Dumb Girl

by C. R. Jane

  “A couple of weeks,” I said, not bothering to offer her any more information.

  “So what’s your experience level? I need to know what I’m working with so I can know how best to use you,”

  I laughed bitterly. My experience level.

  “Actually, I just had my first kiss today,” I told her, turning away from the window to stare at her right in the eyes. I wanted to know what kind of person she was. I thought that my uncle, he wouldn’t have cared. He probably would’ve just gotten annoyed that I wasn’t where he thought I should be.

  But her eyes flickered. There was something like distress and pain, but she shuttered away her emotions so quickly that it was hard to tell. She said nothing in response to my comment, just turned her attention back to the road, and we continued the rest of the drive in silence. We pulled up to one of the nicer hotels in the area. It wasn’t the seedy, pay-by-cash hotel that I thought we would be at. She gave the valet her keys, and I followed her inside the hotel. She didn’t stop to check in or get a key; instead, she headed right to the elevators. The silence was deafening as we went up to the fourth floor. We exited the elevator and walked down a long, carpeted hallway, the sound of our feet muffled as we went.

  We stopped at room 406, and Ashley pulled a key out of her purse. “He has a room permanently booked at this hotel for work,” she explained. She didn’t use my uncle’s name. I had noticed that no one did. It was either he or him or in my case, my uncle.

  I was sure he liked it that way. Just like he had made sure that my name was Holland now instead of Holly, there was power in a name. He sounded much more powerful than Bennett Jared, a name I only knew because my gran had mentioned it, not because he had told me.

  The room had the standard bed, armchair, and TV on an armoire set. The only thing that set it apart from other hotel rooms I’d seen was the drawer that Ashley pulled open that was full of items like lingerie, lube, and condoms. I shivered, the reality of what was going to happen tonight became more tangible by seeing those items.

  “I can’t do this,” I said before I could stop myself, the words bursting out of my mouth.

  Ashley glared at me sharply. “You don’t want to know what he’ll do to you if you don’t,” she told me harshly. The way she said it, I knew that Ashley wasn’t so different from me. At one point, she had been just as innocent as me, and somewhere along the road, either my uncle or someone else had taken it from her, just like this.

  I drew a hiccupping breath when she handed me a set of silk, pink-colored baby doll lingerie.

  “Put this on,” she commanded me calmly.

  I grabbed it and walked to the bathroom feeling sick, even though I knew modesty didn’t really matter in this situation. My hands trembled as I put it on. The make-up, and now the lingerie… I definitely seemed over eighteen. I had a feeling though that the clients that would be entertained tonight wouldn’t have really cared about my age, despite my uncle’s concerns.

  I walked back into the room, and she eyed me critically before giving me an approving nod.

  “Our first client is a regular. He’s a quick one. He sneaks in these appointments when he’s supposed to be at work meetings. So there won’t be a lot of discussion. He likes his blowjobs with a lot of suction and a little bit of teeth. Not every guy will want that. But this is what he likes.”

  My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest. “I don’t even know the first thing about that,” I told her in a frantic voice. I was fifteen. Obviously, I knew the general idea of how that worked. But I had never seen it done.

  “Well, you’ll just have to learn,” she said in a voice that was a little bit less confident than before. I could see reluctance growing in her gaze. As if the more time we spent together, the more she was beginning to regret what was about to happen.

  She stopped giving advice after that, and I didn’t ask her for anymore. We waited there in silence until there were two quick knocks on the door before a pause and one more knock. She looked at me as she grimly set her face. “That’s him. Just wait right there in that chair,” she said.

  She stood up and straightened her shoulders, and I watched as she transformed herself into whatever part she was playing tonight. She walked to the door with an extra sway in her hips that I hadn’t seen before. She took a breath right in front of the door, and then she opened it.

  The man was on her before she had even uttered a word. Both his hands were on her face as he devoured her, kicking the door shut behind him. I watched as his hands slid down her body, and they began to wander all over.

  I must’ve let out a squeak when I saw him drop his hands in between her legs, because his eyes flew open and he ripped himself away from her. “Who the fuck is this?” he said as his eyes danced around my scantily clad body. I felt dirty, I would feel the need to wash myself after this for weeks just from that look alone. Was this how she felt after her job ended every night?

  “She’s no one,” Ashley said suddenly. “She’s just observing tonight,” she continued as I shot her a questioning glance. Was she really letting me out of this?

  She reclaimed the man’s attention by grabbing the front of his straining pants. Although his eyes still flicked back to me occasionally, it at least stopped him from asking questions. She began to kiss him, moving him so that his back was to me. She pulled away from him as she began to undo the buttons on his shirt and mouthed to me “get out.”

  I was frozen in my seat for a moment, not sure if I had read her lips correctly. When she glared at me, I figured she had meant it. I tiptoed past them, grabbing my clothes and heading to the door, trying to ignore the man’s moans that were starting to fill the room.

  I hadn’t changed, so I stood in the hallway in just the pink lingerie. When I heard a door start to open down the hall, I booked it to the bathroom on the floor to change back into my clothes. There was a man lounging next to the elevator, and I felt his eyes on me as I passed by to get to the restroom. The feel of his gaze crawled up my spine as he stared at me until I disappeared behind the safety of the bathroom door.

  I leaned against the door, holding my clothes to my chest, taking in deep breaths as what I had just avoided hit me. Trembling, I sank to my knees, only faintly aware of the cool marble of the floor tile against my skin.

  Dry sobs started to erupt from my mouth, but I didn’t let actual tears fall. The adrenaline rush from my relief threatened to overwhelm me.

  I stayed on the floor in that bathroom for what seemed like hours, too afraid to leave the safety of its walls. There was a knock on the door after a while, and I flinched.

  “It’s me, Ashley,” she said through the door. I dragged myself off the floor and let her in.

  “Ready to go?” she said without any explanation or addition.

  I nodded. Her eyes were dead, blank masks that hid everything. Different than how they were before that man had arrived. It was like her soul had retreated inside of her… or disappeared.

  That was what was going to happen to me. I just knew it. It was only a matter of time.

  We picked up the car from the valet, and I realize that it was already four in the morning.

  “It will be no use trying to lie to him,” she said numbly as we started to drive. “He’ll find out one way or another so just tell him the truth… that I told you to get out of the room.”

  “I can at least try,” I protested. “It’s not fair for you to take the blame like that when I was the one freaking out.”

  “You’ll see,” was all she said in response. We were silent for the rest of the drive. She made no move to walk into my uncle’s house with me. I didn’t really know what to say to her as I got out of the car. Did I say it was nice to meet her when it hadn’t been? Did I thank her for what had happened, even though it was most likely just delaying the inevitable?

  “Good luck, kid,” she said, taking the decision from me.

  “Thank you,” was all I could muster before I closed the door.
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br />   She nodded once and drove off like the devil himself was after her.

  And maybe he was.

  “There’s nothing I hate more than a whore with a conscience,” came my uncle’s voice as I walked into his house. I had been trying to tiptoe, thinking he would be asleep, but maybe he didn’t sleep. Monsters didn’t need sleep, did they?

  He was sitting in his usual seat at the kitchen table, eating a chocolate chip cookie, even though it was five o’clock in the morning.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know that you hid in a bathroom stall all night, Holland?” he asked calmly as he took another bite of cookie. Crunch, crunch, crunch. The sound grated in my ears.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but then closed it. What was the use?

  “What should your punishment be? I’ll even be benevolent and let you pick it,” he told me. Crunch.

  I stuttered, thinking of what I knew I wouldn’t pick. A trip down to the basement. Anything but that.

  “Would you rather me pick?” Crunch. I wanted to rip the cookie out of his hand and throw it where he couldn’t reach it. Crunch.

  I clenched my fists to prevent myself from sliding my hands over my ears to block out the noise.

  “Run along to bed, you’ve got work to do tomorrow. I’ll think on your punishment,” he said, glancing at the clock that hung on the wall. Crunch.

  I almost laughed. I wasn’t sure how he expected me to sleep after a night like I had just had. Combine that with the punishment that I was sure awaited me in the morning. Well, it was going to take a lot of concealer to make me presentable for school tomorrow. I left the room.

  I didn’t bother to say good night. You didn’t say goodnight to monsters.

  My uncle was nowhere to be seen when I stepped hesitantly out of my bedroom into the hallway of our house. I had been asleep about an hour before my alarm rang, and I was weary down to my very bones.

  The house was completely quiet, but it didn’t prevent me from tiptoeing around and hurrying out as fast as I could when I was ready. Who knew if he was gonna pop out from the basement? I certainly wasn’t going to go down there and check and see if he was there.

  Brandon was waiting outside the school when I arrived. I was shocked to see him, honestly. With everything that had happened last night, I’d forgotten about him. What a strange life I lived that I could have my first kiss and then go on a field trip with a prostitute.

  “Holly,” he said eagerly. And I almost corrected him. Didn’t he know that my name was Holland now? I gave him a fake smile, and I knew he didn’t see right through me. He was just a regular teenage boy. He would never guess the horrors that awaited me when I went home at night. Suddenly, I was ridiculously happy to see him. Maybe at school I could pretend that I was living a different life, that I was someone else. Brandon could be the key to that.

  So that’s what I did. Even though I knew it was wrong, I flirted with Brandon all day, building my web around him so that he wouldn’t escape. I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself that there was something I liked about the whole thing. There was something I liked about being in complete control of Brandon and his emotions. If I spoke to another boy in class, Brandon’s entire aura would dim. But throw him a shy smile and a coy wink, and he would beam so bright that he lit up the whole room. Everything I did just made him want me more. Maybe it was because everything else about my life was out of my control. I couldn’t possibly be the type of person my uncle had told me I was, the type of person that thrived off of manipulating other people.

  At least that was what I told myself.

  The thing was, the more I was able to control him, the more control of him I wanted. We went back to his house after school. I didn’t bother shooting a text to my uncle to let him know where I was. This was supposed to be my job after all. We had only been studying for a couple of minutes when I saw the signs. He was itching to kiss me, itching to touch me, itching to do anything with me.

  I set down my pen and glanced at him under lowered lashes. I hadn’t known that was a thing until I saw Ashley do it last night to the valet as we left. He had nearly come in his pants.

  Apparently, it worked just as well on teenage boys. See, Uncle, I had learned something.

  “I really want to kiss you,” Brandon whispered to me.

  “I really want you to kiss me,” I said. It was probably the corniest thing that I had ever said, but Brandon ate it up. He was on me a second later, kissing me in that rushed, desperate way that I supposed most teenage boys overcome with hormones kissed like.

  When he put his hands under my shirt, I didn’t object. And I didn’t really want to object. This was what my uncle wanted me to do, but at the same time, in this moment, it seemed like my choice. He felt me up awkwardly, and it didn’t particularly feel good, but it seemed to do something to him.

  Note to self, it didn’t have to feel good to the girl for the guy to like it. I approached the make out session like I was a general learning war strategy. I learned what elicited the most gasps from him, learned where he wanted to be touched, and the sounds that he wanted me to make. It was an interesting process. Going down on him wasn’t actually that difficult either. He made enough noises to tell me exactly what he wanted, although I imagined doing it to someone more experienced would be different than with Brandon.

  When I was finished, and he was sprawled out on his bed, breathing heavily with his eyes closed, I gave myself a little thumbs up mentally. I was probably almost to the point where he would give me whatever I wanted if he was able to.

  My thought process momentarily stalled when he opened his eyes and looked at me. The way he was staring at me, I couldn’t really remember the last time someone had looked at me that way. He was gazing at me like he adored me, like I was worth something. It was kind of like how my parents had looked at me. I couldn’t stop myself from crawling up the bed and snuggling against him.

  “I really like you, Holly,” he whispered to me as he stroked my shoulder softly.

  “I really like you, too,” I said, a little surprised that I actually meant it.

  Chapter 11

  Holly

  Now

  I absolutely didn’t remember falling asleep. Drifting back to the here and now, it took me a second to even recognize where I was. Jamie’s hotel room. How and when had I conked out? The guys had been talking, pretty much ignoring my grand statement about being dead inside, and then I’d… what? Just taken a nap? I never did that.

  A hard weight was strung over my waist, and I turned slightly. Jamie. He was cuddled up against me, his forehead on my shoulder. He snored. It was a sound I’d gotten used to in New York. Charlie was gone.

  The light coming through the window had changed, and I could open my swollen eye, which meant that I must be healing.

  I turned my head so I could watch Jamie. I hadn’t thought I would ever get to do this again. Lie beside him, feel his warmth. There had been a gaping hole inside of me since I left him, but just having him sleeping beside me like this seemed to soothe the empty ache. His eyes fluttered open. They were soft and lazy… and familiar, like we were waking up in his penthouse in New York. Like we had done this every day.

  “Hi,” he whispered, his voice gravelly from sleep. I turned my body around all the way so that we were facing each other. I moved slow, scared to ruin the moment and remind him where he was, who I was, and what I had done.

  He held my gaze, piercing my very soul. I’ve never wanted anything more than for this moment to continue. I had to bite my lip to keep from begging him to please kiss me. He groaned softly as we continued to stare at each other.

  I exhaled a shuddering breath, and he inhaled sharply, like he was trying to capture it. “Do you remember how good it felt when we kissed?” he asked suddenly, his voice now deep for another reason.

  Oh, how I remembered. I had dreamed of it. I could taste him still. I realized that our time apart had only amplified my feelings. Still moving slow, I rubbed the tip of
my nose against his as I nodded.

  He cradled me, and I couldn’t resist bringing my mouth to his. The touch was electric. It sizzled. Our sharp gasps were synchronized. My lips quivered as they brushed back and forth across his, a wildfire of feelings flickering across my skin.

  When his tongue, hot and wet and so fucking delicious, swept across my bottom lip, I was transported. To a place where he and I were together. Without my crazy uncle, without fucked up intentions. Without heartbroken nights that made me careless. Without anything but my lover, the man I would have done anything for in another life.

  It was just a few months, but my time with Jamie had changed me. It had been the unexpected interlude in the shit show that had been my life. It had been the nail in the coffin in shattering the fragile hold I had on myself after what I had experienced with the others.

  I let my chest press against his, and I wrapped my hand around his neck, deepening the kiss, even though my body protested the movement because of my injuries. His tongue swept inside my mouth and tangled with mine. He licked and sucked reverently, reminding me of everything I’d missed. This was the most perfect kiss.

  We were both fucked up, but we were each other’s perfects somehow. His hand drifted down my shoulder, and he cupped my breast, his thumb sweeping my nipple. His fingers twisted and fisted the hair at the nape of my neck, his lips skidded down my throat, his teeth and tongue worked in beautiful concert—nipping and then soothing. I was unraveling. I was approaching a place I shouldn’t have been going. The warning bells started to ring. This was wrong. I was ruining my chance at freeing him, giving him a life without me.

  I pulled away abruptly, even though it went against everything inside of me to do so.

  Jamie

  Now