Cheating Life

The point of all this was, of course, to weed out the jerks who were too narcissistic to follow through, and to keep any of the real enders unsettled enough that they wouldn't flake out and cause a whole mess of paperwork. It was risk management. The details varied from girl to girl to whim to mood, but the results were pretty much the same, and they were reliable.

Jane was toweling me off with a terry-cloth robe as she told me that this was not at all like her plan for me. She had already decided I wasn't a jerk or a flake, and she'd agreed to take me because she thought I'd be interesting to know. She had nearly cleared her schedule, and we were going to be spending time together. We could do whatever I wanted - as long as she liked it, too. There would be no bowling or miniature golf, and no card games unless it was strip poker. No going out again to advertise, unless she'd gravely misread me and I had an exhibitionist streak. And since my own room wouldn't be ready until tomorrow morning, I'd be sleeping here with her tonight, and every night I wished.

I let her know that I had put myself completely in her hands, and I would be happy to do whatever she thought would be fun. Her mischievous grin told me clearly that I had given the right answer.

She handed me a pair of slippers and led me out over the marble floor, past the fucking bed, to the squared leather couch facing the windows and overlooking the city. I lay on my stomach as I was directed and folded my arms under my chin. A moment later there was a jack-and-coke on the end table by my head. (That was no psychic act - it was on my questionnaire.)

After I'd had a few sips and she'd finished whatever she was doing, I heard the clop-clop of her boots as she came around into my view. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and leaned up against the window. "So, schoolboy. Now I've got you alone in my room, and just a little tipsy. What should we do? I don't really feel like homework - I'm not the studying type tonight. I'm not the cheer type, either, but I can show you my kicks." She set her booted heel on the end-table and knocked my drink to the side. I looked up to a magnificent view while she peered down with satisfaction. "Or we can sit and 'talk'. I might be able to teach you a few things."

"That sounds good."

"I thought it might." She dropped her boot and circled the couch, coming to stand at the other end. "Roll onto your back." As I complied, keeping the robe around me, she crawled up over the arm of the couch and straddled my hips. She rolled her thighs and ass to settle in, and I went hard beneath her. "There, that's comfortable. Now what are we going to talk about?"

I shrugged. I wasn't very good at these types of games.

"Oh, you're still much too tense. We'll never have a good conversation until you relax." She pulled open the chest of the robe, then reached over the couch for a little bottle. Hot oil dribbled over my shoulders, neck, and the top of my stomach, and a moment later she was rubbing it in with the palms of her hands.

She started by asking me about movies. I was too busy watching her, feeling her, to give good answers, but only at first. She kept asking, kept laughing, kept massaging, and I began to speak more freely. She flirted with her fingers and her questions. She pinched my nipples and tickled under my arms. She listened to my answers, then teasingly described how she would turn my favorite movies into porn and what part she'd have me play. She was feeling me out. Her questions became less frequent but more probing as my conversation began to flow.

We had graduated from movies into books and philosophy, but strangely we were no less aroused. My arms were crossed behind my head and my eyes were drifting over the ceiling as I described Atlas Shrugged with no small words. I was feeling comfortably arrogant. She was only half-focused on the massage now; she'd been silent for some time and had taken to kissing my neck and chin as I spoke.

When I came to a break in thought, she sat up and put a hand over my mouth. "Close your eyes, schoolboy. I've got a surprise for you." I obeyed, and her thighs squeezed over my hips while she turned to the side. A moment later a nipple was pressed into my mouth, and she cupped a hand behind my head to hold me in place. Then she began talking. She had thoughts of her own on my subject. She delivered this critical opinion on Objectivism, and Ayn Rand in general, barely pausing mid-sentence to move my head to the other breast once I'd teased her perky and warm. Though I was understandably distracted, I listened. I was surprised – surprised and impressed. She was right - I'd never heard it said that way before, but she was spot on. And I'd done a thesis on Rand. She pushed up from me, and I opened my eyes to see her staring into them.

At that moment it was easy for me to look right back into her eyes; in fact, it would have been difficult to turn away. That struck me as peculiar later. I'd never been able to look someone in the eyes like that for more than a few seconds before self-evaluation got the better of me.

She kissed me hard, then pulled herself away. I thought she might slip open my robe and slide me inside her, but instead she ran her hands through her hair and let the pigtails drop out. "I could fuck the life out of you right now if I wasn't careful. But I have some other ideas for tonight. You need an intermission, and I need a costume change. I'm done with the naughty schoolgirl for today. Or at least with the schoolgirl part." She slid off me and stood, patting the bulge beneath my robe. "Wait for me here." She winked, then turned a knob on the remote behind the couch. One of the window panes darkened just a shade, hiding the city lights to show a dim display screen - just so I'd know it was there.

I sighed, and listen to her clop off to her dark double doors in the corner. I left the display as she did - for the moment I preferred my own thoughts to public entertainment.

vii

I was still mulling myself over when the lights in the room dropped almost to a candle flame. There was rustling by the fucking bed, but I barely heard it, and didn't turn to look. I didn't turn to look yet, not until the screen flicked back to a tinted window and I heard a low, hissing voice far behind me: "Ahh... Dinnertime has come at last... Come here, my plump little argent. Fly to the flame."

I sat up on the couch. Only the lights at the far edge of the room were lit, and just barely at that. The fucking bed was a silhouette against the orange glow. A semi-sheer canopy had descended from the frame above the bed, and swags of drapery drooped around the posts and up to the walls and fell to wispy heaps on the floor. It felt like a den, or a nest. A dark figure swayed in the center - she was obscured in the folds of the curtains, but her hand slipped out, and a hooked finger beckoned. "Come closer." I left the robe and the slippers by the couch, and descended the stairs of the reverse dais, slow to feel each step in the dark. As I reached the bed, I realized that the drapery was patterned with heavy spiderwebs.

A gloved hand caught my wrist and pulled me through the curtain. I was immediately pinned face down on the bed and wrapped tightly between sheets and thighs, fingers and pillows, and the not-infrequent nibbling kiss. A blindfold was slipped over my eyes. Over the next several minutes, while the wraps continuously tightened around me, I was rolled onto my back and each of my limbs was drawn free from the bundling and very firmly pulled straight, only to be tied to a cornerpost of the bed. I didn't struggle, but I don't think it would have mattered - she was surprisingly strong and quick with her hands. Each time she moved, it was brief and deliberate and ended in a pin that kept me pressed, immobile, to the mattress. At last I was spread-eagled, though my body was still swaddled. I could tell she was satisfied - I felt her strum each of my bonds and cluck her tongue.

Then she sat back on my hips and pulled off the blindfold. My eyes had adjusted, so even in the low light I could now see her clearly. Her lips were full and painted a bright, bloody red. They twisted into a closed, satisfied smile. Her eyes were heavily shadowed, and her black lids drooped dangerously. Her hair was hidden in a tight knot behind her head. She wore a black stocking catsuit that clung to her curves and wrinkled at just the right places; her belly was covered by a satin hourglass, red as her lips. Her elbow-length gloves ended in hard curved points at the fingertips - like claws - which she now used to loosen and peel back my wrappings and tease my chest. Her smile parted, and she bared a pair of sharp fangs. Her tongue flicked against them as she spoke, giving her a slight lisp.

"Such a present for me to unwrap! And now that I've caught you in my web, my argent, you know your doom is near. But before I have my way with you, I'll tell you a truth: all spiders bite. Lucky for you, the bites themselves are rarely deadly. It's what we do afterward that matters." She licked her lips. The lights of the room disappeared as her shadow fell over me.

viii

I woke the next morning to a brightly sunlit room. A pale yellow glow flowed in from the wall of windows, painting a faded, impressionistic image of the web-draped bed against the far wall.

I propped myself up and saw that my wrists and ankles were still tightly bound in last night's silk ties. The ties themselves, however, dangled loosely, and were only restrained by their overnight twisting in the sheets.

There was a solid-sounding click from the corner of the room. I sat up to see Jane had just emerged from the dark wooden doors. She wore grey sweats, a loose t-shirt, and fuzzy slippers, and she walked with her head cocked over her shoulder while she wrapped a towel around her hair.

"Oh-" She spotted me then, and turned toward me. She tucked the towel up into a makeshift turban as she descended to the bed and sat beside me. "I didn't think you'd be up so early - not after last night."

Last night: It was... It was a swirl of images now, and I remembered we... We did everything, or rather she did everything, and I was her toy - her very pleased, satisfied toy. It was all part of her story, her game, where she was the spider and I her midnight snack, but I don't think even the black widow's mate gets the treatment I got before he is devoured. No one memory would stick in my mind long enough to relive. They kept fading and blurring, but the whole experience was steeped in a feeling, a sort of golden, overwhelming bliss, like it was the first time I'd been laid. I looked at her now, without any make up, dressed like a stay-at-home, and saw that she was beautiful. She had a very pretty face - wide, knowing eyes with dark lashes, lips just full enough to frown, smile, or pout, and naturally arched brows. Her body - well, a modeling agency would probably ask her to shed a few pounds, but there were no folds or sags in her curves, and she knew how to work them. But it was that quality, the same confidence I saw yesterday, which could exhibit calm coolness, light a fire behind her eyes, and invite acknowledgement of her alpha status all at the same time. That was what defined her.

I remembered her questions and I shrugged dumbly; "'I wake with the Sun'".

I think she caught the quote from the lyric – it was from a song on that Refinery album she took - because she gave me a funny sort of smile and watched me a moment. "Well, feel free to lie in, if you'd like, and I will bring you breakfast. Or you can get up and take a bath, and then we'll go for breakfast. But either way, you're having a solid breakfast. I've got to keep you well-fed if you're going to last the three days. Last night was barely foreplay." She grinned wickedly.

I stood, and I remembered the bindings as they came with me. Even though the knots were carefully tied not to cut the circulation to my fingers, they were not so loose that I could slip free. I started picking at the knot, but soon realized that it was so tight it would have to be cut. "Leave it," she said, loosely taking the free end of the silk. "I like you with handles. I'll cut them down after your shower so you don't trip." She gave me a loud slap on the ass, starting me off at a quickly-suppressed gallop toward the shower.

ix

True to her word, after I was dried off she cut each leash down to about six inches and wrapped up the loose ends. She'd changed into a flower print sundress - nothing naughty, just pleasant and comfortable. She'd also found a change of clothes for me, but not from my bag, which was still sitting just inside the door. I now wore pressed khaki jeans, sandals, and a white linen shirt with the hotel's monogram. She produced my ohm and hung it around my neck, then tucked the pendent beneath the shirt.

We went up in the elevator, I think - the unnumbered, unlit button was far from the one she'd hit last night, but we seemed to go only a few floors - and walked a short hall to what smelled like a bakery. Inside were scattered clusters of equally mismatched and luxurious chairs and loveseats facing short, round tables. Many were empty, and none of them seemed to have an ender in them - certainly no-one was dressed like me. Everyone there was female, and each was enjoying her own style of luxury. Jane led me to the other side of the room by way of each group; as we went, she introduced me to the girls by name and polite details, and gave them only my name in return. I got the sense that she was friendly with most of them but in none of their cliques, which had drawn them together like soap bubbles on dishwater. None of the girls appeared surprised to see me, and they feigned varying amounts of interest in me personally, but none of them went back to their previous conversations until we were out of earshot. Jane settled us in a loveseat in the back corner of the room from which we could see the others but not be overheard ourselves. She told me a few embarrassing details about some of them.

We settled into talking, mostly about what we'd do today. I let my eyes wander around the room. All of the girls seemed to be drinking tea. Occasionally a tray of food would arrive for one of them, but they didn't eat from it; instead they took their leave and carried it out of the room. Within a few minutes I had a tray of my own laden with breakfast foods - eggs, sausages, a sweetroll - enough to fill me but not to stuff. Jane was now sipping from a cup of hot, pungent tea herself. The cup was clear, and in the bottom was a large flower blossom rooted to a smooth stone; the petals seemed flush with life despite the steam rising from the water. Jane was listing off things we could do today, but I didn't have any lingering desire to fly or scuba or do anything really risky. I wanted a couple of hours to think and write, perhaps. I was still open to suggestions, by which I secretly meant I hoped for more of last night. But if nothing else seemed better, I told her I'd like her to show me around the hotel. It seemed an interesting place.

She gave me that same sort of funny smile, but nodded.

She was done with her tea when I was done with my food. She had picked a few petals from the flower to munch on, but it seemed little the worse for wear. She set a copper plaque down in front of me – it was a smaller version of the one from the evening before. "By law, I will ask you to renew the contract every day. I'm doing it this morning because if you decline to continue now, you're liable only for one night's stay. Just say 'Yes' or 'No' to the agreement printed there and press both thumbs into the appropriate circle."

I quickly re-read the agreement - there were no surprises - and affirmed the contract with a word, thumbprints, and DNA. "I'm very set on this, Jane." I mustered all of my sincerity when I said so, mostly to remind myself.

"I know." She returned the plaque to her purse. "I could see your determination as soon as I walked in your door. Here, give me your arm a moment." I complied, stretching my arm out as she retrieved a small black leather box from the bag and flipped it open. "This will hurt just a bit." Inside the box was what looked like an accounting stamp, but when she held my wrist and pressed it down into the underside of my arm, it did hurt, like a bite or a cut. She returned the stamp to the box, and I turned my arm to see a fine-dot matrix tattoo inked into my flesh. There, now permanently in my arm, was a neat row of strange symbols. The tattoo began to ooze blood, but she only took my arm back and pressed a cloth napkin against it for a minute. "It identifies you as a suicide - my suicide, actually. You could say your body is now my property, at least as far as the rest of the girls are concerned. Of course, it won't prevent you from declining the contract at any time if you change your mind, but then you'll have a nice souvenir to take away with you."

x

The tattoo seemed to be a hall pass, too.

Jane took me first to a floor with long halls stretching off in both directions, lined by tightly-packed doors on either side. The doors were numbered, and we strolled down the left hall until we found number 276. She produced a small fob and waved it in front of the door; a green light blinked overhead and the door clicked. She pushed it open. Beyond was a small, simply furnished room. It had a bed, a desk, a table, a chair, a restroom, a window, and a computer tablet resting on a stand - just what you'd expect to find in a hotel room, but with better quality and less decoration.

"This is your room. You can stay here whenever you want, and it's a good place for you to rest or think or write later on today. But don't forget what I told you - you are mine, and I won't treat you like another girl might. I'd like you to spend your time with me. I won't lock you in here, either. Here's your key - you'll need it to get out as well as in. If you do leave the room, I only ask you to send for me first so you don't get lost. Oh, and there's a spyhole beneath the numberplate - see right here? So, if you do want to spend any time in here, I'll give you a little piece of tape to cover it."

We left my room - my cell, really - as it was. Now that I knew about the spyhole, we flipped up the numberplate on several of the other doors along the hall. Most of them were empty, or too dark for me to see anything. I could just make out someone sleeping in a few of them. Jane motioned me over to one nearer the elevator. There were two or three shapes inside crouching over the bed, rocking and arching and slumping. "I think that's Vanessa's ender in there - it looks like they're getting ready to check her out." She dropped the numberplate and confided, "Vanessa doesn't like to get her own rooms too messy. Do you want to watch on the monitor?"

I shook my head.

She took me throughout the hotel, in no particular order, apparently - sometimes we went up in the elevator, sometimes down. She took me to the pool on the roof, through the parking garage again, into several kitchens, and around the two floors of the private casino. We saw the "recreation rooms" - conference halls converted to stages for fantasies more elaborate than Jane's spiderweb. A couple of them were in use, and we watched from the control room as a panty-less chorus line performed the Can-Can for a small audience of well-dressed business-types. Across the hallway, workers were tightening up the rigging on what appeared to be the inside of a one-ring Big Top, complete with wild beast cages and straw and peanut shells on the floor. One of the rooms was now a series of indoor pools, decorated like the bottom of the ocean. With a wink Jane told me that if I wanted to meet a mermaid, it could be arranged.