Joey put a wine glass in front of me but I caught him before he poured.

“Can I get a whisky instead?”

“That bad a day?”

“Some single malt that’s not going to break the bank, a little ice.”

He poured and I sipped. I wasn’t fired. I sure as hell screwed up and the likelihood of promotion was flushed deep down one of those old really loud two-gallon toilets. Going back to face the team at work was not going to be easy.

“You want another?”

I guess I was sipping more aggressively than I thought. “Please.”

Joey poured again. A couple of cubes of ice. 

The Braves pre-game was on and they were waxing about a minor league pitcher who was all that, or might be all that. No one knew, but the panel of experts was excited.

The overhead lights flickered a bit and the bar briefly went from red to fluorescent and back to red. The lights snapped me awake. The shaded bulb above me was hot, annoyingly so and perspiration was filming my cleavage. To the left was an overactive area AC unit and my elbows were cold and my knees were chilled below the hem of my skirt. 

I considered moving a seat or two to the right, but there was a couple making googly eyes with each other a few seats down in that direction, and invading personal space has never sat right with me. I certainly wasn’t moving right toward the AC. 

I stayed in my hot, cold seat and watched the game.

Joey poured again. And again. 

The hoped-for wunderkind from the minors got pulled in the second with two runners on base after giving up five runs. I felt bad for him, and not just because I thought he was cute. There was a bad decision on a would-be double play that made him look worse than he should have. In all, it was a “welcome to the majors, kid” type of game. He’ll be okay.

In the middle of the sixth, the Braves were pulling off one of those streaks that make you think they were going to stage a comeback. Of course, they weren’t, but enough hits gets you excited. I should have been excited. But I wasn’t. I was the idiot that accidentally forwarded a minorly important email to the competition and spent two hours hearing about how stupid I was from a cascading cast of superiors. Fuck, fuck, fuck. But they didn’t fire me.

That meant I had to go back Monday.

“Joey…”

“Erin, maybe you’ve had enough.” He said. Fucking professional.

“You know I’m not driving.” I lived a block away.

“I do,” he said. “I’m worried about you walking at this point.”

There was a tear fighting to escape my left eye. “I just… I’m not ready to go home.”

“One more,” he conceded. “One more, but one of us walks you home.” 

I gave a sniffle and a nod. No one was sitting within two barstools of me. No one would. The kids googling to the right of me left three innings ago and were probably showering off by this point. I was wasted. I was miserable. 

Joey set my last Scotch of the evening in front of me. 

I shifted the glass between my hands and noted the cold. The Braves hit into a double play.

“Hey,” said a voice to my left.

“Evening sir,” said Joey. “What can I get for you?”

“Jameson’s or something else Irish with a splash of soda, if you don’t mind.”

“Not a problem.” And Joey went about his business.

I glanced at him in the mirror behind the bar and was horrified. The Jameson didn’t recognize me yet. Please don’t recognize me, I prayed. 

“Erin?”

Fuck.

“Erin Sindler?”

“Oh,” I definitely didn’t slur, “Scott!” 

And then… I can’t explain it. I jumped from my barstool and wrapped my arms around a man I haven’t seen since high school. I wept. It was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.

Go back to high school and I had a huge crush on him but was younger by a year which oddly mattered at that age. There was a party the weekend before he was off to college and we talked in a corner for an hour or so before slipping off to a darker corner behind the garage. He kissed me a little. I stuck my tongue down his throat and he grabbed my breasts under my t-shirt. He wasn’t the first.

But then he snaked his hand below, unbuttoned my jeans, and slipped beneath my panties. No one had ventured there before. His fingers slid up and down my slit, getting wet and polishing my lips. When I was ready, or rather when he decided that I was ready, he dipped in. First one finger and then two into my virgin pussy.

It’s been twelve years but I still remember the feeling of the brick wall against my back as he drove in three knuckles, out to one, and in three again. His tongue was hot on my neck. I was incapable of expression beyond the occasional grunt. 

That was the first time anyone besides me made me cum. I bit his neck so hard, trying not to alert the party to our covert, but I wanted to scream. My blue-jean-clad hips pumped against his hand and I, the virgin who never even touched, much less had seen a dick, needed to drop to my knees and stuff as much of his naked cock into my mouth as I could manage. Other girls had told me about blowjobs and some said it was gross and some said it was okay. I wanted it. I wanted a mouthful of cum.

The sirens went off. Not figuratively. 

The sirens went off and the police broke up the party sending teenagers north and south. I never got to my knees before him. Scott went off to college and I have finger fucked myself to the what could have been more times than I’m willing to admit. 

I don’t think of him every time I take a load on or in me, but I think about it every so often.  

So here I was, sitting in a bar drunk beyond recognition, weeping and pathetic, worried about my job and my status in the office, and overjoyed that there was a chance that a practical stranger but for the years might take pity on me and he was also a practical stranger that I might beg to shoot his cum all over my face. 

That’s when you need a good bartender.

**********

“You were pretty drunk,” Joey said.

“I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “You left your credit card after Jean walked you home. The tip was surprisingly generous.” There was a Cheshire grin as he polished highballs.

“So he backed off?”

“He?”

“Fair,” I said. “I guess I backed off. But he let it go? I used to have a thing for him. Did you ever have a high school crush?”

“I… what?” Arms up but giggling. “No, Erin. Only pissed off ad execs have high school crushes.”

I smiled, “Fuck off.”

“The guy you molested seems not to have had motives similar to you.” He notes a cobweb over the taps and aspirates a bit of frustration.

“What did he say after I was gone,” I asked.

“He very politely let me know that his pushing you away was not because of a lack of interest in your offerings or an interest in what I might substitute.”

“You tried?”

“Damn fucking straight!” and then he paused. “Everything but straight I mean. Fucking hot.” 

“I’m embarrassed,” I said. “The worst is that I have no idea how many or who he keeps in touch with. The next time I see an old acquaintance, I’m already worried that he'll have told them what a sot I was.” I twirled my hair. “Can I get a white?”

“Particular?”

“Crisp. Dry. Whatever.”

“This is Sardinian.” He set that glass down, poured the wine, and waited until I tasted.

“So….”

“What?”

“So…. he left a business card.” 

*****

“I’m really embarrassed.”

“Stop.”

“Seriously.”

“Let’s just drop that and catch up. It’s been a hell of a long time.”

“Maybe a cup of coffee? We could catch up.”

“I’d like that.”

*****

“And so, I was caught in this nether area where I was afraid of losing my job and just as afraid of keeping it and being the person that was always looked on as the person that can’t be… I fucked a big deal up,” I said. “I was afraid of being back-benched.”

“But that’s passed?” asked Scott.

“No. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting anything but a support position on any deal going forward for a while, and it’s embarrassing for me in the office.”

“I bet most of that is in your head,” he said. The waiter topped off our wine.

“Doesn’t make much difference either way,” I sipped and stared off. “My head or theirs, I’m off my game.”

His phone beeped, literally. I didn’t know anyone had a simple beep for a ringtone.

“Shit. I need to take care of this,” he said. “Um, I need to run.” He waved for the bill. “This was fun though, can we do this again? I don’t want to be forward.”

“No, no. You’re not being forward.”

He stood. “What are you doing for dinner tomorrow night?”

“I guess I’m waiting for an invitation,” and my inner teenager began mocking me. And rightfully.

“Maybe Italian?”

I should have just said yes, but my face gave something away.

“You don’t like Italian?” he asked.

“Oh, no.” I was awkwardness personified. “I love Italian.” I started speaking with my hands, but not on purpose, like my mother used to. “It’s just that I grew up in a big Italian family and we always cooked family style and the restaurant experience just doesn’t… this makes me sound like such a snob, doesn’t it?” 

“Not at all,” he said. “But now you have me curious as to the big difference.”

Suddenly, I was that teenage girl with her back up against the bricks wanting desperately to drop down on her knees before him. “Maybe I could cook for you?” 

I couldn’t believe I just said that.

“At your place?”

There was no going back now. “Something simple, but like we’d make at my parents.”

“I’d love that. What can I bring?”

“Oh, nothing. I’ve got, or you know, I’ll pick up…”

“If I brought wine, should it be red or white?”

“Red would be good.”

*********

I opened my door, locked it, dumped my purse on the side table and fell on the couch, pants around my ankles with two fingers from my right hand in my pussy and the thumb of my left sucking as deep as I could into my mouth imagining what could have been made all the more intense because it might become.

*********

He came with white and red.

DInner went off better than I could have hoped. I kept it simple. First, we had a salad of arugula, feta, cantaloupe, and black pepper in a red wine vinaigrette and followed it with puttanesca. Dessert was a mix of hard and soft cheeses. 

He was so sweet he insisted on doing the dishes.

The conversation was not what you’d expect. We actually talked about previous relationships, but not in an intrusive way. He was interested in why things didn’t work out between me and my old boyfriends.

He told me all about the reasons he had to leave the women he had been involved with. It was the type of back and forth that I had been missing for years. It was refreshing.

At one point, the bluetooth speaker ran out of charge so I went into the kitchen to get a charging cable. We both liked The Bad Plus and the album was only halfway through. I came back into the living room to see Scott scanning the spines on my bookshelves. I fumbled around getting the speaker back and the music running and turned to see him grinning and holding a certain book.

I lived alone and don’t have company often and so I never thought about it.

I tried to speak but my voice caught in my throat.

“You like Anne Rice?” he asked.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “I’ve read all the Sleeping Beauty books. People pretend that they don’t want such things, but they at least want the fantasy.”

I tried to deflect. “A friend gave those to me.”

He smirked. “What a good friend to have.”

“I never even read it.”

“Funny. The binding looks worn.” He stepped toward me, brandishing the book. “Let me tell you what the book is about.”

“I… it’s just that I-”

“It’s about how sexual desire can overcome social mores. We all know about being a good girl and all that shit, but you have needs. Sex fulfills those needs for most, but not for everybody. Some long to be humiliated. To be used. Those that want more will have to come to terms with why, but they do want more.”

A tear dripped down my face. I was needy. I was wet. “I don’t.”

“I suspect you do.”

We stood staring at each other for too long.

“I think you want more.” he said. “I’m going to the bathroom for a moment. When I come back, if you are standing here like we are right now, I’ll just walk out the door and we can pretend we haven’t seen each other since high school.”

“Or?” I asked.

“Or, when I come out of the bathroom I find you with your palms down, bent over the dining room table, your skirt pulled up over your ass, and your panties around your, pick one, left ankle.”

“Maybe we could…” 

“No.” he smirked. “That ruins the allure for both of us.”

“But..”

 “There is no maybe where we get to know each other. I come out and go straight for the door or you surrender your body to me.”

“Surrender?”

“To be fucked by me in any way I please.”

He walked over to the table and lifted his wine glass to his lips. “Your call.” And then he went to the bathroom.

**********

He found me as he hoped: bent over the dining table with my dress lifted up and my panties around my left ankle.

“Good choice,” he told me.

Panic gripped me. I gasped as his fingers slipped along my slit.

“Good,” he whispered. “You’re ready.”

“Ahhh!” and I was full. It was a big cock, forced in immediately. No preamble. He just fucked me. I was still trying to get used to the size when he gripped my hips and I realized that I didn’t feel his balls on my ass. 

Three more in and out thrusts and I felt the balls. His cock was deeper into me that anything else had been and I was already feeling the beginnings of an orgasm. 

While he was thrusting, he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Penguin.”

Between breaths I muttered something along the lines of, “What?”

“Penguin,” he said. “Repeat it.”

“Penguin,” I repeated, my breathing telling as I was nearing cumming.

“That’s your safe word, got it.”

“Okay, okay… yes, okay.”

“Say it.”

“Oh, oh, oh…”

“Say it!”

“Penguin.” And then it all stopped. The cock I suddenly loved, slipped out, the orgasm I needed slipped away. Please no. Bring it back.

He rubbed my ass with one hand and massaged my shoulder with the other. “That’s your safe word.” 

I whimpered. Why wouldn’t he just finish.

“Once you say your safe word everything stops. The reason for this is that I’m going to do things to you that will make you say ‘no’ or ‘stop’ but you won’t mean that.” He rubbed my spine with his palm. “That’s why we have Penguin.” 

“Penguin,” he says, “ends consent.”

“Please,” I begged. I was so close. I needed his cock.

“You said the safe word so you have to invite me back in, but things have changed.”

“Anything.”

“Anything, Sir.”

“Yes!” I was writhing, “Anything sir.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk terms.” He ran his hands up and down my thighs, spreading wetness dripping from my cunt but not coming close enough to satisfy me.

“To get started again you have to say, ‘Sir, please continue using your…” and he paused.

I moaned as he cupped my ass.

“You have three choices,” he said. “You can say ‘Please Sir, continue using your whore.’”

His middle finger ran along the cleft of my ass.

“A whore is a series of holes. You are there for use. You are the cum dump.”

His other hand joined and spread my cheeks. He was looking at my asshole.

“You can say ‘Please Sir, continue using your slut.”

I felt the cool air on my ass and pussy. I needed relief. 

“A slut is a slave to her cunt. She’ll degrade herself and take all manner of humiliation to satisfy her pussy.”

The head of his cock brushed my ass. My breath was heaving.

“Finally you can say ‘Please Sir, continue using your bitch.’”

The head was resting between my lips now. I tried weighing down but he lifted me up. 

“A bitch needs to be tamed and is always being punished one way or another.”

I was on a wire when he said, “You pick.”

His shaft sliding up and down my slit, touching on my clit and I had to cry out one and shouted: “Please Sir, make me your slut!” His cock filled me. He held nothing back. It was vigorous and angry. Right before he came he pulled out and grabbed me by the hair and forced me to my knees. I think he wanted to just spray my face but he got some in my mouth, just like I wanted since high school. It was everything I imagined. 

I look forward to whatever humiliation he has in mind. Erin doesn’t deserve esteem.