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He and Cal parted ways on the sidewalk shortly thereafter. The coffee shop was within walking distance, just around the corner, and the thought of being so close and not stopping in to take home a caramel pecan-studded treat for later seemed too preposterous to contemplate. He was standing in line at the Black Sheep Beanery, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, when he heard the notification.
The multispecies dating app had a proximity feature, one he kept meaning to disable. If you are within a small, predetermined distance from one of your mutual matches, both parties receive a notification. It was a feature he would’ve taken ready advantage of a decade earlier. When you’re young, single, and looking to mingle, such an announcement of your whereabouts to a potential partner might be welcome. Now though, it just made him feel on display. Old, desperate, and completely out of his depth. To his horror, his phone chimed again a moment later, a message from the match.
Hi there! I just saw that we are both downtown . . . fancy meeting up for a drink?
He could say no. He could ignore the message entirely. He could unmatch with this unknown woman and go about his business as if nothing had happened. Rourke tried to imagine himself in that position if the overture had been reversed — but making himself vulnerable only to have the person on the other end ghost him without a word.If you’re going unmatch with her, you should just delete the whole app and be done with it.It was still the middle of the afternoon, though, and he couldn’t justify two p.m. cocktails.
I’m actually just over at the coffee shop if you care to meet up.
She was a nymph of some sort. Silvery markings curled around her face, almost invisible until they caught the light. They’d had a few friendly back-and-forths through text previously, but meeting face-to-face was always fraught.She probably thinks you’re too old. Too old and too scrawny for a bull.It was true; he didn’t possess some of the outsized bulk of his peers; the time he put in the gym was perfunctory rather than a passion.Still. You were good enough for the milking farm.
“Rourke? Hi!” she exclaimed enthusiastically in a high, measured voice as they hugged awkwardly. She was very pretty, around his age, maybe a few years younger, but old enough to be settled. “It’s so great to actually meet you face-to-face!”
Rourke wondered if this was her customer-facing voice. He had a feeling it was. High and bubbly, exaggerated inflection, her smile never breaking. He heard himself responding in the same voice he had used in his salesman days, hugging her briefly before they settled at a small table in the bustling coffee shop.
“I was just around the corner,” she exclaimed in that same bubbly, upbeat tone. Maybe this is actually her real voice, and she’s always this cheerful. Not everyone is a cynical asshole like you. “I had a quick client meeting earlier this afternoon, and I thought maybe I would stop in for a yoga session when I saw you were nearby!”
“Same here,” he chuckled woodenly. “Well, not the yoga part. Lunch with a client. I was just grabbing a coffee before I headed back into the office.”
They exchanged pleasantries and superficial small talk for the next half hour, and Rourke felt as if he were outside of his body, watching as a spectator.This is all performance; nothing is real. You’re never going to meet anyone with whom you can be yourself. It’s going to be this salesman voice from now until you die.
Dating at his age was tortuous. He was too brusque for half of the women he met and too busy for the other half. The handful of matches he’d made on the multispecies dating app he’d downloaded had all been looking for a serious partner, and he hadn’t known what to say when his own relationship aspirations were questioned, ensuring that he rarely got a third or fourth date. He was fine with that outcome. He appreciated their straightforwardness and enjoyed their company, but he had no intentions of wasting someone else’s time, not when his own time was his most tapped-out resource.
Yet here you sit, wasting away the afternoon, spinning your wheels and going nowhere. You used to be able to close deals. You used to be good at this. What the fuck happened?The divorce had happened, he was forced to admit. Two years earlier, he was still raw from the end of his marriage. A year ago, he’d thrown himself so completely into expanding his business that he barely had a chance to come up for air, let alone cultivate a social life. Now, Rourke thought, he was tired and cranky and disliked admitting that he might be a tiny bit lonely.
“So, your profile mentioned that you’re looking . . .” she flashed him a brilliant smile, her dark eyes shimmering, “but you never specified for what.”
There was the rub. He still didn’t know what he was looking for, and Rourke was beginning to suspect he’d never achieve any sort of dating satisfaction without hammering out an exact plan with a desired outcome. After all, that was how he had started his career, started his business, and he was nothing if not successful in that arena. If you’re going to be forced to use the salesman voice forever, you may as well treat it like work.
“I- I’m not sure, really,” he answered after too long of a pause. “I know,” he chuckled as her smile faltered, “that’s the kiss of death. But it’s the truth. I don’t know if I’m looking for a long-term relationship, girlfriend, wife. Someone to have fun with on weekends. Someone just to screw around with. I don’t know. And I know that doesn’t probably help you decide whether or not this is worth pursuing or if we should just say thank you for the coffee date and be on our separate ways. But I just want to be honest. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
You should invite her to the ribbon cutting. Tell her you’d like to see how it goes; put yourself out there.He ignored his internal voice, watching her expression change from one of eagerness to resignation.
“I appreciate that,” she said after a moment. The customer service voice was gone. Her actual voice was much nicer, he thought, much more natural. It had a serenity that matched her sophisticated appearance, far better than the bubbly put-on voice did. Her smile was warm and not as forced as she gathered up her bag. “I really do. There are too many guys on this app who are just wasting everyone’s time, their own included. Finding someone honest is a breath of fresh air.”
A breath of fresh air as she pushed out her chair. Rourke stood, waiting for the obligatory awkward hug before they parted for good. He thought it was a shame that the final goodbye was the only time they felt comfortable enough to be themselves. “Well, I can’t be anything but honest.” His normal speaking voice was deeper, with his customary impatient edge. He wasn’t sure at which point in his career the executive voice had superseded the sales voice, but it was more authentically him. This is who you are. This is who you should always be.
As he navigated his truck out of the municipal lot on Main Street, Rourke considered his options for the rest of the shortened day. He could head back to the office, make up for the lost time. Check-in with his salespeople, follow up on some leads . . . But the nice thing about being one’s own boss was that there was no one hovering over you demanding that you account for your time. If he were to, say, stop off for a short, thirty-minute detour, there would be no one to tell him no.
He had worked hard building his company, he reminded himself, turning at the light instead of continuing on straight in the direction of his office. He worked hard, and he deserved to blow off a little steam. And besides — Morning Glory was close to work, close to home; he might hit the gym later and stop into one of the restaurants to pick up dinner. Human-run or not, it kept him close to home, which was exactly where he liked to be.
***
“Right there,” he groaned. “That’s the spot, right there. Keep that up.”
The invisible technician beneath the bench had his entire cockhead exposed, the pad of their thumb working against his frenulum as they pumped the base of his shaft, and at his instruction, they continued the movement. Control was rapidly slipping from his grasp, but unlike any other situation in which he might find himself, there was no incentive to hold back here.
I’m down on my knees for you like a good little slut, Daddy. I want you to fuck me with that big bull cock.The kitsune’s words replayed in his mind, her numerous tails fanned out, framing the delicious sight of him filling her, stretching her, taking her hard from behind.
The groan began in his chest, building until it vibrated against the upholstered cushion. His arms were wrapped around the headrest, hips pistoning with a solid thump against the seat as he chased his release. The tension in his groin built the same way his moan of pleasure did in his throat, fucking, fucking, fucking his way to completion. As he rutted against the bench, his balls bounced against the invisible technician’s fist. The slap mimicked the sensation of thrusting into someone from behind, the kitsune in his mind, the added element of realism helping his orgasm build.
His movements must have been making it difficult for the tech to keep their grip on his cock, for their fist tightened, squeezing his shaft like a boa constrictor, the pressure against the sensitive base of his head nearly making him wince . . . but then the pistoning arms of the machine began to whir, the hum of the interior motor making his balls tighten, for they had learned what that sound meant.
He’d come twice a week for the last month and a half, coming to come — the reliable, satisfying outcome becoming a fast-forming habit he saw no point in trying to break. Once or twice, he’d even managed to fit a third visit into his weekly schedule. The Pavlovian response to the sound of the hydraulic whir of the milking machine could not be denied at that point, and the possibility of spontaneously coming while visiting one of his clients on a farm or at the mechanic or anywhere else where a similar mechanism might be employed had moved from the realm of frightful supposition to an almost certainty. It was a concerning thought, to say the least.
He was about to come. Whether he could have gone another thirty minutes of being jerked off or not — the noise meant ejaculation was imminent. His stomach muscles clenched in readiness, cock throbbing, eager to obey. A green light in his subconscious would click on at the sound, mirroring the green light that lit on the machine below, like an evacuation warning for his balls, the floodgate opening, and his entire body prepared. Sure enough, a moment later, the nozzle of the machine was sucking up his glans, enveloping his cock in its textured confines, rolling down his shaft, and sucking so hard that control was ripped away from him. His back arched, and he moaned again, erupting down the throat of the chrome-plated nozzle, pulse after pulse, sucking down every drop until he was limp.
Somewhere along the past few months, fucking this machine had become more reliably satisfying than fucking anyone else, a habit that made his early reticence over the pharmaceutical-run property seem silly. His balls were empty, his cock was happy, he was getting the best sleep he could remember in recent memory, and best of all, there was no contorting his schedule necessary.
