had boarded the bus with barely a minute to spare. Had relaxed with the success of his endeavor as the bus jerked its way back to the interstate.
That was twenty years ago. Back when he was a poor kid from Philly heading south, hoping for * and fortune. Willing to do whatever it took to get either. He’d gotten off the bus six hours after taking the girl, the scent of her still on his hands, his feet hitting the dirt of Miami at an hour of night when only trouble walked. He’d had eighty bucks in his pocket and he’d felt unstoppable.
Marcus lets out a breath and closes his eyes, remembering the feeling. Wishing it to return. Now, back in his life, he feels incomplete—he needs that amp. Needs the affirmation that he is in control. That he can bend wills and take what isn’t meant to be given. He needs that high from twenty years ago and can’t get it inside this house. Can’t get it with the police watching his every move. Two more months and some change. Then he’ll be free. Then he’ll find a girl and take the final piece of his life back.
CHAPTER 20
WHILE JEREMY KNOWS the feel of my lips, the curves of my naked body, Dr. Derek knows my soul. He’s seen the black pit of it, knows the things I think, things I can’t imagine confessing to Jeremy. Things that would make teenage boys plug in a night-light. Things that scare me more than anyone, since I hold the keys to their containment.
Derek has never made me feel ashamed of my sickness. He has, out of everyone, judged me the least. He has always been supremely unaffected by the dark confessions that come from my lips, has not flinched. And while, in some ways, he knows me better than anyone… in other ways he is ignorant. He doesn’t know what I spend my days doing. Doesn’t know about the bed, the cameras, the toys. He doesn’t know about the men who whisper through my speakers, about the graphic way I can describe a sexual act. He thinks I design websites, spend all day with plug-ins, shopping carts, and graphic design. I initially lied to control the conversation, to steer our talks away from my daily activities and to focus them on what mattered. Stopping my fantasies, fixing my brain. Making it possible for me to reenter the world.
Now? Now that we have talked my sickness to pieces, looked at it from every possible angle, made little progress in two years of appointments—I could bring my job up. But why? For what purpose? I think, when I turn the psychoanalysis on myself, it is because I am embarrassed. Embarrassed to be both sexual and insane. He knows so much about my brain, yet still—in some crazy way—treats me like I’m innocent. I don’t want to ruin that side of our relationship. And I’m pretty sure stuffy straitlaced Derek will not approve. Of the words I say, the actions I perform. He’ll turn it into something dirty, stack a psychological sentence on top of it, give all sorts of clinical reasons for my motivation. Make me feel guilty for it.
So I haven’t told him. And I most likely won’t.
CHAPTER 21
“HOW’S WORK?”