Go: A Surrender Read online

  At the Edmonton airport a driver held a sign with my name on it—another first, albeit a more mundane one. I noted with apprehension his heavy wool coat, and braced myself for the air outside—fifty degrees!

  But I’d been right. It was endurable. Not thirty seconds later we were ensconced in the warmth of his car.

  The back seat was empty, which disappointed me some. I’d hoped Jack would meet me at the airport. I realized I was lonely and scared and truly not a bit prepared to be in a totally unknown city—I wasn’t even sure I could use my cell phone up here, or if I could, whether it would cost me a fortune.

  Still, it was cozy in the car, and I did my best to simply relax and appreciate it for what it was. Through the tinted glass I watched people hurrying through the cold outside, hailing cabs, throwing luggage into trunks, until after a long pause the driver pulled out into traffic.

  We drove into Edmonton’s downtown, a charming stretch of Old World architecture. Glorious facades, twinkle lights in the trees. The driver came to a gentle stop outside what I was guessing was a restaurant.

  “Mr. Simeon’s running late,” he said, “would you like me to walk you in?”

  I told him I thought I’d be fine, then made a second mad dash from car to door. Inside was warm and bustling and delicious-smelling. I stepped up to the hostess podium.

  “I’m meeting Jack Simeon?” I quietly reprimanded myself for sounding so timid. “I think he’s running a little late, I don’t—”

  “This way,” she said, and indicated I should follow her deeper into the dining room.

  As we walked I noted with trepidation that my fellow diners looked posh indeed. I looked passable, considering the trip, but I felt my edges needed buffing, my shoes a polish.

  The building was long and somewhat narrow but after weaving through the length of the room the hostess finally beckoned me into a semi-private enclave at the back. The pervert in me felt a little thrill at the possibility Jack had made arrangements to have his way with me half in public.

  I settled into the rich upholstery of the bench seat, and in an instant a waiter had arrived. I hadn’t even opened my mouth to order a martini before he was opening a bottle of champagne. I laughed a little at this, Jack’s opulent stubbornness with regards to my drink of choice.

  The waiter poured me a glass and then left me alone. Outside, the diners clinked and laughed and murmured with the noisy, glittery confidence of the rich. Where was I? It felt Disney-princess-level unreal.

  I was pouring my second glass when Jack arrived.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, “Something came up I needed to address.”

  As he sat the waiter hastened over to fill his glass, glancing briefly, disapprovingly at my glass and deducing that I’d re-filled it un-aided. I tried to give him a subtly defiant look back. Jack didn’t miss it. He raised his glass, a bemused smirk spreading across his face.

  “That’s what happens when you invite peasants to dine at the castle,” I joked, as we clinked glasses.

  “Come now,” he scolded, “you’re hardly that.”

  “I reserve the right to use the wrong fork,” I countered.

  “I think what you mean is you reserve the privilege.”

  I laughed; I liked his wit. It was nice to see some people got rich using their brains, even if it made me feel like a lazy schlub by contrast.

  “Have you looked at the menu?” he asked.

  “Wait,” I said, “Can we back up just a beat? I just, um—you know, can we do the niceties? Our names, where we’re from…”

  “But you know my name,” he said.

  “I know, I just—I need to get used to it, or something.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to use it as much as you like. Try it.”

  I clammed up, feeling foolish. So he smilingly demonstrated: “Jack.”

  “Jack,” I repeated.

  “There; I knew you could do it,” he teased. Then he reached out a hand, to shake. “And you are?”

  “Sylvie,” I said, shaking back.

  “It’s a pretty name,” he said. “Are your parents French?”

  “No,” I said, “but my mom always wished she was.”

  He smiled. “Better now?” I nodded. Then he said, “And Sylvie, if you didn’t google me after I gave you my full name, I’ll have to worry that you’re a crazy person with inadequate regard for her personal safety.”

  The tone was light, but he wasn’t kidding. It was an odd feeling, having been caught in a lie and challenged in the same breath.

  “I googled you,” I admitted.

  “Thank goodness,” said Jack. “I was sure you would. But it’s always wise to doublecheck.”

  So I’d passed. But I still wanted to dispel the little remaining chill. “So, are you like a billionaire, or what?”

  He laughed. “You don’t have to be a billionaire to drop a couple grand in a single weekend,” he said, which of course made sense. A billion was a thousand millions. A million was a thousand thousands. A couple grand was more than I could afford to burn through on impulse, but suddenly that little bit of math made him seem a little more like a regular person.

  So we ate and talked. Quickly I gleaned that his career success had been based on smarts and the same brazen self-assurance that had kicked our interaction off the night before. I knew, occasionally, how to seem confident, but I rarely ever was. So his unapologetic self-regard was utterly foreign. But neither did he seem like a snob: he seemed knowing but also sympathetic, interesting. Naturally, it was magnetic.

  When it was time to leave we stood and walked out instead of waiting for a check. Jack explained he had a personal account.

  Absurd, I thought, just absurd.

  At the entrance to the restaurant the hostess brought Jack his coat and began to help him on with it. Steps behind her was another woman, carrying a sleek, gorgeous-looking fur. She indicated for me to turn.

  “Oh my god,” I said. Jack smiled a tiny smile, not looking at me. “Jack,” I breathed, and he turned.

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, and he held open the door for us to walk out.

  A moment later we were back in the car. I hadn’t forgotten we were still playing the game. I wondered where we were going to next—another swanky hotel, where I’d suck some other stranger’s cock? Some S&M club where he’d tie me up?

  “I know Edmonton is a strange destination,” he said, “but I had a meeting here this afternoon. And I’m up here a lot, so I know the area pretty well. The sorts of places one can go.”

  Something about his phrasing—sorts of places—made me settle on the S&M club possibility. I didn’t particularly go in for bondage scenarios, but he seemed so confident, so capable, I was prepared to play along.

  But we were not driving around the downtown as if toward some nameless, secret club. We were getting on the freeway, heading away from the city center and into the night. Perhaps we were going to some secluded, pseudo-Edwardian estate, I thought. After all, the Queen was on Canada’s money. Why shouldn’t things become even more gilded and fairy-tale tinged?

  I was still picturing ladies’ maids and poisoned apples when we turned off the freeway and onto a dark, gravel road. A few moments later, the car pulled to a stop. We were beside a signless, ramshackle roadhouse. Filthy, bare particleboard formed the exterior walls. The only light was from neon beer signs in the tiny windows. A handful of muddy trucks and junked-out cars were parked haphazardly in the packed dirt.

  The driver came around and opened my door. I climbed out. The air smelled like tar.

  “Oil sands,” said Jack, again hearing my thought.

  “Is this a joke?” I said, stopping in my tracks. “We’re not really going in there, are we?”

  “If you’re still playing, we are,” he replied, and looked at me expectantly. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Walking into a rough bar in the middle of nowhere in an extravagant fur coat someh
ow scared me more than the prospect of fucking whatever hulking, tar-covered brute I expected him to recruit for me once we were inside.

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t seem about to plead for me to change my mind. He simply stood there, and I stood there, and after a long, silent moment he held out his hand.

  I took it, and he gave it a good squeeze and drew me toward him. I squeezed back, tighter, and he put his arm around me and held me to him, then turned his head to kiss my temple, then the top of my head.

  “I’m here,” he said. “Everything’s safe. Okay? I promise. Always.”

  I nodded tentatively, and he pulled me toward the door.

  5.

  We stepped into the bar and, just as I’d feared, everyone stared. But they seemed to recognize Jack, and so after friendly nods they mostly returned to their drinking. It wasn’t particularly crowded—maybe twelve or so guys in there, plus the bartender.

  I felt a couple men still stealing glances at me, or for all I knew, at the absurdly expensive coat I was wearing. It had been a generous gift but from what I knew of Jack there was no way he wasn’t aware of how grossly ostentatious it would be in a place like this. The only thing I could conclude was that he’d done it on purpose—that the conspicuousness I now felt was part of the game.

  We approached the bar and I feared he would order champagne. But instead he handed me a Miller Genuine Draft. “The Champagne of Beers.” I laughed, and he saw that I’d caught the joke and smirked as he leaned forward to converse with the bartender. I took a swig of my beer and tried to subtly survey the men in the room.

  I don’t know that it would be fair to say it was a rough crowd, but it certainly looked rough. To a man these guys were sun-baked and wind-chapped and dirty. I had only the vaguest notion of what “oil sands” were but I concluded that these men must work out in them. We’d driven easily an hour to get to this bar, too, so I supposed they must live somewhere out here, rather than in the city. My guess was that there wasn’t much of a dating scene. A whore out in these parts must certainly clean up.

  The bartender nodded and Jack left me at the bar and next went to confer with a small group of men sitting at one of the tables. They kept glancing up at me. It seemed strange I hadn’t been admonished not to watch this process this time. I felt my heartbeat quickening—but I wasn’t actually aroused.

  However, I was already halfway through my beer.

  Jack straightened up and the whole table he’d just talked to got to their feet. But they didn’t come to me—they headed toward the back. Then, after a minute, one at a time they returned to the main bar, shaking water from their hands, wiping their faces with paper towels that they then dropped unceremoniously on the floor.

  It dawned on me: he’d asked them to wash up.

  He’d said yesterday would be mild, and now my mind was galloping ahead, frantic. Surely I wouldn’t be expected to fuck them all—or even to suck them all off. Even as I panicked, I felt the warm, spreading ache of my body readying itself for sex. Still, I had my limits. Jack had moved to another table now, but I didn’t care—I marched over to him, tugged at the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  He excused himself and we stepped away from the men. As we did so, they, too, filed off to the bathroom.

  “What’s happening, I don’t want to fuck all these men.” My voice caught a little as I tried not to cry once again.

  “No, no, don’t worry, you won’t.”

  “I won’t?”

  “No. But will you let them touch you?”

  I balked, even as I grew wetter. “All of them?”

  He inhaled, looked around. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Only your breasts. Nobody will touch you anywhere else unless you say so.”

  “Nobody?”

  “I promise.”

  “But I’ll be—”

  “Naked, yes.”

  I made a concerted effort not to shake. I felt the delirium of prolonged, powerful arousal coming on—felt it eroding my thoughts, my objections. Mechanically I took a sip of my beer.

  “You’re turned on, aren’t you?”

  I looked around. The men watched me. They were not attractive. Or maybe they were; I couldn’t tell. I both wanted and did not want for them to touch me.

  “Yes,” I said, finally.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s the point of this, after all.”

  He began to loosen his tie then, and in a swift motion slipped it off his neck. “Here,” he said, stepping in to me, and he tied it across my eyes. I was to be blindfolded.

  He took my hand then, and led me a few steps. The music stopped, as well as any remaining conversation.

  He slipped the heavy coat off my shoulders and I heard him drape it over the back of a chair.

  Next I felt his touch between my shoulderblades as he took hold of the zipper on my dress. I arched my back just a little, savoring the feeling of him undressing me.

  “Arms up,” he said softly, and whisked the dress off over my head.

  He unfastened my bra next. Then my panties—he held my arm as I stepped out of them, so I wouldn’t lose my balance.

  Then he placed his hands firmly on my ribcage and lifted me up, onto the bar. I squirmed a little—he’d sat me in something wet.

  “Hold on,” he said, and a moment later he was leaning me to one side and drying the bar beneath me, then rubbing the wetness off my buttock. He set me back right again. The room was still completely, utterly silent.

  Then came Jack’s voice again. “Okay,” he said, “who’s first?”

  A few seconds later, some hot wet mouth clamped onto my breast, sucking hard—too hard—I cried out.

  “Okay, you’re done, next?”

  The mouth was gone. Next came a soft, feathery touch—someone who didn’t want to repeat his companion’s mistake. I moaned a little. He traced little circles around my nipples and I felt them harden. For a moment I tried to think who among these men could have such a sweet, soft hand—but then he covered my nipple with his mouth and that final coherent thought just disappeared.

  “Ohhh,” I groaned, as he lapped his tongue back and forth across my straining nipple, and I felt myself lifting my hips a little, as if to urge his mouth downward.

  I hadn’t received any instruction.

  “Yes,” I said, “I want him,” and to my dismay the mouth was withdrawn from my breast.

  “Tell him what it is you want,” said Jack. “He can only follow your directions. Here, let me help you.”

  I felt Jack and this other man take hold of my legs and lift them up, so my knees were bent and my feet were on the bar. Jack patted my ass so I’d scoot forward, spreading my pussy open right at the bar’s edge.

  I heard the other men moving now, stepping in for a closer look. “God damn,” said a male voice, irrepressibly.

  Jack spoke to me again. “Tell him,” he repeated.

  “I want him to lick my pussy,” I said raggedly.

  The sentence was barely out before the man dove upon my pussy, licking and slurping at it hungrily for a moment before burying his whole face in me. His nose rubbed back and forth across my clit, but his two-day stubble was irritating across my tender labia.

  “Careful,” I said, and he tried to back off but nuzzling seemed to be his thing. After a few more moments I had to stop him.

  “Stop, please… I’m sorry. You’re hurting me a little.”

  “Next,” said Jack.

  “Wait,” protested the man from between my legs, “I can try something different.”

  “Not how it works,” Jack informed him. “Next.”

  The next man started over again with my breasts, nibbling lightly at my nipples, then, as I pushed them toward him for more, pulling them hard into his mouth. But I needed a few moments more to regain my arousal after the abrasions of the former man’s beard.

  “I don’t think so,” I said to whomever was liste
ning.

  “Next,” said Jack, and a new man stepped to my breasts. This one stroked and cupped their curves, then trailed his touch into a gentle pinch. Then sucked at them, then stroked some more—he had a routine, but kept changing it up.

  “Lick my pussy,” I told him, “But start gentle.”

  With the tip of his tongue he traced the sensitive lips of my pussy, then flicked the smooth base of his tongue across my clit. I moaned approval.