After extricating myself from Mallory’s loving grip, it was only a few moments before Audrey had pulled me along outside behind the bookstore. There was a small alley there where enterprising truck drivers sometimes tried to negotiate into our paltry excuse for a loading dock. Mostly, these days, all the books were unloaded in the front. The dock was there as a leftover, something that probably had been quite useful before the tall, identity-less apartment buildings rose up directly behind the shop with their steel corners and tall metal fences.

The Ice Festival took place in a four block radius in downtown. Down the alley, I could see couples and families walking by. Children held balloons shaped by the local artists on the prowl. A hotdog vendor shouted about his special on beers and brats.

Audrey crossed her arms, looking at me critically. She wore a long, loose sort of white gown that clung neatly to her large braless tits and firm, luscious hips. Her thick chestnut hair was wrapped around one shoulder in a shiny braid. God, I wanted to fill her. Breed her. Get her pregnant. The urge to grab her, kiss her, take her was nearly overwhelming. All she had for warmth was a small jacket—not quite enough in the winter cool of the city. Her shivering body only made my primal instinct to take her and fill her with warm, overflowing seed all the greater.

We had never fucked before, of course. Our intercourse barely went beyond kissing. That made me want her all the more now.

“So,” she said.

“So…?”

“It’s so nice to see you.”

It clearly wasn’t.

“Somehow it doesn’t seem that way.”

“You stopped talking to me.” She pushed my shoulder, aggressive. “Why?”

“Because…you asked me to? Because we had broken up and I moved on?”

“I know I asked you to, but like,” her dark eyes flashed, “I wasn’t asking for complete radio silence. Just, you know. Less.”

I shrugged. “I suppose if you wanted to talk, there was nothing stopping you from setting the terms of the conversation.”

“But how am I supposed to know if you want to talk at all?”

“You’re right,” I said, smiling through gritted teeth. “It’s my fault. All of it. Every last bit. Are you happy now? Are we done? Can I go back to work?”

There was something in her that had wanted to create some form of peace. I could tell that, with that off-hand remark, I had steamrolled all over it. I didn’t care. She deserved a talking-to for once in her life, raised in Daddy’s riches without ever lifting a finger for herself, and I wasn’t in any mood to deal with her double-talk. If she wanted something from me, she could ask.

“Mallory’s your girlfriend now, I guess?”

Instead of owning up to anything she had done wrong, she changed the subject. Typical.

“Not your business. But, yup. She is.”

That, and so, so much more, I wanted to tell her. So much more than you’ll ever be, Audrey. You’ll never come close to comparing to what Mallory gives me.

Not naturally, anyway. Again, the thought filled my mind. Holding her jaw open for just a few seconds, letting a vial of my cum sink down. It would be easy. It would only take a few seconds. Would anyone from the street see? I didn’t think so. We were both so isolated there in the alley. And the struggle would be so quick…after the initial part, anyone watching wouldn’t know what to assume. She would be so calm and placid, so accepting of my will…

I could make her accept it was all her fault that we broke up. I could make her beg to take her back. Beg for my forgiveness. I could make her apologize for days that she didn’t worship my cock like a woman should.

Please, she would say, trained.

Tamed. Put in her proper place on her knees, where women belong before me.

Please. Please let me apologize properly…

I’m so sorry, Master. I’m so sorry I made you wait. I’m so sorry I ever told you to stop talking to me. I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what I was for.

She would be kneeling already, that white dress rucked up around her thighs, the cold concrete of the alley pressing red marks into her perfect knees and she wouldn’t care, she wouldn’t even notice, because the only thing that would matter would be the cock in front of her and the privilege of being allowed to look at it.

Please let me apologize properly. Please let me show you. I’ll do anything. I’ll be better than her. I’’ll be so much better than her. Look at me. Look at my face. Look at my body. You know I’m prettier than her. You know it. Everyone knows it. You were too good for me and I didn’t know, I didn’t see it, please please please…

Her thick braid would have come undone by then, that chestnut hair spilling around her shoulders like an offering. Her eyes—those big, dark, devastating eyes that had once made me feel small for not being rich enough or polished enough or interesting enough—would be wide and white and wet, blank where I needed them blank, brimming where I needed them brimming. Her mouth would already be parted, the lower lip trembling, a thin line of spit catching the cold winter light. Vapid. Vacant. Mine, forever.

Master, I’m prettier than her. I am. Tell me I am. Please tell me I am. Look at my face. Look at it. You used to look at it all the time and I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve a single second of it. I should have been on my knees the first time you ever looked at me. I should have been right here, just like this, the whole time.

She would tilt her face up. Offering it. That perfect cheekbone-and-jaw geometry that had wrecked half the boys in our graduating class, presented now as a gift, as a thing to be used.

I know about Mallory. I know she’s yours. I’m not asking you to get rid of her. I just want to be first. Please let me be first. I’ll earn it. I’ll earn it every single day. I’ll hold her down while she sucks you off. I’ll be such a hot first-place girl, please. Think of how pregnant you could get me. You’d own me. Own my body. Claim every part of me, forever.

You could do it so easily, Master. You could just hold me down, couldn’t you? You’d make me thank you for it. You’d have such an easy time. It’s only what you deserve, isn’t that right? Victor?

“—hello, Victor? Nice view?”

I had been staring at her tits, nipples hard in the cold. My breath was heavy, face slightly flushed. This power was getting to me. I looked away, down the street, trying to resist the singing urges of my bulge. This was so hard. Literally and figuratively.

“What would your girlfriend think of you looking at my tits?”

I shrugged. “She’d probably say I had good taste.”

Audrey looked disgusted. “And Lori is…just, what? Your fuckbuddy?”

“I don’t know that’s any of your business. Why don’t you ask her?”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, I just know…”

“What, Audrey? What is it you know?”

“I know that’s not you. I know that you’re a pushover. You’re acting like a dick, now, and you never used to before. Not this openly, anyway. And you’ve got both of these beautiful girls eating out of your hand, somehow. And it’s creepy and weird and I’m a little scared for them.”

I rolled my eyes. “For them?”

“You’re doing something. I don’t know what it is, okay? But…the way they looked at you. I walked around for a minute in the store, paying attention. Lori was flirting with other guys, but she would always look back at you. Like a dog, like a puppy. Hoping for approval. That glassy, obedient look. I’m thinking it’s drugs.”

“Drugs? Get real.”

“When I was in Ecuador, I helped these girls get out from under a pimp’s fingers.” She crossed her arms. “He kept them hopped up on some combination of ecstasy and heroin. They were blissful and active and looked to all the world like they loved their life…but they were dead inside. And I know that’s what you’re doing to them. Or something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s me, Audrey. That’s the guy you went out with. That dude who knows where to get ecstasy-heroin combinations. That’s what I do. I go find drug dealers for the most banned substances in America and then I use my advanced knowledge of chemistry to mix it all together.”

The funny thing is, I really was angry at her accusation. She was closer to the mark than she knew, closer than she had any right to be. And yet still, I was legitimately pissed that she would level that kind of thought my way.

Morality is all fucked up, I guess. Especially when you’re trying to ignore it.

We were quiet then, but my fury still raged. I tried to find something civil to say, but the anger had a mind of its own now. Like a cheetah, lunging after a kill at full speed, it wouldn’t be satisfied until the prey was in its hands or it had fumbled and tripped on its face. Either way, the only cure for the rage was exhaustion of its fuel.

“God, you’re a bitch.” I shook my head. “You really are. You find me so repulsive that the notion that two women might enjoy me, simultaneously, just doesn’t even register with you. It’s not your business. And hey, you know what?” I couldn’t stop my words now. I was furious. “Let’s say I’m doing that to them. You know Mallory. You know she has her head on straighter than anything. If I were able to do that to her, fuck with her head somehow? What makes you think I wouldn’t do the same to you? Why wouldn’t I just, you know, poof! Drug you. And then you’re mine to do with as I please. What’s protecting you, Audrey? Especially now that you’ve gone and told me that you ‘figured out’ my whole plan? Wouldn’t it make just perfect sense for me to fuck your head up too so that you didn’t do anything about it? You can’t even be smart about what a bitch you are, that’s the most infuriating thing about you.”

I wanted it to be sarcastic. But there was too much of the angry, wicked truth in there…and she could tell.

She straightened herself upward, putting on a brave face. But I could tell that, instantly, I had terrified her. I felt bad. Really, I did. When anger leaves you, it’s like the air leaving a balloon, keeping you whipping and swirling in the wind, waiting for something to steady you.

But god, I was tired of her nosing in on my business. Her and her entire family. I just wanted them out of my life.

“I can see we’re not going to have a nice, rational conversation about this,” she said coldly. “It’s too bad. I missed talking with you, Victor. Or, I missed the old Victor. I thought we might start talking again. Have some fun together, even. But I can see that I don’t want to do that now.”

“Audrey—”

“Shut up. Shut up, now. You don’t get to threaten me and then talk to me, okay? You do not.”

“I wasn’t threatening—”

“No.” She smiled, her face entirely frozen. “Nothing you could ever do would be a threat to me, little boy.”

And then she walked out to the street. And it took every ounce of my self-control to not grab her and show her exactly how in control of her I could be.