Free Torment Me (Rough Love Part One) by Annabel Joseph

we dried off. Afterward, he led me back into the room. “Sit,” he said, and I sat when he forced me down, trusting a chair would be there. “Did you bring extra clothes?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “
Yes, Sir.
Use your damn manners.”
    “Yes, Sir, I brought extra clothes.” I hoped I didn’t sound too sassy. He put a hand on my back and shoved me forward in the chair. Oh, Jesus.
    “Be still,” he said. “Don’t move.”
    I felt a weird, tingling sensation on my back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. I finally realized he was writing on me. Too much to hope for, that it wasn’t permanent marker.
    “What do you do, that you have so much money?” I asked while he scrawled across my back.
    I didn’t think he’d answer, but he said, “Design.”
    “What do you design?”
    “None of your business.”
    High fashion? Web design? What kind of designer made enough money for Park Hyatt call-girl sessions?
    “I thought you might be an Ivy League English professor, with all the poetry,” I joked.
    He did a flourish with the marker against my lower back. “Poetry is just another form of design.” I heard him cap it and zip his briefcase, and then begin to dress. My hands were free. I could have unbuckled the blindfold and looked at him before he could stop me. I could have finally seen what he looked like, and satisfied my curiosity. Of course, I also would have lost his trust, and possibly the ability to see him again. My whore hands stayed curled in my lap.
    “There’s a pool here,” he said. I heard the whispery sound of him sliding on his shoes. “Did you bring a bathing suit?”
    “No.”
    “Next time, bring a bathing suit. Will you stay here tonight?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You can if you want. I won’t come back and bother you.”
    It was almost sweet, how he wanted me to stay in these ritzy hotel rooms after he left me. Like he wanted to spoil me. More likely, he knew I’d think about him the entire time I was here. While I was on the bed, I’d think about him. While I was in the bathroom, I’d look at the tub and remember his skin against mine, and the smell of the soap, and the soft, scratchy loveliness of his hair. If I wasn’t so chicken, I could know the color of that hair.
    I would know the color of that hair, next time. Did that mean he trusted me now? I got a sickly, nervous feeling in my stomach at the idea of him revealing himself. Mere eye contact would feel like a crazy-scary level of intimacy after the way we’d begun.
    He stroked my back and tugged a handful of my hair. “Goodbye, Chere. You can get up when you hear the door close.”
    “Bye,” I said.
    I heard his footfalls across the room, heard the door open and close. I wondered if he still felt pissed, or if he felt better now. My feelings had run the gamut since I arrived.
    I took off the blindfold and stuck it in my bag, even though I knew I wouldn’t need it again. I tried to wrestle the halves of my stockings off the bedframe, but I couldn’t undo the knot. Oh well. I was sure the staff had seen everything in this kind of hotel. I collected the pieces of my dress and garter belt—he hadn’t taken them with him this time. I tried not to read anything into that.
He’s weird, don’t try to understand him.
    And it was weird that it took that long to remember I had poetry on my back. I went into the bathroom and twisted around to try to read it in the mirror. No dice. I had to use my camera timer to take a photo. I swiped at the screen to enlarge the black words written on my skin.
    Oh drink me up
    That I may be
    Within your cup
    Like a mystery
    I didn’t know if it was a whole poem or part of a poem, written by him or someone else. I typed the words into my phone’s search engine and got the answer:
Mystery
by D.H. Lawrence.
I lift to you my bowl of kisses/And through the temple’s blue recesses/Cry out to you in wild caresses.
    I had cried out at his wild caresses, that was for sure. Well, as much as I