“Put it on me first,” I tell her.

Again, she does exactly what I tell her, and—I admit—she does it well, sliding it down on me with careful precision, making sure to cop a feel of my balls when she’s done, before letting go and standing up between my opened legs.

Placing her hands on my shoulders to steady herself, she steps over my lap and straddles me on the chair. I’m hard again in under a second. I close my eyes softly when I first feel her warm, wet and swollen nether lips rubbing against my shaft.

She fucks me for a while. And when I’m tired of sitting on the chair, I bend her over the end of the bed and fuck her there for a little while more. And when I’m tired of that, I fuck her against the wall. And when I’m tired of standing, I lay with my back against the bed and let her ride me some more before finally giving in and telling her to sit on my face.

A couple of hours later, I’m coming out of the shower when she says to me from the bed, “Ready for another round?” with a suggestive smile plastered all over her very beautiful face.

I barely look at her as I step into my boxers after picking them up from the floor.

I glance at my Rolex.

“Sorry, but I have somewhere I need to be soon.”

She pouts. “Ah, come on. I’ll make it worth it. I promise.” She pats the mattress with the palm of her hand.

Stepping into my dress pants I button them and then buckle my belt.

“You’ve already made it worth it,” I say evenly. “But I’ve really got to go.”

While buttoning my gray dress shirt and tucking the ends into my pants, she gets up from the bed and walks naked the short way across the room. She steps right up to me and places her hands on my chest, but I turn sideways away from her and finish up the last buttons.

I notice her shoulders rise and fall with one heavy, disappointed breath.

“Well, you mind giving me your number?” she asks. “I’d like to see you again.”

I slip my arms down into my suit jacket and then put on my long, black winter coat.

“Sorry, but that’s not going to happen,” I say.

“What do you mean? Why not?”

I don’t look at her as I make my way to the door.

“The sex was great,” I say, turning to look back at her and hoping to leave her with her dignity, at least. It was never my intention to make her feel used. “But we won’t be seeing each other again.”

She just stares at me with a slack mouth and her eyebrows bunched in her forehead.

And I walk out the door.

I only came back to Baltimore for one thing and it certainly wasn’t the sex.

I drive to the opposite end of town and park beside a dumpster on the side of a convenience store building, locking my doors with the press of the button on my key ring when I get out. The smell of gasoline from the car filling up at the pump fills the air. I walk slowly toward the front double glass doors and push one open to the sound of an electronic bell alerting the clerk of a new customer entering the store—the clerk doesn’t look up from whatever he’s doing behind the counter. I step into the heat to the stench of fried food, dirty mop water and bleach. A young boy with scruffy blond hair comes out of the restroom from a door on the other side of the drink coolers and zips past me, pushing the tall glass door open with all the weight of both of his skinny, boyish arms. A burst of cold air rushes inside. I watch the boy from the door for a moment as he runs toward the car at the pump, swings the back door open and jumps inside. Seconds later, the car pulls onto the street and drives away.

I turn my focus back to Dante Furlong working behind the counter.

Making my way toward him, I take my time, nonchalantly scanning the various overpriced gas station junk foods and individually wrapped snack cakes and tiny cans of bean dip displayed on outside shelves. Everything is lined in an orderly fashion. The floor has been mopped recently. Dante has been hard at work—on something other than selling heroin and letting addicts suck him off for a fix.

Finally, Dante looks up.

He does a double-take.

The smile that only got as far as his eyes flees at the sight of me. He sucks in a sharp gasp and falls backward against the shelves displaying various medicines—two-pack Tylenol’s and Advil’s and cold and flu capsules—and merchandise falls from the brackets into a scattered mess against the floor.

“It’s you!” He points a shaky finger at me. “Look, man, I haven’t…I-I haven’t done anything since that night! I swear it!”

He got himself a pair of upper dentures, I see.

Still stumbling backwards into the shelf as if he could walk right through the wall behind him, more merchandise ends up on the floor until finally he realizes he has nowhere to go.

His entire body—dressed quite decently in a nice white shirt and a pair of clean blue jeans—shakes feverishly. His beady blue eyes seem as big around as my fists can be; the wrinkles and lines around them and in the corners deepen and stretch and pulsate. His curly black hair has been washed and doesn’t look oily underneath the burning fluorescent lights above us in the ceiling. He has certainly changed since I tortured him two months ago.

I step the rest of the way up to the counter and stand with both hands buried in my coat pockets. Dante’s eyes move back and forth from my face to my hands, likely worried about what I might be hiding in them behind the fabric of my coat. Needles to shoot him up with? Pliers to pull out the rest of his teeth? A knife to cut out his tongue, perhaps? A gun to put him out of his misery?

None of the above.

“Look, I didn’t say nothin’ to no one,” he stutters with one hand facing me, palm forward. “I haven’t said shit. I haven’t did shit.” He looks around the store. “I’ve got myself a real job here. It doesn’t pay jack, but it’s an honest job.” Then his voice rises and cracks when I still don’t respond: “I haven’t done anything!”

“I know,” I finally say. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you since I let you go that night.”

Looking down at a box of gimmicky gum on the counter, each wrapped individually in clear plastic wrappers, I point and say, “Do you mind?”

“Sure, sure, yeah,” he says quickly, gesturing both hands at the gum. “It’s on the house, man. In fact, you can have anything in this fuckin’ store you want.” He smiles squeamishly.

I take a single piece of gum from the box and remove the plastic wrapper, popping it in my mouth.

“I see you got new teeth,” I say and then start chewing.

He nods rapidly. “Y-Yeah, I uhh, well there’s a nice dentist on the other side of town who helps addicts tryin’ to get clean. I didn’t actually lose my teeth because of Meth or anything”—I smile and continue to chew—“but he helped me. Got me a denture for real cheap and put me on a payment plan. I’ll have it paid off in a few more months.”

I slip my hands back inside my pockets.

“How would you like a set of permanent implants?” I ask.

Dante’s eyebrows draw inward confusedly.

“I don’t know what you mean?” He’s extremely nervous.

I think I smell urine.

I make a face. “This gum tastes like shit,” I say.

He nods rapidly again, uncertain and still fearful of my every movement and word. “Yeah, kids like that stuff….”

“Well, Dante,” I go back to the important matter, “I have a job proposal for you. That is, if you’re interested in hearing it.”

Silence.

He doesn’t know what answer he wants to give, but is sure he knows what answer I want to hear.

He opts for the in-between.

“Umm, I’m not sure I understand.”

Bringing the little plastic wrapper up to my lips, I spit the gum back into it and then toss it in the trash can pressed against the counter on the floor.

“I’ve been giving it some thought,” I begin still in the same casual manner I walked in with, “and I believe you’re the right kind of man for the job. You can pay off those dentures with just a fraction of your first paycheck and afford dental implants within a month. Of course, you’ll be put through some tests—medical, among other things—and like with any honest job, you’ll be subject to piss tests every now and then, but I think you’re the right man. What do you say?”