Closing Time

I knew something was up when the new guy shut the door to the stock room behind us. The club had been closed for over an hour now, and there was nobody to shut the door against at this hour. It was possible, I entertained, that he was just being thorough.

Or tired. We all do wacky things when we’re this exhausted and it was only his second weekend on close. How he landed the time slot I’d never know, he couldn’t bartend for shit and though he was learning, he was still slow as a bar back. Joke going around the crew was that he had something on Jenny, our manager, and leveraged himself into prime time.

Not that it could be true, and we knew it, too. For starters, Jenny was a man-eater, an amazon blonde who could kick you into next Tuesday and would rather broadcast a secret on prime-time television than let someone, especially a guy, hold something over her. Nobody fucked with Jenny, and Jenny kept people from fucking with us. Garcia, the bouncer on this shift, did a great job, but he didn’t even interfere when she decided to forcibly remove some asshole.

No, it wasn’t that. My guess was she did it because the new guy, Gustavo, was a babe. Simple as that. So adorable I honestly rolled my eyes behind his back at Jenny after she introduced us, and the giantess stepped on my foot in return.

Gus had smooth brown skin and long, straight black hair, cut past his shoulders that he was always tucking behind one ear, if not both. Though you could see the muscles rippling in his forearms as he worked he had a gorgeous, soft face with deep dimples in his round cheeks when he smiled. Though nowhere near as tall as Jenny he still had to be brushing the six foot mark.

On top of being gorgeous, he seemed to be the safest gorgeous guy she’d found yet. We always kept an eagle eye on them, and their predation was always their downfall. So far, Gus acted like he was born to do the job. He flirted, he smiled, he laughed in all the right places, but he didn’t run his mouth, or linger with certain women, touch anyone inappropriately, or copy anybody’s name or address off a card.

He’d hardly even been more than polite with us bartenders, always keeping his distance and carefully not stepping into our space.

Until tonight. Tonight every time we slipped past each other his hand brushed my hip, the faintest hint of his crotch against my ass. At one point he reached over me to hand out change, and pressed it fully against my hip. His pants were tight and, by that touch, revealing.

I watched him after that, with my coworkers and women at the bar. Gus was the very pink of proper with everyone, not even paying particular attention to me. Yet when I got back to work, there was his hand high on my hip as he slipped past.

Nothing to send him out over, and I hadn’t yet decided how I felt about the whole affair.

It was a risky move on his part, though. Pink’s was a woman-predominated club that didn’t allow single men or groups of men without female-presenting dates inside. The owners, an older couple named Alice and Jill, wanted a space where women could come, drink, and dance with minimum fear of harassment. Jenny had worked hard on that image, and now Pinks was the premier lady’s club in town.  

She did like to keep one pretty boy bar-backing, if not bar keeping. According to her it kept the ladies thirsty, and thirsty ladies bought drinks from thirst traps. The hard part was finding a trap not looking to snare his own lady every night but so far, Gus was passing with flying colors. Every woman drooled over him and yet he slid every phone number he was passed discreetly into the trash when the woman wasn’t looking.

“Put that crate over there,” I said, instead of what the hell do you think you’re doing. “Count the extras.”

 I set my own down at the far wall and started moving bottles around to get a count. Other than his crate hitting the concrete I heard nothing behind me. No counting. No working.

Shit. He was going to force my hand.

My ears still rang from the throbbing dance music, my feet were sore from standing all night, and now I was locked alone in a room with a guy I’d known for two weekends. I didn’t want to do this right now, but here we were. Gustavo was about to get either a broken heart, or a broken nose.

His call.

Before I could turn around, I felt the warmth of his body behind me and a gentle hand in my hair.

“Gus,” I said as menacingly as I could, but his hand caught my shoulder as I went to turn and forced me to stay facing the shelves of vodka.

“Just hear me out,” he said. His thumb made a couple soft circles on my shoulder and when I didn’t try to turn again, he patted it and turned his attention back to my hair. I could feel him softly parting it, separating the clinging curls.

“This is a good way to get fired,” I said, “unless you’re auditioning to be the official Pinks hair dresser.”

His chuckle was a sound I hadn’t heard from him yet. Throaty. Deep. Amused.

“I used to work at the Spade Club.”

Instantly both ice water and warmth ran through my limbs as I suddenly understood him, and all the words I had prepared about “you’re not my type” fled with my memory of his last command. I tried to whip around and face him, to understand how I’d missed it, search his face for that jolt of recognition, but he shoved my shoulder forward no.

“No,” he said darkly, and my breath caught. All my blood drained, but stopped about halfway south. “Good girl,” he said when I froze, and resumed playing with my hair. “I will not do anything you don’t want and if you ask me to, right now, I’ll walk away and never touch you again. Is that what you want? You may answer.”

I swallowed hard. Yes, you presumptuous asshole, get the fuck out of here and don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you didn’t manage to push pass the simple, “No” that I did say.

“Good girl,” he said again, and trailed one finger down my neck. My knees almost went out then and there. “What’s your word?”

“Angler.”

“As in the fish? Clever. Which means Damien didn’t come up with it, you did. He’s not that clever.” When I stiffened at the name, he gave a gentle shh. “Don’t worry, we’re not friends. But you know how this works. You say the word, and we stop.”

He was quiet for a moment as he worked at untangling my curls, then started to braid the strands around each other, his hands soft and deft. Every time his fingers brushed the back of my neck a chill of pleasure ran down to my toes.

“Gus, I don’t—“

He yanked a fistful of my hair, hard, pulling my head back and making me hiss with pain. “I didn’t say you could talk.”

He went back to braiding, the silence punishment enough while I could only stand still, staring at racks of bottles, not even able to turn and adore the beautiful man behind me. Finally I heard the snap of elastic and a thick, heavy braid fell against my back.

“There,” he said. He gave it a little tug for show, then put his hands on my hips. Hot breathe hit my neck and my knees threatened to drop me to the concrete. “I adored you at Spade, couldn’t stand watching that asshole take advantage of you. None of us could.” He stopped to nibble my ear and a tiny sound of pleasure escaped my throat without my permission. “He was quite unceremoniously invited never to return, but you’d disappeared by then.” Teeth sank into my shoulder and when my knees did buckle, he threw an arm around my waist to hold me up.

“Then I found you.”

I could hardly breathe as teeth and tongue and lips roved my neck, my ear and my bare shoulder. I shot my hands out and gripped the metal shelf for support as his own started roving. Fingers pressed into my crotch through my pants. He moved his head to the other side of my neck, every caress shooting straight to my groin. Mewls and moans rose unbidden through my throat and I didn’t notice him unbuttoning my collared shirt until the cool air of the store room hit my chest. One smooth motion to pop the front latch of my bra, and he sank his teeth into that ticklish spot where neck meets shoulder just as he pinched both nipples.

I cried out, struggling to stay upright and grateful everyone else had gone home.

“Just say the word,” he whispered against my neck, nipping at the skin. “Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll go.”

It wasn’t even about not safe-ing out. I did want this. If I’d known him from Spade, I probably would have wanted it even sooner.

Damien had crossed the line from play into abuse and harm, but I thought I’d been the only one to see it. If he’d gotten ejected from Spade, the only S&M nightclub in town, I’d been completely wrong.

It had been six months. I’d tried to guys I’d picked up around town, two of them I even took home with me then promptly kicked out, dissatisfied and angry at my inability to just enough a nice fuck with a beautiful idiot without…everything else. But when you’re looking for something rough and the boy you picked up thinks doing it doggy-style and moaning “You like that, huh?” is kinky, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Everything they had been missing, Gustavo now offered, standing behind me, fingers pinching and flicking my hard, exposed nipples while he gnawed on the nerve endings of my neck.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked quietly. One of his hands slid between my legs, but pulled away as I thrust my crotch forward, hungry for release.

“Yes,” I said quietly, then cried out and added a “sir!” to the end as he violently twisted one nipple.

“It comes at a price.” His hand slipped between us, where his bulge pressed against my ass. I heard the soft clink as his belt unbuckled. “Do you still want it?”

“Yes,” I said, the tremble coming through even my voice now. “Please, sir. Please stay.”

“Like hell I’m leaving now,” he said. Leather whispered through belt loops. Once more he bit into my neck, then stepped back. “Undress. Don’t turn around.”

I rushed to obey before my brain even thought to question whether or not I should. It was mortifying, stripping my skin bare, leaving my clothes piled next to me on the floor, facing steel racks of bottles like a kid forced to face a wall for bad behavior. Knowing he was behind me, fully dressed, watching my body slowly come on display for him. Seeing every part of me as I kicked out of my shoes, slid off my bra and shimmied free of my pants and thong.

Then there I was, bared, toes chilling on the sticky, pocked cement, the braid he’d put in my hair tickling the bare skin of my back.

There was nothing but silence, no noise save for the faint strains of after-hours jazz I liked to play as I closed. Silence that stretched so long and was so absolute behind me, I started to panic that he’d left. That I’d mistaken everything. That he wasn’t there, or this was some cruel practical joke.

I couldn’t hear him breathe. His feet didn’t shuffle. Clothes didn’t rustle. I swallowed and pulled a deep breath. He’d said not to turn around. I couldn’t turn around. Not until I was positive he wasn’t there.

I exhaled slowly and fully, waited for a count of four, and inhaled again, trying to concentrate on how it filled my entire torso. I closed my eyes and pictured an old alarm clock, the type with numbers on tiles that flipped. I set it to 200, and started flipping tiles. 199. 198. 197.

I told myself if I could make it down to 001, I’d look. I’d make sure I wasn’t alone, damn the consequences.

145. 144. 143.

Anxiety roiled in my stomach, churned up by anticipation and fear. If he was there, he was a master. Nobody had made it past 150 without deciding I’d waited long enough, for whatever it was.

122. 121.120.

Jesus it felt like I’d start dripping on the concrete from the thrill of it.

I hit 072 before I finally heard him. There was no way to judge how long it had been, five minutes or half an hour, but he’d stood there, completely silent, trying to wait me out. Doubting. But I’d won.

The twist of a rubber sole on cement and a whoosh was all the warning I had before the pointed end of the belt snapped on the thick of my ass. I wasn’t braced and the pain almost sent me crashing into the rack, a mistake that would cost both of us our jobs and thousands of dollars in broken alcohol.

But he knew that.

“Spread your legs,” he said, instead of moving me away from the shelves. “Hands on head.”

He had a belt, and he wanted a clear path to wherever he wanted to use it.

I immediately complied.

His thumb traced the welt the tip of the belt had left, then pressed into it, brightening the pain. I held on, eyes closed, and rode the release of dopamine it triggered.

Gus’s body was against mine again, the hand holding the belt snaked around my hips and bracing me as the leather rested on my thigh. He began to spank me, lightly at first, slowly increasing the force and speed of the blows. What began as a light warming, spread out amongst my ass, thighs, and lower back, quickly became a sharp, biting pain everywhere he hit.

It was a fight to keep my fingers locked behind my head as he beat my ass red with his palm. I caught my lip between my teeth and trapped all my cries in my throat. Just enough noise to entice him, but this was just a warm-up. Things hadn’t even begun to get painful.

He spanked me until I was panting and my arms starting quivering as I fought to hold them up. He was starting to breathe hard and I could feel his excitement through his pants, cock leaping with every strike.

With a finality he drove his palm ferociously hard against first one cheek, then the other, and chuckled.

“Good girl,” he said, and let go of my hip. He slid behind me, pants rough and grating on my burning ass as he pressed in.

He moved the belt to between my spread legs, cold leather caressing my labia. His other hand squeezed my left breast hard enough to make me whimper, before drawing soft circles around my nipple. Again his teeth and lips were on my neck, making my knees want to buckle even before he turned the belt on its edge, slid it between my sex, and started pulling it up and down over my clit.

The first time it touched my clit directly my knee buckled from the bright sensation. Gus yanked and twisted the nipple he’d been teasing and ordered “Stand.”

I locked my knees and jerked back into his crotch every time he pulled the belt up, relaxing as it slid back down.

His teeth, hands, and belt slowly blended into one long stretch of pure sensation, the familiar tickling building in my lower stomach until I was panting and shaking under his ministrations.

“Sir,” I managed to say in a tiny voice. “Sir may I cum? Please. Please let me cum.”

His only answer was to step away, my arms shaking on my head, body suddenly cold and unfulfilled.

I heard the leather run through his hands.

“Hold onto the shelf,” he said, though I could hear the lust in his voice, too.

We could just fuck. We both wanted to just fuck, them and there.

But anybody could just fuck. Not everybody could scratch the itches we carried deeper down in our sexuality.

So I wove my fingers through the wire mesh of the shelf, spread my legs a little wider, and waited.

This time, I didn’t even get to start counting. He’d doubled the belt and, using it like a strap, began bringing it to bear on my exposed skin. Though he started at my ass he quickly moved to just below my shoulder blades, beat his way down one side of my back, and down my thigh and calf. Not to half-ass it, he stepped to my other side and repeated the path until both sides of my body burned. Despite the cold I could feel sweat on my forehead and desperate mewls escaped my mouth despite my efforts to deny them voice. He spent more time tanning my ass until it felt as though he’d beaten the skin clean off.

Again he was panting as he finished, running his hands over his work, pressing thumb and finger into every line and welt he’d left. He found one that inspired particularly bright pain, and chuckled as I cried out.

“There it is,” he said darkly. “We’ll have to find your voice again.”

I squeezed the metal between my fingers until it hurt. There was an implication in his words this was only the beginning of many encounters, for starts. There was an acknowledgement of Damien’s hatred of any sound made on my part, as his sub was there to be beaten and fucked, nothing else.

And, the most important, there was personhood in that. For me. Something Damien had never afforded me and I’d been too naïve when we meant to realize it wasn’t a relationship if I was just someone to beat until he could get off.

“Ten,” Gustavo barked, breaking me free of my reverie. “You’ll count them. Any missed by you are given again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I managed.

He was clearly practiced with the belt. The first blow along, cross the welts on my back, nearly dropped me. Encouraged, I didn’t hold back much, letting the cry of pain slip past my lips before I forced out, “One, sir. Thank you, sir.”

By seven my knees were shaking, and a tear had slipped past my lower lid. Every flicking of the belt’s tongue felt like it cut straight through my skin and it was enough to make me want to drop to my knees and beg him to stop. Eight licked expertly under one ass cheek and nine, the other.

I expected a breath between nine and ten but he surprised me. The belt whipped out one last time. It went straight between my thighs and flicked so perfect at my crotch, just the very tip making contact with my sex.

It was such a perfect shot, I almost had to attribute it to luck.

But it had the desired effect. It was that last little shove off the edge and my entire body turned to jelly as I cried out. The minute my hands came undone from the wire shelf, I was collapsing, bound for the concrete floor but out of my mind with the pain of that strike.

Strong arms caught me instead, Gustavo hugging me against his still-clothed body, laying kissed across my shoulders and up my neck to my hairline. “You did so well,” he was mumbling between kisses. “You are so beautiful, and so strong.”

Slowly I melted against him, cradling my abused clit in one hand and clinging to the arm around me with the other. His words were everything I needed to pull back into this moment and out of the fog of pain he’d beaten me into. Through his pants his dick strained to get out, and as he lavished gentle attentions on my bruising skin I rolled my hips, driving down against his cock.

His turn to moan for me. He didn’t let go, but pried my hand from between my legs. With his middle finger he gave my clit a flick and down I went, crashing my knees into the concrete as he deftly wrestled both of my arms behind my back. Again he had the belt and faster than a calf roper he had it looped around each wrist individually and secured tight. I gave an experimental tug and moaned.

No way in hell I could free my hands, which left me at his mercy.

My favorite position when it came to sex.

Then he was yanking me to my feet, marching me across the room all the while swatting my ass and making me hop. In the corner he tipped over one of the empty kegs, kicked my knees out, and shoved me down and over it.

“Ask for it,” he said.

He was panting himself, about to lose control and yet I knew if I didn’t, he’d walk away. Even this turned on, I’d pay for misbehaving.

“Please fuck me,” I said, and wiggled my ass over the barrel.

“Beg for it,” he snarled, even as I heard the tell-tale sound of a condom wrapper ripping open.

“Please, sir, I need you to fuck me. I need your dick in me. I don’t deserve it, please be merciful and give it to me. I ache, sir, and I need you to make it better. Please, please fuck me.”

I was about to launch into another round of tearful pleas when his weight dropped on my back, legs kicking mine farther apart. He tapped his dick twice against my wet slit, one last tease, before he thrust brutally forward. The entire keg rolled until my head brushed the concrete, the metal punishingly cold against my bare skin. Then he had my braid in his hand, yanking me savagely backwards, rolling me deep onto the length of his cock.

His free hand found my clit and began a gentle massage, anachronist to his vicious thrusts and the burning pulls of my hair. It took mere seconds before I was on the edge, overwhelmed with the sensations of it all.

“Please can I cum,” I panted. “I’m going to cum, please say I can, please, I have to—“

“Say my name while you do,” he said, sounding strained himself.

I cried out, lost in the release of that terrible wonderful build-up to an edge I couldn’t pull back from. I yelled his name, panting the syllables out with pleasure.

It was all he needed to go over the edge himself. While I still pulsed around his cock he pushed in hard and deep, abandoning my clit to grab my shoulder and shove me bodily down on him.

“Fuck!” he yelled, and let go inside of me, grunting and straining like a rutting wild animal.

One final, last grunt and throb inside of me and collapsed on my back, panting, laughing, flushed cheek pressed to my abused, hot flesh.

“Holy shit,” he said, and laughed again.

Gustavo set up, keeping one gentle hand on my back while he undid the belt on my wrists.

“Move slow, careful now,” he said, all tender care as he helped me off the keg. He collapsed with his back against the wall and pulled me like a small child across his lap.

This was the point that Damien always abandoned me, left me raw and exposed and alone. Gus held me tight against his chest, kissing my face and neck and forehead and lips, muttering all the while how beautiful I was and how well I’d done.

It wasn’t until I’d come back enough to return his kiss that he put a hand between my legs, slowly teasing and stroking and fingering me back to the edge while never taking his mouth off mine. I came against his lips and he ate my cries of pleasure as though he were dying of thirst and they were the only thing to drink.

Then we sat like that a long while, me, naked in his arms, Gus clothed save for his wilted prick, softly stroking my back and not saying a word.

Finally, I laughed. It started with a single snort of amusement, then a soft chuckle, and soon I had my head buried against his chest as I laughed. When I sat up, he was grinning at me, as though that’s what he’d been waiting for this entire time.

“What the fuck?” I asked, and laughed again. “You cheeky bastard. And I’ve never seen you at the Spade Club.”

He grinned sheepishly. “I’m normally in the back. It’s my club.”

I pushed him playfully in the chest. “No way. You’re a liar and that’s rude.”

Gus drew an X over his heart. “I swear it. It’s my club. I’m not on the floor too much unless I have somebody to play with.”

“Okay so why have you been working here for two weekends? And why wouldn’t Jenny know you?”

He laughed. “Don’t be mad but she does. How do you think I wound up on your shift? We’re part of the business association, we’re good friends. When I found out you worked here, I convinced her to let me bar back.”

I sat up, eyed him harder, and frowned. “How the fuck did you find me? What, are you like stalking me?”

“No, no, no. I should have explained.” He held up both hands in surrender. “We were worried when you went missing from the scene and Damien didn’t let you befriend anyone who we could ask to check on you. He talked about how you were only pretending to be a sub to be with him and he got sick of it and dumped you. None of us bought it and when he wouldn’t give us your contact info and started trying to play with other girls in the club, we kicked him out and warned the community about him. That guy’s a predator.” He held up his hands again in apology when he saw my glare. “I know! I know. Preaching to the choir.”

He was very careful not to touch me while he explained, which let me relax a little. If I’d confronted Damien about anything, he would pin me down and not let me leave until he was satisfied. Gus was the polar opposite. I had a feeling I could cuss him out, punch him in the nuts, and storm out, and he’d respect my wishes for him to be punched in the nuts.

Oddly, it made me not want to do that, but to hear him out.

“Jenny linked me to the website she’d been building to give it a test run and bam, there was a staff picture. Only face I saw was yours, on the far left, grinning and holding a shaker. I wanted to make sure you were doing alright, so I talked her into letting me work a couple weekends. She made sure I knew I wasn’t getting paid for this, though.”

“Why not just come into the club and ask me?” I searched his face for any hint of deception yet he remained as open-faced and earnest as he always did.

Which made me frustrated I hadn’t seen his face while he was dominating me. What did it look like then?

“It’s not a thing you say to somebody in a packed bar and around coworkers,” he said with a shrug. “I was going to come, make sure you were doing okay, and then be dramatically fired by Jenny and disappear back to Spade. But when I was around you, I remembered how much I’d watched you, on the floor, taking beatings and asking for more, and how frustrated you seemed with the guys in the club here.” He grinned now, gleaming teeth showing and dimples as deep as canyons.

Fuck me but he was gorgeous, and I was sitting naked in his lap.

“So I thought I’d take a chance on my last night.”

I couldn’t help myself. I cupped his cheek in one hand and kissed him, hard, his head pressed against the wall. After a couple of lip-locked minutes, he pushed me back.

“If you keep that up we’ll have to start all over again,” he said, panting, but must have seen the dare in my eyes because he laughed. “No. We should probably finish closing and get some sleep. And showers. This floor is disgusting.”

“Fine,” I said, and slumped in disappointment.

Gustavo gave two quick tugs on the braid in my back.

“But,” he said, and instantly had my whole attention. “The Spade Club is closed Mondays, all day.  We could have the run of the place for as long as you like. And, if I’m being honest…” He sighed dramatically and leveled a gaze at me. “You didn’t count the tenth blow.”