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A lot of things change after high school. Straight-A students become deadbeats, shy nerds are suddenly married with kids, guys who swore they were going to join the NFL end up joining the Marines instead.
That was one thing that hadn’t changed after high school: none of us had given up partying.
I wasn't really sure if it was normal to develop a crush on my nemesis, but one thing led to another and…
I'd said worse things about Manson to his face, worse things to all his friends; but when someone else said it, it irritated me in a way I couldn't fully understand.
The bruise under his eye after Kyle had gone after him; so many bruises. He was always wearing marks. The blood on his lip... but none of that shit was my fault. Okay, maybe some of it was my fault… All I'd done was kiss him. And he'd kissed me back.
His voice was taunting, familiar. It was the same way he'd spoken to me in high school when he'd snap back at my teasing. Except now his voice was steadier.
“Aww, too bad. Prom King and Queen didn’t get their happily-ever-after. What a sad world. Shocking, honestly.”
I had never done something so blatantly degrading. I had expected to feel my embarrassment turn thick and settle in my stomach, twist it like rotten food and leave me feeling ill. Instead, that feeling of embarrassment was turning into lust, and suddenly I was thinking about Manson pressing the sole of his boot down on my face. I was thinking of him crushing me into the grass, laughing at me, calling me a dirty whore for daring to like it -
Someone handed him a mixed drink that he took a long sip of, and seeing the comradery grated on my nerves. Why did people like him? Why had everyone decided to suddenly be nice to the freak?
What was wrong with me? I was literally being degraded in front of friends and strangers, and I liked it.
I felt a tiny jab of fear. It was the kind of fear I encountered before watching a scary movie, or waiting in line for a rollercoaster - it was a thrill, a rush, a hit of adrenaline straight to my veins.
He snapped his fingers, and pointed to the ground at his feet. Like he was calling a disobedient dog. “Come. Now.”
The normal, logical part of me was screaming that I wasn’t about to let this weirdo treat me like his personal pet. But the dark, needy part of me was insisting something very different: it was telling me that Manson’s condescending tone sounded hot, and his confidence was sexy, and that running to obey his summoning would feel so good.
“Keep it up, Jess. I know you need some discipline in your life. You’ll earn it soon enough.”
Maybe I’d file this away as just another weird experience and move on with my life as if none of it had happened. I’d forget about Manson - forget about his orders, his cocky smile, his boots. I’d go back to just being Jessica Martin, who had her life together, who was popular and normal and not-at-all into weird kinky sex shit.
“You heard me loud and clear. We’re not in high school anymore, Jess. If you want to keep playing this game, you have to realize the rules are a little different now.”
My pussy was one thing - horny betraying bitch! - but now my own brain was turning against me. Thoughts of Manson shaking his head in disappointment, calling me a bad girl, telling me to bend over his knee-
Anger and haughtiness were my shields. Without them, my defenses were thin, at best.
How many times had he fantasized about degrading the bitchy cheerleader who made fun of his clothes and started rumors about his friends being Satanists?
I liked feeling as if I had no choice. I liked that I had an excuse to let go of my pride and do the filthy, degrading things that made my belly light and my pussy clench.
Giving Manson Reed that power over me... maybe it was karma for what an asshole I’d been to him. Maybe it was the biggest self-discovery I’d ever encountered. Whatever it was, I couldn’t resist it.
The idea of crying, begging, sobbing uncontrollably, only to have to give in and accept it in the end. I wanted to imagine he was forcing me. I wanted to imagine there would be dire consequences for refusal, instead of none at all. I wanted to imagine I hated him - just like I’d always insisted I did.
What the hell was wrong with me? Since when did something like boots turn me on?
I felt filthy, vile, completely disgusting... I felt on fire, alive, utterly consumed in the high. I laughed from the giddiness. Licked and laughed, then laughed harder. I wanted to touch myself so badly…
I hadn’t noticed before how sharp his canines were, like little fangs that could pierce into my skin.
“You deserve to have your clit aching all night. You deserve to have duct tape slapped over it so you can’t touch while I crush your pretty little pussy under my boot.”
After all the shit I’d given Manson, after all the nasty things I’d said behind his back, said to his face - I was completely melting in his hands. I was craving his touches, craving his grip.
“Your cunt is cuter when your ass is red; funny how that works.”
“If you really don’t want this, say so now. Right now. You’re safe to do that, I promise you.”
Manson was right: in some twisted way, putting all my strength into struggling and finding that it got me nowhere was a relief.
Manson Reed - weirdo, freakshow Manson Reed. He made me feel safe and terrified, protected and brutalized, all at once. But it wasn’t only that. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get in his pants.
The boys I’d taunted were men now, muscular and tatted up with bitterness hanging heavily on their shoulders. The amused disdain in their eyes made it clear that they hadn’t forgotten what a bitch I’d been to them.
I could remember when he first started wearing those thick rings, and why: the injuries they left in a fight were far more substantial than his slim fingers alone.
That smirk – fuck. Mean and cold, as bitter as dark chocolate and just as appealing.
The thought of being shared by the four of them, ordered around, degraded, punished – it made my stomach tighten, slowly strangled by a knot of tension and desire.
The very men I’d tormented, I wanted. It was so fittingly humiliating.
I had no doubt that I’d made every single one of them that surrounded me now feel that same helplessness. It was justice, somehow. Poetic, maybe.
"It was only a couple hours ago that you were getting that cute little ass of yours beat. Did you forget what that feels like already?"
He owned a paddle; he literally owned instruments to inflict pain and humiliation. He was such a freak. And god, I loved it. I wished he had his paddle with him too.
Do you have any idea how good it feels to punish the girl who always laughed at me?"
“I spent the most hormone-fueled years of my life wanting to touch you, Jess. Wanting to…never daring. I learned not to even look at you.” He laughed, bitterly. “Meanwhile you’d touch and tease and laugh in my face for it. You knew. You knew how badly I wanted you.” He released his breath: heavy, tense. “So if you think I’m not going to savor every moment of this, if you think I don’t have the discipline to wait even for my own satisfaction, you’re dead wrong.”
“If there’s a doubt in your mind, if it’s too much, they all know your safe word. I wouldn’t let a soul touch you that wouldn’t respect it if you want the game to stop. Got it?”
“You’re doing so well, angel, I’m so proud." He spoke gently, his voice soothing. "You look so pretty with your mouth filled up with his cock.”
“We need our privacy now, boys,” he said. “Leave us.”
We were in some other world, a world where pleasure and pain, fear and excitement, were all the same.
“How does that feel, angel? Do you want it faster? Harder?”
“You can change your mind if it’s too much. Whether that’s now or 5 minutes from now or 10. Got it?”
The pain left me giddy, high off the sensation.
I could only imagine if the party-goers downstairs knew what was going on. If only they knew that the girl wearing angel wings was making an absolute slut of herself upstairs, moaning and begging to be hurt more, more, more.
"You're going to get off on this knife, Jess," he said. "And I'm going to hold you open, nice and still, so you don't get hurt."
