The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (3 page)

I licked my own lips nervously in response. I had been licking them all along, I realized, and now my mouth had that gummy lipstick taste. I reached up to brush a wayward lock of hair out of my eyes and realized to my extreme horror that my very rebellious hair was falling down around me despite my best efforts to pin it up. “Very much,” I told him. I couldn’t rationalize it, but yes, I trusted him. I didn’t just
want
him. I trusted him implicitly.

“Are you a virgin, Evelyn?”

The question caught me so off guard that the whole room seemed to shift in a surreal way around me, like I was on a carousel moving too fast. My hand grew absolutely still in the process of hooking long wayward strands of dark hair behind my ears. “I…I don’t understand.”

One of his eyebrows ticked up. His fingers continued to trail along my file folder. His voice was a low, intimate rumble in his chest. “I’m wondering if you’ve ever had sexual relations with a man before. The position I’m considering you for is best served by a virgin. It’s not a necessity, of course, but it is my personal preference.”

I should have gotten angry right then and there. I couldn’t believe his audacity! Instead, I sat stunned, wondering if he was being serious or not. Maybe this was his way of testing me? Was this some kind of joke? “I don’t understand,” I said again. “What kind of job is it?”

“I’m looking for a courtesan.”

Now I did get angry. Finally, I was angry. I’d been called a lot of things in my life—a beanstalk, a bookworm, a tight-ass, other unflattering things—but no one had ever accused me of being a whore! Not even Shawn. “I don’t do that. I’m not a hooker,” I said with indignation, my voice low and growling.

I expected anger in the face of my outburst. Instead, he looked even more interested, as if my anger proved something to him. As if it enlivened him. His hand grew absolutely still. I realized he’d disrupted the file he was touching, and that his hand now rested on a picture of me, taken from my resume. It was an unflattering picture. I never photographed well. “I’m not interested in a hooker, Evelyn. I
am
interested in a courtesan. They are
not
the same thing.”

“How are they different?” I said, my voice rising in pitch and volume. I wanted to get up, to leave his office immediately, maybe even press charges for sexual harassment, but I was afraid I’d fall down again and make a fool of myself.

“Well, for one thing, my courtesan will be mine and mine alone. I’m not interested in sharing her with anyone else, and that includes husbands or boyfriends. For another, she will have certain duties to perform…”

“I’m sure,” I said drolly.

He continued on, undaunted. “…including acting as my escort at certain public functions, a confidante and companion at home, and, of course, my most trusted friend. We would trust each other implicitly. I have certain expectation of her, of course.” He paused to let that sink in. “I expect my courtesan to be well heeled, intelligent, and to engage me in interesting conversation. I expect her to be strong and confident, but to also know her place. The position is not without compensation, of course.” He sharpened his look at me as if he were x-raying me with his eyes, seeing past the layers of my clothing and skin and observing something inside of me, something that squirmed. “I’ve seen the books you read, Evelyn. Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot. I’ve heard you speak on the phone. I’ve read your resume.” Again he touched the file folder and my godawful resume picture as if these things were very important to him. “I know you’re an intelligent woman.”

I sat there, blinking at Mr. Sterling like a person gone blind. “I’m sure you can hire a lot of girls for the things you want, Mr. Sterling…”

“I don’t want ‘a lot of girls,’” he answered tersely. He sounded vaguely annoyed by my suggestion. “And I don’t want just any girl. I want
the
girl. I want an intelligent girl. And I want a virgin.”

“And you always get what you want, right?”

He indicated the whole of the office with a flick of his hand as if to say
What do
you
think?

“Why me? And why a virgin?” I asked. I was very interested in knowing what kind of obsessive hunger Mr. Sterling had for virgins. Call it morbid curiosity.

Mr. Sterling rose slowly from his seat once more and came around the glass desk until he was standing right in front of me. He leaned down and put his hands on the armrests of my chair, boxing me in. His heat engulfed me. “I want her unattached…untouched. I want to be her first. I want to be the first man to touch her inside. I want a virgin,” he said, as if his request was all very sensible, as if his word were law.

I had stopped breathing. I sat there, suffering his presence. “Perhaps I’m not.”

“Perhaps you are.”

“Most women my age aren’t, you know.”

“Are you most women, Evelyn?” he asked, glaring at me searchingly through the reflective lenses of his glasses. “Are you untouched?”

“I’m…” I stopped. I decided I didn’t want to have this conversation with him, or with anyone. The surge of anger I’d felt earlier was ebbing away, replaced by a strange, abiding sadness. It was none of his business what my nonexistent sex life was like!

He narrowed his eyes and licked his lips again like a cat in human form. It was a decidedly lascivious gesture, and he meant it that way. “All you need to do is say no, Evelyn, and this interview is over. Then you can go back downstairs to the pool and your little job and never worry about this again.” He said
the pool
like it was a dirty word, like it was beneath him, and me.

I sat in silence for a long time. I looked at him and worked at not shivering or cowering under his almost reptilian gaze. I’d always been a sensible girl, a good girl, and what he was proposing was ludicrous. It was old-fashioned, autocratic. It was indecent. Immoral. So why wasn’t I leaving? Why wasn’t I telling him to go to hell?

“Yes,” he said after a short while, “or no, Ms. Christopoulos?”

We were back to formalities.

I kept wanting to say the word, to say
no
, to shout it in his face, but after a lengthy silence, I felt him move closer to me. He smiled in a vaguely wicked way and lowered his head so he was actually scenting the front of my body, not touching, but making me quiver inside anyway. I had no doubts about what he was scenting. He knew how wet I was suddenly. He could smell it.
I
could smell it in the heated closeness between us.

He lifted his head, slowly, until he was back at the level of my face. There he laid an almost chaste kiss on the corner of my mouth. He tasted like heat and peppermints. I let him do it. I didn’t even protest when he moved the softness of his mouth and the roughness of his cheek to kiss me more directly on the lips. His hand went to my left breast where he thumbed my hardening nipple through the softness of my blouse. His teeth were hard against my mouth, like he meant to bite me.

We stayed that way for an agonizing length of time. And then, finally, he said against my mouth, “May I take your silence for a yes? Is that a yes, Evelyn?”

I made a rumbly noise in my throat. Yes, no…I don’t know.

“Yes?” He looked at me demandingly, through those glasses. No one had ever looked at me like that, with such hunger. He impaled me with his look. “Say it,” he said, and kissed me again, a deep, rough kiss that left my mouth numb and tingling. His fingers closed over my nipple, pinching it so suddenly I gasped into his mouth.
“Say. It.”

“Yes.”

It was the maddest thing I’d ever said.

A look of profound satisfaction overcame his face. He put his hands around my waist and lifted me easily from the chair, turned, and deposited me on the glassy edge of the desk. “Dear, sweet Christ, yes,” he said as if all his prayers had been answered in that moment. He bent to me, cupped the back of my head, and kissed me harshly, completely, breathing into me. His fingers dug into my coiffure so the little bit remaining came undone and long dark hair showered down around us both. He kissed me fiercely, sticking his tongue deep inside my mouth, almost all the way down my throat. I made a half-groaning, half-choking noise. I expected him to draw back in response to that sound. Instead, he surprised me.

He pushed me down so we knocked the beautiful antique vase full of Japanese flowers over and my loosened hair unraveled all over his files and ink blotter. He grasped my face harshly in his big hands and kissed me like he meant to consume me. A small part of my mind whispered that this wasn’t proper, or smart, or anything like
me
. But a greater part reveled in the feel of his hand gripping my curves and jerking me this way and that so he had better access to first my mouth, and then my throat. His teeth grazed me, nibbled me, but didn’t bite. Meanwhile, his hands worked at my blouse, undoing it with a coordination and speed that impressed me.

The room was suddenly very cool against my damp and newly bared skin. He groaned with satisfaction at the front closer of my push-up bra, undid it, and then he was right
there
, his rough tongue finding an already hardened nipple and licking it, wetting it thoroughly before blowing upon it so it was harder still. He moved back and forth between both nipples, licking and then sucking upon them, his tongue moving in lazy circles, his teeth nipping only very gently. I let out a small cry of surprise, the delicious tingling sensation moving like a vibrating wire from my breasts to my groin and then lower
still
, between my legs. I writhed upon the desk for him, helpless to stop him even when his hand moved down my body, his touch heavy, hot and demanding. He kept the glasses on, observing my reactions with a scowling concentration that made my whole body flutter with fear and anticipation.

I realized my interview was far from over. I desperately wished I was thinner. I wished I was beautiful. I wished his office suite was darker, not all bright, clinical lights. I almost scooted backwards on the desk away from him, but he held me in place, pinned me to the desk.

He finally stopped tormenting me so he could grip me at the hips, twisting my sensible, navy blue business skirt around my legs. It took me a moment to realize just what he was doing. I almost said
no
, and then realized the absurdity of the statement. If I said no, he’d stop. I didn’t want him to stop. I had never experienced anything like this before, even with Shawn. My ex-boyfriend’s blind pawing at my boobs during late-night TV-watching sessions simply didn’t count at all.

He’d finally gotten my skirt hiked up and bunched around my waist like a wreath. That left my legs and bottom cold in the almost sterile white room. The stockings didn’t shield me. The bikini underwear I wore didn’t help me at all. He disapproved of my undergarments. I could tell by the breathless, disgruntled mutterings he made. He said with annoyance, “Stockings with garters in the future, Evelyn. No panties. Panties are for children.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I would have said yes to damned near anything in that moment. I wondered where I would get garters. The internet, maybe? Did they sell such things on places like Amazon?

He slid my black pantyhose down over my hips. They were cheap hose, bought on sale at J. C. Penney’s where I got much of my business wear. I wondered if he could tell. You don’t make much money working the pool, and even though two years had passed since my graduation, I was still paying off student loans. The panties went next. He disapproved of them enough to pull them off me, bunch them up, and toss them into his wastepaper basket. I wondered what the night janitor who cleaned up after him would think.

I started shifting around, the glass desk cold against my bare bottom, but Mr. Sterling said, “Stop it, Evelyn. Be still, dove. I must know for certain.”

Know for certain what?

I was about to ask him when I got my answer up front and personal. He slid his big hot hand between my legs and scissored them apart.
Oh Christ
, I thought as panic seized me and made my heart trip almost all the way up into my throat like a little bird flying up a chimney flue.
Is he actually going to check?

No one had ever touched me like this, not even Shawn. I didn’t even have an OB/GYN because I couldn’t bear the thought of being touched down there by a stranger, even a doctor. I started to protest then, to really say something, but Mr. Sterling leaned over me, his upper body pinning me soundly against the top of his desk, and held my legs wide open for his inspection. His hands were firm against my inner thighs but his touch was gentle on the outside of my exposed sex. He circled his fingers through the soft, dark fur there, then boldly parted my outer folds as if it was his right to do so, as if my body were his to play with. It was cold down there, against my inner labia, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It didn’t hurt. I was still fairly limber, despite the bit of extra weight I’d gained over the years. I’d spent years waiting tables while in college, and work like that keeps you flexible.

I threw my head back so I was staring up at the banks of lighted panels in the ceiling above the desk while Mr. Sterling’s hands worked at keeping me spread wide, all my tender pink parts exposed to his scrutiny. “Ah,” he said with enormous approval and pleasure. He sounded hoarse with desire. “You have a beautiful cunt, Evelyn. Healthy and pink and untouched. I think I shall enjoy exploring your little cunny.”