by Quinn, Cari
What must it be like to drive a man into a frenzy while you stayed safely removed? All eyes on her. She wouldn’t ever doubt if she was sexy enough for an experienced, older man like Giovanni. She knew that every man in the place wanted to take her home.
My gaze snagged on the piles of green clinging to the floor of the cage. And she was getting paid. Handsomely, from the looks of things. She wouldn’t have to scrap for chump change at her minimum wage job that wouldn’t put a dent in her upcoming student loans.
The men could look, but they couldn’t touch. She was their fantasy, close but not too close. She held them riveted. It was the ultimate tease.
She was in control.
The sound of a moan in the room behind me spurred me into moving away from the rail. I stumbled down the hall, the sickness in my belly spreading upward to burn hot in my mouth. I’d forgotten it momentarily, but now it was back, the bile twice as thick. She was touching him. It was her choice. She was desired so much that no man would say no.
She was in control.
My phone rang in my purse and I dragged it out, holding it to my ear without checking the readout.
“Car?” My sister. “Where are you?”
My lips felt numb as I struggled to answer. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She would be shocked. She would demand I come home.
Home. Where was that, exactly? The place I’d stayed at with my aunt? The house where I’d grown up in Georgia, now crowded with the apparitions of my dead parents? Or was it the tiny place I shared with Mia, where we tried not to notice each other’s ghosts when we passed too close to them? We were both waging a battle for normalcy. It had been in short supply since I’d been eleven and Mia fourteen, and we’d mourned its loss ever since.
But what was normal really? Did it even exist? If it meant denying the darker, neglected parts of myself I’d never been brave enough to explore, I didn’t want anything to do with it.
“I’m at a club,” I said, couching a lie in the truth. She’d never suspect a club like this. “How is the movie?”
Movies seemed so banal and ordinary. I’d aged in the past hour. I didn’t feel more experienced, but I sure felt older. Even a little wiser.
No wonder Giovanni didn’t want to play with little girls like me. He knew where he could be satisfied by women who wouldn’t say no or wait or please pretend you love me, just a little bit. There was an honesty here, maybe more than the average person could handle.
More than I could handle.
“What club?” Mia demanded. No movie could compete with smothering me.
“Just a club. No big deal. Did you go to an early show?”
“It’s past eleven, Carly Ann. The movie’s over. When are you coming home?”
When I find one that’s mine.
“Soon,” I said vaguely, aware of voices coming from another one of the VIP rooms. Loud male Italian cursing. The sound of a glass being slammed onto a table. Those guys weren’t getting their dicks sucked—or else they weren’t pleased with the service.
Unlike Giovanni, who hadn’t made a peep when that woman had knelt between his splayed legs.
Mia’s sigh gusted over the phone, somehow audible even in the noisy club. “Are you okay?” Her voice gentled. “I don’t mean to be a nag. I know you’re an adult now, I just worry.”
“I know.” Because I understood all too well how it felt to watch the clock when Mia was out late without calling, I tried to dial back my annoyance.
My sister was my whole world. I adored her. Whatever problems we had, they were insignificant in the scheme. She couldn’t help wanting to shelter me. After what she’d been through, that was the only way she knew how to be.
At twenty-five, I’d probably appreciate her attentiveness. Now, it just felt restrictive and cloying, like a noose around my neck she could pull from miles away. I hated that feeling. I wanted more than anything for it to go away. I didn’t want to chafe at the boundaries she’d set for me. If only I could just…behave.
But I couldn’t. I’d behaved for far too long.
“I should’ve left a note to tell you I was going out,” I conceded, moving toward a corner that promised relative privacy. I could chill next to a fake plant and pretend not to remember that Giovanni was probably panting through an orgasm at this very moment. One he’d paid for, no less. “I thought I’d be back before you were. Didn’t you guys stop for a bite after the movie?”
“Mama drama,” was all she said, and I left it at that.
I knew she meant Fox’s mother, because ours was long dead. I’d been just a kid when our mother had died of an aneurysm. Sometimes I barely remembered her, though before she’d been kidnapped, Mia had fought hard to keep Mama’s memories alive for me.
So many things had changed the day my sister had been taken. My dad, before he’d passed shortly thereafter from a heart attack. Mia. Me.
I’d always been the strong one, the one who had everything together. I’d had a counselor after Mia came home again, until it had been decided I was so well-adjusted that I didn’t need one.
Yeah, not so much.
“You should watch ‘Pretty Woman’,” I told Mia before realizing what I’d said. It was my sister’s favorite movie, and one we’d watched together a million times, but right now the idea of the hooker with a heart of gold struck too close to home when girls were getting paid for blowjobs a few feet away.
Not that I would ever do that. But I might do something else. Like…dance.
“I’ve seen it so many times I can recite the lines myself. Besides, you’re not here. I usually wait to watch it with you.”
Was I imagining things or was that really a whine in her voice? She probably sensed I was in a place I didn’t belong in. One that might push me closer to an edge I hadn’t realized I’d been tiptoeing on forever.
“You sound like you need the feels. Go ahead and start it,” I said, forcing myself out of the corner I’d disappeared into. It was so much easier to hide. To do what I was told. But I was eighteen now, and it was time I made my own way.
Dancing would be a hell of a lot better than pushing salads on people all day. I’d make twice or three times the money in half the time. Then I’d quit, armed with the experience.
At least I would’ve had some.
“I’ll be home before Edward climbs onto the fire escape,” I promised Mia, hanging up before she could guilt me into heading home without finding out what it would be like.
If I hated it, I could quit. I’m sure women quit here all the damn time.
Somehow I made it down the spiral staircase, with my palm pressed flat to the wall beside me to help with my balance. Dizziness swarmed my head, blurred my vision. Laughing faces in front of me wavered and bled together, turning into one taunting mass. Maybe I really wasn’t capable of handling an atmosphere like this. I was meant to stay in my apron behind my chopping board, making food for people without ever truly finding a place to belong. Shadows like me clung to corners. I’d never been the one to dominate a news story. Never been the one that a man would risk his life to have. I was destined to hide away in the kitchen while the party raged on down the hall.
Unless I took steps to change that. Tonight. No backing down.
Taking advantage of Giovanni being occupied upstairs, I pushed my way through the crowd until I was in the hallway where we’d talked earlier. He’d manhandled me, but he still hadn’t been too rough. His intention wasn’t to hurt me, just scare me off. I’d seen the truth of that in his eyes.
But he’d failed on both levels. I was hurt, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to see this through. Not because he spent time here. Or not only because of that. Something was going on with him beyond his search for no strings sex acts, and I needed to know what.
I found the office the guy at the door had directed me to and knocked. Knocked again when there was no response. Anger and humiliation and something darker and twistier had propelled me to this point. This seedy club should�
�ve made me flee into the night and never come back. But for some reason, I was…lured.
Just like Giovanni lured me. There was a mystery to both, more that lurked beneath the surface, and I wouldn’t find out just what if I went home to my safe, chaste little bed.
No, fuck that, I didn’t even have my own bed in my sister’s apartment. I couched it. She shared the bed with Fox when he stayed over. My sister and I couldn’t live crammed together like sardines forever. Once I had my training, I’d have to work my way up as a chef.
Here, I’d start at the top of the food chain. And I’d be in control. I’d say who got to touch and who didn’t. I’d have everyone’s eyes on me.
The girl in the shadows would finally be in the spotlight.
“Yeah, yeah, come in,” a woman called.
Rubbing my clammy hands on my thighs, I walked inside the office.
Giovanni
“You okay, sweetheart?”
Brenda wiped her mouth and blinked up at me, clearly surprised. I imagined there weren’t many men here who asked if she was all right after she performed the back room service she’d been paid for. These kinds of things weren’t supposed to take place, but everyone knew they did.
Now Carly did too.
Revulsion slickened my gut, tasted like fire at the back of my throat. How had I become this man? I’d just had an orgasm, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t thinking about the lovely, unnerved young woman between my thighs. I was focused on Carly.
Again. Still.
I imagined her walking out the door and heading back to her battered car in the lot down the street. It had been a risk allowing her to follow me, but I’d seen her at the fights too often lately and I couldn’t allow her childlike interest in me to stand. Snuffing it out quickly and painlessly was the kindest thing I could do for her.
For us both.
“I’m fine.” Brenda stood up unsteadily and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Knowing she could still taste me brought a flush to the back of my neck. If the circumstances had been different, knowing that would’ve filled me with a possessive, masculine pride. But they weren’t different, and the fact that my intentions were to save one girl didn’t detract from the fact that I’d just taken advantage of another.
It wasn’t enough that I’d fucked her between her soft, pale lips. Toward the end I’d gotten rough. I’d tried not to. Every time my fists tightened in her hair, I’d fought to gentle my hold. But she was skilled, and it had been a while since I’d had a release. With as much time as I spent in this club, and with the women at the fights who brought me the kind of attention I needed to be seen, I still didn’t sleep around indiscriminately. That part of my nature hadn’t changed, in spite of the trappings of my new life. I wasn’t perfect, and I definitely had taken my share of lovers, but I also didn’t have a revolving carousel of them. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have diminished my thoughts of Emilia.
Or Carly.
“Here.” I fumbled out my wallet and pressed a sheaf of bills into Brenda’s hand. She made a low noise in her throat, and I dug for more. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, hating the shame that burned through my skin. My mother would be so hurt to know I’d sunk to this level. Nothing would excuse it.
Though perhaps even that was wishful thinking. My mother had been gone for so many years. She’d walked away from the life my father had given her when I was small, saying a boy needed his father. She hadn’t been ready to be a mother. I’d known that all along. The nannies my father had paid for had helped fill in the gaps. My father hadn’t been willing to let her go, but eventually he had. She’d started over again somewhere far away, and she hadn’t left a forwarding address. Cards and packages had arrived for a while, until those too had stopped. I was no longer a boy, and no longer needed my mother’s censure to tell me I had sinned. I knew it every moment I looked in the mirror.
“No, no, this is too much,” Brenda breathed, and I wondered if she’d ever said those words before either. I doubted most men were nearly generous enough for what she gave them.
“Take it,” I insisted, pressing more cash into her hands. I didn’t know how much I’d given her. Five hundred dollars, maybe. It still wasn’t enough. I wasn’t rich, but I got by. And she deserved so much more than this. “Thank you for being here tonight,” I said, meaning it genuinely.
If not for Brenda and her kind eyes, I might not have been able to follow-through, and then Carly would’ve been screwed.
She still might be, but at least it wouldn’t be on my watch.
“You realize I would’ve done it for free, right?” Her quiet question cut through my recriminations and made me jerk my head up to meet her gaze. “I’ve seen you in here before, and you always seemed so removed. As if you weren’t really close to anyone.”
Truer words.
“I wanted to make you feel good.” She shrugged. “The money…well, it’s nice, and I appreciate it. But I was curious too.” She smiled almost shyly at me. “You’re much more commanding behind closed doors than I expected.”
“I’m sorry,” I began again—
“No, no, I liked it.” She brushed her fingers over the ends of my too long hair then yanked her hand back as if she’d been scalded. Or as if she feared reprisal. “The next time you need…anything, you come see me, okay? I’m happy to do this for you.” Her lashes lowered. “Or more.”
Or more. Christ. She wanted me to fuck her. Believed I wanted that too. And why wouldn’t she? I’d just exploded in her mouth.
But she couldn’t know I’d been imagining someone else. Two someone elses. One who’d touched me that way too few times in the scheme of things, and one who never would. I wouldn’t let her.
No matter what.
When Brenda turned away, I snagged her hand and drew her back. Light flared in her pretty dark eyes before dimming all too fast. “Why?” I asked softly. “Why do you do it? You’re so beautiful.” She flushed, and I kept going. “You could do anything. Be anything.”
She waited a while before answering. “What makes you think I’m not exactly where I want to be?”
“How could you be?” I countered. “The men here, they aren’t careful. They don’t treat you with respect—” I trailed off.
Damn, what a hypocrite I was. As if I had the right to judge anyone.
“Sex isn’t about respect. It’s about fulfilling a need, the same as if you ordered a drink at the bar. You pay more for good service. So I aspire to be good.” She gave me a cheeky little grin and a wink, then tugged her hand from mine and sashayed to the door. On the threshold, she turned back. “Thank you for this,” she said, waving the handful of green before discreetly tucking it into her bra. “But next time, signore, we’ll negotiate differently.”
She hadn’t been gone more than a few moments before the doorway filled again, this time with the man I’d come to the club hoping to see tonight. Carly had distracted me from making my usual rounds. Ensuring that I was seen where I needed to be, and when.
“Giovanni.” Marco Constantinova’s booming voice made my hackles rise, as it always did. “It’s nice to see you taking advantage of the amenities.” His smirk grew. “I trust you enjoyed yourself this evening in my humble establishment.”
His. Sure. Marco owned less than a fifth of the business, last I’d heard.
“I haven’t been here long, but yes.” I took a quick glance at my lap to ascertain my fly was zipped and rose to offer a hand to the other man. He clasped mine, shaking it with a firmness I might’ve respected had I not known the man was evil in a Hugo Boss suit. “Where is Naples?” I asked once the other man had stepped back.
“In Campania,” he said, his smirk deepening.
I laughed at his lame joke. Yes, Naples was in Italy, but we both knew which Naples I was referring to, and it wasn’t the city.
“He had some business to attend to.” Marco smoothed a hand over his thin silver and purple striped tie. “You know how it is.”
“
I do. I also know he promised to introduce me to Lorenzo tonight. That’s why I left the fight and came straight here.”
“No, you left the fight and came straight here because you couldn’t get your dick sucked before, so you needed it done after.” His mouth pulled into a tight line. “Brenda was a bad choice there, my friend.”
A chill passed over me. There was no such thing as idle chatter with men such as these, and I instantly feared for the petite brunette woman’s safety. Had I put her into harm’s way? Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Why is that?”
“She belongs to Lorenzo. He was on his way up to meet you, and met her on the stairs instead.” Slowly, Marco shook his head. “The little slut must’ve been had fifty guys inside her tonight with the amount of cash she had on her.”
It took everything I possessed not to shove this motherfucker aside and barrel through the club until I found Brenda and got her out of there. But then what? Was I supposed to try to save her like I hadn’t saved Emilia? I could hide her away in my studio apartment maybe, try to convince her this was no life for a young girl with such a bright future.
She’d had a bright future, until she met me.
“Where is Lorenzo now?” I asked slowly, clenching and unclenching my fists. Usually I was so careful with my tells, but I couldn’t hold back any more than I was at that moment. That Constantinova was still standing proved I had almost inhuman control, because I wanted him dead for even daring to utter the word slut. If anyone was a whore here, it was them. They were the ones without morals or regard for anything but fucking money. The green was all they cared about.
“He’s indisposed.”
I stared to push past him, but Marco grabbed my arm. He stroked his jaw, eyeing me as dispassionately as the butcher examined a slab of meat. “You might want to steer clear of the main room of the club right now, friend.”
I’m not your friend. I nearly growled the words, but somehow I held back the bitterness that burned on my tongue. “Why is that?”
