by C. C. Piper
Except for these few aberrations, everything else about this version of Roxy had done nothing but draw me to her. She’d gained a curviness to her physique, a voluptuousness that enticed me more than I cared to admit. Her breasts and hips had become noticeably plumper and softer.
They looked so enticing, in fact, that I was grateful that I hadn’t unbuttoned my suit jacket despite the sweltering heat. The extra layer of fabric helped to conceal my body’s visible reaction to her.
That was something else I was reacclimating to, the ridiculously high temperatures and humidity. After those years in the cool fogginess of England, being back in Louisiana was like diving headfirst into a sauna. It made breathing harder and perspiring a certainty. Though I could blame both of those on laying eyes on Roxy again, too.
Even nearly five years later, my desire for her hadn’t diminished. Not even a little. I recollected all too clearly what it had been like to hold her, to touch her, to be inside her. The passage of time hadn’t dulled my memory of her calling out my name when she climaxed in my arms. I didn’t think anything but a full lobotomy could ever make me forget.
So the question was, what should I do about it? Should I seek her out and get to know her again? Our meeting was so unexpected that I hadn’t asked her three quarters of the questions I’d wanted to. Why had she shut me out of her life? How could she have fallen out of love with me so easily? Had there been extenuating circumstances for her blocking me like I was an aggravating telemarketer or had she merely grown sick of me?
My mind and heart had circled around these inquiries on and off for four and a half years. I deserved answers. And if I developed a plan to seek her out, I could have them. It might hurt to know she’d cast me aside like week-old garbage, but I’d convinced myself long ago that knowing was better than not knowing.
Once I knew, I could at least stop my incessant speculation. I could let her go rather than feel like a serrated knife was slicing into my chest every time I thought about her.
That was my theory, anyway.
I couldn’t help being bothered by the fact that she appeared to work here at the club. She hadn’t been dressed like a server or bartender, so that left me with a disturbing option I’d rather not think about. I had no idea what had happened in the time I’d been away, but if Roxy had stooped to selling her body, I didn’t think I could handle it.
Shit, I knew I couldn’t handle it.
Even the idea of it made me furious. I couldn’t do anything about her dating other men or being in other relationships, but if she’d decided the best way to make a living was to lay back and spread her legs, I’d feel compelled to do something about it. Maybe it was no longer my concern or even my business, but it didn’t feel that way. In my heart of hearts, Roxy would forever be mine, and I couldn’t let her risk herself like that.
If some john harmed her or God forbid, killed her – which I knew happened all the damn time in that line of work – I couldn’t live with it. I’d never get over it. Not ever.
Hell, I hadn’t gotten over her yet, and that was before I realized what she’d become.
Well, might’ve become. I couldn’t be sure that she’d taken on the guise of a streetwalker. I needed to speak with her. Make certain she was alright. If it turned out that she wasn’t what I suspected, I could butt out after that. I’d respect her wishes, even though it would suck super hard to have her drift back into my life again, only for her to traipse right back out of it.
Things between us felt unfinished because they were. But I could take care of that. If we met and hashed things out, answered each other’s queries unflinchingly, then we’d probably feel better. I knew I would feel better. Getting to the bottom of the truth was always the way to go. Right?
“Hey, Houston to Jaxson Liddell. Do we have a problem?” Christ, Trevor was such a goober.
“What do you want, Trevor?”
“Just checking to see if you’re still alive inside that husk of yours. You’ve been ogling that closed door for the past five minutes.”
He must’ve been exaggerating. I didn’t do things like that. Waste time lost in my thoughts like that. Or at least, I hadn’t in a long time. Not in four and a half years, in fact. Christ, just one brief moment with Roxy had me turned upside down.
“Do me a favor, will you? Go find the driver in the parking area and have him pull the car around.”
Trevor threw a look at me that was half-smirk and half-incredulity. “Can’t you just call him and have him show up at the front door?”
Yes, but I wanted Trevor out of my hair. I was going to make a call I didn’t need him overhearing. Instead of answering, I tilted my chin down and narrowed my gaze at him, communicating in no uncertain terms that he needed to get lost. Did he actually want me to say the words? After a short standoff, he ultimately took the hint. Finally.
He stalked off, huffing and sounding put out, but I didn’t care. I pulled out my cell and the number handwritten on a business card. The card was of excellent stock, thick and feathered along the edges but blank other than the markings. The Wish Maker was an odd duck. I dialed it, requesting an appointment for today. I wasn’t willing to wait more than a few hours.
I felt like I’d waited long enough.
When I entered the same quasi-office I’d gone into less than an hour before, I stalked in like a military commander. Unlike the last occasion we’d met, this time I knew precisely what I wanted, and I didn’t plan to be the teeniest bit squirrely about it, either.
The Wish Maker lifted her senior citizen gaze to mine, but I didn’t give her the opportunity to speak.
“Get rid of the dating profile I gave you before. I know precisely who I want.”
She didn’t flinch, didn’t move a muscle. For the first time, I noticed a four-legged cane setting off to the side and pondered whether it was just for show. I couldn’t tell. I decided then and there to never sit down to a poker game with this woman. She was impossible to read. But then, I wasn’t here to read her. I was here to make a demand.
“Who is it, then?”
“Roxanne Miller.”
5
Roxanne
When I received another call from the Wish Maker, I was in my ninety-minute nursing class with forty of those minutes still left to go. I felt torn. This lecture was important not only to my grade but also to my future knowledge in my chosen career. I needed to stay and listen. Yet if I ignored this summons for a new client, I might lose all credibility with her. Something I couldn’t do.
It was a lesson I’d learned the hard way early on when I’d once told her I didn’t have time for one of her two-hour appointments. She didn’t call me for a month, and when I contacted her, she explained that dependability was a must if I chose to work under her auspices. It was then that I’d realized saying no to her, even once, had far-reaching consequences. Unless it was an emergency, I couldn’t afford to ever turn her down again.
So I didn’t. No matter how much I wanted to.
In the end, I took a chance and compromised. I texted her to let her know I’d received her call, then asked for her to text me back with the details, already willing to agree as long as it didn’t affect Callie’s care. What I received was a text full of more instructions than I’d ever received from her previously.
The client wishes the following:
1. Wear a formal form-fitting gown in red.
2. Don a pair of stilettos in a matching shade.
3. Pin your hair up.
4. Apply red lipstick.
The next line of text contained the address.
These directives gave me pause. I’d had clients in the past who requested certain attire, but none had ever been so picky. I’d have to go shopping somewhere to secure the shoes and gown because I didn’t own either. I wondered if I could maybe find the stilettos on the cheap and maybe the dress could be a rental…
But rent or own, I had a yucky feeling about this one. More yucky than usual. I shuddered as I read over
the texted instructions again, particularly the address. There was no getting away from the creep factor of this situation.
I knew all about creepiness. New Orleans was an area known for being superstitious and having ties to the occult. The tourist industry took advantage of that history, profiting off it on a daily basis. But those of us who lived here knew of peculiar happenings and unexplained phenomena that didn’t tend to get reported in the news, some of it frightening.
It reminded me of that saying about truth always being stranger than fiction.
These stories were enough to keep me from going into certain areas of the city after dark. I might not have believed in the occult generally speaking, but violent crime was real whether related to the so-called supernatural or not. Besides, I had a little girl to think about. I couldn’t afford to tempt fate.
Yet this address was smack dab in the middle of an area replete with voodoo practitioners. The appointment was right at dusk, too. And my mind filled with scenarios which could end up being far worse than pretending I was some man’s dead wife named Marjorie. I didn’t feel scared, exactly. Just nervous and antsy.
What I felt more than anything was torn about doing it, but then I reminded myself of my mantra.
Callie is worth it.
After that, I knew I’d go through with this. One precaution I did take was letting Raina know precisely where I’d be. I usually didn’t go into such minutiae for my Wish Maker appointments, but something felt different about this one. If this wound up being dangerous, I wanted someone to know where to look for me if I didn’t return on time.
As evening approached, I prepared myself, being careful to follow my boss’s instructions to the letter. I’d lucked out and found a rental gown for a fraction of the price of a new one, then discovered the shoes at the local Goodwill. They didn’t even look worn. When the time came to leave, I prepared myself as best I could, then rushed out the door.
The faster I finished this, the faster I’d be back home.
My GPS app took me to the address of an antique Victorian home on the outskirts of town. If it’d been in better condition, it might have been called a grand old lady, but this lady had seen better days. The location of it was so far out that it was the only one visible, an isolated three-story structure set on the flatness of the marshlands like a boil.
This stretch of land had been one of the areas most heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina, the flooding here had destroyed so many buildings and homesteads. Maybe that was why this one was now all by its lonesome.
The road, like many in Louisiana, had only been resurfaced with a thin gravelly substance called chat. It was the least expensive way to cover over dirt roads and damaged streets. It spoke of the impoverishment that still existed in the state. On either side of the lane, steam rose like ghosts over the spongy ground, the cooler temperature of the evening, the heat of the soil, and the overall humidity causing condensation.
Every scary scene I’d ever watched or read about careened through my head as I poked along, making me shiver. I pressed nine and one into my phone and slipped it back into my handheld clutch. I might have felt obligated to do this appointment, but I’d be damned if I was going to be the stupid teenager in a horror flick, going by herself into the basement or breaking her ankle. If something bad started to happen, I’d make sure a rescue team was on the way.
I parked at the front and got out, my five-inch heels making high-pitched clicking noises that seemed to echo for ages across the landscape. It sounded as if it wasn’t just me approaching the door, but two or three of me.
Okay, Rox. Time to get a grip.
Squaring my shoulders, I stepped onto the slightly worse-for-wear porch, noticing the peeling paint. The boards of the porch itself looked brand new and freshly varnished, though. Maybe the place was in the middle of a renovation. A gleaming white doorbell stood out against the weather-beaten front door, making me think it had been replaced recently, too. I pressed it then held my breath.
The door opened, revealing a shadow. The shadow paced forward, becoming solid and shockingly familiar. It was Jax.
The man I’d seen for the first time in years only yesterday. The man I’d considered the love of my life. The man who left me without any notification, justification or warning.
The man who’d fathered my child.
Before I’d left this evening, I’d taken about five minutes to admire my little girl. She was her father made over and seeing Jax again live and in person had only reinforced this. They had the same black hair, the same blue eyes, the same long fingers and the same high arches shaping their feet. Even the shells of their ears were identical.
Sometimes when throwing a tantrum – though those were thankfully rare, Callie had my cooler temper rather than her father’s hotter one – she’d cross her arms emphatically and cinch down her brows just like Jax. It struck me as remarkable how much our children could inherit from us, not only physically but emotionally and behaviorally, as well.
His lack of contact, his disappearance seemingly off the face of the planet, had meant that I’d had no way of informing him about the arrival of our upcoming bundle of joy. He hadn’t known that I was pregnant, that Calliope Jacqueline Miller’s middle name was in tribute to his first name. He didn’t know anything about her at all.
And even now, Jaxson Liddell still didn’t know how much his silence had cost him.
That had been the thing that had stymied me the most all along. As teenagers, we were the kind of couple to stay in constant contact. We saw each other every day at school. And any time we knew we’d be separated, like during the weekends, we left one another notes.
Looking back now, it seemed juvenile and immature. Leaving notes. Only kids do that. But we were kids. We met our sophomore year and became close friends. There had always been a spark, an undeniable level of chemistry between us even then.
When we’d kissed at the end of that year, I knew it would change the dynamic of our relationship to something more than friends. By the end of our junior year, we’d done things like skip class so we could hide in a closet or empty classroom and make out. Then midway through our senior year, once we’d both turned eighteen, we did more than make out. And that more had resulted in Callie.
We became what many would term classic high school sweethearts, which sounds full of sweetness and cutesy-ness. But our feelings blossomed into something so much more than the terms cute or sweet could ever encompass. Our feelings were real.
At least they had been for me.
I’d believed they’d been real on his end, too. He’d meant so much to me. I remembered thinking about him all the time. Sometimes, we’d just stare into each other’s eyes. From the outside in, our relationship may have seemed sweet and cute, but the truth was it had been intense from the first moment we touched.
There had always been a certain amount of darkness in Jax. And I’d been as attracted to it as a moth to the flame. Initially our forays into sexual contact had been about exploration and careful crescendos of pleasure. But as time wore on, the lovemaking developed an edge, a kind of controlled desperation. It had made me hesitate, but then, it turned me on. Ultimately, I’d found his desire for dominance impossible to resist. Just like Jax himself had been impossible to resist.
Yet, even now I wondered…
Shouldn’t his need for me to be his submissive have turned me off? At the time, I was so innocent and naïve that I had to research what we were doing to determine what to call it. BDSM stood for bondage, discipline and sadomasochism. We only ever practiced the lighter end of the spectrum – Jax never took things as far as he could have.
But shouldn’t his hunger for something so odd have terrified rather than thrilled me? What if the way he’d wanted to be with me meant I was lacking? What if it meant I wasn’t normal or that wantonness was my true nature?
Sometimes, when everything in my day had gone sideways and I found myself wallowing in pity for a minute, I wondered if there w
as anything wrong with me at my core.
What if the true reason he left and cut off all contact was because of the way we’d had sex? What we’d shared had been atypical intimate behavior. I knew certain religious and other groups considered it to be dirty and unnatural. Yet, I’d enjoyed it. I’d more than enjoyed it, in fact. I’d come to require it.
So, what did that make me?
In my youth I’d heard older generations talk about girls who were naughty or wild. They’d call them sluts or whores. They’d say those were the ones boys fucked while virgins were the ones boys married. I’d been a virgin before Jax. He was the guy to deflower me, and we’d said our I love yous long before that.
Louisiana was heavily Catholic by religion, and even though neither Jax nor I practiced those beliefs, I couldn’t help wondering if those thoughts had ever contributed to his decision to abandon me.
But then I’d stop and shake my head at myself. These sorts of circular thoughts did nothing to console me. Instead, playing the “what if” game only made me feel worse.
Besides, even if any of that had been true, where could he ever get off judging me? This was the same person who’d left me high and dry without bothering to retain any link between us. He’d not only broken my heart. He’d shattered it, then ground the remnants into nothing but powder.
And now he’d hired me to spend two hours with him through the Wish Maker.
What was I supposed to make of that?
I gawked at him. Did he know it was me who’d be sent? Or had he given my boss a vague description, and I’d been chosen at random? Had he hired me by accident?
“Hey, Roxy. Want to come inside?” No surprise, no shock or mouth gaping open. No. He knew it would be me.
