The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (5 page)

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Have you found my instructions satisfactory, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you followed them?”

“Yes,” I said, and then added, “…sir,” because that was one of his instructions.

“Do you trust me, Evelyn?”

I looked up at him. Slowly, I nodded my head. I felt trapped by his narrow, all-consuming gaze. I had done everything in his instructions to the letter of the law. His law. I had worn the Burberry dress, sans panties, the platform Pradas, even the cosmetics, though I’d felt they were much too overstated for my pale, plain face. I’d applied them with a light hand and they had
still
left me looking vampiric. Mr. Sterling had provided everything, all of it delivered efficiently to my apartment in advance of our date, if you wanted to call it that.

He’d given me other instructions, of course. How I was to address him. How I was to wear my hair. How I was to conduct myself tonight. But he hadn’t told me anything about the Dollhouse.

He moved closer to me, turning his body ever so slightly so he was pressing me back against the seat. He partly covered his body with mine. He slid one of his trousered legs between my knees, nudging my legs further part. His hand cupped the back of my head, holding me in place, and he bent his head to kiss me for the first time that night. He kissed me hard, a bruising kiss. His tongue tasted bitter and hot and sweet all at once. I groaned at the taste, the feel, of it sliding over my teeth and against the supersensitive top of my mouth. He licked me there, quickly, like a lizard seeking water, then plunged it fully into my mouth. He fucked my mouth with his tongue until I groaned.

His hand moved to my thigh, pushing the too-short skirt of the dress up to my waist. I suddenly worried about the leather seats beneath us. I worried about staining them. He held my eyes and moved his hand so it was pressed against all the wetness between my legs. Did he not trust me? Did he not think I had done what he asked? The touch made me jumpy. He smiled that knowing smile of his as his fingers teased over my exposed sex. “No panties. Good,” he said. “You’ve done well, little dove. How was your day at work?”

I tried to concentrate on his words. I told him it was good, ordinary, another day. I didn’t tell him that I’d spent most of the day either watching the clock and mentally pushing it to go faster or watching the other girls in the pool, wondering if they could somehow sense my
non-virgin
status. I did tell him that I’d finished reading a new book last night, Alexandre Dumas’s
The Lady of the Camellias
. For a little while we discussed Marguerite Gautier, the woman kept by various lovers—frequently more than one at a time.

“How do you feel about Marguerite?” he asked me.

I picked my words carefully. One of my jobs as his courtesan was to engage him in intelligent conversation. “Despite the tragedies of her life and all the things she had been forced to do, Marguerite was a pure woman.”

“A pure woman?” Mr. Sterling asked, smiling at my assessment.

“Yes, sir. Her love for Armand Duval made her that way.”

Mr. Sterling pressed his lips together and watched me through the imperial lenses of his glasses. I wondered if he approved or only thought me foolish and romantic. I told him the next book on my reading list was
Memoirs of a Geisha
. I wanted to learn everything I could about professional courtesans through the centuries.

He circled my sex with his ring finger, his touch as light a feather, teasing more wetness out of me. “You enjoy that, don’t you? You’re like a little cat in heat.” I squirmed against the teasing pressure of his hand. He did not sound altogether displeased. His finger dipped into me, but only briefly. “So wet and tight and eager to please your gentleman like the good little courtesan you are, Evelyn. Like little Marguerite, content to serve your gentleman’s needs. Have you ever come for anyone like you’ve come for me, little cat in heat?”

I groaned at his words. I loved his pillow talk. No one had ever touched me like this. No one had ever spoken to me like this, so sweetly perverse.

He withdrew his hand and eyed me critically. “Have you ever sucked a man’s cock, little cat?”

I felt a flash of terror. I had no experience with these things. “No, sir.” I was too ashamed to admit that the first time I had ever even
seen
a real-life cock was only yesterday. “Please, sir…” I pleaded. I didn’t want to do this. Not yet. Not here.

He offered me a wicked smile. “A good courtesan knows how to please her gentleman, Evelyn. She knows how to perform on demand. Undo me.” He was using his voice again. I’m sure he had used that voice frequently in the past while building up Sterling of New York into one of the most powerful cosmetics empires in the world. The sound of it suggested he would not tolerate failure.

I took a deep breath to steady my rampant heartbeat and told myself that I could do this. I was learning. I was strong, like Marguerite. I went to work on Mr. Sterling’s belt and fly. His erect cock bobbed free of its own accord.

Dear God, he was huge. I wondered how I had ever taken all of that inside me the evening before. It didn’t seem possible, and I was glad I hadn’t known then how big he was. I thought how much more it might have hurt if I had known.

“Lick me,” he said.

I had to slide to my knees on the floor of the car to get the angle right. I inclined my head and flicked my tongue over his throbbing red cock. He tasted salty and warm and male. My soft licks encouraged his cock to grow, engorging it further.

“Harder.”

I licked him harder, starting at the base and moving my way up to the glistening soft head. He was wet at the top. I licked the wetness away from his slit, digging my tongue in just a little. I heard him stifle a groan.

“Now take me in your mouth.”

I hesitated then, wondering if I could. A part of me whispered that what I was doing was filthy, something desperate women did in dark alleys in New York late at night. It certainly wasn’t me, the professional temp, the good girl who wore sensible flannel pajamas to bed, had two cats, and an appetite for chocolate chip cookies, warm milk and
Masterpiece Theater
. I’d never even kissed a boy until college, and now here I was, being asked to suck the cock of one of the wealthiest men in New York. For a moment, the world felt surreal.

“Evelyn.” I could tell he was losing patience.

I took his now fully erect cock in my hands. I bent my head to it. It felt warm and tender and alive, like something apart from him. I thought about how Mr. Sterling had pleasured me with his mouth only the night before, the care he had taken to bring me to orgasm again and again. Turnabout was fair play, I suppose. I took the head of his cock in my mouth and sucked a little on it. I didn’t think I could take all of it. I wasn’t sure anyone could.

Mr. Sterling groaned and bucked his hips against me. I tasted a bit of pre-cum in my mouth and swallowed it down. It tasted strange but not unpleasant. I sucked harder, taking more of him into my mouth. My heart sped up, thudding so hard against the wall of my chest that I worried he could hear it. I felt the wetness growing between my legs again, but at the same time, I felt strangely electrified, in control. Powerful. I was bringing
him
to orgasm, making this powerful man whimper with just the suction of my mouth. The fear that I was doing something wrong, something filthy, slowly disappeared. He felt so perfect in my mouth, so warm and alive…

Mr. Sterling’s hands clamped around the back of my head, holding me firmly in place while he thrust himself in and out of my mouth, fucking my mouth with his cock the way he had fucked my mouth earlier with his tongue. He came hard in my mouth, pounding against my tonsils so I almost choked, almost couldn’t swallow him down in time. He recognized my distress and pulled out. I found I could breathe again. He gripped me by the hair and pulled, hurting me, pulling me back up onto the seat with him. He kissed me desperately, his teeth clicking against mine in his urgent desire to kiss me, to taste the inside of my mouth, to taste
himself
in my mouth. “Christ, you’re so fucking beautiful, Evelyn,” he told me, practically growling against my mouth. “So fucking perfect. I love your mouth almost as much as I love your sweet little cunny.”

I squirmed uncomfortably. Suddenly I was sad.

“Evelyn?” he said, sounding concerned.

I realized he’d thought he had hurt me in some way. He hadn’t. “I’m not beautiful, sir.” Plain, pleasant enough, perhaps, but not beautiful.

He sounded angry. “Who told you you weren’t beautiful?”

I realized my mistake. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have revealed my insecurities to him that way. I was his courtesan. It wasn’t my place to pass judgment on myself. That was his job.

Mr. Sterling studied me through those glasses of him. I could feel a kind of fission coming off him in the dark. It wasn’t anger—more like righteous indignation. He took my face in his big hands. “Evelyn, you’re beautiful and healthy and intelligent and everything I’ve waited for.” His words touched something deep inside of me. Then, as if to prove his point, he touched me between the legs, sliding his hand over my wet opening. His touch made me hyperaware of my body. “I never want to hear you say you aren’t beautiful, because when you insult yourself, you insult me. And I don’t tolerate insult. Do you understand me?”

I groaned a response. My cunt was wet and aching for him, and I could hear the low whimpers in my throat, almost mewling noises like I truly was a cat in heat. He pressed the strange roughness of his fingers against me. Unlike the other executives I knew in the pool, his hands were work-roughened, as if he’d known hard labor at some point in the past. He plunged three fingers inside me. I writhed for him, my knees coming up on the seat. That left me wide open to him. He could take me easily, if he wanted to.

“Please,” I heard myself say. I had never thought to hear myself say that. I never would have believed it if someone had told me that one day I would be writhing on the seat of a Mercedes-Benz, spilling my juices all over the upholstery, begging for sex. “Please, sir…”

“Hush now,” he said, teasing my legs further apart, giving him wider access to all the parts that ached for him. He touched all my wetness, running his fingers lovingly up and down my slit, exploring my openings. I loved the touch of him. He started torturing my exposed clit, tapping it and then pinching it, a sensation that left me groaning and rocking back and forth on the seat, wishing he would go deeper, would fuck me already. I’d been waiting all day. He inclined his head and buried his face in my throat, the scrape of his beard grazing me. “Evelyn, Evelyn…my little Marguerite,” he said, and the purring sound of his voice in my ear and the tapping of his fingers at my overstimulated core were enough to tease a little orgasm from me. I shuddered against him.

“I need you to fuck me,” I told him, ashamed of the begging quality of my voice. But I would beg, if I had to. I wanted to feel him inside of me. “Please, sir...

“Please, sir…may I have some more?” I felt his teasing smile pressed against my neck. I felt my ears burn. But at least he wasn’t angry with me anymore. He kissed the side of my neck, his breath hot against my cheek. “Soon, dove. Soon. But you must hang on just a little bit longer. I can’t have you spent before your big debutante ball.”

We sped on into the night.

***

We’d arrived fashionably late to the Dollhouse. The building was really Hampton House, a huge, rambling stone colonial manor built in 1680 on the southernmost tip of Staten Island. It sat overlooking Raritan Bay. I only recognized it because it was on the National Register of Historic Places, and I had seen a documentary on the oldest landmarks in New York City on late-night cable one sleepless night.

It was one of the oldest houses in New York, if not
the
oldest.

Mr. Sterling escorted me up the almost treacherous stone path to the front door, his hand at my elbow to steady me in my platforms. I said, “Sir, why do you call it the Dollhouse?” It looked
somewhat
like a dollhouse, but not exactly. It looked more like an English manor house better suited to the Scottish moors.

“Ah, that,” he answered. “That’s something of a joke. The gentlemen of New York have been bringing their courtesans here to show them off almost from the founding of the city. At that time, it was impolite to directly refer to a place that might be considered a house of ill repute—even though this place does not qualify as such. So the members of the Society began using a codeword. They started calling it the Dollhouse, and the name has been carried down by tradition for over three hundred years by Society members.”

“The Society?” I asked. He made it sound like it ought to be capitalized.

He pressed his lips together. “You’ll meet them tonight.” He looked me over. I must have been trembling. “You mustn’t be afraid,” he said in a serious, softer tone of voice. He put his hand over mine where it rested on his arm. “The Dollhouse operates on
very
stringent regulations, and any breaking of those regulations is punishable by instant expulsion. No one under the age of thirty is allowed inside, and every gentleman is screened for at least a year before joining. Decorum must be observed at all times. Courtesans are treated with utmost respect here, and you will never be forced to do anything you don’t approve of. If you disapprove of something, you’ll use a safe word. When the safe word is used, all play stops immediately in the Dollhouse.” He closed his hand over mine, his grip powerful. “But the most important thing you must remember is that in the Dollhouse, only a courtesan’s gentleman may touch her. Nothing else is allowable.”