Therapy
“How have you been?”
Max ignored Tommy’s neutral question, instead taking his time to visually inspect the room they were in.
Cinder block walls surrounded him on three sides, the fourth was grimy drywall. Above his head was a brown and yellow water stain that he fancied looked a little like Donald Duck’s head from the side. In the back right corner was a fake potted plant that had years of dust caked on each broad leaf. A low, scuffed coffee table separated the couch he reclined on with Tommy’s worn armchair.
Tommy Branagh was his therapist. Or was it a psychologist? Max didn’t know the difference and frankly, he didn’t really care. The man used to be a brilliant doctor but lost his license after police discovered his role in a prescription fraud scheme.
Currently, Tommy sat in this dingy room, located in the bowels of a defunct YMCA building now known as The Hold. The same building that was used to house illegal arms, act as a safe place for organized crime, and considered the only neutral ground in Chicago for crime bosses to conduct safe meetings. It was also a place where mercenaries congregated.
So for Max, these hallowed halls constituted his home away from home and had for years. Being that he was a mercenary himself and all.
While Max had at one point taken advantage of all the amenities The Hold had to offer– and frequently (lookin’ at you Madame Rose’s Massage House of Happy Endings) he had only started seeing Tommy a month ago.
Because Max had a problem he couldn’t shake on his own. A problem that was starting to disrupt his everyday life.
Max…was in love.
“Do you pay a lot for this room?”
Tommy sighed, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and gently tugging one free. He lit the cigarette and blew out the smoke, dark eyes focusing on Max once more.
“That’s not what we’re here to discuss is it? Why are you avoiding my question?”
“I’m not avoiding it. I’ve been fine.”
“Fine is something people say when they are not, in fact, fine. Has anything happened in the last week?”
“Define ‘anything.’”
“Max, this only works if you talk to me. I need to know what’s going on to determine if you’re escalating.”
“Oh, I’m escalating. I mean, we both knew I was gonna escalate,” Max returned glibly.
Leaning back in his armchair, Tommy took in another drag of his cigarette.
“How are you escalating?”
“I put more cameras on her.”
Tommy sighed and ashed into a crystal tray.
“Where?”
“Well, I have the one in the hallway, right outside her door still. One in the bedroom, and one across the street watching her apartment entrance. Now, I have one in her kitchen. In my defense, she spends a lot of time in the kitchen! I was getting antsy waiting for her to move back into frame in the living room.”
“So there’s also one in the living room.”
Max blinked, “Well yeah. Did I not mention that one?”
Tommy ignored his question. “Are you still masturbating to the feeds?”
“Sometimes,” he muttered petulantly.
Running a hand over his thick, jet black hair Max sucked his teeth for a moment before sitting up on the sofa. Resting his elbows on his knees he studied the magazines on the coffee table. Who the fuck here reads Knitter’s Digest? How the fuck was he not going to jack off watching her laying in her little twin bed, her soft belly on display as she slept?
“Are you still in contact with her?”
“Charlie. Her name is Charlie. And yes. I see her almost every night.”
“Every night she’s working at the club, you mean.”
Max nodded, his eyes refusing to meet Tommy’s. He wouldn’t call the feeling inside him shame, exactly. Max knew what he was doing was wrong. He wasn’t a total psychopath. Although, if Tommy heard him use that word he’d be upset. On his second session Tommy told him that he more closely fit the bill of sociopath. Which had caused Max to go home and look up the difference, and in his opinion he was a blend of both.
From the time Max was a young boy, he knew he lacked the same ability to empathize with other people. That hurt him on the playground but it helped him excel at computers. Max was a fucking genius when it came to technology. It’s what got him into MIT. It’s what caused him to do so well in the Air Force.
Max graduated high school at fifteen. Went to MIT. Got kicked out of MIT (don’t ask) and at the tender age of eighteen joined the Air Force. He almost went Navy…but after his ASVAB tests came back and the Air Force recruiter had a word with him, he was set on joining the Air Force’s Special Warfare division. From there, he became a Special Reconnaissance operative. Max learned how to hone his body to become the ultimate weapon while deploying sick-ass tech all over the world. When he was wounded on a stealth mission in Russia, the Air Force put him out to pasture at the age of twenty-eight.
His boots hit the ground in Chicago and he never looked back. That was five years ago. Taking odd jobs through the merc line in The Hold, Max had managed to carve out a life for himself. He worked when he felt like it and fucked around when he didn’t. His uncanny efficiency with all things tech related earned him the moniker Tech Guy. Have a problem that can only be solved by hacking? You call The Tech Guy. You have a mini nuke that’s locked down with encryptions? Call The Tech Guy. Need surveillance feeds on someone? Tech Guy. There were always jobs available to him. Max had only one rule. He wouldn’t work against crime syndicates. No way was he getting caught in the crossfire. No sir. It was just good business to abstain from that kind of thing.
Then he met Charlie.
A year ago, Charmaine got a waitress with red hair that made the world quiet for Max. And he became instantly obsessed with the little thing. Obsessed enough that he knew everything there was to know about Charlotte Novikov. Like she was a natural redhead. She had warm brown eyes like cinnamon. She was the daughter of a retired stripper and low-level used car salesman, Charlotte came to Chicago by way of New York. She had two step brothers who were both older than her. She preferred to be called Charlie. Max knew where she lived, exactly how much money was in her bank account, that she preferred being paid in cash, and that she loved to bake.
Charlie, who was five foot three with cute little tits, a wide set of hips, and milky white skin. She worked at Wonderland, a strip club two blocks away from The Hold. Max hated that she worked there, but she wasn’t a dancer, so he let it be for now.
Oh, and there was the fact that Charlie was only eighteen.
With enough bravado and makeup she passed for older, but Max had never been fooled by that. He knew the minute he laid eyes on her she was probably jailbait.
That was the thing with being like he was, Max knew logically that her age should bother him. He knew it should be a huge issue, but he couldn’t work it out in his head. And convincing his dick that it shouldn’t get hard over the girl just because she was barely legal… well that was impossible.
“Don’t you think part of the issue you’re having is that you keep initiating contact with her?”
Max lunged back against the worn couch and balled his hands into fists.
“If I don’t go see her at work, I can’t– I get–”
Frustrated with how hard it was to explain, Max stood and began to pace. It wasn’t often he got agitated. Max was a very relaxed and carefree type of guy.
“My chest gets tight. I can’t function. I hacked the feeds at Wonderland but she moves around too much. Flipping the feeds gets annoying. And if something happens while I’m watching from ten miles away what the fuck am I going to do? If I’m there, I can keep tabs on her and if someone touches her then…then I can–”
“What? There’s a zero tolerance policy when it comes to violence at Wonderland. You’d get kicked out. There’s also a zero tolerance policy when it comes to harassing the girls there too.”
“Which mainly applies to the dancers. You don’t see the nasty shit some of these assholes try to pull with the waitresses! I broke some fucker’s fingers the other night for grabbing her ass.”
Tommy’s eyebrows rose. The look he shot Max said, ‘Don’t you see what’s wrong with that?’
But Max did not. That greasy fucking asshole touched his Charlie and she had looked horrified when it happened. Her pretty face had screwed up and he knew she was so upset she had to excuse herself for an impromptu break. He waited to approach the guy until after her shift was over and the fucker left the club. He wasn’t a complete idiot. If Charmaine saw him do that shit in her place, he’d be eighty-sixed before he could blink.
“Have you thought anymore on what exactly it is about Charlie that has drawn your attention?”
Max had. But he didn’t have a good answer yet. Shrugging in a belligerent way, he looked toward the framed window mounted high on the back wall, watery blue light filtering into the room.
“Did you even try going a whole day without contact?”
“No,” Max snorted, as if Tommy had said something completely ludicrous.
And that’s the truth. He wasn’t here because he wanted to stop watching Charlie. That wasn’t his problem. He wanted help understanding these feelings she was stirring up inside him like a ruby tinted tornado.
“I just want to understand all this. I don’t see what’s wrong with looking out for her–”
“Installing cameras in her home, without her knowledge, is a huge violation of her privacy. You must know it’s wrong on some level, since you keep downplaying your actions by generalizing them with the blanket statement that you’re ‘looking out for her.’ Imagine how it would feel if someone did that to you?”
A sly smile formed on his lips. “They’d have to get past my security system first.”
Tommy made a noise of irritation. “That isn’t the point, Max. The point is, if someone was watching you, without your knowledge you would feel like your privacy had been violated.”
“Not if Charlie was doing it.”
“That isn’t a normal reaction, Max. What you’re doing is textbook stalking. You follow her home. You surveil her. You admitted to hacking into her bank statements and email. Charlie has a right to her privacy.”
Again, this wasn’t why he was here.
“I don’t understand why it’s wrong to pursue a relationship with her. She’s not like other girls her age. She’s mature. She holds down two jobs. She pays bills. I mean, fucking hell, she’s a more responsible adult than I am.”
“Because she’s eighteen fucking years old, Max and you’re thirty-three. You’re more than twice her age. Hell, when she was born you were graduating high school.”
“I graduated early!”
Throwing himself back down on the couch in a petulant pose, Max glared at Tommy, his eyes squinting in suspicion.
“You know, I’m starting to think you don’t want us to get together.”
Tommy pursed his lips, mashing the cigarette stub into the crystal tray a tad too roughly for someone who was supposed to hold the upper hand in these sessions.
“Charlie is a girl. I will remind you the age of consent in Illinois is seventeen but it’s the bare minimum limit. She has no idea what being in a relationship with you would entail. The girl might be world-weary but she’s still a child.”
‘Child’ was a stretch. It wasn’t the first time Tommy had phrased it like that for him either. The first time, Max had pulled his phone out and showed him photos of Charlie, to help him see there was nothing child-like about her. Well, except maybe her rounded cheeks…and her little feet…and her adorably cute button nose.
Dammit.
Maybe Tommy had a point.
But fucking hell, when he looked at Charlie…when he talked to her in the club, she didn’t seem like a kid. She seemed like a young woman. She was funny and kind, sweet and sassy. She fucking glowed when he complimented her.
“But I want her,” Max whined.
His stomach rumbled and he rubbed a hand over his abs.
“I want you to work on removing cameras from her space this week. Remove at least two. And I want you to try and skip one of her shifts. Take a job. Something that relies on you physically being someplace that is not Wonderland. Something that you’ll exert yourself with. It should help refocus your attention.”
Oh My God, Max thought, this is not why I’m doing these stupid fucking sessions.
“Fine.”
“How has the other issue been?”
“Fine.”
Tommy tilted his head forward and looked at Max as if to silently say, ‘And?’
“I haven’t been to the tables in weeks. I played a nickel slot for a few rounds on Tuesday. I left when I was out of nickels.”
He left when it was time to go see Charlie, but he had also run out of nickels.
“That’s good. That’s serious progress. Now, remember the key is to not try and cold turkey the gambling addiction. If you feel the urge strongly enough, play…with caution. What gets you into trouble is when you start losing and betting what you don’t have. Nickel slots are a good way to ween yourself off it. You get the high of placing the bet and the risk is low. My advice is still the same: enjoy the floor but stay away from the tables.”
“Yep.”
His therapist let out another long suffering sigh, “You don’t have to keep coming to these meetings you know. But week after week you’re still here, sitting on my sofa and trying. That should tell you something, Max. Alright, well that’s all our time today. Still on for next week?”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Tommy pursed his lips, “We’ll get through this, Max. You have to meet me in the middle though.”
Max nodded and slinked from the room. Meet him in the middle? Ugh. What a cliche thing to say.
And remove cameras? Was he fucking nuts? Didn’t he know how much forethought had to go into sneaking into her apartment and installing those things? The one in her living room alone took him two hours to hide in the fucking drywall. He’d left just as she was getting home, white plaster still sticky on his fingers. Fingers that stung because he’d shocked the shit out of himself twice trying to splice into the ceiling light’s power cable.
The cameras in her apartment were literally the only thing keeping him from kidnapping the poor girl. Watching Charlie soothed him. He wasn’t a total creep. He didn’t watch her use the bathroom, not even he would cross that line.
Walking out of The Hold, Max checked the time. If he got back to his place in the next half hour, he could nab a few hours of sleep before Charlie was due at Wonderland.
Max leaned back in his gaming chair, jeans unzipped and pushed down just enough that he could tug his balls loose. He held his hard cock in a tight fist, biting his lower lip as his eyes stayed glued to the center monitor. The one that always showed the live feeds from her apartment. The other five monitors mounted around it showed other things, but this one was always on Charlie.
Reaching blindly toward the corner of his desk, he fumbled until he felt the bottle of lube. Uncapping it, he drizzled a healthy amount over his dick and hand, then went back to stroking. With the bottle in one hand and his cock in the other Max stayed mesmerized by the scene playing out before him.
Charlie was touching herself. He couldn’t see anything specifically because her thin blankets were still covering her from the waist down, but he knew from the motion of her arm and the way she writhed on the bed, exactly what she was doing.
Fuck, his little angel was going to make herself come.
The faster her elbow moved above the line of the blankets, the faster he tugged on his swollen cock. Rolling his fist over the head on each pass, Max tortured himself by holding his orgasm in check.
With a look of frustration on her face, Charlie kicked her legs out, then flopped a few times on the mattress, the blanket now mercifully thrown to the floor.
Saliva flooded Max’s mouth as he watched her fingers rub fast circles inside her thin panties. The wet spot was so saturated, he could see the individual outline of her fingers. Her nipples were two hard peaks under the cotton camisole she was wearing, that soft rounded belly on display. God, he wanted to come on her. He wanted to load her soft little belly-button full of his cum.
Jerking faster, he set the lube down on the desk and grabbed his mouse. It was awkward to do with his other hand, but he didn’t think he could release his dick for anything right now. Clicking a few times the image zoomed in until the screen was full of just her.
Pouring more lube on his cock, he felt it dripping onto his stomach– sliding down over his balls. But Max wanted to be soaked like she was. Her creamy thighs were glistening as she kept rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.
“That’s it baby, come for me. Let me see you lose it,” he muttered.
She arched on the mattress, her breasts thrusting up, her red hair shifting over her pillow.
Max gripped his balls in his other hand, they were slick and slippery from the excessive amount of lube but he didn’t give a fuck about the mess. Leaning forward, his stomach clenched as he held off on his orgasm.
“Come on baby. Come. Come. Come.”
Suddenly, her hand stopped and she went rigid, her thighs quaking and jiggling. Cum spurted from him, hitting his clenched fist and thighs. A powerful jet even managed to land on his desk, splattering inches from his keyboard. Breathing roughly through his release, Max never once took his eyes off Charlie. In her blissed out state, she pulled her hand from her panties and examined the wetness. Even through the grainy night vision feed he could see how the slick stretched between her fingers as she separated them.
Fuuuuuck, that was hot.
His cock gave a pitiful twitch.
With a deep sigh, Charlie got up and headed to the bathroom. That pushed Max into motion as well. Stripping off the soiled jeans he was wearing he strode nude to his own bathroom to shower quickly, then dress in a clean pair of jeans and a dark red t-shirt. Grabbing his messenger bag and jacket, he locked up his lair and headed for Wonderland.
