Damien answered with a smile, looking in me in the eyes rather than looking over my body. "Hey Phoebe. Come in and close the door behind you."

He turned his back on me as he walked back in, and I followed him, closing the door as instructed, answering, "Um, hi, Damien," belatedly.

I smelled a familiar fruit in the air, and cooking rice, and he took a turn and walked into his kitchenette, where there was a pot on, and a mango half-chopped on the cutting board with a knife next to it. He picked up the knife, and went to the cutting board, back still to me.

"...are you trying to ignore me?"

He looked back to me with wide eyes, and then laughed, waving his knife dismissively. "No, no-- sex requires a certain level of physical vulnerability, so I find it's easiest to just give a girl a chance to kill me if that's what she's there for, rather than worrying about it the entire time, you know?" A little wink. "And I was making mango sticky rice when you called, and it's not really a process that can be stopped... but... you really should try this mango, it's absolutely perfect. I have a great source on mangos, you won't find a better one in town."

He set up the knife and picked up a piece of the mango with his fingers, and walked over to hold it up for me to take, high enough that I could easily see the pulp and drips of juice running down his finger, as his face smiled down at me like it was a special little secret the two of us were sharing.

I reached up with my fingers, hesitated, and then leaned in to take it in my lips, which he obliged, feeding it to me-- it was really good and ripe, not the best mango I had ever had, but pretty high up there. I hesitated a moment more before licking his fingers a little, flushing and glancing up at him.

Damien laughed and petted my head with his free hand. "And now you know that I won't drug you or stab you out of nowhere, so you can relax too... that said, usually a whore will want payment before she starts sucking my fingers... it's the best mango you've had, though, right?" He seemed so proud and eager to share with me, and it was a little cute.

"Oh, yeah, the mango, it's amazing," I said. "Um, thank you."

He considered this for a moment with a slightly more serious expression, although a smile played around his lips. "I do need to finish making this mango sticky rice, but this leaves us at something of a crossroads-- if you don't mind waiting around for a couple minutes, we can eat this together as friends, and then start the timer after-- if you're eager to sell yourself to me and get paid, we can start the timer now... but I will, of course, be treating you a little differently. Which would you prefer?"

I swallowed. He was being really nice about this, which felt weird, but Mika's warning to not develop a relationship with a drug dealer. "Um... could we start now? I mean, it's a very nice offer... just this is scary, and I don't wanna chicken out. And... timer?"

"Oh, yeah." He turned his back on me and walked back to finish chopping the mango. "So, there's a couple of ways to pay whores, by act or by time being the big ones. I think time is the fairest-- incentivizes the whore not to hurry through things, but also insures she gets fully paid for her time rather than spending half an hour blowing a guy who's repressing that he's gay or whatever, you know?"

Mango-chopping completed, he looked at the timer on his stove, and nodded a little, taking out two plates-- apparently he was going to feed me even on his time. I wondered if he had a food kink?

His tone wasn't unfriendly, but I wasn't comfortable with his words. "Um, do you have to call them 'whores'?"

"Of course not-- well, I don't think of 'whore' as a bad thing? I'm a drug dealer myself, it is what it is." He looked back to me with an amused little smile and shrugged his shoulders just a touch dramatically. "Now, I can call it 'prostitute' or 'sex worker' if you want, or 'pet' or 'slave' if you wanna start getting used to it -- doesn't really matter for me -- whatever euphemism we're using, you are selling your body to me, yeah?"

I shifted uncomfortably. "I... guess that's true. Fine, call me whatever, my future Owner will be able to do that anyway...."

"What price were you thinking?"

"Ummm..." I had no idea of my market value, but it didn't seem like a good idea to tell a drug dealer that.

"Mmm, I'd tell you to always know what you're worth... but you are about to become a pet, so I guess you aren't in this for the long haul...." He paused. "Tell you what. I'll give you a hundred eighty dollars per hour, we'll take it slow, you can ask questions, and we can stop whenever you want, and I'll give you whatever I owe you of the hour, rounded up."

He snapped his fingers and smiled. "Now, pay attention: a hundred and eighty an hour? That is, honestly, underselling yourself for how hot your body, and some guys'll pay extra for a new whore... some guys have a kink for girls who are going to be forced to become pets, too... but I'll run you through some stuff. Think of it as training pay." A little flirtatious smile. "You can try to sell yourself for more next time."

He was being really nice. It was tempting. But it wasn't what I came here for.

"Four hundred."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Four hundred, and... and you can do whatever you want to me, you don't need to take it slow or anything." I swallowed, feeling queasy. "Half the reason I'm doing this is because I want to know if I can stand being treated as an utter slave by a guy."

"Oh." He washed his hand, dried them, and then walked over and patted my shoulder, raising an eyebrow as he looked down at me. "You sure?"

I took a deep breath, looked up at him, and nodded. "...Yeah."

"Okay. I do like humiliating girls and making them uncomfortable, but you seem like a nice girl, so I was going to treat you nice our first time and ease you into things, you know?" He walked closer to me, and looked down at me with a mixture of compassion and something much darker. "I'll give you three sixty an hour, and do whatever I want to you besides anything permanent damaging. You should always be particular about deals, and even if you don't care about your body, you're going to have a better life if you keep it more or less intact."

Damien held out his hand to me, and smiled like I imagine the devil himself would smile. "We have a deal?"

His words hung in the air ominously.

Suddenly, his eyes widened. "Oh, fuck, the rice!"

He hurried over to it, and took it off the heat, opened it up, poked it with a fork, and quickly spread the steaming rice out over the two plates he had gotten, and grinned back to me with that cocky little self-deprecating grin. "Sorry, I got caught up in you and forgot all about it. How're you feeling?"

I relaxed a little. He went out of his way to try to teach me how to bargain even when he was talking about being mean, to protect my body, and he was the sort of guy to care about exactly how good a dish was, and share it with me. Even if he treated me like shit, I felt like I could trust him for the big stuff. "Three hundred sixty, sure."

He looked at me for a long moment, then winked, setting an hour on the stove, and pulling out his wallet and laying out three hundred dollar bills and three twenties on the counter. "There we go. Pick those up and put them away somewhere, and then..." He waggled his eyebrows in a cheesily self-aware way. "...we can consider your body mine for the next hour."

...I was getting a little wet at that. Fuck, was I a little bi, or just that fucking submissive?

I picked the money off the counter.

He reached over and ruffled my hair, and put his hand around my throat, and I tensed, all my instincts telling me to run. He laughed and stroked the sides of my throat. "Don't worry, I'd just blood choke you at worst, I don't want to crush your windpipe. Just wanted you to viscerally feel under my power, you know? How does it feel knowing you're my powerless little whore, and I can do anything I want to you?"

I let out a little squeak. "Fucking... I don't know."

He let go of my throat and grinned at me. "Mmm, well, talk it out... I still need to make the coconut milk topping for our sticky rice." He looked at me seriously. "It's a very important part of the dish." A little wink. "And in the meantime, tell me more about why you decided to whore your body out to me?"

Did he fucking have to use whore? I guess I had said it was okay, though, plus he could do anything he wanted.

"Um... I decided to sell myself to you..."

"Whore yourself out," he commented as he poured part of a can of coconut milk into a pan and added a lump of what looked like brown sugar, but there was a little smile flickering around his lips. He was playing with me.

My hands gripped the cold stone-topped in front of me, and I rolled my eyes. "...Sure, I decided to whore myself out to you... well, primarily because I thought if I sold myself to someone, it'd better reflect the experience of having been, y'know, entirely sold to someone?"

He nodded gravely, stirring the brown sugar into the coconut milk. "How're you feeling about that?"

"Afraid. I'm not as into boys, no offence."

"But that's the point? If I was a girl, you wouldn't be interested in selling yourself?"

"I mean... less so? On like, a tactical level, at least."

He poured half of the coconut milk mixture over each plate, and sprinkled a little salt over one of them. "Mm-hmm, I think I get it."

He stripped himself naked, leaving me clothed. Despite his words, we seemed to be easing into all of this pretty slowly... well, I guess he was at least as interested in the mango sticky rice as he was me.

I didn't know if that was reassuring or disappointing.

For the first moment, with him naked, I felt like the one in control... here was this kinda hot guy who had stripped for me, was cooking

me food, and was giving me a saucy little wink... but then he started stroking his cock, and given the direction he was aiming, the unsalted mango and sticky rice plate.

"...wait, what?"

"You ever eat cum before?"

"...I mean, I've done blowjobs and swallowed."

"Well, now you're going to eat it on mango sticky rice." He gave me a playful little wink, and I felt a bit queasy again.

"Don't worry, it's still pretty good. Culinarily speaking, I wouldn't say it's preferable... but the saltiness and umami and bitterness works fairly well with the sweetness of the coconut and mango."

"...you've tried it?"

He looked insulted. "Phoebe, my dear whore-- do you think I could feed a guest food I hadn't tried? Even though you're nothing more than my slutty little slave for the next hour, and we are going to hardly pretend you have human rights... serving a guest a dish that was actually bad? Never, my mother looking down on heaven would never forgive me for that."

"But she will forgive you for all the other stuff?"

He gave a little shrug and looked back to me, his smile showing just a trace of sadness. "We all do what we need to do to survive and thrive..." A sudden self-deprecating grin, and he gave me a little wink again. "Actually, why don't you come stroke my cock onto this plate for me? Sort of a self-serve thing?"

I hesitantly approached and kneeled before him, and started stroking his cock. He stroked my head, and it wasn't like, amazing, but I felt like

"That's my good little whore."

I glared up at him a little, but I just felt him get harder in my hands.

"What? You're nothing more than a sextoy, Phoebe. Whore is a generous term, because soon you won't even have human rights."

I started crying a little, but I kept stroking his cock, which was starting to twitch a little... wow, was he even getting off on me crying?

"Mmm... do you wanna stop the clock and renegotiate?"

I shook my head firmly. "I need this."

"That's right, bitch. Your only role in the rest of your life is as my obedient little toy, and you better remember it. Now say, 'thank you for taking care of this pathetic little bitch whore'."

"...thank you for taking care of this little pathetic bitch whore...." I was crying harder.

He came all over the plate of sticky rice, and ruffled my hair.

"...messed up the word order, but close enough. Lick my cock clean, and then you can have your meal."

I licked his cock clean of his cum, but it just didn't feel sort of naughtily good like it did when I licked Stephanie's cock, and I didn't like the taste, either... I didn't know if that was because of the emotional state, or just cause he was a kind of asshole guy.

He moved over to divide the mango between the two plates and then set one of them on the floor in front of me.

"That was a decent job, you'll get better at it. Go on and eat up, puppy."

"...off the floor, with my hands and mouth?"

"No, just your mouth. And obviously off the plate-- I'm not dumping good food on the floor."

I leaned down and took a bite, feeling even queasier in disgust at the act of consuming his cum with food in such an animalistic way... but he was right, it really wasn't that bad. I think I could get used to this, and that felt fucking terrible.

He kneeled down next to me and petted my head as I ate. "...see? Isn't this a bit much for you?"

I swallowed down the current bite of coconut and cum-soaked sticky rice with mango. "No. I need to know I can do this."

"Okay, okay..." He scritched along my back. "Maybe we can try being a bit nicer another day, if you feel like selling yourself to me again. Your owner might not be a total asshole, you know."

I wonder if I begged him to if he'd buy me. Like, he was kind of an asshole... but he was also a kind asshole, I guess.

Did drug dealers have that kind of money?

"Now, I'm going to eat my food too. Finish your meal -- no hurry, but don't prolong it either -- and then we can get to me really using your body. Get you that fully degraded whore experience you're looking for." There was still some friendliness in his voice.

Was he trying to treat me like crap specifically to honor my wishes, or because he liked treating girls like crap?

...well, he did nonconsensually grope me when we first met, so probably at least some of the latter.