The Game

DISCLAIMER / CONTENT WARNING: This is a work of fiction intended for adult entertainment. All characters herein are the creations of the author, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

To put it mildly, this work is not intended for consumption by minors and may contain graphic depictions of non-consensual sex and other nasty behaviours. This story is fantasy only. The author does not encourage or condone the hateful and potentially criminal things that are done to women in this story. The activities performed in this fictional work should never be inflicted on people in the real world.

Also, be warned that the story touches on some darker themes of drug addiction, violence and abuse underpinning (though mostly not appearing directly in) the main action.

Preface: This was originally written as the opener of a sequence of stories outlining the career of a strange kind of gigolo, a "ravisher-for-hire," as told in sessions with a prison psychiatrist who quickly finds herself more than just fascinated by her subject. I find it works almost as well as a stand-alone, though, so further stories may or may not materialize depending on the dictates of time and inspiration. In the meantime, enjoy.

"Client John F. presents as a 38-year-old single African-American male of light complexion and excellent physical condition. Client has been incarcerated at San Gabriel Maximum Security Penitentiary for the past five years, and was transferred to Graves Lodge prison health service center last week for psychological evaluation pending possible parole.

"John F. presents as being mentally normal and without significant complaint. However, Client has been accused (though not convicted) of multiple crimes against women including blackmail, kidnapping, impersonation of a police officer, false imprisonment, sexual assault and rape (inclusive of aggravated, premeditated and statutory). Dr. Rice's first evaluations on Client's admittance at San Gabriel showed addiction to drugs, alcohol and especially sex; narcissism; general anxiety disorder; profound misogynistic tendencies and a pathological need to control and dominate others.

"John F. however denies experiencing any symptoms of distress or irritability, and denies any recent sexual activity or usage of drugs and alcohol. Client does admit, somewhat wryly, to frequent masturbation and difficulty concentrating when in the presence of women. Despite this, Dr. Rice's last evaluation of Client pronounces him cured of any unusual symptoms and mentally fit for parole. It will be my role to confirm or disconfirm this diagnosis.

"John F.'s thinking appears clear and linear, and his memory adequate. Affect is affable and personable, and Client is generally focused – often intensely so – but with occasional disruptions in tracking and eye contact. Unusually, Client insists on being addressed as "Dick," in apparent reference to his pre-incarceration "stage name" Dick Mandingo, which he claims is a way of connecting himself to and taking responsibility for past acts.

"Assessment will first proceed via narrative treatment. The first order of business is to establish Client's story as he sees it. From there it may be determined whether sufficient data has been gathered to confirm or dispute Dr. Rice's diagnosis. Second session with Client to commence at 11:00 AM of April 14th, 2014."

- From the Case Notes of Dr. Naomi Rivers

Naomi Rivers walked into her office on the morning of the fourteenth of April with a strange flutter of anticipation in her belly.

The gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old rookie psychiatrist stood five foot five, looking slightly taller in her smart high-heeled pumps, and though her slim-fit black business suit was professional, it also accentuated her curvaceous, well-toned hourglass figure. The tight pencil skirt went only down to mid-thigh, showing off her shapely mile-long nylon-stockinged gams and stretching pleasingly over her plump rear end. The equally tight blazer was buttoned just below the swell of her firm, natural 37C breasts – they were almost D-cups, really – that pushed out against her buttoned-up white blouse and bounced and swayed with her steps despite her bra's best efforts to restrain them.

To see her walk, she was the picture of professional confidence. Her flawless, milky skin shone with health, as did the long, lustrous chestnut tresses gathered and pinned behind her head in a tidy bun. Naomi's finely-chiseled, almost perfectly symmetrical features radiated cool assurance, her light green eyes gleaming alertly as she greeted passersby in the hallways, her glossy pink lips parting in periodic radiant smiles of greeting bestowed on colleagues and support staff alike, revealing nearly-perfect pearly-white dentistry with just a hint – humanizing and actually enhancing her beauty – of crookedness at the incisors.

She was Graves Lodge's newest and hottest hire in every way: inexperienced but, according to her transcripts and letters of reference, incredibly brilliant, the kind of mind the field saw once in a generation. And she felt mostly ready to take on her first case. There was perhaps a tiny nagging trace of self-doubt that had been with her ever since she got the job – she supposed everyone must have the secret fear that the world would find out they didn't really know what they were doing, and she chalked it up to that – but that wasn't the source of that fluttering feeling in her stomach. Nor was it her morning protein shake and cup of yogurt.

No, what was nagging at her, if only subconsciously, was a strange feeling about her first client.

During their introductory interview the Friday previous – which had been brief – she'd been struck by his presence. By everything about him, really. His rugged nearly six-foot frame was powerfully muscled with five years of prison-yard weightlifting. The intensity of his gaze, even or perhaps especially when it had wandered over her feminine curves – as it had done more than once – had been like a heat-lamp. And though she hesitated to admit the word into her consciousness, his beauty had been undeniable: his hair kept in a tidy afro, his beard carefully groomed with touches of silver in it, his features sculpted with a harmonious perfection that almost matched her own but saved from being a pretty-boy by a craggy, once-broken boxer's nose and seams of experience and laughter in his cheeks and around his eyes. The piercing black pools of his eyes...

... Naomi was a little disturbed by the way her memory tended to linger over details like that. Or not disturbed, exactly – after all, the fact that she was currently single didn't mean she was going to fall for any distractingly handsome man who gave her a smoldering look, especially not a convict – but just a little disquieted. And... she had to admit to herself that she wasn't totally sure why she'd chosen a much shorter skirt today than she'd worn on Friday.

But as she arrived at her office, she decided it didn't matter. It was time to focus on business. "Good morning, Jenna!" she said cheerfully to her young secretary as she sauntered in. "Ready to make a difference?"

"Hi, Doctor Rivers!" Jenna Bond, her glamorous blonde hair styled in waves that fell around an achingly adorable heart-shaped face, gave a smile whose wattage matched her boss's and whose dental perfection was in a class of its own. "Beautiful day!"

Naomi noted that the petite Jenna, too, was more daringly attired than she'd been on Friday, wearing a skirt perhaps even shorter than her boss' and forgoing a blazer entirely in favour of a form-fitting red blouse with a scooping neckline that showed off a pert bust just as impressive as Naomi's. Rivers fought the urge to give this a little frown – Jenna was as new to this job as she was, she'd have to take time to build expectations of presentation with her – and breezing by, the therapist let the gorgeous clerk go on unabashedly filing her nails. She had only known Jenna for about a week, but already got the feeling she didn't exactly have an obsessive work ethic.

Oh, well. As she hung up her blazer on a coat tree in the near corner of her spacious office – featuring a big teak desk with a couple of chairs in front of it, a scattering of potted palms and another chair beside an ultra-modern ergonomic pyschiatrist's couch with a chrome frame, clean lines and black leather upholstery – Naomi noted that at least the files she'd asked for a week ago had arrived and were waiting on her desk. Dr. Rice's case files on one John Fairview, the man who still liked to call himself "Dick Mandingo." They're here... and not a moment too soon.

Naomi would have only a couple of hours to go through the files' contents before her Client arrived. She intended to put them to good use. Sitting down and opening the first of the pair of thick files, she was curious to find a picture of Chloe Rice herself clipped to the inside front cover: a handsome, put-together mulatto woman with coffee-colored skin and a brilliant smile posed as if for an author's head-shot.

What's that doing in there? She riffled through the stack of papers within before her attention focused on the photo again and she noticed a slight deformation in its surface, and loosing the butterfly clip holding it in place she found a small flash drive nestled underneath it. Naomi picked up and turned the blue plastic data-stick over in her fingers and saw that it bore a tiny, meticulously printed label: "Progress Notes 13-14." She smiled to herself. Bingo. Just what I need. Thank you, Dr. Rice.

Still admiring the found treasure, she pressed a button on her phone and said: "Jenna?"

"Yes, Doctor Rivers."

"Hold my calls until my eleven o'clock arrives, would you?"

"Sure thing, Doctor."

She pull the flash drive's cap off to reveal its network connector, and pushing the paper files to one side she pulled her sleek laptop from its carrying case under her desk, plugged it in and switched it on. After it had booted up she plugged the flash drive in and tried to access it – only to get a "password required" message on each of the cryptically named files.

"What the hell?" she murmured, and turned to rummage in the files to see if Rice had left a password key somewhere. And that was when Naomi suddenly noticed that something was written, or rather scrawled, on the back of Dr. Rice's photo in big, crooked, almost-frenetic looking capital letters. Frowning, she looked closer and saw that it read:

"Huh," she mused to herself with a strange sense of foreboding. "My Latin's... a little rusty... Well..." She tried typing the phrase in as a password, then tried its component words, then tried anagrams. No luck. She eventually looked at her watch to see that fifteen minutes had passed. "Well... screw it, I don't have time for this."

Shaking her head and mentally filing it as a puzzle for later, she turned back to the hardcopy files and opened them, resigning herself to plodding through their contents the hard way.

She was frowning, only a third of the way through the first file and still trying to decipher Rice's proverbially obscure physician's scrawl in the margins of a behavior report from the prison authorities, when the phone on her desk buzzed again. "Dr. Rivers?"

She sighed irritably. "Jenna, I thought I told you no calls until the Client arrives."

"Yes, Doctor, but –"

"I mean it," she snapped. "I've still got a lot to cover before --"

"They've brought him, Doctor. He's here." Jenna's reply sounded curiously breathy.

What? Looking at her watch with a mild shock of surprise, Naomi realized that her couple of hours of lead time were up. Dammit. Can't believe it's been that long and I'm only – oh, screw it. Hastily tidying up and closing the file folders and sliding them into a desk drawer, she quickly patted at her hair and straightened her clothes, her heart beating a little faster than she would have liked. Noticing that her mouth felt a little dry, she scooped a water bottle out of a nearby drawer and took a swallow, breathed, composed herself.

"You're in control, Naomi," she said to herself under her breath. "You're brilliant, you're the best, and you've got this. You've got this."

"Dr. Rivers?" Jenna's voice came again. "Should I... send him in?"

"Yes, of course," she replied smoothly, getting up from her chair. "Send him in."

The door opened a moment later to admit a burly, slightly pudgy member of the state police, walking as if to keep a wary eye over his shoulder. The last in the trio of new arrivals was the cop's partner, a man stamped from the same slightly-doughy mould who keep an equally alert eye on the prisoner between them. But Naomi really registered neither of them: her attention was focused on John "Dick Mandingo" Fairview as she met him in person for only the second time.

He was just as she remembered him. His dark, intense eyes seemed to burn into everything around him, his muscles were corded and tense under his orange prison garb, his features were beautiful and his presence made it as natural for the eye to focus on him as it would be to watch a panther walking between a pair of house cats. His wrists were handcuffed, but he wasn't heavily shackled hand and foot; Naomi was pleased to see that the prison authorities had acceded to her request in that regard. I can't build trust with a Client when he's chained up like Hannibal Lecter were the words she'd used, and they had been effective.

Her heart beat faster as his eyes met hers, but she didn't let it show in her voice. "Hello, Dick... welcome." She didn't think she let it show. "Officers, thank you very much. If you could remove those cuffs and wait outside, please."

One of the Doughboys looked about to protest, but a determined glance of her flashing green eyes quelled his objections and he simply said: "You're the boss, Doc." He took Dick's cuffs off, adding: "You need anything, just shout for us."

Mandingo rubbed his wrists as the officers made their exit. Sitting down across the desk from her, his expression was serious, but there was a hint of a twinkle in those dark eyes. "I appreciate that, Dr. Rivers," he said. His voice was deep, resonant. "It's nice to feel human when I'm in a session, you have no idea what a difference it makes. And thanks... for remembering about the name."

She found herself surprised again at how articulate, how normal, how... it wasn't something she would admit to thinking out loud, but how not Black he sounded. Or not normal Black, anyway, more like James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman Black... focus, girl. "I'm happy to do anything I can to help you feel comfortable here," she said, trying to keep her face from heating up as she noticed his eyes wandering down to the swell of her breasts. "I, I need you to be able to open up to me without reservation."

He brought his eyes back up to meet hers. His expression was unreadable. After a moment he said: "I think we can get there, Doc. I have a good feeling about this."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Dick." She gave him a radiant smile as a reward for looking her in the eye again. "Because I'd like to try something over our next few sessions together. I'd like you to tell me a story. Your story."

"The story of my life, you mean?" He gave a little smirk. "That might take a while, you know. You want to know if my mother used to beat me, things like that?"

That drew her up short. "Did she?"

"No." He shook his head as if to say I can't believe you fell for that.

Naomi broke his gaze and felt her ears heat up in a slight flush of embarrassment, but she plowed on. "Actually," she said: "I had something a little more focused in mind. It's called narrative therapy. Basically, it's," she groped for the right words for a moment before deciding on: "It's a chance for you to see your life now, at this moment, through the lens of the events and the choices that brought you here."

"So you want me to tell you the story of how I wound up in prison." His tone was flat.

"If you think you'd be comfortable with that," she said evenly. "Yes. I'd like you to tell me that story."

He scratched his jaw. "I'm perfectly comfortable with it," he said. "I'm not sure if you'll feel the same way once we get started. And that story might take a little while, too."

"I'll take my chances," she smiled wryly. "And we have some time to work. We have as many sessions as we need to get through it. I'm game if you are."

"If you say so." He shrugged. "I don't see why not. What do I need to do?"

"Just recline on that couch over there," she said. "Do you need a glass of water, or anything?"

He shook his head as he stood and strode over to the psychiatrist's couch. She tried not to notice his lithe grace or the tight, muscular buns underneath his trousers as she followed him. As he turned and lay down, he plainly did notice the spectacular spectacle of her long legs in her short skirt – the twinkle in his eyes grew more pronounced but he said nothing, for which she felt a curious mixture of relief and... something else.

Think about it later... focus! Carrying her digital recorder and her notepad with her, she sat in the chair near his head with him looking away from her, switched the recorder on and set it on a chair arm, and got her pen and note paper at the ready. "Okay. Shall we begin?"

He cleared his throat. "Sure. It started... it started with a game."

"It was back in ought-five," he began. "It was a funny time in my life: I was thirty years old, a few years out of university. The whole world seemed to be in this weird sort of vertigo – Iraq was going down the tubes and Hurricane Katrina had hit, but somehow nothing had changed at the White House. And we went about our lives like – well, my friends and I were just partying like there was no tomorrow. It was like, subconsciously, we were waiting for the crash that you could feel coming down the pipe, and just trying to get in as much living as we could."

He seemed to fall into a bit of a reverie. "What kind of partying?" Naomi prompted him after a moment.

"The hardest kind," he responded, snapping out of it. "Every night of the week, every kind of drug you could name, every kind of booze you could drink, every kind of club skank you could fuck in a bathroom stall or an alleyway or in the back seat of a car, we did it all." He paused for a moment and then said: "Sorry about that term, 'club skank,' but truthfully that's how we thought of them and that's what we called them."

"It's alright, I prefer you to use honest language." Naomi scrawled a note in her pad as she asked: "This partying, did it affect your life?"

"And how." He shook his head. "Hard to hold down a job when you're going on three- and four-day benders every other week. I eventually wound up doing some dealing under the table to keep the rent paid and the party going." Dick gave a little chuckle. "I thought I was being so careful at the time. In retrospect it's amazing I didn't get busted for possession with intent to sell long before anything else happened. And it didn't help that I was getting high on my own supply."

"You had substance abuse issues?"

"Issues?" He laughed almost fondly. "I had a subscription. But I wouldn't come to terms with that for a long time yet. Certainly not before I met Gorgeous."

She blinked despite herself. "Gorgeous?"

Dick nodded. Naomi couldn't help noticing that a lump seemed to be growing in the front of his orange trousers. "One of those club skanks I told you about earlier, but extra-fine. Her real name was Georgette, but everybody called her Gorgeous George, or just Gorgeous for short. And I can tell you, she was." He seemed on the verge of another reverie before he turned his head slightly and asked her: "How much detail should I be going into, here?"