The day hummed along nicely. Lori was sweet on me all day, making sure my coffee cup stayed full. Mallory raised her eyebrows once or twice, but only in a suggestive manner. Wanting me to go pin down the tiny flirt and fuck her until she wasn't able to do anything besides screaming my name. I knew if Mallory was able, she’d encourage me to fuck Lori like that, but I’d placed harsh limits on her initiating sex while we were at work. If we fucked every time that she felt like it, we would never have any work done.

So, I was her Master, and she was my Slave. She wanted this—I had made this deep, dark fantasy of hers become absolutely real. But it was confined to our private spaces—emails and texts, our apartments (which would soon become one apartment, or so I had gathered from her desperate begging), and hot whispers.

The command, “You want your Master to fuck as many beautiful women as he likes,” was a special triumph of mine, I have to say.

If an especially pretty woman came into the store, Mallory would tug my arm and encourage me to look at her.

“Her, Master?” she would whisper in my ear, fingers sliding along my spine. “Won't you bring her home with us? I want to watch her suck your cock...”

One side-effect of all the trances I had performed on Mallory was, of course, that she found me so immensely attractive now that she couldn't imagine anyone else not doing the same. I had become more than just Mallory's type—I was the type. And, while the constant fucking and Mallory's devotion to making healthy meals over the past week had helped me drop a few pounds, I wasn't exactly an Adonis. Just a normal guy with dark hair and a beard that needed more shaving than it got who somehow had a magical cock.

Later in the afternoon, into the store strolled a tall, older gentleman in a beautiful charcoal gray suit. He was slightly taller than average, with a thick bald spot on top of his head covered with a significant comb-over. A thick belly pushed out in front of him wherever he walked, though if you were to see him you would not really characterize him as fat. Just an older American male.

He was Audrey’s father—Audrey being my ex-girlfriend who barely gave me the time of day even when we dated. His name was Wallace Sheffield. He was a self-made businessman, owning his first printing business at the age of twenty, without any formal schooling, and building a small kingdom of profits for himself ever since.

There were two things I knew about him for certain: that he loved his daughter, and that he hated me for dating her.

“Victor!” His smile was flat, like a building. “Just the man I wanted to see. Won’t you come this way, please?”

All day with this. Come this way, come over here. Doing whatever I pleased with Mallory’s mind didn’t make me exactly amenable to that sort of command, but I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. Sheffield would raise a stink, and the bookstore needed him. Anywhere from seventy to one hundred percent of the bookstore's cost of staying in business was directly from Sheffield's donations.

He led me outside into the downtown streets. The wind whipped cool around us, pushing down from the buildings. Across the street a man tinkered with his bicycle lock, trying to get it undone. Swirls of trash gathered in a drain, cups pushing in on paper and plastic lids. A man slept on an old vent with a dog under his arm, his cardboard sign illegible. A skinny, older policeman, Officer Cornell, had caught sight of him and started to head over. There’d be a talking to and a warning and that would be all, which was usual for Cornell.

I had gotten to know some of the policemen because they stopped by the store often to chat with Dawn. Her girlfriend, Celise, was a detective now, but she had been on patrol for several years before working her way up. It was hard for a black woman to get respect like the kind a police detective had in Alder City.

“I’m going to be very direct with you,” said Sheffield. “Are you up for it?”

“Okay.”

“Audrey is returning to the country this week. Later today, as a matter of fact. She’s been in transit for about seven hours now.”

“…all right?”

I can’t lie, the thought of possibly seeing her had my heart thumping a bit. Audrey was absolutely gorgeous, and in a lot of ways, I was still wrapped around her. She had, as Mallory pointed out numerous times, done a number on me. That thick chestnut hair, her bright brown eyes...

“You are not to interact with my daughter. Under any circumstances.”

“Listen, man—”

I stopped for a second, surprised at myself. He waited. It was surreal, calling him “man.” But having just emptied myself into Lori a few hours ago, and controlling her so absolutely, and doing the same thing to Mallory on a regular basis, I felt untouchable.

“Your daughter, no offense, just wasn’t for me. And I wasn’t for her. We both know that, okay? So don’t worry about it.”

“Then why has she been talking about you?”

Double-take. “What?”

There we go. Heart thumping again. Why had Audrey been talking about me?

“She’s been talking about you. With some fondness. Wondering what you’ve been up to.”

“I haven’t…she asked to stop talking with me. So I did. That’s that.”

“Ah.” His eyes twinkled. “I see. You took her at her word.”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

He put a hand around my shoulder. A complete shift in demeanor. “Son, there are all types of women in this world. But one of the most prevalent, and I’m surprised you haven’t come across one already and recognized her for what she was, is the sort that says the exact opposite of what they mean. And they do this all the time. So, in a way, you could say that she always says what she means, so long as you have the code down.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“If I wanted to make sense, I wouldn’t be talking about the emotional inner-workings of a woman!” He guffawed. “At any rate, you’re smart enough. You’ve sussed out why I’m telling this to you.”

“Because you think Audrey is the type of girl who doesn’t say what she means.”

“Yes. And along with that, she’s the kind of girl who’s a little confused, no doubt, about your eagerness to just drop her out of your life.”

“She asked me to.”

“And you accepted! Just like that! A puzzle for a beautiful smart girl like her. You can see how I talk about her. She thinks, no doubt, that she is as special as I believe her to be.” He smiled slightly. “As she should. But so, you represent a terrible puzzle to her. I can see that now.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Demystify the puzzle. When you talk to her again—and you shall, she has her darling little heart set on it now, no doubt—let her know how terribly interested you are. She’ll run away immediately.”

“You want me to dissuade your daughter from dating me by telling her how much I want to date her, even though I don’t want to date her.”

He clapped me on the back. “Now you’ve got it! We’ll make a man of you yet. Or someone will, at any rate.” His voice became low and dangerous. “Don’t let me cross your path for this reason again. You won’t like it very much.”

As he walked down the street, he looked up around at the bookstore.

“This truly is a lovely little shop. I’ve always liked those windows there.” He pointed above the front door. “The stained glass and all. Makes it feel like a special place. Holy, almost. It would be a shame if all it’s funding went away, yes? If rumors spread around, rooting from some powerful source, making it impossible for the place to get back up on its feet.” He must have seen the look on my face. It seemed like he enjoyed it. “Do you know I built that new shopping center out on Second and Old Foster last year? My money. A terrific investment so far.”

I thought for a moment. “There used to be an old church there.”

“Yes. And I tore it down. Special places fall apart all the time. Isn’t that remarkable?”