Take Me

by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin

  My eyes traveled over the door to my apartment, automatically looking for any signs of forced entry. There were none, but you couldn’t be too careful. I slipped the key in the lock and opened the door.

  “Hey, bud.”

  Odin jogged his way across the living room to greet me, and I rubbed his shaggy head. It was good to see his hair growing back in again – he looked better with it longer. Well, he at least looked more like a giant mop, a.k.a. a Great Pyrenees. When we had been out in the Arizona desert all that time, I had to keep it closely clipped to keep him cooled down. His buzz cut had been nearly as short as mine.

  Maybe dogs did end up looking like their owners. Or was it the other way around?

  Whatever it was, if dogs were man’s best friend, Odin did his best to live up to the job. He had been with me for years and was about the only living thing around me I felt like I could actually count on. He would always be there when I got home from whatever I was doing. He never judged, never asked me a bunch of questions about why I was the way I was, and he never looked at me with fear.

  He was my buddy, and it was one of the few things that scared me. I kept quiet about him because making it known I had something to care about – even a dog – was enough to bring those who had something against me out of the woodwork and into my private life. I didn’t need that shit, and I couldn’t always be around to protect Odin. As big and ferocious as he could look to some people, he was an easy target to others.

  I started up my netbook computer before heading to the kitchen for some orange juice. It was the good stuff – fresh squeezed. I had been splurging on little things like that since returning to Chicago from the cabin in Arizona. The little things were so much more important than people realized when they had to go without.

  Not that I had taken any of the small creature comforts for granted beforehand, either. It had been like that in the Iraqi desert, too, even at our base. Ration everything was the rule. It sucked, but it beat being left for dead in a hole.

  Odin rubbed up against my leg, and I realized I had been lost in thought for a moment. I patted him in thanks and wondered for the hundredth time how he knew to do that. Like those service dogs that would get epileptics to lie down on the floor before a seizure starts to keep them from hurting themselves, Odin always seemed to know when I was thinking too much about the past.

  He worked better than the drugs the doctors had prescribed.

  I finished the OJ, took Odin out for a quick walk, and checked my email.

  More lotto winnings.

  Amazon would like me to review my purchase of a new set of headphones. I hadn’t actually tried them out yet, but I’d be hanging out with Jonathan tomorrow and would probably need them. The dude smoked a lot of weed and usually started babbling when he was stoned.

  A dating site called Lost Connections wanted to hook me up with an available woman in my area. I licked my lips and thought I was going to need a little company for the weekend but not from a fucking dating site.

  Lost Connections.

  Before I could stop it, expressive and soft brown eyes in the center of a heart-shaped face invaded my thoughts. Long, dark hair and a fucking luscious ass came next, but I pushed the rest of the memory away before it could really take hold and turned back to my email.

  Pizza Hut had free cinnamon sticks with any large pizza.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” I muttered to myself. I clicked on the pizza link and quickly ordered a large stuffed crust with mushrooms and pineapple to be delivered.

  Hey – it’s what I like.

  Fucking sue me.

  When the pizza showed up, I sat on the floor of the living room with my back against the couch and dug in, tossing bits of crust to Odin as I ate. It was a good thing I had gone to the gym today because I had eaten a shitload of pizza since returning to the city.

  More thoughts about the simple things spun around in my head. Pizza, beer, coffee – even a gym where I could work out properly. For some reason, my pleasure at the thought of the mundane alarmed me. My tongue moistened my lips, and I grabbed the remote to find something to watch on the television.

  I was definitely thinking too much. I had to stop.

  Television wasn’t a necessity; it was a luxury and a way to pass the time. I never really liked television much as a kid but found it was good for helping me relax now.

  This History Channel was always good for a few z’s, and it was playing something about dinosaurs. I tossed the half empty pizza box up onto the coffee table and lay down on the couch. The throw pillows picked out by Luisa were soft and comfortable, and I wondered how Rinaldo’s youngest daughter was doing. I hadn’t seen her in a while.

  Not that I would go too close to her – I wasn’t stupid. You didn’t date the boss’s daughter unless the boss told you to. He hadn’t done that, though she was my age and I was considered one of Rinaldo’s favorites.

  Had been, anyway.

  If he ever gave his blessing, I’d do her. She was hot and had a smart mouth that made me laugh. It didn’t seem too likely now, not with me on the shitlist indefinitely. It was enough to make anyone paranoid, and I was already a little bit on the unstable side.

  An animated T-Rex took a bite out of a Stegosaurus as my vision blurred.

  Head throbbing…and the taste of dirt in my mouth. On my stomach, coughing, trying to get the dust from my lungs…but only inhaling more of it. Hands bound behind me, and I can’t turn enough to the side to get my face off the ground…

  I woke, startled, and glanced up at the television to see a bunch of World War II footage on the screen. I quickly shut the damn thing off. I sat up and put my head in my hands, trying to clear the memory-dream from inside.

  A large wet tongue against my forearm centered me, and I reached over to scratch the base of Odin’s ears.

  “I need a better distraction,” I muttered to myself.

  Odin huffed at me as I grabbed my jacket and keys and shoved a Beretta down the back of my pants. He was probably looking at the clock and assuming I was going to work, but I’d gotten my job done earlier. Now I needed to spend some of my cash.

  My parking spaces in the garage held two vehicles – a used black Mazda hatchback I had purchased on my way back from Arizona about an hour after my old Chevy truck died and a silver Audi R8 convertible that I rarely ever took out unless it was one of the high-end social occasions I sometimes felt obligated to attend.

  The public transportation in Chicago was awesome, and I was a big fan of it ninety percent of the time. Every once in a while there was a need to get from one place to another door-to-door, though, and that was what I needed on this night. I slipped behind the wheel of the Mazda and headed south to the area where the gentlemen’s clubs tended to spill out onto the street corners.

  There were a hundred reasons I loved Chicago. Someone could live here for twenty years and still have new stuff to do. Jobs were everywhere, despite what the dudes sitting in the doorways of rundown buildings holding out cups and signs claimed. They might not have been good jobs, but there was shit to do and ways to make money. I loved the buildings the most – the whole concrete jungle idea. I loved figuring out how to get to the top of them and look down over the whole city. The Skydeck on top of the Willis Tower was an awesome place to relax.

  Okay, maybe not to everyone, but I loved it.

  I slowed the car as I approached the corner, and a half dozen girls and one guy took a few steps closer to the passenger side door. One of the girls actually came around to my side and laid her boobs over my windshield, smiling and grinding away at me. She was way too skinny though and had that junkie look about her. I checked the rest of them out quickly, and it didn’t take me long to decide on the one with the biggest ass. My finger depressed the window button, and the guy placed his hand on the roof of the car to lean it.

  “You lookin’ for somethin’ special tonight?”

  “All-nighter,” I told him. “Gimme the dark-haired girl wi
th the round ass.”

  The dude leaned in a bit more, and I tilted my head a bit so he could get a good look at me.

  “Yeah, I know you,” he said. “One of Rinaldo’s guys. Arden, right?”

  “You got it.”

  “You sure you want that one? She’s new and givin’ me a bit of trouble.” He snickered. “Nothing you couldn’t handle. Fuck, might use you to make an example out of her, ya know? You do side jobs?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said with a shrug. “She won’t give me no trouble, though.”

  “Well, you give her a little discipline if ya need to, ’kay?”

  “’Kay,” I repeated. Like I was really going to fuck up a girl I was fucking. Pimps were assholes, no doubt about it.

  “Employee discount!” he announced with a laugh and a wink. “Come over here, Bridgett.”

  The black-haired girl walked over to the side of the car, and the pimp opened the door for her. She looked up at him with a bit of concern.

  “You’re gonna be taking care of Mister Arden tonight,” he said as he gave her a little push inside. “He’s a good customer, so you be good to him.”

  She only hesitated a moment before getting inside. Her tiny skirt rose up and gave me a view of her little black panties. She had on stupidly high heels – like they all did – which were going to look pretty good over my shoulders. She shivered, but I didn’t know at first if the motion was from the temperature change or from nervousness.

  I gave the pimp half the cash before I drove off with her. I’d owe him the rest when I brought her back, assuming she took care of me the way she was supposed to. I knew she would. However she ended up in this business, they all knew better than to piss off a client. Those who didn’t know the rules ended up in the river or the lake.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. I knew what it was – the pimp had called her by her name – but I wanted her to say it.

  “Bridgett,” she replied quietly. She looked down at her hands on her lap and then tried to pull her skirt down a bit. I saw her hand tremble slightly before I looked back up at the road.

  “I’m Evan,” I told her. “Evan Arden. You haven’t been doing this long.”

  “A while,” she responded.

  “You’ve never had anyone take you home before.”

  She glanced sideways at me and then shook her head.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her. “That ain’t my thing. I’m an ass-man, though. You take it in the ass?”

  She blinked rapidly a few times, and her fingers tensed around themselves.

  “I have,” she said quietly.

  Her throat bobbed up and down, and her eyes tightened along with her jaw. She’d been hurt – I didn’t have any doubt about that. Hookers often were, and I didn’t think there was such a thing as one who wasn’t broken in some way or another. This one was new, though – recently damaged.

  I pulled the car over to the curb and turned sideways. Her whole body tensed up, and she pushed herself a little towards the door. I reached over and took her chin in my hands.

  “Hey,” I said. “I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you, right?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded rapidly as her eyes widened.

  “I meant that. I got lube, we’ll go slow, and if you decide you don’t want it, we’ll stop. I can always just fuck you from behind – I’m good with that. Okay?”

  She nodded again and relaxed slightly. I leaned over the console and placed my lips against hers firmly. She responded like she was on autopilot, which she probably was. After a couple of kisses, I backed away and looked her over once more as I tried to decide if she was going to be all right with this or not. She looked good, though – the right hair color, at least. Her eyes were light brown, though. I wasn’t sure what her nationality might have been, but she wasn’t Italian. Regardless, I really wanted to keep her. It was too much trouble to go all the way back and pick out another one.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded her head a few times, so I pulled back into traffic.

  Bridgett was obviously new. She was young – maybe twenty or so – and definitely didn’t have the demeanor of a street-hardened hooker. If I was a different kind of guy, I would have just taken her to some motel and given her the night off or whatever, but I was more pragmatic than that. If I wasn’t doing her tonight, some other guy would be. Maybe he’d be a nice guy and maybe he wouldn’t, but at least she wasn’t going to get hurt with me.

  At a red light, I looked over at her again, and my mind immediately began to catalog information. Long, soft-looking black hair – maybe Latino, but no accent, so she wasn’t an illegal from Mexico or Cuba or anything like that. She was dressed in the typical whore attire – red mini skirt, thigh-high stockings, black lacy top that showed her lack of bra quite clearly. Nice, big, round nipples.

  “Bridgett?” I asked quietly. It took her a moment to look from the window over to me. Bridgett wasn’t her actual name, and she hadn’t been going by it for very long. People responded very quickly to hearing sounds even remotely like their own names, and her delay was far too long. “You hungry or anything?”

  “No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m fine.”

  “There’s a restaurant in my apartment building,” I said. “We could eat first, if you want. It’s a nice place – good food, maybe get you a drink or two? I know I could use one.”

  Come on, baby – go with me here.

  “If you want to,” she finally said.

  Very complacent.

  It was almost ten-thirty, and the full menu wasn’t available after ten, but I ordered a couple of sandwiches with chips and a beer for me. I got her one of those vodka martinis that were a lot stronger than people realized. I tried to get her to relax a bit, but she kept glancing around the restaurant.

  I contemplated for a moment.

  “No one here cares what you’re wearing,” I told her.

  Her eyes found mine.

  “I look like a hooker,” she said quietly.

  No shit.

  “You are a hooker,” I said. I waved my hand towards the two servers near the bar. “They all know that. They’d know that if I put you in a cocktail dress, flats, and one of those little old lady red hats, too.”

  “How would they know?”

  I laughed.

  “Because you’re with me.”

  I managed to get her to settle down a little after that, and she did eat part of her sandwich and polish off two martinis while we talked about the weather and the Chicago Fire soccer team. Mostly I talked – she didn’t seem to know shit about soccer. I finished my beer, tossed cash onto the table, and led her by the hand to the elevators. As soon as we stepped inside and the doors closed, I could feel her tension mount again, so I leaned over close to her ear.

  “Not going to hurt you,” I reminded her, and my lips pressed lightly against her neck, just below her ear.

  Bridgett nodded slowly but still jumped a bit when the elevator went ding, signifying my floor.

  I led her out into the hallway and to my apartment door. Her eyes widened a bit as Odin came up to sniff at her. He could be a little intimidating, and he didn’t usually let people touch him. However, since he didn’t bark much, he didn’t often end up frightening anyone badly, and Bridgett was no exception. I didn’t give them much of a chance to get to know each other as I grabbed two bottles of water from the kitchen counter and brought Bridgett to my bedroom.

  My foot connected with the edge of the door, blocking Odin from the show as it slammed shut. I could hear him snuffle at the crack before he gave up and moved away. Placing the water bottles on the nightstand, I sat down on the edge of the king-sized bed and started to untie my boots.

  “Those look like army boots,” Bridgett observed. “A friend of mine went into the army. Are you in the army?”

  “No,” I said. Her babble amused me a little. “Ex Marine. Don’t you know what ARMY stands for?”

  “Um…no.”
r />   “Ain’t Ready for the Marines Yet.”

  She snickered at the lame joke, which I figured was a good sign. Laughing brought people’s guards down, and if she didn’t relax, it was going to pretty much ruin my evening. I smiled up at her, and she returned the look before walking up to me and standing between my knees.

  She placed her hands on my shoulders, and I tilted my head up to meet her lips as she bent over me. She tasted like vodka and pomegranate juice in my mouth, and she felt soft and warm in my hands. My fingers moved up to her shoulders and then back down again as our tongues moved around each other.

  She pulled at the hem of my T-shirt, and we broke apart long enough for her to lift it over my head. Her hands came back to my shoulders, and she stroked her fingers down my chest.

  I watched her eyes as she took me in. I was used to women looking at me in the gym or even going down the street. Even in the military, the chicks I served with favored me. Women usually liked what they saw – toned muscles, six pack abs, no scars.

  Well, none on the outside.

  My captain told me I intrigued them, which was why they seemed to flock to me. I was a quiet guy – a mystery for them to solve. I didn’t know why girls ate that shit up, but he said they did and he was right. As soon as they figured you out – really figured you out – they didn’t want anything to do with you.

  It was part of the reason I preferred hired company.

  Bridgett’s soft lips molded against mine again, and her tongue played around in my mouth as her hands continued to explore most of my upper body. I got a good grip on her plump ass, pulled her into my lap and down against my waiting cock. Rubbing against her little thong panties felt good – too good. I needed something a little quicker for now.